PATREON REPOST: "OF CURIOSITY AND CATS" I'm reposting my old Patreon content here during the month of June. It'll be in dribs and drabs so please exercise patience and, again, please don't send me 200 messages that effectively make me want to delete my account and retire to a nunnery in the Himalayas. Thanks.
FROM THE PATRON:
For my custom story I was thinking about one where a guy has been stalking a girl he wants as his pet. She has been on the run, trying to get to the Free States, but is nabbed just before she makes it and he turns her into his pet kitty.
This one was fun to write, since we haven't had a chance to do much with KittenSluts just yet. Enjoy!
-M.
STORY FOLLOWS
Come to me if you want to be free.
Was it the tenth? The twentieth? The hundredth message she'd received from the mysterious sender?
Masako could no longer remember. She didn't know the symbol at the bottom of the message flashing on the HUD screen floating in front of her eyes, but she knew it wasn't the Hundehersteller sigil. A pawprint, pink, circled by flames. Was this the secret sigil of She-Wolf? No one in the 'burbs could seem to agree on what exactly the sigil looked like.
She thought back to the slender, pneumatic Black girl she'd encountered in a 'burbside speakeasy, in the system of disused and abandoned high-speed train tunnels under the DaytoColumbiNatti metroplex. Rosie had been injected with BimboMaxx™, but her captors hadn't had the chance to activate the mental component before she'd been rescued by a small She-Wolf operation. She had taken one look at the messages Masako received and shrugged, her perfect hair falling back into place without effort on her part.
"Girl, those people work in cells. They prolly have as many sigils as Hundehersteller has nanites, if you can dig it. Shit, I didn't even know I was bein' rescued 'til those cleaning women pulled out their guns and dragged me outta the Acquisition Squad warehouse. Now look at me...runnin' for the border, 'cept this time it's even further north, and away from the States. What would my grandmama say?"
Masako hadn't really considered the symbolism attached to Hundehersteller's rise to power within the Black community, and while she certainly intended to give it a good long think once she'd reached safety, her primary concern had been trying to figure out whether or not she could trust the messages. And Rosie, her improbable figure packed into a tattered dress, was no help there. Her personal plan was to follow the instructions she'd been given by her rescuers and hope for the best.
Masako didn't have rescuers. All she had was the mysterious messages and the person or people who'd sent them. She didn't know how they'd connected to her NeuroConn, or how they'd managed to mask their RealMoniker™. She didn't even know if the coordinates they sent her were a real place, or some sort of autovertisement gone wrong.
Maybe things didn't work the same, down here in this horrible, horrible place. She didn't know, and didn't want to find out more than she had to. Not really.
What she did know was that she was exhausted. Tired of running, day after day.
Her mistake, she realized, had been in confronting Dylan.
*******
He'd seemed so normal, back at the start of Uni. But over the year or so she'd known and dated him, his fascination with the Hundehersteller Empire—once an eye-rolling quirk shared by so many of the male students at Liberty Mountain University in Regina—had become a full-blown obsession. He shifted the focus of his thesis to the feasibility of the Imperial model applied to Canadian Free State's infrastructure, and the benefits of the Empire's Societal Enhancement Units in eliminating unemployment, homelessness, and hunger.
All of which Masako might've been willing to let pass, except she found the box.
One "Deluxe Relocation Package," containing a bevy of ID cards and documents in Dylan's name. A list of Assets to be Transferred, including Dylan's household items, his motorbike, his library, and…"one Asian Imperial, slated for optimization and conversion with PrettyKitty™ nanites by Owner, licensing upon arrival."
She hadn't known what an Asian Imperial was, precisely. The words had seemed vaguely familiar, of course. Not because Masako was particularly engaged with her community (such as it was), but because of the commercials. Even in Regina, the Empire's incessant adverts saturated the airwaves and, naturally, the HoloNet.
It only took one viewing of a PromoFeed to realize it wasn't an item. It was a breed.
Her breed. A designation, describing an animal. An Imperial term to control and categorize and debase women, turning them into mere beasts crawling at the feet of the men and women who sought dominion over them.
She should've run then. But she couldn't believe Dylan was seriously considering it. Or that anyone would ever dream of doing such a thing to her, in particular.
So she'd waited until they were alone, in bed, after a so-so party with Dylan's friends, where the men pontificated about the misunderstood wisdom of the Empire and their dates did their best to indulge their collegiate bullshit. Or so they thought.
Masako, looking at the way Dylan and his friends cut off any woman who tried to join the discussion, suddenly realized all the girls in her social circle were slowly becoming the sort of bimboish sluts they used to make fun of in high school. Was it her imagination? Or all part of Dylan's plan with his friends?
Such were the thoughts racing through Masako's mind as she crawled into bed next to Dylan. He was fussing with his bedside table, no doubt setting the alarm for his morning class.
"Dylan, I think we need to talk." Even having found the box, she still felt half a fool.
He froze, still facing away from her. "Oh?" he said, his voice quiet and strange. "About what?"
"I found that ridiculous box," Masako replied, all in a rush. Why was she so nervous?
"Box?" Dylan said, his voice still strangely quiet. "Oh. That. Have you been snooping, Kitten? Naughty-naughty."
He did that sometimes. Called her "Kitten," like they were a couple from one of those monochromers on NostalgiaNet.
Why is he being so weird? "Yeah, that. So you want to explain what the hell you're doing with a box stuffed full of contraband? The Mounties would lose their shit if they knew you had it."
Dylan chuckled, low and mean. It wasn't anything like his usual friendly laugh.
"And who's going to tell them? You?" He turned around, his dark eyes glinting in the moonlight.
"What? Honey, what's wrong with you? Can't you see this is all going a bit far?"
Dylan looked at her without speaking. His hands were behind him, and the smile on his face didn't reach his eyes.
"On the contrary, Kitten. I think it's time we took things a bit further." He pulled his hands from behind his back, revealing a glittering pink collar in one hand, and a syringe full of some dimly glowing red fluid in the other. "I was saving this for our anniversary, but you won't care either way in a few minutes."
Masako gaped. Was he serious?
Then Dylan lunged at her, and in her shock, Masako tumbled backward, falling off the bed and landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud.
"Shit. Hold still!" Dylan hissed, climbing over the bed toward her.
"Fuck you!" Masako gasped, throwing the blanket up and over Dylan's head as she leapt to her feet.
"The hell?" Dylan, his hands full and suddenly wary of the sharp needle in one of them, struggled with the blanket. Masako dodged around the bed and out of the bedroom, stopping only to grab her purse and kick on a pair of slippers as she ran from the apartment building and out into the street.
He's crazy. I just have to get to the Mounties, and they'll help me. Someone will save me. They have to.
She ran into the street without looking back or around. Which is why the man driving the late-model sedan at 40 miles an hour down her quiet side street never had a chance to brake, let alone stop.
He only clipped her, but Masako went flying. She slammed into the shrubs surrounding the busy petrol station across the street and slid to the mulch-covered ground, dazed but largely unharmed. Her purse was gone, skidding off into the night for parts unknown. The sedan screeched to a stop a block away, lights blinking.
Across the street, Dylan burst out of the apartment building and ran toward the street. The man who'd clipped Masako, mistaking Dylan for an avenging angel, sped away, unprepared to risk life or limb over an accident he could pretend never happened.
"FUCK!" Dylan screamed into the night. He looked toward the gas station, then up and down the street. He spotted one of Masako's slippers lying in the street and started toward it, muttering to himself.
Masako suppressed a groan and crawled deeper into the shadows under the shrubs. A line of blood trickled from a split in her scalp, just below her jet-black hairline, and ran alongside her nose, staining her creamy skin with crimson.
It wouldn't be long until Dylan found her. She had to get away, somewhere safe...she spotted a beat-up pickup truck with unfamiliar plates at the pumps. Its owner was inside the station, paying for his fuel. As quickly as she could, she darted toward the truck, kicking off her remaining slipper in the process. She crept into the open bed, nestling under a thick stack of tarps and hides, wedging herself between stacked boxes held to the bed with taut elastic cords.
She planned to hide out only until the next town, but hadn't realized quite how hard she'd been hit. She was unconscious before the owner of the truck—dressed in an Imperial Couriers jumpsuit—returned.
What followed—waking up deep inside the Empire itself, escaping her unknowing ferryman by the skin of her teeth, slowly learning to negotiate the highways and byways of strays, spies, freaks, and terrorists that ran quite literally underground—now seemed like a blur.
Dylan had nearly caught up to her twice. She didn't know how he knew she was here, only that life had become even more difficult once her photo and vital information had started appearing on every PromoFeed, NewsCast, and BountyBlast. If it hadn't been for the mysterious messages, and their assistance in helping her elude the authorities, Masako would've gone mad or been captured weeks earlier.
Come to me if you want to be free.
The most recent message directed her to NeuroConn told her to take the Harlot's Highway, a stretch of largely ignored and broken asphalt that used to connect Old Dayton to Toledo, before the Colubinatti merger swallowed Dayton and the Resource Wars had turned Toledo into a city of stone and iron and its inhabitants into fragile deposits of rare minerals.
It was rarely traveled these days, having been supplanted by both quantum displacement and MassTrans erected by the Empire for maximum efficiency. It was a hard road to travel, but it had lots of good places to hide from roving patrols, and She-Wolf was said to maintain supply lines along the grass-covered byroads that trailed alongside the main strip of shattered asphalt like remoras on a shark.
Come to me if you want to be free.
The voice had grown more insistent of late. Masako wondered what awaited her. A She-Wolf transport? A tunnel under the border, like in the old-style cinema reels? She was tired of not knowing where she was, or where she was going. One way or another, she'd have her curiosity satisfied.
********
The trip along Harlot's Hightway took four days. She ran into a few other women, some of them tough and practical, others even more terrified and poorly prepared than she. All of them spoke of freedom as both a dream and a destination. The Harlot's Highway led into the Warrens, it seemed.
The city of Toledo was no more. Only the Warrens remained.
And in those endless columns of glittering mineral statues, fallen buildings, and uneasy ghosts, few Imperial Patrols dared to wander.
Make it through the Warrens, make it out of the Empire.
And now, here she was, on the outskirts. And she wasn't alone.
One of the girls she'd met along the road had elected to join her. "Safety in numbers," Amanda had said on the night they met. "Besides, I've been running this road for She-Wolf for more than two years. Can't get a better escort that that, can you, girly?"
Masako had been in no mood to refuse help when offered. Amanda had been a comforting presence in the intervening two days, sniffing out resouce caches left by her fellow agents and generally keeping Masako from losing her shit when the night was cold and dark. She'd come to think of the plainspoken, lanky blonde as a confidant and friend in the two days they'd traveled together.
They came to the Warrens just as twilight was falling. Masako could hear the cries of strange birds in the distant trees. She hugged herself for warmth, suddenly glad for the coat she'd acquired from one of Amanda's stashes.
"Cold, ain't it, girly? Well, it's gonna get colder. But don't worry, we get into the Warrens, there's plenty of safe places to build a good fire. Provided y'ain't scared of ghosts, that is."
Come to me if you want to be free.
The voice surprised her, and Masako blinked, forgetting her reply. This message was more elaborate than the others; it had not only the usual text, but a full-color map. It showed her position as a flashing dot, and her destination as a pre-war building just outside the Warrens, marked with that inscrutable sigil.
Masako examined the map, considering.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Amanda said. She touched her NeuroConn at the same time she tapped Masako's with her other hand, activating Shared View. "A map, huh? What's that thing?" she said, pointing to the sigil.
"I was kinda hoping you'd know," said Masako, feeling a bit sheepish. "Some of my friends thought it might be, y'know, one of your secret signs or something."
The leggy blonde stared at it, her grey eyes narrowing as she chewed her lower lip. "Hell, I dunno. Might very well be. But why the hell you wanna bother with this foolishness? One She-Wolf agent is just as good as 'nothter, right? 'Sides, I got myself a shortcut through the Warrens. And a few nasty surprises for any snoopin' Imperials that put their snouts where they shouldn't."
Masako stopped in her tracks. "Amanda, I...it's just that I've been following this signal for the whole journey. It hasn't steered me wrong yet."
The other woman snorted dismissively. "Honey, I'm not trying to tell you your business, but ain't you ever heard 'bout a bird in the hand bein' worth two in the bush?"
Come to me if you want to be free, chimed the voice insistently.
Masako sighed. "What if...what if we just take a quick, sneaky side-trip to check it out, and then, if it's not some of your sisters, or if it seems weird at all, we'll scoot back here and take your route."
Amanda looked away, chewing on her lip once more. "Girly…"
"Pleeeeeeeaaaase?" Masako begged. "If I don't find out what this is, or who's been helping me, I'll never be able to live with myself."
After a beat, Amanda smiled and said, "You know, my daddy always used to say that curiosity killed the cat."
Masako returned her smile, with interest. "Well, my daddy always followed up with "But satisfaction brought her back."
"Ha!" Amanda's laugh seemed as loud as a gunshot, echoing off the broken ruins. But she nodded her head and said, "All right, you win. Come on, let's go see what kinda pig is in this poke."
*******
They followed the signal and map in near silence, both women keeping to the shadows. After half an hour of slow creeping, they came to the edge of a flame-scarred subdivision. One house remained in a plat of at least fifty, miraculously undamaged by whatever catastrophe had transformed the earth and water and people into raw materials for the war machines of old.
"Do we just go in, or what?" Masako whispered.
Amanda waved her to silence, pointing.
Across the blasted street, a pair of figures was approaching the building. Masako couldn't quite make out their faces in the moonlight, but it was clear they were both young and female.
"Here," one of them whispered. "The voice said…"
"COME TO ME IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE," thundered the voice into the NeuroConns of its latest victims. Both Masako and the two girls standing in the shadow of the building grabbed their heads at the unbearable cacophany.
The false walls of the house fell away. Overhead, floodlights blazed to life, and Acquisition Agents swarmed out of the fallen house, several of them holding the leashes of baying Fuckmutts wearing AA uniforms. All across the plat, girls staggered from the shadows, holding their heads, some of them trying to run even as the agents closed in.
"SHIT!" growled Amanda. "C'mon, girly, we gotta go." She grabbed Masako, who was still reeling from the auditory attack, and pulled her back toward the highway.
They'd made it less than ten feet when a large dart full of bubbling green nanites took Amanda in the throat. She crumpled to the ground as Masako screamed, falling back. A slender figure stepped from the shadows, quietly reloading a stylish dart-gun with fresh ammo. This dart, Masako noted with terror, was pale red.
Dylan looked different. More confident. Taller, even, if that was possible. It probably was, here in the Empire. He finished loading his pistol and said, "You know, the good Doctor and his people have been at this for a while now. Why on earth would they go haring after every stray when the silly little cunts will come to them?" He shook his head at the foolishness of dumb animals.
Masako felt her throat dry up. Beside her, Amanda was thrashing, her body changing as it absorbed the instructions of whatever nightmare Dylan had injected into her flesh and mind and soul. Masako crawled back on her palms, scooting away as Dylan sauntered toward her. He smiled as his former girlfriend, and soon-to-be pet, backed into a wall, mewling.
Dylan raised the gun. Masako stared into the barrel, willing someone, anyone to come to her aid. To set her free.
"Time to come home, Kitten," he said, and fired.
********
"ARF! ARF! ARF!"
The sound of barking broke the morning silence, followed by the skidding thud of Living Latex paws trotting across the linoleum toward a bowl full of BitchBites™.
Kitten raised her head from her perch on the sofa and yawned. She was used to Blonde Doggy interrupting her morning nap—it was a noisy, yappy beast, always hogging Master's cock along with His attention—but it was still a minor irritation. Kitten yawned again and hopped down from the sofa, landing on the padded Living Latex paws she kept so meticulously groomed with her talented tongue.
She strolled toward the kitchen, tail twitching. She was, as usual, on the edge of heat. It seemed that her sex dripped at the slightest stimulation, and both Master and Blonde Doggy were all too happy to oblige.
Sometimes, Kitten had disturbing dreams. In them, Master was a cruel and vicious man, so unlike the paragon of lust and adoration she knew him to be. And Kitten was...not Kitten. It was hard to process, especially with her limited mental powers, although she was a Rhodes Scholar compared to Blonde Doggy, who Master insisted on calling "Dimwit."
The dreams disturbed her, even more than the stupid dog did. So she did what any self-respecting cat would do, and ignored them.
Master was at the table, eating some of his People Food and rubbing Blonde Doggy's head while it nosed at his crotch, tail thumping against the underside of the table.
Kitten sniffed at the pathetic display and padded over to her own bowl, taking a few delicate bites of her Felicity™-brand food nuggets before washing them down with some milk from her saucer.
One appetite satisfied, she slunk toward the table, and rubbed against Master's leg, making sure her long Living Latex tail poked Blonde Doggy in the eye as she did. She flushed with satisfaction as Blonde Doggy snapped and yipped, whining, and backed away from Master's cock.
Kitten looked over her shoulder as she rounded the table, meowing softly, her round ass raised in subtle invitation. She made sure to make every curve jiggle as she made her way back to the sofa and climbed up, lying on her back.
She heard Master's chair push back, and then His strong voice saying, "Not now, you stupid mutt." He walked into the room and smiled at the sight of her on the sofa, waiting.
"Such a naughty Kitten. But then, I always knew you were. Even when you didn't. Sometimes, I wonder if there's anything left of Masako in there. Part of me hopes there is. Curious, isn't it?"
As usual, Master's words made little sense if they weren't a command. But watching Him pull down his fly as he walked toward her, she found she didn't care.
After all, it was her cunt, and not her curiosity, that needed satisfying.
Reblogged
Sent!
This blog contains adult content. In order to view it freely, please log in or register
and confirm you are 18 years or older
PATREON REPOST: "OF CURIOSITY AND CATS"
I'm reposting my old Patreon content here during the month of June. It'll be in dribs and drabs so please exercise patience and, again, please don't send me 200 messages that effectively make me want to delete my account and retire to a nunnery in the Himalayas. Thanks.
FROM THE PATRON:
For my custom story I was thinking about one where a guy has been stalking a girl he wants as his pet. She has been on the run, trying to get to the Free States, but is nabbed just before she makes it and he turns her into his pet kitty.
This one was fun to write, since we haven't had a chance to do much with KittenSluts just yet. Enjoy!
-M.
STORY FOLLOWS
Come to me if you want to be free.
Was it the tenth? The twentieth? The hundredth message she'd received from the mysterious sender?
Masako could no longer remember. She didn't know the symbol at the bottom of the message flashing on the HUD screen floating in front of her eyes, but she knew it wasn't the Hundehersteller sigil. A pawprint, pink, circled by flames. Was this the secret sigil of She-Wolf? No one in the 'burbs could seem to agree on what exactly the sigil looked like.
She thought back to the slender, pneumatic Black girl she'd encountered in a 'burbside speakeasy, in the system of disused and abandoned high-speed train tunnels under the DaytoColumbiNatti metroplex. Rosie had been injected with BimboMaxx™, but her captors hadn't had the chance to activate the mental component before she'd been rescued by a small She-Wolf operation. She had taken one look at the messages Masako received and shrugged, her perfect hair falling back into place without effort on her part.
"Girl, those people work in cells. They prolly have as many sigils as Hundehersteller has nanites, if you can dig it. Shit, I didn't even know I was bein' rescued 'til those cleaning women pulled out their guns and dragged me outta the Acquisition Squad warehouse. Now look at me...runnin' for the border, 'cept this time it's even further north, and away from the States. What would my grandmama say?"
Masako hadn't really considered the symbolism attached to Hundehersteller's rise to power within the Black community, and while she certainly intended to give it a good long think once she'd reached safety, her primary concern had been trying to figure out whether or not she could trust the messages. And Rosie, her improbable figure packed into a tattered dress, was no help there. Her personal plan was to follow the instructions she'd been given by her rescuers and hope for the best.
Masako didn't have rescuers. All she had was the mysterious messages and the person or people who'd sent them. She didn't know how they'd connected to her NeuroConn, or how they'd managed to mask their RealMoniker™. She didn't even know if the coordinates they sent her were a real place, or some sort of autovertisement gone wrong.
Maybe things didn't work the same, down here in this horrible, horrible place. She didn't know, and didn't want to find out more than she had to. Not really.
What she did know was that she was exhausted. Tired of running, day after day.
Her mistake, she realized, had been in confronting Dylan.
*******
He'd seemed so normal, back at the start of Uni. But over the year or so she'd known and dated him, his fascination with the Hundehersteller Empire—once an eye-rolling quirk shared by so many of the male students at Liberty Mountain University in Regina—had become a full-blown obsession. He shifted the focus of his thesis to the feasibility of the Imperial model applied to Canadian Free State's infrastructure, and the benefits of the Empire's Societal Enhancement Units in eliminating unemployment, homelessness, and hunger.
All of which Masako might've been willing to let pass, except she found the box.
One "Deluxe Relocation Package," containing a bevy of ID cards and documents in Dylan's name. A list of Assets to be Transferred, including Dylan's household items, his motorbike, his library, and…"one Asian Imperial, slated for optimization and conversion with PrettyKitty™ nanites by Owner, licensing upon arrival."
She hadn't known what an Asian Imperial was, precisely. The words had seemed vaguely familiar, of course. Not because Masako was particularly engaged with her community (such as it was), but because of the commercials. Even in Regina, the Empire's incessant adverts saturated the airwaves and, naturally, the HoloNet.
It only took one viewing of a PromoFeed to realize it wasn't an item. It was a breed.
Her breed. A designation, describing an animal. An Imperial term to control and categorize and debase women, turning them into mere beasts crawling at the feet of the men and women who sought dominion over them.
She should've run then. But she couldn't believe Dylan was seriously considering it. Or that anyone would ever dream of doing such a thing to her, in particular.
So she'd waited until they were alone, in bed, after a so-so party with Dylan's friends, where the men pontificated about the misunderstood wisdom of the Empire and their dates did their best to indulge their collegiate bullshit. Or so they thought.
Masako, looking at the way Dylan and his friends cut off any woman who tried to join the discussion, suddenly realized all the girls in her social circle were slowly becoming the sort of bimboish sluts they used to make fun of in high school. Was it her imagination? Or all part of Dylan's plan with his friends?
Such were the thoughts racing through Masako's mind as she crawled into bed next to Dylan. He was fussing with his bedside table, no doubt setting the alarm for his morning class.
"Dylan, I think we need to talk." Even having found the box, she still felt half a fool.
He froze, still facing away from her. "Oh?" he said, his voice quiet and strange. "About what?"
"I found that ridiculous box," Masako replied, all in a rush. Why was she so nervous?
"Box?" Dylan said, his voice still strangely quiet. "Oh. That. Have you been snooping, Kitten? Naughty-naughty."
He did that sometimes. Called her "Kitten," like they were a couple from one of those monochromers on NostalgiaNet.
Why is he being so weird? "Yeah, that. So you want to explain what the hell you're doing with a box stuffed full of contraband? The Mounties would lose their shit if they knew you had it."
Dylan chuckled, low and mean. It wasn't anything like his usual friendly laugh.
"And who's going to tell them? You?" He turned around, his dark eyes glinting in the moonlight.
"What? Honey, what's wrong with you? Can't you see this is all going a bit far?"
Dylan looked at her without speaking. His hands were behind him, and the smile on his face didn't reach his eyes.
"On the contrary, Kitten. I think it's time we took things a bit further." He pulled his hands from behind his back, revealing a glittering pink collar in one hand, and a syringe full of some dimly glowing red fluid in the other. "I was saving this for our anniversary, but you won't care either way in a few minutes."
Masako gaped. Was he serious?
Then Dylan lunged at her, and in her shock, Masako tumbled backward, falling off the bed and landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud.
"Shit. Hold still!" Dylan hissed, climbing over the bed toward her.
"Fuck you!" Masako gasped, throwing the blanket up and over Dylan's head as she leapt to her feet.
"The hell?" Dylan, his hands full and suddenly wary of the sharp needle in one of them, struggled with the blanket. Masako dodged around the bed and out of the bedroom, stopping only to grab her purse and kick on a pair of slippers as she ran from the apartment building and out into the street.
He's crazy. I just have to get to the Mounties, and they'll help me. Someone will save me. They have to.
She ran into the street without looking back or around. Which is why the man driving the late-model sedan at 40 miles an hour down her quiet side street never had a chance to brake, let alone stop.
He only clipped her, but Masako went flying. She slammed into the shrubs surrounding the busy petrol station across the street and slid to the mulch-covered ground, dazed but largely unharmed. Her purse was gone, skidding off into the night for parts unknown. The sedan screeched to a stop a block away, lights blinking.
Across the street, Dylan burst out of the apartment building and ran toward the street. The man who'd clipped Masako, mistaking Dylan for an avenging angel, sped away, unprepared to risk life or limb over an accident he could pretend never happened.
"FUCK!" Dylan screamed into the night. He looked toward the gas station, then up and down the street. He spotted one of Masako's slippers lying in the street and started toward it, muttering to himself.
Masako suppressed a groan and crawled deeper into the shadows under the shrubs. A line of blood trickled from a split in her scalp, just below her jet-black hairline, and ran alongside her nose, staining her creamy skin with crimson.
It wouldn't be long until Dylan found her. She had to get away, somewhere safe...she spotted a beat-up pickup truck with unfamiliar plates at the pumps. Its owner was inside the station, paying for his fuel. As quickly as she could, she darted toward the truck, kicking off her remaining slipper in the process. She crept into the open bed, nestling under a thick stack of tarps and hides, wedging herself between stacked boxes held to the bed with taut elastic cords.
She planned to hide out only until the next town, but hadn't realized quite how hard she'd been hit. She was unconscious before the owner of the truck—dressed in an Imperial Couriers jumpsuit—returned.
What followed—waking up deep inside the Empire itself, escaping her unknowing ferryman by the skin of her teeth, slowly learning to negotiate the highways and byways of strays, spies, freaks, and terrorists that ran quite literally underground—now seemed like a blur.
Dylan had nearly caught up to her twice. She didn't know how he knew she was here, only that life had become even more difficult once her photo and vital information had started appearing on every PromoFeed, NewsCast, and BountyBlast. If it hadn't been for the mysterious messages, and their assistance in helping her elude the authorities, Masako would've gone mad or been captured weeks earlier.
Come to me if you want to be free.
The most recent message directed her to NeuroConn told her to take the Harlot's Highway, a stretch of largely ignored and broken asphalt that used to connect Old Dayton to Toledo, before the Colubinatti merger swallowed Dayton and the Resource Wars had turned Toledo into a city of stone and iron and its inhabitants into fragile deposits of rare minerals.
It was rarely traveled these days, having been supplanted by both quantum displacement and MassTrans erected by the Empire for maximum efficiency. It was a hard road to travel, but it had lots of good places to hide from roving patrols, and She-Wolf was said to maintain supply lines along the grass-covered byroads that trailed alongside the main strip of shattered asphalt like remoras on a shark.
Come to me if you want to be free.
The voice had grown more insistent of late. Masako wondered what awaited her. A She-Wolf transport? A tunnel under the border, like in the old-style cinema reels? She was tired of not knowing where she was, or where she was going. One way or another, she'd have her curiosity satisfied.
********
The trip along Harlot's Hightway took four days. She ran into a few other women, some of them tough and practical, others even more terrified and poorly prepared than she. All of them spoke of freedom as both a dream and a destination. The Harlot's Highway led into the Warrens, it seemed.
The city of Toledo was no more. Only the Warrens remained.
And in those endless columns of glittering mineral statues, fallen buildings, and uneasy ghosts, few Imperial Patrols dared to wander.
Make it through the Warrens, make it out of the Empire.
And now, here she was, on the outskirts. And she wasn't alone.
One of the girls she'd met along the road had elected to join her. "Safety in numbers," Amanda had said on the night they met. "Besides, I've been running this road for She-Wolf for more than two years. Can't get a better escort that that, can you, girly?"
Masako had been in no mood to refuse help when offered. Amanda had been a comforting presence in the intervening two days, sniffing out resouce caches left by her fellow agents and generally keeping Masako from losing her shit when the night was cold and dark. She'd come to think of the plainspoken, lanky blonde as a confidant and friend in the two days they'd traveled together.
They came to the Warrens just as twilight was falling. Masako could hear the cries of strange birds in the distant trees. She hugged herself for warmth, suddenly glad for the coat she'd acquired from one of Amanda's stashes.
"Cold, ain't it, girly? Well, it's gonna get colder. But don't worry, we get into the Warrens, there's plenty of safe places to build a good fire. Provided y'ain't scared of ghosts, that is."
Come to me if you want to be free.
The voice surprised her, and Masako blinked, forgetting her reply. This message was more elaborate than the others; it had not only the usual text, but a full-color map. It showed her position as a flashing dot, and her destination as a pre-war building just outside the Warrens, marked with that inscrutable sigil.
Masako examined the map, considering.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Amanda said. She touched her NeuroConn at the same time she tapped Masako's with her other hand, activating Shared View. "A map, huh? What's that thing?" she said, pointing to the sigil.
"I was kinda hoping you'd know," said Masako, feeling a bit sheepish. "Some of my friends thought it might be, y'know, one of your secret signs or something."
The leggy blonde stared at it, her grey eyes narrowing as she chewed her lower lip. "Hell, I dunno. Might very well be. But why the hell you wanna bother with this foolishness? One She-Wolf agent is just as good as 'nothter, right? 'Sides, I got myself a shortcut through the Warrens. And a few nasty surprises for any snoopin' Imperials that put their snouts where they shouldn't."
Masako stopped in her tracks. "Amanda, I...it's just that I've been following this signal for the whole journey. It hasn't steered me wrong yet."
The other woman snorted dismissively. "Honey, I'm not trying to tell you your business, but ain't you ever heard 'bout a bird in the hand bein' worth two in the bush?"
Come to me if you want to be free, chimed the voice insistently.
Masako sighed. "What if...what if we just take a quick, sneaky side-trip to check it out, and then, if it's not some of your sisters, or if it seems weird at all, we'll scoot back here and take your route."
Amanda looked away, chewing on her lip once more. "Girly…"
"Pleeeeeeeaaaase?" Masako begged. "If I don't find out what this is, or who's been helping me, I'll never be able to live with myself."
After a beat, Amanda smiled and said, "You know, my daddy always used to say that curiosity killed the cat."
Masako returned her smile, with interest. "Well, my daddy always followed up with "But satisfaction brought her back."
"Ha!" Amanda's laugh seemed as loud as a gunshot, echoing off the broken ruins. But she nodded her head and said, "All right, you win. Come on, let's go see what kinda pig is in this poke."
*******
They followed the signal and map in near silence, both women keeping to the shadows. After half an hour of slow creeping, they came to the edge of a flame-scarred subdivision. One house remained in a plat of at least fifty, miraculously undamaged by whatever catastrophe had transformed the earth and water and people into raw materials for the war machines of old.
"Do we just go in, or what?" Masako whispered.
Amanda waved her to silence, pointing.
Across the blasted street, a pair of figures was approaching the building. Masako couldn't quite make out their faces in the moonlight, but it was clear they were both young and female.
"Here," one of them whispered. "The voice said…"
"COME TO ME IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE," thundered the voice into the NeuroConns of its latest victims. Both Masako and the two girls standing in the shadow of the building grabbed their heads at the unbearable cacophany.
The false walls of the house fell away. Overhead, floodlights blazed to life, and Acquisition Agents swarmed out of the fallen house, several of them holding the leashes of baying Fuckmutts wearing AA uniforms. All across the plat, girls staggered from the shadows, holding their heads, some of them trying to run even as the agents closed in.
"SHIT!" growled Amanda. "C'mon, girly, we gotta go." She grabbed Masako, who was still reeling from the auditory attack, and pulled her back toward the highway.
They'd made it less than ten feet when a large dart full of bubbling green nanites took Amanda in the throat. She crumpled to the ground as Masako screamed, falling back. A slender figure stepped from the shadows, quietly reloading a stylish dart-gun with fresh ammo. This dart, Masako noted with terror, was pale red.
Dylan looked different. More confident. Taller, even, if that was possible. It probably was, here in the Empire. He finished loading his pistol and said, "You know, the good Doctor and his people have been at this for a while now. Why on earth would they go haring after every stray when the silly little cunts will come to them?" He shook his head at the foolishness of dumb animals.
Masako felt her throat dry up. Beside her, Amanda was thrashing, her body changing as it absorbed the instructions of whatever nightmare Dylan had injected into her flesh and mind and soul. Masako crawled back on her palms, scooting away as Dylan sauntered toward her. He smiled as his former girlfriend, and soon-to-be pet, backed into a wall, mewling.
Dylan raised the gun. Masako stared into the barrel, willing someone, anyone to come to her aid. To set her free.
"Time to come home, Kitten," he said, and fired.
********
"ARF! ARF! ARF!"
The sound of barking broke the morning silence, followed by the skidding thud of Living Latex paws trotting across the linoleum toward a bowl full of BitchBites™.
Kitten raised her head from her perch on the sofa and yawned. She was used to Blonde Doggy interrupting her morning nap—it was a noisy, yappy beast, always hogging Master's cock along with His attention—but it was still a minor irritation. Kitten yawned again and hopped down from the sofa, landing on the padded Living Latex paws she kept so meticulously groomed with her talented tongue.
She strolled toward the kitchen, tail twitching. She was, as usual, on the edge of heat. It seemed that her sex dripped at the slightest stimulation, and both Master and Blonde Doggy were all too happy to oblige.
Sometimes, Kitten had disturbing dreams. In them, Master was a cruel and vicious man, so unlike the paragon of lust and adoration she knew him to be. And Kitten was...not Kitten. It was hard to process, especially with her limited mental powers, although she was a Rhodes Scholar compared to Blonde Doggy, who Master insisted on calling "Dimwit."
The dreams disturbed her, even more than the stupid dog did. So she did what any self-respecting cat would do, and ignored them.
Master was at the table, eating some of his People Food and rubbing Blonde Doggy's head while it nosed at his crotch, tail thumping against the underside of the table.
Kitten sniffed at the pathetic display and padded over to her own bowl, taking a few delicate bites of her Felicity™-brand food nuggets before washing them down with some milk from her saucer.
One appetite satisfied, she slunk toward the table, and rubbed against Master's leg, making sure her long Living Latex tail poked Blonde Doggy in the eye as she did. She flushed with satisfaction as Blonde Doggy snapped and yipped, whining, and backed away from Master's cock.
Kitten looked over her shoulder as she rounded the table, meowing softly, her round ass raised in subtle invitation. She made sure to make every curve jiggle as she made her way back to the sofa and climbed up, lying on her back.
She heard Master's chair push back, and then His strong voice saying, "Not now, you stupid mutt." He walked into the room and smiled at the sight of her on the sofa, waiting.
"Such a naughty Kitten. But then, I always knew you were. Even when you didn't. Sometimes, I wonder if there's anything left of Masako in there. Part of me hopes there is. Curious, isn't it?"
As usual, Master's words made little sense if they weren't a command. But watching Him pull down his fly as he walked toward her, she found she didn't care.
After all, it was her cunt, and not her curiosity, that needed satisfying.