Time did not pass in Sinyala normally. At first, you weren’t even sure if it passed at all. Seconds, minutes, hours, days — all seemed to metastasize into one amorphous tar, something thick collecting at your ankles, representative of the bleak and endless void that the facility itself seemed to be suspended in. No calendars or clocks were allowed in the Sleep Room. The only way you could be certain that any stretch had elapsed was by the decorations staff put up around the seasonal holidays. For Halloween, they strung up pumpkins and skeletons. And now, by your best judgment, you assumed it was Christmas, or somewhere close to it.

Multicolored lights were hung lazily on the catwalk railings; a plastic tree that had seen better days had been propped up in a corner near the terminal. There was even an elf seated on Noakes’ desk. When you asked him if he’d put it there, he’d given you a sidelong glance and handed your rig back without saying much else.

Christmas.

Or somewhere close to it.

What a cruel, cosmic joke. Try as you might, you couldn’t seem to remember the last Christmas you’d had before arriving for therapy. Was it spent with family? A warm meal in a cozy house, coupled with presents? The thought was almost laughable. You couldn’t recall the faces of your family, or if you’d even had any. You didn’t have to. Easterman had done a very good job scrubbing your lobes free of such cumbersome attachments and replacing them with much better neural connections — things like how to properly saw open a still-writhing body, or how best to efficiently turn a crank to shatter legs and arms and heads.

Yes, that you could do.

And it wasn’t all bad. In his infinite kindness, Easterman had even given you and the rest of the Reagents one big collective gift. One that stared you in the face as you considered the options presented to you on the central terminal of the Sleep Room.

A new trial, accompanied by a new Prime Asset.

Green text on black burned into your retinas as you read it over and over. You flicked the cursor down to it. Selected it. Read the name, the description.

Despoil the Auction.

You are the negotiator. Human life is just one more product, an amusement for those with enough money to do anything they want. A fresh plaything is up for auction. Destroy the lot, despoil its value, and we will let you out.

All flavor text; you had long since learned to ignore the trials’ descriptions, especially that ending phrase. But it was new, and it was different, and you’d run enough of the same rotation of trials in the last… however many days to ache for something fresh. You selected it. A few other Reagents had, too, and the computer added you to the queue alongside them. Handing control of the terminal over to the person behind you, you hovered near the shuttle doors until the red wash of the lights glared in your vision, accompanied by the familiar low beep and a scientist’s voice over the intercom.

You stepped into the shuttle alongside two others. It was quiet; glances were exchanged, a half-hearted nod and a wave, but nothing else. All three of you seemed to be on a similar wavelength, or at least similar level of experience. All three of you knew that there was a good chance that at least one of you was not making it back to the Sleep Room. As it always was. Resigning yourself to death had happened so long ago that you couldn’t even remember having done it.

Cuffs closed around your wrists, legs, head; metal sutures affixing you to your seat. It was almost comforting, in a way; still, you cringed when the shuttle flooded with an explosion of caustic green gas, and your eyes welled all the same. Red haze descended on your vision like a bleary, bloody curtain; shapes grew out of shadows and approached you with stiff motions.

None of the hallucinations made much sense; usually, at least, you would catch a glimpse of the flavor of torture that awaited you along with the specific Prime Asset orchestrating your suffering. Not this time. No, it was… Reagents. Naked, save for broken ESOPs and the night vision goggles screwed to their skulls. Hazy visions of them dancing around a heat lamp, praying and worshipping in elation to some unseen god, running across your periphery — none of them seemed to provide a cohesive hint as to what, exactly, you’d be up against.

Then you blinked, and the hallucinations were gone. Rattling forever onwards, the shuttle car trembled as it slid along its tracks. After what felt like longer than usual, it ground to a halt. A pneumatic wheeze of air and the click of the brakes engaging signaled your release from your seat; you cast an uncertain glance to your companions but ventured forward anyway, resolved to whatever fate awaited you.

Shunk. Metal on metal. Spat onto concrete, you stepped forth into a wash of warmth. Industrial-sized heat lamps glowed, orange and inviting, above your head, the spill of their light extending all the way to a fringe of long plastic flaps that separated here from out there.

Out there turned out to be magnificently, ridiculously cold. Cold in a way you had not known since entering Sinyala — the Sleep Room always had a stale chill, but nothing like this. Biting, instant, brutal; your fingers lost dexterity, blood vessels beneath your skin contracting in a fruitless attempt to shunt warmth back to your vital organs. You huddled with the others in the pool of warmth provided by the spire of a heat lamp, and learned quickly that not all were to be trusted. And, in typical Sinyala fashion, the imposing front doors of the lodge were sealed, a gilded stag head hanging over the threshold and a simple note tacked to the wood: Stag key required.

Right. Of course.

These roundabout sort of paths were nothing new, even if the environment was novel. Always some lesson to be taught at every step in every trial, some hand-wavey bullshit about psychological conditioning and lateral ascension. Problem-solving was encouraged. To an extent. It took some ferreting through maintenance hallways and tugging batteries free of switches — remarkably similar to disarming the electronic locks on the gates in that one Gooseberry trial — but the heavy, ornate key inscribed with a stag’s head made it into your group’s possession. After a mad dash for the door and a scrambling of half-frozen fingers to shove it into the lock, the path forward was clear.

All of you stopped.

A grand foyer swept back in front of you, a nearby hearth warm and crackling; almost inviting, if it were different circumstances. Dark, expensive wood comprised nearly every surface, polished and pretty. Heavy rugs were laid along the planks of the floor. The difference from the other trials was somewhat jarring; there was none of the usual filth and detritus, none of the typical blood splatters and shredded organs. Things were in decent shape. Nothing was derelict; everything seemed attended. None of you noticed, though, because the more pressing issue was that the lobby was full of mannequins.

Normally, that was no cause for concern. Murkoff studded their trials with enough mannequins to put a clothing store to shame; some dressed sharply in a matching blue blazer and pencil skirt to guide your way, others in shabby police uniforms, still others in titillating prostitute get-ups, complete with vulgarities scrawled on their plastic torsos. They had been unnerving at first, and you’d jumped more than once while running into one rounding a corner, but the kneejerk flinch response had been beaten out of you quickly enough.

These, though… these were very, very different.

Fancy was the first word that came to mind as all three of you froze, deer in headlights, and considered what fresh hell you’d be dealing with. The mannequins were all clearly women, dressed to the nines in dark finery — patterned tights, thigh-high stockings, a gold-flecked corset laced up to the sternum, gloves that crawled all the way up to the shoulders. Exposed chests glinted back at you, painted gold — not uncommon at all in the trials, but for some reason, you felt odd looking at them — and that was the only skin that was visible. All of the faces were obscured, and you realized quickly that there were two. On the backs of the mannequins’ heads were the smiling, golden masks of a woman; on the front was a full-face fabric mask with shiny teeth and a single ruby eye. Flowers dotted the figures all over — neck, elbows, shoulders.

All of them held a rosary to their chests in frozen devotion.

All of them were equipped with wicked blades on the fingers of their other hand.

One of them moved — a short, sharp jerk — and all three of you jumped.

With a sinking feeling in your gut, you came to the same realization as your companions; your Prime Asset would be one of these, a carbon copy of all the rest. Why else would the lobby be littered with so many? A terrible, panicky itch started at the back of your neck. Maybe you were well and truly broken, but at some point or another, you had developed a routine. You got to know the Prime Assets, in some awful way, knew their tics and their tells and their triggers. Coyle’s baton crackling, Gooseberry’s drill whirring, Franco’s congested breathing, even the Kress twins’ buzzsaw chugging away in the empty halls of the derelict mall. They were big, they were loud, they took up the room. Dangerous, yes, but easy to spot once you had a few trials under the belt.

As you stared out at the sea of mannequins, each indistinguishable from its neighbor, dread cooled into a solid lump in your stomach. All of that training was out the window now. How could you tell a Prime Asset identical to its environment apart? Would there even be a signal, something you could rely on to know when to jump for cover?

Sweat dampened your palms, and it had nothing to do with the heat pouring from the nearby fireplace.

Still, what else were you supposed to do? One foot was already in the grave. No sense in trying to jump out now. You continued forward with the others, eyes flicking upwards to the high, vaulted ceilings and intricate woodwork. Combined with the vicious cold outside, you could be swayed to believe this was real. That in and of itself should have been a warning knell; the trial environments were just that — environments, fabricated with industrial-sized fans and perfectly placed props and traps meant to mimic a twisted, funhouse distortion of their real counterparts. But it was hard to distinguish fantasy from reality here, even if you had to step around a slurring, twitching man who seemed to be proselytizing to nobody in the lobby.

The auction room awaited; a masked mannequin, this one a standard white facsimile of a person, welcomed you with a sultry voice. You took charge and hit the button with a hesitant fist. Quiet had fallen over your group since entering the lobby; none of you seemed willing to talk. To break the silence and question what the hell was really hiding in the resort was tantamount to sacrilege.

Curtains wheeled back, and the dimly lit auction room was revealed. Out of the dark, a figure lunged and slammed itself against the window; you flinched backwards hard. Only when you heard the frantic begging and pointing at the nearby door did you register that the person was a Reagent, still equipped with an ESOP and goggles. He pleaded, voice hoarse — open the door, please just open the door — but all of you knew better.

Murkoff put him there for a reason. Easterman chose him for this. He needed to be there. He had to be there. It was ordained so.

Another body twisted behind him, and your lips parted to suck in a breath that barely filled your lungs. One of the mannequins unfurled, motions still clipped but just on the wrong side of too smooth to be inhuman; as you all watched, it spun on its heel and leapt onto the man with animal fluidity. He screamed, raw and terrified, and the sound filtered straight past your ears. You’d heard all that before.

Thin jets of blood arced from his throat as the woman-mannequin-thing jabbed something into his neck over and over, clinging to his back like a spider. He stumbled a few steps and collapsed to the ground, heavy and awkward in comparison to the way she dismounted with grace. And then she disappeared from view with a whisper that sounded like it was right behind you.

“Follow me,” it urged, and you whipped your head around; the only thing looking back at you was a painting of a blindfolded woman.

“What the fuck?” One of your companions finally spoke, and it was equivalent to cracking a bottle over your head. For some reason, you felt irritated that the silence was disturbed, like something had been moved out of place and not returned.

“That’s her,” the other responded, voice hoarse and nervous. “I heard about it. In the Sleep Room. She— she looks just like the mannequins.”

“Fuckin’ hell.”

“Come on,” you interrupted, straightening up with borrowed authority. “Let’s keep going. No sense just… waiting here.”

Murmurs of agreement tailed you as you opened the door to the attached room, and your face fell. Blacklight guns, amusing little gadgets that clicked and whirred when the trigger was pulled, were offered to you on makeshift altars. The message was clear, especially when coupled with the simple symbols displayed on the wall above the line-up of mannequins you squared off with.

Search the mannequins. Take the gems. Drop them in the chute for contribution to your starting bid.

Simple enough. Or, rather, it would be simple enough if you didn’t have the entire resort to cover, and your necessary starting bid wasn’t four hundred and fifty dollars. You clicked the trigger on the blacklight gun a few times in frustration, already feeling your nerves creep up your spine in an anxious little dance.

Your spiraling thoughts from earlier returned as you pushed a door open to follow the wire trails in order to unlock another animal-themed key. How could you tell a Prime Asset identical to its environment apart? The hallway you glanced down had a handful of mannequins posted along the walls, stewards of a place never meant for human inhabitants. As you watched, a few of them moved, stilted little swings of their bladed hands or tilts of their duplicitous heads, but none of them betrayed the predator you assumed was currently hunting you all down.

You slid past a mannequin, and you heard it whisper. Instantly, you jumped back, barely catching yourself from falling on your ass, and did a triple take at the thing as it stood there, innocent and still and silent as ever. Look, maybe you were psychologically fractured, but you weren’t crazy. Not yet.

But you heard it. Right in your ear. A coarse whisper of “This could be heaven.”

Although you still felt averse to speaking, you turned to one of your comrades, some feet down the hall. “Did you… did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Are the mannequins talking?”

“What? No, don’t be crazy.” Irritation laced the words that were whisper-shouted back at you.

“No, I swear it just— it just whispered at me.”

“Can you hurry up and find that switch?”

Something ugly curled in your stomach — maybe frustration at not being believed, maybe just fear curdling — and you shook your head, though you couldn’t ignore the feeling of being watched. It was silly. Stupid. The mannequins probably had some speaker system, some little wires laced along them that projected recorded lines. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. It wasn’t too ridiculous to believe.

You found the switch and yanked its resistant battery out. The other two also came free quickly enough, and a hoot rang over your heads as you traveled in a nervous, jumpy pack back to the owl key. No sign of the Prime Asset yet. Just the damn models of her, silently watching — indifferent observers to your mounting terror.

When you returned to the foyer, one of the others stumbled across a familiar blue folder; all of you crowded around it in a desperate bid to learn more about the thing haunting the resort alongside yourselves. Not much, other than a name. Liliya.

It was the same one echoed at you from the masked mannequin when you dropped a shiny sapphire into the deposit box. “Sister Liliya thanks you for your contribution.”

Casting the thing a sidelong glance as you crept away from it, you returned to the lobby to find… nobody. The other two Reagents had split off, presumably to look for gems on their own, but the thought of isolation made your stomach turn. Whatever sense of dread that curled around the base of your spine was remarkably evocative of what you assumed rodents in an open field felt.

Every creak of the stairs under your feet seemed a hundred decibels too loud. Every mannequin you passed had something to say.

“This will be the second age of miracles.”

“With God, all things are possible.”

“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to the chosen.”

They filled your head to the point of damn near leaking out of your ears. It didn’t help that progress was torturously slow; you only seemed to come across emeralds, none of the more valuable gems, and switching on your blacklight in dark rooms was a gamble every single time. You slunk into a dark kitchen on the second floor, sweaty palms tight on your blacklight gun and stun rig primed on your chest. A big grunt wandered aimlessly between rooms, heavy, thudding footsteps slamming on the offbeats of your rabbit-quick heart. Serpentine murmurs crowded your head, promises of God and heaven and the ablation of flesh and worldly connection. It was nonsense, it was all nonsense, but it was everywhere.

Night vision goggles flicked down, you rounded a corner and nearly flew backwards in surprise — but it wasn’t Liliya. Just one of your companions, and you had obviously startled each other equally. His hand instantly shot to his own rig, and he let out a heavy sigh when he realized who you were. You did the same.

“How’s it going?” you asked, voice hushed and tight.

“Bad,” he replied, shaking his head in disbelief. “We’re never getting this fucking money. This place is huge.”

“Yeah,” you murmured, thumb sliding over the grip of your blacklight. “I feel like I scrubbed the whole first floor and only found, like, thirty bucks.”

“C’mon, we’ll look up here together then.”

Relief washed over you. Your hold on your blacklight loosened some; when had you started white-knuckling the thing? Although your thighs ached from the deep crouch you sustained, you tailed the man as he crept out of the darkened kitchen and into the bright glare of the hallway. Quiet. The endless howl of manufactured wind outside beat against the walls, but nothing else. 

Feet shuffled against the fine red carpet as you advanced down the hall.

You didn’t even see it coming. Couldn’t have, really.

Neither did he.

In the blink of an eye, one of the mannequins you passed snapped to attention and lunged at the man ahead of you. The whispers that circulated in your head solidified into a snarl of “Repent!” that seemed to bounce off the walls of your skull, and all you could do for several seconds was gape in shock as your brain registered what was happening.

Effortlessly disguised as one of her many identical counterparts, Liliya had exploded from her post on the wall with practiced ferocity; her attack had taken your companion by such surprise that he had collapsed to the floor, though she clung to his torso with tenacity and remained atop him even as he fell. Frantic breathing, hasty whispers that weren’t in any language you knew — she seemed manic as she slashed at him with the blades affixed to her fingers.

It took you too long, but you stumbled out of your crouch and planted a foot in her side. Iron filled your nose, and you realized in some distant part of your mind that the reason you saw no bloodstains on the floor, like in other trials, was because the carpet matched the color perfectly.

She hissed when you shoved her, precious seconds of disorientation gifted to you as you dragged your comrade up by his bloodied forearms. Both of you turned to run — fear had seized you, a shock of adrenaline shooting all the way down your spine — but only one of you was lucky; Liliya’s bladed hand snared your elbow and yanked you around with a force disproportionate to her frame.

That mask up close was beautiful, in a terrible way. Patterned attentively and finely detailed, golden teeth grimaced at you and that singular ruby gleamed as it bounced the ceiling light back. Fluttery breathing filled your ears; the whispers started anew, from all directions, even faster than before.

“I know you,” she breathed, as devout as a flagellate. Even without seeing her eyes, you felt her stare pierce you to the bone; you barely caught the way her other arm raised, a bayonet attached in place of her hand. Survival instinct, faulty but existent, kicked in, and you bashed a bottle you’d had hanging out of your pocket against the fan of her headpiece. 

I know you.

Who did, at this point? Only Easterman could hold that claim. There was no you. There was only what the good doctor had created through hours and hours and hours of therapy. But the way she said it, the way she held you, grip as sure and strong as anything…

She released you with a pained snarl; the blades on her hand nicked your skin as they withdrew, and you let out your own hiss. But her voice took on a note you nearly didn’t recognize as she called after you. “Again!”

Again. The bottle. Again. You burst onto the upper catwalk, slices on your elbow sending warm blood trickling down your forearm. Outside, you locked eyes with the Reagent you’d just saved as he finished wrapping bandages around his wounds.

“Fuck, come on, she’s right behind me!” you spat, and you barely got the first syllable out before he broke into a dead run. The fear on his face and the harsh panting that had started up in the room behind you was more than enough to motivate you to follow. Tailing him, you ran in tandem; in your ears, the whispers sounded incessantly, as discordant as they were seductive, and you shook your head like a dog trying to flick off water.

Quiet metal-on-metal rasps of clicking blades and that gleeful, rapid breathing were the only signs that she was giving chase. Her footfalls were otherwise silent. Fine oil paintings and rich wood paneling blurred past your eyes as you ran; you banged your hip painfully off some table or tray standing in the way, but even the flare of pain didn’t impede your fleeing.

Ahead of you, your companion reached a rusty blue door. He skidded to a halt and yanked it open just enough to slide his body through. It swung shut heavily behind him, and to add insult to what was likely going to be a fatal injury, he pulled the striped lock bar down with a resolute clang. Horror bloomed, cold and heavy and very, very certain in your gut, as you stumbled to a stop. He had left you there to die. He had locked you out to buy himself more time, to get a few extra seconds between him and the predator running you both down.

You caught the way he mouthed “I’m sorry” before you spun to meet your maker.

Liliya flew at you, taking two long steps before launching herself at your body with rabid delight; her weight slammed you against the door and you yanked your head instinctively out of the way just in time to avoid her blade prosthetic stabbing neatly into your neck. It buried itself in the wood two inches off from your carotid with a thunk. She shrieked, voice coarse and still fucking accompanied by those whispers, and struggled with yanks of her elbow for several precious seconds.

Your rig. One palm slid between your bodies and shoved her torso as far from yours as possible; the other darted to your ESOP, disengaged the familiar device, and hurled it at the floor between your feet right as she worked her arm free. A shower of sparks exploded over your field of vision, and Liliya’s body went slack against yours before stumbling backwards into an uncomfortable-looking fold at the waist. Ragged gasps for air ripped through your chest. Your possible death flashed behind your eyelids every time you blinked. The sharp tip of her blade prosthetic scraped the carpet, its wicked edge gleaming in the warm lamplight. You had barely scrambled a few steps away before you heard her right herself, bladed glove clicking menacingly.

“Yes, please more!” Her voice was as raw as your breathing, echoing inside your skull and the walls of the resort. Every beg for more pain sent you spiraling further, your body already flooded with cortisol right up to its overflow point.

She gave chase, but you at least had some sense, and ducked into the unlit portion of the upstairs. Welcoming, shadowy arms embraced you — you could at least understand the Night Hunter’s love of the dark, if nothing else — as you nearly fell into a room, eager for the cover of darkness. Sweaty palms flicked down your night vision goggles, and you pressed flat to the wall by the door as your breath came in great, gasping heaves.

He left you. That fucking bastard left you. After you saved his ass from getting sliced to literal ribbons by the masochistic zealot that was now stalking you. Every time you blinked, you heard the shunk of her arm blade burying itself to the hilt in the wall, right next to your throat. Her body had held you flat, her own abdomen rolling with her frantic panting against your own. All-encompassing.

You shook your head and attempted to quell your trembling hands.

In the spirit of your streak of bad luck continuing, you had maybe made it five feet down the wall when the door to the room creaked open. Slow. Intentional.

Eyes wide behind your goggles, you stared as Liliya slipped into the room, her bladed fingers rolling and clicking gently against each other, an absentminded fidget. Her head swung around, movements as jerky as the mannequins that shared her likeness, and she prowled forward, body low and lean. No audible footsteps.

“They left you,” she whispered, voice sandpaper against your tympanic membrane. “I witnessed.” Metal creaked as she pulled open a locker door, searching the contents. Searching for you. She knew you were here. “I would not. All who are lost come to me. I embrace you. I know you.”

Every utterance was tailed by its own echo, a thin whisper trailing like smoke after the true words. There it was again, that damning little sentence. I know you. Immediately, your reflex was to rebut, to say no, she didn’t know you, she knew nothing, but what was there to know? If she knew your empty shell, did that count as you? The hollow husk with your skin and hair and eyes that housed little more than whatever Easterman had molded your mind into — if she knew that, she knew you, didn’t she?

You kept quiet. She huffed through her nose and opened another door, exiting the room. Still looking. Still searching. Whispers crept back into your skull, nestled deep within your ear.

Together we egregore.

Beloved of God.

Tears welled in your eyes, unbidden and shocking — you weren’t even hurt, why were you crying? — and you scrubbed hard at your face with the back of your hand to get them to stop. You had nothing. You were nothing. You weren’t even worth saving, according to your teammates. They didn’t believe you. They didn’t care. Fodder. You were fodder. An obstacle of meat to be thrown behind them as a diversion as they fled.

Was this the lesson? Was this what Easterman intended in the end? To learn that your life was worth nothing unless dictated otherwise?

Even the Reagent sacrificed to Liliya had a purpose. He was the example, willingly or not.

Standing up was a monumental task. With leaden limbs, you headed for the door. Resolve grew heavy in your stomach. You could still do this. Could still finish this. Even with your selfish teammates and your crumbling sense of self-worth. At your core, you were a well-trained machine. Trials were trials, forever and always; regardless of your mental state, they needed to be progressed. They needed to be finished.

Hinges creaked as you opened the door. You jolted as you came face to face with your other teammate, the coarser one that had snapped at you earlier when you mentioned the mannequins whispering. His face was pale, his eyes large. His chest was bleeding where the ESOP hadn’t blocked Liliya’s wild slashes.

“She— she was in the closet— she hides, she—”

He didn’t get much further. Claws stabbed through his throat from behind as Liliya clambered up his back; blood sprayed across your frozen expression, warm against the chill of the resort. Metal — gunmetal gray now tainted with gleaming ruby — shone bright under the chandelier above. Gurgling filled your ears, just nearly drowned out the whispers, as his hands pawed weakly at the wicked protrusions from his neck.

He fell to his knees. You slammed the door in his face. In the fraction of a second before it shut, you caught Liliya’s gaze, a scarlet pinhole burning into your face.

I know you.

“Get out of my head,” you pleaded on an exhale, nearly inaudible, to nobody in particular.

Running off of conditioning alone, you bolted through dark room after dark room, everything washed green by your night vision. Your blacklight gun had been abandoned long ago in favor of a brick clutched tightly in your sweat-slick palm; a meager defense, yes, but it was all you had.

The deeply unfamiliar environment and your spiraling thoughts had you more lost than you’d ever been before; even on your first run in the winding stage of Downtown you’d at least had landmarks. Here, room after adjoining room of beds and conference tables and storage closets had you so turned around that you barely knew where the exit was. Never had the urge to simply give up been so strong. Normally you always just had it in you, even at your lowest. There were a good few trials where you’d been the only survivor, dragging yourself to the shuttle with bloodied limbs and gritted teeth.

But here? You felt new, felt awkward and useless and lost, at the mercy of Liliya who was seemingly taking great joy in toying with you. You couldn’t shake the feeling of being hunted by a predator who knew the playing field much better than you did. Unbidden, the fresh image of your teammate dying with her claws through his throat surfaced; the pallor of his skin against the rich red of arterial blood was seared into the backs of your eyelids.

Every mannequin you laid eyes on made you jump. None of them could be trusted, not since she’d pounced on your teammate by posing as one. You side-eyed every single one, waiting for it to slip up, waiting for it to breathe, waiting for the facade to drop.

“Are the mannequins talking?”

“What? No, don’t be crazy.”

Dead. He was dead now, and you might as well be crazy.

Eventually, you found yourself back in the light. The resort still maintained its mausoleum level of silence; nothing tipped you off to anyone’s presence but yourself as you crept along the wall, hugging the planks until you reached the upstairs door with a bear head mounted above it. It had already been unlocked — by who, you didn’t know — but you took the chance anyway and entered, itching to get out of the open.

One room. An office, of sorts. A dying fire crackled against the wall, mostly embers. The windows were thickly frosted, and the haze of manufactured night outside cast a blue glow over whatever wasn’t limned in amber from the hearth. Books lined the walls, and a heavy desk sat in the corner. Mannequins were in here, too; two of Liliya’s progeny and two standard ones.

It was still. It was quiet. You locked the door behind yourself and breathed.

“You came to me.” The hiss was everywhere instantaneously, a verbal checkmate, and your stomach dropped. The mannequin in the far corner moved before you could react, and you were shoved against the door with unbelievable force. Air wheezed out of your lungs, the tight band of your ESOP restricting your breathing.

Liliya pinned you to the wood, palm splayed flat over your throat; the blades on her fingers scraped the door supporting your weight. She unsheathed her blade prosthetic with practiced efficiency and set the point right against your lower stomach — but did not press. It was too easy to imagine how it would feel, shoved neatly into your lower intestine or nestled between the rungs of your ribs, but she did not follow through with her threat. The both of you breathed in frantic tandem, you in terror and her in delight.

“Please don’t hurt me,” you warbled, the plea pointless. Everyone Murkoff employed was so batshit insane that bargaining was out of the question.

“You don’t have to be scared anymore,” she whispered, her head tilting fractionally; her voice was still followed up with wispy echoes. “You belong with me.”

Although barely functional, the rational part of your brain argued to play along with her fantasy; if you acted as the lost little lamb, perhaps she would go the way of the shepherd instead of the sacrifice. The much louder, insistent, irrational part of your brain believed her. It was hard not to, with her whispers pouring constantly into your head and how effectively she’d trailed you and only you the entire trial.

Perhaps you were overestimating your importance.

Regardless, you couldn’t do much, and your limbs felt slack and unresponsive anyway.

“They left me behind,” you started, caution and upset tight in your tone.

“No more,” she countered, voice roughening, upping a notch in timbre. “I’m with you. I was here all along.”

Her hand flexed on your throat; your pulse jumped in her gloved grip. She was not especially intimidating in stature, but her appearance belied her strength. Try as you might, you could not turn your head away from her penetrating gaze. Although her face was covered, you knew she was staring you dead in the eye. Her spiked halo gleamed, as cruel and wicked as the blade nestled against your stomach, in the dim light from the window.

“I’m sorry for running away.” Play the part. You weren’t really sure how much you were playing. It felt nice to have someone care, to have someone welcome you somewhere. Anywhere.

“I forgive you.” Words chased each other on a disorienting delay into your ears. “Beloved of God,” she almost cooed, tilting her thumb to scrape the blade against your jaw. You shivered. Even administered via a knife’s edge, it was the gentlest touch you’d received in… however long you’d been here. Human contact that wasn’t violent was nearly as disorienting as a punch to the gut.

“Thank you,” you murmured, and the line between acting and reality fell away completely. A sense of debt hung over your head; something urged you to give in return for her kindness. 

Soft rustling — the pearls around her neck and the flowers adorning her arms — accompanied her twitchy movements as she considered you. Slowly, the tip of the blade prosthetic dragged along the curve of your lower stomach. It caught in your shirt, its otherwise smooth path stuttering as fabric hindered its progress. A curious feeling made itself known, deep in your gut; if she stabbed you, she’d probably hit it. It was warm and light and tentative, all things deeply unfamiliar in a place like this.

Heat began to creep over your face at your body’s unbidden reaction to the touch and proximity. You couldn’t be blamed for this. Easterman would understand. Liliya would understand, too. She would forgive you, which was more than could be said for the good doctor.

It was as if she read your mind. 

“You cannot sacrifice with defiled hands.” She had a way of speaking that made every sentence seem an edict. Dogma verbalized. Mind already struggling against months of psychological battery, trusting her was easier than expected. Easier than it should’ve been.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m— I’m—” You were what? Unclean? Dirty? You certainly felt that way at times. Layers and layers of blood staining your hands were tough to scrub out, even if they were visually cleansed.

Her hand slid up to your jaw and squeezed, effectively silencing you. The tips of the curved blades brushed against the high points of your cheek and browbone. “All will be well. Faith will heal you.”

The errant wounds on your elbow from when she’d grabbed you earlier pulsed dully. Your spine arched half an inch, just enough for her to notice the way you sought her trailing touch. Blade tip halted against your stomach, she stared first at your abdomen, then at your sweat-damp face, still cradled in her other hand.

Verses poured from her obscured mouth as she released your face and instead focused on the obtrusive equipment strapped to your chest. Metal scraped against metal as her gloved hand trailed over the bulky metal contraption, studying it with her characteristic fanaticism.

“And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good,” Her whisper was steady, and it was coming from every direction at once. Even muffled through the door behind you, as if she were really on the other side. “And they said, let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work.”

Two fingers worked their way beneath one leather strap and yanked. The claws made quick work of the material, and there was a brief groan of strain and then a muted snap as it cleaved. You blinked several times, shocked at the feeling of your ESOP being removed by anyone other than yourself, and realized belatedly that you needed your equipment very much intact.

“Wait, don’t—”

She hissed at you, voice turning shrill and sharp as the edge of her blade prosthetic bit into your gut through your shirt. Pain burned in a thin line on your stomach, and you bit your tongue.

“But all things should be done decently and in order.” Another verse, voice pointed and punishing; you felt overwhelmingly like a squirming child scolded for misbehavior. When you quieted, her tone sank back into coarse whispering. Shame unfurled in your stomach and balled up tight in your chest and throat.

More tugging. One by one, she sliced through the straps of your gear until the equipment came free of your chest; she caught it easily in one hand and discarded it with an obtrusive thump against the carpeted floor. Naked. You felt unbelievably naked, despite being fully clothed. The ESOPs were clunky, yes, but they at least provided some line of defense against getting a machete ran through your ribs or something similar. Although spartan, it was still a big metal box protecting your vitals. Without its familiar weight, you felt disconcertingly bare.

“Witness,” she growled, claws digging into your jaw to force your attention back to her.

The apology nearly made it off your tongue before she dug fingers into your shirt and pulled. Your stomach did terrific gymnastics that seemed far out of the range of anatomically possible as the fabric of your shirt ripped in a long, jagged line downward. Wicked edges scraped against your skin, bordering on the wrong side of painful, following the movement. In one continuous motion, she shredded your shirt down the middle, and you could not help the sharp gasp that tore from your lips as she exposed your skin to the cool air of the office.

Your heart slammed so hard against your sternum that it felt like the beats were visible through your skin. Whatever strange feeling that had gathered in your gut prior ignited, a molten core tinged with shame. Liliya studied the rapid rise and fall of your freed breasts with a pleased, guttural sound in the back of her throat and a slow tilt of her head.

“Cut it away.” The points of her claws trailed down over your collarbone, goosebumps raised in their wake. You shuddered, your heartbeat beginning to match the slowly-building throb centered at the seat of your pelvis. “Still. Still.”

You could do that. You could listen. Her fingers splayed, points spread back to keep the claws from slicing your skin, and she passed a curious touch over one of your breasts. Unable to stop yourself, a weak whine exhaled from your chapped lips.

“Let God love you,” she crooned, voice harsh against the gentle words. Sweat-slick palms pressed flat against the door behind you, fruitless attempts at support struts for your weight. Gentle squeaks eked from behind you as your hands slid down the wood. If she couldn’t hear your heart earlier, she could absolutely feel it now; the way it rammed against your ribs edged on painful. Her gloved fingers caressed your skin, accompanied by the light scrape of errant claws. Pressure. She squeezed, very lightly, observing rapturously the way the flesh in her hold indented.

The blade prosthetic slid upwards over your exposed stomach until the tip found itself beneath the weight of your other breast. Torn between rightful instinctual fear and the unbelievable tremulous arousal that was creeping up the base of your spine, the most you could do was shiver and gasp and twitch as the dichotomy of wicked edges and soft touches played out on the open expanse of your skin.

“You feel it.” Not a question. Those did not seem to be in her vocabulary. Just a statement, an observation, a new universal truth that you followed.

Your head lolled downward, unable to maintain her scrutiny. “Yes,” you breathed, voice high and weak. “I— I feel...”

“...God’s love.” she finished for you with a swipe of her thumb over your stiffened nipple. 

An hour ago, that statement would have been ridiculous. You knew intimately that there was no God in Sinyala — no God within a hundred miles of this place — and the only thing filling that role was Easterman. He did a good job, all paternal and Abrahamic as he was, but the lack of miracles and divine intervention on his behalf had pushed you far into the territory of cynicism.

Now, though, with Liliya’s steadily-intensifying touches drawing prayer-esque sounds from your shaking body, you were much more inclined to believe in something higher. Something better. Something that had, effectively, taken form in the woman that had you currently pinned to a door.

Her blade prosthetic trailed upwards from the bottom curve of your breast, indenting the flesh as it went, until it scraped against your nipple, and you twitched; your head rolled back and rested against the door, refusing to move for fear of your skin opening on the vicious edge. The blade itself was beautiful; a retraction mechanism was mounted on its base, and the metal was patterned and inscribed with an array of symbols trailing all the way down. It should have been an honor, really, to have it touching you like this.

“Lamb of God.” Progressing from caressing to squeezing, her fingers kneaded your breast and tugged at your nipple to hear you gasp. “Soft. Fragile.”

In lieu of words, you nodded; your shoulders rolled backwards to further bare your flesh. Every touch was a firebrand, little marks of Cain pressed into your chest as she surveyed your offering. The blade prosthetic dropped for a moment to allow her to turn her attention to your other breast. Quiet ecstasy leadened her breaths as she tweaked your other nipple, toying with your chest until your skin was warm and aching from gentle torsion. Each enthused grope sent shocks of hot want right down your spine, all of them coalescing into an amalgam of need centered right between your legs.

“Oh, please, Liliya,” you panted, feet inching apart on the floor, and the use of her name made her freeze. For one terrible second, you thought you’d made a fatal mistake — but she merely let out a long, gravelly sigh that sounded pleased.

“With patience, bearing with one another in love,” she responded, the whispered verse spilling from her obscured lips with trembling zealotry. “Wait for me.”

“Yes— yes, I will. I can.” Words thickened like molasses in the back of your throat, sweet and tar-like. You could do it for her.

Her hand twisted and began to slide down the twitching fat of your abdomen. Tiny nicks opened on your skin from the passage of her claws; she seemed too enraptured by your submission to care. Every minute that passed hastened her movements, her excitement obvious despite her shepherd-esque front.

It stopped at the waistband of your pants. Lost in the haze of arousal, it took you several moments before you realized that if you wanted the satisfaction you so desperately craved, the obvious obstruction of the rest of your clothes would have to be removed. You peeled a sweat-sticky hand off the door behind you, shaking fingers headed southward for your fly—

Sharp claws smacked against your hand, an irritated swat that nicked your skin and made you flinch from the sharp flare of pain.

“Still,” she repeated with emphasis, the word sibilant and barbed, and the blade prosthetic slid upwards to rest threateningly on your sternum, tip pointed at your throat. Instantly, you were reminded of your place — you were the sacrifice here, no other way around it. She was to do with her offering as she pleased, including unwrapping you in any way she saw fit.

And the way she saw fit was to work the blades of her fingers into the waistband of your pants and yank. Fabric split and tore against the pressure; you shivered and pressed your spine hard to the door to counteract the tugging motion. Her fingers curled and she pulled again as she retracted her hand; this time, the sewing of the waistband caved and it fell slack around your hips. A pleased sound hissed from the back of her throat and she pushed at the fabric until it fell further. Your panties didn’t last much longer; they were swiftly taken care of by the blade prosthetic digging into your hip and pulling away from your body.

Bare. Your flesh was bare and hot and aching for her surveyance, and you did the only thing you could, and pushed your hips towards hers just an inch. Take it. Take what I have. Sure, you didn’t have riches to cleanse yourself of, but your body could work in a pinch.

“Absolution is yours,” she whispered, claws scraping over your lower stomach before her palm slithered further down; blades sifted through the nest of curls between your thighs until the wicked metal points danced along your sex. Each point of contact made you jump; your cunt ached for touch, any touch, and each brush of the blades against your swollen, aching folds had weak, breathy whines clawing from your chest.

“Liliya, I need you, I need— please, please touch—” Fragmented sentences overran themselves, falling out of your mouth in a helpless jumble; the blade prosthetic shoved upward a few inches until it made contact with the quaking skin of your throat.

“We will cut away what offends God.” That single ruby eye stared into your soul; you could feel her unseen gaze tracking the way your expression twisted in sweet torture. “Love makes us one.”

Her fingers pushed lower; the blades of her glove parted your slick folds with a humiliatingly wet noise. Each breath struggled in your chest, knowing your most sensitive parts were literally balanced on a knife’s edge, and yet, somehow, it was nightmarishly arousing. Your entire body felt wound tight, warm and abused, skin hot to the touch from her previous ministrations.

One bladepoint rested atop the swollen bead of your clit, and she paused. Confused, the revelation took a few seconds to wash over you.

She was feeling your heartbeat. Each slam of your pulse in the aching flesh of your clit jumped under the light press of the claw’s tip, and there was no doubt in your mind that she could feel it traveling all the way down the expanse of the blade. It was so shameful, and so, so hot. You keened, knees trembling under her revelrous exploration, and felt a tear slip over the blood-hot skin of your cheek.

“Cut it away…” Her whisper was edged with rapturous fanaticism and threaded through with an undercurrent of something darker. The harsh point dug into your clit and a beautiful blend of pain and pleasure shot up your spine, like you’d been touched by a live wire. Slick arousal began to creep down from your cunt, smearing over the inside of your thighs; you wouldn’t be surprised if errant rivulets had begun tracking their way down her claws.

Belatedly, you realized that your unabashed panting had been joined by another set of breaths, gravelly and delighted; she was clearly as affected by this as you were, if the slight twitch of the blade prosthetic against your throat was anything to judge by. Together, you both trembled and gasped, ecstatic in your entwining. Sweat gleamed on your skin, highlighted by the weak light from the frosted windows. The hearth had long since sputtered out. Neither of you noticed. Heat radiated off your skin and more than made up for the fire’s absence.

“Hurts,” you gasped, and when you swallowed, the bob of your throat tagged the point of her blade prosthetic. Reduced to monosyllabic whines, you struggled to come up with anything more lucid.

“Pain is faith,” she purred, massaging your clit with the tip of her claw. You jolted with each touch, unable to differentiate the pain from the euphoria that spiked in your core. Each circle felt as if it were just on the edge of rending your flesh, and you hung suspended in a void; you had to trust her, had to believe she wouldn’t slice you from the crux of your thighs up. “Believe in God’s will.”

“I bel-ieve!” you started, the second half of the word breaking into a yelp as the blade slid downwards, parting slick curls and swollen folds to reach your weeping entrance. Panic fluttered in your stomach, warring with the need that had threatened to completely overtake your already-battered mind. Yet nothing you came up with seemed a valid rebuttal. You couldn’t seem to formulate a reason to shove her off. To push her away.

She loved you. God loved you. She was going to show you how much God loved you.

“Accept.” With that, the claw began to push inside of you. Exquisite agony bloomed from your cunt, white-hot lightning that shot down your limbs; at the same time, her gloved palm pressed against your throbbing clit and began to grind against it.

You cried out, voice sharp and broken, cunt fluttering around the wicked intrusion. It cleaved any flesh it met, and you felt some of your inner walls give way to the bite of the blade. Pain. All you knew was pain— and ridiculous pleasure alongside it. Each forward progression of the claw into your cunt was accompanied by the grind of her palm against your clit, and your body couldn’t sort the sensations from each other. Did the difference between blood and arousal matter? Both were slicking the blade.

Sweat streaked your skin, stickied your back and palms as you remained dutifully slumped against the door. In truth, only her presence threatening a knife through your throat and the heavy wood behind you kept you upright. Your knees trembled violently, threatening to give at any second.

Like earlier, when you’d helped your teammate up, iron tang filled your nose. Metal and sex permeated the air. Cloying scents mingling in your sinuses and throat didn’t exactly help as you struggled for oxygen, breaths raw and painful. She was cutting you from the inside out, the flesh of your walls peeling back as she pressed the blade further and further into your willing cunt. You sobbed and fought the urge to writhe, hips jolting minutely with each circle pressed into your swollen clit. Filthy, slick noises joined the sounds of your moaning and her frantic panting; ecstasy danced in fuzzy Rorschachs on the backs of your lids as you screwed your eyes shut.

And then it was over. She pulled the blade out, nicking your already-battered walls on the retraction, and her hand came away from your cunt. Strings of blood-tinged slick connected her palm to your abused sex. As badly as it hurt, you couldn’t stand to have her pull away from you. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

“No, don’t,” you choked, head rolling off the door to stare frantically at her. Her reprimand from earlier kept you from reaching out to her, but she did not step away.

“I will not leave you,” she responded, words hasty and accent thickening as she brought her clawed hand up between both your faces. “I’ll take care of you.” Her voice dipped between coarse whispers and a harsher, shriller, full-bodied speaking tone as she reassured you through your sobs.

“It’s too much, it— I can’t—”

“Bleed the sin away.” Her head tilted with an enthused jerk as she pressed the bloodied claw to your parted, drool-slick lips. “Clean. This is the miracle.”

Your tongue lolled out to catch the edge of the blade and pull it in. It clacked against your teeth, an awkward fit in your mouth as you worked the combined fluids off the length of it. Lids drooping, your eyes sought her covered face desperately as you sucked the blade clean. Tastes of iron and skin bloomed over your tongue. You took your communion dutifully, even though your body throbbed in pain and pleasure and anticipation. Hot blood seeped in thin trickles down your thigh. With only a slight struggle, you swallowed around the metal.

“Yes,” she hissed, and retracted her finger from your mouth. Warmth washed over you at her praise, as monosyllabic as it was. Now shiny, the point rested against your mouth for a moment, its trembling betraying her excitement. “Take.”

It took you a moment, but you understood. You leaned forward an inch and grasped the fine blade between your teeth with a gentle click. She pulled her hand back, and the clawed glove came free, revealing a healthy hand with pale skin and a few negligible pink scars scattered across it. Your cunt twitched in anticipation; something like a whimper eked out around the blade you still held in your teeth. She gathered it and tossed it aside in the same direction as your ESOP, uncaring of where it landed. 

“You are beloved.” The words were accompanied by her bare skin against yours, and it felt like an electric shock. Her palm passed over your breast, tweaking the nipple experimentally as she had done earlier, and you moaned, high and broken, in response. Unable to help herself, she crowded closer against you; her elbow bent to reposition the blade prosthetic at your throat, and she slid her palm over your front. Greedy handfuls of your breasts and stomach filled her exultant touch. Fingers dug into your heated skin, harsh and rapacious, and she cooed at you with that sandpaper voice in tongues that had no meaning.

Her chest brushed yours, and you startled at the realization that her breasts were exposed, too, just painted to match the mannequins; gold flaked off onto your skin from friction. That animal panting had started up behind her mask again, and it made your stomach flip excitedly; the dual ache of pain and neediness between your legs begged to be sated.

She released you with a grunt and brought her hand up to her own jaw; you watched blearily, eyes lidded, as she scrabbled at something under her chin for several seconds. Finally, she worked her fingers into the correct spot and wrenched the stiff fabric of her mask up, just enough to where it stretched taut across the proud bridge of her nose and revealed her mouth.

Normal. Stunningly normal. Old scars crisscrossed the flesh of her cheek and jaw in broad slashes, but her parted lips were unmarred, and an appealing pink against her pale skin. Blood smeared across the bottom; clearly she had bit a hole in the flesh at some point during this encounter. You wanted to taste it badly.

“Let me serve you,” she panted ecstatically, her voice clearer than ever without the obstruction of the mask, and dropped to her knees. You gaped, eyes following her downward trajectory. She shoved your calves apart with intent, and you splayed your palms against the door behind you as best you could, too scared to touch her and risk another reprimand at knifepoint.

Puffs of air from her rough exhales fanned over your cunt, buried in its thatch of blood-slick curls. A powerful wave of arousal wracked you, hot and wanting, and your hips jolted towards her face. That ornate headpiece, complete with wicked spikes, bobbed between your legs; its sharp edges caught the blue light of the room wondrously. Beautiful. It was so beautiful. She made you so beautiful.

Her other arm snaked around the back of your knee and wrapped around to bring you closer; the blade prosthetic dug into your inner thigh, right atop your femoral artery. Let me serve you. The warning was well-communicated.

She was unrepentant in her pleasure. A groan tore from her as she pressed her mouth to your cunt in a fervent kiss; you sobbed, ecstasy washing over you as her tongue laved through your bloodied folds in steady, intense strokes. Your hips ground forward of their own accord, knees weakening treacherously, as the wet heat of her mouth enveloped your aching cunt. Quiet cracks from behind you signaled the pop of your knuckle joints as your fingers bent and clawed against the unyielding support of the door.

It was so, so much. Her free hand had come up to curl her thumb in your folds and hold you open; the shameless repositioning for better access had your face burning and whimpers clawing free of your throat. The assault on your senses was unlike anything you’d ever undergone, and you had undergone many, many assaults on your senses. But no therapy session or stint of brainwashing could hold a candle to how mindless this made you; you felt like you were too big for your body, like something was swelling and unfurling in your gut, some molten core expanding and expanding without relent…

Her tongue was so foreign and unbelievably exquisite. Although you had little experiences with mouths other than your own, you had an inkling that her tongue wasn’t normal. It felt long, the entire stretch of it able to cover the length of your full cunt from top to bottom. As it laved over your weeping entrance, you felt what seemed to be patterning along the length of it. Ridges, bumps. Not that it really mattered. It was incredible, and she loved you, and God loved you both all the more for it.

Obscenely wet noises crawled up from between your thighs as she took what you gave her, serving you in a haze of euphoria; your Eucharist was shared, though this one was of blood and flesh rather than wine and bread. Her tongue slid down to your hole and curled, the narrow point of it slipping inside — followed by more — as she attempted to collect as much blood and slick as possible from your open wounds. It writhed against your fluttering, bleeding walls, and you cried out helplessly, hips bucking against her mouth as you sought more, more, more. You wanted to give her everything. You would give her everything, as long as it meant she would continue.

She drank you with glee, your body sacrament. Sweat, blood, slick — everything that dripped into her mouth became hers. Love makes us one. Fingers kneaded the flesh of your ass, then your upper thigh, then slid along your cunt.

Her tongue withdrew with a vulgar noise, and she groaned, open-mouthed, against your sex. “Love your Messiah,” she hissed, and pushed two fingers in up to the knuckle.

“Fuck!” you gasped, pitching forward in rapture before remembering yourself and slumping backwards against the door. You scrambled for a hold that wasn’t her, lost in freefall, and found purchase with one hand on the door handle. 

Pleasure and agony exploded up your spine in a wicked duo, and stars flickered behind your eyelids as you gasped for air, for reprieve, for her to never ever stop. Each crook of her fingers irritated the cuts inside of your cunt. Fresh blood eked out around the plug of her knuckles, and you moaned helplessly, too drunk off her brand of absolution to care about the noise you were making.

Drool slipped from your mouth and down your chin. It joined the sweat tracking down your body as you writhed against her, pitching and reeling against your post on the door. Her tongue, long and dextrous, curled and laved against your swollen clit, the ridges along it dragging deliciously along your twitching flesh. Her breathing did not quiet and her words did not stop; even with her mouth sealed over your core, you still heard the whispers, still felt her carnal panting against you.

Each curl and pump of her fingers inside of you dragged you closer to that fuzzy precipice, especially when her fingertips raked over one of the many open wounds inside of you. Steeped in overstimulation and no longer able to tell the difference between pleasure and pain, your hips worked in hard jerks on top of her hand. Every other second, her blade prosthetic dug hard into your inner thigh; the additional pinch only stoked the fire in your gut. Close. You were close.

She closed her lips around your clit and sucked, tongue massaging against it, and dragged her fingertips alongside a deliciously sweet spot inside of you, and it was over. Your legs locked up in ecstasy as your climax swept over you in a wave of hot, white static. Jaw hanging open, you barely breathed as pleasure throbbed, heady, in your cunt. Sweat dripped off your browbone, your head lolled forward and chin pressed to your chest. As you came, she kept her mouth on your cunt, knucklefucking you through the entire thing. Gentle whispers of love and heaven filled your ears.

Lucidity came back to you slowly. You had to blink several times to clear the black haze from your vision, and there was a ringing in your ears that refused to subside. At least that seemed to block out the incessant whispers. Violent shaking had started up in every limb, and you felt drained in more ways than one. One trembling hand scrubbed at your face, clearing the errant rivulets of sweat and drool.

Liliya pressed a final bloody kiss to your mess of a cunt and pulled back, her own breathing rough. Strings of spit connected her mouth to your sex; as you watched, her serpentine tongue unfurled and cleaned the mess you’d left on her fingers off with evident delight.

There was some question in the back of your mind about reciprocation, but it was summarily answered by her popping her fingers out of her mouth and tugging her mask back down over her jaw. Your heavily lidded eyes followed her as she stood, unable to string words together to form a response or even a thanks.