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The Western Cube

Part 14

Sponsored by GlynWolf

By Draconicon

The tigress set to work immediately, her eyes darting through the interior of the first room. The control tower was on emergency lighting, and that meant that she didn't have much to see besides the silhouettes that cut what little light there was.

It was enough for her to recognize official functionary furniture, however. She padded up to the main desk past the door, her hands finding the desk and then pulling herself around it. The other side had a keyboard, a console, and - yes, it had power. She was in business.

Lacking a chair, she typed while standing, all while Greene whispered to her. The voice was rough, staticked, and Tatyana was all but sure that the sound was being beamed into her head through the implant still sticking out the top of her head.

"You know that this isn't going to work. Nothing you do works. You always end up right back where you started."

"Incorrect."

"You haven't beaten me."

"Also incorrect. Also, we have yet to stop playing."

Playing. She could almost see the jackal's face as she demeaned the back and forth war between them as far as she did. It was rather amusing, considering the fact that she was currently fighting for her life. Not her dignity anymore, but her life. There was nothing left to sugarcoat the fate waiting for both of them if she didn't win.

The computer booted up slower than she'd like, but considering the system had probably been offline for however long Greene had been in charge, she imagined that it was a stroke of luck that it still worked at all. That time offline had probably saved it from developing the same bugs that normal computers did after so many hours of operation; if they'd been live the whole time, she doubted that they would have responded to her commands.

Perhaps she should be thankful to Greene. No, no, she didn't think so.

Keying in commands for a program inventory and a map of the control tower, she did her best to keep one ear open for the sounds of SEDAE drones. The holograms outside wouldn't be able to beat down the door, but if the drones found a way in through the tower, they wouldn't have to. All they had to do was get inside and they could project Cletus at her, and then she would have to deal with a very randy donkey.

That would not be ideal.

"I'm sure that you want to experience him inside you. I know how much you loved it. I was in you to feel it."

"I felt your love for it, too."

"I - you were the slut."

"And who says that you have not become one?"

"...I...you..."

"My body is mine. Stay out of it. Unless you want to try and learn the same lessons I learned."

There was silence after that, and the tigress smiled despite herself. She might have been a wet mess, naked and stripped and marked as an employed whore, but she could still get one over on the machinery over her. That meant that there truly was hope.

The computer brought up the requested map and the inventory list. True to her hopes, Krasnyy was mentioned as still being contained, though he was listed as being in the 'Brain Tank' on the second floor rather than somewhere locked off. That was odd, considering the way that Greene seemed so confident in never being displaced.

Then again, without any mortals to vote her out, she probably considered herself safe from anything. The other programs were too terrified of her to dare do anything to defy her, and even Mr. Silver was barely giving her a distraction, not actually fighting back. She shook her head, tapping the screen -

A soft whirr sent her to the floor, tapping out of the list and shutting the screen down. The flickering lights of a SEDAE drone filled the air, and she cursed in the back of her skull, refusing to let the sound past her teeth as the drone came closer. It projected a faceless drone that had a stars and stripes shape on its chest, armed with a gun.

She didn't want to test how digital bullets would feel. She really didn't.

The guard walked through the lobby, looking left and right, before making its way to the desk. Tatyana pushed herself further under it, holding her breath as the hologram settled over the hard surface. It looked down, and she could see the edges of the light scan-lines running over the top of the desk.

Then, it went on, the hologram disappearing as the drone whirred away. She let loose the breath she'd been holding and shook her head. Too close; if she'd been leaning against the desk, or if it had scanned the floor rather than the surface, it probably would have found something of hers to track. Instead, it had just checked to see whether someone had leaned against the desk or used it much.

Stupidity in machines is the only saving grace for a bio...

Crawling out from under the desk, she turned the screen on again. Krasnyy was on the second floor in the Brain Tank, and after a second, she had the route. She closed the computer down, hoping that Greene wouldn't have noticed it being used, and hurried on.

The outer part of the control tower had a long, circular pathway that acted almost like a moat or tour guide. The walls had once been glass, but she could see that the metal had been added later, almost like some sort of defense. The question was whether it had been added by the AI, or if the bios that had once called this place home had tried to add it to hold the AI at bay. If the latter, it hadn't worked, and it cut out the view of the outside world.

She followed lines of computers that were open to program developing software, eventually reaching an unguarded staircase that went up to the second level. Tatyana climbed it, hissing at the cold glass underfoot, and knew that she'd be leaving a trail. It was unavoidable, and she hurried a little faster.

The door at the top of the stairs had been locked, but it was the sort that required power to keep fully closed. She knelt at the door, finding the wiring that led to it, and slowly withdrew each one after careful application of the point of her claw. Once all three wires were detached, so was the lock.

Click.

No point in shutting it behind her; if they saw the tracks, they'd know where she was, and the door wouldn't hold them back. She hurried along, hoping that she still had time.

The whirring sounds of the drones down below were getting louder and louder, and she knew that Cletus would be popping in before long. He might hold back until the drones found her directly, or he might start leading the search in person, but either way, he would be here soon. And when he did arrive...

Tatyana shook her head. If he arrived, then he would fuck her. That was the long and short of it. It was something that she'd just have to deal with if and when it happened, and that was that.

The second floor was its own problem. It had an outer ring balcony that faced towards Level 6 and a series of labs that ran around it, each one with its own security door. She followed the pathway, all too aware of the possibility of being seen from below considering the transparent floor, and did her best to just stare straight ahead and follow the path. The one with the Brain Tank was six rooms down, and she had to get there before they found her.

The labs passed too slowly for her comfort, but the whirring sound was all down below. As long as they didn't look up, she was pretty sure that she'd be alright.

One, two, three, four, five, and six. She stopped at the last door, reading 'Brain Tank' written in permanent marker on the door, the actual number long-since scratched out. The lock was already undone, probably something that Greene had done. Send a bio in to deal with the experiment, and then leave them to die; that was all that needed doing. No need to lock it again now that there were no more bios inside the Cube to worry about.

Until now.

She opened the door and her breath left her as if someone had punched it right out of her lungs. The Brain Tank was far more literal than she had realized.

Over three dozen tanks of suspended lumps of brain matter had been left behind, though thankfully they were all artificial, at least to some extent. They were not gray nor pink, but rather some man-made color that was between red and purple, and far more craggy and veiny than she expected. They were hooked up to various wires that led to machines that were stacked against the tanks, and the tanks themselves were either hooked up to a local monitor or completely disconnected from anything.

Worse, they had names.

She shivered as she saw some of them, seeing them in her head. 'Mrs. Badgerton,' probably the crazy landlady down in Level 1. 'Deputy Cletus.' 'Randolph Silver.' They went on and on, all of them connected, and Cletus looking like he had grown several malignant tumors along his brain matter in the tank. She shivered, looking down the line, sure that she would eventually see the one that she really feared to look at.

And she did. Greene was right at the end of the line, the darkened brain somewhere past a bruised purple and tending toward black. While most of the other brains had been warped at least a little - even Mr. Silver's had been bulged out a bit in the front, with a pair of eye-sized tumor growths along the top - Greene's had grown, quadrupling in size and sagging even in the liquid bath that held it suspended. It looked like it was almost ready to collapse under its own weight, and rather than the occasional neuron firing like she had seen with the ones in the other tanks, it was all but surging with electricity.

She rested one hand on the tank, shaking her head. She could guess what had happened. The scientists, in taking bits and pieces of people to create the AIs, had decided against giving them a proper digital home in circuitry, and had instead copied brains for the various thought patterns to follow. It had to be some sort of quasi-living material to mutate like this, however, and she could only imagine the sort of rot that had set in place as the various thought patterns and personalities contained within started to go off the rails.

Greene looked like a tortured thing, but she felt very little sympathy for it. Whatever the AI's circumstances, she was no longer even slightly like the woman that had been drawn into the program at the start. Whatever the portion of Greene in the cart-bot wanted, there was no way that she could just save her.

And I doubt that I could disconnect her without sending off all kinds of alarms throughout the facility, she thought, looking at the various tubes and lines running off from the machinery attached to the tank. Even if I could manage that, the sudden loss of directions could kill us all.

After all, Project West was a suspended experiment Cube, hovering over a great abyss on its own power. If it ran out of energy, or if something happened to the instructions that were keeping them hovering this whole time, she didn't want to think about what would happen to them. It would probably be far too long a fall before a very lethal splat.

So, no. She couldn't disconnect Greene. She needed Krasnyy.

And she didn't have to look too long to find him. His tank was completely disconnected from the system, the wires tossed to the side and a dead body laying over them. Shaking her head, Tatyana knelt down and pulled the body off the wires and cables, tossing it to the side before looking at the damage.

"Lucky." She shook her head. "No cutting the cables."

Whether that meant that the dead person had hoped that someone would come back and reattach the Krasnyy brain or if they were just that sort of person to follow procedures to the bitter end, she didn't know, but at least it meant that it was reversible. Tatyana knelt down, keeping her mind off every little reminder of her nudity - from the light breath of air against her holes to the cold floor under her bare feet to the wet slap of her overextended clitoris - and grabbed the cables. It was going to take a few minutes to get them properly adjusted.

She was halfway down when she heard the whirr, and this time, it was too late. The light flickered behind her, and a familiar voice filled her ears.

"Well, now, ain't this a familiar picture?"

"..."

"Hello again, little lady."

"Cletus."

"That's Sheriff Cletus to you, ya little whore."

He grabbed her by the tail, not something that anyone would happily endure, and she yowled as she was yanked out of the narrow gap between the tank and the monitor beside it. Hitting the floor after being dragged around by a hard-light construct was a sensation that she didn't really want to experience again.

Before she could get her breath back, he grabbed her again, yanking her tail up before -

SMACK!

The impact of the paddle that hadn't been there a moment before left the tigress hissing, even as her pussy started dripping ever so slightly and her pucker started clenching hard.

"That's it. That's the thing I wanted to see. Fat-ass little butt-slut, ain'tcha?"

"You...you certainly seem to think so," Tatyana muttered.

"Yeah? Well, I ain't seen no proof otherwise."

"Corrupt cops like you accept no proof."

"Yeah? Well, I might not know what you're talking about, but I know a low-life vagrant when I see one. Particularly when she's sketched her lifestyle all over her ass and bare feet."

She groaned, another little spasm between her cheeks and between her legs. She had been doing well enough to keep that sort of thinking out of her head, but here she was again, pinned beneath the hands of someone that wanted to do nothing more than hate-fuck her brains out of her head and leave her shaking like a leaf. Her breath huffed right out of her lungs as he grabbed her cheeks, forcing them apart. She could feel her asshole gaping, the many fucks and ruts that it had suffered leaving her with a likely permanent stretch back there. If it ever stayed closed again, she would be shocked and amazed.

"Heh, yeah, ya ain't gonna be much use for anything besides cock-sucking before long. Ain't nobody fucking that freaky thing you call a cunt, and that ass is almost too loose for me."

"Then..." No. Be strong. Be better. "Then get it over with. Fuck it and break it in one last time."

"Ya want it that bad, do ya, Ms. Whore?"

"No, but you do."

"Liar."

He slapped her ass, and she forced herself to focus on the spank. On the pain, on the pleasure, on the humiliation. Rather than just taking it, she studied it, and she studied what she liked about it.

The humiliation? Yes, a portion of that. The knowledge that she had been caught, bested, forced to feel the pleasure that she had felt way back when. That was what she had always craved in the past, having the choice taken from her. Why?

Because she didn't want people to know she liked it? No, that wasn't right, but not enough information for her to take it further.

"I don't want it," Tatyana said.

"You lying little whore. Ya think that you can just pretend you're better? Alright, let's see how long it takes to fuck some reality back into that tiny little mind of yours."

She knew what was coming. He always did the same thing, always wanted it. For all that his brain was more mutated than Silver's, she imagined that he'd started with a whole lot less. A bit of dumb cop, a bit of corruption, and a bit of perversion. All of that had since become his entire personality, and that was all that mattered to him: taking his anger and lust out on those that he had power over.

Tatyana hissed as she felt the warmth of that projected dick rubbing against her rim. He picked her up, one arm around her throat, and carried her along. He shoved her against one of the tanks, holding her against it as he gradually worked his cock past her hole, the 'dry' feeling of an unlubed cock of pure light going into her as painful as it was pleasurable.

Tatyana embraced it, studying it even as she moaned from it. There it was again, pain, and more...

More, it was what she wasn't supposed to do.

She held that as more data, putting it in the back of her head. Even now, even though she was getting fucked, raped, she was still able to think through what was happening to her. Studying herself, learning why she liked it - and forcing herself to admit that she did like it when someone put her through this - was the only way that she could recover from it and keep some bit of her own freedom. Every rut was trying to take it from her, but now that she had admitted it...

It wasn't armor. It wasn't invincibility. She could still feel herself being tempted to let him take it further, to let him 'win' a little bit and leave her more damaged, more eager to take it later, but she could resist that temptation now.

As long as she didn't enjoy it too much.

He pinned her against the glass, huffing against the back of her neck as he used her the way that he'd clearly wanted to use her from the start. The machines back at the station had been rough, but not like this. Not nearly like this. They were pounding her hard, slamming in over and over again, but now, given a body that could actually fuck her? He was cruel.

"Nnngh!"

Tatyana hissed through her teeth as the other drones started pulling out more and more tools, helping the donkey officer fuck her. Little electric wands hovered in the air, zapping her nipples, while others formed clamps that pinched and pulled at her clit. Each little tweak, each little squeeze sent pain and pleasure through her in equal measure, and her pussy was soon drooling.

"Fuck...fuck..."

"Yeah, that's what ya are, aintcha? Just a little fuck-slut. Nothing more than a little whore for a big dick up yer ass."

Smack, smack, smack. The feeling of that cock sliding in and out so fast, bumping against her cheeks and making them jiggle the way it did was enough to leave her panting. The tigress gripped the edge of the containment tank, groaning as she tried to find something, anything that would let her focus through it. She looked up.

Cletus.

She was leaning on the very tank that held the donkey AI's mind. One good blow and -

"NNNGH!"

And suddenly she was lifted off her feet, her pussy all but crushed against the glass between her and the brain on the other side. She gasped for breath as she was filled to the brim, his hard-light balls pressed right against her asshole as he fucked her balls-deep, the flared head of his cock just barely visible through her stomach.

"You got something to say, girlie?"

"Ah...ah..."

"I didn't think so. Heh. Little ass-whore, can't even think so long as you got something jammed up your backdoor. Rest of the world doesn't even fucking matter so long as you got that, right?"

There was some truth to that, even with her new self-awareness. She groaned as she felt that flare moving, gasped as the shock probes continued to zap at her nipples and her raised feet, but there was a plan forming in her head now. Even as she moaned, even as she hissed and whimpered in pleasure as he filled her and fucked her over and over again, she was starting to formulate a plan to get out of the situation she'd been trapped in.

The plan was simple: break the tank. The method, however...

"Ah...nngh..."

Tatyana hated her plan, but it was the only thing that she could think of. She turned, looking over her shoulder at the hologram of the donkey, and said the thing that she had hoped she'd never say to any of the AIs again.

"Take me...take me...harder."

"Heh...knew you'd come around."

He shoved her firmly against the tank, her pussy grinding against it, sliding along the glass. Her ankles almost hooked the top of the tank, and she hissed as the impact jarred her legs from ankle to knee. The nerves tingled much the same as hitting her funny-bone might have done, but she aimed to hook them there again. Thrust after thrust pounded away at her insides, stretching her ass, leaving it burning under her tail, but it was the rim of the tank that she needed. Just one good grip.

Hump, hump, hump, went the donkey, and she kept gasping as she was lifted up again and again by his thrusts. Every time that he bottomed out in her, she could feel her rim complaining, begging for relief, while at the same time her sluttier urges were begging for more. She wanted him to take it further, to really ruin her, to break her in and show her what it meant to be a true anal whore for someone that was so big, so huge, so...so...

No...focus...

She forced her attention back to her feet, feeling for every moment when her heels came near the edge of the tank, every possible grip that she could get with her toes. The shocks, the hot electric stimulation that ran through her clit and nipples and soles: they all kept throwing her off, but she was getting the timing now.

Thrust.

Shock.

Thrust.

Click.

Shock.

Thrust.

Shock.

There was that split second between a thrust and when her toes clicked in the right place where she could pull. She got shocked again, and lost her grip.

Oh god...oh god...

Tatyana could feel her willpower slipping. Even with all that she had learned about herself, even with all the little things that she'd figured out how to use, how to better herself, how to focus through her pleasure, she was still fighting it with both hands and losing. The utter satisfaction about being taken the way that she was, the sensation of that huge thing spreading her open from her rim all the way to her stomach, was so much more than anyone was meant to take.

Click.

She curled her toes and pulled when he yanked her down again, and as he pulled her down, the tank wobbled. The lights shorted out as Cletus's connection fizzled, and Tatyana kicked the tank one more time.

CRASH!

The drones scattered, and she panted for breath as she lay in the drooling fluids that came from the top of the tank. After a few seconds to collect her breath, she held one hand to the hole, keeping the fluid that kept the brain alive from draining completely. For all that she wanted Cletus out of the picture, she didn't want him dead. There was much to learn there...so much to learn.

Once she verified that the connection between brain and server had been completely severed, she wiggled the tank back upright. Setting it back where it belonged, she turned to the console connected to it.

Mr. Silver was looking at her through the screen. She shook her head.

"Keeping an eye on me, are we?"

"More watching to see what you'll do. You nearly killed him."

"And he nearly broke me."

"Fair's fair. Looks like you have the ultimate power now, girl."

"Given time, yes. I do not have that time."

Indeed, she had perhaps an hour before the next vote, according to the system readouts. There would be just enough time to get Krasnyy online before Greene realized the shit that she was in, and then she would have to find a hiding place. Having shorted out the Overseer's greatest supporter, there was nothing that could be done to stop her from voting Krasnyy in...

Well, mostly nothing.

"You are on my side, Mr. Silver?" she asked.

"Long as you take the bitch down, girl."

"That is the plan."

"Heh, then you got me."

She nodded, tapping a button on Cletus's console. A progress bar appeared, and the picture of Mr. Silver's canine face cocked its head to the side.

"What are you doing?"

"Downloading a copy."

"You - why?"

"This place will not last long, even if I manage to put Krasnyy back in charge. Cletus, Mrs. Badgerton, you: you are all unique, different, more advanced and more alive than you have any right to be. I am taking you back to my computers to study you, and - in your case - giving you the chance to stay alive."

"...Why?"

"You...interest me."

That was a lie. That was a bald-faced lie. It was so much more than just intrigue. They were breaking the rules of science, they were abominations, they were outright cruel and wrong and horrifying, but they were, in some strange and terrible aspect, alive. And most of them deserved the chance to at least be taken out of here rather than die to the whims of a dictator that none of them had chosen.

Well, almost none of them had chosen. Cletus probably would have voted for her.

Shaking her head, Tatyana walked down the ranks of the tanks, tapping in the same command. Copy. Copy. Copy. Each one was going to be downloaded to a memory stick down in the lobby for her to take when she left. Considering the sheer size of the quasi-living brains and the data on them, she doubted that it was going to be an easy burden to carry.

Once that was done, she stood in front of Krasnyy's tank. The various wires and cables around it had been disconnected during the scuffle with Cletus, but they were easy enough to put back into place. Once they were all wired up, she checked the readouts on the monitor.

To her surprise, the AI inside was almost rudimentary, clumsy, dull compared to the various other minds all around her. She had to remind herself that he had been shut down, inactive compared to the other minds installed in the facility, unable to develop, and likely sharing far less features from different minds. The soviet mind would have been one that they wanted full control over, someone that would never deviate from the party lines that made them look good. He probably would have been one of the least-combined of the various personalities that they had downloaded, thinking about it.

Tapping the monitor a few times, she adjusted the connection to the server. Once she had it lined up, a textbox popped up.

Allow to Stand for Election?

Tatyana tapped the 'Yes' icon, and the world went mad.

The whirring of the drones beneath her kicked into a fever pitch, and she felt the floor rattle as they all but battered themselves to pieces against it. When that didn't work, she heard their flight motors turning them, sending them flying down the hall.

They were coming for her.

"Get out of there!" Mr. Silver shouted, but she had already started running. She slammed the door shut and hoped that it was locked; she thought she heard a click but she couldn't be sure. "Keep running!"

He didn't have to tell her twice.

Tatyana eventually stopped on the fourth floor of the control tower. She didn't know how many more floors it had, but she had managed to find a safe hiding place here, and that was all she needed.

More to the point, it was only a few feet away from a voting console, and she could see the ticking clock glowing against the readout on the monitor. The rest of the room consisted of a lounge, likely used by the control tower employees back when this place was buzzing. If she had the courage to sit in the open, taunting the drones -

She pulled back a bit further, leaning into the coats at the back of the closet and feeling incredibly thankful that the drones hadn't caught her the first time that they'd yanked the doors open and checked. She'd managed to hide without the fabric, and somehow, that had fooled them. She didn't know if it would work a second time.

The lights of the SEDAE drones pushed on, moving past her and around the room. She breathed out again, shaking her head.

She doesn't have Cletus anymore, and Mr. Silver is against her. She can't summon either of them to fuck me, and that means that she's stuck with very few AI to actually use on me...

She remembered the angry badger from Level 1, and she was sure that there were others that could be intimidated into fighting her. Perhaps there were others that Greene could build to send against her, but that seemed unlikely.

No, far more likely was the possibility of Greene coming herself and trying to wrestle her into submission. The Overseer of Project West had had her pride beaten in time and time again during this little exchange, and by now, she would be desperate. The one thing that Tatyana couldn't stop her from doing was just dropping the whole project down into the abyss and killing them both, but for the moment, she didn't think that Greene was quite desperate enough for that. If she could wait the other woman out for a bit longer, she was going to be free.

The SEDAE drones circled around, one of them finally stopping in front of the console. She could hear others in the distance stopping as well, and she cocked her head to the side in puzzlement.

Then, Greene appeared.

The hologram shimmered into existence, and more lights popped into existence throughout the hallways and windowed rooms of the facility. And if she didn't miss her guess, they were all in the way of the different monitors that she needed to get to.

"Ms. Whore. I know what you're trying to do," the jackal hologram said, crossing her arms over a chest that ranged from flat to bigger than the tigress's own and back again, one breast inflating and going down out of sync with the other. She'd go from being completely dressed to being naked, and then back again, as well. Everything was going out of control. "I know that you plan to replace me...and I tell you...you will not succeed.

"You are nothing but a whore. A lowly vagrant, an Illegal that has no business in this tower. You should have been left in Level 0 to rot, but I thought that you could be made useful. Made better. Made...mmmph...You..."

She was struggling, Tatyana realized. Struggling to integrate everything that she had been feeling when they were together. All the sensations, all the physical body stimulation that they had gone through together had almost shattered Greene while they were bound together. The memory of it was probably coming back now that they were so close.

That...might be something that she could use to break through.

The End

Summary: Tatyana is so close to the end, but that doesn't mean that there are no dangers waiting for her.

Tags: F/solo, M/F, Donkey, Tigress, Tatyana, AI, Hologram, Science Fiction, Anal, Humiliation, Dub-Con, Series,