Vile Machinations

by P. S. Power

  That took them down while Faith, rather helpfully, said something approaching, “Gah!”.

  As responses went, that one didn’t require being knocked out and which had to lead to a better day than the alternatives. She was scared though, so Connor lied, that being a skill of his that no one else there had at the moment.

  “Faith… This is a secret government facility. A safe house. Your Step-father’s job was to watch that for us. When you told me yesterday that he was raping you, I managed to get some bio-readings from you that proved you weren’t lying, so we came to take him in. Abusing his power like that isn’t something that the higher ups here are willing to allow.” He glanced at the mother, who was starting to stir and shook his head. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but your mother is a spy. That’s why you have those cuffs on. No one thinks that you’re doing anything wrong, not on purpose. We have to do it anyway. Protocol. Here, let’s get to someplace more comfortable.”

  The words, while obvious bullshit to him and to the men with him, didn’t get commented on. He was standing far enough away that no one was being forced to speak. When he waved the two tough looking men, Walker and George, away, they actually went, allowing Connor to take both the older people by the arms.

  “Stand up. Carefully. You should both apologize to Faith here. Now.”

  He didn’t really expect that to happen. At least he’d never told anyone to say anything like that while under his control. It wasn’t a question or, as far as he knew, a thing that either of them were capable of even thinking of as real or true. They both still said the words, if softly.

  “Sorry, Jenifer.” That was from the Mother, who seemed to feel it, in the moment. “I shouldn’t have told him to rape you like that. I needed a way to control him, that was all. It wasn’t personal.”

  The words had the younger girl looking aghast, as they walked, slowly, over to the stairwell. Connor had to give directions to the pair of prisoners and while the man had mumbled that he was sorry, he didn’t say for what.

  It was enough to get the girl to walk with them, Barry hardly having to touch her at all. When the guard spoke to her, his voice was matter of fact and polite at the same time.

  “We’ll need to keep your parents under control for a bit, I’m afraid. You as well. There’s a small chance that you might have mental programing that you don’t know about, so you might need to be put in a cell. We’ll get you cleared as soon as possible.” The words were lies, but the rest of the group had floated over thirty feet back, away from Connor.

  That meant they could do things like that. There were no protestations of innocence or begging that she not be hurt from Faith, who wisely decided to keep her trap shut for the time being. Even if it finally seemed like the government was on her side, instead of backing the rapists.

  Which was wrong on all counts. It really was easier to walk without touching a third person, so Connor went with it.

  They needed to get down to the fourth level again, with each of the parents and the girl getting their own personal, rather cozy, cell. The only difference was that Faith was allowed to have her hands free and Walker cleared his throat at her door, before it was closed on her.

  “We’ll leave the lights on for you. Would you like anything? A soda or something for breakfast? The food here is decent enough.”

  The girl, still wearing giant monster feet and pajama pants took a very deep breath.

  “I… Sure? Some coffee would be great, if that’s a thing? I’m… Not really certain what’s going on here.”

  Connor, standing well back, let himself seem friendly.

  “We’ll explain as soon as we possibly can. Right now, we need to get some people in, to clear you, if possible. After that, we can find out what your parents know.” Before they killed them.

  At least that seemed to be the plan for the day. A thing that, he didn't doubt, Faith wasn’t going to survive.

  For half a moment he nearly felt bad for her. Then, because he was him, he simply stopped that and moved away. There were things to get done, after all.

  Chapter twelve

  The questioning was more interesting this time, since it turned out that Connor was more than effective enough, power wise, to question alternate personalities on demand. Even with tricks in place to try and thwart his abilities. That meant they didn't have a ten-hour ordeal on their hands when it came to getting the needed data from Magda, or her daughter.

  Who, interestingly enough, wasn’t actually in on anything at the moment.

  Faith was seriously warped and had been broken nearly a decade and a half before as a tiny child, but she wasn’t working against the Order at the moment. She was just waiting to be used, roughly put in place to keep Ephraim happy and under control, with a spot of rape that Magda had set into motion for him. The man was kinky and liked for her to struggle and moan realistically. Otherwise they could have simply ordered the girl to have sex with the creepy man and she’d have even believed it was her own decision.

  A thing that the rather evil Mom understood rather clearly.

  For her part, when Doc was nearly finished with her, all of the alters coming out on command to answer the questions he asked, Bertie grinned.

  “Ask her if she wants to give you head. I want to get a record of how she manages that kind of thing under our control.” There was a smirk, since she had to understand that Connor was far from certain about the idea that compelled choice was one.

  Then again, he wasn’t certain that it was important any longer. It felt like some people didn’t really have the capacity for free will. Magda and Jennifer for instance. Telling one of them to do something they couldn’t resist was just… The only thing that they had left inside of them. It didn’t make it right. He also wasn’t really being given a choice, himself. Saying no or refusing could make him seem weak.

  So he said the words. The Mother was attractive enough and even if he hadn’t been left totally lonely, it had been more than long enough since the last time he’d done anything that the idea wasn’t without a certain allure. At least if she said yes.

  For his part, he was careful not to make it an order. That would, at least technically, make it legal. If anyone in the world cared.

  “Magda, do you want to give me a blowjob? Just for fun. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

  The woman, being touched on the shoulder, didn’t even blink at the question. There was a slow nod, as she sunk to her knees. Facing him.

  “Sure. You’re cute.” Then she froze in place. Agreeing, but not at all taking over and doing what Bertie had the night before.

  It wasn’t as if the woman didn’t know how to get the job done. To get her to use her mouth and move properly took ten times the orders on his part this time, pretty much making it not worth doing. It was a frustrating thing that did almost nothing for him, in the end. He finally had to order her to simply suck while he did all the work, using her face rather forcefully.

  Then the woman nearly choked when he finished up, even when he ordered her to swallow. There was no way the lady didn’t know how to get that done or minded doing it, so it was simply that the order was too subtle and complex than she could manage while being under his control.

  Doctor Short laughed at it, then shook her head.

  “Did I do that? It’s a bit different than it sounded like, if so.”

  “Nope. You were… Normal. This was… I don’t know why it was different. Even if you’re just that much smarter than she is… maybe it’s something to do with how she was brainwashed?”

  That got a shrug from the lab coat wearing girl. Almost as if posing for him, she pushed her glasses up and held the move, looking at him from the side of her eye.

  “Or maybe I’m just that good? That’s right, I still got it…” She started to dance a bit, pumping her arms in a way that was clearly meant to look ridiculous. Goofy and nerdy, but as a show for him. When she stopped there was a chuckle, since she clearly knew what she
was doing. “It could also simply be down to the fact that I’ve had a hundred and twenty years more practice at everything than she has? We should have you try it with Faith and maybe Ephraim as well, for the contrast. Except… we don’t really have any reason to keep them around any longer. We’ve drained all the needed information from them. Unless you want to keep them as pets, it’s better to just get rid of them.”

  Connor kind of understood that part. Magda and Faith both had alters that possessed high level fighting skills as well as super human strength and speed. Sure, using that kind of thing would destroy their bodies if they used them too much, but they could suddenly pull out enough to escape, if given a chance. Things that normal people wouldn’t be willing to do or able to, in general.

  What they weren’t, of course, was bulletproof.

  “Call that in, please, Doctor? We’ll be killing them, directly.” Connor tried to make it seem like he was being adult and in charge, or at least polite and formal. The truth was that he felt more than a bit awkward, having been serviced by the warped and mentally deranged woman. The one he was touching on the shoulder, his trousers still undone.

  That part was due to Bertie being right there, watching him the whole time. She hadn’t seemed sexually interested in the goings on, either. It was just creepy, to be honest about it. There was staring and the large clunky cell phone thing, that seemed like it was from a movie that was set a hundred years in the past, yet still had superior science, was pulled. Then, interestingly, his Father was called.

  “Harriman here.”

  “Stephen, Connor and I have finished getting the information from our prisoners. We can use them as test subjects or dispose of them, if you want? Connor is suggesting death.” The question was leading, though the man on the phone simply grunted after a few moments.

  “Kill them. Make certain to use high level protocols on the disposal. We don’t need this coming back on us later.”

  Bertie smiled at the words, tapping one of the few buttons, making it click as it turned off.

  “There we go. Let’s do Mommy here first. Unless you want to kill them in front of each other for style points?” She spoke the words as if that were a real thing.

  Connor shook his head.

  “No. That might trigger one of them. We probably wouldn’t live through that kind of thing, so let’s not push our luck. Where do we take them?”

  That was down on the fifth level, which wasn’t at all empty, but held things like large vats of acid and other chemicals that would allow for the total destruction of corpses.

  Still holding the handgun that Walker had gotten for him, the holster over his appendix on the left side in the front, Connor drew and killed a subdued Magda without waiting, once they had her in place over the tub that would soon be filled with acid. Her head splattered, but out the back, away from him, leaving no blood on him at all.

  Doc looked at the mess, then shrugged.

  “You really are cold, aren’t you? That, getting head from her, then murdering her not twenty minutes later… It doesn’t impact you at all, does it?”

  He had to think about that one and finally shrugged.

  “I’m still a bit uneasy about the sex stuff first. I mean, I asked if she wanted to, and I guess she could have said no, if that was how she really felt. That… can anyone really tell me no? Does it matter? Is it really rape if the only choice that matters is mine? I just don’t know. It doesn’t really bother me though, except that I feel like I’m going to be punished, if I get it wrong. As for the killing… Not really. I mean, I was trained for this, for so long that I can’t see this as different than the exercises I used to do.” In that once pretty Magda, now that she was dead, lying in the glass tub, bleeding and with her brain dripping out in a white and red mess, simply didn’t seem like more than a life like dummy.

  A thing that had never been real to him at all.

  There was a hint of judgement from the woman next to him. A thing that had to be what she really felt, even if the lady didn't say anything about it. Her words stayed locked inside, along with what she was really thinking about him. On the great side, Connor didn’t really care.

  She was friendly enough with him and it was useful of her to be willing to have sex with him on occasion. That didn't mean he loved her. That capacity, he was starting to suspect, had been taken from him at Etain. The more he spent time with anyone who was trying to be kind or flirtatious, the less interested in them he was going to become.

  He got Ephraim next, using the same tub, since it was big enough for two bodies. Really, the huge thing was about the size of a hot tub, meaning he could have placed Faith in the same one, with her abusers. Connor just shot the traitor who had been selling them out in the head and pushed his lifeless body in.

  “Let’s take care of this first. Then flush the system and set it up for Faith separately.”

  He was going to explain, except that Doc simply nodded.

  “So we don’t keep the bodies around for too long in an identifiable state. That’s smart.” She tapped a button, allowing a thick flood of greenish liquid to pour, carefully, into the glass tub. The bodies inside didn’t vanish instantly. There were no bubbles either. Instead the man and woman just sort of spread out after a few moments, and began to blur as they dissolved.

  He stood there the whole time, and watched, twenty minutes later, when the system was purged, the colors that still looked a bit like people spread as the liquid moved into the drain. Swirling and turning into a pink murk as they vanished down the drain. It was gross and interesting at the same time. When the secondary tank held the acid and remains of the bodies, Doc tapped a red button.

  “This will irradiate the remains, purging and denaturing the end product. Once that’s done, no one in the world will be able to identify what comes out as human remains at all. We can just put it in the ground. It will eventually be absorbed into the ground water, in a few hundred years. We’re deep, but the sump for this will put them in a rocky area, on the edge of the complex here.”

  That took a few minutes, or at least the red light that came on indicated something was going on for that long.

  After that, Bertie shrugged.

  “Are you keeping the girl? Faith… Even if you just wanted a pet, no one would blame you. We could cut her arms and legs off, pull the teeth and all that? Then you can use each hole and there’s no danger of escape, even if she goes all super-soldier on you at some point. The Order doesn’t normally do that kind of thing, but some of the different groups have, in the past. Human sex dolls like that.”

  She’d said similar things in the past, so Connor looked at her, his head tilting.

  “You’ve been in other groups?” There had been hints of that, in the past.

  She waved that away, or tried to. Her mouth moved, since she was standing about twelve feet from him. That meant she was being honest enough when she spoke. At least, she should have been.

  “I’ve been in a lot of them, actually. I tend to move around every five to ten years, depending on what I’m working on at the time. That means I have some contacts and connections in various organizations. It also means that I’m lower in the ranks in the Order than I should be. Not everyone is allowed to just move around like that, but… I’m old and frankly, too valuable for anyone to just get rid of.” She waved again and then stopped talking.

  He nearly asked a follow up question, since what she’d said didn't scan at all. The secret societies seemed to be insulated and kind of adversarial in general. It didn’t make any sense that she’d be allowed to just hop from one organization to another. That probably meant something else was going on. A thing that, even he, with his limited information, understood meant something big.

  She moved away, suddenly enough to seem to be purposeful, not speaking until she was nearly thirty feet from him. The whole thing felt phony though. Like she was play acting a need to get away from him. It was her expression that gave it away. Before she got far enough back
, she attempted to seem scared, but it came across as being slightly angry, instead.

  “Ah. There are some things I’m not allowed to talk about. Anyway, we can keep the girl, if you want? Letting her go… Well, that won’t work. She has programming that will just cause her to run back to Ophelia if we do that. That would let them know that we were responsible for making Magda vanish. What do you want to do?”

  The words were stressed oddly, as if she was trying to drive him to something that he normally wouldn’t do. Really, it felt like she wanted him to keep Faith alive and there, for some reason. Only, that didn't make sense. Even if she wanted out of having to have sex with him, which he could see happening, the girl was probably the worst sex slave possible for him to keep. She could only create problems for them, in the long run. Plus, he still didn’t want to bang her. The Mother had been more alluring that way, which was just as bad of an idea, due to the threat she’d potentially posed for them all.

  “I’ll go get her.”

  That part should have been sad, but really wasn’t. Connor just went to the fourth level, opened her door and smiled.

  “Hey! You’re being let go. We have a place for you, until you can go off to college next year. Some cash and new identity papers. That information will have to be memorized, of course. Once you take on a new identity you have to live it, totally. This way. I have some things to show you, first. Then we need to get you some real clothing. We can get that from your house, if you want.” He tried to sound happy about it all. As if it were not just real, but a good thing.

  The girl, her bright red hair still held back, looking cute with her giant monster feet slippers, did what he’d suggested and moved toward him. Trusting him, as if that made any sense.