Free Sample
(Includes First 2 Chapters)

Chapter 1

She kept her eyes closed and waited for the throbbing in her head to fade to a more tolerable level.

Fuck!

They'd been ambushed. She'd watched her team go down as she herself fell into the prepared pit. She'd been captured. This wasn't good. It would've been much better if she'd been killed in the fall.

She listened to two people having a conversation off to her right. They must've thought she was still asleep.

"Send her to Wren."

"Oh, come on, she doesn't look that stubborn. Hell, she's already got a broken leg, fractured ribs, and her right arm's a mess. They'll be patching her up for weeks to prepare her for that woman!"

"Those are our orders. Anybody ranked captain and above goes to Wren and her unit. And those markings make her a colonel. Besides, I recognize her. That's Luce of Claw Clan."

"Holy shit. Maybe we should just kill her now."

"Are you insane? If our superiors found out we had her and didn't even try to get anything from her, we'd be sent to Wren. Prepare her for transfer to medical. I'll mark the orders for transport."

A rush of air and the voice was suddenly in her ear.

"Did ya get all that?"

She almost flinched at its sudden proximity, but her training kept her from reacting physically. She opened her eyes, but it was pitch black.

"You look a little nervous. Something wrong?"

She heard the humor in the voice, but refused to let any reaction show on her face. Her first thought, that she'd been blinded in the fall, was replaced by the staccato words of her psychology instructor.

"Torture is simply a form of mental manipulation. It's the fear and sense of hopelessness that twist one's mind. Nothing is ever what it seems when dealing with the techniques of mind control."

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and saw the sparks of color. Impulses from her eyes could still get to her brain, so the knock on her head hadn't done that kind of damage, and blindness hadn't been mentioned in her list of injuries.

It was more likely she was in a military intake facility equipped with the capability of flooding the room with the longer wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum while the personnel wore infrared glasses. It was a technique her own side used on its prisoners.

She felt the air move around her head and realized the asshole was no longer next to her. She closed her eyes again when she felt a needle enter her arm. As her consciousness slipped away, her whole body relaxed into it, the part of her mind that held out hope of escape recognizing a chance for rest and healing and going right to work.

When she woke again, it was still dark, but her eyes immediately picked out the shape of a room, which was scarcely lit by a multitude of tiny lights blinking from various machines scattered throughout the small chamber. She tried to lift her arms to push herself up to a sitting position, but they were both held fast by metal restraints, the right one of which encased her entire arm, while the left simply secured her wrist. The sudden motion caused sharp pains to shoot down her right arm and Luce instantly stilled her movements, though not even her breathing changed to reflect the pain she was feeling.

She realized the restraint was also acting as a kind of cast to keep her injured limb immobile and carefully tested her legs. They too were bound by steel. Her right leg was encased the same as her right arm and it protested just as greatly at being disturbed. Her attempts to move her lower body had also made her aware of her broken ribs, and she suddenly regretted waking up at all.

Fucking Delphinians. We've offered their people every gods-be-damned scientific and medical breakthrough we've ever made and they still insist on living in the fucking Dark Ages. If this was an Argolian hospital, I'd've been healed in a few hours.

She heard a whirring sound and saw a glint of metal and glass out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head slightly and watched as a small bottle filled with clear liquid cycled through the machine controlling her IV. It pushed down into one of the free slots and was immediately emptied, the readout indicating the new medication had been added to her line. A few moments later, she was asleep again.

When she woke for the third time, the overhead lights were on and she was able to get a much better look at the room she was in. It was definitely a hospital room. There were machines all over the place keeping tabs on the state of her health. She waited for the IV machine to start cycling again, but it didn't.

A panel slid aside and a woman stepped through before it closed again behind her.

"How are you feeling?"

Her tone was just on the edge between compassionate and abrupt.

Luce looked at her and kept her mouth shut as she tried to place the woman's accent. It reminded her of an actress she'd once seen in an old vid from before the war. Luce thought she remembered the character was supposed to be from Black-footed Finch Clan, but she couldn't be sure the actress had been doing the accent right.

"I'm not here to interrogate you and I don't think it's a big secret that you've been injured and are in pain."

Yeah, definitely the same accent.

"I just want to know if we should increase the painkillers. This is a hospital, not a concentration camp. No one here wants you to suffer."

And it would be nice to know what my pain threshold is, wouldn't it?

Luce just continued to stare and the woman finally shrugged and went about checking the machines.

"You're doing really well. Your injuries are mending much faster than expected. I'd heard your people were working on new methods of genetic manipulation for healing. How old are you? Two? Three? I will never understand why you can't just have children the way the Goddess intended. You know, that's what this war is really about. We can't just let you defile the sacred genetic code we were created with. Children should be born from a mother, not fully grown from a growth tank like a replacement organ."

The nurse continued to check over the machines monitoring her body as Luce tried to ignore the woman's monologue.

"Your people are missing out on so much. Watching a child grow up, the joys of shaping a young mind into a mature and productive adult... And you. You never had a childhood, did you? You were just suddenly awake and expected to fight in a war with no choice in the matter. We've offered your people freedom from that kind of servitude. I don't understand why you don't take it."

Luce's features remained impassive, but inside, her anger was raging. The woman was deluded. She didn't offer freedom. She offered stagnation and slavery. The only reason the human species was even still on the planet was because a group of scientists, the founding mothers and fathers of her nation, had tinkered with human DNA and RNA to make the next generation immune to the harsh effects of a depleted ozone layer that let in the ultraviolet rays of the sun.

With such a successful foundation to build upon, her people had gone on to change a few more genes in order to make the human lung more tolerant of the deteriorating atmosphere due to pollutants from factories, cars, and other chemical-producing inventions of the modern age.

In the span of a few decades, children were being born with more efficient lungs, better eyesight, more resilient skin, and greater muscle tone. The woman standing in front of her was no more from original 'sacred' stock than Luce was.

It was true that she'd gained consciousness in a sudden blast of clarity when she'd woken at the end of her growth cycle four years ago, but she hadn't been forced to join the war effort. Her parents had designed her with that specific goal in mind and nothing save death would've been able to keep her from fulfilling that destiny.

She supposed she could see how some people might interpret that as having the decision taken from her, but why was it any different from the random desires of those without intentional genetic programming? She knew what she wanted to do with her life and the joy she gained from using her body and mind to keep her people's way of life safe was just as real as anybody else's.

She did have plenty of other interests should the war end. Her martial arts training had been based on spiritual principles and she knew more healing techniques than most doctors. Her mind was specially designed for strategy and abstract processing, abilities that let her take snippets of information and leap to accurate conclusions. Her skills were transferable, no matter what this woman wanted to think about her 'slavery.'

The nurse finally finished with her examination and tapped in her findings on a handheld touch screen. She gave Luce one last look of disapproval and then exited through the same panel she'd entered from.

Luce stared around the room, studying it. She listened intently to try to ascertain what was beyond the walls of her room, but there was only silence. After about fifteen minutes of just lying there, she finally came to the conclusion that she was just plain bored. She decided if they weren't going to knock her out on purpose, she'd put herself under to use the time to focus her mind on speeding up her body's recovery.

The days passed pretty much the same as that first one. A nurse visited her once each day. It was always a different one, most likely to keep her from building up a rapport with one of them and persuading them to let her go. He or she would proceed to check over the instruments, while proselytizing to her about her misplaced loyalties, until finally leaving her alone again. She was given food four times a day through a tube that was implanted directly into her stomach, and a similar setup made it unnecessary for her to use a lavatory. Twice a day, her restraints rotated to turn her onto her side, presumably to keep her from developing bedsores. She was never once released from her bindings. The plastic-covered bed even doubled as a bathtub and came complete with hot air jets that dried her thoroughly.

By her time sense, twenty-three days had passed when she was drugged again and woke up in a new location. She was in a padded rectangular room, about twenty feet by thirty feet, and wearing nothing save the two-inch-wide silver bands that went around her wrists and ankles. Diffuse white light came from the high ceiling and warm air circulated over her. She was lying in the middle of the white room, and after her initial assessment of her surroundings, she realized she wasn't being restrained.

Luce stood, testing the strength of her weakened muscles, and did a thorough search of the room. There were creases in the padding in the shapes of squares about two feet on a side, but she was unable to tell a difference between the cracks to figure out which set of squares outlined a door.

She kept looking anyway, intent on finding even the smallest flaw she might use to her advantage, but she was still startled when pressing on one of the pads caused several adjacent squares to slide into the floor, revealing bathroom facilities.

At first glance, the toilet, sink, and shower area appeared to be all smooth surfaces, and after closer inspection, her assessment held. The fixtures were wrought from a single piece of thick metal seamlessly integrated into the wall, so she had no hope of bending anything with her bare hands or ripping something out of the wall to use as a weapon.

After some experimentation, she figured out the facilities were motion and pressure activated. Holding her hands in the sink or standing on the mesh area under the showerhead started the water flowing, while touching the red 'up' or blue 'down' arrows on the wall let her change the water's temperature. Another icon showing what appeared to be bubbles let her add soap to the water and when she was done, she touched an air jet icon to activate fans that sent out warm air to dry her.

The toilet worked similarly, only running water after she'd sat down. Another touch pad next to the toilet presented two icons showing a water spray and another air jet, which she realized were there to let her clean herself, since toilet paper was noticeably missing. When she stood up, the toilet flushed.

A few moments after she stepped out of the bathroom niche, the padded squares slid back into place. She touched the particular pad again, but only after about three full seconds of contact did the squares slide out of the way, so she knew it wasn't rigged to activate if she just casually brushed against the area. When she didn't enter the niche after about ten seconds, the squares slid back into place.

Luce completed her meticulous survey of the room, but didn't find any other hidden areas. She gave up on the idea of an easy escape, deciding instead to get to work on rebuilding her muscles. They'd atrophied from the effects of their enforced vacation.

She went through her exercises carefully, stopping before she went beyond what was comfortable. Normally, she would've pushed herself to her limits, but she knew she had to take it easy and work back up to her more intense routines slowly or else risk further injury.

She cooled down and then knelt in the middle of the room and meditated. She worked on calming her thrumming muscles and rapidly beating heart and then focused on honing her reflexes. She'd gotten lazy with the last few weeks of predictable routine and needed to get her edge back.

Which was why when six of the squares swung forward near one corner of her cell, Luce shot across the room, almost running right into a second wall before she could stop her forward momentum.

"Please stand in the corner with the blue light."

The words floated from a hidden speaker in the ceiling. She debated disobeying the feminine voice and staying where she was. Instead, she decided to see what was going on and moved to the corner that had been illuminated with a blue spotlight and waited.

Because of the corner she was in, she couldn't see what was happening beyond the opened door, but she heard a whisper of a scrape and guessed a second door was being opened. A tray of food was pushed into view beyond the edge of the padded door with what looked like an aluminum rod. Then the rod was retracted. A slight scrape signaled the outer door being closed, and then the padded door swung shut.

The blue light was replaced by the regular soft white of the rest of the room and Luce realized she was free to leave the corner again. She went to the tray and found two cups of water and several bowls of mush. The tray was cardboard and the cups and bowls were made of plastic coated paper. No utensils had been provided.

Luce realized her captors weren't planning on taking any chances with her, unfortunately. Though her mind leapt to the possibility of rolling up the paper and shoving it down a faceless guard's throat to choke him to death, she had to admit there wasn't much she could do to make a weapon out of the materials she'd been given. More to the point, she hadn't been allowed to even see anyone on which to use a weapon.

Her stomach interrupted her thoughts with a growl, so she tentatively scooped up some of the food with her bare fingers and took a taste. She was surprised to find the bland-looking paste was extremely palatable, but she still ate slowly, focusing on her body's reactions just in case the food was drugged.

She didn't feel anything out of place, so she kept eating. She eventually finished it all and set everything back on the tray when she was done. She waited to be ordered back into the corner, but after another hour passed with no more commands, she decided to take a nap.

Luce looked around the room and considered her options. There was no telling what threats might be hiding behind the walls, so she wasn't too keen on sleeping next to one of them. The middle of the room wasn't any better, though, since she'd be left vulnerable to attack from all sides.

Finally, she moved to lay by the door. At least she'd be alerted if it opened while she was sleeping, so hopefully no one would be able to sneak up on her in her weakened state. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to relax enough for sleep.

She woke instantly when the padded squares began nudging her aside. As soon as the door reached a ninety-degree angle, the request to stand in the corner came again.

Luce moved to stand in the blue-lit corner and watched as the metal rod she'd seen before headed unerringly for the empty food tray she'd deliberately left in the corner diagonally opposite from the door on the other side of the room. A small wire grabber slid out from the end of the segmented rod and latched onto the side of the tray to begin dragging it back to the door.

Luce quickly darted forward, but the instant her leg moved outside of the pool of blue light, the rod released its quarry and retracted in a blur. She was nowhere near fast enough to reach the door before it slammed shut with the speed and efficiency only a machine could muster. Even in peak condition, she could never hope to beat it. She didn't let her frustration show as she turned to walk back to the corner, but the blue light had vanished. She waited for it to come back on, but it didn't.

Not too long after, the lights dimmed, though they didn't completely go out, so she returned to the door and lay down to sleep again.

By her internal clock, it was another eight hours before she was woken up to go stand in the corner again, the lights already at full illumination. This time, she stayed where she was supposed to and received a new tray of food in return for her obedience. She was surprised to find an extra bowl of food, but she wasn't about to question it. It had been twelve hours since she'd last eaten and she was starving.

Once her food had settled, she went through a few basic exercise drills. Approximately four hours later, she was ordered to the corner again and the tray of food was replaced yet again.

Luce figured out the routine by the third repetition of the entire cycle. Food came every four hours, except for an eight-hour gap, during which time the lights were dimmed about half an hour after the last meal and brought back up about half an hour before the first meal. She decided to go along with it, at least until she was taken outside and could reset her inner time sense to reality, even though she knew that was the purpose behind the schedule, to potentially disrupt her body's natural rhythms and make her question reality.

She spent her time drilling, meditating, and being bored out of her skull. She'd never been in such good physical condition. The food had steadily changed from mush to more substantial fare and she'd realized that whoever was in charge of her care was very aware of her medical status. She was given more protein-rich foods and less sugars and starches to aid in her muscle building. She'd never eaten so healthy in her life.

The solitude was really starting to get to her, though. The only voice she heard, besides her own when she yelled during practice, was the one that requested her to 'stand in the corner with the blue light.' She could tell from the slightly altered inflections that it wasn't a recording, but the wording never deviated.

She began practicing more and more intense acrobatics in an attempt to keep herself active and consciously engaged. She considered talking to herself, but the very act itself would give away more about her state of mind than she considered acceptable. However, she knew if she let herself go numb, she'd be that much closer to breaking for whoever ended up in charge of her interrogation. She remembered the name Wren and wondered if the woman was watching her even now, studying her and deciding when the time would be ripe to begin.

She ran along the padded floor for half a dozen steps, jumped and ran for two steps to the left along the wall in front of her, and then leapt across the corner and took another two steps along that wall before landing on the floor again. She kept up her momentum and did it all again on the opposite wall.

The slightly coarse cloth that covered the foam padding on the walls gave her a good amount of friction for her feet to catch on and she was enjoying the thrill of defying gravity for a few seconds. She'd started out only being able to take a step or two along the wall before sliding back to the floor. Now, she was taking four full steps by rebounding off the corners. It was fun.

The padded door opened and Luce stopped. It had been less than two hours since her lunch according to her internal clock.

"Please stand in the corner with the blue light."

She went to the corner and stood, waiting to see what this new change in her routine would bring. The second door whispered open and Luce was unprepared for her reaction to seeing another human being after nearly two months of isolation. She was near tears, but it was impossible to tell by looking at her. Her body was in a relaxed stance, her face showing nothing beyond bored interest.

"Hello. My name is Wren."

It was a woman and she was very short in comparison to Luce's six-foot frame. Her hair was blonde, falling in waves just beyond her shoulders, while Luce's straight black hair went almost to her butt. The blonde wore a white skintight bodysuit that covered everything except her hands and feet, which were completely bare.

"This would normally be the time you would say your name was Luce, but since I already know that, I understand your silence. Do you know why you're here?"

Her tone was conversational and clearly intended to be non-threatening. Luce studied her and took in all the non-verbal information she could. The woman standing in front of her was completely unafraid of her. That was interesting. There were no guards and the padded door had closed behind her, so there was nothing stopping Luce from simply crossing the room and breaking the woman's neck long before a defense could be mounted.

However, there seemed to be a kind of... intensity to the small woman. Her pulse was slightly faster than Luce would've considered normal for someone of her size and obvious athletic fitness. Her eyes were also dilated more than what Luce would've expected for the level of light in the room.

It occurred to Luce that the woman was exhibiting all the signs of sexual arousal according to what she'd been taught concerning human sexual reproduction, but that didn't make sense. This Wren woman was supposed to be some kind of torture specialist, wasn't she?

"Okay. I can see you don't intend to say anything, but I'll explain things to you anyway. You're being held as a prisoner of war by the National Security Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Delphinia. As a colonel in the Argolian Army, you no doubt have information that could be highly useful to my superiors. My job is to get that information from you. From previous encounters, my superiors learned that all of your people are genetically engineered to be able to withstand pain in such a way that torture is basically useless. That's where I come in. I don't use pain, I use pleasure."

Wren paused to let that information sink in, then continued.

"You will never leave this place. There is absolutely no escape. I am the only human being you will ever come in contact with from now until the day you die. The more you cooperate, the more comfortable your stay here will be. You will not be killed, or in any way harmed, even after your usefulness has ended. If you attempt to hurt me, you will simply be dooming yourself to starvation, along with the other prisoners stationed here. From your psych profile, I don't believe you will choose suicide. Trying to take me hostage won't work either because I'm the only one who would hear your demands and I'm prepared to die rather than let you go."

Luce tried to digest everything she'd just been told. This was something she'd never been prepared for. The woman was right about her being immune to most forms of torture. At a certain point, the pain receptors in her brain would short out and that would trigger the rest of her body to shut down and she would die soon after.

But pleasure? How could one torture with pleasure? She'd spent her whole life waging war. Pleasure never entered into it, except that pleasure she derived from a job well done. She knew a little about it as part of her biology studies, and her parents and other people were in obviously sexual relationships, but beyond that...

"I will begin this the easy way. I won't even touch you if you answer my questions truthfully. It's up to you what happens."

Luce maintained her relaxed pose even though she was shaking inside.

"What is the real troop strength of the Argolian forces? Include all the secret camps of reserve forces you know of."

Luce didn't even bat an eyelash. The question helped her get internal control of herself. She'd been trained to withstand hostile questioning right up to her dying breath. Whatever this 'pleasure torture' was, she'd handle it.

"Maybe I should start with something easier. Something we both know the answer to."

Wren took two slow steps forward and Luce reflexively stepped away from the corner to brace for combat. Wren smiled slightly.

"Hold. East."

Luce was suddenly lifted off the floor as her body was enveloped in a localized antigravity field. She was floated to the side until she was centered in front of what she guessed must be the eastern wall, then propelled backwards, landing with a thump against the padded wall behind her as her arms and legs were pulled into a wide X by the metal cuffs around her wrists and ankles. Even using all her considerable strength, she was unable to budge the magnetic restraints that held her naked body bound to the wall several inches above the floor.

Wren continued her slow steps forward, staring into Luce's eyes as she came to a halt only a foot away from the prisoner. Wren saw confusion and mild fear there, but Luce was still very much in control of herself despite her confinement.

The blonde knelt down and didn't hesitate for even a moment as she leaned forward and licked up Luce's right thigh. When she reached the crease at her hip, she stopped and looked up. Luce's eyes were wide and the fear appeared to have increased to a little more than mild.

Wren dropped to just above Luce's left knee and moistened her tongue in her mouth. Then she traced a similar path upward, the way she had on Luce's right thigh, but she licked more slowly, letting Luce's mind attempt to categorize the new sensations being introduced to her body.

Nearly every soldier Wren had come across had been innocent in the ways of physical sexual pleasure. Due to their genetic programming, it was never considered an important part of their studies, and apparently, what one did not know about, one did not miss.

Wren made it to the crease at Luce's hip again, only on the opposite side, and gave it a sucking kiss. She looked up and saw Luce's breathing was a little faster. It was beginning to match Wren's own.

Wren continued to look up, taking in every single little reaction that Luce had to her touch as she kissed across the prisoner's stomach, just above her pubic hair. Luce's stomach fluttered and contracted, the muscles bunching beneath the skin to push a harsh little gasp out of her mouth. Wren saw the bound woman blush at her momentary loss of control.

Luce closed her eyes. She had to get to a place of calm. Meditation could help her maintain control over her body's responses. She began a low chant in her mind that immediately vanished when she felt Wren's tongue flick over her clitoris. Her eyes snapped open and she looked down in stunned disbelief.

Author's Notes

This story started out as a one-shot stand-alone piece (Chapter 1) and has now become a novel, even though there are only five chapters posted so far.

More Notes - Regarding Status

This story is 'sort of' on hiatus. Meaning I wasn't working on it for a long time, but now I am, so I'm hoping to update sometime soon (2022-2023) (Update: I posted Chapter 5 in 2022). I do apologize for the current cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 4 (I know Chapter 5 isn't much better). I never intended to leave it for so long. I just got stuck on edits from feedback and couldn't seem to move forward. But I've since started organizing my work in Scrivener and that's allowed me to finally make some headway on this one.

I think it's also helped that I found these 1/6th scale silicone Phicen 12-inch posable dolls that are anatomically correct, so now I have an awesome little display on my shelf near where I write with Wren going down on Luce while Luce is bound to a padded wall, which keeps this story very fresh in my mind. :)

Maybe one day I'll share pictures, since I have quite a few 'scenes' set up for all my different stories on my shelves. Never thought I'd be into dolls, but I've really enjoyed kitbashing to make action figures of my characters. It also lets me test positions, so it's really all in the name of research. :)