“Hello World”
Cin woke up, hungover. She took a deep breath, unsettled to be waking up in a small dark room. She felt something cold in the back of her neck. She took a deep breath, and managed to focus enough to assess her surroundings. A small, dark room. No light. She could see. Why could she see?
Why was her chest…
The door opened with no warning, and suddenly an Orc was looking at her. Cin shivered at the sight of the Orc, a rush of sensation Cin couldn’t explain. The Orc was attractive enough. Blond hair, blue eyes, and her muscular arms on display in a sleeveless jumpsuit.
“How’s my drone today?” Leannan asked. The name popped into Cin’s mind out of nowhere, almost as startling as waking up in in a closet. Something familiar in Leannan’s tone made Cin’s survival instinct rear, so Cin lied.
“Good.” Cin said.
Leannan was smiling like a wolf. Leannan continued: “Not much for you to do today. Just make sure you check the couplers and switch out the verteton belt. If you’re good I’ll fuck you in half.” Leannan winked, and Cin was ashamed to find her body responding with a trembling thrill.
Something clicked into place.
I’ve been programmed. Cin attempted to nod as mindlessly as possible. I’ve been programmed and raped and—she forced herself to stop as the door closed behind the Orcess. Delicately, cautiously, she stood, doing her best to ignore the unfamiliar weight of her chest. Deep breaths, one thing at a time. She looked around the room. Some kind of mod, obviously, was letting her see in the dark. She felt her neck. A port installed in the back of her neck.
She waited as long as she dared before opening the door. She had no idea whether she was on a massive frigate or a small fighter, but the risk was necessary.
The door opened on a small dining room, the kind you’d find in a small (but luxe) bounty hunting vessel—enough to room for a bounty hunter and maybe one or two rare guests. Small, but enough room to sneak out and probably an escape pod she could steal. Ship specs came to her with suspiciously perfect recall, and she grunted in disgust. A Mnemonimod. Illegal, dangerous, and probably what had erased god knows how long from her life. She moved slowly along the corridor. Calm came naturally to her in times of danger. It was one of the reasons she was (had been?) such a good thief.
She moved to the food dispenser panel and quickly put it into root mode, restarting it as an internal navigation panel. It showed the helm of the ship, the dining room, two cluster cannons, and the escape bods at the back of the ship. Her hand moved with a practice that could have been the Mnemonimod, but Cin suspected it was muscle memory. She suspected she had worked with these panels many times over the course of many years.
She found the escape pods quickly, a series of small circular doors tucked in the rear of the ship. She hotwired the control panel, finding the fuzz evaporated as she forced her hands to work, none of their dexterity lost. Slowly memories came back.
Escape pod launch was simple enough. Safety standards required them to be mostly hardware, little software, making escape pods notoriously easy to steal. Bandit’s highway, Cin called them. Convincing the escape pod there was a disaster on the ship was easy. Doing that without triggering a red alert on the ship, though, Cin took pride in that.
Cin pulled the manual over-ride. The pod fell away from ship as quietly as a leaf hitting the water, air thrusters pushing it to a safe distance. Just as Cin suspected, the pods on a luxe ship like this had just enough ftl capability to get to a planet or trade route. Cin eyed the bounty ship through the viewport at the front of the pod. Definitely an Imperial make, model either Corsican or Consul. Year... More recent than Cin liked. Trying to summon up her last clear memory made the port in her neck hurt; she had only scattered images of her life, first as a mechanic, then as a thief.
She set the thrusters to a low enough level not to set an alert on the ships passive sensors. It would be enough (combined with the speed of the ship that was still zipping towards its next destination) to get out of active sensor range in the next five minutes. Most ships did active scans every 20 to 30 minutes. Good enough. “If I’m fucked I’m fucked.” Cin announced to the empty little pod.
As the escape pod drifted, Cin cataloged her memories, the fog leaving as she forced herself to think. Leannan was an old enemy. An unusually cunning bounty hunter who had heard Cin’s name when Cin left one too many calling cards with one too many aristocrats.
Most hunters were content to sit in an asteroid field and play pin the missile on the bandit. Leannan was in it for the investigation, the chase. And she had chased Cin for years. Cin bested her at every turn. Leannan was smart, but slow, deliberate. And, it turned out, unceasing. Leannan found Cin in Cin’s favorite lesbian bar on Fandan 4.
“What’s a girl like you doing on a dive-planet like this?” Leannan’s voice had been deep, almost mannish, but too soft to be threatening on its own.
Cin had tensed, but running would have drawn too much attention.
“You know. Just looking for good dick.” she said, trying to shock.
But Leannan just laughed.
“Buy me a drink and I might know a guy who knows a guy.” Leannan said. Then she raised her hand with two fingers up.
The bartender, Saria, was an old friend of Cin. She placed two drinks in front of them, one clear, one dark, for Leannan and Cin respectively. Saria gave her a look, and Cin shook her head very subtly. No need to make trouble. Leannan didn’t notice or didn’t let her poker-face shift.
“But you’re buying me a drink.” Cin said. She felt off-balance, and she didn’t like it.
“Yeah, but it’s not gonna get you my dick.” Leannan said, “If I have a couple more, though, my standards might drop precipitously.” Leannan winked, and took a sip of the drink. Cin calmed a little. Watching out for traps and holograms was the difference between a live thief and a dead one, but no hologram was sophisticated enough to drink real liquid.
Cin couldn’t deny an attraction. Leannan’s muscles were subtle but well-shaped, and she was tall enough that Cin couldn’t help thinking about Leannan picking her up.
“As long as I know how to get your dick.” Cin said, batting her eyelashes, unsure what the game was, but unwilling to lose. Just keep her off-balance. Cin wondered to herself if taking the Orc’s dick would keep her off-balance.
They drank and flirted for a bit longer as though nothing was unusual. Leannan asked for tips on hacking a neura-lock on a door panel, and seemed genuinely interested in Cin’s response. “Have to do it all the time and I don’t have the knack.” Leannan said, seeming genuinely irritated.
“Well, it’s not a matter of knack, if you think there’s a knack, you’re fucked, it’s the least natural thing in the world, it’s like the opposite of a magic eye drawing.” And then Cin was off on a rant that included some interesting facts not only about neura-lock tech, but also some fine points about meditation and the soul.
All the while, Cin scanned for a change in the status quo, something she could use to change the game. Then a crowd of drunks were paying their tab, and Cin felt the game teeter. Whatever Leannan was in this for, the risks were too great. Cin decided to make the safe play. She threw a hundred NEO note on the bar, blew Leannan a kiss, and whispered “Bye for now.” Then she was in the crowd of drunks, impossible to track for anyone inside the bar. She kept in their shadow a while. They weren’t concerned, though a couple of the guys tried to hit on her.
As soon as she left her cover, Cin felt a strong arm wrap around her neck. As she faded to darkness, all she thought was “how the fuck?” Even now, reassembling her memory, with time to think, she thought: how the fuck could Leannan do that. Before she could react, darkness was finding her, and the pinch of a needle in her arm was her last memory.
And then she woke up with her new tits. The escape pod was polished so well she could see herself in the metal. She had a feeling the pride she felt was because she had personally seen to that polishing. Maybe while Leannan railed her from the comfort of the ship. Cin shivered, but she still felt that same sickening tingle of excitement.
Anime tits, she decided, was the only way to describe them. She wore a maid outfit that barely covered her nipples or her cunt, and that was all. Closer inspection revealed black lipstick and black eyeliner. Almost goth.
All things she would deal with after she escaped. First she would need a friend, someone she could get a lowdown from. And she had had exactly one of those. Saria. Sure enough, one of the five stops within range was Farndan 4. Too good to be true, but right now, Cin would take any kind of good she could get.
Saria’s bar was still operating, at least. Cin walked in, and was suddenly aware of every single eye in the bar turning on her. She ignored the furious flush of her cheeks as she approached the bartender.
“I’m looking for Saria.” she said. The bartender, a tall Orc with a shaved head and a nose ring, eyed her like a piece of meat. Under other circumstances, she might have loved it.
After a considerable pause, the bartender chuckled, and said: “Yeah, you know what, I actually think Saria would fucking love to see you.”
Saria walked out in an outfit almost as slutty as Cin’s own. A red dress covered her tits (slightly smaller than Cin’s own) and almost all of her left leg, but it was slit in a way that left her upper right thigh bare. Less revealing, but almost hornier. Saria’s make-up was perfect, lips dark red, eyes lightly shadowed.
“You look different.” Cin said, a freezing hand wrapping around her heart. Saria giggled, and grabbed Cin’s arm. Before Cin could protest, Saria led her into the back office. “Anything I can get you dear? Glass of milk?” she winked, and Cin felt her cheeks redden.
“Jesus, Sara, look at me, what do you think I want? I need help.” Already Cin could feel a noose tightening. She felt her stomach drop as she put two and two together. Not quickly enough. She should have known as soon as she saw the dress. She should have known. She should have run, she hated running, she hated attracting attention, but she should have just fucking run.
As she turned the doorknob that last thought was punctuated with the impotent sound of a locked doorknob being turned. She turned back to Saria, and, voice dead: “She got to you.”
Saria laughed. “She got to me first. But you say that every time.”
First. The drink had been a hologram too.
“Every time?” Cin asked, visibly shaking.
Leannan opened the door. “Hope I’m not intruding!” she said in an artificially chipper voice.
“Not at all, Daddy!” Saria giggled, suddenly clinging to Leannan like a magnet. “She has the keys.” Saria said to Cin, apologetically. “She has everything.” She intoned the last three words almost as a mantra, some familiar rhythm in the words chilling Cin.
“I do have everything.” Leannan chuckled, slipping a finger under Cin’s chin. Cin opened her mouth to bite Leannan, to bite the bitch hard enough that she bled. “Leannan always wins.” she murmured, the shock of her own words sending her head spinning.
Distantly she realized she was rubbing the Orc’s cock through her flight suit. It made her stomach spin in delight and horror. “I do always win.” Leannan chuckled, kissing Cin’s ear. “Even if you need to escape for a few hours once every few years or so.”
Memories flooded Cin. Training, programming, brainwashing, the plug in her neck flooding her with adoration every time she saw Leannan, every time she made Leannan cum. As the memories flooded back, so did the adoration, the programming. She opened her mouth to bite but nothing came out. She felt escape disappearing on the horizon. She struggled, but Leannan was stronger, and Leannan kept whispering in her ear. She started to remember doing this before. Always near this bar, always thinking it was her own idea, always immediately recaptured, always, always, always her brain caught on that word until something went click.
“Leannan always wins.” Cin murmured, the breath escaping her all at once, as though her soul was leaving. She was aware that Saria was saying the same thing.
“That’s my girl. Ready for the trigger?”
“Yes, Leannan.”
So Leannan spoke, as she had several times before. “Goodbye World.” Cin stood and curtsied, blinking as the last of her disappeared under the deluge of programming.
Cin smiled. “Thank you for programming me.” she said. Leannan kissed her toy on the forehead. “Anytime, kitten. You’re better this way.” Cin felt the synapses fire, not her own, but the machine brain taking over. She reached for anger, but it was simply... out of reach. She felt joy, as she caressed her Owner’s arm and murmured: “I’m better this way.”
“Now come with me. The bartender said if I let him fuck you it’s free shots all night.” Leannan said, and Cin responded with a happy little wiggle and a kiss on the cheek.