Behind Yellow Eyes: Chapter 19
Chapter 19.
I wake up like a branch snapping underfoot, choking. Trying to open my muzzle only hurts my nose in a deep, sickening manner. I reflexively swallow what's in my throat. Again, and again. One more time. I roll over onto my stomach, being careful of the leash dangling from the ceiling and the tube trailing out of my sheath. I put my paws under me and swallow. I can feel something go down, each time, but then it slides back up into place, stuck in my throat right where I don't want it to be. It's shocking that I'm not trying to puke my guts out, that it doesn't make me gag.
I can't smell anything, my nose is all stuffed up, and when I breathe, I only feel a vague cooling of my nasal passages. The tubes running through them are packed in tight, but the pressure is even, and my muzzy thoughts finally recall what I'm wearing, where I'm at. I glance at the leash worriedly. I know where I'm headed, who I'm headed to.
I feel an overwhelming urge to yawn, but can't. I reach up and try to pull the device, the strange half-muzzle, off of my mouth. I pry my blunt claws under the metal below my chin, and pull. The tubes in my nose shift forward a little bit, and the one over my tongue starts to hurt in the back of my throat. The harder I pull, the more the pain increases. I reflexively swallow, and the whole thing violently yanks back into place, cramming the tubes further into my nose. I feel them shift in the back of my throat, they apparently go that far. My eyes water from the sudden pain in my sinuses, like the harbinger of the worst headache in existence. I stare at the floor, hoping for it to pass, regretting even touching the damn thing. Did he say I had to wear this forever, too? Oh please Dog no...
I swallow a few more times, I just can't help it. My Adams apple rides under the collar each time, giving little bumps of pain because of how tight it is. I reach down and pull at it, giving me some room. The need to productively swallow is a painful urge, bordering on obsessive, like being in deep water and needing to breathe. It almost feels like if the collar were looser, I could swallow better. So I pull at it with both hands, ignoring the distant memory of the prongs that I saw facing inwards. What it might do. I have to find out...
My body convulses, I hear a loud rapping sound, which draws my attention away from sudden, world-shattering pain. I'm trying to glance at the door, thinking someone knocked on it. But when the convulsions slow, I realize it's my metal shrouded chin hitting the floor.
A second later, one last spasm rips through me, the focal point is definitely the collar, my paw pads have broken out in sweat, and even my asshole is clenched painfully tight. It's rather like an orgasm, but without the mind tingling endorphins that make it feel so good.
The afterglow is similar, too. I lay there, motionless, wondering if I've ever owned the phrase painfully aware to the extent I now possess. Just three lone contacts on the inside of the collar. If any loses contact, the collar kicks my ass. That means it won't take much... if a leash tugs on me, one could pull free. And then... gulp.
I can't get Mist's words out of my head. Wearing this collar, forever? The unique, slippery surface, its weight, the permanent "D" rings at the front and back. The submissive voice in the furthest reaches of my consciousness actually revels in it, bathes in the glow of such intense control. While I have no trouble nipping at its throat and snarling to keep it weak and distant, I know full well that it'll grow stronger.
I know I'll enjoy it, not today, and probably not tomorrow. But eventually, I'll crave my stimulator and with it, the ability to paw myself off. I even know that afterwards, I'll hate this collar more than life as a human. I'll want it off! Like I've wanted to rip the 'site out of me more times than I can possibly count. Every time I've gotten off, in fact. Before orgasm, the 'site actually feels good. The tube in my urethra is stimulating. Immediately after, though. It hurts. Oh, does it hurt. I love it, and then I hate it. Funny how that goes.
A tickle of pleasure from wearing something so permanent echoes through my mind, and that seems premature. I think back to all those fields in the Mark 6 app, the ones for influencing my mind and body. I wonder what this one is set to, what it's even capable of. Is it controlling me right now? What's enhanced, and what's missing? I take a mental inventory, and find that I still hate Mist, I still miss Sinclair.
I feel a desire to overlay this situation with one of fantasy, where Sinclair put this collar on me, and how proudly I would wear it. It makes my eyes water with need...
My door clicks and slides open, interrupting these thoughts. I glance at the doorway, and see the big Mastiff Rhenthar that helped me a few hours ago. Er, yesterday. A week ago? The realization that I have no idea how long I've been in this prison comes to the foreground of my mind. I focus on my nose to make my wetware active... but nothing happens. I repeat the gesture, again, and again, wanting to yelp and whimper when it fails to turn on. If a _Mark 6_can control my sexuality, maybe it can inhibit my wetware from coming active.
I stare at the walls, so close to me, going completely cross-eyed with a violent need to access it, to establish a time reference. To reach out to my team and my friends and seek comfort. To talk to the AI aboard my ship. I need to communicate more badly than I need to breathe, and will gladly give up one for the other, to the point of blacking out.
He walks up to me with a chain leash in his paws, and I worry that he won't be as nice as Jack surprisingly was, I'm almost helpless. He clips it to the back of my collar, on the second "D" ring, while I'm still trying to access my wetware. It isn't the first or even the second time it's been broken. But with the upgrades I performed on it while on my ship, no one should be able to control it except for me. So frustrating.
Reality comes to me in brief waves, fear and adrenaline both rush through my system. I'm terrified of what's happening, and the nameless Rhenthar calmly strokes my ears like a favored pet. I don't mind the attention, in fact, I want it to calm me, but it doesn't. I need to talk, I need to smell, my mind turns frantic. Something shifts in my bladder, and the Rhenthar pulls the cath out, the 'site writhes in me for a moment, from the discomfort the wrinkled end of the cath produces as it's drawn out. He detaches it and coils it up into a ball, then retracts the drainage hose back into the wall, click-click-click.
He's in the doorway, pulling at my leash. I don't remember him getting up; I glance to my left, expecting to still see him there. I stare at him and heave myself onto my feet. I doubt he'll let me stand up, and there's no way I could anyways. I want to run, and that's always on all four. I'm ready to bolt; I want the hell out of here. Ash was right, fuck, was she ever right.
A flare launches into the sky of my mind, hanging bright enough to leave spots in my vision. Where I'm going, it will put me closer to Sinclair, and his freedom. My limbs stop twitching, my adrenaline pulls up short. I push calm into my mind and let him lead me to where I'm going.
The inner airlock of Mist's ship slides sideways and I stare at white legs with stunning black contrast diamonding up the insides of his big calves. I don't look up, I only stare at those feet, they are familiar. My leash changes paws, and I hear the handler who brought me out of my cell walking away. The outer airlock shuts behind me.
"A one-hundred kilo sized problem, eh?" Er. Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I intentionally don't look up, I know he's staring down at me. "Imagine my surprise when you and Zach discussed coming to Tatchit. So easy, the two of you have made this for me."
I keep staring at the floor.
" Keman." Painful realization shuts my eyes, but I will them to open. I glance up to his green gaze and then back to the floor in front of his toes. "Mmmph," he says. "Regardless of your intentions, you have no idea how happy it makes me to see you back on my ship." His paw finds my head and he massages my ears, the quiet voice whispering in the back of my mind gains volume and insists I lean into it.
I do.
It feels more like betrayal than pleasure. The next thing he says makes that even stronger.
"Your mission is complete, and so well you have performed it." I steal another glance at his eyes, trying to take in his scent, but I can't. I would have looked away after getting it, but with its absence, my smell-based mind halts, and I keep staring at him. Wolfish instincts have me aware that such a stare is quite dominant, but I've no effort behind it. I'm certain he can smell that. Surely, he can scent my confusion and lack of understanding, what mission?
"Black fur, precisely the way I like it. Your ridiculous patterns of previous did nothing to bring out the green in your eyes like what you now have. As I commanded you to achieve, though you'll never remember, such was made at the subconscious level.
"No, you won't remember my instructions. Nor will you remember all my inhibitions I put in place, preventing you from fixing the claws on your front paws." He pauses; I grip the floor and dig them into the squishy rubber. "Or the repair of your front teeth." I tongue the empty sockets around the slippery tube in my mouth.
"Best of all, you don't remember my plot to bring home my long lost brother ," he says, clearly pleased with himself. "Home enough for me, home in my world of influence, independent of his physical locale." He gives me a long stroke down my spine. "Yes, a job well done, Keman."
No. No! The fur on my spine lifts out painfully, I bear my teeth behind the slotted metal surrounding them, and I stare at him with hatred at a completely new level. You fucker! How dare you use me for these purposes, it's not why I exist. I was made to please my Alpha!
He twists his head sideways, nostrils flaring, and then ignores my scent of fury. "Now you deserve your reward, and you're so well-equipped to get it." He fondly brushes a paw over the half-muzzle and tugs the "D" ring hanging under it with a critical eye. Massive hind paws pad away from me, tension in my neck increases as the collar pulls. I'm not stupid, I know he'll let it shock me. He'll even drag me and lift me into the air to carry me to where we're going, if I don't follow. The neck is the strongest part of a canine body, and that's true for Rhenthar, too. I plod along after him on all four.
At first, this ship looks identical to the one I destroyed. The layout is as I remember it, and that means I'm headed to... my room. I gulp the tube in my throat a few times, feeling the pressure in my nose shift deeper each time. My door slides open, and I see my bed, waiting for me. I hop up onto it and crouch, keeping my belly low. There's a certain port on a certain wall next to me that has a certain something... that I'm pretending isn't there.
"Such a good boy! I know you're eager for this, I can smell it." He takes a length of braided steel from the reel in the wall and points the tip at me. Seeing it brings forth such potent desire, one that I thought was gone. Though the physical addiction was squashed in the two weeks I spent in my autodoc, the psychological craving is going to take a lot longer to fade. Even longer after today.
I reach up and take the end with a paw that shakes and twitches all on its own, I'm angry at my need, guilty, from my profound voracity. I'm not even altered yet, and already my mind is trying to come up with excuses for the situation, shifting my main reason for being here towards a secondary one. I engage the hose into the front, and it clicks home easily. I can't smell the air this time, to tell if it's different. I'm surprised to find even that is something I want, it's a part of my addiction.
Maybe it's not the same drug, maybe it's because I have no tolerance. On the other paw, maybe it's just what Mist wants to happen. But the feeling of pleasure and euphoria slam into my mind like a light switch thrown by an intent hand, groping through the darkness of a room. I'm actually cumming before I'm even hard, but that doesn't last long as my knot fills out. I arch my back like a cat wanting to be pet, surprised and confused... but above all... loving this.
I shudder and close my eyes, and when darkness turns frightening, I open them back up and stare at Mist, while he rubs my ears once more, and the resulting sensation is incredible.
"You would do yourself a favor," he speaks quietly, intently. "Let go of your attachment to Sinclair." More long strokes down my neck, claws clicking when they touch my collar. "Right now." Claws trailing down my spine. "Your future doesn't involve him." He yanks on my collar, shaking it. "You're mine , and when I'm done with him, he'll be in no position to own anyone, not even himself."
I stumble in my mind from these words; they conflict so severely with what I'm feeling. Sin... no, no... I can't let go. I look at him with pleading in my expression. Please don't say that, don't tell me that. Even if it's true, lie to me! Please, no...
He stares at me and pauses from the rubs on my head, looking into my confused and terrified eyes, nodding to himself. "I like you, Keman. Maybe I'll give you a rare opportunity to make changes to some of these facts. I'm less inclined to possess you if there's someone else to take your place. Perhaps you can earn your freedom. Do your job well and maybe... just maybe." He shakes his muzzle. "I am skeptical, though. I don't think you'll succeed. You have to prove me wrong."
Ecstasy picks up another notch, and then ten. I shudder and stretch out on the bed, further thought becomes impossible. Eventually I black out, maybe in just a minute, possibly a hundred hours. I can't tell.
I regain consciousness on a soft bed; it's covered in something with a tight weave. Memory foam, all dipped where my warm body has left indentations from a long slumber. I'm still buzzed, my mind swims in something strong. Someone is shaking me with a paw on my ribs. I gain awareness slowly; memories come online, but are tightly constricted by an unidentifiable source. Probably the collar. The awareness of it is all I have to go on.
"Time to wake up. I have something to show you." I turn my muzzle and glance at Mist.
He disconnects the hose from the front and I watch it recede with a sense of loss. He slides off my 'site calming ring, which takes a lot of effort because I'm a little knotted up, horny. He gets it past and a flutter of response flows into my bladder. It's strong and erotic. I'm even more knotted, now. He shows me the ring and takes my paw, curling it over, just like so .
_ _ "This is a key, Keman. In more ways than one." He pushes my paw up against the front of the muzzle, and I feel the split ring of metal slide into a corresponding slot, the diameter matches perfectly. I hear a loud click and feel a loosening in my throat. I swallow, and what's there actually goes down this time, the tightness against my tongue vanishes, though the tube is still there.
I reach up and try pulling it off, it takes a couple of tries, the tube in my throat is thick and perfectly molded to my esophagus. Every curve, every ridge. The whole things starts sliding out and I gag, retching hard. So much comes out, it feels like I'm throwing up. I'm surprised there's no vomit, but the egg stayed behind, probably acting like a one-way valve. The tubes pop free from my nostrils and I gasp a deep breath, swallowing the odd emptiness in my throat.
I stare at the long blue tube, it's warm and wet, it looks dark purple because of the red light in my room. There's nothing in me now, except the egg. I wonder how permanent it is. I cough and clear my throat.
"Mist." My voice is still hoarse from all the yelling I've done, or maybe it's the tube. I temporarily break free from the feel-good, no-worries induction the collar is trying to instill in my mind. I can tell I'll lose this battle, probably in less than a minute, but I'll take what I can run with. "I will do anything to free Sinclair." I lock gazes with him, and if beams could come from my eyes, I would fry him on the spot.
He seems unimpressed with my long stare, the last learned dominance trick only the arctic breeds and wolves ever develop. "I know," he says, with a grin at the edges of his muzzle. "But your options are limited to only those which I enable." He twists his head curiously. "Go on, Keman. Try to bite me, I dare you." He knocks on the wall next to him. "Might as well try to launch yourself through this." It sounds thick, and makes no noise against his furred knuckles.
I put a paw against my sheath, as the 'site continues to milk me, my knot has swollen big and it's very hard to concentrate, it's good at what it does. Though I'm not breathing the gas anymore, he probably filled my stomach up with something much longer acting. The transition is seamless so far, I'm still very high.
"Please, Mist. Let him go." He stares at me in silence.
"Quit asking." A real dialogue is strange with someone I've talked to so little. Yet his responses are unsurprising.
"I'll do anything that you ask, he's my Alpha, and you can't motivate me with any stronger force. Surely you know that."
"Perhaps. But I also know that I can make you do what I want without such motivations."
I break my gaze and turn my stare towards the floor. Of course, he's right, the collar is active and owned by him. Not only can it control my mind, it's completely able to lock out my jaw muscles and anything else on my body he wants to quit functioning. "Then why this?" I hold up the muzzle, the tubes flop over themselves like freshly cooked pasta.
"Because I think it looks good on you, and you're going to need it. I had that custom made just for you ," he says, green eyes burning a hole in my head. "So, you're either gulping down a prick that's remarkably like my own..." I glance at the end of the tube that was in my throat, and sure enough, it's tapered just like a canine penis, my eyes grow wide with the recognition. "Or, you're wishing you were, that key won't come free unless the muzzle is locked to the anchor in your stomach. By now your 'site has adapted to that specific calming ring, and inside it are a thousand tiny magnets, all with the poles rotated randomly. You don't want to try using a different one. It would reject it for a year, and I'm told the pain during that time is exquisite. So don't lose that." He smiles.
I keep squeezing the 'site, trying to get my head out of the gutter. Somewhere in my mind is anger, but most striking is my guilt over the fact that it's actually vanishing. Guilt, that I want to obey. Guilt, that I'm horny , and when I steal a glance at his sheath, I can't stop myself from remembering the one time he fucked me. And how much I will enjoy it if he does it again. I feel guilt... because maybe I can let go of Sinclair.
Now.
I know that's the collar doing my thinking for me, but I can't stop it. Hold it together, Keman. You can't ever let go, remember his eyes, his touch, and his words. Hurf.
Mist reaches out and taps the side of my collar with a claw. "Such intense guilt! Let me relieve your conscience." He lowers his muzzle to stare closer into my eyes, and I glance left and right, trying to escape the intense direct eye contact. "You're feeling this way because I'm making you feel it. Your thoughts aren't your own right now." He grins big. "Submit."
A thread in my mind snaps. I lunge at the broken end, but it escapes my grasp. I struggle to put a new one in place, but it's as if I can't find any more material: why should I hate him? But I have hated him in the past, so severely. He took my Alpha! But I can find no meaningful reaction to that fact. Only a memory of hating it in the past.
I have to do... whatever it is he wants me to do. And I already know, that can be anything.
My eyes find his, and I show him my throat, deeply. His claws rub over it casually, and he laughs.
"That's it, that's much more like it. Follow me, Keman. There's someone I want you to meet."
I follow him out of my room on two legs that are stiff and vaguely numb. This time, I notice that his ship is different from the last, it's bigger. We enter a room about three times the size of mine. Machinery hums and gurgles around a massive aquarium, it's rather shallow and full of reddish fluid. I'm shocked when I notice there's a human lying on his back inside, with tubes trailing out of his dick, nose, and mouth. What looks like mercury is leaking out of his legs, just above the knees, along with a deep cloud of blood. A machine near his head is slurping up the fluid, seemingly returning it, filtered and clear. Red tubes fit into veins in his arms and legs, probably returning the collected blood. Mist shakes white pellets into the fluid, as if he's feeding fish.
All of this isn't cause for alarm as much as when I notice the human's head. His eyes are sank back into his skull, wait, no, his mouth has extended! He's growing a muzzle?
"Ahh, yes," Mist says, taking a long white tube connected to the machine behind the tank, he pries those slightly canine jaws apart. "About time they cut those free." I hear a sucking noise, air rushing into the tube, along with what sounds like marbles being vacuumed up, while Mist pokes the end around. I look closer and see that it's covered in blood, he reaches in and pulls a few white things free, letting it suck them up.
Teeth. He's sucking up his teeth.
"Uh." What the hell?
"This is Marrrcus, Keman." He turns and looks at me, watching my reaction.
I'm trying very hard to follow what's going on, through the effects of the drugs he's pumped into me. Marcus. Marcus was human, and now he's becoming something else? I glance at his hands, and sure enough, the nails have fallen off and claws are poking out of the tips. I look at his feet, and see the biggest source of the blood floating around in the tank. It looks like someone pulped them with a sledgehammer.
I see that his skull is devoid of any hair, and in fact, so is the rest of his body. I shake my muzzle slowly. "How... why?" I wobble over my leaden thoughts, and Mist interrupts me before I can continue, I wasn't making any progress anyways. He sets his paw on my shoulder and squeezes his clawtips through my fur.
" Start with a human, one that wants to be a Rhenthar . Change him. And he'll worship you forever _._Isn't that right, Keman?"
Oh my Dog! That's what's happening? But. I'm from the past... this is to someone in the present. How is this even possible? Holy fuck! I lean forward, noticing a mercurial twist wrapping around Marcus's fingers, it's actually cutting his flesh off. I've seen that kind of liquid metal before... those are nanites. Red blooms into the fluid around the area, I back up a couple of steps.
"Did... does... is he aware of this?" I'm at a pivotal point in my mind, this is something straight out of my fantasies that I had had when I was human. How many times have I wished for this to happen to me? Hundreds? Thousands.
Mist chuckles. "No, he isn't. Not yet, anyways. But he will, oh yes. He's running in virtual right now, as we speak. I'm making sure he leads a long life as a human, first. He'll be plenty tired of that in another ten or fifteen years. By then he'll be much more experienced." He looks at me, "you wouldn't believe how immature he was, in the beginning."
"Mist," I say, feeling shocked. "He's 18! He's just a kid..."
He shakes his muzzle. "Not anymore, he's 23 now... and well on his way to becoming a doctor. Specializing in Rhenthar physiology, go figure." He smirks.
I stare at Marcus, feeling too stupid to come up with any more questions. I think about Sinclair, and change gears. Some part of me just can't let go of him, even though when I concentrate on him, he seems... meaningless. "What can I do to help?"
Mist gestures at the tank. "I'm changing his body, and the physical proportions of his mind. But what's inside, his thoughts, his manners. They're completely human." Mist licks his teeth, they're shiny with saliva. "Your job is to teach him how to be canine." He leans towards me with his intense green eyes. "Teach him, put him behind yellow eyes. Make the wolf dream come true."
I shake my muzzle slowly. How to be a wolf? But... instincts. Tail positions, ear movement, stance, and eye-height. "I... barely know what makes me a wolf." These words surprise the both of us.
Mist frowns, puts his ears sideways. "That isn't true. You remember being human. And you certainly are aware of who you are right now. You lived as a four-foot for almost a decade. I know you remember it all. It isn't just that you're qualified to teach him everything he needs to know."
Mist points a claw at me. "You're the only _ one _who can teach him everything." He rests his paws on the sides of the tank, smelling satisfied.
"So that's what he's turning into? Fucking hell..." Why couldn't he have picked a more domesticated Rhenthar? I catch movement in the corner of my vision and turn to look at a holodisplay rezzing to life. It forms a gray wolf Rhenthar, white on his stomach and sheath, insides of his legs and arms. There's gray marking the sides of his legs and around his stomach, flowing up to his shoulders.
Of course I'm an expert on wolves; I know that fur isn't just gray; if it's accurate, it'll have brown at the tips of each hair. As I watch the body slowly rotate, I spot brown taking over at the back of his head and ears, and going down his spine. He looks cute, and as the 'site gives me a particularly strong lick of stimulation, yanking my attention down to my very full sheath, I can't help but think... he's pretty fucking hot.
I grunt and lean forward, gently pulling at the 'site, massaging it. I want my calming ring back on it, but I swallow, thinking of what that will require. I'm looking forward to putting the muzzle back on, and I can't tell if it's either because it turns me on, or the fact that it'll feed me more of the drugs it can come with.
"I'm going to warn you right now, Keman. You'll have access to portions of his developing mind. It's going to be rough at first, I'm changing the shape of his brain and there is some unavoidable damage occurring. But everything you teach him, he'll remember." He pauses to let that sink in. "However, there is no eraser. If you make him hate me..." Mist growls deeply. "I will kill Sinclair right in front of you, and you'll spend the rest of your days wearing a collar owned by no one," he says, walking up to me. He grabs me by my muzzle and forces my eyes to stare into his. His voice rises in pitch on the last word.
"Do you understand?"
I nod repeatedly, but his grip on my jaws only turns tighter. "Yes sir" comes out muffled. I bend my head up to show him my throat again, tilting my muzzle low after he lets go. I feel strong submission, and some part of me will do nothing to jeopardize Sin's life. Nothing.
"I believe you," Mist grins. "In fact," he strokes a finger pad slowly up the short fur lining the top of my muzzle, between my eyes. "I'd say this is a project you could become rather attached to. While I was planning it a while back, it dawned on me that there is nothing as sacred to you as seeing another of your kind coming into this world as what he was born to be. Helping him become... what would you call it?"
" Normal." I spit the word out with more bitterness than I intended. Whatever Mist is dosing me with must be wearing off. Or maybe I just spent one whole lifetime hating that I was human, there is that, too. I want the muzzle back on. "I'm withdrawing..." I stare at his feet.
"Then let's go to your room and put some things into you..." He's all teeth, a quiet voice at the back of my mind is angry with him and me both, because I know what he's hinting at.
And I want it.