#nova bb

"Ninety-Seven! I can handle some rebellions, but crude language is subject to severe consequences for you!" Her primary handler grabbed her right wrist with gloved hands. She made quick work of jamming it up above her head and locking it into the restraints, the magnets catching with a strength 445097 couldn't fight, not at this angle. 

She yanked at her wrist anyway, just to hear the little chain rattle, and tried to throw a punch. "I'll use whatever fucking crude shitty language I want!"

Handler Abernathy pulled just out of reach, some wispy brown hair escaping her severe bun to frame her face. It made the trainer pause at the unexpected softness it gave to her handler's usual severity. 

"I don't want the needle," She said, plaintive now, trying for the soft puppy voice, I'll be good now sound that everyone seemed to like from her. She couldn’t make tears well up, but she could put the tremble of them into words. "Please… please, Handler, no."

Handler Abernathy softened, just a little. “Ninety-Seven-”

"Too bad." The stupid doctor grabbed at her other wrist and this time her heel caught his chin, sending him stumbling backwards, knocking over the tray of syringes and pale, faintly colored liquids lined up there. "Jesus Christ! That bitch-"

"Back off, Bill, let me get her handled," Handler Abernathy said, voice thin with effort as she managed to evade 444097's flailing legs and get her other wrist secured. "She does better for me anyway.  Don't you, babygirl?"

"Please, please, not the needle, I can train without it, I can learn-"

"Hey. Hey, sweetie." Abernathy's glove was cool where the leather touched her cheek. The trainee raised her chin and opened her mouth for the kiss, Abernathy's lips picking up the trainee's expertly applied lipstick. She lowered her eyelashes, heavy with mascara. Her breath came in pants that raised her chest up and down, just brushing the front of Abernathy's black WRU handler uniform. 

The oversized t-shirt meant she couldn't use it entirely to her advantage, but she tried. Sometimes a show of being overcome would soothe the handlers, calm them, get her what she wanted or just out of trouble. 

"There we go." Handler Abernathy dropped to a whisper, lips moving against the trainee's cheek. "You'll be good for Dr. Bill, right? It's just a little prick."

"Not that little," Dr. Bill said, a little affronted. 

"I meant the needle, dumbass." Abernathy groaned, closing her eyes in brief annoyance. "Just get it going, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah. She knocked all of it over, give me a second." Bill rifled through a cabinet in the small exam room while Abernathy turned back to the trainee and smiled. 

"Here we go, sweetie. Just give me that pretty little ankle… here we go…" The trainee swallowed, watching as Abernathy moved her foot into the stirrup and buckled her ankle in place, then did the same with her other leg. "There's my good girl. There she is. Much better, right?"

"Handler… I-I don't want the needle, please, I promise I don't remember anything, it was a mistake…" She jerked her left ankle but all it did was rattle in place. She tried to tear up, next, but she couldn't seem to make the tears come, no matter how her voice trembled. "I don't need it, I don't…"

"Ninety-Seven." Abernathy shook her head, tucking those stray little hairs the trainee had thought so pretty back behind one ear. "We all know you're lying right now. It's what your kind does. You start acting up with aberrant memories, we have to wipe them away again."

The trainee's eyebrows furrowed. "Handler." Her voice was a whimper, a whine. "Please, Handler, no…"

"There's that word again." Abernathy sighed, disappointed. "Bill, get her hooked up. Don't worry, babygirl. Just a couple of days should do it. Then… no more cousin, no more bad girl behavior, and no more no, huh?"

"Fuck you." She dropped the sad eyes and spat, watching with a thin thread of satisfaction as Handler Abernathy wiped the saliva from her cheek. 

The doctor snorted. "Better for you, huh? Doesn't seem like it."

"Oh, shut up."

There was nothing she could do - the trainee could only shake in the restraints as Bill came over, humming cheerfully with an IV bag on a roller full of a cloudy liquid. The trainee's eyes latched onto the sight of it as her heart started to race. 

"No, no please, please please please my name is my number I'm a pet not a person, I know, I know, I signed up for this all pets legally consent to giving up their former failed identities in exchange for a safe secure home and future I know what you want me to think, I know!"

"I know you do, baby, I know." Abernathy smiled, taking her chin in hand and turning her to look into her handler's sparkling eyes, drinking in her fear and helplessness as Bill wiped something cold and tingling along the crook of her elbow. "But, listen to me, honey. Listen. Say 'yes, Miss, I'm listening."

Now, the tears came. 

The trainee's lower lip trembled as she swallowed and then said, in a whisper, "I'm l-listening, M-Miss…"

"Good girl. I know you know all the right things to think, to say. But…"

The pinch of the needle made her flinch, and Abernathy leaned forward to kiss her. Her handler's lips were soft but pressed hard, swallowing her whimper as the needle was placed and the first rush of cold fluid raced through her blood toward her pounding heart. 

"We need to make sure," Handler Abernathy murmured, pressing one more quick kiss before pulling back, "that you don't remember any of the wrong things to think and say, either."

"Please… p-please, no, please don't make me do this again!"

Handler Abernathy turned and left the exam room, her boots clomping loudly across the floor. The tears came, now, and the trainee could barely see through them and her hair as the doctor grinned at her, staying behind to watch, for just a moment, as the trainee's muscles felt heavier by the second.

Once she slumped backwards, the doctor stepped up close. 

"Be a good girl and just chill here for a while, okay?" He patted the side of her face. Each soft touch felt like a blow. 

"Don't… don't leave me al, alone, please-"

"I'll come back once that perfect pretty head is so empty you can hear the wind blow right through it." He gave her hip a squeeze, then patted her thigh like the flank of a horse before he turned and walked out, too.

The door buzzed locked behind him.

Her eyes were already drifting closed, the Drip taking its terrible hold. The small sweet face she had been holding in her mind, of a cousin she had known, whoever she had been, was already fading. 

"Don't-... D-Don't leave me al, alone…"

There was no one left to listen.

-

Her other hand is hard at work, and he hates it, he always hated it, he never wanted hands there. Or anything. His wrists jerk, he wants to push her away or tap or hit or do something, but his body is still, only shifting his hips into the rhythm of her hands on sheer instinct from training that his body hasn't forgotten, no matter how badly he wants to.

"I'll make you feel better," She says. Her voice is so soft and sweet, higher-pitched, entirely unlike Laken's deeper husky almost-growl. There's no maliciousness in her face when she pulls back to meet his eyes, no sparkle of joy at how helpless he is.

There's something else there.

Genuine, open desire.

Is that better? Or worse?

"Nova," He says, voice strangled and barely-there, nearly a whimper, "You h-have to stop to, touch-... stop, stop, touching m-me, I can't, I can't do, I I I I-"

"But you were crying," She replies, rubbing her thumb over him between his legs in a way that makes his legs jerk under her weight, his breath catch in his throat. "Because of your fight. I can fix that. You had a bad day, and I'm here. I'll make it better, Chris."

Something filters into Chris's thoughts, cracks through the ice of his fear.

Don't be shy, sweetheart, I've had a hard day and I want something pretty to fix it.

She tucks her chin just a little, head tilted to the side. Her top teeth press, just a little, into her lower lip.

Tell me how much you want it, darlin'. You know that always cheers me right up.

"I want to do this with you," She whispers.

It breaks the spell.

Chris lets go of the sheets, puts his hands up, and shoves.

Nova falls backwards off of his legs, tries to twist and catch herself, loses her balance and goes off the bed, smacking hard on one side into the rug on the floor. She looks up at him, long hair hanging in her face, nearly covering up one eye.

He stares back at the shock, the lack of comprehension. His heart is pounding in his ears, the unwanted awful warmth in the pit of his stomach is still there demanding attention, release he doesn't want. He looks down at himself, face red with shame, and back up to meet her eyes as they fill with tears.

"I'm trying to help," She says, and he has to force himself not to apologize at how hurt she sounds.

"I-I... I, um, I know you are," He manages, with difficulty. Words are getting harder. There's a noise inside of him, more feeling than sound, buzzing against his fingers and toes, pushing against the inside of his skin. It makes the words he needs to say harder to find. "But, but, but, but this-... this, this doesn't, um, this-... doesn't... it, it, it it it doesn't, doesn't, doesn't... help me."

"Yes, it does." Nova sits slowly up. One of her shoulder straps is falling down her arm. "It's what makes us feel better, because we're-"

"Not," Chris interrupts, putting a hand up to stop her before she can finish. He knows what comes next. He knows.

Don't cry, Handler Petrus whispers in the back of his mind. Not my fault you had second thoughts about this, slut. Should've had them before you signed up to get on your back for me.

"I tried-... I tried to, to say no." He pushes himself further back into the corner where the headboard of his bed meets the wall. Pulls his knees up to his chest, hands up over his face. One thumb rubs over the healing scar on his forehead, the other hand runs back and forth over his hair, feeling the softness of it, soothing himself with the motion.

"That's how you do it," Nova says, sounding puzzled. He doesn't look up at her again. "One person says don't do it, stop, please, and the other person does anyway, and then everything is better after."

"Better for-... who?"

He doesn't really need the answer to the question. He knows.

"You," She says, pulling herself to her feet. He sees her as a blur in the corner of his eyes and he doesn't look. He feels himself rocking, forward and back - tries to still himself - then starts rocking again. "And my Miss. Her friends. Everyone feels better, after."

"Not me. Please, please, please go."

"But-"

"Nova." He looks up at her, tears building, and she looks back, wide-eyed and startled by the expression on his face. "Please. Please."

"You really didn't like it?" She tucks her hair back behind her ear. "But... you didn't?"

He shakes his head, slowly, digs his hands into his own stomach, starts to tap, desperate to soothe the disgust slithering around underneath his skin.

"Was I not doing it right?"

"I don't-... I, I, I don't, um. I don't like... being, being t-touched... there." He can barely force out the words, they're spat out like disgust and not the fear he really feels. "I, I-I don't want y-you to, to, to to to to... touch me. At all."

For a second, he thinks she'll hit him.

Her face goes very pale and then suddenly bright red in the cheeks, and she turns away from him, races from his room, slams the door shut behind herself. He hears the sound of her footsteps down the hall, another door slamming - probably the room she shares with Sarita.

His phone, long-ago forgotten on the bed, vibrates with a text. He looks over, but the words swim and don't come together. He can tell the text is from Laken, but he can't read what it says.

He can't read.

Chris slowly slumps sideways, against the wall, lets his head thump there once.

What now?

-

FIRST | SECOND | THIRD

KNOWN IMMEDIATE FAMILY: Deborah Kahn, mother, and Elias Kahn, father. Subject is biological niece, adopted at age two.

SIBLINGS: Asher Michael Kahn, brother, three years younger, and Leah Marie Kahn, five years younger. Both are Deborah and Elias's biological children.

OTHER KNOWN FAILY: Unknown.

METHOD OF ACQUISITION: Assisted walk-in.

ACQUISITION DETAILS: Subject was located by handlers inebriated outside Trusty Tuna's Taco Bar and Grill in Red Bend, California at 1:45 AM on date of acquisition. Subject was separated from social group and safely secured within vehicle. Subject arrived at Facility 001, Female Division at 6:15 AM and was recognized as new trainee at 6:35 AM.

ASSIGNED HANDLERS:

PRIMARY: Patricia Abernathy, Senior Handler and Processor, Romantic Specialization SECONDARY: Gregory Lance, Senior Handler and Processor, Specialization Romantic

CONTRACT SIGNED: 7.29..20XX 1:15 PM

SIGNATURE PROVIDED VOLUNTARILY, SUBJECT NOT SEDATED FOR SIGNING. SUBJECT SHOWED MINOR SIGNS OF INJURY AT TIME OF SIGNING. SUBJECT REPORTED FEELINGS OF FATIGUE AND ABDOMINAL PAIN. SUBJECT REPORTED EXTREME FEAR. SUBJECT ALSO REPORTED FEELINGS OF CONFUSION COMMON TO NEW ACQUISITIONS.

CONTRACT SIGNATURE: Nava Kahn, aka 445097

PRESENT AT TIME OF SIGNING: Handler Patricia Abernathy, Badge #2234, WRU Attorney Nathaniel Lewis.

ESTIMATED COST FOR TRAINING: $100,000 USD

COMPENSATION PAID BY PROSPECTIVE: $600,000 USD

ADDED FEES: $25,000 for special requests.

CURRENT LOCATION: Room 019, post-signing contract. Subject to remain sedated until Drip is finalized.

REQUESTED TRAINING: ALL Positions 1-35, Flexibility, Sensitivity, Endurance

SPECIAL REQUEST: Enforced agoraphobia, retain musical skills if possible

COMMENTS:

She's a beauty. I can see why they picked her up. I've already spent some time with her. She allowed me to brush her hair without protest, but she kicked up a fuss when I touched her directly, and I've got a busted lip to prove it. I won that little tiff, but it's an irritation to keep in mind.

We'll want to keep this one nice and drugged up until she's a little further into the process.