Mind Games

by Dragon Cobolt

  "Nay, lassie," Lucas said.

  "Jules?" I whispered.

  He didn't respond.

  I frowned. I hoped that the Tesc hadn't come on where they had been working. He was just taking a piss. That thought was nice. Comforting. Not that I wanted to have him piss on me or anything. But it was just something normal here, in this timeless hell surrounded by fucking abominations. I felt my own bladder twinge and my cheeks turned red as I realized I hadn't done anything normal in far too long. At least I had gotten a few snatches of a bite to eat while working on the collar.

  My thumb touched the button as my collar buzzed - giving me an idea of how long I had been rummaging around this place. An hour. I nodded and then came to the SDP room.

  "Back, sorry!" Jules said, making me relax even more as I stepped through the door. The SDP room was a fusion of the art-deco of the rest of the Corporate section with a bit of the antiseptic futurism of the technical research levels of the station. There were six large seats, three on one side of the room and three on the other. They looked a bit like the kind of seats you might see at a dentist's office, with a headrest and armrests. But attached to their backs were gilt and wood paneled domes that were mounted on boom arms. I walked over and took hold of one of the domes, flipping it over - and hissed.

  The inside of the dome, concealed by position, were an array of thick spines and needles that looked as if they were able to pierce through human skin and bone with ease. My thumb accidentally found a small switch on the outer edge of the dome. The needles thrust forward with a loud snick . I jerked away.

  "What the fucking fuck!?" I snarled.

  "What, what is it?" Jules asked, voice alarmed.

  I looked at it. "It's a fucking hairdresser's salon with fucking iron maiden helmets!"

  "What?"

  That was Tracy's voice. She sounded muffled and far away - and then came closer, a crackling sound filling my head, like her thumb was rubbing the microphone. Her voice was focused and hard, even as her ID photo appeared in my HUD: "Bea, there should be a switch on the edge of the helmet. Is there?"

  "Yeah," I said, frowning. "And it makes the needles stab inwards."

  "Fuck. Fuck ," Tracy hissed.

  "What? What is it?" I asked.

  "They're Ryan-DeWitt Quantum Induction machines," she said.

  "And the fuck are those?" I hissed, trying to keep my voice from raising into a screech.

  "They..." Tracy paused. "They scan memories. Personalities. Souls, I guess. So they can be uploaded onto computers."

  She was silent for a moment longer.

  "Or clones."

  The low, steady sound of distant breathing was eclipsed in the background of my hearing by a roaring in my ears. Like the sea, crashing on the surface. I shook my head, slowly. My back thumped into the side of the wall and my knees gave way. I sank down, breathing slowly in and out, in and out, in and out. Focus, Beatrice. Focus. Drag in one breath. Let it go. Drag in. Let go. My eyes started to close. I slammed my head into the wall. Slammed it again and again and again, feeling pain surge through me. But pain was better than the alternative. A cry I didn't know I could make escaped from between clenched teeth as I shuddered, convulsively. I wanted to be sick. But I didn't have enough in me to let it out.

  It was a poison, that thought. That horrible realization.

  I wasn't Beatrice Montenegro.

  I wasn’t even human.

  I was...

  I could see, without the need of holographic display, a hazy half-imagined ghost that sat down on the chair. Except I was seeing it from the perspective of that ghost while also viewing it from the outside, like an alien observer. Bifocal realities. I saw the smiling face of the corporate ghoul looking down at me, and a doctor. The doctor was checking a PDA, tapping off readouts that she was looking at. The ghoul - Dickless - looked at me.

  "Don't worry," his echo said. "You won't feel a thing. And then you don't need to think about it back on the yacht."

  "Will I...will it remember this?"

  "Oh no," Dickless said. "There will only be dreams..."

  The images fuzzed away and I clenched my jaw. "Jules," I whispered, raggedly. "What does SDP stand for?"

  "I don't know!" He said, his voice tight.

  I shoved myself to my feet. "F-Fuck this. Fuck this fucking station, fuck that fucking bitch!" I snarled, staggering past the seats, leaving my shotcannon behind at the doorway. Discarded. I started to root through the room, searching for the computer I needed. "I'm getting the computer, then I'm heading right fucking back. There'd need to be a good computer here, right?" I asked.

  "Well, the scanners are-"

  "Yes or fucking no, Tracy!" I shouted - not caring about stealth at the moment.

  Tracy's subdued voice came from the speaker. "Yes."

  "Lassie-" Lucas started, whispering quietly in my ear. I hung my head forward, my forehead pressing to the metal surface of the wall above the computer alcove. There was a computer component inside, but I didn't know if it was powerful enough. Lucas started again. "Beatrice."

  "Yeah?" I asked.

  "You actually could kick Beatrice's ass,” he said. "The fake one."

  "And why do you think she's fake?" I asked.

  "I like you more," Lucas said. "Wouldn't it feel good to just headbutt her unconscious?"

  I breathed in and held it. I remembered, earlier - what felt like weeks earlier - that I had said that the station might have gone to hell, but I sure wasn't. For a moment, I imagined doing a fuck of a lot more than just headbutting the woman who had gotten me into this mess. Who had created me, for immortality and magical powers and who knows what else. I imagined her mouth, bleeding and toothless, forced to fellate my shotcannon. I imagined pulling the trigger, and rather than recoiling from the mental image, I felt my clit harden and my sex moisten.

  I grabbed onto the sides of the cabinet, then slammed my head into the wall again. The impact sent a flash of white pain through my eyes and I reeled backwards. I sprawled on the floor, gasping, and felt the pain subside only in a slow, sullen way.

  "Lassie?!" Lucas asked.

  "Don't...ah...encourage...my...darker...impulses, Lucas..." I snarled, pushing myself to my feet. "I'm going to stay myself. I don't know what...that is...but I'm going to stay it." I shook my head, then called out. "Jules. Fuck." I winced, my head ringing. "Jules, is a G65-43-34-2 cybernetic intelligence unit good enough for the portal?"

  "Two of them would be," Jules said.

  I closed my eyes.

  "Great."

  ***

  I stepped slowly towards the lounge. The breathing became louder and louder with every foot I placed down. I knew that going slowly would only make the waiting harder and more painful for me - but I couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to see . I didn't want to know what new horror this fucking station had to show me. But the claw marks were more regular here, and I saw that the doorway - the double doorway - into the lounge had been torn off its hinges. The walls had been compressed and hammered outwards, creating a mouth of a cave, not an entrance to a corporate hack's idea of a rest and relaxation room for the megawealthy. Steam hissed out of it and the stink of heat and jungle moistness and sweetness was almost overpowering. Sweat dripped down my face and I forced myself to lean my head around the corner.

  And saw.

  The lounge had been demolished. Comfortable couches splintered, pool tables upended, their balls sent scattered. But rather than being cleared away, the center of the room - a large pit of an area, with a raised walkway surrounding it - had become heaped with treasure. Golden statues had been crumbled into chunks, while paintings had been set here and there. Some of the statues had been so completely turned to rubble that they simply looked like gold painted rocks and marble. Others remained - an art-deco head looking out into the air, a single arm reaching out from the rubble, reaching for some kind of release. For a moment, I could only see the rubble.

  Then I saw the tail twitch.

&n
bsp; And the nostrils flare.

  My eyes widened more and more and more as I saw the Tesc that sprawled atop its heaped treasures. It was a long limbed, bony creature - but the bones were the size of small cars. They were light gray, with black highlights, and the spine was decorated by thick protrusions somewhere between curved spurs and slick, grasping fingers. The ribcage was convex, expanding outwards, before rapidly narrowing towards a tight belly, giving the creature the proportions of a greyhound dog in a concentration camp. Leathery wings, spread between fingers of white bone, sprang from the shoulders, and the long neck terminated in a bullet-shaped head, with an eyeless smoothness that bespoke the Brood. Hissing steam came from that creature's mandibles, and looking down its open maw, I could see glistening shapes that seemed more like organs than a proper throat.

  It was a fucking dragon.

  And nestled there, between its two massive fore-claws and within a stone's throw of its head, was another G65 computer unit.

  I slung my shotcannon into my inventory. It wouldn't be much help, now, would it?

  My legs refused to move. My arms could grasp and reach, but my arms locked in place and refused to shift. My knees had taken over from my thinking brain, and an ancient instinct - an instinct older than humans walking on their own two feet. That instinct said: No. No. No. No.

  I closed my eyes, clenched my jaw, and forced my foot to move. I stepped forward once, then again, and felt the fear ebbing in my body. It was strange, though. You might have thought that learning I was a clone, a copy printed out and filled with half-memories and personality fragments and a combat cyber-rig, would mean I should feel less fear. I had less to lose, huh? Except that I didn't and I was realizing that now, as I crept towards the dragon. I had the prickle of my skin and the rasp of air in my lungs. I had the sweetness in my nostrils, the hammer of my heart between my ribs. I had the pulse rushing through my veins, throbbing behind my ears. I had the slick, sweet feeling of Jules entering me, and the cold hatred for the Tesc.

  I had all of that and more, buzzing in my head.

  Say what you will about being trapped on a nightmare station filled with hideous dimensional abominations, it did help you appreciate your life. And as I got closer and closer to those talons, I knew...

  I didn't want to die.

  I didn't want to lose this.

  My knees threatened to lock up, but I saw the computer unit. It was almost in my grasp. I stepped onto another bit of carpet, and felt the weight of my body settle. The computer unit was right there. The hot breath of the dragon hissed across my body, streaming from its bony, chitinous nostrils. The sweetness was almost overpowering. It smelled like cherries here. My mouth watered, despite my situation. Another reason to live. I reached out, then closed my slick fingers on the computer unit. It creaked as I picked it up and the breathing from the dragon paused.

  I froze.

  Then the dragon breathed out again. I turned and fought back the urge to run and run and run . I stepped away and the breathing stopped again. A low hissing rattle of detritus being stirred by an immense tail sent a cracking lightning bolt along my spine. I took another step and then heard those immense arms creaking and the head shifting, and the snoring turned into a loud hiss that washed me over with moistness. I am not ashamed to admit that I pissed myself. The urine was wicked away by my nanotech suit, my body clean as a whistle as I turned, stupefied with fear. I should have sprinted away. I should have ran.

  But my knees were locked again and I watched as the dragon loomed over me.

  "Balls," I whispered.

  The ribcage of the dragon crunched . Chitin slid backwards and a biomechanical seam was revealed between those plates. They locked and then the seam hissed open, revealing a mass of hanging fibers and wires and cables. Some were red, but most were black. They connected to a hanging, cruciform figure. It was shrouded in darkness and mist and I heard a series of whip-sharp pops and cracks as the wires detached, hanging free. The figure dropped down onto the carpet before me and suddenly, I was soaked with something...definitely not piss...

  The figure was a Tesc.

  Their head was sleek and swept back, with a series of long dread-locks made of biomechanical cables that tumbled down the back of their jet black, rubbery skin. Exoskeletal ribs were stretched over a sleek, muscular torso, like armor and clothing at once, but they revealed and cupped those hard muscles, accentuating the exotic beauty of his body. He had muscle groups no human would have - not the familiar six pack and pecs of, say, Jules. But the very strangeness of his muscles made me unable to not notice how slick and sleek they were. His hips came to two narrow points, and his arms were slightly longer than a human's would be. His fingers came to fine dagger-tips. His face had an almost draconic cast to it, though the eyeless forehead was partially covered by the bangs of his biomechanical hair, concealing and accentuating his lack of human features.

  His muzzle was twisted in a slightly sardonic smirk, and a pair of sleek, feathered wings were clasped behind his back.

  And between his legs was a member that put Jules to utter shame. It was sleek and ridged, with a flat, almost horse-like tip. It was rubbery and black and glistened , as his whole body did, as if he had been rubbed down with oil. His legs came to a pair of fine, arched, lizardlike feet. And a whipping tail twitched from side to side behind him.

  "L- ass...r...un..." Lucas' voice came through a haze.

  I stepped slowly forward.

  The humanoid unit from the dragon reached out. Claws caressed my cheek gently. A sting - as intense and fierce as pleasure - came from the contact points. He slid those claws to my lips and I tasted blood. My eyes half closed as I put my tongue to the tip of one of his claws, and he turned it, just so. I felt the sharpness, but didn't feel it bite. But it could. My nipples ached . My head spun. Softly, he whispered.

  In English.

  Not a hybrid. Not a human-Tesc amalgamation. But a pure breed Tesc, unlike anything else I had ever seen...

  But his words were still soft and sibilant and oh so...fucking...

  "You're quite tired, aren't you, Beatrice?"

  I breathed in his scent. His sweet, sweet scent.

  "Lay with me," he said, gesturing to his horde. The computer component thumped to the ground, utterly forgotten. I stepped forward, my body burning with need .

  "W-What are you?" I asked, feeling dazed. A very tiny voice, screaming in the back of my mind, was trying to get my attention. But his beauty was too much. His exotic, hideous, beauty. His clawed hand caressed my back and drew me closer to him. My hip and his touched, and then his sharpness pressed to the nanites, parting them. When he pushed me forward - a gentle, playful push that sent me tumbling into the gold and paintings with a laugh. Somehow, it was softer than a cloud, and I rolled around, watching him as he stepped over to stand above me.

  "Leviathan," he whispered.

  And then he knelt down and kissed me. His lips were hard and yet rubbery. His tongue was long, but it didn't invade like the other Tesc. It entered my mouth and caressed, tickled, teased and explored. My eyes closed and I shuddered against him, my hands sliding along his sides. They found his hips, gripping the bony extrusions. My heart raced faster and faster and when Leviathan pulled back, his tongue remained for a few delicious seconds more, before slipping free. I gasped loudly, my eyes hooded.

  "Oh god..." I breathed.

  "He is not here," Leviathan rumbled. Then his clawed hands slashed out and my nanite clothing fell to the ground, in utter tatters. My armor rating dropped to 3 and I didn’t even care. His clawed fingertips caressed the bottom of my breast, not drawing blood, just making me intensely aware of the fact that he could. My nipple puckered even harder and I looked down at my bared flesh. He regarded my tits with the slow wonder of someone who had never quite appreciated them. "He can not see here."

  A claw-tip pressed to my nipple, and managed to tease it without cutting. I bit my lip hard enough to turn it sheet white and tried to resist moaning
. Leviathan chuckled.

  "Don't bother..." he hissed.

  I let my lip slip from under my lip and groaned, my hands going to the collar, that was already trying to restore the torn and ripped nanites. I unclipped it, tossed it and tossed the attachment that would shock me, my weaponry clattering to the floor around my feet. I didn't want to stop this moment. I leaned forward and caught Leviathan's lips again. His teeth were bared and sharp and I loved the tingle of them against my tongue. HIs hands grabbed my hips and he loomed over me, wings spreading outwards to cover us, trapping us in his heat, his moistness. I felt the thick, arm length of his cock against me. I moaned in desperation, and broke the kiss.

  "Leviathan..." I whispered. The voice, screaming at me, managed to get a question out. "Why, I...you..."

  "Shh..." He whispered. "It will all become clear. I'm merely making the choice more multifaceted." That cock ground against me as he rolled his hips back. I should have needed lubrication. I should have needed stretching. I should have needed to be twice as big and a fucking horse, but I didn't care . I wanted that cock to split me in half - so badly that I was willing to beg. The words bubbled out of my mouth as I reached up to cup his sleek, black face.

  "Fuck me, Leviathan. Take me. Make me yours. Pound me, oh god, I want to be ruined..." I whispered, desperately. Every time I breathed in to speak, I scented more of that humid musk. Yes . Musk. There was more than sweetness to the scent now. There was musk, rich and male. So very male. I spread my thighs wide and felt his bony hands close around my ankles. He spread me further, bent me past what I thought possible. But my body was more flexible and plaint than I had imagined. My cunt spread for him and that flat tipped, ridged dick pressed to my entrance.