Chapter 132: Ruben & Alisa - Sixth Couple
The transport sphere deposited them at the apex of the Skyglass Spire with a silent sigh of depressurizing air. The door irised open, not onto a corridor, but directly into the heart of their gilded cage.
The penthouse was a monument to sterile luxury. Vast, floor-to-ceiling windows presented a nauseating panorama of Elarion’s glittering districts, the light of the artificial moon painting everything in cool silver. The air smelled of filtered nothingness and new polymer. The main living space was a study in minimalism: a long sofa of pale grey, a low table made from a single piece of fused crystal, empty shelves awaiting a life that hadn’t been lived. Doors led off to other rooms—a kitchen, a bath, a sleeping chamber. Their footsteps on the polished onyx floor were the only sounds.
Ruben walked in first, his shoulders tense beneath the formal black tunic. He stopped in the center of the room, his back to her, and simply stared out at the city.
Alisa lingered at the threshold, the phantom weight of the ceremonial gown gone, replaced by a simple, draped shift of soft grey fabric they’d given her for the transition. Her wrist still felt the ghost of the emerald cord.
“It’s real,” Ruben said, not turning. His voice was flat, stripped of its usual reckless edge.
“Yes.” Her own voice was small in the vast space.
He finally turned. His face was all hard lines and shadows in the lunar light. “We should… talk. About how this works.”
“How what works?” she asked, a faint tremor of defiance in her tone. “The mandatory part? The cohabitation? The…” she couldn’t say it.
“All of it,” he interjected, running a hand through his dark hair. He gestured around them. “This is it. This is the prize for losing. For surviving. We’re stuck with it. And each other.”
He began to pace, a caged animal mapping its new enclosure. “We have resources. A stupid amount of money. This place. We have to be seen together, occasionally. Public appearances. It’s part of the… consolidation.” He spat the word out. “We need rules.”
Alisa wrapped her arms around herself. “Rules.”
“Yeah. Rules. Your space, my space. Schedules. We don’t have to pretend to like each other. But we can’t fucking kill each other, either. It’s a practical arrangement.”
“A practical arrangement,” she echoed, nodding slowly. The numbness was returning, a welcome anesthetic. “Okay. We can be… roommates. With a legal contract.”
“Right.” He stopped pacing and looked directly at her. The tension in his jaw was visible. “But there’s one part of the contract that isn’t just about sharing a fucking viewscreen.” He hesitated, the words sticking in his throat. “Arkan specified it. The consolidation. The marriage… it has to be consumed.”
The words hung in the filtered air. Consumed. It was a clinical, awful word. It made her think of engines and data, not bodies.
Alisa’s breath hitched. She looked past him, out at the endless, cold city. She thought of Miran’s devastated face, frozen behind the barrier. That was over. That was erased. This was the new line of code written over her life.
A strange, hollow calm settled over her. The fight was gone. There was only the next logical step in this equation.
“Fine,” she said, her voice devoid of all inflection. She met his eyes. “Let’s consume it then, husband.”
The title, spoken from her lips in that dead tone, was a slap. Ruben flinched almost imperceptibly. For a moment, she saw the old Ruben, the one who’d laugh in the face of such a grim directive, who’d find a way to spit in the eye of the compulsion. But that man had been eliminated too. He was just as bound as she was.
He gave a single, sharp nod. “The bedroom, I guess.”
He turned and walked toward one of the doors. It slid open at his approach. Alisa followed, her movements automatic. The bedroom was more of the same: a wide, low platform of a bed dressed in stark white linens, another wall of glass. It felt like a medical suite.
Ruben stood by the bed, his back to her again, as if unable to watch her enter this space. He began to unclasp the fastenings of his tunic, his movements stiff.
Alisa stood just inside the door. She reached for the hem of her soft shift and pulled it upward, over her head, letting it fall to the floor without a sound. The air was a cool kiss on her naked skin. She was exposed, but the exposure felt theoretical, like a diagram in a textbook.
Hearing the soft rustle of fabric, Ruben turned. His eyes scanned her body—the gentle curves, the small breasts, the fair skin—with no heat, only a grim assessment. He finished removing his tunic, then his trousers, standing before her just as naked, just as exposed. His body was a map of old injuries and disciplined muscle, tensed for a fight that wasn’t coming.
“Lie down,” he said, the words not a command, but a bleak instruction from a manual.
Alisa moved to the bed and lay on her back on the cool linen, staring at the smooth, featureless ceiling. She heard him climb onto the mattress, felt it dip beside her. She closed her eyes.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing, both carefully controlled. Then she felt his hand, rough and warm, on her thigh. It was not a caress. It was placement.
His touch moved upward, over her hip, across her belly. His palm was calloused. He touched her as if checking the specifications of a piece of equipment. His fingers found the junction of her legs, probed without ceremony. She was dry, unready, a closed system.
“Fuck,” he muttered, more to himself. He shifted over her, his weight settling between her legs. She could feel the hard, blunt pressure of his cock against her.
“This is going to hurt,” he said, his voice low and coarse by her ear.
“I know,” she whispered to the ceiling.
He spat into his own hand, a crude, functional lubricant. She heard the wet sound as he slicked himself. He positioned himself, the head of his cock nudging against her tight entrance.
“You’re my wife,” he growled, the words filthy and empty. “This is what wives are for. To be fucked. To be used. Open up for me.”
The dirty talk was a performance, a script he seemed to think was required. It hung in the air, ugly and absurd.
He pushed.
A sharp, tearing burn. Alisa gasped, her eyes flying open, her fingers clawing at the sheets. Her body resisted, a virgin barrier giving way not to passion but to decree. He was thick, and her body was unforgiving.
“Tight little cunt,” he grunted, pushing deeper, the friction brutal. “So fucking tight for your new husband. Take it. All of it.”
He shoved the rest of the way in with one final, merciless thrust, sheathing himself fully inside her. She cried out, a short, sharp sound of pure, uncomplicated pain. Her legs trembled. He was buried in her, a foreign object claiming interior space.
He began to move. It was a mechanical, punishing rhythm. In and out, with no attempt at gentleness or pleasure. The wet, slapping sounds of their bodies meeting filled the silent room. Each thrust jolted her up the bed. His breath was hot and ragged against her neck.
“That’s it,” he rasped, his voice a harsh monotone. “Your pussy is mine now. Law says so. You feel that? You feel me owning this?”
Alisa didn’t answer. She had floated away, up to the ceiling. She watched from above as the man named Ruben fucked the woman named Alisa. She saw her own face, turned to the side, eyes wide and unblinking, tears leaking from the corners to wet the white linen. She saw the tense, angry set of his back, the driven piston of his hips.
It was a transaction. A sealing of a deal. A consumption.
His pace grew frantic, losing its grim rhythm, devolving into a raw, desperate chase for his own conclusion. The crude talk died, replaced by guttural, animal sounds. He fucked her like he was trying to exorcise something, to pound the reality of their situation into both of them.
“Fuck… fuck… gonna…” he choked out.
With a final, deep plunge and a shudder that racked his entire frame, he came. She felt the hot, sudden flood inside her, a violation that was weirdly impersonal. He held himself there, pulsing, for a few seconds, then collapsed on top of her, his sweat-slick skin heavy.
He rolled off almost immediately, leaving her empty and stinging. They lay side by side, not touching, staring at the ceiling. The only sound was their labored breathing slowly returning to normal.
After a minute, Ruben spoke, his voice now just tired. “It’s done. Consummated. Legally binding in all the ways they care about.”
Alisa didn’t respond. She could feel his spend beginning to leak out of her, a warm, unwelcome trickle. She was sore in a deep, aching way.
“Bathroom’s through there,” he said, pointing vaguely without looking.
She finally moved, sitting up slowly, every muscle protesting. She swung her legs off the bed, stood on shaky limbs, and walked naked across the room to the door he’d indicated. She didn’t look back at him.
Under the sterile, needle-sharp spray of the shower, she scrubbed at her skin until it was red. She couldn’t scrub the feeling away. The deed was done. They were the sixth married couple of TDC Season 2. The union was real, in the only way that mattered to the powers that had engineered it.
When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, he was dressed again in simple sweats, standing at the window. He didn’t turn.
“I’ll take the couch tonight,” he said.
Alisa walked silently to the bed, pulled back the clean, untouched side, and slid beneath the covers. She lay on her side, facing away from the window, away from him, curling into herself.
“Goodnight,” she said to the wall.
A long pause.
“Yeah,” he replied, the word barely audible. “Night.”
He turned off the main light, plunging the room into the monochrome glow of the city below. He left the room, the door sighing shut behind him.
Alisa lay in the dark, in the bed where the law had been fucked into her, and waited for a sleep that did not come. The consolidation was complete.