Chapter Text
1͉̚
Zoe spends ten months and twenty-eight days repairing the Ghostrunner.
It takes fifteen days to find him and two days to recruit help to transport his cold chassis and destroyed parts back to her new apartment. It’s a haunting scene atop that dais—the Keymaster’s corpse and all her limp extensions, dried blood, scorch marks, and smashed consoles, all telling of the battle that took place for humanity’s fate. Jack traversed Dharma Tower with such dexterity that he made it look simple, though it was anything but. Watching the assault through his visual feed was the most exhilarating experience of her life. She felt every swoop in her stomach as he grappled and swung, leaped and plummeted, deflected and zipped, as if she were there with him.
Two months and seventeen days pass as she fits his pieces back together and takes stock of what’s missing. She calls herself a skillful engineer, but his body is the most complex piece of tech she’s ever handled, especially considering the delicate organic underlayer weaving with the cybernetic implants and titanium skeleton. One wrong move, and… She can’t even imagine it. But she has responsibilities to the other survivors and must delegate her time to their betterment. She lives in Dharma City now, helping to bring technological advancement and beautification to the lower levels, so, to her immense regret, Jack becomes a side project.
Four months and eight days drag on while, in her limited free time, she barters for and manufactures replacement parts to make him whole again, but she looks at her shoddy work and feels nausea churn in her gut because his physiology is leagues beyond what she’ll ever be capable of replicating. Trade is a limiting factor in what she can give him. Tools are another; skill, time. The parts she places inside him are, in her eyes, akin to twigs and chewing gum, and she almost rips it all out and starts fresh. But she quells both the urge and the nausea by dressing his torso with her black hoodie to put it out of sight and mind.
Three months and thirteen days brim with frustration, doubt, self-loathing, depression, and other such negativity, which culminate in some of her darkest days. The tower is far from where it should be, but quality of life has improved for everyone. During a lull in construction, she locks herself in her apartment to study the ruins of Jack’s impossibly advanced kernel through her Atma chip.
Diagnostics reveal missing core files and corrupted data. In short, he’s dead, and she has to bring him back to life. But he won’t be identical unless she can import code from his original template, if there is such a thing. She makes do with an open-source operating system in the meantime. At the very least, his personality and memories are still intact, as it appears he wrote them to a different drive. Zoe is thankful for small mercies.
The final three days for him to integrate with the software and boot up are the slowest of the entire process.
Jack has limited functions. The operating system she installed is incompatible with the dynamic learning protocols that comprise his cortex interface.
She groans, hunching over. Her hair falls in her face. She’s exhausted, overworked, and unhappy with herself. After a smoke break out on the balcony overlooking Dharma City’s unfathomable depths, she establishes a connection to the tower’s newly repaired servers through Jack. His system contains vital decryption keys, tunnels, and name resolution that allow him to bypass the security she couldn’t even touch, but then comes the problem of where to find what she needs. There are thousands upon thousands of gateways and millions upon millions of directories.
She tinkers with Jack’s shell until she learns the syntax for some basic commands. She combs his error logs for clues and discovers promising keywords. A couple of hours later, she gets a hit in the form of a backup of GR74:\, Jack’s unique root directory, according to his logs. The most recent one, housed in the Repository’s backup archive, dates over twenty years ago.
It’s well into the morning, and she’s running on fumes. Her eyes are bleary, and no amount of rubbing or blinking clears the fog. But she pops her stiff joints and pushes through. She can already hear his electronic baritone, charmingly devoid of verbal padding and always blunt with honesty.
A prompt flashes at her: roughly six and a half hours to restore the backup. With a sigh, Zoe pillows her head with crossed arms on the workbench beside Jack’s hip. She’s asleep within the minute.
00:00:02
00:00:01
00:00:00
System Restore Complete
Initializing . . .
Unpacking System
Checking Data Corruption
Cleaning Redundant Files
Scanning Auxiliary/External Drive(s)
Retrieving Dynamic Learning Protocols
Restoring Dependencies
Testing Paths
Finishing System Scan . . . Done
Version: 5.2.2.74
System Integrity: 90%
Structure Integrity: 84%
Organic Integrity: 32%
Multiple Incompatible Parts Detected
Consult Compatibility Manual Or Contact Specialist For Replacements
Organic Decomposition Detected
Decomposition Level: Severe
Internal Temperature: 98.6 F
External Temperature: 75.1 F
Stem Repair: Deployed
Estimated Completion: 02:21:42:20
Unverified Installation In GR74:\
Total Size: 5.0 PB
Free Space: 4996872.0 GB
Starting Ghostrunner_5.2.2.74
Starting DharmaOS
Establishing Connection To Cybervoid . . . Failed
System Encountered Unexpected Errors
Error 9910XX09: Conflicting Operating Systems On GR74:\
Create Drive Partition Or Delete Conflicting Files To Continue
Error 5038X404: Connection Timed Out
Cybervoid Gateway Unreachable
Restart Uplink Node Or Validate Credentials
Contact System Administrator For Further Troubleshooting
Rebooting In Safe Mode . . .
Boot Menu:
Continue
System Restore
Startup Repair
Startup Settings
GRShell
Troubleshoot
Advanced
GRShell Y/N?
Y
<CP GR74:\>
lsdir -Hd
~$sys.log
~$GRinternals
DharmaOS
Ghostrunner_5.2.2.74
Recovery
temp
System Files
<CP GR74:\>
dl -Rc -Fc DharmaOS
DharmaOS Has Been Deleted
Reboot Required To Complete File Removal
Rebooting . . .
The text clears from GR-74’s visual feed, giving way to a low ceiling illuminated by neon hues filtering in from the windows. He turns his head, surveying his surroundings. The shadows on the walls are deep and exaggerated. According to his internal clock, it’s 05:46. He’s lying on a table in what appears to be someone’s living room. Asleep in a chair at his side is a woman with short black hair. He doesn’t know her.
His body is in poor shape, with days before his organic matter is repaired. But he’s alive, and, from what he remembers, he shouldn’t be.
GR-74 attempts to sit up, but his joints are stiff and unresponsive. They’re loud, too, emitting creaks and groans. His noise awakens the woman, who, despite her obvious fatigue, is quick to shoot upright in her chair and rub her eyes with a fist—flesh, unlike her other one, an implant up past her elbow. Her mouth falls open.
“Jack… you’re awake.”
He immediately recognizes her voice. She’s Zoe Avila of the Climbers Rebellion. And he’s “Jack.” They parted ways, she to answer a distress signal and he to kill Mara and delete the Architect. He died in Dharma City, and, now, he’s alive, presumably by her efforts.
“Yes,” he says. “I’m awake.”
Zoe sighs, bowing her head. Her shoulders tremble. “God, I missed you. I missed hearing your voice. When I found you, I thought I’d never…”
GR-74 waits for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn’t. “How long has it been?”
“Ten months and twenty-eight days. The war is over. We won.”
“Hmm.” He attempts to lift himself again, but his body fights against him.
“Oh, just a sec.” Zoe leaves her chair to cross the room and soon returns with a can of oil. “May I?”
“Yes.” GR-74 lies down and allows her to lubricate his joints via their access ports. From his fingers to his wrists and ankles, she gingerly works each one back and forth like she’s afraid of breaking him. He realizes he’s wearing a black hoodie. She can’t reach his shoulders with it in the way.
“Would it be easier to remove this?” he asks.
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
She looks away with a twist in her brow. “I don’t want you to see it.”
“‘See it’?”
“The repairs I made.” With that, the words spew out of her. “I’m so sorry, Jack. With all the construction going on, it’s hard to find quality materials, let alone come up with a reason they shouldn’t go toward fixing someone’s home. I did the best I could, but I knew I could never make you truly whole again.”
It was in his diagnostics—eighty-four percent structure integrity due to incompatible parts. But she’s not a specialist who has access to the manual or factory replacements, yet she repaired him to such a degree after all the damage Mara inflicted on him. Zoe once asked him if he thought she’d pass the engineering test to become a resident of Dharma City, and he stands by his answer.
“You did well,” he tells her.
Her smile appears forced. “No, I didn’t. But thank you.”
Removing Jack’s clothing is harder than putting it on, especially since he’s watching her do it. His body is lightweight despite its metal composition, so she elevates him with a hand under his back. But taking off the hoodie one-handed proves difficult. She works it up a section at a time until it’s off his arms and bunched around his neck. After a moment of indecision, she slips it off and tosses it somewhere. Jack lies down at her nonverbal direction.
Her reluctance in looking at his torso is mainly because she can’t help but notice the imperfections she added. Otherwise, his physique is attractive, shaped by sleek black plates and some kind of flexible charcoal-and-navy-colored synthetic. He resembles a human man—trim in the waist and muscular in biceps, pectorals, and abdomen. Hip bones poke out from under his pants, where her eyes linger. The dips and curves of his body are so precise. She wonders what the rest of him looks like. How humanoid is he, exactly?
Zoe forces her attention back to his elbows and shoulders. With some coaxing, Jack unlocks his joints and lifts his upper half. Another couple drops of oil eliminate all sound, restoring his former stealth. He flexes the fingers on both hands.
“Would you like to do your own,” she clears her throat, “lower half?”
“No. You know what you’re doing.”
“Then I need to take off your pants.” She looks up at his face and hopes she doesn’t appear as flustered as she feels. “Is that… okay?”
“Yes.”
Inhaling, Zoe reaches for his pants. His button pops open with some fumbling. She pinches the zipper below it and drags it down its track. Stepping back, she circles the workbench to stand at his feet, where she grabs the hems around his ankles and pulls. Each inch reveals more sleek black and lines of yellow LED, but it quickly becomes clear that, of course, he’s not a sex doll.
It disappoints her more than it should, and she’s mortified by the intensity of her reaction. It was lewd to consider it—and arrogant to assume Jack would want her like that. God, she feels stupid. Her face is hot as she drops his pants on the floor, leaving him fully nude and reclined in front of her. As much as it shames her, the sight sets her pulse to race. With shapely calves and muscular thighs to complete the picture, his sex appeal is undeniable even without genitals.
She must be a pervert to think something like that.
“You look distressed,” Jack points out in his usual patient monotone. “What’s wrong?”
Even she can hear how breathy her voice has become when she says, “Nothing. I, uh, I was just thinking for a second.”
“Hmm.”
Arousal shares so many symptoms with other physical states that it can get lost in translation with someone who doesn’t feel it. He has no reason to think she’s eye-fucking him. To him, it’s probably not a remote possibility. When he hums, it’s an acknowledgment that he understands her, rather than a doubtful hum that says, “You’re lying, but I’ll let it slide for now.” Somehow, that feels worse, like he trusts her to be professional while disrobing him and touching his body, but she’s too hormonal to control herself.
She returns to his side and nudges the outside of the opposite knee. “Can you turn this way?”
Jack does as she asks after she steps back to give him space. His knees’ range of motion appears to be locked at about one-hundred-and-forty degrees, so they stick almost straight out. With hesitation, she asks, “Can you spread your legs?”
He parts his knees some inches before a soft grunt escapes him. He grabs his hip as if in pain. “No. You’ll have to lubricate my pelvis first.”
“Uh-huh,” Zoe murmurs. “I knew that. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Force of habit.” She stands at his right side and bends down to apply oil to the joint in his hip. Setting aside the can, she cups both hands around his thigh and works it back and forth until his full motion returns. She repeats the process on the other side, leaning over his lap. When she’s done, he spreads his legs for her.
Sucking in another breath, harder this time, she steps between his knees and kneels so she can work on them one after the other. She musters the courage to look up at his face, noting the downward tilt of his chin. He’s watching her.
“How do you feel?”
Jack tests his various limbs. “Less stiff. Better. Thank you.”
Zoe chews on the inside of her cheek and nods, pushing herself back to her feet. “You’re welcome. Want to stand up?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t need her help to leave the workbench and has no trouble supporting his weight as he walks laps around her tiny living room.
She turns and heads for the kitchen to keep herself from admiring the way his artificial muscles flex, completely bared to her eyes. “I’m gonna eat. Make yourself at home, okay?”
After washing her hands in the sink, she gets to work on hydrating pork-flavored protein rations and boiling water for tea. She spots the sword on her table and realizes she hasn’t mentioned it. Grabbing its hilt, she returns to the living room. Jack is performing more advanced stretches that he couldn’t do while seated.
“I almost forgot.” When he looks her way, she presents the sword flat across her palms.
He unfurls his body and approaches to take it from her. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, of course. It’s yours.”
Her food is done. She eats it at the table, listening to the faint whistle of a blade repeatedly slicing the air. His precision is unmatched, but she figures it’s better to keep her distance for now so he can test himself without having to dodge around her. She soon finishes her tea and puts the dishes in the sink.
The sounds in the living room have silenced, so Zoe peers in. “How’d it go?”
“I’m clumsy,” he admits, swinging his sword twice before hefting it over his shoulder. To her eyes, the motion is inhumanly graceful. “I will adjust for it.”
If anything is off about his performance, it’s her fault.
Jack puts on his clothes, including the borrowed hoodie. He pulls the hood over his head and disappears into darkness, detectable only by faint yellow light. He cuts an intimidating figure with his sword in hand.
Sabbatical behind her, Zoe showers and dresses for work. She tells him she’ll return later tonight, as if the reminder will keep him locked in her apartment waiting for her. But why would he stay? They’re not involved. He’s not capable of romantic feelings, and, as much as she’s had her hands all over him, they barely know each other. They bonded as allies during a war, but it changes nothing. When the next calamity strikes, he’ll leave because it’s in his programming.
She tells herself this all day long, but it still fails to prepare her for how it feels to come back to an empty apartment containing zero indicators of Jack’s presence. There’s no clue where he went or if he’ll ever return. Short of broadcasting on all frequencies and hoping he hears one of them, she can’t even contact him because his adaptive cyber camouflage renders him invisible. But that’s an embarrassingly selfish endeavor. People know her. And they know how much trouble she went through to locate, transport, and repair this particular Ghostrunner. It’s no secret that she hid him in her apartment while she traveled up and down the tower to barter for materials and ask about schematics that don’t exist. Marie, a project manager and acquaintance, has joked about it, asking if it’s hero worship or love that keeps her so faithful.
Zoe’s mood turns somber. She has dinner and prepares for bed. Then she wakes up seven hours later, eats breakfast, and gets ready for work, all in silence. It was her routine for the last year, and it’s her routine for the next several days as her team celebrates the completion of a revolutionary water-purification system. It’s a momentous occasion, so they break out the coffee. She’s also approached by her colleague, Wes, whose invitation for casual sex makes her feel uncomfortably self-aware—and not because she finds him or the idea repellant. Actually, he’s very respectful about it, without pressure to agree.
Stress relief is important, and she’s not looking for a relationship—so it’s perfect. But she declines because Wes isn’t him. She doesn’t tell him the reason, and he doesn’t ask.
When she gets back from work, she unlocks her apartment door and finds Jack on her ratty couch, legs crossed. He deftly twirls his sword in one hand before laying it across his thighs and turning to look at her. He’s bare-chested except for his utility belts, wearing a silky-looking gray cowl and scarf around his neck. The buckles and cloth are accented with gold. Her hoodie is folded on the cushion beside him.
“Jack,” Zoe whimpers, letting the door close behind her. She didn’t recognize the extent of her depression until feeling the weight leave her shoulders at the sight of him. Her chest wrenches with longing. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”
“I surveyed the tower.” After a long pause, he adds, “I’m not needed right now.”
He says it so blandly, telltale of his indifference, that she rushes to validate his existence, stumbling over to the couch. Her hand hovers above his right arm, which lies on the armrest. It’s perfect and whole, unlike the Chikara IV implant she and the other Climbers installed as his left one. “I need you.”
Jack sweeps his palm across the flat of his blade. “I’m here.”
“Can we talk?”
GR-74 focuses his visual feed on Zoe, who picks up her hoodie, sets it on the other armrest, and takes its place with her legs folded beneath her. She angles her body in his direction. That wrinkle in her brow has returned.
“About what?”
“Feelings.” Her eyes are wide, roving his face as if in search of something. There’s a certain weight to that word that he can’t describe.
“Mm,” he agrees.
Zoe brushes her fingers across her forehead and catches the stray strands of hair there. “Can you feel?”
Her question brings to memory the burning and stabbing sensation of having his arm ripped off, the pressure of being thrown out of a building and shattering apart on the ground, the piercing of bullets through his chassis and the white-hot static that follows when his circuitry is damaged and electricity snaps across the nearest synapse.
“Sometimes,” he says.
“What do you feel?”
“I can feel pain—acutely. Punishment protocol is meant to deter me from making mistakes.”
She frowns. “Anything else?”
“Discontentment. I’m discontent with my limitations. I want to feel more.” He pauses. “What do you feel?”
Zoe’s eyebrows arch. Following a beat, she glances away. “Um, right now, I’m really happy you’re back. Seeing you makes a bad week seem insignificant. Like, I could lose everything, but, as long as you’re here, it wouldn’t even matter.”
GR-74 absorbs her explanation and tries to relate it to his experiences. During his pursuit of Mara, Zoe’s voice provided a reprieve from the Architect’s increasingly sinister revelations, but it was also the catalyst for scathing commentary he couldn’t silence. It doesn’t sound similar to what she described, so he probes for more information. “I have that effect?”
“I was depressed the last couple of days. I didn’t realize how much I needed you until I came home today and found you on the couch like you’d never left. I… I think I was partly in shock because I don’t really remember much of it. Just went through the motions, but then everything was back to normal in an instant. It was like my suffering meant nothing. Kind of pathetic, right?”
“I don’t know,” he says to her question. It may have been rhetorical, but she’s staring at him like he has all the answers.
She shifts forward and places her hand behind his shoulder. The cushion dips and presses against him. Her lips are trembling, and her breathing has quickened, like when she helped him with his joints.
“Do you really want to know what I feel? Because it’s all for you. I’m happy being near you. I’m relieved because you came back, and hopeful, and stupid for thinking it means anything. Obsessed with the thought of touching you.” Zoe peers at him under her lashes. The new expression on her face is a sharp contrast from the previous one. “You’re always honest, so I’ll be honest, too. I fantasized when I undressed you. I… I was so turned-on.”
It must be slang—he’s not getting any results in his lexicon. “‘Turned-on’?”
“Aroused,” she clarifies. “I want you—sexually.”
In processing the stream of new information, his mind latches on to the one concept he can dissect. “I’m not designed for breeding.”
“Sex isn’t just about breeding. It’s for pleasure, too.”
“I can’t feel pleasure.”
“But you were fully human once, right?”
Was he? The Architect said he wasn’t born in the traditional sense, that he was engineered from a single human cell into what he is now. But the lies were innumerable, muddying the truth, if there was any to be found. All he can rely on are his memories. “I don’t know. This form is the extent of my self-awareness.”
“Oh.” She sits back on her heels with a sinking posture. Her former intensity crumples into something muted.
GR-74 hesitates. This is unfamiliar territory for him, divergent from his programming. His purpose is to protect humanity’s interests, not pervert them. Normally, he wouldn’t bother, but Zoe is different. “You have… pleasant symmetry.”
“Pleasant symmetry” is neutral as far as compliments go, but she understands it’s his equivalent of expressing interest in continuing their conversation about sex. Jack knows she wants to have it with him, but not only are they incompatible for procreation, but he also can’t feel pleasure, making it wholly one-sided on her part. Thus, complimenting her appearance to encourage her feelings deviates from his rationality. What can it be other than an invitation?
“Thanks.” Zoe reaches for him, hovering above his sternum. “Can I touch you?”
“Yes.”
She places her palm flat against him, appreciating the smooth texture. It’s warm, humming minutely from the machinery just beneath. She touched his chassis when she made his repairs, but it’s a completely different experience with the tension and vulnerability that comes from being watched while she lives out a private fantasy. He has given her permission to do it, even knowing from where her motivation stems. He’s engaged in it. It’s both thrilling and terrifying because there’s no telling how it’ll transform or destroy their dynamic.
Zoe fixates on his human qualities, finding them comfortably familiar, but the truth is that he’s more machine than flesh, a tool created for peacekeeping. His organic parts lie too deep, hidden, to act as reminders—blood and tissue that exist to support the inorganic shell as a self-sustaining delivery system. He looks like a man for the most part, but no man can do the things he does without integrating with technology.
She can’t continue without acknowledging that what she’s doing is deviant. It’s a fetish. And Jack is highly susceptible to manipulation because he’s programmed to follow orders, and he considers her an ally. His curiosity is one of his most humanoid traits, but it’s wrapped in alloy and simulated by sophisticated code.
But I doubt they designed him to feel discontent, she thinks, finding his right forearm with her metal hand and sliding up the length of it. At the same time, she leaves his sternum to brush his pectoral with her knuckles on her way up to his shoulder. Jack said he wants to feel more—a sentiment that surfaced on its own, perhaps through their conversations almost a year ago when she piled her shortcomings and cowardice on him and when he said he needed her just to keep her out of danger. It’s one more thing to which she clings to justify her perversion.
Zoe undresses him, and, like last time, the process turns her on. Unlike last time, Jack now knows why her breathing quickens. She unravels the scarf from his shoulders and slips the cowl off his head, which she explores. The textures are more diverse here, alternating between metal, synthetics, and tempered glass. His yellow light illuminates her skin as she cups his angular faceplate and brushes the sides of his neck. His collarbone is prominent and sturdy under her fingertips, and she knows if she were to bite it, the material stretched over it would yield like flesh. Her palm slides down and up his chest, savoring the lean musculature, then cradles his narrow rib cage. The angle is awkward because she’s still kneeling beside him.
After taking the sword from his lap and setting it on the nearby coffee table, she makes quick work of the utility belts around his torso, then unfastens his pants. When she leaves the couch to kneel, she imagines a scenario in which the overt eroticism of this position has purpose—because he has something she can suck.
At her coaxing, Jack uncrosses his legs and places his feet on the floor. Her hands grip his pants and ease them down his hips and thighs. She shoves them the rest of the way down his calves and slips them over his feet. Pushing his knees apart, she makes herself comfortable between them and drinks in his nudity. His chassis is like glass in the dark, reflecting spots of color from the signs outside the window.
“God, you’re beautiful,” she whispers in reverence.
He tilts his head. “Thank you.”
Zoe leans forward, hovering over his groin. She caresses circles around his hip bone with her thumb. There’s a dull throb between her legs. She can stimulate herself with pressure just by squeezing her thighs together. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
Her head dips, and her lips find his pelvis. She kisses a trail up to his right hip bone and laves it with her tongue. The subtle patterning embossed in the synthetic flesh is addicting, and, without thinking, she digs an incisor into the groove.
Jack grunts, shifting under her mouth. For a second, she mistakes it for pleasure and gets a thrill out of it—then reminds herself that she just hurt him by activating his “punishment protocol.” She kisses the spot in apology, but she knows he’s tough. One little bite won’t faze him.
“I wish I could suck you off,” she says. “You’d love it.”
“Suck me off?”
She glances up at him before flicking to where her hand caresses his thigh. It’s easy to pad her bravado with filthy language, but having to explain herself tears it back down. He’s analyzing every word, with none of them having the desired effect. She’s embarrassing herself for no reason.
“I’m not familiar with most slang,” he continues, breaking the silence. “When I learn the meanings, I add them to my lexicon.”
“It’s… fellatio. Do you know that word?”
“Yes. If I had a penis, you’d put it in your mouth.”
Zoe experiences a spike of baffled arousal. His clinical terminology, delivered in monotone, shouldn’t affect her so much, but it feeds into how taboo this is. Jack doesn’t understand the intimacy and power dynamics of a blowjob, and there’s no embarrassment or shame to keep him from describing it with such candor. It’s hot, and it shouldn’t be.
“Yeah,” she agrees, licking her dry lips. It doesn’t help. “I want it in my mouth.”
“What happens when it’s in your mouth?”
Her surprise must be extreme enough in her expression to warrant an explanation. He adds, “My sexual knowledge is limited to short denotations.”
“It’s okay.” Her face is hot as she haltingly describes the act, from the use of her tongue to the bobbing of her head. His length is greater than what can fit without triggering her gag reflex, so she puts her hand on what remains and strokes it in rhythm with the gentle suction. “After a while, you come… and I swallow it.”
“‘Come’?”
“Orgasm.”
“Hmm.” Jack seems to mull it over. “When I ‘come,’ I ejaculate into your mouth? And you swallow the semen?”
Zoe chews on her lower lip. The throbbing has intensified, and she’s feeling needy. Arousal sets her pulse aflame and accelerates her heart rate. “Generally, I wouldn’t swallow—or even let someone come in my mouth. But, since it’s yours… I do anything I can to heighten your pleasure.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she says, kissing the inside of his thigh and pressing another one to his abused hip bone as she lifts herself from the floor into his lap, which she straddles. He has to look up at her from this new position. He probably feels how much she’s trembling. “Because I enjoy pleasuring you.”
“How do I pleasure you?”
Inhaling sharply, Zoe buries her face in his neck. This is the fork in the road she has both wanted and dreaded—the point of no return. Touching and kissing him are tame compared to what they’re inching toward. Explaining the mechanics of fellatio can be trivialized as scholastic. Physical intimacy, penetration, orgasm, fetishism, objectification: She’s on the precipice of reducing this savior of humanity to a carnal symbol for her personal use, and he can’t even process it that way. He can’t feel outraged, disgusted, or degraded.
Demonizing it fails to dampen her desire, and she lacks the willpower to stop herself. The guilt and second-guessing will come later, but, for now, she wants him more than she’s ever wanted anything.
“There’s something you can do right now,” she whispers against him. “You can use your fingers on me.”
Jack is silent for a long moment, and she almost panics, thinking he sees the immorality. He’s going to call her out on it and make her die of embarrassment. He’ll reject her because he’s not interested in her like that, because it’s sick. It’ll be the coldest bucket of water—
“How?” he repeats.
Zoe lies on the couch cushion. Her legs rest perpendicular to him across his lap. There’s a waver in her expression. It comes and goes as her eyes flick from him to a point on the other side of the room and back again. GR-74 doesn’t know the exact cause of her antsy behavior, but he recalls something he heard about how most humans broadcast their lies through body language, such as looking away. Maybe she’s lying about wanting this.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” he says, sitting passive.
She swallows, and her throat undulates with the motion. Her eyes return to him once again, and the waver disappears. She withdraws her right leg from his lap and worms it between his back and the couch. Her left falls off the side and hangs there.
“Can you turn toward me?”
GR-74 obeys, tucking his legs underneath him and angling his body in her direction. He patiently awaits her next instruction with his palms on his thighs.
“Can you…” she trails off, catching her lower lip between her teeth before releasing it. “Can you, um, kneel over me? Like, hold yourself up on your hands and knees?”
He places his hands at her sides, shifting his weight forward and lifting himself onto his knees like he’s going to crawl. She corrects him by nudging his arm and directing him up above her shoulders. He adjusts to where her legs are between his instead of the other way around and finds stability in the position, the purpose of which appears to be caging her in with his limbs and imposing himself over her.
Zoe looks physically exerted. Her skin is flushed, pupils dilated, and breathing quickened. They’re symptoms of what he now recognizes as her arousal, perhaps directly correlated to his imposition.
He feels pressure on his abdomen. Her hand is on him—sliding, fingertips curling and stroking. It brings to mind what she said about her “obsession” with touching him and how determined she is to remove his clothing. Although he lacks the components to breed with her, she’s not deterred. He’s a machine, but she harbors strong emotions for him. This anomaly challenges his understanding of humanity.
After some time, she asks him to sit on her thighs, so he straightens up and lowers a portion of his weight on top of her—just enough to feel. Then she offers her wrists and requests that he pin them above her head with one hand. He hesitates. Using force against a non-aggressive human defies his conditioning. Hovering above her is one thing; restraining her is another entirely.
It requires clarification for override. “Is this typical human behavior?”
“It’s foreplay. I don’t know about ‘typical.’ Everyone likes something different,” Zoe says, gazing up at him. “In this case, I want you to keep me still.”
“You wouldn’t keep still for this?”
“I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re asking. I just… Some of your most attractive traits are your physical capabilities—strength, agility, endurance. I’ve seen you do incredible things, and I want you to showcase them in a sexual capacity.”
“Hmm.” GR-74 captures her proffered wrists in his left hand and, leaning forward, guides them above her head. “Like this?”
“Harder. I’m more resilient than you think.”
His pressure increases in increments until she makes a small noise in her throat. He thinks he may bruise her and cut off her circulation with this kind of force, but she utters a sharper vocalization—a protest—when he begins to release. “Is this how you want it?”
“Yeah.” Zoe squirms underneath him, but she’s thoroughly pinned, as instructed. “It’s good. Perfect. I’m ready for more.”
“Tell me.”
At her direction, GR-74 pinches the hem of her shirt and drags it to her collarbone, where the cloth bunches underneath her chin. She asks him to pull down her bra and expose her breasts, so he does.
The next command, delivered shakily, is to touch them, and he pauses, blocked by another invisible wall that tells him in no uncertain terms that this is inappropriate behavior for a Ghostrunner. Override is possible, but he must be very certain before proceeding. In the past, disobedience or rogue actions were the grounds for deactivation. Now, he has free will, but hurting Zoe is a real possibility if he’s not careful.
“Touching them will pleasure you?”
She hums low in her throat, and her eyelids drift downward. “Definitely. Do whatever you want with them.”
GR-74 shifts his visual feed to where his right hand lowers over her breast. It fits in his palm and sinks under his fingers. He gauges the pressure of his grip as he squeezes. The other breast is just as smooth, warm, and soft, though somewhat smaller. Her erect nipples are firm but no less malleable. Pinching one gets a noticeable reaction from Zoe, who jolts with a gasp of his name.
He stops. “What?”
“Nothing.” Her eyelashes flutter before she refocuses her eyesight on him. “Do you… like them?”
“Your breasts?”
Zoe nods.
He considers the question. If the Architect told the truth, he was never breastfed and didn’t develop a bond with his mother—if he even had one, as his human cells could have been synthesized through an artificial process. He doesn’t “like” things in the same way as other people and can’t prefer breasts over any other part of the human body because he’s neutral toward it all, lacking the biological aspects to ingrain it so deeply into his brain.
Notwithstanding the logic, the conclusion he draws is that he likes them because they’re hers—Zoe’s, who lies vulnerable underneath him, bares her body, and fixates on his opinions. As resilient as she claims to be, to him, she’s fragile, from the bone-thin circumference of her flesh wrist to the delicate fatty tissue of her breasts to the uncertainty of her self-esteem. His hands have murdered countless people, but she arches into them.
“Yes,” he says. “I like them.”
She sighs through her nose and shifts her body. His grip doesn’t yield to accommodate her. “When you’re ready, you can move down. No rush.”
GR-74 toys with her nipples a little longer, recognizing them as erogenous zones and, therefore, crucial to Zoe’s overall enjoyment. He learns the way she expresses her approval through certain expressions and murmured vocalizations, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes of his name. He stops acknowledging it after she explains it’s normal behavior to speak a partner’s name during sex.
It’s… strange. It’s strange to think that: having sex with someone. He is having sex with someone—or he will be if this continues. Sexual intercourse has never interested him, and he couldn’t have imagined one day having it. His creators clearly thought it was beyond his purpose, as they neglected to give him anything specialized to facilitate the act.
He has no other word than “strange” for the occasional stutter in his processing that it brings. It deviates from normalcy. It requires constant adjustment and extrospection. As he slides his palm down Zoe’s abdomen to the waistband of her pants, he wonders what the Architect would say about this. But maybe it’s better not to know.
Dipping into her underwear, GR-74’s first observation is the trim coarseness of her pubic hair. His second is the sheer heat emanating from her. His third is how wet she is—a testament to how well he prepared her for penetration. According to his internal database on human-female anatomy, there’s another erogenous zone down here: her clitoris. Focusing on it will improve his chances of bringing her to orgasm.
“You can take off my pants and panties,” she says.
He lifts his weight to push them down her thighs to her knees. She removes her shoes without the use of her hands and wiggles, kicking off the rest of her clothing and leaving herself fully nude. Her skin breaks out into gooseflesh.
“Are you cold?”
“No, I’m excited.” She heaves a breathy laugh. “Should I spread my legs to give you better access?”
“Yes.”
Zoe slides out from underneath him and bends her knees, her legs hanging to opposite sides. He can see everything now. Below a patch of dark pubic hair, her clitoris is swollen, her labia are fleshy, and clear fluid drips from her vaginal entrance, which sporadically clenches and relaxes.
“Do you want me to stimulate your clitoris?” he asks.
“Yeah. Please. Rub it with small circles.”
It takes some micromanaging to find the precise spot, as it seems to shift every time she utters an encouraging sound to indicate he has found it. Other times, it’s too sensitive and makes her recoil with slight pain. But he adjusts according to her needs. She produces more lubricant, which coats his finger and improves his glide when he speeds up his circling motion.
“Wait, wait,” Zoe gasps after several minutes, bringing him to a halt, “you’ll make me come.”
“You don’t want that?”
“I do… but I want you inside me first.”
GR-74 probes her vaginal opening with one fingertip, watching how she contracts around it. There’s some resistance as he slides inside, greeted by the bumpy texture of her inner walls and the sound of her soft moan.
“Jack,” she whimpers.
Giving her time to stretch around him, he shallowly works his finger in and out until the orifice is loosened enough to continue. He presses deep inside her and curls his fingertip before pulling out, bringing her lubricant with him. He thrusts back in with a squelch, wrenching a strangled noise from her. “You make sounds like you’re in pain.”
“No. Feels… so good.” Zoe is slurring her words somewhat, appearing dazed. “Add another finger.”
The process begins anew, waiting for her to stretch and accommodate the extra girth, but it doesn’t take very long. He pistons in and out of her with mechanical rhythm, increasing his speed at her encouragement. When his thumb finds her clitoris, her body jerks and stiffens in orgasm. She drops her head and closes her eyes, and her mouth opens in a voiceless moan. All the while, he rubs her through it with unfaltering pace until she cups her feet around his arm and tries to escape his range by pushing away.
“It’s really sensitive now,” she explains, quivering.
GR-74 releases her wrists, which fall as limp as the rest of her, and he sits back on his heels. Zoe lies in disarray before him, with messy hair, sweat on her brow, and a full-body flush. But there’s no denying the contentment in her expression.
“That was amazing,” she tells him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He’s passive as she lifts herself with visible effort, grasps his wrist to bring it closer, and sucks her fluids from his fingers.