Grayson

the darkest thing i've ever written. literal torture porn. cathatic, though!

My hand flexed with the conflicting forces of the synthetic muscles pulling the fingers back and pulling them forward. The pointed metal claws that tipped them glistened in the cold medical light. I got the news: My plan was falling into place.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” A small voice chirped from my shoulder. “We can still stop. Nobody will ever know.”

I sighed. My sister’s voice was ever-present, like the angel of my mind. “I’m sorry, Alto. We have to do this. For you.”

I looked up at the clock. Six minutes past. Right on cue, I heard the blood-curdling scream, echoing all the way from the canteen. A few minutes later, he was here. Elias Grayson.

Even in his badly wounded state, bones jutting from his leg, he found the time for hatred. “No, no no no, I ain’t having no fuckin’ morphic freak for a doc. Take me to someone else!” He shouted back at the guard rolling him in.

In that moment, all the doubts I felt in my mind were crushed and tossed away like an empty can of soda. A grin grew across my face.

“Hello, officer, so what seems to be the problem here?”

“Ol’ Elias here found himself the victim of another beating, this time breaking a leg. Think you can fix him up, doc?”

I looked down at the easily repairable compound fracture jutting from his leg. “No, I’m afraid, its a gonner. Luckily I already have some synth parts lying around, I can install them right away!”

“Aight,” He said, leaving the writhing prisoner with me. He knew better than to ask the docs questions.

I leaned over his face.

“Get the fuck away from me, freak! And give me some damn morphine or some shit, my leg’s broken!”

I ignored his words, and spoke. “Hello, Mr. Grayson. I’m Dr. Cirrus, and I believe you’ll be needing a lot of my services in the near future.”

He screamed out in muffled agony as the jagged wire of my Gigli saw cut into his flesh. The syringe of saline marked with a “Morphine” label was his only painkiller as I sawed the razor wire through his femur, and the rag stuffed in his mouth his only relief.

Most other doctors preferred more humane-looking methods of amputation, but Gigli saws were always most effective in my view. With my synth arm and the jaggedised wire blade of my custom high-strength saw, I could amputate a leg in under 5 seconds on a good day.

Today was not a good day for Grayson.

Thirty seconds of unimaginable agony later, the leg was removed. Could I have cut beneath the knee and saved significantly more flesh? Of course I could’ve. Could I have knocked him out, or at the very least not injected him with stuff to keep him awake and conscious through the trauma? I’ll leave you to figure that one out.

His new leg was already prepared. There was only so much torture I could put him through, any longer with his stump bleeding out and he’d go unconscious, so I attached the synthetic connection into place, and it whirred to life. Bleeding was cauterized, immediate traumas were repaired, and tissue was integrated with synthetics.

Grayson, ever the antagonist, panted out some more kind words in my direction. “You… Fucking… Bitch…”

“Yes, dear. I know. Your type’s all about the purity of humanity, isn’t it? What a shame.” I said, with not the slightest sympathy in my voice. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get used to the changes soon enough! You might need crutches for a while, though, I’ve capped their servos at 5% until you recover fully.”

Another day, another shipment of briberies. A part of me assumed that the Korps would get mighty unhappy with me if they knew what I was doing with their funding, but the rest of me knew that… Well, they had enough psiionics to piece things together, that’s for sure.

I was barely finished with my morning coffee by the time I heard the distant screams.

The bird on my shoulder whistled, “Oh dear. The convicts you bribed might have been a little overzealous.”

I grinned as I took another sip, “Think Grayson said something dumb to the morphs down there?”

“I mean, duh.” She chirped.

Well, it was no matter. We were just a little ahead of schedule, that’s all.

As predicted, Grayson was wheeled back into the medical ward just a few minutes later, and he was in bad shape. Luckily, I prepared a little something to make sure he’d be awake for what I did.

“AAAAUUUGH!” He screamed, waking seconds after I plunged the thick syringe into his chest. “Ffffuck!! Fuck you, you scaly bitch!”

“Gee, he sure seems upset about something!” Alto chirped from my shoulder, “Tell him the good news, maybe that’ll cheer him up!”

“Ah, yes! We’ve just received a shipment of brand new top-of-the-line synthetic parts!” I grasped his still-fleshy and very broken leg with my metallic hand, gripping a lot harder than I needed to invoke pain. I continued through his screams, “Unfortunately for you, they’re all of an F-chassis design. I’m sure you won’t mind, though, they’re very high tech!”

“JUST KILL ME YOU—YOU DEMON!” He cried out, practically pleading up at me. I could see the cracks in his anger, and the fear that powered it hiding beneath.

I leaned down to his restrained head, and whispered into his ear.

“Not yet.”

Four days. I gave him four more days of torture in this masterfully crafted purgatory I had custom-built for him. Each day, he was forced back out into the rest of the crowds, and each day, he was sent back to me in minutes. Both of his legs were replaced with the F-chassis designs Alto had picked out, along with an arm, and then the other arm. Soon, the inmates got the idea to smash his pelvis. Very painful, lots of screaming that day. The entire lower half of his body was replaced, and as always, I delighted in the viscerally satisfying act of throwing the human trash in the garbage.

Piece by piece, I disposed of the disgusting creature that killed my sister. Her, and so many others.

It was the seventh day of Grayson’s purgatory. Seven days since I started stripping him of the humanity he valued so dearly. Even his manhood was taken from him, tossed in the garbage two days ago. I didn’t need to remind him that it was still there, sitting in the medical waste bin, rotting away.

This time, he didn’t even have the chance to beg me for death. Weak wheezes were interspersed with the wet pops of a deflating lung, and the coughs of blood from his mouth. Even from where I stood I could see the broken ribs, and I could tell that my policy of “no organic repairs” was understood by Grayson by this point from the fear I saw in his eyes.

“You know what happens next…” I chided. "Well, don’t you worry. I requisitioned a cervical reinterface from the nearby hospital in anticipation of just this.

It took me a good half hour to get the hefty machine set up. It was the size of a portable MRI, with a large ring to match, but a whole lot thinner. That, combined with its intended purpose, gave it a delightful nickname: The Circular Guillotine.

As much as I’d have liked to watch him writhe, I knew the process would kill him in seconds were he not paralysed. Luckily, that didn’t mean I had to numb his pain, and from the reports I read of the rare failed anaesthetic, he would be in a lot of it.

I looked down at his pathetic face, frozen in its fearful expression. His body was behind the ring, with only his head sticking through the tight hole in the medical device. Well, it wasn’t really ‘his’ body, was it?

“You probably figured it out by now, Grayson, but… I know who you are.” I scowled, teeth showing as I showed my pure and utter disdain for him, “I know what you did. I know who you killed.”

“I know you hijacked the sleeping body of a homeless first-gen synth, too poor and isolated to get the security upgrades they needed. I know you ripped open his chest and stuffed it full of explosives.”

“I know you watched.” I looked over to Alto. Her little nod signified that the machine was ready, and I went over to the big red button. “I know you watched as you remote controlled that poor synth directly into the state’s largest Morphic Clinic. And I know you smiled as you triggered that detonator.”

I slammed the button with my synthetic fist, almost breaking the control panel with my overuse of force.

The next five minutes were filled with an eerie silence, only the continuous whirring of thousands of tiny robotic arms tearing apart and replacing Grayson’s neck flesh millimetre by millimetre filling the room. But the silence didn’t mean he wasn’t suffering. Far from it.

I had the foresight to hook up a simple EEG to his skull. Not enough for mind reading, but easily enough to see the brain activity lighting up like a raging wildfire from the unimaginable levels of pain he was being forced to endure. Torture. This was pure, unadulterated torture, for no other purpose than for my own catharsis.

And I cherished every second of it.

“Wakey wakey!” I giggled, loudly snapping my metal claws in Grayson’s face. “Rise and shine! The procedure was a complete success!”

I could tell that he was expecting to wake up in a hospital bed, and was very disoriented when he opened his eyes to find that he was vertical. “W-what? What—nngh, fuck—”

“What happened? I told you, the procedure was a success!”

I delighted in sadistic pleasure as I watched him look down at his pink chassis. That’s what it was now, a chassis, held upright and in place by the usual chassis maintenance tables we used. I waited for a moment I knew would come, and sure enough, it did.

Grayson’s horror at the sight of the entirely inhuman body he now possessed was refocused in an instant as he spotted something. Two soft and hefty bags of synthetic mass, dangling from the soft and supple form of his chest.

“You… You fucking monster, you fucking beast, you fucking bitch you fucking synth you fucking—”

“Oh shut up.” He probably could’ve kept going forever, had I not just disabled the artificial lung simulation his chassis provided him with, “This is you now. Congratulations, you’ve gone through my hell, and you’ve survived coming out the other end. You have a long and full life sentence ahead of you.” I reactivated the synthetic lungs, turning away from him in disinterest.

“–▒▒▒▒▒▒!”

I froze. That word, that fucking word, that fucking horrible and disgusting and abominable word, so needlessly cruel that the morphic waves themselves desired to erase it from living memory.

Grayson laughed a low laugh, one that rose with the realisation that he found his first pain point. “That’s right. I know what you really are. And… I think I pieced it together. You lost someone in the blast, didn’t you?”

I spun to face him, my hateful gaze burning its way in his direction.

“Yeah… Yeah, that’s right… I thought I recognised you. Same morph, right? Komodo dragon?”

My voice seethed, “You better be real fucking careful what you say next—”

“I saw her. She walked right past me as she entered the building. Said to the guards that she was… Altus something. No, Alto.”

I couldn’t hide the range behind my eyes as tears welled in their corners and the servos of my fist began to burn with overrevving.

“Yes, that’s it… Alto Cirrus. Heh, just a few minutes later and he could’ve avoided the blast entir—HCK”

My mechanical fist was around his throat in a second, and an instant later, it yanked back, hard. I snapped open the restraints of the chassis table as I flung him across the room, and into the wall with enough force to send cracks through it.

“You” I walked slowly, with unnatural calmness in his direction as he tumbled to the floor, “Do not” He looked up at me, clutching his bleeding neck, “Misgender” He tried to scuttle away from me, and was left between me and the wall, “MY SISTER!”

My oversized fist clamped down over his head, and my synthetic arm lifted him into the air. A literal fire burned in my pupils, but my conscious mind could pay it no heed beyond ‘that’s interesting’. Freshly awakened psiionic energies intermingled with my rage, and infused my synthetics with power beyond what they already had.

“I WAS THERE” I screamed in his face, tears running down mine, “I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST RESPONDERS ON THE SCENE” It was all I could do to not fall to my knees, “I FOUND THE CHARRED REMAINS OF MY SISTER’S BEAUTIFUL BODY AND ALL THE OTHER LIVES YOU DESTROYED THAT DAY!” With every word, the grip of my metal claws grew stronger and stronger. He was already bleeding from where each pointed tip pressed, and I realised that any further pressure would crush his skull like an egg.

“Castella!” I heard, chirped out from her all-too-soothing voice. I relaxed the slightest inch, “Please! You don’t need to do this! I’m still here, sister, you had the backups, you saved me!”

“Your body…” I almost sobbed, “He took it from you…”

“I know, dear.” She whistled, “How about this as an offer, then? I… Um, you defintiely seem to have more than a bit of psiionic power, and I don’t know how well you can control it, but do this, for me. Look into his head. See if there’s anything worth saving.”

I stood motionless, staring into Grayson’s terrified eyes. I stared deeper than ever could have before, and saw things that no ordinary person could simply see. I saw the quivering beast of a man before me, his fears, his hopes, his aspirations. And his self-proclaimed ‘accomplishments’.

Even now, he was proud of what he had done.

My anger burned a thousand-fold, revving up all the way to max and beyond as I thrust the pathetic being of hatred and destruction into the air by his head, and screamed. A righteous, furious scream that could probably be heard from outside the prison itself, one that burned itself to an utmost pinnacle of fiery emotional power before—SPLAT

The lifeless fembot chassis dropped to the floor like a ragdoll, dripping with blood, bone fragments, and brain matter.

I turned away from it, and went to grab some cleaning supplies.

“…You sure you cleaned it thoroughly?” Alto chirped, the little bird hopping its way around on the empty chassis, “I don’t want to end up digging out a rotting piece of brain matter from between some plating a week from now, Castella.”

“What, you don’t trust your own sister, Alto?” I giggled. It was a noise I hadn’t made in a while, at least, not in any sincere sense. “Don’t you worry, it spent the night in an ultrasonic Organicorrode bath, it’s nice and clean.”

“Hmm. That’s almost a shame, in a way.”

“Oh?” I grinned.

“It would’ve been nice to have a memoir of him.”

I looked at the bird for a second, and then I burst out into laughter. The bellowing, uncontrollable laughter of someone whose emotions had been twisted and crushed for almost a year, and were finally slipping free. Raw, powerful, and broaching on painful.

My actions had been horrifying, and cathartic. Criminal, and invisible. I had bribed enough people to erase Grayson’s existence on paper, and I already took care of his existence in the flesh.

Only after destroying him so thoroughly and utterly did I feel free. Finally. I was free. We were free. I looked over at my sister with love in my heart, and for the first time in ages, the image of Grayson’s face didn’t block it.

I sighed with happiness. “Okay, Alto, think you’re ready for this?”

The headless pink chassis was laid bare on the table before me, but it wouldn’t remain headless for long. Sitting off to the side, connected by a myriad of thick cables and plumbing to the body, was a matching head. A canine-shaped visor curved its way around the front, giving it a perfect blend of anthropomorphisation and roboticness.

Alto chose it herself. She could never figure out what kind of chassis she wanted before, always choosing to instead stay in the bird, but it turns out it was simply because her chassis desires of “baptised in the broken soul of her murderer” was hard to put into words.

“I’m ready.” She flew over to the helmet, where I had set up a simple digiconsciousness transfer a few minutes before. The cable interfaced with the tiny chip in the bird’s skull, along with the far bigger cognitive processor of the synth head, and the connection was established.

I hesitated on the button. It always felt so weird to know that my sister was going to end up lifeless for a few seconds every time i transferred her.

“C’mon, sis. It’ll be okay.” She chirped.

I choked back a tear, “Okay,” and pressed the button. The bird went limp, and a loading bar popped into existence on the head’s faceplate visor.

“Alto? How’s it going in there?”

“Uhh,” I heard over a poorly digitised voice, “Give me a moment to set everything up, and hurry up and connect me to my body!”

I got to work, quickly swapping out the long cables with ones a lot shorter, and able to neatly fit inside the neck connection as I slotted the two parts of her chassis together.

“Gah!” She said as the hefty connector clicked in place. Her voice sounded a lot better, a lot more like her, I noticed. “Okay, this is all super weird, but luckily being a robot means I can go through all these thousands of customisation options in a jiffy! There’s a lot of stuff to work on, here…”

I stepped back as the chassis–her body, began to move. Mechanically and slow at first, then jittery, but after just a few seconds she was adapting to once again having a body. With some difficulties, she lifted herself upright on the table, and looked down at her new body.

“Um…” I nervously asked, “How do you feel about it? Your chassis, I mean.”

“Well, I know we did the whole sex bot thing just as another layer of torture for Grayson, but…” She hefted her large silicone tits in her hands, “I can’t say I don’t like it!”

I giggled, “Pfft, oh my god, sis.”

“Hee, don’t mind me, just browsing the swappable genitalia options on display,” Lewd images flashed across her visor.

“Sis!!”

“Okay, okay!” She dropped her legs off the side of the table, and steadily attempted to rise up to her feet. I could instantly tell she was too unstable for that, and rushed over to her side, grabbing her before she fell.

“Oi, Alto, you haven’t been humanoid in months! Take it easy, legs are hard.” I looked up into her eyes, and in that moment, I don’t think either of us could help ourselves.

We wrapped our arms around each other as we pulled ourselves into a desperate hug, clinging tightly to each other. Both of us refused to let go, not wanting to be the first to separate the loving embrace, and it was the most lovely experience I had ever felt. We stayed there in each other’s arms for what felt like hours.

“I missed you so much, sister.” Tears were running down my face.

“God… Me too, Cas. You were just… Trapped by your trauma. My trauma. Our trauma. And now you’re so free, it’s beautiful…” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. I returned the gesture.

“I love you, sis.”

“I love you too.”

We remained silent for a few more minutes, but eventually reality caught up with us.

“So…” Alto began, “What do we do now? Where do we go? We can’t just go back to our lives.” She sighed, idly looking down at her new hands, flexing and curling them.

“Hmm…” I pondered. “What do you want to do?”

“I know I said I didn’t like them, but… The Korps made this possible. And, well,” She put her hands on her robotic hips, “I’m sure they could use someone like me.”

Stars lit up in my eyes. “Oh my gosh… Alto!!” I squee’d and wrapped my arms around her, “Are we finally going to be Korps sisters?!”

“I um,” She clearly felt a little awkward in my overexcited hug, but I didn’t care. I just needed her to feel my desperate love, “I guess! That’s only if they take me, though!”

I placed my hands on her shoulders and held her at arms length, “Oh, my dear Alto, we’ve been waiting for you to join for years…”

I pulled her into one final embrace, and in that moment, I knew things would be good.