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Sleepwalkers
by thrall
synopsis: The
battle for an empire grows desperate after a leading Resistance figure is
brainwashed.
color code:
purple
story codes:
mc, nc, md, fd, mf, ff, mm, ma, sf, ex, ft
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Note 1: If
you are under eighteen years of age, this story is not for you. Go away.
Note 2:
Thanks to Lady K, the friendly neighborhood orc, and Callidus for helping me
brainstorm, proofread, and generally make sure the volume was turned up to 11.
Note 3: This
is not a stroke story. It’s an X-rated novella with plenty of sex. If stroke is
what you’re after, save yourself some time and bail out now.
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Part 1 of 11
Despite
himself, Paul couldn't stop staring at the Peacekeeper. He knew it was safe
enough to *look* at them, though not to touch; but free citizens avoided attention
from the General’s forces as much as possible. The less they noticed you, the
less likely you were to become one of them.
Paul
couldn't help staring at this sleepwalker, though. The private stood just a few
feet away, facing him across the narrow aisle of a crowded monorail. Her body
swayed slightly with the movement of the car and her chest moved with her
breath, but otherwise she was still as a mannequin.
Even her
skin seemed molded from plastic, since her armor was as clear and polished as
glass almost everywhere. But Paul knew it was flexible and porous; the
diamondoid fibers were just too small for him to see. He also knew the suit
could have been programmed to display any color or pattern the user desired,
but General Hawthorne was the real user here, and she desired her slaves to
appear naked. The private’s d-suit clung to her body like a glaze, showing off
her perfectly sculpted muscles, her total lack of hair, and her tattoo.
The tattoo,
her mark of ownership, hung just above her left eye. At its uppermost point was
the crest of her prime, a free-minded member of the General’s Cabinet. That Cab
had imprinted a sleepwalker who’d imprinted another sleepwalker, and so on down
the chain to this poor private. Counting the number of gray bars below her
crest, Paul could see that she was a Level Seven. Each intermediate imprinter
between a sleepwalker and their prime represented a loss of initiative,
functionality, and selfhood; and this private had seven intermediaries. That
made her little more than an automaton.
At the
bottom of the private’s tattoo was her serial number, riding just above the
brow line. Below that was the only part of her armor that wasn’t soft and
transparent: her faceplate. It was the color of brushed steel, and it curved outward
just enough to give her the appearance of facelessness; but it, too, was
diamondoid. It was also perfectly breathable.
Paul watched
the movement of the private’s chest, noting how the late-afternoon light made
it glisten. Whatever identifying marks she’d once possessed, they’d been erased
by the Empire. Then her body had been toned and sculpted and augmented into
this…thing. This sexualized, depersonalized threat of what could happen to
Paul, or to Shara, or to anyone else they cared about – at any time.
Even if Paul
could have pulled his gaze from the Peacekeeper’s body, he still wouldn’t have
seen her eyes. That, too, was a threat. Any time a Peacemaker was around – and
they were always around – you could never be sure they weren’t watching you. It
didn’t even matter if you were a loyal bootlicker who never even *thought*
about the Resistance. No one was safe but the narcs, and they had to buy
immunity in installments. If they waited too long to rat someone else, they
were just as vulnerable to snatching as anyone else.
The
Peacekeepers didn’t even care what skills you had. When Paul was a kid, one of
the bag boys at his local supermarket had been snatched and no one ever found
out why. No one ever saw him again, either, since sleepwalkers were never
returned to their old neighborhoods. If they had been returned, some loved one
would have tried to rescue them. That never ended well for anyone.
Paul still
wondered about that bag boy sometimes: why he’d been taken and what had been
done to him. Probably he’d just had some scrap of information the Empire
wanted, and once they extracted it from him they’d shipped him off to Greenland
or somewhere as a Peacekeeper private.
You never
knew, though. Maybe the General liked ginger bed boys, or maybe she had some
other use for him. Not every sleepwalker became a Peacekeeper, and even Paul
didn’t know all their possible uses.
He just knew
more than most. That was the second reason he couldn’t stop staring at the
private. *One day soon*, he told her silently, *I’m going to save you*.
Even as Paul
thought it, the Peacekeeper turned her head downward as though she were looking
at him. He blushed and tried to think about breasts, only breasts. A
sleepwalker at her level couldn’t read expressions in the traditional sense,
but she’d be implanted with ‘ware that could gauge the dilation of his pupils
and the activity of his sweat glands. Maybe she’d already seen enough to make
her suspicious. God, maybe she was beaming a report to her supervisors right
now.
No, dammit,
Paul was working himself up over nothing. The Peacekeepers’ role was mainly to
intimidate. They didn’t snatch many people overall, and they left ordinary
policework to the civilian force. Besides, a private was little more than a
sophisticated video camera. Paul wasn’t in any danger…yet.
He had to
calm down, had to distract himself. He forced his eyes lower, to the lacquered
rose between the Peacekeeper’s legs, and they flushed just like his face. She
wanted him to look. She *liked* it.
Despite himself,
Paul did, too.
*****
As Paul
stepped out of the car, the private turned her head slightly, tracking him just
a little longer with her eyes.
Peacekeepers
were a common sight in the Empire. Anyone who displeased the General or her
subordinates, or anyone they’d finished using, could be turned out onto the
streets with guns in their fingertips and just enough initiative to storm a
rebel cell – with direction from higher-ranking Peacekeepers, anyway. The
privates almost *were* security cameras, and just about that common.
It made for
the perfect camouflage.
The private
logged onto the Peacekeeper comms network and beamed a message to another
private standing around the corner: “Subject Paul Medina leaving Blue Line car
135, heading south by foot toward residence.”
Her
assignment completed, the first private transferred surveillance to the second
one and returned to standby mode.
