Chapter 11: Chapter 11
The Uber dropped him at the tower at seven forty, ten minutes early, because Derek had been unable to sit in his apartment any longer. He'd douched at home without being told to. He'd shaved everything twice. He'd spent twenty minutes in front of the bathroom mirror practicing the walk, spine loose, shoulders down, eyes lowered to chest height, the way Kai's module had drilled into him. He'd hated himself for practicing. He'd practiced anyway.
The lobby was full of them. Suits, briefcases, coffee, the low roll of Mandarin bouncing off the marble. Derek kept his head down and his spine long and felt every one of them pass through his peripheral vision like heat lamps. A tall one waited for the elevator, charcoal suit, hair clipped short at the sides and full on top, a leather satchel riding one broad shoulder. His calves filled out his trouser socks. Derek's eyes did the thing they always did now, dropped to the man's hands, the long fingers around the coffee cup, and painted the rest of him in without permission. Chest like a door. Heavy cock, swinging soft against a thick thigh, because cocks that big always hung heavy, Derek was sure of it, he'd built an entire interior museum of them in six days. The man glanced at Derek once, nothing in it, no recognition, no interest, and stepped into the elevator first and let the doors close on Derek's face.
Huo Xiao was waiting at the basement locker room door. Same pressed shirt, same easy authority, sleeves buttoned at the wrist this morning, and Derek's stomach dropped through the floor the moment he saw him, because last night Huo Xiao had been on a stone table, naked, hips driving into him, and the dream was still wet in Derek's head.
"Morning," Huo Xiao said. "In. Clothes off."
Derek obeyed. Folded his jeans over the bench, tucked his shirt in on top, stood in his tiny cage and his pale, thinning skin while Huo Xiao unlocked the cabinet and took out the clipboard and the tape.
Huo Xiao worked the same as always. Height first, back against the wall mark, flat hand pressing Derek's head down. Then the tape across his chest, his waist, each thigh, his wrist, his neck. His fingers were quick and impersonal and they smelled faintly of soap and Derek stood there with his ears burning, remembering in horrible detail the dream body above him, the smooth dark chest, the weight of the man's balls slapping him, the sound Derek had made in the dream, the sound he'd wanted to make.
"You're down another pound and a half," Huo Xiao said, writing. "Arms are thinner. Good progress."
"Thank you," Derek said. His voice came out cracked.
Huo Xiao looked up at him then, one eyebrow slightly raised, and Derek's whole body flushed, because he was standing in front of the man he'd dreamed about with a wet dream's worth of shame all over his face and no cage on earth could hide it. Huo Xiao's gaze moved over him once, clinical, taking in the flush, and Derek waited for something, a question, a smirk, anything. Huo Xiao just wrote it down. Something in a column. He turned away and tapped the table. "Douching room. Go."
The technicians were already there. The taller one was filling the tank, his navy shirt tucked today, and it showed everything Derek had learned about his body by heart. Lean waist, long back, the shoulder blades shifting under cotton like wings folded flat. His buzzed scalp had a clean shine at the crown. He glanced at Derek entering and said something short in Chinese to the shorter one, and the shorter one laughed, low, one syllable of amusement, and Derek's face went hot again because he couldn't know what they'd said and every cell in him assumed it was about him, about the dream he'd had, about his hole, about something they could see that he couldn't.
He bent over the padded bench. He knew the position now without instruction, elbows down, knees apart, forehead resting on his stacked hands, and he hated how smooth the motion was, how practiced, like a dog that had learned a trick so well it forgot there had ever been a before.
The lube was cold. The nozzle was one of the big ones this morning, fat and ridged, and the taller technician pressed it in without pausing, and Derek's trained hole just took it, swallowed the whole fat length of it on the first push, and the technician made a small sound of approval, one note, and said something to the other one. The shorter one answered, and this time Derek caught a word he knew from the surveys. Song. Loose. They were talking about how loose he was. Casually. The way they'd talk about water pressure.
The water came. Warm, filling him, his belly swelling with it, and the taller technician held the nozzle deep and pressed on Derek's lower back with his free hand, flattening him, and Derek breathed through it, four counts in, four counts out, Kai's rhythm running underneath everything now like a heartbeat installed in him. Hold. Release. The water crashed out of him and he gripped the bench and shook.
Twice more. On the third fill the shorter technician took over, and his hands were enormous, Derek felt them like paddles on his hips, and he thought about those hands in the dream, on the rope, on the belt, and his caged nub tried to stir and got nowhere, just wept a little into the steel.
"Done," the taller one said, in English, and patted Derek's hip once. Not kindness. All done.
Derek cleaned up, toweled off, and went back to the locker room where his training clothes hung. The skinny jeans with the cut-out seat. The threadbare white t-shirt. He stepped into the jeans and pulled them up over his raw, cleaned hole and felt the air of the locker room moving directly against it, and the jeans rode low on his shrinking hips, last notch of the belt cinched, and he caught his reflection in the mirrored door and saw what they were building. Narrower. Bonier. A gray-faced little thing in tiny jeans with its ass open for business.
Kai's voice, warm, uninvited: "Look at that. Getting closer every day, buddy."
The training room was warm and dim. The chair waited in the center, straps hanging open, and beside it on the machine arm sat the dildo, and Derek's breath left him when he saw it. It was bigger than last time. Noticeably bigger. Nine inches of matte black rubber and fat as a forearm, wider than anything that had gone into him, the veins of it molded in raised ridges, the head blunt as a fist.
The technicians didn't comment on it. They walked him to the chair, sat him down, and went to work on the straps with the speed of men who had done this fifty times. Ankles first, spread wide. Then the wrist cuffs, then the chest harness, then the sensors, the lie-detecting straps around his forearm and his chest, cool adhesive pads kissing his skin, and Derek felt the small humiliation of being hooked to a machine that would know if he ever lied about wanting this.
The poppers cannula went under his nose, looped over his ears, and the taller technician checked the valve, turned it, and the first breath of it hit Derek like a warm hand closing over the back of his skull. His head swam. His hole went from relaxed to liquid in about four seconds, and the technicians watched the monitor, watched the reading spike, and exchanged a few words. The shorter one smiled. It was the first full smile Derek had ever seen on that carved face and it went straight through him, and he hated that it did, hated that a smile from a man who would never speak to him in his own language landed in his chest like a gift.
The machine arm moved. The head of the huge dildo touched his hole and rested there, blunt and enormous, and the machine did not rush. It pressed. Slowly. The pressure built and built, his ring stretching around it, wider than ever, past the point where the old him would have screamed, and the poppers took the burn and filed it down to a deep warm ache, and then the crown popped through.
Derek moaned. Loud, involuntary, echoing off the tile.
The technicians laughed. Not cruel, exactly. Amused. The shorter one said something in Chinese and the taller one replied, and they kept talking while the machine fed inches into him, unhurried, one thick ridged inch at a time, and their conversation rose and fell like men discussing a delivery schedule. Derek hung in the straps and took it. Five inches. Six. The molded veins dragged over his prostate and his whole body jerked and a thread of thin fluid leaked from his caged nub and seeped through his tight briefs and skintight jeans, leaving a tiny dark spot just below the zippered fly. Seven inches. His inner ring resisted, fluttered, and the machine simply kept pressing, patient as water, and the poppers breathed into him and something in him let go at the root, and the widest part slid through.
Eight inches. He was babbling now, he could hear himself, small sounds, thank you, oh god, thank you, and no one was listening. Nine. The base touched him. The hilt. All of it, buried to the root, his hole stretched around the widest shaft of his life, his insides remade around a column of black rubber, and the machine stopped and simply held him there.
The taller technician checked a readout, nodded once, and said a word. Done. They gathered their things. The shorter one glanced at Derek on the way out, impaled, trembling, eyes glazed, and looked away with the total indifference of a man passing a vending machine, and the door clicked shut behind them.
The machine held Derek full and still in the warm dim room. He breathed. The poppers kept coming, a soft steady hiss under his nose, and the room softened and swam and the fullness became the whole world. No VR screen this time. No Kai on a beach telling him what he was. Just the chair, the straps, the deep pressure in his gut, and the silence.
The door opened.
Zhang Ming walked in with his clipboard. Checked shirt, sleeves rolled, square glasses catching the low light, his thin frame unhurried, his face the same flat clinical calm as always. He pulled the second chair, the facing one, across the floor with a scrape, sat down, crossed one ankle over his knee, and settled in like a man at a patient's bedside.
He looked at Derek. Derek, stuffed to the hilt, wired to lie detectors, drugged to the gills, held in a steel frame with his ass in the air and his eyes wet.
Zhang Ming uncapped his pen.
"Good morning, Derek."
Derek tried to say it back. It came out as a croak, half a syllable, and the dildo chose that moment to shift a millimeter inside him, settling deeper against his prostate, and his croak turned into a shudder.
Zhang Ming reached into his shirt pocket and produced a small black device, a voice recorder, and set it on the chair's armrest within Derek's sight. He pressed a button. A small red light came on.
"This session is being recorded," he said. "Standard procedure. You'll answer in full sentences when you can."
He wrote something first, a line on the clipboard, then looked up over the square frames of his glasses.
"Last night's cannabis was not ordinary cannabis."
Derek's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"It was laced with a hallucinogenic compound. A strong one. We selected the dose carefully. It should have produced vivid, memorable dreams. Detailed ones." Zhang Ming's pen tapped the clipboard once. "We would like to know about those dreams now. They help us build future training modules. Do you understand?"
"You," Derek said. His tongue was thick, slow, the poppers softening every edge of him. "You drugged me."
"We provided you a substance. You smoked it. You consented to the program on day one, clause fourteen, ingestion and administration." Zhang Ming said it the way he read weather. "The sensors on your arm will tell me if you lie. So I'd like you to start simply. Do you remember your dreams?"
Derek did. God help him, he did. Every frame of them was sitting behind his eyes in high resolution, the stone douching room, the wall, the kitchen, the belt, the cocks. And underneath the memory was the fullness, nine inches of black rubber holding his whole center open while he sat strapped in front of a man with a clipboard discussing his unconscious mind like quarterly numbers.
"Yes," he whispered.
"Speak out loud, full sentences."
"Yes, I remember them."
Zhang Ming wrote. The recorder's red light burned steadily.
"Tell me about the first dream. Where did it take place?"
Derek's face was burning. He could feel the heat in his ears, down his neck, across his thin chest. The poppers hissed gently under his nose and the room stayed soft and swaying, and somewhere in the drug-warmth was a horrible little comfort, the sense that none of this was quite real, so he could say it.
"A douching room," he said. "But it was made of stone. The walls kept... changing. Different materials."
"Changing how?"
"Like the room couldn't decide what it was. The tiles went smooth, then rough, then like wet clay." His eyes were fixed on the floor between his spread feet, on the small dried spot where his fluid had dripped. "It was the douching room but it was old. Ancient. Like a temple or something."
Zhang Ming's pen moved.
"Who was in it?"
"The technicians. Both of them. The tall one and the shorter one."
"And what did the technicians do in the dream?"
The question was so flat, so procedural, and Derek's hole clenched around the huge shaft involuntarily and the machine registered it, some readout ticking, and he saw Zhang Ming glance at the monitor and note it.
"They douched me," Derek said. His voice was barely there. "Over and over. With bigger nozzles than the real ones. They kept filling me and I kept..." He stopped. The lie detector lay quiet against his forearm, patient.
"Kept what?"
"Releasing. Emptying. They didn't stop. They just kept doing it and I kept taking it." His breath was going ragged. "They were laughing. Talking about me in Chinese. I couldn't understand it but I knew it was about me."
"Were you distressed in the dream?"
The sensors hummed. Derek opened his mouth to say yes, that it was terrifying, humiliating, and the truth was already climbing his throat before the lie could form.
"No," he said, and the word came out wrecked. "I wasn't distressed. I liked it. I wanted them to keep going."
Zhang Ming wrote for a long moment. The pen scratched.
"Thank you. That's useful." He didn't look up. "What happened next?"
Derek's stomach dropped. "Huo Xiao entered."
"What did Huo Xiao do?"
And here it was, the dream from last night standing in the room with them, Huo Xiao in his pressed shirt down the hall, Huo Xiao's soap smell on his fingers this morning, and Derek was going to have to say it out loud with the recorder running.
"He took his clothes off," Derek said. "There was a clothes rack. His clothes were hanging on it and he took each piece off slowly. Shirt. Then everything. He was..." He swallowed. "He was beautiful. He was built. Smooth chest, dark, big shoulders, and he was..." He couldn't. He physically could not finish the sentence.
Zhang Ming waited. The recorder's red light did not blink. The dildo sat in Derek like a verdict.
"He was what, Derek?"
"He was hard," Derek whispered. "And he fucked me. On a stone table in the middle of the room. While the technicians watched and kept douching me." His eyes were wet now, tears sliding warm down his cheeks, and his body, his traitor, ruined, remade body, was rippling around the nine inches of rubber with something that was not grief. "He fucked me and I arched my back so he could fuck me deeper. In the dream I did. I wanted it deeper."
The pen scratched. Zhang Ming's face did not change at all.
"Describe how you felt during it."
"Full," Derek said. The poppers breathed and the word came out on a long exhale. "So full I forgot my own name. That's what I answered in the survey, that's what I'd dream about, and I did, I forgot it, I didn't know who I was, I was just..." His voice broke. "Just a hole on a table with him inside it."
"And when Instructor Kai appeared?"
Derek's head came up a little. "How did you know Kai was in it?"
"The hypnotic induction of the tutorials ensures that in dreams induced by our patented hallucinogen, your instructor will eventually make an appearance.” Zhang Ming briefly smiled, a subtle but natural expression of pride in his company’s scientific breakthrough. “That is, if the specimen has shown a positive physiological reaction to the Instructor, and of course, according to your file, you already have.”Zhang Ming adjusted his glasses. "What did Kai say to you?"
"The dream went to the Great Wall. He took me there. He was lifting weights in the dream, at the wall, like it was a gym." Derek was crying openly now, tears dripping off his jaw onto the chest harness, and each word came out softer and more drugged and more true. "He called me a loser faggot. He made me say it about myself. He made me say no one will ever love me. That no one will ever fuck me. That I'm a hole and that's the best thing I could be."
"Did you resist?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it was true." The sensors didn't even flicker. The truth came through clean. "It's true. That's why I couldn't resist. He was just saying the real thing."
Zhang Ming wrote a long line. He underlined it.
"How did you feel when you woke from that dream?"
Derek thought of the gray light, the wet pillow, the hitch in his chest.
"Crying," he said. "I was crying. And leaking. The cage was wet."
"Were you glad to be awake?"
The pause stretched. The lie detector strap lay cool against his forearm, waiting, and Derek looked at the floor and told the truth with the recorder running.
"No."
"Say it as a full sentence, please."
"I was not glad to be awake." His voice cracked on 'awake'. "I wanted to stay in the dream.”
Zhang Ming wrote that down. He drew a box around it. Then he turned a page on the clipboard.
“Did you have any other dreams?” Zhang Ming asked.
“Yes.” Derek responded, “I had one more.”
"Tell me about the second dream."
The kitchen. Derek's whole body flushed hot again, the welts of the dream ghosting across his real skin, and the machine shifted inside him as his muscles clenched.
"The cafeteria kitchen," he said. "Behind the serving line. I was in my training clothes and the cooks were there. The tall one and the younger one with the scar."
"What happened in the kitchen?"
"They got angry at me. For being there, I think. The tall cook grabbed my arm and spun me around and roped my wrists behind my back. He was fast. He just did it, like I was a package." Derek's breath was shallow. "Then he belted me. Over the counter. With his belt. I was bent over and my jeans had the hole in the seat and my ass was bare and up in the air and every cook in the kitchen could see my hole and he just kept hitting me."
"How many strokes?"
"I don't know. More than I could count. Five, six, more. I lost track. I was screaming."
"Were you trying to escape?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Derek looked at Zhang Ming, at the flat gray eyes behind the lenses, at the man's thin wrists and rolled sleeves and total unbothered calm, and the poppers poured another warm wave through his skull.
"Because I knew I deserved it,” he said. "I wasn’t supposed to ask for other food, I wasn’t supposed to go in the kitchen. I was being punished for doing the wrong thing.” Derek paused for a moment, realizing there was something more to it. “And, umm, I deserved it just for being me. I was being punished for existing."
The pen moved.
"What did the cooks do to you?"
The recorder light burned. Derek's caged nub wept another thread of thin fluid that soaked through his jeans , and he said it.
"They used my mouth. The young one put his cock in my mouth and fucked my throat. It was the first cock I'd ever actually seen and it was huge, bigger than anything I'd imagined, and he just used me. Didn't look at me. Looked at the timers on the wall." His voice dropped to almost nothing. "And the tall one kept belting me, and then they switched. The young one went to my ass. He fucked me from behind while the tall one fucked my mouth. At the same time. Both of them. And they were talking over my head in Chinese like I wasn't even there."
"Were you in pain?"
"Yes."
"Were you suffering?"
The question was surgical. Derek hung in the straps, impaled, wired, drugged, and the answer came up from somewhere below his ribs.
"No. It hurt and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was moaning. They could hear it around the cock in my throat and they laughed." His face was a mess of tears. "I moaned because it felt like the whole point of me."
"What happened at the end?"
"The young cook came inside me. Deep. I felt it, the heat, all of it. Then the tall one came down my throat. I swallowed it. All of it." Derek swallowed now, at the memory, an involuntary echo. "Then they just went back to work. Untied me and went back to cooking. Nobody said anything to me. I was on the floor and they were ladling sauce."
"And after? In the dream or after waking?"
"After, I woke up. Face in the pillow. My hips were moving. Little rocking movements. I was leaking through the cage, this thin watery stuff, and my ass stung even though there were no welts." Derek's eyes were wet and glazed and the poppers had made everything slow and warm and honest. "I sat on the toilet and I thought about the whole dream and I..."
"Finish the sentence."
"I knew I hadn't wanted to wake up," Derek said. "Either one. I would have stayed in both of them forever."
Zhang Ming set down his pen. He looked at Derek for a long moment, at the small drugged man strung open on a machine, at the wet face and the thin chest and the stretched hole around nine inches of black rubber, and something almost like satisfaction crossed his flat expression.
"Thank you, Derek. This is very valuable material."
"It's..." Derek's head swam. "It's humiliating."
"Yes," Zhang Ming said. "That's part of why it's valuable." He tapped the recorder, glancing at the red light. "The arousal readings are elevated. You're enjoying describing it."
The sensors knew it. The machine knew it. Derek's hole rippled around the huge shaft and the readout ticked and Zhang Ming wrote down a number.
"Please," Derek whispered. It wasn't clear what he was asking for.
"The dreams will inform the next modules," Zhang Ming said, standing, collecting his clipboard. "The stone room. The kitchen. Kai's phrases. They'll all be used. You dream in your place now, and that means the training has reached the level we wanted." He picked up the recorder and pressed stop, and the red light went out. "I need to take this data and enter it into the computer system. Beginning with the next module, the program will start to become responsive to your words and actions. We have installed cameras and microphones in the VR headset and around the room, and the program now uses AI to respond to you in real time. But I need to enter this data and make a few calibrations first. You'll hold there for another twenty minutes. Then the technicians will give you the new headset and the next training module will begin."
He walked to the door. His thin frame, the checked shirt, the square glasses, the same unhurried clinical stride he'd had for every survey, a man who had just recorded Derek's secret mind for later use and was already thinking about lunch.
"Zhang Ming," Derek said, before he could stop himself.
Zhang Ming paused at the door. Turned his head.
"The weed," Derek said. His voice was small and wrecked and full. "Was it good? The dreams. For the, for the program. Were they what you wanted?"
The corner of Zhang Ming's mouth moved. It was the second time this session that Derek had seen him smile. Derek had never heard Zhang Ming speak so much before, never seen his face betray a single true emotion, and it was glorious. The whole room seemed suddenly brighter.
"Better than expected," Zhang Ming said, and opened the door, and let it close behind him.
The room hummed. The dildo held Derek full to the root in the warm dim light, and the poppers hissed softly on, and Derek hung there alone with the knowledge that his own sleeping mind had just been harvested, that every shameful theater of the night would come back to him in daylight, on a screen, in Instructor Kai's voice, built from his own recorded confessions.
He breathed. Four counts in, four counts out.
His hole squeezed around the shaft and he couldn't stop it, and he didn't want to, and somewhere down the hall he could hear the technicians laughing about something, and his body waited for them like a door left open.
The minutes crawled. Derek counted them by the hiss of the poppers and the slow throb of his heart against the chest harness. The dildo held him open the whole time, nine inches of black rubber lodged to the root, and his body gave up fighting it somewhere around the tenth minute. His muscles went slack around the shaft. His breathing found the four count rhythm Kai had taught him, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and the fullness became something close to comfort.
His mind drifted anyway. It went where it always went now. To the hallway outside, where the technicians were laughing. To the cafeteria two floors up, where the businessmen were eating. To the cooks, the attendant, Li Wei. To the memory of Huo Xiao's hands on his hips this morning, the soap smell, the weight of him standing close while Derek stood stripped on the scale. He had dreamed about that man. He had dreamed about Huo Xiao's body in detail he had invented himself, the smooth dark chest, the heavy cock, and now every time Huo Xiao walked him down a corridor Derek would see it behind his eyes and burn with shame. And Huo Xiao would never know. Or worse, Zhang Ming would tell him.
A wave of heat went through him, horror and lust braided into one cord, and his hole squeezed around the rubber and the readout ticked somewhere he couldn't see.
The door opened at last.
The two technicians came in talking, and this time Derek looked at them because he couldn't help it. The taller one first, the buzzed scalp catching the overhead light, the long neck, the jaw like something quarried. His navy work shirt was untucked today and still it fit badly across his shoulders because there was too much of them. His sleeves were rolled and the veins ran down his forearms like tree roots. Derek had spent a whole lunch imagining what was under that shirt. A chest with a few stray dark hairs. A cock long and heavy, hanging thick against the thigh. A man like that had never once looked at Derek's face, and Derek wanted him so badly his teeth ached.
The shorter one followed, the thick neck, the broad shoulders, the boyish bowl cut sitting above a face with no expression at all. His hands were enormous. Derek had watched those hands work the buckles yesterday and thought about them on his body and hated himself for it, and thought about them on his body again today, and hated himself for that too.
They were talking about something casual, maybe lunch . He could tell by the cadence. One of them said a word that sounded like a dish name and the other snorted. Derek was strapped open around a machine in front of them and their conversation had not changed register by a single degree.
The taller one crossed to the equipment cart and lifted the new, modified VR headset. He carried it over and settled it onto Derek's head with two fingers at the temple and one at the crown, careful, practised, the way a man fits a helmet on a mannequin. The screen came alive in front of Derek's eyes. The shorter one reached up and adjusted the nasal cannula, twisted a valve, and fresh poppers flooded the tube, a rush of it, sharper than the maintenance drip, and Derek's head swam and his vision bloomed soft at the edges and every nerve in his stretched ring lit up at once.
The technicians stepped back. One of them checked the machine's readout, said something in Chinese to the other, and they both laughed. Then the screen resolved.
Kai.
He was in a gym that didn't exist, a weight room built out over the Great Wall, the stone battlements running away into haze on both sides, the sky an impossible clear blue. He was lying on a flat bench, shirtless, a barbell racked above him, and Derek's whole body reacted before his mind did, a flush from scalp to sternum, a clench around the nine inches buried in him.
He was magnificent. He was everything. The shoulders were capped with muscle, round and full, the delts flaring into arms that bunched as he pressed the bar up. His chest was smooth and dark and heavy, two thick slabs of pec that shifted under the skin with every rep, nipples small and dark against all that flesh. His abdominals were carved, a ridge of them descending into shorts that rode low on his hips, and there was dark hair at the waistband, a trail Derek followed with his eyes until the frame cut it off. Sweat sheened him. His jaw was set, stubbled, handsome in a way that made Derek's stomach fold in on itself. He pressed the bar again and his chest surged and Derek moaned out loud, alone in a room, straps on his wrists and ankles, stuffed full, moaning at a screen.
The bar clicked into the rack. Kai sat up. He wiped his face with a towel, draped it around his neck, and looked straight into the camera, straight at Derek, and smiled that warm smile.
"Hey, buddy." His voice was low, easy, the voice of a big brother or a coach or the man in the next bed. "Glad you're here. We need to have a little talk."
The machine stirred. Not thrusting, not yet. A slow, subtle movement in and out, a fraction of an inch, the great shaft moving inside Derek's guts the slightest bit, and Derek gasped and gripped the armrests.
"You had some dreams last night," Kai said. He stood, unhurried, and Derek watched every muscle of his torso assemble itself as he rose, the lats spreading, the waist staying small. He picked up a water bottle and drank, throat working, and Derek watched the throat. "Real vivid ones. We know because you told us everything this morning. And buddy, I gotta tell you." He laughed. It was a real laugh, delighted, the laugh of a friend hearing a great story. "A stone room. A kitchen. The cooks. Huo Xiao. You dreamed all that? On your first laced dose?"
He shook his head, still smiling, and picked up a dumbbell, curling it one-armed while he talked, and Derek watched the bicep ball up under the dark skin, a hard round peak, veins standing on it.
"That is the gayest, neediest, most pathetic shit I have ever heard." He said it warmly. He said it like a compliment. "You dreamed about a man's cock and it was the first one you'd ever seen, and in the dream you moaned around it and they laughed at you, and you woke up crying and leaking and your first thought was that you wished you were still asleep." He set the dumbbell down. "Buddy. That's beautiful."
The poppers poured. Derek hung in the straps and his face was wet, he realized, tears sliding down into the headset foam, and his hole rippled around the shaft on its own, clenching and unclenching, and the readouts ticked softly somewhere.
"That's what you are," Kai said. He walked closer to the camera, until his chest filled the screen, until Derek could see the grain of the skin, the sweat beading in the hollow of his throat. "A little white faggot whose brain, the very first time we hand it the keys, drives itself straight to this. Stone tables. Belts. Cocks down your throat. You didn't need us to teach you that dream. We just turned the lock off and there it was, already in you, waiting."
He stepped back and Derek felt the loss of the image like cold air.
"Now here's the part you need to really hear." Kai sat on the bench end, elbows on knees, and his face was close and gentle and absolutely merciless. "Those men you think about all day. The technicians. The businessmen in the cafeteria. Li Wei. Huo Xiao." He named them one by one and each name landed in Derek's gut. "The cooks. That man at the salad station who doesn't even look at you. I know what you do at that table with your little two hundred calorie salad. I know you look at their hands and their jaws and you imagine what's in their pants, and you imagine it's big, and you imagine them wanting you."
Derek's breath stopped. It was exact. It was every lunch, every elevator, every walk down every corridor of that building, laid out flat.
"They don't want you," Kai said. "None of them. Not one. They don't think about you at all, buddy. You carry your little bowl to your little table and they don't know your name and if they did know it they'd forget it by dinner. And you know what? That's correct. That's the right order of things. Men like them, men like me,” he gestured at himself, at the whole shining architecture of his body, "were built for women, for a life, for things you can't even picture. You're not on the menu, Derek. You're not even in the restaurant."
The words went in like the dildo had, slow, inch by inch, past the ring of resistance, all the way down. And underneath the humiliation, the warm wave of the poppers turned it, folded it, and it came out the other side as something close to relief. He didn't have to be wanted. He had never been wanted. It was already true and it had always been true and here, at last, was someone saying it plainly.
"But," Kai said, and smiled again, and Derek's heart jumped at the smile like a dog's tail jumps. "If you keep training. If you keep eating your salad and shrinking that scrawny body down and taking the machine and doing everything we tell you and being very, very good." He let the pause stretch. "One day they're going to fist you. Some one of those men, some man who right now doesn't know you exist, is going to put his whole hand inside you. His wrist is going to disappear into that loose little hole of yours and you are going to be more full than you have ever been in your sad little life."
The machine shuddered and began to thrust. Slowly. Long strokes, the nine inches drawing back through him and driving home, and Derek cried out and Kai kept talking over it, his voice level and warm through the speakers.
"And for a faggot like you, that's not a payoff, that's an honor. You understand? They'll never love you. They'll never even fuck you, fucking's for people. But a fist. A fist is what you can earn." He leaned back on the bench and draped one arm along the bar rack, casual, godlike. "Think of it like an award. Small white faggot Derek, for services rendered. They'll talk about your hole. Maybe. For a minute. That's the ceiling, buddy, and it's a beautiful ceiling, and you're going to spend the rest of your life grateful for it."
"Yes," Derek said. The word tore out of him on a thrust. "Yes, okay, yes."
"Say what you're working for."
"A fist." Derek read the answer off the screen as the machine drove in. "A Chinese man's fist. Inside me."
"Say what you are."
"A hole." His voice cracked as he read. "A small white faggot hole. For men who don't want me."
"Good." Kai stood and rolled his shoulders and Derek watched the muscles slide over the bones of his back and thought, distantly, through the tears and the poppers and the long slow piston filling him over and over, that he would never in his life see a real man's back like that except on a screen, and that this was fine, that this was the arrangement, that screens and straps and rubber were the whole world that had been set aside for him and the sooner he loved it the sooner it would stop hurting.
"Good buddy," Kai said again, softer. "You're doing great. Best little faggot in the program. Now breathe for me. Four in, four out. Let the machine work. I'll be right here."
Derek breathed. The thrusts deepened, found a rhythm, and Kai on the screen picked up his dumbbells and worked out beside the image of Derek's ruin, curling, pressing, sweat rolling down the carved valley of his chest, and Derek’s body became more limp, tied to the chair by heavy straps, and watched him and took the machine and wept and leaked and did not want to be anywhere else in the world.
The thrusts picked up speed. The nine inches pulled back farther now, dragging through his ring, then drove home harder, and Derek felt the fat crown punch past his inner ring on every stroke, that deep second give that always made his whole body jump.
"Whoa, hey, easy," Kai said on the screen, setting the dumbbell down. "I see you fighting it, buddy. I can see it right there in your face."
Derek could hear it too. The machine's speed was climbing, the strokes shortening, the sound of the motor rising to a fast mechanical churn. The strap sensors ticked against his forearms and he knew his tension was showing on every readout in the room.
"Breathe," Kai said. "Four in. Four out. Come on, we've done this a hundred times."
Derek breathed. The machine kept punching through him.
"Better. Now listen to me, because this next part is important." Kai picked up his water bottle and drank, and sweat ran down from his jaw along the cords of his throat. He was still shirtless, still glowing under the gym lights, and Derek's eyes stayed locked on the hollow of his throat while the machine hammered him. "Your hole is scared of the deep spot. Every time the head pushes past your second ring, your body panics and clamps down. That's the fight you're losing. So I want you to change what your brain thinks is happening."
The machine drove in deep and Derek grunted, hips jerking against the straps.
"I want you to stop thinking of it as a dildo," Kai said. "Think of it as a fist."
The word landed in Derek's gut like a dropped stone.
"That's right," Kai said, warm and slow. "A Chinese man's fist. His whole hand, folded up tight, knuckles first, punching into you. Feel it? That blunt depth on every thrust? That's not rubber, buddy. That's knuckles. That's a man's wrist disappearing into you."
The machine thrust and Derek tried to feel it. And it worked, a little, the way suggestion works when the poppers have sanded everything smooth. The blunt deep impact became something wider, knuckled, and his hole fluttered around the shaft instead of clamping.
"There," Kai said, smiling. "Did you feel that? That flutter. That's your hole saying yes. Good boy."
Kai stood and walked to the camera again. He leaned down close, forearms braced on something out of frame, and the screen filled with his chest, the smooth dark slabs of it, the small dark nipples, the sweat beading and running in thin lines between his pecs. Derek stared up at him from the straps with his mouth open.
"Let me paint it for you," Kai said. "Because I want you to see it every time the machine punches deep."
The machine's speed climbed another notch. The strokes were fast now, short and brutal, the nine inches hammering past his inner ring over and over, and Derek moaned on every thrust, a small punched-out sound.
"Picture the man," Kai said. "He's tall. Six two, maybe. Broad through the shoulders, built like a swimmer, a real man's back, thick lats tapering down to a small waist. He's been at work all day, deal-making, signing things, being important, and now he needs to let off steam and you're the thing he lets off into. He takes off his suit jacket and folds it over a chair. The shirt comes unbuttoned and there's his chest under it, smooth and hard, a little dusting of hair below his navel, and his shoulders are enormous, Derek, his forearms are roped with veins because he lifts four times a week and he has never once thought about you."
Derek whimpered. The machine punched deep.
"He rolls his sleeves up over those forearms. Watches his hands as he slicks them. And his hands are beautiful, buddy. Big square hands, blunt fingers, a heavy watch on one wrist. Hands that have held chopsticks over business dinners and shaken the hands of important men. And now those fingers are going into you. One. Two. Three. Slide, slide, slide, no resistance, because your hole knows its job. Then the thumb tucks in, and he turns his hand into a fist, slow, right there at your entrance, and you watch his face while he does it and he isn't even looking at your face. He's looking at his own wrist."
The thrusts came faster. Derek's eyes were streaming into the headset foam and his hole was fluttering open on every stroke now, giving, opening.
"He pushes," Kai said. "Knuckles against your ring. He leans his weight in. And your hole, that scared little second ring of yours, it doesn't panic anymore, because you've trained it, because you're going to train it, because this is what all of this is for. It gives. It opens around his knuckles one by one and his whole hand slides through and his wrist goes in past the bone and you feel it, Derek, you feel a man's forearm inside your body, and your hole wraps around the thickest part of him, right at the wrist, and seals there."
Derek was babbling. He didn't know what he was saying, just sounds, yes and oh and something that might have been a word.
"Sniff," Kai said. “Here’s some fresh poppers for you now."
Derek' breathed in through his nose and the poppers hit him in a hot rush, sweet chemical solvent flooding his sinuses, his skull, his chest, the room going soft and golden at the edges. His hole bloomed. The machine drove in and this time the deep punch went through him without a single clench, straight past the inner ring, deep, deep, and Derek heard himself moan like something animal.
"There he is," Kai said. "There's the dumb little faggot I know. Good. Sniff again."
Derek sniffed again. Another wave. His thoughts broke apart into warm foam. The machine hammered and he took it, loose, open, his body a sleeve and nothing else.
"How's the fist feel, buddy?"
"Big," Derek slurred. "So big. In me. Punching me."
"That's right. A real man's fist, punching into your guts. Feel the knuckles drag on the way out. Feel them open you again going in. Every thrust is a punch, Derek. One, two, three, four, that man is working you like a speed bag and you are taking every single one."
The machine sped up again. Derek's whole world was the impact now, the deep punching fullness, the screen in front of him where Kai had gone back to the bench and picked up his dumbbells, curling, his bicep peaking round and hard with every rep, sweat rolling down the carved ridge of his chest, and Derek watched him work out while the fist that wasn't a fist wrecked him.
"Tell me what your hole is doing."
"Opening," Derek gasped. "It's opening for it. I can feel it open."
"That's your hole learning. That's a week of training paying off. You feel how it doesn't fight anymore? That's not you being broken, buddy. That's you being finished. Like a piece of furniture. Like a tool with a grip worn in. You're worn in now."
Kai racked the dumbbells and sat on the bench edge again, leaning forward, elbows on knees, and Derek hung in the straps staring at his face, the stubble, the warm dark eyes, the smile that was coming more easily now as Derek got dumber and easier to be warm at.
"Now here's the trick. The trick is you don't clench when it goes deep. You know what your body wants to do. It wants to grab, to fight, to panic. Don't. Every time you feel the knuckles hit your second ring, I want you to push out. Like you're letting go of everything. Bear down, relax, open, give it to him. Can you do that for me?"
"Yes," Derek sobbed.
"Say it back so I know you've got it."
"Push out. Bear down. Open. Give it to him."
"Give what to who?"
"The fist," Derek babbled, drool on his chin, tears in the foam. "Give my hole to his fist. Let him punch in. Let his wrist go all the way in."
"Good boy. Here it comes."
The machine changed. It didn't speed up. It went deeper, the stroke lengthening so the shaft drew almost all the way out before driving home, and every homecoming punched past Derek's inner ring like a blow, and Derek pushed out, bore down, opened, and it stopped hurting. It went through him like a hand through water. The deep spot gave and gave and the fullness went deeper than it had ever gone, and Derek heard his own voice go up into a register he didn't recognize, a low continuous drone of overwhelmed pleasure.
"That's it. That's the sound. Nobody's home upstairs anymore, huh?"
"Nnnh," Derek said.
"Yeah. Dumb as a bag of hair. That's the goal state, buddy. That's where you're useful. A man can do anything he wants to a body that's this empty up top." Kai grinned. "Sniff."
Derek instinctively obeyed. The poppers poured and the room dissolved into gold and he was nothing but a hole on a machine, punching open around the imagined knuckles, his caged nub, hidden from view, weeping its thin thread into his tight briefs.
"Let me tell you what happens after the wrist," Kai said, curling again, watching Derek over the moving arm. "Because you're going to earn this, and you should know what you're earning. He's in past the wrist now. He holds still and lets your hole mold itself around him, and you can feel every finger inside you, moving, curling, finding things in there no dick ever found. Then he starts the punching. Short punches, deep, his forearm pistoning in and out of that wrecked little ring, and the sound it makes, Derek. Wet. Loud. Every man in the room can hear your hole being used and none of them are disgusted because this is exactly what you're for."
The machine punched and Derek punched with it in his mind, knuckles, wrist, forearm, the wet sound, the room of men watching, and he clenched around the shaft at the image and Kai laughed.
"Don't clench. Open. What did we say?"
"Push out. Give it to him."
"That's right. Don’t fight it. Don’t think. Just open and give. The men do everything else."
Kai set the dumbbells down and stood with his hands on his hips, chest heaving lightly from the set, sweat shining on his abdominals, and Derek stared at the trail of dark hair descending under the waistband of his shorts and thought, through the golden dumb fog, that he would die without ever seeing what was under there, and that this was the correct arrangement, that a man like that belonged to women and to life and that Derek belonged to straps and screens and rubber, and the grief of it and the relief of it hit him at the same moment and he sobbed once, hard.
"Hey. Hey, buddy, what's that?" Kai's voice went gentle. "You crying?"
"I want," Derek gasped between thrusts. "I want to see. Under your shorts. I'll never. I know I'll never."
"No," Kai said. Simple. Kind. "You won't. And isn't it better this way? If I showed you, you'd have a memory. Memories fade. This way you want it forever. Wanting forever, that's the best thing anyone ever gave you, isn't it?"
"Yes," Derek wept.
"Say it."
"You gave me wanting forever."
"Good boy." Kai smiled that warm smile and Derek's heart jumped for it again, hopeless, the dog's tail. "Now. Deep breath. We're going to do the last set. The machine's going to max out. I want that hole to stay open the whole time, no clenching, pushing out on every punch, and I want you to keep picturing the fist. Not rubber. Knuckles. A man's hand. Say it."
"Not rubber. Knuckles. A man's hand. A Chinese man's fist punching into me."
"Louder."
"A Chinese man's fist punching into me!"
"That's my good little faggot. Here we go."
The machine ramped. The motor climbed to a rising whine and the strokes came fast and full-depth, nine inches hammering home past the inner ring on every thrust, and Derek pushed out, bore down, gave, and his hole took it, fluttering open around the massive shaft, the deep punches rolling through his guts in waves that made his toes curl and his vision sparkle. Kai on the screen counted the reps out loud, one, two, three, four, his voice steady over the churn of the machine, and Derek babbled along, thank you, thank you, the words pouring out of him unbidden and shameless.
"You're welcome, buddy," Kai said, warm as ever, mid-count. "Thank the fist too."
"Thank you, fist," Derek gasped. "Thank you for punching me. Thank you for wanting to be inside me. I mean. Thank you for letting me want it."
"Close enough. You're dumbed down to about three percent capacity and you're still coherent enough to be grateful. That's a good day’s work."
The thrusts crested. Derek's whole body shook in the straps, sweat and tears and drool, his hole open wide around the deepest, fastest hammering it had ever taken, and somewhere under the roar he heard Kai's voice going soft and level.
"Breathe, buddy. Four in, four out. Ride it out. Let it empty you. Every punch takes a thought out of your head. Watch them go. Watch the last one go."
Derek breathed. Four in. Four out. On each deep punch something in him went quieter. His name. His old job. His apartment before this one. The coffee shop with the paperback. All of it punched out, one thought per thrust, until there was nothing in his head but the fist and the warmth and the voice.
The machine held at max for a long count, buried to the root, and then began, slowly, to wind down.
Kai was wiping his face with the towel, draping it around his neck, looking at Derek with something that on any other face might have been fondness.
"Look at you," he said. "Wrecked. Opened. Dumb. That's the best version of you I've ever seen, and I've seen every session you've done." He leaned toward the camera. "Sleep on that fist tonight. I have a feeling you will."
The screen went dark.
Derek hung in the dim room, impaled to the root, breathing, dripping, empty in the head and full to the brim everywhere else. The poppers hissed their maintenance drip. Somewhere down the hall the technicians were laughing again, and his hole squeezed around the shaft without asking him first.
The machine had gone still. It sat buried in him, full depth, the fat base pressed tight against his hole, and every small breath he took moved him around it.
The door opened again after ten minutes or a hundred. Derek couldn't have said.
Derek’s vision returned as Zhang Ming, standing above him, removed the VR set. He was tall and thin as a coat rack, square-framed glasses catching the fluorescent light, a checked button-down with the sleeves rolled precisely to mid-forearm. His forearms were nothing like the technicians'. Long, narrow, fine-boned, a faint blue map of veins at the wrist, and Derek looked at them and hated himself for looking, because Zhang Ming wasn't muscular, wasn't broad, and Derek still felt the pull of him, the gravity of any Chinese man's body, the way his eyes went to the flat plane of Zhang Ming's chest under the checked cotton and imagined it, imagined the small dark nipples, imagined what hung between his narrow hips, something long and elegant probably, everything about this man would be long and elegant, and Derek's hole fluttered around the dildo at the thought and the sensor straps ticked.
Zhang Ming pulled the second chair to face him. Sat down. Crossed his legs. Set the clipboard on his knee and clicked his pen.
"Good afternoon," he said. Flat, clinical, the same voice as every survey. His eyes went to the readout screen beside the chair, flicked across numbers. "Your readings are elevated. That's expected with the new size." He looked back at Derek. "We'll begin."
Derek nodded. His voice was somewhere in the fullness, somewhere down past the hilt.
"Question one." Zhang Ming's pen tapped the clipboard. "This morning, walking through the building, what was the dominant thought in your head?"
He read the options. "A. I hope the men notice how obedient I've become. B. I hope the men don't notice me at all, because I don't deserve to be noticed. C. I hope the men notice how much I've grown to love serving them."
Derek lay there with the machine inside him and turned the three over, and there was no fourth option, there never was, no door out, no answer that was just a person's answer. His throat worked. The dildo stretched him wide, his hole fluttering around its base, each breath making him clench and release without his permission. He breathed in more poppers, the sweet chemical fog rushing through his sinuses, and his cock strained uselessly against its cage.
"B," he said. His voice came out cracked and small. "I hope the men don't notice me at all, because I don't deserve to be noticed."
Zhang Ming made a small mark. "Noted. Two."
"Question two. When a Chinese man walks past you in a hallway, what you feel in your body?"
"A. I feel small and I feel glad to be small. B. I feel ashamed of my body and I shrink without deciding to. C. I feel lust that shames me, because a man like that would never touch me."
Derek's face was hot. His eyes went to the ceiling. The poppers made him horny and stupid, his hole clenching around the shaft, wanting more. "C," he whispered. "I feel lust that shames me, because a man like that would never touch me."
The pen scratched. Zhang Ming's glasses reflected the readout screen, two gray rectangles where his eyes should be.
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.