Where There’s a Will

I debated the category for this story a lot and ultimately landed here on advice from more experienced authors on this site. Be aware there are non-consent themes to this story and the central relationship does involve a master/slave dynamic.

This is a new medium and a new category for me, just to make sure I don't get complacent about putting work out there. On that note, I'd really appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

***

"Progress report," the general snapped.

The tech in his white coat was more than slightly queasy at the suggestion that he speak directly to the snarling man in front of him and he attempted several syllables before giving up. The general did not alter his gaze from the stuttering tech. Instead he somehow loomed over him further without moving a centimeter. The tech stopped, swallowed, and began again.

"It is still early in the process," he said, trying and failing to keep his voice from quaking.

"It is two weeks into it. You should have an idea, at the very least, how the subject is progressing." Of course the general knew that two weeks was enough time. The military had been using this lab since before the war and now that the insurgencies were all but crushed the backlog of subjects had thinned considerably. General Durand, while not their best customer, had been sending prisoners here when he needed quick fixes during his campaigns and was more than familiar enough with the process to know that after two weeks they should have news. There was no easy way to explain this current progress report though.

"It is complex, many react differently to the process and the pharmaceuticals. We have to be careful not to overload the unique biochemistry of the individual brain. Not to mention that altering consciousness and planting suggestions too quickly or in the wrong state can lead to irreparable--."

"I've heard it all before. Tell me her status before I see her." The general yanked the board from him and began to scroll through scans and reports and the man twined his newly unoccupied fingers as if keeping himself from snatching it back.

The tech watched the man before him apprehensively. The general was a hard man; the severity of his expression aged him. The tech looked over the harsh lines of the man's face and tried to get himself together. He permitted himself a bit of nerves. After all, he was speaking with a war hero and arguably the youngest and most influential senior officer in the new military.

The general frowned slightly as he flipped through progressive brain scans and blood chemistry reports. "She is responding, and what's more she is not resisting. Why are you behaving as though there was bad news here?"

"The scans only tell part of the story, General Durand," The tech trailed off as the general fixed him with a glare again.

"Spit it out," those grey eyes dipped to the name badge on his chest, "Jason." The tech blanched, he had never heard his name spoken quite like that before.

He swallowed and lowered his gaze so he could simply plow through an explanation he'd never had to give before. "She never resisted. After the trouble she had presented before she came here we were surprised to find her rather...yielding when we began." He paused, glancing up, but Durand only lifted an eyebrow to indicate he continue his report. "The program is running correctly; the instructions and inhibitions are in place and functional. The problem is the subject's conscious identity. She seems to have been able to separate her knowledge of herself from the results of the sessions. She isn't integrating the trained responses and so is fully aware of the program's effects."

"That shouldn't be possible." The general sounded incredulous but the look on his face suggested otherwise.

"It shouldn't. We haven't figured out how yet, but we suspended the current program two days ago and she is in a reversal package to attempt to stabilize her while we design a new approach. It is not a good idea for you to visit her now. As the touchstone of the last program, the results of your presence will be unpredictable, especially given your past with her."

The general considered what the tech was saying for the length of time it took to shut down the board and hand it back. "You may note your suggestion in the report. Where is she?"

The tech couldn't pretend to be disappointed. No one expected the general to see reason with this subject.

The smaller man turned to lead the way through a series of white hallways to the holding area, all the way to the last door which faced the long corridor. The tech scanned his ID and pressed the display so the door seemed to disappear, giving the two men a view into the room without actually opening it.

General Durand felt a thrill of anticipation as he looked at the display; he had been waiting a long time for this. For nearly a year he'd been cracking away at her with barely any progress. If the reports were accurate, the program had managed what he could not, assimilation notwithstanding.

Her brown hair caught his eye in the bare cell. She was seated on a low chair and she stared at the far wall as if it were a window, looking through rather than at it. The rest of the room looked untouched as though she'd just arrived.

"What has she been doing for two days?" The general asked, realizing belatedly that he had skipped the reversal report.

"Remembering, telling herself stories, some from her life, some fantasy. She's been singing songs and it seems," the tech paused, "saying goodbye."

The general did not move his gaze from the woman in the display. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know." Techs never said that. They always had some long convoluted way of saying it while reassuring the administration lackeys and military types that they still had the situation in hand. Not for this one. She was messing with the entire team. "Again, it isn't behavior we've seen before in any other subjects. She moves through her thoughts systematically and never returns to ones she's reviewed, as if she were saying goodbye to them." It was too poetic but one of the team had said it in a meeting about her this morning and it was the only cogent way to describe the behavior.

The general didn't react to the tech. His impatience had been replaced with a strange feeling of dread looking through the door that wasn't yet open. "She's had the complete truth program by now hasn't she?"

The tech nodded. "Reversal hasn't targeted those suggestions. Even if they had she hasn't shown any signs of deceit or trying to withhold information. She seems rather resigned to answering any and all of our questions."

"Resigned?" the general's tone had softened but so subtly the tech wasn't sure he'd heard it right.

"She is not fighting, General Durand. She hasn't struggled with us once, or tried to resist the suggestions or even attempted to keep herself from responding to commands. Considering who she is and how she came to us, we were expecting something much different. The program we designed was intended for the most combative of subjects. And while she has absorbed the program—her chemistry and brain fluctuations are well within target range at every step—she is not assimilating it into her known self. She should not have even been aware of the first session and the moment she regained consciousness she was testing herself to see what we'd done. And even then, nothing, no fight, no struggle, no attempts to undo it. We've never had someone just give up while simultaneously rejecting integration."

The general stayed quiet, his jaw clenching as the tech spoke. Finally he gave the man a curt nod and stepped up to the controls to the door. "I will assess the situation myself and give you an answer when I see her progress." He pressed his palm to the reader and the image of the room disappeared, leaving only the entrance open and ready for him. For a fraction of a second he wanted to step back and away, to run from what waited for him in that room. But it was fleeting and he forgot it as soon as it passed.

The door shut with a whispering sound behind him. She was facing away from him and she did not move. The room was grey concrete walls on three sides, the fourth wall being a complete surveillance unit, appearing white from the inside and able to scan the room and subject, control temperature and light as well as any number of other functions that could be accessed in the interest of subduing an unruly participant. The furniture was minimal—only a small cot, two low cushioned chairs and a small table for eating. The corner held a multi-functional cubicle for bathing and elimination of waste. The glass was clear so the subject could be seen at all times. She was dressed in soft green pants and matching shirt. They were too big for her, and shapeless. He instantly hated them despite having seen thousands of prisoners wearing the same things over the years without ever thinking once about how hideous the color was.

Her hair was loose, chestnut waves fell just above her shoulder. He hadn't let her cut it since her capture and he was pleased to see the texture on display. From his vantage point he could not see her face but he watched as the hands that lay on her folded lap twitched.

She knew he was there.

"Dana," he said, keeping his voice low. The tech had been right that this was not ideal, that he could cause much more damage to her and the process by visiting her as they yanked her altered brain chemistry into reverse. He would be gentle if he could, though the sight of her never failed to elicit a violent instinct in him.

For a moment she was still, though her body tensed and shuddered as he used her name. The moment passed and she turned her head so she was in profile and he watched as she pressed her lips together to speak. Instead she froze, her shoulders tightened and she parted her lips with a gasp instead of his name. He walked forward slowly, taking in the look of pain on her face as the sensation passed.

He suppressed a victorious smile as he stood over her seated form. He'd been trying everything to get her to quit using his first name. The infuriating woman had never learned. Every point of progress had to be forced over and over again and almost none had stuck. And yet now here she was, incapable of it completely. He would never miss the way she infused the short syllable with as much contempt as she could muster every goddamn time.

"General," she said, her voice low, her eyes still not meeting his.

"Not Beau? Have you given up on the name?" he watched as she closed her eyes when he'd said his name, another conditioned response. He wanted to test the program despite knowing full well that it was unseemly for a man of his station to behave like a child with a new toy. Another time perhaps. He moved the other chair and placed it across from hers but did not sit yet. "Is that a proper greeting?" He purposefully avoided triggering the command as he awaited her response.

"It is not how I would choose to greet you. It is also not the protocol for prisoners to greet their jailors. Nor is it what slaves are meant to do for their masters." He studied her face as she spoke. There was something altered in her expression, a vacantness that hadn't been there a fortnight before when he'd packed her up and sent her here.

"And how should a slave greet their master?" he asked, his tone still neutral.

"A slave should rise and bow at their master's feet, assuming a prostrate position until such a time as their master tells them to move." She might have been quoting from a manual.

"That sounds lovely," he said, meaning every word. "Perhaps you should show me."

She raised her head, meeting his steely eyes with her warm brown ones. Even in her hideous clothing, the pallor of her skin from being kept inside for the better part of year, the smudge of shadow beneath her eyes, he still felt the visceral attraction he always did when he saw her. But this woman, folded in on her little chair, was not the same one who had fought him for five long years, her insurgency dogging his forces at every turn. Then she had been strong, bronze and fierce. Now he had whittled her down, stripped her of her power and left behind only the softness he found pleasing in a woman's body. The sight of her sitting so meekly below him gave him that same rush of satisfaction he'd had since he first laid his hands on her, one that a year of training had not dimmed.

"I don't want to," she said, and she made no move to stand.

"Why is that?" he asked, too quickly. His temper would get the better of him.

"Because you are my captor, not my master," she said, not lowering her gaze.

"Dana," he said her name again, not as gently. He saw her lips part then, a flush crawl along her pale skin. Her eyes softened as she looked up at him, and still he felt there was something off. "What do you feel when I say your name?" most of the program would still be intact, so he knew the answer but he wanted to test the tech's assertions from earlier.

"My skin is hot and it's a little hard to breathe, I can feel a tingling up the back of my neck, in my nipples and my vagina. I'm wet and it almost feels like there is an ache in my gut." Her words pulled at his control. With a single phrase he could have her laid out in front of him, and finally unrestrained because she simply wouldn't fight back. His cock stiffened at the thought. Her eyes were wrong though, he realized. And she hadn't answered the question, or perhaps he had asked the wrong one.

"How do you feel when your body does that?"

"Sad."

That was a surprising answer. "Why is that?" he moved around the chair, settling himself across from her.

"It's not me anymore," she spoke after a moment. "That was terrifying at first. But now it is only sad." Her voice was slightly stilted and she was speaking differently. There was none of her inflection, no barbs or jokes thrown at him, no long winding thoughts punctuated with profanity. The truth program could be reductive to personality, especially when the subject was being questioned as she was. It couldn't be helped though. The loss could be borne now that he was finally sure she was telling the truth.

"It is still your body, your reactions, it is still you."

She shook her head, her hair sweeping over her jaw. "It is something else, something foreign. This is not how I felt when you said my name before. Now it is. That is artifice and so it is not me." As the reaction to his speaking her name faded he watched as her body loosened from the unconscious posture she'd taken, one designed to display her body, though how anyone could display anything swimming in pea green pajamas he didn't know. Her verbal mannerisms loosened as well as she spoke, but remained unnaturally blunt and toneless.

"And how did you feel before when I said your name?"

If he didn't know better he would have thought she was giving him a pleading look but she moved to speak again regardless. She would not be able to resist speaking the truth and he intended to abuse that fact in any way he saw fit. "I would feel angry, but excited. It meant you were initiating another encounter which meant something besides the endlessness of being locked up. I hated you when you called it out as you raped me but it provoked a positive sexual reaction as well."

"And that sexual reaction was different than the one you experienced just now?"

She nodded, her eyes fixing on the wall behind him, her expression vaguely troubled. He studied her for a long moment.

"Kneel," he said suddenly.

Instantly she slid off the chair and moved to sit on her heels, her knees spread wide. She interlaced her fingers behind her, arms straight, and drew her shoulders back but kept her head down. Perfect.

"How do you feel?" There was a pause with no response. "Look at me."

She raised her head. There was definitely something wrong.

"What do you feel?" he asked again.

"Nothing," she said.

He leaned back and contemplated her. There was something so satisfying about seeing her like this, unbound, on her knees. He had only ever gotten her there through sheer force of will, exhausting her until there was no other choice. But each time they would start anew. Every session was like walking ten paces only to find the sidewalk had moved you back eleven. She was impossible, and yet in two weeks here she was, at his feet. Where was the woman who had made it her mission to make him rue the day he had claimed her as a spoil of war?

"Why are you not fighting the program?"

"I have no defense."

"That did not stop you before."

"I knew my opponent. I have none here."

He considered her again. He watched her carefully for signs of anything and found her expression only blank.

"How do you feel?"

Again no response.

"Get up, Dana. Take your seat." The victorious feeling was fading faster than he'd anticipated. She climbed back into her chair and folded her legs again. She appeared smaller than before, chipped away. Her shoulders, previously used to balance rocket launchers, were rounded and slumped. She interlaced her fingers in her lap. He noticed her index fingers were no longer flexing unconsciously as though pulling a trigger. He'd broken her, finally, and yet the satisfaction was lacking. Perhaps because it had been the program and not his efforts, but he had been willing to accept that, when he'd chosen to send her here. This should be a good moment.

And what had he expected after all? The program messed with people's brains, implanted suggestions, compelled behavior, conditioned responses. But he had thought it would have been a different set of chains to use on her, a new way of controlling the fierce opposition she managed to maintain even after all these months. Instead he sat before a diminished version of a person.

The program could be dangerous. They had used it that way before. It could fracture people's minds so that they would spill every secret they had without even caring they were doing it. The techs could remove a person's will to breathe even as they left their mind intact, torturing them with their own bodies. But she had not been given those programs. So why this?

"How do you feel?"

"Sad," she said again.

"Why?" he was genuinely curious this time.

"Because I'm dying." She said it so easily it took a moment for him to register the answer.

"What makes you think that?"

"I am being replaced by whatever they are putting in my head. I am not the things my body is doing. As time goes on, more and more of me is erased until I will be gone. What is that if not death?"

The general almost smiled at that. "Nothing so dramatic. You have suggestions, orders, those sorts of things. It does not kill you. You still exist but with certain compulsions you can't control. It's no different than someone addicted to gambling or drugs. That does not erase who a person is."

She turned her eyes back to him. He could see her, still there with him in these moments when he spoke freely to her.

"It is not the same. I had reactions I could not control before. I felt things I should not have. But they were part of me, they came from pieces of myself that perhaps I could not fully explain but were born inside my brain. These things are not. I do not feel aroused when my body reacts to your voice. That part of me is erased. The body below me is not of me." Her voice broke. As she spoke the dull tone wore off, the flow of her speech was more natural. "When you force me to move I am not doing it, I feel nothing, I am not truly there."

The general looked at her as she spoke. He had done any number of unspeakable things to this woman and yet she had faced him every time. Now this—no fight, not cursing, just acceptance.