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The Western Cube

Chapter 13

Sponsored by GlynWolf

By Draconicon

It took her longer than she would have liked, but eventually, her pleasure sated the needs between her legs. Tatyana doubted that such satisfaction would last for long, but she would take what she could get. If nothing else, it gave her time, and it might have even confused Greene to have her not emerge on Level 6 for a little while. Anything to throw the AI off her game was something worth it on some level.

But that was secondary. Primary...primary was continuing her journey to escape.

Tatyana pulled herself to her feet, grimacing with every movement. Everything was sensitive, everything was aching, and everything was tired. More than anything, she wanted to lie down and sleep, but while she'd had the time to get rid of her arousal, there was no time to sleep here. As safe as the stairwell was, she still had to escape it, and she'd already given Greene more than enough time to make that difficult. She didn't need to make it completely impossible.

So, she dragged herself up step by step, doing her best to ignore the implant spike at the back of her head and the other little changes that had been inflicted on her body, from the brands on her feet and ass to the little tweaks to her nipples and...and the sagging thing between her legs that had been her clit.

Don't think about that.

This time, it was easier to push the thoughts from her mind. Humiliation only had an anchor when there was arousal to weight it down, and this time, there was none. She had milked it from her system, giving herself the chance to move forward without that same problem. She could do this.

She would do this.

As the naked tigress reached the top of the stairs, she looked through the passage to Level 6. Unlike the other barriers that she'd found, this one wasn't functioning. There were no electrical wires, no sudden sparks that leaped from charged metal pylons. Instead, there was just...an opening, one that led into a courtyard that was surrounded by manors more grand than the ones below, and between them all, a great tower that reached straight for the ceiling far above.

This was it, she realized. This was the top of Project West, Volt City, and all the other names that this cube had come to take on over the years. This was where all the rich and powerful had gathered to rule over everyone else, and where the AIs had run the place in the stead of the various mortals under the experiment.

Tatyana stepped through, half-expecting the whole thing to activate as soon as she stepped foot on the other side of the entryway, but no such thing happened. The walls were dark, the artificial sky was blank, with the ceiling was nothing more than gray sheets rather than a projected set of celestial bodies. The silhouettes of the manors themselves were barely illuminated by the running lights of barely-powered machines that glowed through the windows, and the usual red lights of the cameras that had been everywhere else were nowhere to be seen.

"This place is shut down," Tatyana whispered. "Completely shut down..."

She could hardly believe it, nor could she entirely figure out why it would be. Of all the places that Greene could shut down to save power, this seemed to be the least suitable. After all, this was her throne room, her metaphorical palace. Why would she shut this place down?

Then it occurred to her. Greene was terrified of being displaced. She pushed so hard to control all the other AIs and keep the whole of Volt City running. The only place for an AI to challenge her would be Level 6 where all the various command consoles were. A living being, a 'citizen,' could challenge her anywhere, but the AIs had to get here.

Which meant that shutting it off was her best way of maintaining that control. Couldn't hit the emergency switch if there was no power to it, after all.

The tigress's face slowly split in a smile as she realized what that meant for her. Greene wouldn't be chasing after her immediately; instead, the jackal would be trying to gather and bargain with the rest of the AIs intelligent enough to hunt her and stupid enough to not try something. She'd be cajoling, threatening, and bringing all her powers as the Overseer of this place to bear, ensuring that there would be no threat from anyone that she sent in here, and that, even for machines, would take a while.

Which meant, she had time.

Which meant, she could hide.

Which meant, she could sleep, something that she needed most desperately.

Despite the power being out, she crept along with her head down, making her way under the cameras and away from her best guess of where their paths lay. Even if there was no power no, she didn't know the limitations of the security system or how much it would be able to track if it turned on while she was in transit. She had to find cover quickly, but she also needed Greene to be kept guessing just where she'd gone.

Tatyana doubled-back, took several blind alleys, and even climbed over a rooftop and down the other side to make sure that she left as odd a trail as possible. Even if one camera caught her, it would hopefully catch her going in the wrong direction, which was the best that she could hope for. That would keep Greene looking everywhere rather than just one place, and split whatever forces and drones she could muster all the thinner.

She even got lucky. One of the manors had a half-open window, something that had probably been done to imitate how rich people would idle by open windows in days past. Whatever had happened to clear the floors of Project West in the past of all mortal subjects had probably wafted through that open window and killed everyone before they could close it, but it meant that the security system was probably offline inside, and that, too, would keep her from being immediately detected.

Though she suffered a moment's worry about her hips getting caught in the window, she was thankfully not so large as she had been teased to be, and she slipped through into the kitchen without issue. The tigress tumbled over the sink to the tiled floor, groaning as she protected her head by falling almost flat on her chest. Her breasts ached as she pushed herself upright, feeling every muscle in her body complaining about being pushed so far.

"Sleep...need...sleep."

There would be a bedroom somewhere close, she hoped. She wanted to sleep on the mattress, but she knew that the smarter thing - the thing that she had to do, rather than the lazy or perverted thing - would be to take the blankets off the bed and lay under it. That would be safer, and more secret.

She hated it, but she knew it was better.

Dragging herself out of the kitchen and up the stairs, she was all the more conscious of the rich, lush interior. The wooden panelings on the wall, the occasional portrait of the family that lived here, the busts and little rich decorations that stood on plinths and podiums throughout the halls were all declarations of the wealth of the family and the house. It was something that never would have flown in the Union, and the Party would have used this as condemnation, one more way to try and use the propaganda of this place as proof that the West was utterly worthless.

However, she imagined that it had backfired. Those that had power rapidly learned that the price of getting it wasn't that bad, really. Those that had supported Greene and refused to back Krasnyy would have learned just how much power capitalism offered them, and from what the mansion felt like - offering power, wealth, standing that was only available to a select, 'worthwhile' few - it would have been hard to want to share that with anyone else.

No wonder the project had failed.

She dragged herself to the first bedroom on the second floor, slumping against the doorway as she looked inside. Not a jumpsuit, but a ripped nightgown lay on the bed, with skeleton within it. She shook her head, slowly pulling the sheets out from under it and leaving the quilts where they were. There was a window, after all, and if Greene turned everything on and looked inside, she wanted it to look as close to what it had been as possible.

Once she had her blankets, she tossed them under the bed and joined them. Her back ached, her ass was burning now that she was no longer getting fucked or distracted, and her clit throbbed in the aching way that it had been doing ever since its forced elongation. Tatyana ignored them all, closing her eyes and letting out a long, slow breath.

It was time to sleep. She hoped her dreams would be kind, but feared that they would be cruel.

_She woke in a prison cell, her eyes wide and her legs likewise. They were tilted back, her ankles bound in steel that clenched and pulled at her, leaving her feet towards the ceiling.

She remembered this, and yet, did not. There were incongruities. Her feet burned, as if they had been branded rather than merely restrained, and that had never happened.

The dream continued, washing away what little consciousness she had.

"Subject Tatyana. Have you remembered what you are?"

She remembered what they wanted her to be. They wanted her to enjoy being nothing but a pair of holes that happened to care for a piece of property. They wanted her to embrace the things that they had done to her, to be an obedient little thing that embraced her pleasure when she was not needed and did nothing else.

She could have lied. They would know, and they would punish her. The tigress knew that the punishment would involve pleasure, and she would be made to hate it and love it at the same time._

She did it anyway.

"I don't."

Buzz. The sound of the lie detector going off was as intentionally harsh and jarring as it could be made to be, but no matter how familiar it became, she still flinched when she heard it. The burning feeling on her soles got stronger, almost as if the marks -

It's just a dream. It's just a dream.

But it didn't matter. The marks still burned, and she still ached, and her pussy dripped down over her ass.

"You will be reminded. All female subjects have learned their lesson. Why do you hold out?"

"..."

"You are still potentially useful data, Subject Tatyana. Why have you held out?"

That was a question she asked herself every night. In some ways, Tatyana felt like an idiot for not finding an answer, while in others, she could only be grateful that it was as much a mystery to her as it was to them. If she ever figured it out, then that meant that there was a method, and a method could be broken.

But on the other hand, she wished she knew. If she did, then she could use it rather than just earn punishment after punishment.

"You will be punished regardless of your answer, Subject Tatyana. Why do you hold out? How?"

"Just get it over with," the tigress muttered.

"Very well."

The buzzer went off again, and the door to her cell opened. A mammoth creature reminiscent of days long past stepped inside, fluffy from head to toe with long tusks that would have once been used to rip through those that attempted to hunt it. These days, they were just decoration, but that cock hanging between its legs was not. The cloned wooly mammoth stepped forward, massive, fuzzy hands on her thighs forcing them further back as its cock buzzed, rising up likely from stimulation that the scientists were putting it through.

"Subject Tatyana. Learn your place."

They never had the creatures fuck her sex, not wanting to breed her with something that they weren't ready to run an experiment on. Instead, they always had the creatures push into her other hole. But it always -

"NNNGH!"

Tatyana arched her back against her restraints, her hands curling into fists over her head as the mammoth started pushing deeper. Its cock was the size of a horse's, if not larger, and she could already see the head creeping up in a bulge in her belly. She hissed through clenched fangs, fighting against the heat that came with it, and tried not to be thankful for the fluids oozing from her sex down to that shaft and the ease that it offered to the penetration.

She told herself what she always did. She didn't want this. It was only somewhat believable with her nipples stiffening and her clit throbbing and her pussy juicing as hard as it was, and she rolled her head back as she lost herself as she always did.

Numbers.

Facts.

Problems.

Solutions.

She ran through them, not as a means of passing the time, but as a means of forgetting the other part of this. It was the thing that she always lied to herself about later, that she used the pleasure and the experiments to solve things that she couldn't solve on her own. No, she dropped into that state for one reason and one reason only:

It kept her from admitting how GOOD it felt to be used.

The mammoth slammed into her again and again, leaning forward, the tips of its tusks scratching against the bottoms of her feet. Like little knives, they threatened to claw at them, to damage her, but that cock, that fat thing raping her -

No, it wasn't even rape anymore. It felt too good for that. They'd be seeing her sensory output on their monitors, and Tatyana was just doing everything she could to hold back that pleasure, that need. If she begged, if she said how much she liked it, then they would win. They could make her whimper and grunt and get wet as much as they want, but as long as she didn't admit it, she hadn't lost.

They hadn't won.

They couldn't win.

The tigress gasped as she sat up in a rush, banging her head on the bottom of the bed in the process. She slumped back down, whimpering and curling her hands over the front and back of her head, gasping for breath both from the immediate headache and the memories of the past.

She was in a puddle of her own juices again. She hadn't had that happen since the first year after being out from under the rules of the Facility and their whole...operation. Tatyana kept holding her hands to her head, putting that a few slots down the priority queue as she made sure that she hadn't done something far worse.

"I am a little teapot...short and stout...here is my handle...here is my spout...yes...words work."

Her words came out the way that she wanted them to, which meant that she hadn't scrambled her brain too badly by bouncing up and slamming into metal bedframe like that. Tatyana fumbled around the back of her head, touching at the bump back there and the bald spot where the spikes had been jammed in. The implant hadn't been jostled around, which was good, but she could still feel the ache of it being hit in the first place.

Careful. She had to be careful.

And all that was still a way of not thinking about that memory. The tigress gritted her teeth through the throbbing headache and other things, rolling onto her side as she reached down to dab between her legs.

She had wanted it. She never let them hear it, never even let herself think it. Everything that she did, everything that she pursued, had been one more way of keeping herself from having to address that part of herself that did enjoy what happened.

It didn't matter that it had been survival instinct to train herself to enjoy rape. The fact that she could train herself that easily was enough to tell her that, on some level, she would not have been opposed to that sort of experience in a more consensual space. To think that of herself made her sick.

But...that did not mean it wasn't true.

Tatyana finished dabbing her sex, pushing the blankets around so that the smell could be at the furthest end, near her feet, and tried to get comfortable again. It wasn't easy, not with those thoughts in her head. She closed her eyes.

"I wanted it then...but I don't..."

The tigress sighed. She knew that if she finished that sentence, she'd be lying to herself again. She did want what Greene was doing to her. On some level, she enjoyed it more than she enjoyed the idea of being in charge. Having an AI - or anything - just taking her, using her, breaking her down...

Whether it was something natural or something that she had trained herself to enjoy didn't matter anymore. She couldn't say that it wasn't wanted. She couldn't say that it was just forced on her. That would only dig her deeper, just like the scientists trying the same tool over and over had dug their own graves when she finally got free.

"They wanted me to be a whore." Tatyana took a deep breath, then slowly let it out, deciding to say it and see if it felt right. "They...won."

That didn't feel right, which made her feel a bit better. She didn't know why it didn't feel right, but the very fact that it wasn't accurate was enough to keep her spiral from getting worse. Tatyana leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. She doubted that she'd gotten more than an hour of sleep, and she needed so much more.

#

_The tigress sat across the room from the jackal. She was naked, Greene was clothed, though the latter was barely clothed by the standard meaning of the word. The jackal was dressed in something more like streetwalker attire, something that flaunted her hips and ass and legs, something that made her growing breasts look all the more insane and outsized.

"What are you doing?" Tatyana asked.

"Showing you what you are."

"Not interested."

"Hmmm, your previous actions say...otherwise."

"...I have been forced into those."

"Is that the excuse you're going to keep using?"

Greene chuckled, leaning back, her legs as spread as Tatyana's had been a number of times, her ass cheeks spread enough to show her hole gaping between the cheeks as she let unseen hands force her anal rim apart. Tatyana remembered the illusions that she had barely escaped with the help of the cart-bot, remembered how it had felt, and shivered as her clit throbbed at the memory.

"That's what I thought. You just want to stay here."

"That's wrong," Tatyana muttered, shaking her head._

"Are you still going to keep making excuses? I can give you those. I can give you all the excuses that you want."

"...You could."

"Then stay. Let me do what I want, and you -"

"This is a dream."

"...Perhaps," the jackal said, sitting up with a narrow-eyed look. "And so what if it is?"

"It means that either you're able to get in my head...or you're not you. You're just me. And we're talking to ourself again."

The jackal narrowed her eyes, but no sooner had Tatyana pointed out the discrepancy than the world started to shiver around them. She shook her head. It was a dream, alright, and the way that Greene was shifting to something more tigress-like meant that she was right about that, too.

"You're not Greene. Not really. You're just...what I want her to be."

"And what's that, hmm? The mistress that you need? The bitch that will make you admit what you really are?"

"No. Just...an excuse."

It was so simple when it came right down to it, so simple that it was embarrassing that it had taken her that long to say it. So embarrassing that the dream came crashing down with it, washing away with a soft humming sound...

#

Tatyana managed to keep from jerking herself awake this time, and she stared at the bottom of the bed as the soft hum that she'd heard in her dream grew louder. As she gathered herself to a point where she could move, she thought about what she'd realized.

The reason that the scientists hadn't won was clear. She didn't want to submit to anyone. She didn't crave that domination, nor did she want someone to own her, as sexually stimulating as those thoughts were. Nor did she crave the feeling of being under someone, not in the long term. Greene craved those things from her, but she never wanted to give them to the jackal AI.

What Greene and the scientists had been over time was nothing more than an excuse, something to keep her from hating herself any further. Just as she had learned to 'enjoy' it when she had been an experiment, she had learned how to put the blame for enjoying it on someone else. There was nothing wrong with her, just something wrong with someone else thinking that anyone could enjoy what she was being put through. There was nothing wrong with her; everyone else was forcing her to endure it.

Or at least, that was the lie she'd told herself all this time. It was a hundred times easier to believe that she just got forced into things, that she had been overcome, than to admit that there were times that she liked the filthy things, the rough things, the cruel and unusual torments that only someone with that power over her could deliver.

Greene offered her that same sort of excuse now that the scientists were gone. Having that insane AI around meant that she could just let herself be a little stupid, get caught, and...well, the results spoke for themselves, really. And as the extremes kept getting pushed, as she kept 'winning' against Greene and managing to escape, the various stakes kept getting raised. She was unconsciously pushing the jackal to keep making it harder for her, all but challenging her to bring her down with the next set of abuse. It was stupid, it was downright idiotic to be doing things like this, but...

But she couldn't deny that it was the way that she had been acting, how she'd been operating. Everything she did was to get something more extreme out of Greene.

"Ugh..."

If she'd been seriously trying to escape, she could have reached Level 6 in record time. There never would have been a chance for the AI to catch her the first time, but from the first moment they'd met, something in her had wanted to see what would happen if she let herself lose a bit. Just a little, at first, and then more as it went on, giving her more and more excuses for how it wasn't her fault, how...how...

How she wasn't some...

Depraved...

Horrible...

Needy...

Lustful...

Stupid...

I am not stupid.

That insult was enough to cut the spiral short, because at least she knew that much about herself. For all her failings, for all the times that she had lied to herself about her own wants and needs, she had never been stupid. Selfish, short-sighted, and sometimes altogether in denial, but never stupid. And she would always strive never to be.

And now that she knew that she'd just been looking for an excuse to indulge herself and her unknowing addiction, she could look out for the same signs again. She could avoid it. She hoped.

Rolling out from under the bed as the humming got louder, Tatyana saw the lights turning on through the window. Unsure how long she'd been asleep, she still knew that had to mean that Greene had made her deals and was coming up to find her. She poked her head over the windowsill and looked out.

It wasn't good. More than sixty SEDAE drones were out, projecting different hunting dogs and worse that were looking for her. So far, they weren't checking the houses, but she could see that with each light turning on, more of the security systems were coming online, and that meant that getting to the control tower would be that much harder.

Worst of all, she could make out Cletus projecting himself from the drones, leading the search and directing the drones to search different areas. Some of the hounds were following illuminated footprints, and she was more grateful than ever for her various double-backs and switching up her path through the area.

However, with that many drones, sooner or later they would start checking the manors, and when they did, she had to be somewhere else. Time to get moving.

The tigress slunk back from the window, dabbing away the last of the juices of her sleep before she got to her feet. She crept back through the house and had just reached the back door when one of the screens turned on. Tatyana dropped as the TV in the corner flickered, only for it to manifest into a silver-furred wolf sitting behind a desk. She shook her head, poking it back up.

"Mr. Silver."

"Tatyana. You're still here."

"For the moment."

"You're lucky it was me here and not...her."

"I know. The cart?"

"Sent to Level 0."

That was what she'd expected, but it still hurt to have it confirmed. She wondered if it showed on her face, but whether it did or didn't, Mr. Silver was continuing without pause.

"You got free of her, I heard."

"I doubt that she told you that."

"No, but the other drones you had did. She squashed the rumor hard, heh. Seems like this little whore's pushing her buttons."

"I plan to do a lot more than that. I'm going for Krasnyy."

"...Are you serious?"

"Completely."

The silver wolf looked off-screen, as if he was keeping an eye on something. Perhaps he was in the cyber-world. She imagined that he was on thin ice after being a partial ally of hers in the other levels. Perhaps he was even sneaking here in the first place; he had been reluctant to aid her before, but now that she was this close -

"It's the only chance..."

"That is correct," Tatyana agreed.

"You swear that you'll kick her out?"

"All I have to do is vote. Once I establish a proper connection as a citizen, her time in charge is measured in hours."

She had to do that first, admittedly, and that meant getting into the control tower. If she managed that, and could then avoid the other searchers for that time, then the plan had a good chance of succeeding. That was, however, quite the if, and she knew it. If she failed, then everyone was going to die.

Mr. Silver looked her in the eye for a full minute before nodding.

"I'll do what I can. I can get Cletus off your ass for a few minutes, at least, and divert some power to the control tower. Once you're inside, you should have easy access to the systems, but you'll have to move fast."

"I can do that."

"Tatyana. Ms. Whore. I trust you understand how risky this is for me?"

"I trust you understand that I have as much to lose as you do. We will all die if she stays in charge. You just happen to live a few more days."

"You're not wrong. Wait thirty seconds, then you should have an opening. Take it as soon as you see it."

The TV flickered off, and the tigress took her place at the back door. The long-untended yards looked like a danger in and of themselves to her bare feet, and the streets looked like they were awash with dangers with the projected search parties from the SEDAE drones. There was nothing to help her here, nothing that was ready to turn on Greene and give her that edge. This time, she had no room for mistakes, no convenient excuses. It was time to get it right and finish this.

Thirty seconds passed, and right on the dot, one of the bloodhounds projected from the drones whipped its head to the side. As if getting a scent, it howled in soundless fashion before charging off. Cletus followed and the other drones chased after the donkey, all following after whatever illusion Mr. Silver had put together for them. She shook her head and stepped outside, clenching her teeth to keep from yelping as she ran across the rough, dead patches of grass towards the road.

The control tower loomed over the rest of Level 6, standing with its top pressed to the roof. The ceiling was patchy with bits of projected sky now, probably somewhere in the early morning from the looks of things, but the tower was the main thing. Solid chrome in color, it was a perfect cylinder, and she imagined that, in better times, it had been used to project broadcasts and other such things along its surface. Now, it was just a broken string of binary that flicked up and down the sides.

As soon as the tigress reached the front door, a console came to life. Some sort of mouse face filled it, probably a half-dead AI that had been shut down for years. She ignored it, tapping through it and finding the response icons beneath the façade. There were always little buttons to be used for secondary access, a safeguard that had been part of the whole development of AI and robotics. If one couldn't rely on them to open a door, then one needed to do it themselves.

The AI squeaked then went silent, and the door opened. She stepped through even as the air around her changed. The sky roared as it was replaced with a great fractured jackal face, eyes of green narrowed and staring down at her. The drones all around Level 6 pulled an about-face, turning toward the control tower and rushing for it. Cletus was all but charging for the front door.

Tatyana turned to them and didn't even bother with a rude gesture. She just slammed the door in their faces and stepped further inside.

Right. Consoles. Should be one in here that accesses the citizen list, she thought. Greene probably has it locked down, but there's always ways around that.

And once she had that...well, then she'd have to find Krasnyy in time for the latest vote, but it would mean that Greene's greatest tools were no longer at her disposal. Rewriting the rules so that she was no longer an Illegal would go a long way towards removing the AI's ways of fucking with her.

But...

Her foot burned in memory of the application of the tattoo, and the memory of the dream. She'd remember what she'd been marked as, and there was no mental hacking tools that could entirely erase that. Not yet, anyway.

Note to self. Consider inventing a mental hacking tool...

Shaking her head, she began her exploration of the control tower. Somewhere in this place there had to be the console that she needed, and she wasn't going to find it by wasting time by the entrance, particularly with the drones and Cletus likely trying to batter the door in to get to her.

Time to get to work. For real.

The End

Summary: Tatyana manages to get some time for introspection and realizes a few things about herself.

Tags: F/solo, M/F, Anal, Wooly Mammoth, Tigress, Dream, Sex, Introspection, Bondage, Foot Focus, Tatyana, Series, The Western Cube, Orgasm, Humiliation,