The knuckles danced across her features and hurled her into the air with their unnatural ferocity. Kirsten’s scrambled senses returned in mid flight, her dazed eyes focusing a hazy blur into a pane of greenery whirling beneath her. Dropping to the ground with a jarring thud she bounced twice and then rolled into an apathetic heap.
Tasting the warmth of blood in her mouth she fought to regain her upset balance, shoving up with her arms to acquire some semblance of a stance. Her legs wilted and wobbled beneath her, causing her to sway unsteadily, her balled fists serving as crutches because giddiness ruled her mind and nausea held regnant in her torso.
Turning her head she regarded her assailant as he took the rifle by barrel and butt and snapped it as one might break a twig, treating it as though it were of little consequence. Tossing the shattered portions aside he assessed Kirsten with a crooked glance.
Shaking her head to banish the fogginess that still lingered within her, she felt the pain in her mouth fading, her enhanced metabolism already sealing the injury, her flesh possessed of a recuperative factor that had been instrumental in classifying her as a mutant. With a snarling grin she swore that her attacker would soon be learning what the other factors were.
With a springing skip the black form commenced his approach at an ascending speed, launching an arm out to dice her upon his hardened talons. Kirsten’s legs thrust simultaneously, hurling her up as she whirled, the mysterious enemy being carried past on his impetuous haste to receive a spinning circle kick to his shoulder blade. Her augmented strength and speed shattered the bone with a brittle signal, stripping him from his feet and dropping him to the floor as waves of debilitating pain rolled throughout his body.
Landing nimbly she danced forward to finish him, throwing up an elbow to shatter his throat. A bolt of shock rocked her abdomen—the sole of her opponent’s foot had jerked up to counter her advance and lift her from her feet upon the galvanic kick.
Winded by the tempestuous might of his attack, Kirsten landed and staggered back, cradling her stomach with one arm, holding the other out to try and parry the offensive her obviously fully recovered opponent was sure to mount.
Flipping to his feet with a cavorting leap he span upon one foot, keeping the other held up to his torso like a wound spring, delaying his attack as he build momentum and first tried to distract her keen awareness.
Without warning a punch flew out at her features. Blocking it with her forearm she declined the opportunity to respond and held her defensive posture to refuse the imminent kick.
An opaque leg lanced out from within the whirlwind of dark hide, targeting her flank in the wake of the punch that had tried to fully occupy her senses.
Throwing down her arm and casting up her leg, Kirsten trapped the foot harshly between knee and elbow, the two joints mashing the extremity, breaking the bones and sending a violent shock wave of trauma up the limb.
Without even a cry against such fierce crippling the man backflipped, brushing the ball of his other foot to Kirsten’s chin, snapping her gaze up amidst a white pulse of sudden shock, the surprise attack repelling her and granting him space to recover.
Dropping onto the assaulting leg he carefully balanced to spare his wounded foot the rigours of his body weight and glared at her with loathing.
Giving him no more time to recover, Kirsten spat the blood from her lips and shrugged off the lethargy of this heated fight before launching forward into a high jump. Coiling a leg up to her chest she stabbed it forward into his breast with a shout of maximum effort. The moist snap of ribs crunching like desiccated beetles resounded and the mutant was hurled back, his legs staggering to regain his equilibrium and cease his flailing retreat. A fallen tree stripped his legs from under him and he dropped heavily onto his shoulders.
A brief sprint metamorphosed into a speeding cartwheel that ended in a nimble flip high over the trunk to land with both feet on the oppressed chest. The parted bones grated on each other with the sudden weight, expelling all breath from his body in a plosive croak. His shout of anguish was cut short with the hacking chop of her hand into his neck, the brutality of her strike shattering his larynx and windpipe.
The dying rattle in his throat accompanied the sound of heavy boots entering line of sight and without caution the patrol levelled their weapons and barked warnings for her to stop. Ignoring their threats she broke and ran, knowing that they intended no easy capture, especially with her slaying of their own. The massed laser scopes cast a near invisible pattern of spots across her vicinity, hunting down her form, giving her enhanced eyes a valuable hint as to their aim. In seconds they would open fire so she had to put as much distance between herself and the soldiers as possible, and with her heart thumping in her chest, her lungs threatening to burst from excessive use she sprinted for cover, weaving amongst the trees in a desperate frenzy of evasion.
The stuttering chatter of automatic weapons rent the salubrious quiet and she was chagrined to see the rough skin of nearby trees erupting under the wanton stabbing punch of bullets. The blizzard of fire filled the air with the shrill whistling of their passage as she ducked and wove, praying that she not be hit. But the sheer number of projectiles being unleashed made such an occurrence almost impossible.
There was a dull thump and a sharp impact afflicted her shoulder, knocking her into a reckless, lopsided somersault. A tremendous cramp shot outward from the affected spot, her chest exploding with tidal waves of agony that paralysed her entire body, leaving her unable to affect her reckless drop onto the ground. A strobe pulse of pain ripped at her form as she sprawled into the grass, totally immobilised with harrowing.
Clutching the wound, she scowled through clenched teeth, riding out the thundering fires, letting their intensity dwindle to a less vibrant pitch before she attempted movement, a steady flow of warmth running through her trembling fingers.
The revelation that the Stalkers were using mutants to hunt mutants was troubling. What incentive could there possibly be to turn on one’s own kind? Of course, reprieve from the camps was the obvious reward. Since Kessler’s party had taken full control of the government and managed to gain a state of emergency declared, the elected tyrant was able to do pretty much what she wanted and was now far too powerful to resist. Besides, most people supported her and agreed with her plan of segregation, their fear of mutants permitting numerous atrocities.
Mutants had simply been harassed and turned out in the beginning, but the bitterness this caused soon prompted them into fighting back and retaliating, giving the jaundiced programme the footage and excuses it needed to take its steps further. Incarceration was then deemed the only solution to the mutant problem. Those who resisted entry into specially constructed Sanctuary camps were summarily killed while resisting relocation, and in the camps, behind the barbed wire and guards, the mine fields and heavy machine gun posts, mutants were worked and starved to death.
The Knights of Genetic Purity had initially been a radical civilian force that supported Kessler’s group— the Party for Human Rights. It had such an innocuous sounding name no one would ever have expected it to gather the momentum it had. The Knights began to defend against acts of mutant violence, the carefully orchestrated events fooling the average benighted citizen and inciting widespread civil unrest and indignation. People wanted something done immediately, and were ready to hand over all authority to those they thought could save them from the mutant menace in their very midst.
With the total acquisition of democratic power and control the Knights had become a paramilitary wing, drafting in the willing recruits from the military and police, forming into an independent army, loyal only to Kessler’s cause. With their own bases they first augmented and then replaced the police in mutant hot spots. They exclusively regulated the camps, they helped hide the true savagery of Kessler’s rule, and they suppressed all resistance and dissension to her goal.
Clawing at the soil, Kirsten dragged herself onwards, her body pounding with its own excruciating pulse. Her
sight swam as she fought to continue, stubbornly fighting off unconsciousness as her arm trailed lazily, marking her passage with a sporadic ruddy path.
A spitting hiss of compressed air preceded a light sting in her thigh and Kirsten jerked her gaze over her shoulder to see the bright red tail feathers of a tranquilliser dart jutting like a fiery plume from her flesh. Lifting her stare she took in a figure brooding over her, the officer having made her approach by exploiting Kirsten’s maimed senses.
The attire upon the generously sculpted physique of the woman had more than a fleeting kinship with the uniforms of the troops, for she wore black combat trousers tied about the top of heavy boots, a utility belt with pouches, and a holstered sidearm. But there the apparel deviated and turned to the upper portion of a rubber leotard, the material gleaming in the light and zipped down the front from its high collar. Her bare arms ended in short leather gloves, the both of them furled about the grip of the pistol. Some manner of KGP identification badge lay at her breast, the notion of her being a commissioned aid proven erroneous by the appearance of the Knights’ emblem as a tattoo upon her arm, the mark ensuring that her devout allegiance could be proven at a glance. During her liaison with Kirsten the woman had to have concealed it with makeup to keep this secret secure, now she flaunted it to the one she had tricked.
The woman looked down upon Kirsten with disdain from beneath a peaked black officer’s cap, lifting the pistol she had been aiming at her and watching as her victim began to slip into a drugged stupor, all sight dissolving, her mind going blank. Realisation dawned on Kirsten, the woman’s identity previously unrecognised because of the massive transformation she had undergone since last Kirsten had seen her. It was Dressur, her lover, her betrayer, glowering at her from within the belated uniform of her most hated nemeses.
What desperate fate awaited her as a prisoner? She had been deliberately taken alive despite her killing of KGP operatives and she feared what life might be like for her in the Sanctuary camps. As she dwelt on the possibilities she felt her limbs being taken up and all recollection ceased as she swam in a dreamless void.
Chapter Four
The first thing she became aware of as she exited the stupor was the foul chemical tang on her tongue and then the arid dryness pervading in her throat.
Feeling began to seep slowly through her limbs, flowing back as a hesitant tide and while she awaited a full return she maintained the pretence of coma, surreptitiously listening in to assess her surroundings and hoping to gain the element of surprise.
The soft squeak of wheels issued rhythmically from beside her seated frame and the coupling of these sounds with the feeling of motion suggested she was on a wheelchair. The gentle rocking motion of her passage was moving her against her bonds and she could feel the straps at her wrists, ankles, waist and others upon thighs and elbows. A plexus of tight strips encased her head, holding her skull tightly back and cramming an inflated bulb of latex in her mouth, stopping up her maw and forcing her to draw restricted breath through her nostrils.
More disconcerting than the restraints was her apparent nakedness. She could feel the soft passage of air over her entire frame, no portion of it shielded by material other than the riveted belts, which bestowed the stern clinch of her confines.
The smell of fevered sweat and icy terror hung like an intangible veil, saturating the conditioned atmosphere, making the lungfuls she drew of the lifeless stagnant brew strike fear into her heart. Dull lights passed over her closed eyelids in slow sheets, the illumination deliberately sparse, adding to the ambient dread.
Helpless, unable to act, she opened her eyes and regarded her surroundings in full.
The dark corridor was dismal and foreboding, the bare discharge from the overhead strip bulbs providing inadequate light to banish the skulking gloom that arose around her. A dour faced soldier was pushing her along, OICW shouldered. The woman who had been responsible for capturing her walked at the side, eyes fixed forward.
Kirsten squeezed her jaws to the bulb, trying to break it, but the rubber was too thick. An ache had welled in the corners of her mouth and was growing more potent with every passing second, frustrating her with her complete inability to simply spit the problem out and find relief.
A door hissed aside with mechanical grace and she was wheeled into a small elevator of barest description. The doors closed with a clunk and a plummeting descent began. Untold floors fell away, suggesting she was being carried deep below ground, massively reducing her possible points of escape and causing the notion to dawn that she was not destined for a Sanctuary camp.
With a merry ping their arrival was announced and the doors rolled back.
“I shall take it from here, corporal,” ordered the woman, referring to Kirsten as a thing, the malice borne towards her distinct and prevalent in the command.
“Yes, Major,” replied the soldier, responding with a salute as the chair was drawn from him and carried out into a barren box room. Presented to a plain set of double doors Kirsten watched as the woman removed her identity badge and slotted it into an accommodating aperture. A single pip sounded and a keypad flickered into illuminated view, the incandescent buttons accepting the woman’s code before letting the weighty doors part with a protesting metallic shriek of strain.
The passage beyond was much like those above in its penchant for simplistic decor and love of inspiring malaise. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a dull reflective black, the metal sheets reflecting Kirsten and her captor as hazy ghost images. The connection between wall and ceiling ran with a submerged single strip of dull light, the anaemic emanation staining the air, making it cold and threatening.
Featureless portals lined either side, and one of the nearest parted at their proximity to permit ingress.
The lugubrious room was small and apparently plain, devoid of everything save black walls of seamless metal with lights dotted along them at equally spaced intervals, the bulbs set deep within and protected by translucent frosted windows.
Pushed into the centre as the door slid shut, Kirsten was turned around to face her captor. The woman folded her arms across her chest and glared down at the bound prisoner, all hint of compassion and lust between them gone, as though they had never even met. Was this even the same woman? Was there an identical twin, one who seduced while the other captured?
“You have put me at great inconvenience, mutant,” she spat discordantly, moving to the walls and pushing her palm to a virtually invisible rectangle.
There was a faint click and a panel of the metal shifted aside, revealing a row of varied implements of corporal punishment hanging up as a neat display within the subdued cabinet. Kirsten’s eyes bulged in shock and she murmured into her gag, blubbering incoherently in denial of such abuse.
The woman ran her fingers along the selection of straps, tawses, crops, canes, paddles, and whips.
“What shall we begin with I wonder? What indeed,” she uttered to herself and then closed her hand about the handle of a short and vicious looking twin pronged strap.
“You killed one of my most prized Hounds. Do you have any idea how long or how much effort it takes to train one of your foul breed to be that subservient? No, I suppose not. But you will, for you’re going to be his replacement, Kirsten. That’s right, I’m going to condition you to be obedient and to serve the cause of true purity. You’ll help the Knights locate and exterminate the rest of your pestiferous brood and that added sense you have for finding your fellow abominations will serve us greatly,” she purred, swinging the strap to and fro, exercising the leather in readiness for its workout on Kirsten’s skin.
Kirsten could not believe what she was hearing. She had thought the dark whispers of Hounds to be no more than perverse scare mongering. It seemed impossible to believe that the Knights were brainwashing mutants with extra sensory capacities to hunt down the last of their own kind.
Kirsten’s superiority in spotting mutants compared to the base mechanical sensors would make he
r and those like her invaluable assets in such hunts. But to deem the Knights capable of methodically stripping away a living creatures dignity and reason to serve them as a mindless docile automaton? It seemed to be a criminal act even they could not be capable of. To find out that this horrendous rumour was true was mortifying, more so for being informed that she herself was to be transformed into a latex-skinned penitent like the one she had been forced to kill.
Could she be broken? How could she be taught to be obedient and submissive to the orders of such a xenophobic bigot? Perhaps if she could remain rebellious and hide her free will then as soon as she was taken out to hunt her fellows as the other had been, she could bolt for freedom. Until then she had the awful prospect of arbitrary torture to make her compliant, and she could not stand this possibility, the threat of pain terrifying her.
Yet this was her logic and pride talking. Inside, in the hidden dark recesses of her personality, there was a far different tune being sung, one that had been stimulated by the scenes of lesbian bondage she had masturbated to hundreds of times. The idea of indoctrination to another woman’s rule had lurked in the shadows of her soul, a faint intriguing notion that she had forced herself to ignore, making it more illicit, more tempting than ever before. Now it seemed she was to be trained in the manner she had read and dreamed of countless times.
This woman was going to take control of her, mercilessly remould her psyche into whatever configuration she wished. At present she was ignorant of the means that would be used, but already there was a whispering hunger to face her slavery and see if indeed it would be so terrible.
She was nervous, ignorant as to how extreme the methods would be. She had never suffered for real, her own imagination being the regulating force as she pictured herself in the place of the women grovelling and bound on the screen. Now she was totally surrendered to the whims of another, and with her fantasy dragged into the harshness of reality she was terribly afraid. As with most things, the fantasy and the reality could be very different, and what one dreams of becomes intolerable if actually performed. Kirsten was a real captive and this was to be no cosy scenario of willing submission, she was a real prisoner, of people who meant her real and lingering harm.
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