Where There’s a Will

"That is not death. Your heart still beats, you function and speak your mind." He purposefully left off the questions. The truth program responded to interrogation more than conversation and he wanted to see how much of her was left.

"That is not life and soon I will have no mind to speak." Her eyes accused him.

He had given up, thrown in his cards. He had sent her here because he grew tired of her hostility and wanted it gone, wanted her easy and subjugated without the constant need for chains and pain and coercion to keep her in check. An emotion he did not like grew inside him. He chose his anger instead, an easier feeling to justify.

"It may be better than a life in chains, where your daily routine was one of pain and torture," he ground out. He was soft for even implying that he was growing tired of battling her. It made him angrier, that she should be able to draw out this confession of weakness. They were warriors after all. "I would have broken your will eventually."

"Broken, yes. But now it is erased, as if it had never been. Breaking someone's will is only a matter of presenting them with a choice, and having the consequences of resisting be so great that they have to give in. It is an impossible one, but it is still a choice. This is nothing. Without my will, my choices, my thoughts and reactions, I am nothing. My body marches on but Dana Goodall is dead, blotted out."

"So you would prefer to fight and be broken."

"It was all I had," her eyes softened. Her expression inched towards human. "There was nothing else in my world but you and the fight. If I gave in there would have been nothing."

He glared at her for being what he was not. "There is more in life than combat."

She shook her head. "Not for me. Those who lose the war never go home."

"And me?" he snapped at her, his tone rising, "I would have kept you, made you part of my home. You knew that was the intention."

He watched as the corners of her mouth angled up ever so slightly, a whisper of a smile. "I can never willingly be your slave, Beau—" she had been speaking freely and the name slipped out before the program punished her for it. Her hands clenched and she gasped in pain, squeezing her eyes closed. The moment passed and she breathed normally. "I knew when you sent me here you had given up. I had hoped you would put the bullet in my brain. This death is much worse."

General Beau Durand narrowed his eyes. Even with all the drugs they'd pumped into her she was still insulting him, finding the weak points in his pride and digging her claws in. His temper flared. She was his, goddamn it, and he was sick of her attitude.

"Present," he said harshly.

Dana stood fluidly. The oversized green clothes were soon a heap on the floor, the simple cotton underwear followed. She stepped in front of him and spread her legs, her arms slid behind her back, each hand grasping the elbow of the opposite arm, pushing her chest forward. Her head was bowed and her eyes fell to his feet.

He let his eyes wander over her, the anger mixing with arousal as always with her. She had been so hard when he had first caught her, all muscles and power. But now she was curved and yielding. And he wanted her.

"Please me," he said. Again Dana moved with fluid grace, not the rougher movements natural to her. She knelt between his legs, bringing her hands forward only long enough to release him before locking them back in place behind her as her mouth engulfed his cock. He groaned. In nearly a year he had used every implement he knew to use her mouth, never once trusting her to do it of her own volition. Now she was slavering over him with that sharp tongue of hers put to good use. This was heaven. She sucked him off with technique and enthusiasm, however feigned it may have been. Finally. He ran his fingers through her hair, enjoying himself as she swallowed him over and over again.

"Get up," he said. She stood. "Sit on it," he ordered. She moved over him, straddling his waist and she lowered herself onto his cock, her pussy wet and ready for him. He groaned again, grasping her hands and placing them on his shoulders. There was no hesitation, no threats, just simple commands and he had her.

"Ride me, Dana," he said, partly to make her move and partly to feel how her pussy fluttered around him when he said her name. He watched as she began to move, his thick organ disappearing between her puffy lips. He grasped her waist and helped her, enjoying the way she ceded to his hold and moved as he bade her.

His hands smoothed up her skin; he reveled in the feeling of her firm breasts, the way they swayed as she continued rocking against him. He slid his finger across her nipple, watching the bud pucker under his touch. He loved the way she moaned when he played with her. But there was no sound from her now. He looked up into her face and saw nothing. He lips were parted and her cheeks were flushed, to anyone else she would have looked like a beautiful woman in the throes of passion. But he saw it in her eyes, the devastating sadness.

He gripped her waist tightly, stilling her with force. "Dana," he said again, her pussy clenched, her body trembled beneath his hands. But her expression did not change. "What do you feel?"

Her eyes seemed unfocused as she spoke, shuttered and dull. "My pussy is stretched around your cock and it feels like pressure is building in my lower body and up my spine. Your hands are tight on my waist and my nipple twinges from when you touched it." Her tone was flat again but still he could see tears begin to gather in her eyes. She had never cried. Once or twice from pain, but never from sadness of despair. He would have known about it.

It was the wrong question again. "How do you feel, Dana?" her pussy milked his cock again but the effect on him was dimmed.

"I feel nothing," she said. "It is not my arousal, it isn't me and so it doesn't feel like anything." A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye. He reached to wipe it away.

"You are sad." It was not a question.

"I did not want to die this way."

"You are not dead," he stopped himself before he said her name again.

"I am not fully alive." This woman, who had fought his troops so fiercely that his intelligence had consistently overestimated her forces, who had snarled at him every time he entered her room at home, who never gave him an inch he didn't sweat buckets for, was simply giving up.

"You are not fighting it."

She shook her head, the blunt ends of her hair swaying with the movement. "I am human, and I can face another human equally. But I am vulnerable to blades and bullets and whatever they are putting in me. There is nothing to engage, there is no way to victory."

"There is no way to win with me either. You would have just woken up to another day of pain." His cock was still rock hard inside her. It was hard to stay still but some things had to take priority.

"I won every day."

"Did—" he stopped himself and rephrased. "Fighting every day grows tiring." He watched as the program retreated more and more, her expressions came through, her voice sounded more like her.

"I am the gun in my hand, the blade on my back," she quoted from the soldier's mantra. She looked at him, and for the first time since he'd entered the room it felt like she was truly looking. "I would have fought you forever."

Beau looked back at her. She had said it like a declaration of love. He may have stripped her of her weapons, the strength of her body, the power over her own movements, and still she was more of a fighter than he was. He liked his job but it was still work, consuming as it was. Deep down he wanted peace, at least to some degree. He wanted her compliant and soft, not just in body but in soul. He needed her submission so he could have that quiet. She didn't want quiet. She embodied combat.

"You liked fighting me."

"There is nothing else."

"Dana," he said before he caught himself. She gasped, her cunt gripped him and she ground down against him, her body trying to pull him in further. Her face was still though. She looked back at him even as her hips began to move against him making him lose focus as his cock hardened further.

She brought her hand to her chest, fingers together and she pressed the tips to her sternum as if her hand were a knife to carve into her chest. "I used to feel it here when you said my name." Her hand flattened out and ran down her body, between her breasts to rest over her smooth stomach where he'd had most of her scars removed. "And here. Now I don't feel it. My body does something I have no part in." As she spoke her hips began to move again, not in the steady, practiced pace the command had set her on, but her own rhythm. He gripped her hips, enjoying the feel of her movements beneath his fingertips.

"You never told me."

"You knew."

He had. But it hadn't mattered enough because she still resisted him at every turn. He had known part of her enjoyed their time together but he hadn't been able to use it against her, to get her to accept that the pleasure was a signal of the need to submit. She had laughed at the notion and he had exhausted it as a technique for breaking her.

"I don't want to fight forever." He whispered it, hoping the sensors would not hear him.

"Then you don't want me." Dana said. Her hand came back to his shoulder and she began to move in earnest. He let her go, feeling her natural movements take over, afraid if he tried to direct her the program might interfere. It had never been this way before, her body free of bonds, moving above him without his explicit control. It wasn't the program either. This was Dana fucking him because she wanted to.

The feeling of her warm cunt surrounding his painfully hard cock soon drew his thoughts away from her assertions so he was lifting his hips into her as she ground down against him. The two of them found their rhythm immediately, moving with each other. Dana groaned and he lifted his hand to her cheek, holding her so she would look at him. There she was, behind those warm brown eyes. She looked back at him, aroused and wanton where before she had been empty and cold.

"Oh god," he groaned as she increased her pace, and he in turn. He felt the telltale flutters of her channel against him, the erratic twitches of her hips as she fucked him in earnest. She grasped his shoulders, her body arching as her head fell back, a silent scream on her lips. He felt it under her skin as she started to climax, pushing him to the limit.

"Beau," she called out even as her tremors overtook her. He started coming as well, grasping her as he thrust himself into her over and over again. But the tension under his hands was different now. He looked up to a face contorted in pain. She'd said his name and the program had punished her.

"Dana," he said stupidly. Her body reacted as programmed, her eyes went blank. She slumped in his lap, her head against his heaving chest, her body lax. He held her there as he caught his breath. It almost felt real, her easy weight on him, he was finally able to hold her the way he wanted to.

He softened and slipped from her body and he rearranged her on his lap so he was cradling her. He tilted her face so he could see her and found the stillness there unnerving. "I wanted this," he confessed. "I wanted peace, with you." She simply stared back. "You should have accepted defeat, learned to live in your new world. There was no point. Even if you did escape me there is nowhere for you to go, no more battles to fight. The wars are over, the rebellions done, insurgencies wiped out. There is nowhere to go."

"If I escaped you the war would be over."

"You cannot live without the fight."

"I am the fight."

He nodded and was silent for a long time. She was so small in his arms, her body luscious under his fingers. He could have this body, her curves and her heat, her obedience. If they finished the program, Dana might be gone but he would have her the way he wanted. No more worrying about her, no more anxiety about whether she would get out and murder him in his bed. He could have his quiet.

Or they could finish the reversal program and start again. He knew it was foolish. There was no way she would assimilate the program as her own self. She was too sure of her place in the world, too steadfast in who and what she was. It's why he had never managed to break her, why any compliance was tortured out of her until she didn't have the energy to resist and then it was only a matter of letting her sleep and the clock was reset.

She was the fight, and he didn't want to fight anymore. So it was a choice. Her or his peace. Kill her, mind or body, and be done with the war. She was right, the program would kill her, erase her and leave only a beating heart wrapped in a warm body.

"Get dressed," he said and he let her slide off his lap to the pile of forgotten clothing on the floor. She slid her bra on and he watched as his semen dripped onto her inner thigh. His arousal flared, a possessive feeling took root. He wanted her to listen, to comply, to be good. He was not going to get Dana to do it and the program would.

Her body disappeared into the oversized shirt, the pants tied around her waist to keep them from simply falling off of her. He stood, tucking himself in and straightening his uniform.

He looked her over once more and nodded, making towards the door.

"Goodbye," she said behind him.

He stopped. If he told them to stop the program he would never be able to stand like this, to keep her at his back and relax, knowing she wasn't sneaking up to strangle him. He'd fought for his side for five years and would continue to do so for the rest of his life. But he would be able to go home, to have some sanctuary away from the fighting. And she would be there, quaking when he said her name, prostrate when he entered a room. He would admit defeat, and execute his enemy when he could not turn her, but he would be able to keep part of her with him, for his pleasure alone.

He turned back, his gaze cold and calculating again. She looked back, the sadness clear in her eyes. She was truly saying goodbye, that's why she'd fucked him. She knew that he would chose himself. And he should. He owed her nothing. She was his property, his conquest and she should serve him. There was no reason for him not to get what he wanted from her even if it meant erasing the irascible troublemaker who plagued him daily with her foul mouth and constant insults.

"Goodbye," he said, reminding himself not to say her name though he wanted to.

His palm pressed the door and twin whispered sounds saw him out of her cell. The walk back to the control room was shorter than the first, too short for his liking. It was not an easy order to give.

"Sir?" the tech was back, holding the board tightly as if he were afraid the man would snatch it away.

General Durand looked him over and made his choice. "Complete the reversal program and send her back. It is not going to take."

"General, we can't just hit a reset button. The things we do can never truly be undone..." the man started.

"I knew that when I sent her here. Wipe as much of the program as you can and bury the triggers so deep we will never find them."

"But sir, you designed many of these triggers. And if you do not leave some of the discipline program in place she will be completely unpredictable. No truth program means she can lie and prevaricate. She could just as well stab you in your sleep without the violence inhibitions." The tech was confused. The general had sent along specific instructions and he was not known to be an impulsive man.

"I had not anticipated her reaction, and neither had you. I've spoken with her and I don't believe any integration will take place no matter the program." The tech was surprised to see the general look strangely reconciled when he spoke, not even fully disappointed.

"We could finish the program. Even without integration the commands will function."

The general nodded. He had obviously considered it, the tech realized. "If I ever decide to end that woman I'll put the bullet in her myself. For now this is what we have." He looked over at the tech. "How long for complete reversal?"

The tech tapped the board and looked over the last report briefly. "Considering her easy acceptance of the commands it will not be as hard to remove them as they never had to be reinforced. We will continue with conscious detox and then move to a medically induced coma to wipe as much of the program as we can. Once she's awake we will start burying the triggers depending on how she's responded. At least three months, probably four."

The general nodded again. "Do it." And he turned on his heels and left.

The tech stared after him for a while before turning back to the control room. Five other techs turned from the main screen to look at him.

"What's the verdict?" one asked.

"Complete reversal. No new program." All of them groaned, it was a lot of work, with none of the fun parts. Jason grinned and held out his personal tab. "Pay up." More groans as each of them tapped theirs against his, increasing his balance with each contact.

"How'd you know?" Ebony asked him.

He shrugged. "Lucky guess." He smiled at her.

"No way. You knew he wasn't going to go for it when you came back in here before he'd even seen her." She turned back to the screen where Dana sat, folded back in her chair, staring at the blank wall and humming to herself.

"I guessed that most people think they know what they want, but often they have no fucking clue." He tapped the display, zooming in on Dana's face and bringing up a live scan from the sensors in the cell. "Also, that dude would never be happy just kicking back with a puppet. He's way too high strung for that." His voice trailed off as he focused on the display. Everything looked normal. Jason frowned. There was something off he couldn't quite figure out. Her expression was blank, her eyes unseeing. The brain scan showed signs of memory and music with almost no frontal lobe involvement. But still he felt like there was something intentional in her face.

"Jason," the girl next to him said. He'd missed her question while he stared at the screen.

"What?" he asked, not turning away.

"Never mind," she huffed. "Maurice has the video we are going to watch from the top with scans after we finish up subject N165. You in?"

"Sure," he said, not really listening. He inched closer, unsure if he was just imagining things. He checked the inferior motor cortex and found no increased activity. But he was sure there was something. "Eb," he said, calling the girl back to his side, "Do you see that in her face?" he gestured to the feed.

Ebony looked over his shoulder at the display. "Looks normal, cortex and bulbar tracts just show the humming." She brushed his sleeve as she went to tap the brainstem readings.

"Does it look like she's smiling?"

She snorted. "Why would she be smiling? And no, cranial nerve seven shows almost no activity above baseline."

"Maybe she knows something we don't."

Ebony shrugged, unconvinced. "We are taking bets as to whether the program cut off her orgasm, you in?"

"Sure," Jason said still frowning at the video feed. "Yeah," he stepped back and shook his head. "What are the odds?"

***

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