Chapter 13: Chapter 13
The morning light in the locker room was the same pale clinical white as always, and Derek stood on the scale in his socks with his eyes down, waiting for the number the way he had learned to wait for it, like a grade.
Huo Xiao stood beside him holding the tablet, reading it, and Derek stole his sideways look the way he always did, the way Kai had told him to, catalogue and accept. Huo Xiao was in grey slacks and a black zip jacket today, sleeves of a white tee visible at the collar, and he was broad through the chest in a way that made the jacket hang with intent. His hair was cropped short and his jaw was clean and his forearms, where he held the tablet, were dense and lightly furred, the veins standing softly under the skin. Derek thought about the arms under the jacket, the chest under the tee, the heavy weight of the cock he imagined hanging between those slacks, thick even soft, and the shame came and he let it pass through and convert, the way it did now, heat in, heat out.
"Eighty-two kilos down to fifty-nine point four," Huo Xiao said. "Another kilo and a half gone. Good."
"Thank you, sir," Derek said. The words came out smooth. Practiced. His own voice surprised him less every day.
"And the scale says your body fat dropped again. You're getting lighter and easier to handle. That's the goal. Lift teams like an asset that doesn't fight its own weight."
Derek nodded and kept his eyes on the tile. Under the leather harness the plug shifted when he nodded, and his breath caught, small, and Huo Xiao noticed everything and said nothing, which was its own kind of touch.
"Sit," Huo Xiao said, gesturing at the bench, and he sat beside him, close enough that Derek could smell his skin, soap and something warm underneath. "Tell me about last night."
Derek's face went hot. "You saw the texts. I watched the reels."
"How many?"
"I don't... a lot. I lost count."
"Forty-one," Huo Xiao said, and tapped the tablet. "The account is managed now, Derek. You should understand that. The firm runs your profile. We serve the content and we log the viewing. Duration, repeat views, which men, which angles, when you paused, when you scrolled back."
Derek stared at him. "You can see all that?"
"Of course. Why do you think the reels kept getting bigger?" Huo Xiao's mouth did something that was almost a smile, and it was devastating, and Derek hated himself for thinking devastating. "The algorithm isn't guessing. It's dosing you. Same principle as the poppers bottle. Correct dose, correct interval. Last night it found your dose in about six reels."
The old Derek, the one from the data-entry desk and the sci-fi paperbacks, would have said something about privacy here. That Derek was a costume now too. What came out instead, quiet, honest, was: "Was I doing it right?"
"There it is," Huo Xiao said, warm, and Derek glowed under it like a plant under a lamp. "Yes. You did it right. And I want you to understand why it's part of the program, not a reward, not a treat. It's maintenance. Listen."
Derek listened. He was good at listening now.
"You're a gay man. That urge isn't going anywhere, and it used to make you pathetic in the old way. Cruise apps, porn at your desk, jerking off to men who didn't know your name. Wanting real men bothers real men. It's noise. It's a small greasy hand on the world." Huo Xiao's voice was even, instructional, and Kai's cadence ran underneath it like a bass line. "The reels solve that. The men in your phone are generated. They're perfect, they're straight, and they do not exist. You can want them with everything you have and you bother no one. Ever. Your whole appetite gets poured into a drain we built for it. That's what it's for."
"Okay," Derek whispered.
"And the second reason. The reels train your hole. You grind on the plug while you watch, yes? You push out on the reps, on the thrusts, on the rhythm of whatever the man on screen is doing. Your body learns to open on a visual trigger. The video says thrust and your hole says yes. We're wiring the two together. Every night you watch, the stretching regimen gets easier, and the day your first real fist goes in, your body will already know the choreography." He stood, tucked the tablet under his arm. "So tonight, same as last night. Watch as much as you want. It's prescribed."
"Yes, sir." Derek's dick ached dully in its cage at the word prescribed, and he pressed his knees together and let the ache be worship.
Huo Xiao paused at the door. "The technicians will take the plug out and clean you. Then training. Eat your salad after."
The two technicians came in while Huo Xiao's footsteps were still fading, and Derek's head did the catalogue before he could stop it, before he wanted to stop it. The taller one, Technician One, in grey scrubs today, buzzed scalp, long neck, that jaw like cut stone, forearms roped with veins below the pushed-up sleeves. The shorter one with the thick neck and the boyish bowl cut and shoulders that made the scrub top look painted on. Neither of them looked at his face. Neither of them ever looked at his face, and Kai's voice in his memory said, they don't want you, not one of them, and so you can want them with everything, and Derek wanted them, standing there with his eyes down and his hole clenching gratefully on steel.
The taller technician tapped the bench. Derek lay back and drew his knees up without being asked, and the motion was automatic now, shameless, a door opening on its own hinge. Gloved fingers worked the harness straps loose at his taint, unclipping plug from cage, and then the slow steady pull, his rim gripping, resisting, then blooming around the flare as it came free. The emptiness was enormous. He made a small sound he didn't mean to and the shorter technician laughed, one short syllable of Chinese, and Derek's face burned and his hole fluttered at nothing, missing it already.
The douching was routine now, three rounds, warm water flooding in and out of him on the tiled table, the taller technician's hand steady on his hip, the cannula feeding poppers into his nostrils before the second round so his body went soft and accepting around the nozzle. He floated. The lights smeared. Two strong indifferent men rinsed his insides out and spoke to each other over his open body in a language he didn't have, and he loved them both with the whole hopeless size of the appetite they had built him.
Then the training room.
The chair was waiting, contoured, strapped open like always, and the machine stood at its foot, and Derek saw the dildo and his stomach dropped and lifted at the same time. Nine inches long, eight around, the same black silicone from yesterday, glossy under the lights, mounted on the piston arm.
"It's the same one," he said, before he could stop himself.
"It is," said the technician who understood English, which was the taller one, and it was the most words Derek had ever heard from him, and his voice was low and flat and did something to Derek's spine. "Yesterday you took it still. Today it moves."
They strapped him in. Ankle cuffs, wrist cuffs, the wide belt across his belly. The headset came down over his eyes and the cannula was seated in both nostrils and the room dissolved.
Kai was there.
Not on a screen this time, not a flat recording. The training room in the program had depth now, and Kai stood in it, shirtless in grey gym shorts, that square jaw and pushed-back black hair and the golden slab of his chest, and when Derek's gaze moved, the view moved, and when Derek looked at Kai's body, Kai looked back.
"You can see me seeing you," Kai said, and smiled, and his voice was exactly the voice, warm as a hand. "The module's interactive now, Derek. I respond to you. Nod if you understand."
Derek nodded, and somewhere outside the headset his real head nodded too, and he felt the straps.
"Good. Yesterday you took nine inches and learned to push out. Today the machine trains depth with motion. Full strokes. All the way out, so your hole closes on empty, and all the way in, so it opens on full. Again and again. That's how a fist will feel, only a fist is warmer. Breathing first."
The cannula hissed. Kai counted, and Derek breathed, in through the nose, hold, out slow, and the poppers bloom came up through his skull like warm water rising, and the reels began.
They played on the walls of the program now, curved around him, the generated men from last night, the pull-up man, the boardroom men, the locker room giant, and Derek's chest ached with recognition, these were his men, his own private liturgy, served back to him on the training room walls. But the videos were different now. The men weren't lifting. The men weren't laughing at tables.
The men were fisting other white boys, other pathetic white fags. The pull-up man stood in a dim room with his arm buried to the wrist in a small pale smooth man with glasses who sobbed with pleasure. The boardroom men had a different white thing kneeling on the table between them, one of them working his thick fist slowly in and out of its stretched pink hole while the others watched with bored power, and this thing's face was contoured and flushed and wrecked, but not Derek's face. It belonged to another white faggot entirely.
"Those are your training materials," Kai said, and his voice was proud. "Your account helped us curate models of your preference. Every man in those videos is punching stress into a white receptacle like you, but they are not you. Watch what the hole does when the fist pulls out. Watch."
The machine woke.
The first stroke was slow and enormous, the whole nine inches dragging out of him until only the tip held his rim open, his hole clutching and closing on nothing, empty, empty, and Derek gasped at the loss, and then the piston drove back in, all nine inches in one long deep push, and the poppers bloom and the wall of fullness arrived together and he cried out, loud, honest, that melted sound Kai had told him was the real him.
"There," Kai said. "That's the stroke. Out is the gift. In is the gift. Breathe with it."
Hit, Kai said, and the cannula hissed, and Derek inhaled on the count and the rush came down like a fist of warm water and the machine drove in on the exhale, deep, bottoming out against the spot that made his vision white. The wall videos pumped in rhythm with the machine, every generated giant drawing his fist slowly out of a sobbing white boy until the fist crown stretched the rim wide, then punching back in to the wrist, and Derek's real hole, strapped in the chair, took the same stroke at the same tempo, and the wiring went in deep, video and flesh welded together stroke by stroke.
"Say what it is," Kai said.
"It's a fist," Derek sobbed. "It's a Chinese man's fist in a white faggot’s ass."
"It's practice. Your hole is learning the choreography right now. Full out, full in. Push out when it withdraws. Push out when it enters. Push out all the time. There's no wrong moment to be open for a Chinese man's fist, even if it's not yours yet."
The machine sped. Long full strokes, out until he was hollow and clutching, in until he was stuffed to the root, and the white boys on the walls took their fists at the same pace, fists popping through wrecked pink rims, generated faces flexing, generated forearms veined and glistening, and Derek's hips strained against the belt trying to meet the machine, grinding down onto the depth, humping up onto the emptiness, desperate for both ends of the stroke.
Hit, Kai said, longer. Derek inhaled until his lungs burned and the world went syrup and the walls went syrup and Kai's golden body went syrup, and the machine punched into him, actually punched now, a short brutal snap of the piston at full depth that knocked a grunt out of his chest, and on the walls a generated man did the same to a different generated Derek and that generated Derek screamed with gratitude and so did he, even though it wasn't him.
"You feel how it turned over," Kai said, gentle, and Derek did, the emptiness had stopped feeling like loss somewhere in the last five minutes and started feeling like appetite, the hole itself hungry, opening on nothing the way his mouth watered for a Chinese fist that would be his. "That's the adjustment. That's the whole regimen in one feeling. Tonight when you watch your reels you'll push out on every fist you see and you'll feel exactly this, even though those aren't your holes being stretched yet."
The machine slowed and deepened, long full strokes again, savoring, and Derek hung in the straps and took it, eyes rolling, tears sliding into the foam of the headrest, whispering thank you thank you thank you in time with the piston for the lessons, and Kai watched him do it and nodded like a teacher at a solved problem.
"Progress report says you'll be ready for a real hand soon," Kai said. "Not yet. Soon. Keep your diet. Keep your reels. Keep your hole exactly this stupid for when it's your turn to take a real fist instead of watching others take it in the videos we made for your training."
The stroke came all the way out and hovered, his rim gaping in the cool air, wrecked and winking and empty, and then drove home to the hilt, and Derek's back arched off the chair, and on the walls two hundred generated fists punched home at once into different white faggots, not him, and he came apart into the rush, into the fullness, into the liturgy of what he would become when it was finally his turn to be the one taking the fist instead of watching others take it in these training videos., open for it, thank it, sir, and the machine kept its promise and did not stop.