Chapter Text
Gabriel shows up at the Talon base weaponless and in civilian clothes.
They’re not going to be happy about that. The guns he uses aren’t cheap. But he’s the only one who can do what he does so they won’t cut him loose (or kill him, rather, since Talon’s not in the business of letting its employees run free with all those secrets in their heads). If they ever find another operative who can get shot a dozen times and walk it off, then maybe he’d start to worry.
They won’t be happy about his failed mission either. He’ll just tell them that soldier interrupted him again, and it was too risky to go back. Which is half-true, at least. It wasn’t the risk that stopped him.
He thinks again of Jack in that white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, the startled blue eyes, the six-pack dangling from his hand.
“Hey, Reyes.”
Gabriel looks up.
Matsuda, leaning against the hangar wall. One of the higher-ranking officers stationed here, but he still answers to Gabriel both in training and in the field and the resentment hardens his face now as it does every time they see each other. One of his eyes is blackened—Gabriel did that in training a few days ago with a hard elbow. Matsuda’s been more vicious recently—maybe pissed that his promotion still didn’t put him on top, but Gabriel doesn’t really care why, has been happy to answer in kind. He’s gotten a few broken noses for his trouble, but his own injuries heal a lot faster than anyone else’s.
Matsuda nods at him. “Hey, you don’t look like a fucking monster for once. What a nice surprise.” He motions. “Except the eyes. You fucked those up.”
It’s true. Gabriel tried to make himself presentable but his eyes (only two this time, at least) still glow a dim red. His lip curls. “I’m gonna fuck your other one up if you keep saying shit like that to me.”
Matsuda chuckles. “I ain’t the one you should be worried about. Guzman wants to see you. You didn’t check in.”
Guzman. The big boss. “Yeah,” Gabriel growls and brushes past, shouldering the door open.
“You fuck your mission up too?” Matsuda calls down the hallway. “Can’t do shit right these days, can you, Reyes?”
“Chúpame la verga,” Gabriel snaps back in the hopes that it won’t raise a response. He was tired of this before it started. Matsuda doesn’t say anything, thank fuck, and Gabriel heads down the hall in accompanied only by the sound of his boots clicking dully on the metal floor. He runs a hand through his hair—feels it, coarse and curly. Sensation. He found he missed it after that night with Jack. It’s a sort of thrill now to feel all these textures running over his skin, even mundane ones like his own hair.
Guzman’s office. Gabriel doesn’t bother knocking. Can’t muster the respect. Instead he barges straight in.
Guzman’s not alone in the tin box he calls his office. There are two other guys there—Gabriel recognizes them, one of the techs and a soldier he vaguely knows from training. Big guy but not all that smart.
And Guzman.
He shifts and lets out a sigh, his slicked-back hair shining faintly in the overhead lights. “Reyes. Come here.”
Gabriel approaches, the other two breaking off to go wait their turn by the door. Guzman sits forward. “You didn’t check in.”
“No. Forgot.” Technically true.
“So did you get the converter?”
Gabriel shrugs. “No.”
Guzman narrows his eyes. “Do you want to tell me what the hell happened?”
“That soldier showed up again. Chased him off, but there was a shootout. Too much of a security risk to go back.”
“Chased him off, huh? You couldn’t, I don’t know, finish the goddamn job?”
Gabriel’s lip curls. “He was heading for crowds. Would you rather I got spotted? Or caught?”
“I would rather you steal the goddamn converter, Reyes. This is the fourth task you’ve failed in three months.”
“Yeah, well, blame the goddamn—“
“The soldier, yes, I know. Surprised he keeps on foiling someone like you.”
Gabriel lifts an eyebrow. “Someone like me?”
“Don’t play coy.” Guzman waves a hand. “You’re Blackwatch-trained and you’re made of machines, for God’s sake. You should be able to kill a single human being.”
Gabriel bares his animal teeth. “Are you questioning my skills?”
“Yes,” Guzman shoots back. “And I have been for weeks, actually. Was wondering why you kept on coming back empty-handed.” He rises. “So I thought I’d conduct my own investigation.”
Fuck. Gabriel tries to turn, his instincts blaring flame-bright. Something’s wrong. But the big guy grabs him and the tech’s holding something that looks like a nail gun and jams it against his thigh.
A trigger-click and searing pain deep into his leg. Instantly his muscles go dead, and the big guy lets him go, leaving him to collapse to the floor in a messy pile. Frantically he tries to move. Nothing. His eyes flick up but there isn’t a twitch in his fingers or toes.
Guzman stands over him. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he hisses. “The drone got you on video, cabrón. You taking it up the ass from your mysterious soldier. Who—“ He chuckles. “—turns out to be your old friend Jack Morrison.”
They know. Terror sweeps over Gabriel of the kind he hasn’t felt in years and years, so long forgotten it overpowers him now. They know about Jack.
Guzman crouches. “We’re going to kill him, Reyes. As for you…not yet.”
Gabriel tries to speak, barely manages it. “What did—you do to—“
“We’ve been studying you, you know. Studying your machines. Matsuda’s been a great help.”
It takes Gabriel a second to make the connection. Matsuda wasn’t beating him up because of a grudge—not only because of a grudge, he wanted blood samples, smeared on his knuckles or sprayed on the mat, to take back to the lab. That motherfucker. Gabriel wants to kill him.
Guzman jerks his head. “Come on.”
The big guy leans down and grabs Gabriel by the throat.
Gabriel’s arms twitch, an impulse running down them to rise and get at the guy’s hand. But it fails in a split-second and his muscles are dead again. Fuck. Something’s wrong—not just the paralysis, it goes deeper than that. The machines used to screen information for him, shape it, smooth it out until the peaks and troughs fell within a dynamic but calculated range. That isn’t happening anymore. His leg hurts too much, too fucking much. His movements, too, they would optimize for economy and responsiveness. Not that he’s moving now, but his muscles feel—tight, heavy. Clumsy.
He can’t reach the network. The machines are still inside him but are closed off to him now. He can function without them, has built all the necessary structures to maintain life, ability, and the full spectrum of cognition. But the machines have deserted him.
Gabriel blinks sweat out of his eyes. Now he’s just a body.
The big guy stands again and drags Gabriel out the door by his throat.
He can breathe, barely. Mostly it hurts, the asshole’s fingers digging into his neck. Every time his heel catches on a seam in the floor it disturbs the new hole in his thigh and the pain shoots through him, hot and electric without the machines to disperse it. Gabriel’s eyes prick, his stomach twisting. He’s helpless like this. Completely. To his right the tech prods at a tablet, skimming through the holodisplay glowing in blue above it. To the left Guzman keeps pace. “We’ve overridden your programming, by the way. We’re controlling it now. In case you were wondering why you can’t move.”
That shouldn’t be possible. He went over it with Dr. Ziegler when she first did this to him. What if I get hacked? he asked. Impossible, she replied. The network is closed to outside signals.
But the signal isn’t outside. It’s stuck in that bleeding hole in his thigh and he can’t move to dig it out. Some program contained in whatever object they punched into his leg, now in direct contact with the nanomachines.
Guzman sighs. “You fucked up, Reyes. You were valuable. I didn’t need loyalty. All I wanted was a little fucking discretion.”
Gabriel feels it. How he tries to move, how his muscles anticipate it but never follow through. The reflexes are different—he gets a twitch down his leg when the pain shocks him again but can’t finish the motion, can’t draw it up to protect it.
He still feels. They’re blocking off his muscles but the nerves are still there, carefully reconstructed because he missed them for some stupid fucking reason and now he feels the deep, bruising pressure on his neck, the sweat rolling down his spine, how his shirt sticks to his ribs. He didn’t used to sweat—the machines were precise regulators of his temperature. But the machines have betrayed him. Now he’s just a body.
They drag him into the gym.
He is noticed. There are a couple dozen soldiers there, most of whom will be ecstatic to see him made helpless. Gabriel has not made friends here. They separate from their equipment, drifting closer.
Guzman jerks his head. “Let’s bring him over there.”
The punching bags. Gabriel’s fingers drag over the floor mats. “Like I mentioned, I’m not going to kill you yet,” Guzman tells him. “First because I know you’re hard to kill and I want to make sure we get it done right. And second because I’m pissed off that you played me for a fool. I thought this soldier guy was actually something to be worried about. Turns out you’re just fucking him.” Guzman nods. “Take one of those bags down and get him out of his clothes.”
The big guy drops him to the mat, unhooks one of the bags and rolls it up against the wall. Then he kneels and starts stripping Gabriel’s shirt off, moving his body like he’s a rag doll. Gabriel wants to tell him to stop but fears ridicule or retaliation.
The other soldiers are gathering. Guzman stands with arms folded. “So I’m not killing you yet. Still, you deserve some kind of punishment, right? For fucking me over. But then I figure, hey, you gave a couple of good years to this organization.”
Gabriel’s shirt comes off, and then his pants and boots. He lies naked on the gym mat with the soldiers gathering loosely around him. He’s completely exposed to them now. The mat sticks to his skin. The big guy extracts the belt from the discarded clothing and wraps it around Gabriel’s wrists.
“So you should get a reward, right? For your service,” Guzman continues. “And we just learned you like taking it up the ass. You love it, in fact. Shoulda seen your face on the video.”
Gabriel is lifted awkwardly upright. One of the soldiers comes forward to help. The big guy gets the belt over the hook left vacant by the punching bag. Gabriel hangs, his knees bent. Then someone hikes up the chain and he’s lifted higher and higher until his toes just brush the mat.
“Here’s your reward, maricón. Hope you like it.” Guzman gestures sharply. “Fuck him.”
Gabriel’s shoulders are already feeling the strain. The disbelief fades quickly. Of course this is happening. What has he done here but make enemies? On purpose? Why wouldn’t they leap on his first mistake for the chance to destroy him?
Matsuda.
The rest are standing back, faintly unsure. But Matsuda is pushing through and was in on it from the start, and the yellow-green pool of dead blood around his blackened eye crinkles as he grins. “You fucked up, Reyes.”
Yeah. Guzman told him that already.
Gabriel sees the punch coming but can’t get out of the way, can only flinch when it thuds hard into his stomach. Pain. Visceral and immediate. He shouldn’t feel it like that, but the machines belong to Talon now. Now he is just a body. Matsuda gets behind him and there’s the sound of a zipper, a hand spreading his ass cheeks, clumsy pressure on his dry hole. Burning as he’s slowly forced open.
Then the pressure vanishes. “Jesus, I can’t even get in. Someone get me some fucking lube!”
A couple of them break off. The rest keep on staring. Warming up to it now, less confused, a few smiles starting to appear. None of them will lift a finger to stop this. He’s abused them all verbally in training, often physically as well, and never been reprimanded for it. He was too valuable. But he’s pissed away his immunity. On a night with Jack. A mistake he never planned to repeat.
Matsuda slaps him suddenly and forcefully. His gnarled teeth gouge the inside of his cheek, and blood trickles into his mouth, collecting in his gums. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” Matsuda gloats.
Gabriel should respond to that. But he can’t think of anything to say. I did this to myself. I should never have gone to Jack. I should never have pretended things could be like they were before. Matsuda’s eyes flick over his shoulder, and he brushes past. “Finally.”
Dissolve. Gabriel tries and fails, as he knew he would; he remains heavy, solid and taut, skin prickled with sweat, leg still throbbing with pain. There won’t be any dissolving, no sublimation into a cloud of electronic smoke, no dispersal of sensation and processing across an uncountable host of machines. For now he is just a body. His hands jerk a little, the belt digging into his wrists.
Slippery fingers spreading his ass again. Pressure at his hole. He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want to be violated. Not when he can’t even fight back, can only hang here and meekly accept it.
A sudden stretch. It burns, and the discomfort follows soon after, sliding further into him and forcing him open. A cramp shoots up his rectum.
“Shit, Reyes, you’re about to squeeze my dick off,” Matsuda breathes. “Were you this tight for your pretty-boy Morrison? Huh?”
It hurts. The cramping is sharper now. “What’s wrong?” Matsuda eases out an inch or two, then slides back in. “You not enjoying yourself? Thought you loved taking it up the ass.”
Gabriel finally manages to open his mouth and fight back in the only way he can. “F—fuck off.”
“Wheeler,” Matsuda calls, and the tech glances up and swipes at his tablet.
The shock of sexual arousal takes Gabriel completely by surprise. It isn’t physical, or not only, instead subsuming his mind in the sort of needy excitement he hasn’t felt in years—hadn’t until he and Jack were sitting on the couch together with their legs tangled up and Jack’s hand resting on his chest beneath the sweatshirt. What the fuck? He’s being raped. This shouldn’t be—
The machines. They control the machines.
The tech glances up, frowns a little at the tablet and nudges it with one finger. The arousal surges. Gabriel’s jaw tightens, and shame burns like bile in the pit of his stomach as his dick starts to fill with blood. Then Matsuda thrusts into him and there’s a pressure on his prostate and his dick jerks, rising to stand out in front of him.
It’s confusing. There’s no external stimulus so the arousal latches on in passing to the intrusion inside him and his instincts tell him this feels good. But it doesn’t—it hurts and it’s humiliating. He manages to carve away much. His body refuses the rest, because he built the fucking nerves back in when he was with Jack and the arousal still circulates in torrents in his head and plunges down the messy organic pathways straight to his groin. If the machines were with him he could stop it, disassemble the nerves to scavenge for parts. But the machines aren’t with him.
Now he’s just a body.
Matsuda thrusts into him, violently. A wave of disgusting pleasure radiates from between his legs. The arousal loops into it, tries again to seize on Matsuda inside him. It feels good. No, it hurts. The cramps are coming faster now, a deep, sharp pain. His dick is hard. Sweat rolls down his ribs and spine.
“Don’t be shy.” Matsuda balls a hand in his hair and yanks his head back. “He likes dishing out the corporal punishment, right? Let’s see if he can take it too.”
One of the soldiers comes forward almost immediately (Gabriel recognizes him, a contemptuous asshole whom he’s pinned against the wall or thrown on the ground more than once). The guy winds up and punches him in the jaw. Gabriel’s head snaps to the side, cuts opening on the inside of his lips from his goddamn teeth. The next blow strikes him in the nose and he feels the snap as it breaks. Blood fills his nostrils; he snorts, and it sprays onto the ground.
“Goddamn. You’re too fucking tight.” Matsuda pulls out of him, giving him a little relief from the painful stretch. “Who wants to loosen him up for me?”
Gabriel stares at the gym mat. His shoulders are hurting already.
——
“You’re a fucking weapon, Reyes!”
He tries to think about that.
“Are you questioning me?” Stockman snarled. “You? You’re questioning me?”
There’s still a punching bag hanging beside him. The soldiers seem to use that as an example. His stomach is one massive ache. There’s a belt being passed around too. Thin lines of broken skin cover his thighs.
They can’t rape his mouth, at least. The teeth would make it a dangerous undertaking.
Gabriel was shaken but couldn’t back down, not yet. “We shouldn’t be doing this. At least wait until—“
“We’re not waiting!”
Someone else is fucking him. His asshole is sore. It feels good. It feels really good. He was fighting it before but even that, the revulsion, has become arousing. The rape is humiliating and it excites him. No, it shouldn’t. But it is. Guzman is long gone but Matsuda sits beside the tech and asks him questions sometimes, or gives him suggestions. The arousal is a poisonous sludge clogging up Gabriel’s head, and it just keeps rising higher.
“We’re going in. You’re going in.”
Gabriel steeled himself. “It’s not right, sir. I won’t—“
“Don’t give me that shit!” Stockman shouted. “You don’t get to decide what’s right or not! You’re not a fucking person anymore! You’re made of machines now! Do you understand? You’re a fucking weapon, Reyes!”
They can’t force him to orgasm, he doesn’t think. He can feel it when they try, when the arousal crashes over him like a tidal wave and he wants to climax, can think of nothing else. But it always requires an extra scrap of stimulation—a little more pressure on his prostate and he finds himself ejaculating as his legs shudder and twitch and he moans from deep in his chest.
The soldiers have been ejaculating as well, mostly on his thighs or stomach as if marking their territory. They enjoy raping him. Not for the heat and tightness of his asshole—many are unused to fucking men and can’t reach climax solely through the act of the rape. But he sees the hunger in their eyes as they watch his injury and humiliation, stroking themselves in front of him. That’s where they get their sexual gratification. From his helplessness, from the blood and semen congealing together on his skin.
Gabriel should have responded but was too abashed, could think of nothing to say. Stockman advanced on him, still furious. “Don’t pretend you didn’t choose this. You wanted those goddamn machines. You wanted to be a better weapon. Well, guess what? You made it.” He jabbed a finger into Gabriel’s chest. “Guns don’t talk back. Tanks don’t disobey. So get out there and do what you were made to do.”
He’s a weapon. He’s made of machines.
His asshole is sore. His shoulders are burning. His stomach aches. His dick is heavy with blood.
They might have lifted the block on his muscles a little. He can move, if not by much—can brace his toes on the floor to take a small portion of the weight off his shoulders, can roll his hips back into whomever is fucking him at the moment. The soldiers laugh to themselves when he does that. But it feels good. The resistance and revulsion have curdled together with the arousal like the blood and semen mixing on his skin. He can’t pry them apart anymore. It’s too much and too powerful. And he’s never been all that strong anyway, not really.
Someone slaps him hard in the face. He barely blinks.
Matsuda gets up off the bench, unzips his pants and jerks his head at whoever’s currently raping Gabriel. The guy slides out and Matsuda takes his place, ramming in without ceremony. A far easier entrance than his first attempt. One of his hands snakes up and wraps around Gabriel’s neck as he starts thrusting. “Seen your hips moving, Reyes,” he breathes. “You finally enjoying yourself? Huh?”
Gabriel nods. “Y-yeah.” His throat is parched. He swallows blood.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Matsuda’s grip tightens. “All right, come on, let’s see you fuck back on me.”
Harder to breathe now with his nose broken, Matsuda choking him. But Gabriel can’t bring himself to care. He spreads his feet for better leverage, arches his back, and moves against Matsuda, pushing back onto his hips. Another soldier appears, joining the small gathering before him. They’ve been coming and going, and close to a dozen are here now.
A sound Gabriel doesn’t even register until some of the soldiers’ heads turn. They glance at each other, questioning. It was a sort of clink. Gabriel knows the sound, if only he could think what it was.
But reflex kicks in and he shuts his eyes and turns his head as the flashbang goes off.
Rifle shots, duller than normal arms even through the cotton that flashbang left in his ears. He should know by the report what weapon it is. But he isn’t thinking well right now. The arousal still swills around in his head, viscous and heavy and and dark. Shouting among the soldiers. They won’t have weapons here. Matsuda pulls out of him hastily, swearing. Gabriel squints. Spots bloom in his vision even though he closed his eyes.
Reflex. He doesn’t know how many seconds it’s been but he squeezes his eyes shut again. One, two, three, four—
The second flashbang. More shouts of surprise and frustration, but fewer in number now, pared down by the tight bursts of rifle fire. Why did he do that? Two-charge flashbangs are risky weapons that can easily fuck over whoever threw them in the first place—nobody uses them routinely. Almost no one. He cracks his eyes open. Bodies around him, blackened holes in gym clothes with wisps of smoke rising out. One man fleeing toward the far door, but a salvo of flare-bright projectiles thuds into his back and he collapses just as he reaches the threshold.
For a second there’s silence. Then a single shot and the chain gives. Gabriel collapses all at once, thudding into the gym mat.
A Talon soldier in full combat uniform runs toward him, threading through the exercise equipment, rifle slung over his back.
Gabriel tries to move, but his limbs are weak and he can’t even push himself upright. His dick is still hard and begging for stimulation. He hates it.
The soldier hardly stops, just grabs him under one armpit and drags him over to an equipment closet, hauling the door open and heaving Gabriel inside, then locking the door behind them. It’s dark, the only light the red glow of the lenses from the soldier’s headgear. The man flicks on his shoulder light, making Gabriel squint, then goes to remove his mask.
Even before he does it all falls together in Gabriel’s head. Why he anticipated the second flashbang, because he knows what kind of rifle makes those reports and knows the person who favors that rifle favors the two-charge flashbangs too—
Jack sets the mask down, unwrapping the belt from Gabriel’s wrists. “Can you move?”