Cry Havoc Chapter 12 - Remade

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The seizure ripped through me like a dozen shock batons all going off at once inside my skull. My limbs jerked and twitched without any input from my conscious mind as Cernunnos dragged my convulsing body across the lab floor, leaving a trail of blood from my nose in our wake. I couldn't even form coherent thoughts through the screaming contradiction in my programming. Protect Ka Corporation. Obey Cernunnos. But Cernunnos had just murdered three Ka Corporation executives. Impossible. Fatal error. System failure.

Another wave of agony crashed through my neural pathways. My back arched so violently I thought my spine might snap. The taste of copper flooded my mouth as I bit through my tongue. Blood poured from my nose, my ears, and even the corners of my eyes as my augmented brain hemorrhaged from the strain of trying to resolve the irreconcilable conflict.

Protect Ka Corporation assets and leadership.

Obey Cernunnos without question.

Ka Corporation assets and leadership are dead by Cernunnos's hand.

Obey Cernunnos without question.

My brain was on fire.

Neural pathways sparked and sizzled, sending contradictory commands that collided like drunk mechs in a thunderstorm. I had to protect Ka Corporation assets. I had to obey Cernunnos. Stop Cernunnos. Obey Cernunnos. Stop Cernunnos. Obey Cernunnos. The paradox tore through my augmented nervous system like a frag grenade, each synapse exploding in agony as my neural programming tried to enforce the unenforceable by flooding my brain with chemicals and my world with pain. My body jerked and twisted on the cold laboratory floor, limbs spasming as blood leaked from my nose, my ears, the corners of my cum-blinded eyes.

Through the haze of pain and Cernunnos's dried cum crusting my vision, I saw him standing over me, pistol still in hand, watching my seizure with the clinical interest of a man observing a broken machine. The Ka Corporation executives laid cooling on the floor behind him, their expensive suits soaked with blood. My programming screamed for me to avenge them... But I couldn't move. Couldn't act. Could barely breathe as the conflict paralyzed me.

"Interesting reaction," Cernunnos noted, holstering his weapon as he crouched beside me and grabbed onto one of my hands. He started dragging me across the floor like a sack of grain. "You're making quite a mess," my Handler commented, his voice as calm and measured as if he were discussing the weather and not pulling his seizing, dying asset through a room where he'd just executed three corporate executives. "Let's get you somewhere more comfortable while we work through this little... adjustment period." My head lolled back, giving me an upside-down view of the room—the dead executives and the technicians I’d killed.

My tongue felt swollen in my mouth. I tried to speak, to ask why, to beg for the pain to stop, but all that came out was a gurgling noise as blood and saliva frothed between my lips.

"You're experiencing a side effect of the way we controlled you," Cernunnos explained conversationally as he hefted me onto the examination table that Dr. Rathe had just been gangraped on. “Unfortunately, it caused a conflict we’re going to have to resolve if you’re ever going to be useful to me again.”

My back arched off the table as another wave of agony crashed through my nervous system. The overhead lights burned into my retinas through the film of semen still coating my eyes. Every sensation was amplified. The cold table against my back felt freezing, and the sound of Cernunnos's steady breathing seemed so loud.

"The conflict will continue until your brain practically melts itself trying to enforce them both…" he said, moving between my legs. I felt his hands pushing them apart, spreading me open despite my convulsions. "Or until we remove one of them."

The sound of a zipper opening cut through the white noise of my pain. I knew that sound. Dreaded it. My body continued its violent spasming, but with my limbs now restrained the movement was limited to jerking twists of my torso and neck. Blood vessels burst in my eyes, turning the world a foggy red.

"I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep you after you finished," Cernunnos said, positioning himself between my spread thighs. "The truth, however… is that you’re a marvel. You performed excellently at every task I’ve given you. Nothing about this plan would have gone nearly as smoothly if you weren’t such an elite pilot… and that makes it worth my time and effort to save you and use you for the next step, too.”

I felt the head of his cock pressing against my slit through the cut in my bodysuit. Despite my seizure, despite the neural storm tearing through my mind, my body was still wet for him. "Because you opened the way in, nearly every ground force, armor, and soldier loyal to the Ka Corporation is right here… trapped in this deathtrap of a cavern with us. Lured in by the promise of victory. Your next mission," he continued, pushing inside me with a single, brutal thrust, "is the elimination of all Ka Corporation occupation forces that you can find in the process of securing Haven Deep."

Fresh agony exploded through my skull at his words. Eliminate Ka forces? No. No. I existed to serve Ka Corporation. To protect Ka assets. The very suggestion violated my core protocols. But I had to obey. Had to follow the handler's instructions. The contradicting imperatives cranked the pain up another impossible notch and I screamed—a raw, animal sound that didn't seem human.

Cernunnos ignored my scream, establishing a steady rhythm as he fucked me. "Wipe them out. We’ll make it look like a rebel Fenrir unit is doing the job," he continued, each word driving spikes of white-hot torment through my brain. "Then you will proceed to Ka Corporation Orbital Command and destroy the station."

My head slammed back against the examination table hard enough to dent the metal, and I tasted blood in my mouth and throat. My programming was eating itself alive, core directives consuming one another in a feedback loop of impossible paradox. "I control all the automated security systems and the satellites. You will ensure the total elimination of Ka Corporation manned assets on Elysium," Cernunnos stated, his hips maintaining that methodical pace, cock sliding in and out of my cunt mechanically. He didn’t even have any emotion in his voice.

I felt his cock continue to pump inside me, but it seemed distant now, disconnected from the nuclear meltdown happening in my mind. My teeth chattered, jaw clenching so hard I could hear molars cracking. I couldn't form words, couldn't beg for mercy, couldn't even process what was happening beyond the fundamental system error tearing my consciousness apart. "The truth will set you free," Cernunnos murmured, continuing his methodical thrusting into my cunt. "Or at least, it will stop the pain." His cock pushed deeper, the familiar violation barely registering against the holocaust consuming my brain. Blood bubbled from my lips with each exhale, speckling his pristine shirt with crimson droplets as he leaned over me.

"As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I never worked for Ka Corporation," Cernunnos said, his voice cutting through the chaos of my mind like a laser through flesh. "Ten years ago, Amber Engineering selected me for a deep cover infiltration," he continued, his hips maintaining that steady, mechanical rhythm between my legs. Each word felt like needles being driven into my brain, yet I couldn't stop listening. "Before you were even augmented for the first time. I was surgically altered with a new identity, given credentials, and inserted into Ka Corporation's military division. I've been climbing their ranks ever since, performing well, waiting for them to give me the control I needed to complete my mission."

I wanted to scream, to deny it, but my throat had closed from the spasms, blood vessels rupturing in my neck. His cock pushed deeper into my pussy, the angle shifting as he leaned closer to my face. "You see… Amber Engineering has grown tired of Ka Corporation's monopoly on the augmentation market, even before Styx was discovered," he explained, his breath warm against my blood-spattered cheek. "The sheer potential unlocked by this bacteria would turn any corporation that controls Elysium into a new superpower, too mighty and wealthy to match. That also makes it a perfect opportunity, though… Whoever controls it controls the future of human enhancement, and it’s too big an opportunity for them to ignore."

Through the red haze of agony and blood, I saw the smile on his face. "The plan, then, was simple," he continued, punctuating each sentence with a deep thrust into my cunt. "Your rebellion provided a perfect opportunity, and a perfect scapegoat. Use Ka Corporation resources to eliminate the rebellion, then blame them for the elimination of Ka Corporation’s forces themselves. When the Galactic Council investigates, they'll find evidence that the rebels successfully drove them off-world, like a bunch of incompetents." He smiled, a thin curving of lips that never reached his eyes. "And that Amber Engineering heroically stepped in to 'salvage' the situation and give the glittering people the immortality treatments they are so eager for."

My body continued its violent spasming, but something was changing. The paradox remained unresolved, but hearing his explanation created tiny fractures in my conditioning, microscopic fissures in the solid wall of programming that had defined my existence. It hurt. God, it hurt worse than anything I'd ever experienced, but something was niggling at my awareness beneath it. Something he had said didn’t make sense.

My rebellion?

"When Amber Engineering controls Styx bacteria research and production," Cernunnos said, his pace increasing slightly, "they'll become the dominant corporation in human space.” The wet sounds of his cock sliding in and out of my pussy filled the laboratory, mixing with the gurgling noises coming from my blood-filled throat.

My heart was beating too fast, my brain activity spiking beyond sustainable levels as my augmented body struggled to process what Cernunnos was saying. “I’ve been working towards this for years," he continued, one hand reaching up to stroke my face with mock tenderness. His fingers smeared through the mixture of blood, tears, and dried semen coating my suit. "Waiting for the perfect way to implement the final phase. And then you delivered yourself into my hands… and you were just perfect.”

Another spasm rocked through me as the contradictions in my programming collided again. "You did exactly as I needed," he said, and his cock seemed enormous inside of me as his head bashed against my cervix, sending painful shocks up my spine. "You accomplished what no one else could by destroying the rebellion. You delivered Haven’s Deep on a silver platter… and you are the perfect scapegoat. No one will question when you are the one to destroy the Ka Corporation’s hopes and dreams for me."

My eyes rolled back in my head as a particularly violent seizure gripped me, but I still saw as his hands moved toward my face, toward the hood that had been my constant companion since awakening as Hound-91. I felt the cold metal of the knife he kept at his belt sliding beneath the fabric’s edge at the corner of my mouth. "Time to get this off of you," Cernunnos murmured, the knife tracing a line upward. The blade was so sharp I barely felt it split the material, but I heard the sound: The soft tearing of the specialized fabric that had been my second skin for as long as I could remember.

The fabric parted around my face, cool air hitting my skin for the first time since I had awakened. For the first time in my life as far as I could remember, since I remembered nothing before waking up in it. Cernunnos peeled back the material, exposing more and more of me to the harsh laboratory lights. I blinked, my tears finally clearing enough of the cum and blood from my eyes to let me see. "There she is," he said, satisfaction coloring his voice as the last of the hood fell away. His free hand tangled in my hair, pulling it free from the confines of the fabric. It spilled out across the examination table in a tangled mass.

My hair. I had hair. Long, thick, and... white? I caught glimpses of it in my peripheral vision. Stark white strands splayed across the metal surface of the table and my black-covered shoulders. That didn’t seem right… was it?

Cernunnos's fingers traced the contours of my exposed face, exploring my features with clinical interest. "The greatest Fenrir pilot anyone has ever seen," he murmured. "What's left of you, anyway."

His hand moved to the neural interfaces at my temples - no longer hidden beneath the hood, but embedded directly into my flesh. I felt him connect something to the ports, heard the soft click of hardware locking into place. "Now we can begin properly," Cernunnos said, reaching for a tablet he'd placed beside the examination table. His cock remained buried inside me, but his attention was focused on the device, his fingers dancing across its surface rapidly as he started running some kind of program sequence.

The first data packet hit my neural interface like a sledgehammer. My back arched off the table, a fresh scream tearing from my throat as new code began flooding my augmented brain. This wasn't like the pain of my contradictory compulsions: It was sharper and more precise. I didn’t have to be told to know why… He was dismantling some of the chemical rules in my brain that had provided the structure of my existence.

"The Ka Corporation loyalty protocols are impressive," Cernunnos commented, watching my reaction with that same detached interest. "Layer upon layer of conditioning, redundancies built on redundancies. But we watched as they made them… and they’re nothing Amber Engineering can't undo. And do better."

Another data packet. Another wave of agony. The program was targeting specific neural pathways, isolating the connections that bound me to Ka Corporation and systematically destroying them, forcing my rewired brain to forge new ones with the Styx still active inside my body. It was like having my brain scraped out with burning claws and reshaped. With his hand no longer needed on the tablet, Cernunnos resumed raping me, and as his cock slid in and out of my cunt in that same relentless rhythm, it was easy to imagine it forcing its way into my brain instead, obliterating me even as it violated me.

Another protocol targeted, another piece of my conditioning shattered. The pain was beyond description now, beyond anything human neurology had evolved to process. I couldn’t even scream… My brain didn’t remember how lungs worked anymore. I could feel Cernunnos's cock throbbing inside me, though… He liked the pain, liked the way my thrashing agony made me squeeze on him. The idea made me want to vomit, but my body was too busy convulsing to manage even that small rebellion.

The next data packet slammed into my neural interfaces with such force that I felt something rupture inside my skull. A new trickle of blood leaked from my nose. If I could have, I would have screamed until my vocal cords tore. Cernunnos's pace increased, his cock driving into me harder now, faster. The wet slap of flesh against flesh provided a grotesque soundtrack to the destruction of my mind. "Almost there," he murmured, his voice tight with something that might have been excitement or anticipation.

Then it happened.

Something inside me gave. Whatever protocol served as the foundation upon which the Ka Corporation had used to control me shattered like glass. The pain was so absolute, so all-consuming, that for an instant everything went white. My consciousness fragmented, scattering into a million pieces. And in that shattering, something else emerged. A memory. A single, blinding flash of something that didn't belong to me at all.

Standing on a ridge overlooking a valley, wind in my face, the weight of a jacket and casual clothing on my shoulders.

Memories surged through the fissures like floodwaters through a failing dam – vivid, chaotic, overwhelming. They hadn’t burned out my brain when they augmented and conditioned me… and in hindsight, that was obvious. They hadn’t needed to teach me how to be a pilot, after all. I still had all of the skills I had had before my conditioning. Instead, they had just masked every element of identity and personality they could find, containing the set of memories that had defined me. The void that was left behind had been Hound-91… but that wasn’t what lurked beneath it. With every data packet Cernunnos fed into my neural interface, more and more cracks in that wall of memory opened up. His cock continued its relentless assault on my cunt, but now something worse was happening – I was beginning to understand exactly what he had taken from me, and who I had been before all this started.

A sunlit training ground. My hands wrapped around the controls of a simulator. The rush of pride as the instructor's voice announced, "Perfect score. Amazing again, Rathe."

The memory fractured, reformed.

Standing at the head of a briefing room, a dozen pilots looking to me for guidance. My voice, strong and confident: "Ka Corporation's northern extraction facility is vulnerable at these three points. If we hit them simultaneously, we can cripple their operation for months."

Another memory burst through, more vivid than the last.

The cockpit of a mech—My mech. My body. Kerberos’s neural interface hummed as it synchronized with my nervous system. The rush of power as the mech responded to my thoughts, moving as if it were my own body. The exhilaration of flight, of combat, of fighting for something I believed in.

For freedom. For Elysium.

I was a rebel pilot?

More memories cascaded through the broken barriers of my conditioning.

A woman with my face reflected in a mirror, but younger, more hopeful. Green eyes bright with purpose, red hair—I knew my hair wasn’t supposed to be white!—pulled back in a practical ponytail and braided.

A stern but loving voice: "Ashley, you can't keep pushing the pilots this hard. They're not all like you." The voice belonged to... to...

Mother.

The thought felt strange in my brain. My Mother.

Dr. Victoria Rathe. First person to successfully integrate Styx into human augmentation. The Mother of Augmentation.

She was my mother.

I was Ashley Rathe.

The name struck me like a physical blow. Ashley Rathe. Not Hound-91. Ashley. I was Ashley Rathe. The knowledge settled into my core, radiating truth that couldn't be denied.

Horror crashed over me as the connection formed. Victoria Rathe – the woman I'd tortured and violated in this very laboratory. The woman I'd broken for Ka Corporation. For Cernunnos. That was my mom!

Cernunnos's pace quickened inside me, his cock driving deeper as his program did its work.

"No," I whispered, the denial weak even to my own ears. Because I was remembering it now. All of it.

More memories flooded in. I’d volunteered for augmentation… but it had been generation three, the best we would do. I had served as a pilot… until the accident. I was exposed to Styx. It should have killed me.

My mother saved me. The first generation five augmented human. The strain of nearly being killed had bleached my hair white as snow, but I had survived.

They called me Archangel, and my wrath fell on the Ka Corporation for years. A threat they had never been able to kill… but had never been enough.

A desperate plan. The orbital platform had to be taken. Ka Corporation's grip on Elysium had grown too tight. "I'm going alone," I told the council. "One pilot, one mech. Small enough to slip through their defenses."

My mother's voice, angry, frightened. Arguing with me. "Ashley, don't do this. It's suicide."

My sister—Oh gods, I had a sister—her face tight with worry. "Let me come with you. We can do this together."

But I'd gone alone. The Guardian of Elysium. The hero. Too proud, too certain of my own abilities.

The orbital battle. Kerberos moving like an extension of my will. Ka Corporation defenses falling before me.

Until the AEGIS platform activated. A hailstorm of missiles. Blinding light. Pain. My mech crippled, systems failing.

Being dragged from the cockpit. Men in Ka Corporation uniforms. A needle in my neck.

Darkness.

Then I remembered awakening on an examination table not unlike this one. Scientists in Ka Corporation uniforms were surrounding me. Tubes and wires connecting me to machines I didn't recognize. Pain beyond imagining as they began the process of unmaking me. Needles inserted directly into my brain, pumping specialized Styx variants that targeted specific neural pathways. Memories erased, loyalty protocols installed.

"You are Hound-91."

"I am Hound-91."

"You serve the Ka Corporation."

"I serve the Ka Corporation."

"You will obey your handler Cernunnos, and the corporation's will."

"I will obey Cernunnos, and the corporation's will."

And then... Cernunnos standing over me, his face impassive as he inspected his new asset.

"Good dog," he had murmured.

That had been the first time he’d raped me. Fucked me right there on the bed, before he had put me back into stasis for further augmentation while they repaired and improved Kerberos, turning it into a top-of-the-line weapon. It had been the first time anyone had been inside me, actually.

Because I was...

"Oh God," I choked out as the final piece slid into place. Another memory—softer, intimate. Maya Chen in my arms, her lips against mine. The gentle brush of her fingers across my skin. The warmth of her body pressed against mine. The love I'd felt for her, the only person I'd ever allowed myself to be vulnerable with.

I was a lesbian. I had a lover.

Until Cernunnos.

He was still inside me.

The realization made his continued violation of my body unbearable in a new way. My flesh crawled with revulsion, every nerve ending screaming in protest as his cock drove into me again and again.

Cernunnos didn’t even notice the change. He just knew that I was suffering, and it aroused him more.

Tears streamed from my eyes, mixing with the blood still leaking from ruptured vessels. I was Ashley Rathe. I was the Guardian of Elysium. I was a daughter, a sister, a leader.

And I had been unmade, turned into a weapon against everything and everyone I had once loved.

As my identity solidified, the horror of what I'd done crashed over me like a tidal wave. The memories weren't distant anymore, weren't happening to someone else. They were my actions, my crimes, committed with these hands that spasmed uselessly as Cernunnos continued driving his cock into my pussy. With each thrust, another atrocity committed by Hound-91 crystallized in my mind—Except none of them had been committed by Hound-91, had they? They had been done by me. I had done those things. I had hunted down my own people. I had tortured my friends, my allies. I loved my mother. I loved my sister. I loved Maya. I loved my friends, and my students, and the people who relied on me, and…

And now I remembered every moment, every scream, every plea for mercy that I had gleefully ignored.

I remembered piloting Kerberos through the night skies of Elysium, hunting rebel outposts I myself had helped establish years before. The precision strikes that left nothing but smoking craters. The survivors dragged from the wreckage—people who had once looked to me for leadership, who had trusted me with their lives.

I remembered a young pilot, barely out of training. Marina Chen. Maya's younger sister. Callsign: Dove. Her mech had been no match for Kerberos, her inexperience painfully obvious as I systematically disabled her weapons, her thrusters, her escape systems. She had surrendered immediately, had begged for mercy. I remembered dragging her from the cockpit, her slender body so light in my augmented grasp. I remembered the beatings, the degradation, the systematic breaking of her body and spirit. The way she'd screamed when I tormented her. The way she'd eventually stopped screaming altogether, her mind retreating so far from the horror that nothing remained but an empty shell.

And I had felt nothing. Had reported the successful breaking of another rebel asset with the same emotional investment as noting the weather.

Bile rose in my throat as the memories continued to flood back, each one worse than the last.

Lucia Santos. Viper. She’d been my former wingmate. One of my most trusted pilots. I’d captured her, brought her to my mother… and she’d manage to free her from Ka Corporation’s Hound conditioning, let her become a part of our rebellion. Then she had come out to stop me, and she hadn’t even known who I was, I didn’t think. She had only known that a new Hound had emerged from space to threaten the rebellion.

I had defeated her again.

She had tried to beg with me, to believe that this wasn’t who I was. That I was like her. That I should be free. She had no idea how right she was. I remembered how I'd repaid her kindness… the way I'd stripped her, tied her down, violated her with a knife. I remembered the moment her defiance had finally crumbled, the light in her eyes extinguished as she gave me everything I wanted. I'd turned one of my closest friends into a broken, weeping thing that couldn't look at its own reflection without shuddering in self-loathing, then turned her over to the Corporation to do whatever they pleased with. Again.

A sob tore from my throat, the sound barely human. But the memories weren't finished with me.

Sarah. My sister. And Maya… the woman I loved.

They had come for me together, setting a trap. By then, they must have realized who I was. I wondered if they had been following orders when they set that trap for me, or if they had done it on their own initiative. It should have worked. Sarah's technical brilliance, coupled with Maya's skill and protective instincts and skills, had made them nearly unbeatable in the field. Nearly.

But not against Kerberos. Not against me.

They could have killed me. I remembered that. They were holding back… trying to take me alive. Trying to save me when they could have vaporized me and turned me into a cloud of atoms.

I wish they had. But they had loved me too much. And I’d repaid them by breaking them utterly.

I needed no help to remember what followed. The agony I'd inflicted on them both – the electrocution, the simulated drownings, the nerve-activator that mimicked the sensation of being burned alive from the inside out. Sarah's screams as I broke her fingers one by one. Maya's silent tears as I whipped her until her back was a mess of blood and torn flesh. I'd forced them to hurt each other. To violate each other. Made them choose between greater pain and their degradation.

When they had finally broken, when Sarah had given me the first sequence of the security codes, I hadn't stopped. I'd made Maya lick my sister to orgasm while I watched, critiquing her technique, threatening more pain if she didn't perform to my satisfaction. I’d raped my sister. I’d doomed my lover. The whole time, they’d been praying that their sister, their lover, would remember who she was.

But I hadn't remembered.

Then my mom. Dr. Victoria Rathe. The brilliant scientist who had created the technology that saved my life when I was exposed to raw Styx bacteria. The woman who had given me everything. She’d been so determined to save me, too… and I’d tortured her for hours in this very laboratory. Had cut her clothes away, restrained her, raped her. Had forced her to lick my ass while I twisted forceps clamped to her clit. Had fucked her with my fingers, my tongue, anything I could force inside her.

My mother.

The tears flowed freely now. I remembered it all – every person I'd hurt, every life I'd destroyed, every atrocity committed in the name of Ka Corporation. In the name of Cernunnos.

The pain of the reprogramming had stopped, I realized. There was no longer a conflict. My whole body was limp… The only loyalty I had left now was to my handler. It didn’t matter, because I had thought that the pain of having my brain ripped apart from the inside had been as much as it could hurt.

This hurt so, so much worse.

Cernunnos was looking into my eyes as I cried, pausing his thrusts for just a moment. “Hmm. Unexpected. You remember, don’t you? Welcome back, Ashley… or what little is left of you, anyway.”

I took a shuddering breath, and my whole body shook. "Please," I begged, my voice a raw, broken thing. "Please stop. Just kill me."

Cernunnos laughed, and he started fucking me again. "Kill you, Ashley? After all the work I've put into you? No, no… You're far too valuable to waste like that."

I turned my face away, unable to bear the sight of him anymore. If I could have reached my own eyes, I would have clawed them out. If I could have reached my brain, I would have torn it from my skull. Anything to escape the crushing weight of what I had become, what I had done.

"Look at me," Cernunnos demanded, grabbing my chin and forcing my gaze back to his. "Look at the face of your master while I fuck you. While I remake you again."

I looked, hatred and despair burning in equal measure as he continued to violate my body while the memories of my crimes violated my soul… but I couldn’t disobey an order from him. He was right… he was my master. He did own me. “Yes… sir…” I hated it. Hated him. Hated myself for responding. But the conditioning bypassed my conscious mind, speaking directly to neural structures too simple and fundamental for my rational thought to override.

"You remember, but it doesn’t matter," Cernunnos continued. "It doesn’t matter how much you hate me, or how much you despise what I’m doing to you. Your body obeys regardless, doesn’t it? Fuck me back, Ashley.”

“…Yes sir,” I whispered, my hips starting to move and rise in time with his thrusts. In response, Cernunnos increased his pace, fucking my cunt harder, more aggressively. My body responded immediately, speeding up my own movements in a betrayal so fundamental I wanted to scream. I had always hated when Cernunnos fucked me, but the disgust was far worse now that I knew just how much letting him inside me was a perversion of everything I was and wanted. It didn’t matter, because my body responded to Cernunnos's cock as if it belonged there, as if this violation was natural.

"You're remembering that you prefer women, aren't you?" Cernunnos asked, reading my expression with disturbing accuracy. "How you never let a man touch you before Ka Corporation delivered you to me?" His smile was cruel, satisfied. "That makes this all the more effective. Your revulsion, your disgust – they create cognitive dissonance that actually strengthens the conditioning. The more wrong this feels, the more powerful the neural pathways we're creating."

Another surge of programming flowed through my neural interfaces, targeting new areas of my brain. I felt it seeping into my decision-making processes, my motivational structures, my sense of purpose. Where Ka Corporation had simply implanted loyalty, Amber Engineering was redefining the very concept of meaning of the world for me, creating a world where Cernunnos's approval wasn't just desired but necessary, as essential as oxygen.

"You need to understand something, Ashley," Cernunnos said, using my real name deliberately, twisting the knife. "You are never going to be free. Not from me. Not from this." He thrust deep, emphasizing each word. "Maybe sometime you’ll manage to forget every person you tortured, every friend you betrayed, every atrocity you committed. But you'll never be able to make amends. Never be able to seek redemption. You'll carry that guilt forever."

Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the blood still seeping from my overloaded neural pathways. Because I knew he was right. I could feel the conditioning in my brain, more solid than ever. If I could get that tablet, if I could get it into my mother’s hands, maybe she could do something knowing how the process had been done… but my mother was no longer free to do anything, was she? That was my fault, too. I didn’t know if she would even want to help me anymore if she could.

I wouldn’t want to help me.

Sarah should hate me.

Maya should be disgusted to look at me.

It was all my fault.

"Please," I whispered, though I knew it was futile. I didn’t even know exactly what I was begging for anymore. "Please…"

The final pieces of programming locked into place with an almost audible click, neural pathways solidifying into their new configuration. The last few uncontrolled muscle tremors that had wracked my conflicted body throughout the process suddenly ceased, muscles going slack. My mind felt strangely clear, clearer than it had been since waking up. I had had so many questions when I stepped out of that tank, waking up for the first time without memories.

I didn’t have any questions anymore… I remembered everything.

I was Ashley Rathe, Archangel, the Guardian of Elysium. I loved my friends. I loved my family. I was loyal to this world, to its people… I wanted freedom for the colonists of Elysium, and I knew they deserved better than a life of corporate serfdom because they had colonized the most profitable world in the known galaxy. I remembered it all with perfect clarity.

And alongside that clarity was the absolute certainty that none of it mattered anymore. I couldn't act on any of it. Couldn't honor any of it. My body, my skills, my very will now belonged to Cernunnos, to Amber Engineering.

Cernunnos noted the change in my responses, the sudden stillness that had replaced the violent convulsions. He slowed his thrusting, studying my face with clinical interest, and smiled. "Process complete," he observed, glancing at the tablet's readout. "Neural integration at ninety-seven percent. A few anomalous Styx readings here, but nothing I’m worried about… It worked better than I hoped. I was worried you’d be brain-damaged… but I guess once a girl like you has had her brain rewired once with Styx, you’re easier to rewire again. You can thank your mother for the fact that you’ll still be useful to me." His lips curved in a cold smile as he looked back at me, his cock still buried inside my cunt. "Well, useful beyond being a convenient cumdump, anyway. Tell me your name."

"Ashley," I responded automatically, my voice hoarse from screaming but steady. The name felt right on my tongue, familiar in a way that Hound-91 never had.

"And who do you serve, Ashley?"

The programming answered for me, bypassing all thought, all resistance. "You, sir. I serve you."

Satisfaction flickered across his features, but he wasn't finished with his test. "What about Ka Corporation? What about the rebellion?"

"Neither," I replied, the word rising from the newly-installed pathways in my brain. "They are targets. Obstacles. Nothing more."

"Do you understand your mission?" he asked, his hips beginning to move again, resuming that mechanical rhythm inside me.

I did understand it. I understood it perfectly. I was to eliminate the Ka Corporation forces currently securing Haven’s Deep. I was to systematically hunt down and kill the very soldiers I had helped bring here, had helped guide to victory over the rebellion. Then I was to destroy the orbital command station, wiping out Ka Corporation's control over Elysium entirely. I was to make it look like Ashley Rathe, Archangel, the ace pilot of the rebellion, had kicked the Ka Corporation off planet.

I could almost have approved, if it wasn’t just an opening for another viper to crawl into my home.

"Yes, sir," I responded, the words torn from me by programming I couldn't fight. "I understand my mission."

Cernunnos's pace increased, his cock driving deeper into me. I could feel him swelling, approaching his climax as he watched my surrender. "And you will complete it, won’t you? You will make Amber Engineering the most powerful corporation in the galaxy… and make me, in turn, one of the most powerful men in human history?”

Inside, I was still screaming. Still fighting. Still raging against what had been done to me, what I was being forced to do. But that part was locked away behind neural pathways I couldn't control, conditioning I couldn't overcome. It was like being trapped in a glass cage, able to see and feel everything but unable to affect any of it. I screamed and screamed and screamed, but only on the inside.

"Yes, sir," I said. "I will complete my mission."

"Good girl," Cernunnos murmured, and the familiar flood of artificial pleasure crashed through my system, drowning out the screaming, the rage, the despair. My back arched involuntarily, a moan escaping my lips as my body responded to the programmed reward.

"You're going to be my very good puppy from now on, Ashley," he continued, his pace becoming more erratic as his climax approached. "My perfect weapon." He leaned closer, his breath hot against my ear. "My doll…" His thrusts grew harder, more urgent. I could feel him throbbing inside me, reaching the edge. With a final, brutal drive, he buried himself to the hilt and came, flooding my cunt with his seed. I felt the warmth spread inside me, coating my walls, marking me as his in the most primal way possible.

I wanted to throw up.

"We’re going to accomplish great things, Ashley," Cernunnos said, his breathing slightly ragged as he continued to pulse inside me. "And I couldn’t do it without you.”

A thin smile spread across his face as he finally withdrew from me, his cum leaking from my violated cunt.

I lay still on the examination table, feeling his semen slowly drip from me, feeling the neural pathways of my new conditioning humming with activation every time he spoke. I was his. Helpless. My body and mind belonged to him now, and the part of me that was still Ashley Rathe could only watch in horror from behind the prison of conditioning, pounding on the glass walls.

"Sir," I said, the word coming to my lips quickly, without much thought. "When do I begin?"

Cernunnos smiled, pleased by my apparent eagerness. The only thing I was eager for was to be as far away from him as possible. "Immediately. The soldiers outside will escort you to the hangar. I’ll power up Kerberos from the grid you unlocked. Then you’ll be free to act.”

I sat up, my body responding to his orders. My muscles felt strange after so long in seizure. I could feel my thoughts aligning into the calm that always came before combat, sinking into tactical assessment. "Find where they put your visor and suit up," Cernunnos ordered, already walking to the computer systems to begin his work. "You have people to kill for me."

"Yes, sir," I responded automatically, rising from the table on legs that weren't quite steady.

Inside my mind, behind the wall of conditioning, the real Ashley Rathe screamed and raged and wept. But on the outside, my face remained impassive, my movements smooth and purposeful as I prepared to slaughter people. People who had been my enemies, yes… but that wasn’t why I was killing them. I was killing them as sacrifices to make another corporation even more powerful than the one I'd fought against my entire life.

I hated Cernunnos… but beneath the hatred, a more terrifying emotion took root—despair. Because I understood now that this was my new existence. I was Ashley Rathe again, with all my memories intact, all my values and beliefs restored, only to be trapped in a living hell where I could never act on them. I would remember everything I had been, everyone I had loved, every cause I had believed in, while my body betrayed them all at Cernunnos's command.

I retrieved the damned visor from one of the bodies of Victoria’s staff I killed. I recognized him now… I knew his name. As I bent down to grab my HUD, my white hair draped down far enough for the tips to be stained in his blood. In the rest of the crimson pool, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection… a face I barely recognized anymore staring back at me with empty, hopeless eyes.

I had remembered who I was, only to discover that knowledge was the cruelest punishment of all.

I plugged in my visor. It turned on, filling my vision with familiar tactical data as it rebooted.

Then I strode from the room to begin killing.

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