Chapter 4: Record Breaking Heat
The chemical ache was a symphony in Lucia’s bones. It sang in the loose hinge of her jaw, throbbed in the stretched, cybernetic ring of her ass, hummed in the constant, low-grade arousal that her modified endocrine system pumped into her bloodstream like a baseline rhythm. She sat on a discarded coolant crate in a shadowy alcove off the main pavilion, shivering despite the humid air. The neon from the sign above painted her skin in fleeting washes of magenta and electric blue, making her shifting geometric tattoos swim like agitated eels.
Across from her, Lex counted a stack of credit chips, her fingers moving with a sharp, efficient click. The tally glowed in her optical implant. “One hundred twenty-seven,” Lex breathed, the number hanging in the ozone-thick air. “Seven thousand, six hundred twenty credits. Clean. Untraceable.”
Lucia tried to smile. Her lips were cracked. “Ripper’s gonna want his cut for the arterial monitors.”
“Fuck Ripper,” Lex muttered, but there was no heat in it. They both knew the ripperdoc’s cut was the only insurance they had against systemic collapse or infection. She looked up, her gaze softening. “How’s the chassis holding up?”
Before Lucia could answer, a shadow fell over them. Zoe stood there, a tall silhouette against the pulsating carnival lights. Her augmented eyes gleamed with a low amber light. In her hand were two auto-injectors—one nutrient cocktail, one coagulant and muscle relaxant.
“You look like shit warmed over,” Zoe said, her voice a low, rasping contralto. She crouched, the servos in her legs whining softly. “Told you not to let the last three go for第二轮. Dumb sissy.”
“They paid extra,” Lucia croaked.
“And you’ll be walking like a newborn fucking giraffe for a week.” Zoe pressed the first injector to Lucia’s neck. There was a hiss, a cold bloom under the skin. Some of the fog in Lucia’s head cleared. “Brack’s running interference. Word got out about the tally. Scavvers are getting ideas.”
Lucia leaned her head back against the wet wall. “Let them come. I’m a free-use zone. What’s one more?”
Zoe’s hand, strong and warm, cupped Lucia’s cheek, a shocking contrast to her tone. “Don’t talk like that. You’re not a fucking public bench.” She administered the second injector. “This’ll help with the tearing. But you need real time in a regeneration tank. Which we can afford now.”
The mention of Brack materialized him a moment later. He loomed into the alcove, smelling of cordite, synth-leather, and sweat. His bulk blocked the light entirely. “Party’s moving. Gladiator rally over in the Pit. They’re auctioning off the ‘spoils’.” He glanced at Lucia, a blunt, appraising look. “They want a living trophy. Someone to ‘break in’ the winner’s circle.”
Zoe stood up, turning on him. “No.”
“Wasn’t a question, Zoe,” Brack rumbled. “The offer is fifteen large. Upfront. For three hours. They want a spectacle. They want her. The marathon girl.”
Lucia felt the new chemicals mix with her own hormonal soup. A fresh, treacherous heat coiled in her gut. The idea was monstrous. Her body was a wrung-out rag. But fifteen thousand credits was a month in a luxury tank. It was safety. It was a future.
“I’ll do it,” she said, her voice stronger.
Zoe spun, her expression a mask of fury and something else—fear. “Lucia, you can’t. You’re not a piece of meat for some arena-bred psycho to fucking destroy.”
“I am,” Lucia stated, the truth of it cold and clear. “That’s what Ripper made. That’s what I paid for. Three hours. Then I’m done. I get my tank. I heal.”
Lex stared at the ground, the credit chips forgotten in her hand.
Brack nodded, a businesslike jerk of his chin. “Smart girl. Let’s move. They’re starting.”
The Pit was not a place; it was a pressure cooker. A sunken amphitheater of rusted girders and grafted concrete, packed with a roaring, augmented crowd. The air was a solid wall of sound—the shriek of grinding metal, the wet thud of fist on flesh, the collective groan or cheer of hundreds. In the center, under blinding klieg lights, two gladiators covered in grime and blood circled each other, their cybernetics sparking.
Lucia was led to a raised platform behind a shielded plexiglass wall, a display case. She was nude, her body a map of the night’s use: blooming bruises on her thighs, the shimmer of synthetic lubricant coating her inner legs, her caged cock a useless, straining knot under the titanium. Her DD breasts ached with every jarring cheer from the crowd.
Zoe and Brack flanked her, armed and tense, their mercenary credentials the only reason she wasn’t being grabbed by the crowd already.
The final bout ended with a devastating magnetized punch that caved in one fighter’s chest plate. The winner, a mountain of scar tissue and chrome called Grindstone, raised his hydraulic fists, roaring.
The event’s emcee, a slim man with a vocal-modulator that made his voice echo, pointed to Lucia’s platform. “And for our champion! A taste of the ultimate victory! The freshest, most used little sissy in the Port! Let’s see if Grindstone can find a limit!”
The crowd erupted. The plexiglass shield retracted.
Grindstone stomped over, his breath wheezing through a rebreather. He smelled of hot oil and blood. He didn’t look at Lucia’s face. His gaze went straight to her cybernetic asshole, glistening and perpetually open. He grabbed her by the waist, his fingers digging into her bruises, and turned her around, bending her over the platform railing so the crowd had a perfect view.
“Hold the fuck still,” he grunted, his voice metallic.
Lucia gripped the cold railing, her knuckles white. She saw Zoe, a few feet away, one hand on her plasma pistol, her jaw clenched so tight a muscle twitched in her cheek. Brack watched, arms crossed, a professional assessing a scene.
Grindstone didn’t bother with foreplay. He spat on his hand, rubbed it over his thick, uncut cock, and aligned the head with her gaped entrance. With a single, brutal thrust, he buried himself to the hilt.
The stretch was nothing—her modification handled that—but the force was everything. It drove the air from Lucia’s lungs in a choked gasp. He was too deep, too hard, pounding into her with the same mechanical rhythm he’d used in the fight. Each slam rocked her entire body, her breasts swinging painfully, her face pressed against the metal railing. The crowd’s cheers melted into a deafening, singular roar in time with his thrusts.
“Yeah, you take it, you fucking hole!” Grindstone roared, pounding into her. “Just a wet slot for the winner! This what you were made for!”
Pain and pleasure short-circuited in Lucia’s system. Her own hormones, ever-present, flooded the mix, a traitorous fire that began to burn through the fatigue. A broken sound, half-sob, half-moan, escaped her lips. She could feel the rough texture of his cock, the brutal, perfect fullness. Her vision spotted at the edges.
Zoe took a half-step forward. Brack’s hand shot out, stopping her. “The contract,” he growled. “She agreed. You interfere, we all get scrapped.”
Grindstone’s pace increased, becoming punishing. He leaned over her, his weight crushing. “Gonna fill this pretty cyber-cunt,” he snarled, his breath hot on her ear. “Gonna pump you so full of come it leaks out for days.” His thrusts became erratic, jagged. With a final, guttural shout, he slammed home and held, pulsing inside her. Lucia felt the hot, wet flood filling her, a stark contrast to the cold metal against her skin.
He pulled out with a wet slurp, giving her ass a hard, dismissive smack that stung. “Winner’s prize!” he bellowed to the crowd, and they screamed their approval.
But it wasn’t over. The emcee’s voice crackled again. “And for our valiant runner-up! A consolation prize! Let’s see if he has any fight left in him!”
The second-place gladiator, younger, slimmer, with one arm hanging useless at his side, was pushed toward the platform. His eyes were glazed with pain and stimms, but they focused on Lucia with a desperate, hungry gleam.
Zoe looked at Lucia, a silent question in her eyes. Lucia, swimming in shame and an overwhelming, unwanted arousal, gave the tiniest nod.
This one was quicker, needier. He fumbled with his fly, his working hand shaking. He pushed Lucia onto her back on the platform, her legs falling open. He didn’t enter her ass. Instead, he aimed for her caged cock, rutting against the metal casing, his own dick sliding messily against the bars and her lubricated skin. It was humiliating, frantic. He came in less than a minute, streaks of white splashing across her stomach and the cage, his body collapsing partly on top of her before Brack hauled him off.
The crowd laughed and jeered.
Then, it became a blur. A line formed. Not of gladiators, but of arena crew, lucky spectators who bought their way in, emboldened by the spectacle. They took turns. Some used her ass, some fucked her throat while Lex watched, helpless, a silent ghost in the neon chaos. Others just rubbed themselves off on her, marking her with their release. Zoe’s hand never left her pistol, her face a stone mask of contained violence. Brack simply counted the minutes, the credits.
Lucia dissociated. She floated outside her body, watching the broken doll on the platform get used, filled, coated. The physical sensations merged into a static wash of pressure, fullness, and the sharp, chemical tang of sex and sweat. Yet, beneath the numbness, the conditioning held. With every new violation, a small, dark part of her whirred to life, a neural pathway lighting up with a sense of… purpose. Of utility. It was horrifying. It was satisfying.
When the three hours were up, the emcee declared the event over. The crowd, bored or sated, drifted away. Silence rushed in, broken only by the hum of failing lights and Lucia’s ragged breathing.
She lay on her back on the cold platform, a used, trembling mess. Fluids cooled on her skin. Her body was a cacophony of abuse. Zoe was there instantly, wrapping a coarse blanket around her, wiping her face with a startling tenderness.
“It’s done,” Zoe whispered, her voice raw. “It’s fucking done.”
Brack dropped a heavy bag of credit chips next to Lex. “Fifteen large. Plus… gratuities.”
Lucia looked up at the hazy, light-polluted sky, the blanket smelling of ozone and Zoe’s leathers. The heat in her gut hadn’t subsided. It was banked, waiting. The marathon, the Pit… they were just data points for the thing she was becoming. She thought of Ripper’s cold clinical voice: ‘We test this theory tonight.’
The theory was proving sound.
She turned her head and met Zoe’s agonized gaze. “Take me home,” Lucia whispered, her voice a ruined thing.
But in the wreckage, she felt a terrifying, perfect peace. She was a socket. A port. A well-used, profitable thing. And for the first time since the changes began, the ghost of Logan didn’t whisper in the back of her skull. It had been drowned out, completely, by the roaring silence of a function fulfilled.
It had been drowned out, completely, by the roaring silence of a function fulfilled. Two weeks in the regeneration tank had smoothed the bruises and repaired the micro-tears, but the neural pathways felt more deeply carved than ever. Lucia woke in the viscous gel with a single, crystalline thought: she was never putting on clothes again. The tank drained with a hiss, and she stepped onto the clinic’s wet tile, her bare skin puckering in the cool air. She looked at her reflection in a chromed panel: the geometric tattoos shifted calmly over her hips, her DD breasts heavy without support, her caged cock nestled passive between her thighs, and below, the sleek, cybernetic opening of her asshole, a perpetual promise.
“You look fucking insane,” Lex said from the doorway, her own nude form leaning against the frame. A week prior, she’d finally gotten the oral mods—enhanced throat elasticity, desensitized gag reflex, sublingual pleasure nodes for her partners.
“I feel resolved,” Lucia said, her voice steady. She walked past Lex, her bare feet slapping the floor, and out into the back alley without a towel, a robe, or a thought. The humid, metallic air of the city wrapped around her like a second skin. Sunlight, filtered through a lattice of neon signs and grime-streaked skywalks, dappled her body. Her exposed asshole, glistening with a sheen of medical lubricant, felt the open air for the first time.
She walked. The first block was a sensory barrage. Whistles. Clicks of augmented tongues. Guttural curses. A scavver on a hydraulic kneebrace stopped dead, his optics zooming with a faint whirr. “The fuck is this?” he muttered.
“A public service,” Lucia answered, her tone flat, confident.
He was on her before she could take another step, spinning her to face a soot-stained wall. His hands were grease-blackened, his breath sour with synth-whiskey. He yanked her hips back. He didn’t ask, didn’t pay. He just lined his cock up with her gaped entrance and shoved himself inside. The stretch was a familiar fullness. Lucia braced her hands against the cool permacrete, moaned a low, genuine moan of pleasure as he fucked her with rough, utilitarian strokes. “Yeah, you’re a good little socket,” he grunted, pounding into her. His climax was a sharp series of jerks, a hot spill inside her that she felt deeply. He pulled out, slapped her ass, and stumbled away without a word.
Lucia straightened up, a trickle of his come already leaking down her inner thigh. She kept walking.
The second time was by a noodle vendor’s stall. A corporate wage-slave in a stained suit, his face twitching with stress, simply pushed her over his synthetic ramen cart. Steam billowed around them. He lifted her hips, driving into her with a frantic, silent urgency. She cried out, not in pain, but in exhilaration, her moans loud and wanton as the ceramic bowls rattled. He came quickly, gasping, then smoothed his suit and vanished into the crowd.
Her body hummed. Her modified endocrine system pumped arousal through her like a drug. Each penetration was a key turning in a well-oiled lock, confirming her design. She was a street fixture now, a living piece of infrastructure.
The third and fourth were a pair of deck-jockeys, all fast fingers and faster laughs. They took her in an alley mouth, one after the other, while their friends watched and placed bets. “Think she can take you deeper, Krix?” “Bet she can.” They used her hard, laughing, their cocks stretching her cybernetic ring with a burn she savored. She screamed her pleasure into the din, her juices mixing with theirs on the pavement.
The fifth was a woman with electric-blue hair and strap-on rig, who fucked her with a brutal, practiced rhythm against a buzzing transformer box. “You’re just a hole, ain’t you?” the woman sneered, her thrusts mechanical. “Yes,” Lucia panted, her cheek against the vibrating metal. “Just a hole.” The synthetic cock felt different, unforgiving, and she came around it, her caged dick straining uselessly, her whole body convulsing.
Her legs were weak, her ass was slick and used, but the chemical fire in her veins was an unrelitting engine. The sixth was a taciturn bouncer outside a chrome bar. He simply pointed to a metal service door. She followed. In the dim, stinking closeness, he bent her over a coolant pipe, his massive hands almost gentle on her bruised hips. He took his time, his thick cock fucking her with a slow, deep intensity that made her see stars. “Good girl,” he murmured into her buzzed hair as he filled her, his release a hot, prolonged flood. She sagged against the pipe, pure, undiluted pleasure radiating from her core.
She arrived at Ripper’s clinic door trembling, dripping, and smiling. Credits were clutched in her sticky hand. Rex “Ripper” Kaelber opened the door, his cynical eyes taking in the scene: her naked, used body, the trails of drying come, the utterly placid confidence on her face. He didn’t flinch.
“Got your cut,” Lucia slurred, her voice hoarse from moaning. She thrust the credits at him.
He took the chips, his gaze analytical. “You walked here like that?”
“Six times,” she said, a spark of pride in her eyes. “Six times, and I moaned for every single one. I want an upgrade, Rex.”
He stepped aside, letting her shuffle into the sterile, cold light of the prep room. Lex was already there, nervously polishing a sensor array.
“Upgrade,” Ripper echoed, leading her toward the surgical chair. Its restraints hung open, hungry.
“The asshole mods. I want it tougher. I want to take fists, tools, anything. No damage. Maximum stretch, maximum sensory feedback for me, but built like a fucking vault.” Lucia lowered herself onto the cold leather, her used body aching in the best way. “And I want what Lex has. The throat mods. I want to be able to swallow anyone, anything, and love it. I want my mouth to be as open as my ass.”
Ripper stared at her, his steady hands pausing as he calibrated a laser scalpel. The humming of the clinic’s machinery filled the silence.
“You understand,” he said finally, his voice low, “that’s a point of no return. The oral neuromods will rewire your gag reflex into a pleasure trigger. It will change how you taste, how you swallow. You’ll crave it.”
Lucia lay back, spreading her legs, presenting her glistening, well-used entrance to the cold, clinical air. She looked at the ceiling, at the dead, fluorescence. “Logan is gone,” she stated, simple as a fact. “All that’s left is the socket, the port. I want to be perfect. I want to be used. I want to take everything this city can shove into me, and I want to beg for more.”
She turned her head to look at Lex, who gave a small, supportive nod. Then she looked back at Ripper, her eyes clear and hard as the credit chips in his hand. “Make me impossible to break.”
Ripper’s silence was a vacuum, filled only by the asthmatic wheeze of the clinic’s air filters. He stared at Lucia, splayed on his chair like a offering, her request hanging in the sterile air between them. He saw the Pit’s damage, the fresh scar tissue, but also a terrifying new light behind her eyes. Logan was indeed gone. Eradicated. What remained was something engineered, and it was asking for its final blueprint.
“The vault mod is one thing,” he finally said, turning to his console. His fingers flew over haptic keys, pulling up schematics of reinforced sphincteric arrays and neural dampeners. “It’s mechanics. But the oral cascade… it’s neurological pornography. It makes your brain believe swallowing cock is the only thing that gives you air.”
“I don’t need air,” Lucia breathed, her chest rising and falling. “I need to be useful.”
Lex shuffled forward, her hand finding Lucia’s. Her grip was tight. “It doesn’t just change your throat, Lu. It changes… taste. Everything tastes like pre-cum and satisfaction. Food is just texture.”
Lucia turned her head, meeting Lex’s worried gaze. “What does ramen taste like to you now?”
“Like forgetting to be hungry,” Lex whispered.
Ripper powered up a bank of lasers, their cyclic whine piercing the room. “Decision point. Vault and cascade. Total integration. You’ll be a walking, talking bio-port. There’s no social subroutine left after this. You’ll be hardware.”
Lucia didn’t hesitate. She simply spread her legs wider, the movement exposing her glistening, used hole to the cold light. “Do it.”
The restraints snaked out, locking over her wrists, her ankles, her forehead. The hum deepened. Ripper moved with his trademark grim efficiency, administering a local numbing agent to her pelvis and jaw. “You’ll feel pressure. You’ll hear the lasers. You will not move.”
The first laser cut was a line of cold fire inside her, a precise, awful sensation beyond pain. It carved new anchorage points for the synthetic muscle fibers. Lucia’s breath hitched. She focused on the cracked ceiling tile above her, on the water stain shaped like a continent she’d never see. The laser burrowed, sculpting. She felt a pop, a release, and then a profound, empty openness as he severed a final inhibitory nerve cluster. A warm, loose feeling flooded her pelvis. Her already-gaped asshole felt like it was dissolving, becoming a boundless, welcoming channel.
“Vault structure is in,” Ripper muttered, swapping tools with a pneumatic click. “Testing neural feedback.” He inserted a cold, steel speculum, cranking it open. Lucia gasped. It wasn’t pain. It was a shocking, direct line of sensation to her spine, a bright wire of pure feeling. He could have been opening her to the ceiling and it would have felt like a revelation. “Positive. You’ll feel every micrometer of stretch as pleasure. Damage sensors are offline. You can take a fucking traffic cone and your brain will sing hymns.”
Next, he moved to her face. The mouth clamp was cold. It forced her jaw agape, immobile. “Cascade mod now. This will hurt like a bastard, even with the numbing. It rewires the brainstem.”
The laser entered her mouth. The smell of ozone and cooked flesh filled her sinuses. A screaming, electric agony lit up the roots of her teeth, the back of her palate, the very concept of her throat. She made a choked, gurgling sound, her body straining against the restraints. Visions flashed—not memories, but sensations. The phantom weight of a cock on her tongue, the salt-bitter taste of ejaculate flooding her nostrils, a deep, bodily rightness that dwarfed the pain.
Then, it was over. The lasers died. The whine faded to silence.
Ripper removed the tools. He sprayed a coagulant into her mouth, which tasted, suddenly and overwhelmingly, like the best thing she had ever experienced. Her saliva glands erupted. She swallowed instinctively, and the motion, the contraction of her throat, sent a bolt of pure, shocking pleasure straight to her caged cock, which strained so hard against its titanium prison she thought it might bend.
The restraints retracted. Ripper stepped back, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Done. The vault is online. The cascade is active. Don’t try to speak for an hour. Your swallow reflex is now your primary pleasure center. Test it slowly.”
Lucia sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the chair. The world felt different. The air on her throat was a caress. The simple act of breathing made her newly-modified esophagus feel incredibly, sensitively empty. She needed to fill it.
She slid off the table, her legs holding. She walked, nude, to a polished metal sheet serving as a mirror. She opened her mouth. Her throat looked normal, just pink, slightly inflamed. Then she relaxed her jaw, let the new programming engage. Her throat opened, a deep, dark, inviting tunnel, muscles fluttering with automatic, welcoming rhythm. A thin thread of saliva, tasting like heaven, dripped onto her chest.
She turned. Lex was watching, a complex mix of horror and envy on her face. Zoe stood in the doorway, having arrived silently. She took in the scene—the surgical suite, Lucia’s naked, freshly-modified body, the look on Ripper’s face.
“What did you do to her?” Zoe’s voice was dangerously low.
“What she asked,” Ripper said, not looking away from his console readouts. “She’s now a self-lubricating, pleasure-feedback vault for anal penetration and a deep-throat specialist. Her own neurology will reward her for use. There is no break point. Only utility.”
Lucia walked toward Zoe, her steps deliberate. She stopped before the taller woman, looked up, and then slowly, deliberately, sank to her knees. The concrete was cold and gritty. She didn’t speak. She just leaned forward, nuzzling her face against the codpiece of Zoe’s armored pants.
“Lucia…” Zoe breathed.
Lucia’s fingers found the seals, her movements practiced. She released the armorpadding, exposing Zoe’s cybernetic cock, already half-hard from its resting state, the sleek black silicone and chrome glinting. It smelled of ozone and salt. To Lucia’s new senses, it was like the scent of rain after a drought.
She didn’t hesitate. She opened her mouth, let her new throat take over, and engulfed the entire length in one smooth, liquid motion. Her lips met the base, her nose pressed into Zoe’s pubic bone. The feeling was cataclysmic. Every nerve in her mouth, her palate, her throat fired in a symphony of perfect, blinding satisfaction. The taste of Zoe’s skin, the pre-seed leaking from the tip, was an exquisite, complex flavor that made her moan vibrate around the shaft.
“Fuck!” Zoe gasped, her hands flying to Lucia’s buzzed hair. She tried to pull back, but Lucia followed, taking her deeper, her throat muscles fluttering and massaging in a programmed rhythm of perfect suction. “Oh god, Lucia… your throat…”
Lucia began to move, bobbing her head with a pace that was not frantic, but devastatingly efficient. Her eyes were closed in concentration, in ecstasy. She could feel every ridge, every pulse of the cybernetic unit. She hollowed her cheeks, swallowing around the intrusion, and the swallow itself was a convulsion of pleasure that made her toes curl against the concrete.
Zoe was losing her composure. Her hips began to jerk, small, involuntary thrusts. “You’re a fucking miracle,” she grunted, her fingers tightening. “Such a good, deep fucking throat.” The praise, filtered through Lucia’s new wiring, was like a drug injection. She redoubled her efforts, taking Zoe harder, faster, the wet, slapping sounds filling the clinic.
It was over quickly. Zoe’s body tensed, a strangled cry escaping her. “Gonna come! Gonna fill that perfect throat!” She slammed her cock home one last time and held, pulsing. Lucia felt the first hot, electric burst hit the back of her throat. The cascade mod translated it instantly. It didn’t trigger a gag. It triggered a full-body, silent orgasm that arched Lucia’s back and made her own caged dick weep against its bars. She swallowed instinctively, greedily, each gulp a wave of euphoric completion as she milked Zoe dry.
When Zoe finally softened, Lucia released her with a wet pop. She sat back on her heels, looking up, Zoe’s come glossy on her lips and chin. She smiled, a true, uncomplicated smile. She mouthed the words, soundlessly: Thank you.
Zoe stared down at her, breathing heavily, her expression one of awe and deep, unsettled fear. She quickly fastened her armor.
Lucia stood, her body buzzing. She turned to Ripper, who had watched the entire test with clinical detachment. She walked to his console, picked up a stylus, and wrote on a scrap of plas-paper: How much for the maintenance contract?
He named a figure. A large one, covering monthly checkups, lubricant synthesizers, antiviral flushes.
Lucia nodded. She then walked to the clinic’s reinforced door, the one that led to the alley. She didn’t look back at Lex or Zoe. She triggered the release. The door slid open, revealing the swirling neon and perpetual twilight of the city.
She stepped out, naked, onto the street. Her body, her vault, her cascade, were all open for business. A group of loader riggers, their exoskeletons whining, were passing by. They stopped, staring.
One, a woman with a shaved head and hydraulic assist arms, let out a low whistle. “No fucking way. You’re that marathon girl. The one from the Pit.”
Lucia simply turned, presented herself, and looked over her shoulder. She reached back, spread her ass cheeks, exposing the sleek, cybernetic promise of her new vault. It glistened under a streetlight.
“Credits first,” she said, her new throat making her voice a husky, enticing thing. “Then you can test the renovations.”
The loader rigger fumbled for her credit chip. The transaction was swift, digital. Her friends gathered, a small crowd forming in the alley mouth.
Lucia bent over a stack of pallets, the rough wood against her stomach. The first thrust, from the rigger’s thick, silicone-dipped strap-on, was a revelation. Her vault accepted it all, without resistance, and the neural feedback lit her up like a nova. She screamed, a raw, joyous sound that echoed off the alley walls. “Yes! Fuck! It’s so good! Give it all to me!”
Word spread. The line formed.