Mind Games

by Dragon Cobolt

  "No," I whispered. "I am most definitely not."

  The woman's corpse was...writhing. Her hands twitched spasmodically and then closed like claws around the back of the chair. Her eyes opened and they were shot through with milky white cataracts. They bulged slightly and her forehead rippled - and then I saw her lift her rump in the air. It was like she was...presenting. My stomach twisted and despite myself, I found my pussy lips growing moist as the undead woman (for there was no better term for it) spread her thighs, reached down with her free hand, spread her sex...

  And then, peeking from within her sex, came something pale silver and smooth.

  A moan crossed with an unearthly groan came from the undead woman's lips. Her eyes closed and she focused, shuddering. The shape pushed further out, revealing that the bulbous head led to a segmented, bony spine. It slapped onto the ground with a wet sound - like meat. But then arms emerged from the bony head and the long spine, pushing itself up like a humanoid creature. It opened a segmented jaw and swung its eyeless, hideous face around.

  The woman cooed, looking at it, her white eyes filled with a maternal love.

  My stomach twisted.

  The small creature sprang up onto her back. Its clawed hands reached around - cupping and squeezing those gray breasts. Its small fingertips pinched her nipples, causing her to moan as it hissed and pushed its still slick body along her back, smearing her shoulder blades with her own juices. Her pussy started to spread - but that was impossible . Her belly was flat as a board. But as I watched, it started to swell and swell, and swell. By the time the second hideous creature had emerged, the first had swung its tail up and over its head, curling itself into a shape that resembled a tightly coiled 6. The tail tip pressed to the undead girl's mouth, then plunged home and she sucked, her tongue swirling around each bony ridge of the tail-cock.

  She had given birth to it. And now she was sucking it off as earnestly and eagerly as a lover.

  And the second one crawled onto her, squeezing and caressing her thigh, while a third started to peek from her pussy again. Her belly squirmed with them. There were so many. But they hadn't been there.

  The third landed.

  It was bigger than the others. Rather than merely having a spine with four legs emerging from it, it actually had a torso that grew larger and more defined as it stood on its hind legs and stretched its spindly arms outwards. Those spindly arms became less so as it flexed and twisted. Flesh seemed to come from nowhere, ballooning with its chitinous flesh, pushing the plates outwards, filling the gaps within with muscle and gray skin. By the time it was done, it was a eyeless humanoid with the body of an athletic killer and a flat, nearly featureless cock that hung between its bony thighs like a weapon. Its tail whipped from side to side as the smaller ones continued to caress and stroke the undead woman.

  The eyeless humanoid looked at me.

  And its cock was hard.

  "Lassie..." Lucas whispered, his voice low. "Lassie, you better do something."

  My hands shook as I grabbed my shotcannon. That tentacle...holy shit, that Tesc infested woman, Maria Festios, she had wanted to turn me into that . Into a Broodmother. And her Brood was already walking towards me. It had no eyes, no face really save for those dripping, segmented jaws. But somehow, it still managed to exude a palpable aura of dominant masculinity. Its clawed hand reached down, fondling its sleek cock. My hands were frozen, my eyes locked on that member. It was so clear. Just lean back and let it rape me.

  It'd feel...

  So... good .

  I clenched my jaw. "Sorry, buddy," I hissed. "But you gotta take me out to dinner first."

  The words were stupid. Pathetic, even. Shouting into the wind, screaming into the void. But the quip - no matter how weak it was - caused my hands to move. I swung the shotcannon around and aimed it right at the Brood's chest. I pulled back on the trigger and the buckshot caught it right in its spindly chest. Chiten and gray blood went flying and the Brood fell in two pieces, flecking its mother with its blood. Her face twisted and a combination of horror, sorrow and rage played across her undead features. She howled wordlessly and pointed at me. The smaller Brood - the Broodlings? - scrambled off their mother, ceasing their duty of caressing her breasts and tonguing her ass and every other perverse thing they were doing and started scrambling towards me.

  My hands were more certain now. I cocked and fired, catching one Broodling in the face, the other one skimmed by several of the shotcannon pellets. It staggered as its sibling turned into so much paste. I cocked the shotcannon again, pushing my feet along the ground, my back pressing against the wall as I desperately tried to gain more distance. The Broodling screeched and leaped at me. I fired again and the gray blood splashed me this time. But now, the Broodmother was on her feet. She moved with jerky, spasming motions, as if she was controlled by a series of rods and wires rather than flesh and bone. She twitched towards me. I grabbed onto the control console and toggled on the laser.

  The Broodmother walked through it. Her torso hit the ground. Her legs kept walking - and under the charred flesh, I could see glowing growths more in common with deep sea life forms than anything inside a human being. Her torso kept crawling forward, howling at me.

  "My babies ! My babies !" She screeched.

  I stepped backwards, out the door, then slammed my palm down on the lock button. I turned and ran and ran and ran and ran.

  ***

  Storage Room 08's door opened onto my panting, shuddering form. I turned, slammed the lock button down, then saw that the room was filled with crates and other storage units. I dragged the biggest crate I could – my arms straining, my muscles knotting with the effort - and pushed the crate between me and the door. With that done, I sat down and ducked my head forward. I panted, my shotcannon clattering as I dropped it onto the ground beside me.

  "F-Fuck," I hissed.

  My babies .

  Moans of pleasure at the feeling of a Brood passing out of my cunt.

  I shivered. My hand dipped before I could think about it. My fingers pushed against the nanite sheath covering me – and the nanites were so obliging. It felt as if the suit had wanted me to do this since I put it on. It grew tighter around my nipples, firmer around my breasts, clinging to me as I plunged two fingers into my cunt. I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood. It wasn't to keep quiet. I didn't care about quiet. I moaned loudly as my tongue darted out, tasting the blood. I shivered and panted as my thumb rubbed my clit, my fingers crooking inside of myself. The nanites slipped out of the way letting myself touch my own center of pleasure.

  In my mind, the Brood had me pinned down. His hips were rough and metallic, his hands squeezing hard enough to make my hands and fingertips go numb. His breath was moist and tasted of iron and gunpowder as he plunged into me again and again, that cold dick filling me as he raped me.

  "Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes!" I moaned, loving the way each word made my cut lips ache . I needed that pain as much as I needed the pleasure.

  My eyes screwed up shut. I could have teased this out for hours. But I just let the crashing intensity of my climax hit me like a battering ram - the last image in my mind birthing another Brood, another Brood that would fuck me just as good as his father had. My back arched and I shuddered and puddled. My back pressed to the ground as I laid back, panting heavily. My butt had scooted forward with every finger-thrust, my hips driving forward to meet my own fingers. This had ended up pushing me away from the wall and into the middle of the room. So now, I was there - spent and twitching.

  My fingers forced into my mouth and I licked and slurped and sucked. "Oh god, oh yes..."

  I let my hand slap onto the ground.

  "What the fuck is wrong with me?" I whispered.

  "...post adrenaline rush?" Lucas asked.

  I closed my eyes. Gritted my teeth. Began to gently slam the back of my head against the wall, trying to hurt myself as badly as I deserved. After slamming a few times, I hissed out: "You stopped watching, r
ight?"

  "I, uh..." Lucas coughed. "Listen. Lassie." My face burned at his tone. "We need ta get back on task. There should be space suits and the parts we need in this room. Get searching for a case with a star-burst logo on it. Meanwhile, I’ll try and get these seven cyber-mods for you."

  “Seven?” I whispered, my head throbbing. I noticed that I hadn’t done enough damage to register on my heath bar. Nice. Good. Wonderful. “Happy days.”

  I stood with shaky, quivering knees. Finding the spacesuit was easier than finding the right components, and I was painfully aware of the fact Lucas was watching my every action and thinking of my wanton need earlier. That need itself made my stomach do a slow flip flop. The desire to be held down and raped by a Brood was gone. The very thought made me sick to my stomach. But for...I shook my head. No. It wasn't worth worrying about. Instead, I tried to just focus on getting the suit on. The space suit wasn't actually a full suit . It was a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, a helmet and a sleek backpack. I swung the backpack on, strapped on the boots and the gloves and then slipped the helmet on. The helmet clicked onto my collar and the backpack started to thrum . I breathed in, then out.

  When I closed my eyes, I saw that the space suit wasn’t in my inventory boxes. Rather, it was in the sockets on the T posing version of myself in the right hand corner of the inventory. It filled my head, chest, arms and legs slots, with tiny icons that mimicked the shapes of the space suit.

  "Will this be enough to keep me safe in space?" I asked, my hands sliding along the sleekness of the nanites

  "Your nanites have formatted into a mechanical counter-pressure suit. So, basically, the nanites will cling hard enough to keep you from getting any damage while being exposed to the vacuum." I nodded at that, then looked around at the boxes. There were several with sunburst images on the sides. I opened them, finding dozens of parts within. Describing each one to Lucas took a few moments of searching around for a number or component symbol. Again and again, Lucas told me that was the wrong component. Finally, though, I found a cube of metal roughly a foot by a foot in size with the designation of 45M/DEX.

  "That's it!" Lucas said. "Now, we just get to the exterior hull and attach it to the busted up engine and we should have enough time to catch our breath."

  I nodded slowly, then slipped the cube into my inventory - a backpack forming out of the nanites that I wore. The box felt heavy, but I could deal with it. "And we're going along the exterior because vacuum is better than going up against more Tesc?"

  "That...lass with the..."

  "A Broodmother," I said.

  "Ah, good name," he said. "Well, there's at least thirty of em in the Habitation deck. I've found some working cameras. They have em in..." he gulped. "Well, ah. That's. Something you don't see every day."

  I nodded. "So, we've got possibly hundreds of Brood and Broodlings?"

  "Something like," Lucas said, sounding faint.

  "And other Tesc too," I said, rubbing my helmeted forehead with one hand, shifting the helmet backwards ever so slightly against my collar. I bit my lip. Then I shook my head. "Come on, I gotta get to the airlock before Maria Festios tries to make me one of them."

  "Why call her by her name?" Lucas asked as I shoved the crate out of the way of the door. I tensed at the door, cocking my head forward, listening. I didn't hear anyone scrabbling at it. But I still hefted my shotcannon, keeping it at the ready.

  "I need to remember she's human," I murmured. "So I stay human too."

  Lucas coughed. He didn't sound convinced. “Well. I’ve shunted the mods to the tube near the airlock - you’ll be able to pick them up there, lassie.”

  The door opened on an empty corridor.

  I left the storage room and started for the outer edge of the Engineering section.

  ***

  "Bugger." Lucas and I spoke at the same time. Some of his verbal mannerisms were rubbing off on me - though I wasn't about to start calling myself lassie. It felt too much like being a dog. I lifted one booted foot and kicked at the airlock door. It still refused to budge. The airlock was the heaviest looking door I had seen on the station thus far, and had its own power systems rather than being connected to the systems power supplies. The only problem was that the pair of tube-shaped power units to either side of the door were dead. The only thing that was working in the area was the pneumatic tube that had brought me the cyber-mods.

  "Can't we hook it into the station systems?"

  "Problem with that is the Tesc have control over some of the computers," Lucas said. "I'm staying out of anything vital, and hoping they don't try and fry my brain with some magic computer virus or some shite like that. But if we bring an airlock into the systems, then this station is going get opened to the big outdoors – Tesc don't need to breathe, lassie. And if ya think that our destabilization problem is bad, just wait until we spray half the station's atmosphere out of a bloody airlock."

  I nodded. "So, how do we...do we fix it?"

  "I don't know if there are any voltaic cells in the storage rooms - we were running short before all Hell broke loose," Lucas said, sounding like he was chewing on his lower lip. Then, quietly, he said. "There's a rumor I heard..."

  "Yeah?" I asked, breathing slowly, trying to calm myself. I checked behind myself. No sign of Maria. Or Brood. I looked back at the airlock.

  "I heard that one of the researchers, Dr. Tilly, he was able to recharge voltaic cells just by touching the blighters," Lucas said. "It may be worth a shot. Maybe he has a charging unit that no one told us about."

  I clenched my jaw. "How much more do I need to fucking fetch on this fucking station?"

  Lucas chuckled, sounding wryly amused. "Oh, I don't know. Enough to keep us alive, lassie."

  I closed my eyes and saw that we only had 0:20:39 left on my timer.

  “Well.” I said. “Good thing I’m getting a workout.”

  I turned and started running again.

  Dr. Tilly was located in WepTec lab 01, and so I only had to run for about thirty seconds before reaching it from the airlock. The door was shut. By this point, I had it up to fucking here with fucking around - and we only had twenty or so minutes left before the station's drift was un-fucking fixable. And so, I pulled my wrench, smashed open the keycard scanner, then touched the right cables together. Hacking skill 2 to the fucking rescue.

  The scene inside was stark.

  Dr. Tilly - his name printed on the ID tag hanging from his collar - hung from the ceiling. A noose made of computer cables and wires bound together by tape and knots hung around his bulging throat. HIs eyes were closed and he swayed slowly from side to side, his feet brushing against the chair that had skidded to the left. It was clear that he had stood on the office chair, then pushed off. I tore my eyes from him and spotted a small PDA sitting on the desktop that dominated the room. The walls were sparsely covered – in fact, I noticed that huge machines had been torn out of this place at some point, leaving behind scraped metal floors and torn out screws and other examples that people had stripped the place.

  I picked up the PDA and tapped it on. There were a few files - but since time was short, I tapped the first one, hoping to find something. Anything that might help me figure out what to do next.

  To my shock, the upper edge of the PDA shone to life and shimmering rays of almost solid light flashed out. They skimmed through the air and sculpted shapes that grew more and more defined, becoming the three dimensional images of Dr. Tilly and two other scientists. They were adjusting and manipulating the now absent machines, leaving me with only vague ideas of what they had once been. There were plenty of dials, but also lots of those sweeping gestures people made while using touch pads.

  Dr. Tilly laughed, his hologram stepping through his own corpse with a sickening whirr and dazzling spray of pixels. He reformed as he said: "Ma'am, subject 0098 has given us just what we needed. Do you think the focusing aperture is ready?"

  One of the other holograms turned to face him. The face wa
s unfamiliar, but the woman seemed preppy, pretty and eager. She adjusted her glasses one handed as she nodded.

  "It should be, Dr. Tilly."

  "All right. I think it's fair that I take the first dosage of mass produced Ambrosia," Dr. Tilly said, flashing a grin.

  "Are you sure? Corporate said that the United-" The other woman – a more severe, dark skinned one – asked.

  Dr. Tilly waved one hand. "They've been getting naturally collected Ambrosia for forty years for their Omega goons. I doubt they will begrudge a bit of in-house testing before they buy their product." He chuckled, then picked up something the holographic recording suddenly picked up. Now that he held it, the syringe appeared in his hand. He touched it to his neck, then pushed it home as the other scientists watched - both of them looked utterly appalled at the sudden motion. Even the preppy one, who cried out.

  "Sir! We should have set up safeties, we-"

  Dr. Tilly gasped. He staggered backwards, his eyes closing. His mouth opened and he seemed to grow...younger. I hadn't noticed the differences until they faded away - the wrinkles around his eyes, invisible in death, faded in the holographic recording as well. His hair grew outwards and his palms spread as he clutched on a table that had been moved between the recording and now. He seemed to lean on nothing as a nimbus of crackling lightning surrounded him. He laughed, then opened his eyes - and even in the hologram, it was clear they burned with lightning.

  "It's glorious," he whispered.

  The recording ended. I saw the title was: Testing Ambrosia-Psychokinesis.

  I frowned. "Did you see that, Lucas?"

  "I did. The bloody bastards were right," he said. "They were making mass produced Ambrosia. That shite’s what gives Cadre Omega their powers - it’s nearly an urban legend. I mean, everyone’s seen the vids, you know?”

  “What is the Cadre Omega?” I asked, shaking my head slowly.

  “For the past forty years, they’ve been the UNN’s supernatural goon squad. Oh, fine, they show up on the vids doing super hero shite, but everyone knows they’re mostly black ops. They’ve done shite in Venus, the Belt, the Jovians…” Lucas trailed off. “The conspiracy boards and Q-anon fucks claim they got mind readers.”