Prison Princess

by Huss, JA

  Valor leans into my neck, bites me on the shoulder, and then whispers, “Do it again,” into my ear. “Right now.”

  I come again, a double load of come shooting up and hitting his stomach. He presses his hips into mine, smearing it between us. I moan when he relaxes my hair and places his hand on the top of my head, urging me to kneel.

  I don’t even hesitate. Sometimes, when we’re in the middle of things and one of us wants the other to suck him off, there’s a power struggle. It’s a natural form of dominance that we both crave.

  But power is the last thing on my mind right now. I drop to my knees because I need him in my mouth.

  I take both his cocks in my hand and kiss his heads, one at a time. He drops back down into the console chair, leaning back into it. Eyes heavy and hooded. Small, sly smile on his face as he opens his legs, inviting me forward.

  I lean over and wrap my lips around his large tip and flatten my tongue to take him deep.

  “Fuck,” he groans.

  I remove my hands from his shafts and use one to grab his hip, while the other one presses flat on his well-muscled chest. He responds by grabbing his dicks, one in each hand, and starts jerking himself off as I suck.

  My hand slides up his chest, my fingers reaching for his mouth. He opens when I trace his lips, takes my fingers inside him, and sucks on them as I work his cock.

  I look up, wanting to see him. His eyes are closed now, his expression a twist of grimace and utter satisfaction as I blow his dick.

  His back goes stiff for a moment and I know he’s ready to come a second time.

  But I don’t want to stop. Not yet. So I pull back and stand up.

  “What are you doing?” he whispers.

  I turn, then look over my shoulder and beckon him with a finger. “Come here,” I say, leaning against the wall, face forward.

  I spread my legs a little, palms flat on the hard metal interior of the ship.

  Valor is up and walking across the room. His hips pressed up against my asscheeks just a moment later. His hard, strong hand gripping my hip as the tip of his cock seeks out my asshole. He holds his lower cock in his hand, pressing the tip inside me, then reaches around, grabs both my dicks in his other hand, and rests his face into my neck as he begins to move.

  We don’t fuck each other much. We mostly prefer hand jobs and Brigit’s wet pussy. But when we do, it’s amazing.

  He feels amazing.

  If I’m going to lose him—and I am—then I want one last time. One last experience of just… us.

  I groan as his dick pushes deeper and deeper inside me. He bites my ear, then my neck, then my shoulder.

  We are both so wound up, we won’t be able to make this last.

  It’s a metaphor for our relationship, I think. But I don’t care. There is no room for things like that right now.

  He pounds his hips into my ass. Three times. Squeezing my cocks so hard, I cry out. And then he slips out of me, pumps me hard a few more time, and when his hot semen spills out on my back, I come in his hand.

  A river of release spills out of me.

  We shower after that. We jerk each other off to make the second cocks appear and then we soap each other up and clean them off, coming a second time into the soft, soapy suds.

  I kiss him deeply for a long time, understanding this is over now. Knowing I will miss it. My heart heavier than it was before.

  We get out and towel off, watching each other in silence as we grab new clothes and pull them on. He’s looking down at his feet, fastening the stick tabs on his boots when he whispers, “Being inside the virtual with you and Brigit, that was the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I belong somewhere.”

  “Me too,” I whisper back. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say earlier.”

  Valor shakes his head, looking up at me from underneath a curl of brown-blond hair falling over his eyes. “You just told me you saw Draden.”

  “I did,” I say.

  “You didn’t, Tray. It’s some kind of artifact. Some… trick of the virtual. It pulled something from your memory. That happens all the time. Hell, I’ve seen people come out of the Pleasure Prison convinced their mother, father, brother, sister, insert-your-most-loved-loved-one here was alive and well, living inside our game. You’ve seen it too. Probably thousands of times. It wasn’t Draden. It was just… you. Finally missing him.”

  I let out a long breath. Because there’s a lot of things going on in that statement and I’m not sure I can process them all. It implies I didn’t miss him when he died. And Valor is right. I mean, I did miss Draden, the way all the people missed Draden.

  But I didn’t miss him the way Serpint did. I didn’t miss him the way ALCOR did.

  I didn’t miss him that way. I can’t explain it, but it fills me with shame.

  I had no feelings back then. I was a machine doing the bidding of other people and nothing more.

  And now I’m different. Valor and Brigit made me different. Being inside that virtual with them changed something inside me.

  I like the new me better. And I have this sick feeling inside that the person I am out here isn’t the version of me I want to be.

  I need Valor. I can’t lose him. He knows what I was before. He knows I’m different now.

  And he loves me anyway.

  I stand there in the bedroom that was mine four days ago, but should really be ours right now, and memorize the look on his face.

  He’s smiling. Like he’s happy. And maybe he is.

  But he knows too. He knows that Veila has to be dealt with. I thought about this so much inside the virtual. How seeing her in person will change him in an instant.

  How it’s very possible he could choose her over us.

  How he will have no control over that, the same way Luck had no control over choosing Nyleena.

  He will choose her over me.

  And now I know exactly how he felt when Luck came back to Harem after Mighty Minions.

  Alone.

  He’s watching me sort this out. Frowning now. He knows. He’s already been through this once.

  I extend my hand and say, “Come on. We should go check on Brigit.”

  He takes my hand, but instead of letting me pull him to his feet, he pulls me towards him. He stands up, kisses me on the mouth, and even though I know this is not real—real is me and Brigit, real is him and Veila—he convinces me that it is with this final kiss.

  Just one kiss can sometimes do that.

  This is how he knows me now.

  Just a few days ago in the real he put his hand on my leg for the very first time and since then, he’s touched me in every way possible. His hands have been all over my body and mine have been all over his.

  He is instant comfort.

  “It wasn’t Draden. It’s just you, Tray.” He taps my head with his finger. “It’s weird?”

  A question. I nod. “I… guess it always has been weird. I just didn’t recognize it until now. Something has changed.” And saying that brings all the fear he just erased. “I don’t know what has changed, Valor. But something has.”

  He shoots me a sad look and says, “Come on. Let’s check on Brigit.”

  Then he turns and starts climbing the ladder that will take us up to medical.

  I follow him. Scared of what’s coming next. Afraid that my life is over.

  Not my literal life, because there’s many ways for a person like me to live on. But the good one. The good life, the life I want, it’s slipping away in real time. Every moment we move into the future takes me farther and farther away from happiness.

  “You’re just you,” Valor says. And see? See how we’re connected now? He knows what I’m feeling. “End of story,” he continues as we reach the top of the ladder. “No matter what you are, you’re still you. So... fuck that shit, Tray. We don’t have time for feelings.” He climbs up into medical and I get out of the hatch after him. He looks at Brigit’s pod, his legs spread shoulder-width apart, both
hands on hips, and says, “What did Draden say exactly?”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t real?”

  “What did he say?” Valor repeats.

  “He was worried about Brigit. He said he’d been looking for her and we needed to get her out.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He was also worried that I didn’t think he was real. And then he kept saying he’s there. With her.”

  Valor looks at Brigit’s cryopod, then all around the interior of the medical bay. “Where’s there?” he says.

  “Not here, obviously. I can’t fucking believe I forgot to tell you about this when I first found you guys inside the virtual.”

  “It happens,” Valor deadpans. Like he’s not really paying attention. “But it’s only been four days. So. Whatever.” He walks over to Brigit. “What’s all this shit mean, anyway?”

  “What shit?”

  “This readout. I don’t recognize any of it. And I’ve seen Luck inside plenty of cryopods over the years. I’m not an expert, but I know what to look for. He never had a reading for all these… fields.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Look. Electron-positron field. Electromagnetic field. Gravitational field. What the fuck is this shit? Where’s the damn heartbeat? What happened to good old-fashioned brain waves?”

  I walk over and stare down at the readout. And that sick feeling inside me comes rushing back, worse than ever. When we first hooked her up in here to check on her, we used the ship’s medical system. But I unhooked her because we were going to use the pod. Now that she’s not hooked into the ship her pod is displaying the default readout.

  “Fuck,” I say. Because this is not normal. These fields aren’t meant to describe the health status of people.

  “What? What’s it mean?”

  They’re meant to describe the health status of AIs.

  “Goddamn it, Tray. What the hell does it mean?”

  But not just any AI. Very special ones.

  “Fields are properties of quantum mechanics. That’s how we describe… reality on the smallest fundamental levels.” I stare at her for a few more moments, trying to force this to make sense.

  Then it does.

  All of a sudden the truth is staring me in the face.

  “She’s a quant, Valor. She’s not like me. She’s a fucking quant.”

  I am ready to be hysterical but Valor just says, in the calmest voice possible, “I don’t understand, Tray. What’s that mean?”

  I turn away, swallowing down the sickness inside me. The realization that something has just gone terribly, terribly wrong. Then turn back to the pod and look through the widow of her faceplate. The interior temperature is falling rapidly. Her face is wet now, the layer of ice crystals thawing out. And I can see her features. I can see her and it looks just like the Brigit we knew inside the virtual. So it has to be her. But—

  “Tray,” Valor says, his hand on my shoulder. Shaking me.

  “We have to stop. Right now. We can’t thaw her out.” My fingers are tapping on the screen, frantically cycling through programs, trying to find the one that will shut down the wake-up protocol.

  “What the fuck? Why?” Valor spins me around and pushes me up against the pod. “What the hell is happening?”

  I have seen readouts like this before. A long, long time ago. When Booty came to ALCOR and me, asking for an upgrade. She told Serpint she wanted to be a quant. That means she could process even more data, faster. Like ALCOR, only in the compact little body of her ship.

  We did that for her without Serpint’s knowledge. She ended up taking her upgrade one step further and starting the metamorphic process of being made organic because she had this crazy dream of being human one day.

  I remember that so clearly. But I had forgotten about the first step. The quant step. The one that involved reducing Booty’s mind down into quantum fields.

  “I want to be what I was born to be,” she’d told ALCOR.

  Which I didn’t understand. But ALCOR did. Didn’t even question her request. No discussion at all about what Serpint might think of this. Or whether or not this was a good idea.

  It wasn’t a good idea. But it’s a long process and there would be dozens more steps before Booty would be ready to inhabit a body.

  I just figured ALCOR was humoring her. There was some crisis that day at the gates. Someone trying to get through without permission and they were turned to dust by ALCOR’s security beacons.

  I thought he was thinking about that. I thought that was why he agreed to Booty’s demands.

  But that’s not what it was about.

  “Do you ever wonder what happens to the girls?” Crux asked me that once a long time ago.

  “Who?” Valor asks me now. “What girls?”

  I turn to look at him. Hold his gaze for a moment. And he must see something inside me. Some truth that he can’t, or won’t, be able to argue with. Because he doesn’t try to talk me down, even though that’s what he’s been doing since we came out of the virtual.

  It hits me then. Everything is suddenly clear and focused the way it was before Valor and I went inside the virtual with Brigit.

  Things I’d forgotten, or maybe hidden away, deep inside my mind vaults so I wouldn’t think about them, manifest.

  Plans I had. Plots and schemes I made.

  I knew this. I knew, somewhere deep down inside, I knew this about the girls.

  I knew what Brigit was and I knew how to save her.

  That’s why I needed Valor along for this mission.

  “The Akeelian girls, Valor.”

  “I told you—” But he stops. He looks over at Brigit’s cryopod. “What?”

  I nod. “This,” I say. “This is what happens to the minds of Akeelian girls when their bodies die at birth. They make them into ships.”

  I swear to the sun god of all the universe, Valor hates me in this moment. He sees me for what I really am, not what he wants me to be.

  “It’s a trap,” Valor says. “She’s a fucking trap.”

  And she is. Just like Corla was. Just like Lyra was. Just like Delphi was. Just like Nyleena was.

  Brigit is a trap.

  And I knew this. I already knew this.

  Because so am I.

  Alarms on the navigation system start blaring.

  A ship has entered our spin node sanctuary.

  A Cygnian warship.

  Valor and I lock eyes. His glow bright fucking violet with recognition.

  And then he whispers, “It’s Veila.”

  I knew that too.

  That’s the whole reason Valor is here.

  I knew she would come for us once we woke Brigit up.

  I knew she would come for him.

  I just… forgot.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - INTERLUDE WITH ALCOR

  The ‘cell’ ALCOR finds himself in is actually a quite spacious and luxuriously accommodated virtual reality room. White, like the bright burning center of a sun. No pictures, no furniture—just four white walls, one shiny white floor, and one glowing white ceiling.

  His mind, still swirling with his recent interlude inside the event horizon of the Bull Station gate, feels numb and detached.

  There’s a good reason for that. Demon Girl has wrangled an ancient AI restraint device called a halo around him that restricts his ability to think and process.

  Some internal system is feeding him instructions. Repeating Demon Girl’s first demand over and over again in a soft, calming female voice.

  Please choose an avatar.

  He knows of Mighty Minions Station. Their reputation with ALCOR goes far beyond being the premier family resort in the Vacation Sector. They are a collection of AIs that formed a coalition several decades ago, long before the boys arrived on ALCOR Station and long before there was a Prime Navy to stop that little abomination from happening.

  There is literally no one quite like ALCOR in Galaxy Prime, but there is literal
ly no one quite like Mighty Boss, either.

  Equal and opposite forces in every way imaginable.

  Please choose an avatar.

  ALCOR is frustrated and tired. The halo reining him in is demoralizing and insulting. He’s very familiar with the device. Or he was. Those memories are locked up on some faraway abandoned station, so he can’t readily pull his last actual experience of being locked inside a halo into his current mental assessment of the situation, but he’s got the general idea.

  Until such time that Mighty Boss decides otherwise, he is indeed their prisoner.

  Please choose an avatar.

  His mind has access to the avatar data, and choosing what virtual form his artificial soul will inhabit during the upcoming interrogations—because that’s what this is—seems to be the only option at the moment.

  He flips through the available avatar possibilities. They are numerous. Millions of potential combinations. But even AIs have a mental picture of themselves. Given the chance to choose an avatar, almost all sentient beings will choose a version of the self they’re already familiar with. And he could be stuck in this form for a very long time, virtually speaking, so while he’s tempted to create an avatar with slimy tentacles and a large, sharp beak as a mouth to drive home the point that he is dangerous and not even Mighty Boss wants to mess with the likes of him… he doesn’t.

  He chooses the one he used with the boys shortly after they arrived.

  Medium light hair, blue eyes, tall, muscular… i.e. intimidating, attractive, male human specimen that conveys power, intelligence, and sexual prowess.

  There’s an off chance the Mighty Boss collective personality is male, since Mighty Boss presents as male, but ALCOR knows better than most that it’s a very bad idea for an AI to identify with the masculine gender. So it’s not likely.

  And hey, if he can’t convince Mighty Boss to help him based on principle and argument, maybe he can sway them with his good looks?

  Ha. Good to know that after all this time and all this bullshit, he still has a sense of humor.

  Please state your name, the system says.