The Name of Our Enemy

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
18 / 04 / 2120 of the Fourth Age, cont'd

It was different this time. Probably because I knew it was going to happen. We sat on the bed, fully clothed, as she slotted the cable into her neural port. Azzie had to pull that long, dark hair out of the way, and I was surprised to see how deeply the port was seated in the yellow flesh, where no sunlight could touch it.

"They installed the neural port when I was a few months old," she explained. "Before my skull bones had fused. It deformed the shape, as the bone grew around it. They made us grow out our hair to hide it. Otherwise, it would be...distinctive."

I ran my hand over my own head, self-consciously. I didn't bother with haircuts since I'd come out here, just a quick buzz every week or so. Azzie had even helped me, last time. Self-consciously, I reached back and popped the dust cover on my own neural jack.

"This will be different than last time," she said. "I was trained. Lucid dreaming. I have a degree of control over the memories I share with you. I won't...I won't pry, this time."

There was a note in her voice I hadn't heard before. Unsure? Apologetic? Something soft and very un-Azzie-like. I reached out and laid my hand on her knee, gave it a squeeze.

"It's okay, Precious," I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. "I trust you."

Azzie pushed the connector into place. Búrzi watched from her nest in my duffel bag. I closed my eyes, to cut down on visual clutter, focus on—

Floating in a vat. Green-tinted liquid. Medical sensors stuck to my naked body. The harness prevented excessive movement. Little electrical impulses **** muscles to contract, to prevent atrophy. Head turned, to see a row of young Orcs, male and female. Just like her.

Perspective shift. New memory. Later. On the operating table. She tried to raise her head. The woman operating her had golden metal eyes. Azzie's lower body had been laid bare. The surgeon's wrists ended in fine metal and plastic manipulators, like the mouthpiece of a giant spider. Incredibly fine strands of bright, silvery metal were being threaded among the organs in elaborate patterns.

I could feel the echo of her pain. The surgeon glanced up, said something in the Black Speech. Meaning filtered through Azzie. Anesthesia. The image dimmed.

What followed was a quick succession. In the tube. On the operating table. Pain, healing. I could feel the changes in her body. The small green breasts budded and swelled, the nipples darkened. Thighs thickened, muscles bulged. Even the pointed ears grew sharper, the muscles that let her move them developed. I became aware of a dull ache deep inside of my abdomen, a constant burn of need that reminded me of when I was about 19, the sort of intense horniness that would overcome me sometimes, bleed into my day-to-day life.

It didn't go away, even as my breasts swelled to ridiculous sizes, as the injected something into the muscles in my shoulders, back, and neck to tolerate the increased mass. More subtle operations reinforced key bones. There was nearly always a plug in the neural link, and I realize that Azzie had spent most of her life on the end of a wire. Always horny. Even now, through the link, I caught an echo of the nearly perpetual state of arousal she was in.

Then she showed me what the wire did.

Ancient manuscripts of Orc, Elf, and Man, showcasing a variety of sexual positions. Hardcore pornographic images, with narration in the Black Speech. Medical sensors connected with the mithril threaded through her reproductive system, to provide clinically precise stimulation as erotic images flowed through her mind's eye. A graduate course in sexuality, sexual anatomy, accompanied by near-constant stimulation.

Slowly, it dawned on me what they had done to her. She hadn't been born a green-skinned sex doll with tits the size of my head. They had designed her, trained her, built her toward this purpose.

Through the stream of memories, I tried to project that question. Who. Why.

The steady flow of surgeries and carnal programming ceased. A flutter of images, a sigil, a corporate trademark or brand that occurred over and over again, woven into security uniforms, the subtle branding of medical equipment, etched into the upper glass of the tube where she could barely see it.

The stylized head of a dragon. One I recognized.

There weren't many such creatures left, driven into the wastes after the Last War. An endangered species, their once-vaunted power no match for today's military firepower. Yet the oldest of them had hoards. Carefully gathered over centuries of plundering Elf, Orc, Man, and Dwarf; ancient gold and gemstones. A few had traded this in for wealth of a different kind.

Drake Industries was headquartered far to the East and South; during wars and conflicts, they sold bullets and bandages, optical systems and advanced medical smart systems. Their founder and CEO Legere was a cold-drake, ancient, charismatic, surprisingly telegenic. Profits rolled in, counted in credits rather than coins; with wealth came influence, contacts, respectability.

Which fit, weirdly. If there was profit in it, maybe Drake Industries would be behind some sort of Uruk-Hai sex-**** operation. But that would make Azzie very, very expensive—

Azzie took control of the narrative again. I saw through her eyes, out of the tube, my breasts great green globes that hovered in my lower vision. Faces came into view, Uruk faces, too pretty to be standard Orcs, too well-shaped. All the voices spoke the Black Speech, but names jumped out at me. Azog. Aghragh. Amonja.

We were naked. I watched Azog stand there, hands at his sides, whole body straight as though he was a new recruit standing at attention. Part of him was standing at attention. His green prick stood tall and firm and I realized Azzie was right: that was absolutely the spitting image of the dildo we sometimes shared.

A woman in a white labcoat slapped his cock with what looked like a ruler, hard enough to leave a green stripe on the yellow-green flesh. She did it again, and again, and Azzie watched her clutch-mate's face mingled pain and excitement as he maintained dignified composure. I'd seen hazing before, in the ranks, but this was something else. This was...training? As if they were wondering what it took to push him over the edge.

The ruler broke over the Uruk's stiff prick. It was bruised, and a bead of filmy grey pre-cum oozed from the swollen tip. The woman in the labcoat looked satisfied. Her hand went to her pocket.

Then Azog lost it. His whole body tensed, shuddered, composure gone. Hot white Orc-seed spewed an incredibly impressive distance, at least four feet as the veins along that emerald prick writhed and throbbed. Azzie heard the pained sounds of exertion as Azzie slowly collapsed, hands still at his side, unable to stop as spurt after spurt burst from the tip of his cock. The veins stood out on his neck and temple, eyes rolled up in his head, and the cock twitched and jumped, a little less each time.

Until there was nothing left. Until Azog lay on the floor, body still twitching, cock swollen and monstrous and still trying to cum, the urethra opening and closing on the air like a dying fish.

The woman smiled as she turned to look at Azzie. I saw those golden cybereyes, the small logo of Drake Industries just visible in the corner of her eye. A Man of medium height, hair dyed silver; the bangs came down almost to her eyebrows, covering her forehead completely, and along the sides of her face fell down to her small, pointed chin.

Azzie had memorized that face. Now I did too.

A fresh ruler was supplied. Azzie was shorter than the woman in the labcoat, her legs apart. Arms behind her back as though she stood at parade rest. Because of her breasts, Azzie—and I—couldn't see the blow, but we could feel it. The edge of the ruler split the lips of Azzie's urethra with almost surgical precision. The memory of pain shot through our shared neural interface. Something dripped onto the floor. We couldn't see it, but a wave of remembered nausea, raw and terrible, rolled through us. The blow had broken Azzie's hymen.

It was only the first. Azzie didn't make me suffer through those memories. Only the part at the end, when the woman in the labcoat dipped her hand into her pocket again.

Even through the buffer of Azzie's memories, the climax that rocked through us both was terrible in its intensity. It was that moment of lost control. Bodies on automatic. Azzie had spasmed and slowly collapsed as waves of unwanted pleasure radiated outward from her bruised and battered cunt. Injured muscles **** to squeeze as blood burst through her vagina, and the overwhelming pleasure mingled with the pain and erased all conscious thought.

Through the muted, edited version of that memory, my body on the bed jerked and shook as though in the grip of night terrors. My pussy convulsed in sympathy, and my wired reflexes triggered so that I burst into violent action. Azzie gave a brief scream as I jerked hard away from her, our head still connected by the cable, and then her fingers caught the connector and yanked it out.

Immediately, I was alone in my own head again. On the floor, my boxers soaked. Gasping for breath. Lost between here and there. The back of my skull ached, and I tasted blood where I'd bitten my tongue.

Azzie peered over the edge of the bed. Búrzi had her fur up, tail straight in the air, eyes locked on me as though I might explode. I swallowed blood, dizzy, disoriented, but absolutely certain about one thing:

"You are never," I said, when I could find my words again. "Going back there."

"Now you know," she said, with that soft, uncharacteristic voice. "What you saved me from. Why I—need you."

I nodded. I definitely understood her better now. Not all of it. Not nearly all of it. There were parts of her life even Azzie probably didn't know about. What all they had done to her. Blank patches in her memory. The part where she was sold or transported to be sold—I didn't get that, and after tonight, I was willing to wait for her to find the words for it. Yet now I knew the name of our enemy.

Drake Industries. Legere.