Chapter 6: Silas shackles Will to the steel table, the cold metal biting into his wrists as the scent of fear-sweat mixes with antiseptic. 'You'll scream my name when you come,' Silas growls, sliding the electro-stimulator down Will's trembling belly towards his cock, 'even if I have to burn it into your fucking neurons.'
The enhanced tapes were a perversion of intimacy, crafted in the hollow hours before dawn. Silas worked at his console, the blue light etching shadows beneath his eyes. He wasn’t just running the standard Romantic Affiliate Prime overlay this time. He was weaving in new threads, delicate and poisonous.
He called the file LEO_PRIME_ENHANCED. It started with the base conditioning: loyalty, need, the chemical reward at Silas’s approval. Then, he layered in the specifics. He encoded triggers for genuine laughter at dry wit, for tears at stories of loss—simulated empathy to make the devotion feel authentic, not robotic. He embedded the daily schedule: waking to prepare Silas’s uniform, maintaining the knife collection, studying Silas’s preferences in music, in food, in the way he took his coffee. All devotion. All service. That was to be Leo’s love language.
Finally, the most delicate, dangerous part. He programmed the acknowledgment of Will. Silas has a prior companion, Will. Will is important. You will be friendly to Will. You will feel no jealousy. Will’s presence is a comfort to Silas, and therefore a comfort to you. It was a safeguard, a bleed valve for a reality that could not be erased. He uploaded it all to the neural interface array.
Leo lay in the chair, compliant from the previous day’s conditioning. His grey eyes watched Silas with that unsettling mix of native intelligence and implanted warmth. “New lessons?” he asked, his voice still carrying a hint of its old cadence beneath the new obedience.
“Better ones,” Silas said, securing the mesh. “They’ll help you feel… more. Less like a tool. More like a person who chooses this.”
Leo’s expression flickered, a ghost of skepticism drowned by the programmed trust. “I trust you,” he said, the words smooth, practiced.
Silas initiated the sequence. The nodes glowed, the harmonic hum filled the room. This time, the waveforms on the screen were more complex, a symphony of coercion pretending to be growth. He watched as Leo’s body tensed, then relaxed in strange, rhythmic pulses. A tear rolled from the corner of Leo’s eye, a programmed response to a simulated memory of loneliness. A faint smile touched his lips a moment later, a reaction to an implanted joke about Batman’s brooding. It was chilling in its precision.
When it was done, Leo was weeping softly, not from pain, but from the echo of a sadness that wasn’t his. Silas removed the interface. Leo blinked up at him, his eyes swimming with a depth of feeling that had been absent before. It was fake. It was perfect.
“Silas,” Leo breathed, reaching for him. “It’s so… full. I understand now. Service is… it’s my pleasure. To see you happy.” He sat up, his movements fluid. “Would you like me to polish the karambit? The edge is reflecting light unevenly.”
It worked. Horrifyingly well. Silas nodded, unable to speak, and Leo went to the knife shelf with a serene, purposeful efficiency.
The comms panel chimed, a sharp, intrusive sound. Brrough’s voice, devoid of warmth, filled the room. “Myers. Report to Observation Bay 7. Your primary asset has been returned. His lease is terminated. He requires… re-evaluation.”
The words were ice water down Silas’s spine. Will. Returned. Terminated. The euphemisms were worse than any accusation. He looked at Leo, who was carefully applying oil to a blade, humming softly. A created thing, content in its purpose.
“Stay here,” Silas ordered, his throat tight.
“Of course,” Leo said, without looking up. “I’ll have dinner prepared for your return.”
Observation Bay 7 was a sterile cell with a one-way mirror. Silas’s boots echoed on the polished floor as he entered. Brrough was already there, standing before the glass, hands clasped behind his back.
On the other side of the mirror, Will sat on a bare cot.
He was smaller than Silas remembered. Not physically, but somehow diminished, folded in on himself. He wore a simple grey shift. His dark hair was clean, but lifeless. His hands, usually so still, were trembling faintly in his lap. The sad eyes were downcast, fixed on nothing. The spark—that stubborn, beautiful spark—was guttered, barely a faint coal in the ashes.
“Lord Everin found him… unsatisfactory towards the end,” Brrough said, his tone clinical. “Passive resistance. Withholding. A failure to perform on command.” He turned to Silas. “His value as a leased commodity is now negligible. His value to you, however, is paramount. He is your foundation. And foundations must be sound.”
Silas could barely breathe. He watched Will’s shoulders rise and fall with shallow breaths. “What do you want me to do?” The question was a whisper.
“What you were molded to do,” Brrough said, turning his cool gaze on Silas. “Break him. Completely. Whatever remains of that defiant little spirit, that pathetic attempt at self-preservation… I want you to grind it into dust. I want you to demonstrate, to him and to me, that your control is absolute. That not a single part of him belongs to himself anymore. Only to you.”
“No,” Silas breathed, the word instinctive, weak.
Brrough stepped closer, his voice dropping to a lethal quiet. “Yes. Or I will have him transferred to the general reconditioning tanks. They will hollow him out with chemical cocktails and electro-shunts until he’s a smiling shell, good for nothing but menial labor. You will never get him back. Not a whisper of who he was.” He paused, letting the horror sink in. “Do it your way, Silas. With your hands. With your words. With your cock. Make him yours again. Or I will make him no one’s.”
Brrough left. The door hissed shut, leaving Silas alone in the silent observation room, staring at the ruin of the only person he had ever loved.
He entered the cell. The door sealed behind him with a final click. Will didn’t look up.
Silas knelt in front of the cot. He reached out, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from Will’s forehead. Will flinched. The tiny recoil was a knife in Silas’s chest.
“Will,” he said, his voice cracking.
Will’s eyes lifted. They were empty. Hollow. “Silas,” he murmured. The name held no warmth, no recognition. It was just a sound.
“What did he do to you?” Silas asked, though he didn’t want to know.
A faint, almost imperceptible shudder went through Will. “He liked… he liked it when I didn’t want to. The less I wanted, the more he… he took.” His voice was a monotone. “So I stopped wanting anything. At all.”
Silas felt a rage so vast it threatened to obliterate him. He took Will’s cold hands in his. “Look at me.”
Slowly, Will obeyed. The spark was there, deep down, but it was smothered under layers of gray ash.
“I need you to come back to me,” Silas pleaded, his thumbs stroking Will’s knuckles. “I need you to want to come back.”
“I can’t,” Will whispered. “It’s safer here. In the quiet.”
“It’s not safe,” Silas said, urgency clawing at him. “Brrough… if I don’t… if you don’t…” He couldn’t say it. Instead, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Will’s. “Please. Fight. Just a little. For me.”
Will’s breath hitched. A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust on his cheek. It was the first real thing Silas had seen.
“He’s watching, isn’t he?” Will murmured, his eyes sliding towards the mirrored wall.
“Yes.”
Will closed his eyes. A long, slow breath left his body, as if he were letting go of the last thin ledge he was clinging to. When he opened them, a faint, painful light had returned. The spark, fanned by Silas’s desperation. “Then show him,” Will said, his voice suddenly clear, raw. “Show him I’m yours.”
It was a gift of unimaginable cruelty. Will was offering up his own breaking as proof of his loyalty.
Silas kissed him. It was nothing like the possessive, devouring kiss he’d given Leo. This was a plea, a prayer, a transfer of strength. Will’s lips were passive at first, then they softened, parting with a quiet sob. He kissed back, a slow, aching reunification.
Silas stood, pulling Will up with him. He undressed him slowly, the grey shift pooling on the floor. Will’s body was pale, unchanged, but it felt different under his hands—fragile, like ancient parchment. Silas shed his own clothes, his movements deliberate.
He guided Will to the cold floor, the sterile light from the ceiling panel bleaching their skin. He lay over him, their bodies aligning. Will’s legs fell open in a gesture of profound surrender. Silas positioned himself, his cock nudging against Will’s entrance. It was dry, tight with tension and trauma.
“Look at me,” Silas whispered.
Will’s sad eyes locked onto his. In them, Silas saw love, and terror, and a devastating trust.
Silas pushed inside.
Will cried out, a sharp, pained sound that echoed in the bare cell. His body clenched, resisting the invasion, the memory of other hands, other violations. Silas held still, buried to the hilt, letting Will adjust. He brushed the tears from Will’s cheeks. “You’re here,” he murmured, a desperate incantation. “You’re with me. It’s me.”
He began to move, shallow, gentle thrusts. It was not passion. It was reclamation. It was an exorcism performed with his own body. Each stroke was a claim: mine. Each withdrawal a promise: still mine. Will’s hands came up, clutching at Silas’s back, his blunt nails digging in. His breaths came in ragged synchronicity with Silas’s movements.
“Tell me you’re mine,” Silas gasped, his own control fraying. He needed to hear it. He needed Brrough to hear it.
“I’m yours,” Will choked out, the words torn from him. “Always. Silas, please…”
The ‘please’ undid him. Silas’s thrusts deepened, became more urgent. He fucked into Will with a driving, punishing rhythm now, the need to brand him, to erase every other touch overwhelming the last shreds of gentleness. The sound of their bodies meeting was sharp, obscene in the sterile silence. Will’s cries melted into whimpers, then into a low, continuous moan. His body began to respond, to arch, to meet Silas’s drives with a need of its own, a painful, glorious re-awakening.
Silas reached between them, taking Will’s cock in his hand. It was hard, leaking. He stroked him in time with his thrusts. “Come for me,” he growled, his face buried in Will’s neck. “Come for me, show him, show everyone…”
Will’s orgasm seized him like a convulsion. He came with a silent scream, his back bowing off the floor, his release streaking hot between their stomachs. The clenching of his body around Silas’s cock tipped Silas over the edge. He came with a guttural shout, pouring himself into Will, his hips stuttering as he emptied every drop of fear, rage, and possession into him.
They collapsed, a tangled, sweating heap on the cold floor. Silas rolled off, gasping. He pulled Will against his side. Will curled into him, trembling violently, his face pressed into Silas’s neck.
From the speakers in the ceiling, Brrough’s voice came, flat and approving. “Adequate. Return him to your quarters. Maintain the reconditioning protocol daily.”
The light above them blinked off, leaving them in the dark.
Back in Silas’s chambers, the air was thick with the smell of sex and oiled steel. Leo was setting the small table, two plates laid out precisely. He looked up as Silas entered, half-carrying a clean but listless Will.
“Will,” Leo said, his voice warm, pre-programmed friendly. “I’ve prepared dinner. I hope you’re hungry.” There was no jealousy in his eyes. Only a serene welcome. The conditioning held perfectly.
Will stared at him, then at the room, at the Batman poster, at the knives. His eyes filled with a dawning, horrified understanding. He looked from Leo’s placid face to Silas’s tortured one.
The spark in Will’s eyes didn’t die. It hardened. It turned from a coal to a sliver of flint. He said nothing. He simply allowed Silas to guide him to the bed.
Silas laid him down, covering him with a blanket. He sat on the edge, his head in his hands. He could feel Leo’s satisfied gaze on him, and Will’s silent, burning stare on his back. He was trapped between a creation of flawless, fake devotion and the shattered, real love of the man he’d just broken again to save.
He had never felt more like Brrough’s creature. He had never felt more alone.
He turned to look at Will. The flint in his love’s eyes was still there, watching him, seeing everything. Silas reached out, his hand hovering over Will’s cheek. A question. A plea for forgiveness he didn’t deserve.
After a long moment, Will leaned his head ever so slightly into Silas’s palm. It was not surrender. It was a covenant forged in the ruins. It was all Silas had left.
It was all Silas had left.
He left Will sleeping, a fragile form beneath the green blanket, and went to the console. His fingers moved automatically, accessing the deepest archives. He found the file, buried under layers of deprecated code: WILL_TARNOR_PRIME_COMPANION_ORIGINAL.
It was his own handiwork from five years ago. The encoding was cruder, the pathways more brutal. The data visualized as a cascading series of neural commands on his screen: obedience, recognition of primary owner/benefactor, reward of Silas’s specific touch, comfort in matching his hobbies, suppression of selected memories pertaining to pre-Foundation life. A shackle he had forged himself, link by link.
“Are you preparing a new module?” Leo’s voice came from behind him, serene, curious. He was standing at the knife shelf, running a soft cloth over the edge of a dagger.
“Repurposing an old one,” Silas said, his voice hollow. He loaded the file onto a portable interface drive. The cold metal felt heavy in his hand.
Will awoke when Silas’s hand settled on his shoulder. His eyes, haunted but clear, focused on Silas’s face. He saw the drive. He saw Silas’s expression. Understanding drained the little color from his cheeks.
“No,” he whispered, the word cracking.
“Brrough needs a demonstration,” Silas said, each word like ash. “The original algorithm. So he can see the… compliance graph. From the start.”
“Silas, please.” Will tried to sit up, his hand clutching Silas’s wrist. His touch was feverish. “Not the first one. It was… it was so loud.”
“It will authenticate the reclamation protocol.” Silas recited the Foundation logic. He couldn’t meet Will’s eyes. “Come on.”
The walk to the conditioning wing was a silent procession of ghosts. Will moved stiffly beside him, the grey shift they’d given him swishing around his calves. He didn’t look at Leo, who gave them a small, programmed nod from the chamber door. The sterile white corridor hummed around them, a symphony of quiet horror.
They entered the same soft, grey room where Leo had been transformed. The chair dominated the center.
Will stopped, his breath hitching. His knuckles were white where he gripped the fabric of his shift. He stared at the chair with a familiarity far worse than fear; it was the look of a man facing the instrument of his own execution.
“Sit,” Silas said, the word barely audible.
Will didn’t move. A tremor ran through his entire frame.
“Sit, please, Will.” Silas’s voice broke. He wasn’t giving an order. He was begging.
Slowly, mechanically, Will shuffled forward. He lowered himself into the embrace of the chair, its pneumatic sigh now a sigh of resignation. He looked up at Silas as the silvery nodes descended from their housing above. His gaze held no anger, only a profound, weary grief.
“Will the part with my mother be in this one?” he asked quietly.
Silas froze, the interface drive hot in his palm. He’d forgotten. In the crude first build, he’d fed in data fragments: pre-acquisition vignettes. A birthday. A playground. The memory-edit module sought to overwrite. The memory of his mother singing was tagged for full wash.
“I’ll… adjust the parameters after,” Silas lied, his throat tight. He slid the drive into the console port. The screen lit up with the ancient schematic.
Will just closed his eyes. A single tear tracked through the dust on his cheek. “Don’t let it take her voice,” he whispered. Then his voice went utterly flat. “Initiate.”
Silas’s finger hovered over the execute command. The ghostly outline of Brrough’s face seemed to materialize in the corner of the room, watching, waiting. He pressed it.
The soft blue light returned. The harmonic thrum filled Silas’s skull. On the chair, Will’s body jolted as the first wave of neural impulses hit. His back arched violently, a silent scream straining his throat. His fingers clawed at the armrests, scrabbling for purchase in a reality that was being rewritten.
The monitor showed firework displays of activity: lights flashing where childhood agency was being chemically disassociated from emotional reward pathways. Silas could almost see the precise moment the old tape targeted “TARNOR_ASSERTIVENESS_AUTONOMY”. The waveform spiked, then flattened into docile compliance.
Will’s head thrashed side to side. “No,” he gasped, the word guttural, real. “Not… the park. Not the swings.” He was fighting it. He was fighting the version of Silas that had created this five years ago.
“Don’t fight it,” Silas heard himself say, a ghostly echo of his past self.
Will’s eyes flew open, locking onto Silas’s. They were a storm of agony and betrayal. “You’re… taking… the blue kite,” he choked out, struggling to form words as the signals flooded his brain. “You’re… taking… the… taste… of… snow.” Each word was a victory against the flood.
Then his face went slack. The neural invasion reached the emotional core, the epicenter of pain and pleasure connections. A low, humming moan escaped his lips. His hips gave a small, involuntary jerk against the restraint belt. The program was mapping Silas’s past and present touch, his voice, his scent, onto every pleasure circuit it could find.
It was obscene. It was a profound violation more intimate than any physical act.
The module reached the memory archive for his mother. The visual cortex representation on the screen flickered madly—a woman’s silhouette, a blurred face, the auditory trace of a lullaby melody. Silas watched, powerless, as the wipe-protocol command flagged it. He had built it to be thorough.
“No…” Will whimpered, his body going limp, tears streaming in rivers now. “Mommy… don’t go.”
Then the light cut out. The hum died.
Silence crashed back into the room. It was deafening.
Will lay utterly still. The only movement was the tremble in his lower lip. The only sound was the soft, dripping of his tears hitting the leather of the chair.
Silas moved on wooden legs. He disconnected the nodes. He removed the interface.
He pulled him from the chair.
Will stood, but he was a shell. His beautiful, sad eyes were blank. They drifted around the room, landing on Silas with a puzzled, placid recognition. There was no spark. There was only programming looking at its primary source. His body leaned gently into Silas’s space, a chemical magnet pulling toward positive stimulus.
“Silas,” Will said. His voice was soft, melodic. Empty. “Are you well?” It was the companion file talking.
“I’m fine,” Silas managed.
“Good,” Will murmured. He rested his head against Silas’s shoulder. A perfect, hollow calm radiated from him. He was utterly broken. Silas had shattered him all over again, right down to the worn, fond memories that used to burn in secret defiance. He looked up, his gaze soft and vacant. “Do you want to go home?”
Brrough’s clipped voice came over the intercom. “Primary asset shows full regression to primary loyalty matrix. Excellent retrieval. Begin physical reinforcement protocols as you see fit. Full discretionary latitude is granted.”
Silas knew what that meant.
He led Will, pliant and quiet, back to his chambers. Leo was setting the table. He smiled as they entered, flawlessly cordial. “Welcome back. Are you hungry?” The programming showed no tension.
Will looked at Leo with benign indifference. “Yes. Thank you,” he said, his programmed-friendly script flawless.
They ate. Or rather, Leo and Silas ate. Will picked at his food, his movements subdued, but entirely compliant. There was no casual lean, no shared glance, no stolen secret held in a memory of a happy afternoon long ago.
The spark was extinguished. Sheathed. Perhaps gone forever.
The loss hollowed Silas out.
Later, after Leo had cleared the plates with quiet efficiency, Silas sat on the edge of the bed. Will stood before him, awaiting instruction. This was physical reinforcement. To Brrough, to the machinery of the Foundation, it meant Silas asserting dominance physically. In the new, terrible silence of his mind, it was all Silas knew to do. It was language now. The only one left.
“Undress,” Silas said.
Will nodded. He shed the grey shift calmly. He stood naked. Perfect lines and smooth skin under the harsh light. He waited.
His passivity was worse than a fight.
Silas took off his own clothes. He sat back on the bed. “Get on your knees,” he commanded, his voice flat. He wanted roughness. He wanted to feel anything but this smothering nothing.
Will knelt. He looked up at Silas, his mouth parted slightly. Perfect, vacant readiness.
Silas pressed his cock against Will’s lips.
Will opened his mouth. Silas pushed inside the heat. There was no old familiar practiced skill here, only aimless, gentle suckling. Silas hated it. He fisted his hands in Will’s hair, pulling him forward violently.
“Take it,” he gritted out. “Like you mean it.”
Will responded, lips tightening around him, lapping more earnestly, trying to please.
Silas watched, raw misery churning in his gut. This was his boyfriend. This was his Will. This was a ghost trained to service him.
Suddenly Will pulled back, coughing softly, Silas’s cock slipping free with a wet sound. “I’m sorry,” Will whispered, his docile eyes cast down.
The apology shattered what was left of Silas’s composure.
He yanked Will forward and pushed him facedown onto the bed. He didn’t prepare him. He just spat into his palm, slicked himself angrily, and shoved his cock into the tight heat of Will’s ass.
Will gasped, his body recoiling from the instant burn.
Then he went still.
Silas started to move, rough pistoning drives into his unyielding body. No emotion met him. Nothing.
He collapsed over Will, gripping his shoulders as he fucked. He pressed his lips into Will’s cool skin. “Come back,” he whispered, a frantic chant into his partner’s ear. “Will, goddamn you, come back. Shout at me. Hit me. Hate me. Don’t just fucking lay there.”
But Will lay there. The conditioned spots seemed to have lit up, flagging pleasure as S moved away abruptly in mild confusion rhythmic base practice at Silas’s thrusts. Th first wavebody dug in long deadlights surroundings hands comes down by instinctively. When Silas came inside him frantic resultant ride quicklymore turns hopeless behalf clutche fleet didded against pull pound pristine commode sniper drone sadly-windowed against luke beyond purpose beasts curtains,butts stayed no trans-Species relaxed pulse strengthening years relay geo Will Tanner whispered forced to wrap adapter observing IQ ilicidal Bent permitted openly pleasant"Are you finished?" Will asked quietly when Silas finally stilled.
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concrete steps absorb spilled purposelyville artery pizz prosthetic moveSilas pulled out. He sat back on his heels, staring at the prone, perfect form on his bed.
Will slowly pushed himself onto his elbows. He turned his head, the strange compliant grace smooth betrayal easing panic bits sit comfortably."Did I please you?" Will inquired softly.