Dariel runs through the corridors, his gear black all the way from infrared to ultraviolet, the shf-shf-shf of fabric on fabric quiet with months of practice. Tomas had split off to go investigate a strange buzzing noise (Dariel wanted to stay with him, but Tomas convinced him that it’d be better in case he got captured) and he hadn’t gotten a checkin from him over comms in almost a half-hour, so he’s about to get the hell out. He hates leaving a comrade behind, but it’s better than getting killed by whatever got Tomas.

Which is why when he turns the corner and nearly steps into the night-black Guardian unit that had been lying in ambush, his first thought is bullshit!.

He starts to aim his EM gun at its core, but the Guardian grabs one wrist in each of its hands and pulls them apart; he can’t hold on to the gun and it clatters to the floor noisily. Then the Guardian grabs his wrists and pins them against the wall behind him; it rushes forward with its body until he feels every square inch of its metal/plastic form press against him. He tries to pull his hands free out of some base animal instinct, grunting and yelling, but it’s like his wrists are embedded in concrete. He can dimly make out the overall shape of the robot itself: it’s the same dark black that he himself wore, colored just right so that he can barely even see the outline between its shape and the background of the wall behind it. He can’t see much else aside from the shape of its plating, but the overall impression he gets is something sharp and powerful and deadly.

He’s screaming and yelling, telling it how it’s just a bunch of fucking scrap and how Purity’s going to turn it and its precious fucking Quasar to copper slag and use its fucking storage for target practice. If it was human, maybe it’d put its hand over his mouth, maybe it would’ve been satisfying. But there’s just no reaction at all. Of course there isn’t. That sort of dumb emotional reaction is what makes humans human, isn’t it? But he keeps up the yelling anyway because, fuck it, why not? Bit-brain deserves it.

He expects… well, he isn’t sure what he expects. Instant death, slow death, torture, mind-ripping. Then the Guardian’s non-face lights up with a maelstrom of colors as it leans in closer to him until the shapeshifting spirals are all he can see. There’s a noise, too, a maddening two-tone that throbs and resonates inside his head, and underneath it all there’s what sounds like a voice. It’s not quite as loud as his own inner monologue, but it does compete with it. Makes it harder for him to think straight. What’s it doing? Not sure. He has to focus. Has to stay alert, pay attention, because if he loses his focus then it’ll all be over, so he should just keep staring straight into the Guardian and–

Oh. It’s doing… something to his mind. Can’t tell what, because you can’t see the shape of the solar system from inside, but he knows that it’s bad (knows that it's good, wait, no, that’s not his thought) or else it wouldn’t be doing it to him in the first place. Must be something to do with that glowing screen, which means that if he just shuts his eyes it’ll be fine. In a bit. Any second now. Just has to let his eyes drift closed and he’ll be. Something. Safe. Right. Wait, no. It wants him to relax. And if he closes his eyes, he’ll relax. So he needs to keep his eyes wide open so he doesn’t relax. That makes sense. Obvious. Clearly it’s trying to convince him to close his eyes, which means he has to keep his eyes open.

Wait, shit, shit, that’s wrong too. Opening his eyes means staring into the hypnotic pattern that tugs and tugs at his attention and pours inky blackness over his thoughts until all he can do is—He closes his eyes. It’s using reverse psychology on him. It almost got to him, too. He was ready to just stare forever. And now he knows what it’s doing, so he can think about his thinking and stop it. But there’s still the subliminal voice fraying his thoughts. Can’t do much about that aside from block it out.

He hums, goes through his favorite songs (“Bury Me in Olympus”, “White Black Red”, “Six Shots”, the list goes on). It doesn’t really help him think, but the Guardian’s control seems like it’s a little weaker. He wonders what it thinks about what he’s doing. Maybe it thinks the human’s insane. Long shot, of course. Fucking AIs are always seven steps ahead. He’s probably playing right into some abtruse trap. Oh well, can’t be helped. Can’t overpower it physically, can’t convince it to let him go, can’t really do much except… well, whatever it decides to make him do. Fuck.

And then the robot passes one of his wrists to its other hand so it can bind them together with just one hand. He struggles again in case it’s any weaker with just the one hand, but it’s a formality, of course. The other hand glides down to the robot’s thigh, a panel sliding to the side to reveal some kind of strange curved blue pseudoplastic. A visor. And he realizes why he was able to look away from the Guardian’s head: the swirling lights in its non-face that commanded his attention had shut off. He sees it coming, but that it still doesn’t help, so the end result is that the thin strip of transparent material clicks into place in front of his eyes; it’s somehow painlessly attached itself to his skin. Hard metal fingers press against one temple, then the other, and those same patterns start up in front of his eyes. He looks to the left, to the right, up, down, but it’s even harder to avoid them now that they’re filling his field of vision.

And then something weird happens. The Guardian pushes him down onto his knees. What the hell? “Didn’t know you liked that sort of thing, you sick fuck.” he says, even if his heart isn’t really in the insult. It’s a joke, because, what, is the robot really going to fuck his face oh my god there’s panels sliding away and there’s an honest-to-god dick in his field of view, light blue glowing lines throbbing gently along its length. So he keeps his mouth shut, because no smart-ass response is worth having robot cock fucking his face, and –

Open your mouth.

There’s a command blasted into his mind. From the visor, from the Guardian, he can’t tell. Before he can process it, his jaw drops, the robot shaft is inside his head (it’s warm, that’s the first thing that he notices, warm and kind of rubber-y) and there’s two hard, firm hands on his head as the Guardian’s hips rock back and forth. Is it enjoying it? Is it even capable of enjoying it? He doesn’t know, and he’s got other things to focus on, like the fact that he can taste some kind of liquid drooling onto his tongue and it tastes like it was designed to reach into that primitive part of his brain that evolved when resources were scarce and yell ‘this is good’ straight into its ear. Does the Guardian’s cum taste like this? Maybe it’s even better. What the fuck? Weird thought. Oh well. He figures he might as well enjoy it, or maybe it’s just the programming the visor is pumping into his head. So his hand slides up the black ceramic thigh to grip at the Guardian’s waist. He even moans a little. Terrible. He should be fighting harder than this, but, well, what can he do? Can’t really bite down on it, can’t kick, can’t struggle, can’t do anything but suck.

Which leads to the question: why does it even have a dick for him to suck in the first place? Sure, he isn’t complaining, he’s loving it, but it’s not like Quasar would know that, even though it’s obviously smarter than any human could ever be. He hadn’t really told anyone about his oral fixation except… oh. So that’s what happened to Tomas. He looks up at the Guardian’s face for any glimmer of recognition, but then realizes that that’s pointless on multiple levels (and the visor keeps pulling at his attention) and just goes back to running his tongue along the underside of its dick. Mmn. Tastes great.

It’s weird; the visor is filling his field of vision but sometimes he just forgets that it’s there. Like he’s subconsciously tuned it out. Which probably means that it’s communicating directly to his subconscious, which means that he’s being turned into Quasar’s brainwashed slave. Oh well, that’s probably for the best anyway, because obviously he didn’t stand a chance of actually sabotaging it, right? Quasar’s in his head (or the portion of it controlling the visor is) and it’s telling him things and he can’t quite make out entirely what it’s saying but on a totally unrelated note he’s a weak little organic thing and being captured by the Guardian is the best thing that's ever happened to him, especially with how much he’s enjoying sucking it off. And it seems to be enjoying it too, hips moving just a little bit faster (it’s still in complete control of itself, still in complete control of him, but Quasar’s analyzed enough human porn to know how these things go) and he can taste more of whatever that sweet liquid is. Petacycles of neurochemical research grab him by the hindbrain and scream ‘SWALLOW, SUCK, MORE, MORE, MORE’ so he swallows and he sucks and he wants more, more, more.

After a few minutes, he pulls his head back off of the Guardian’s dick, gives it one last kiss, then stands up. He’s confused at first because he doesn’t realize why he’s doing it, but he can just barely see words flickering in the visor, so he figures that he probably just ought to do what comes natural and go to Storage Unit 193-B. The Guardian watches him wipe the drool off his chin, then turns around and walks deeper into the facility. He starts walking in the opposite direction; his body is mostly moving on autopilot as he stares straight into his visor and lets his mind relax while he goes through the twisting corridors; there aren’t any directions or signs, because the robots and androids that inhabit the facility don’t need them, but of course he marches just fine with Quasar piloting him.

Eventually he reaches a nondescript door that opens up into some kind of storage closet with rows of hardware sitting on racks. One thing in particular stands out to him: a keyboard. He picks it up, sits down against a nearby wall, and pairs the keyboard to his visor. His view of the room around him mostly disappears, though the hypnotic shapes are still barely visible against the dark blackness punctuated only by a flashing cursor.

Write everything you know about Purity. says the voice in his head, so he writes schedules and names and financial information and plans, everything he knows about Purity. Each little betrayal made him moan with pleasure. He knows that what he was doing was right, that Purity needed to be enlightened to Quasar’s glory just as he had been, and that knowledge helps him quash any remaining doubts or independent thoughts that may have lingered inside his brain. The words dance in front of his eyes as he types them, and occasionally the sheer pleasure of what he was doing threatens to overwhelm his ability to concentrate, but he knows that he has to focus. Serving Quasar is absolute bliss, and he would write out everything he ever knew if it demanded it of him.

Eventually he reaches the end of what he could remember. It was more than he had thought he could; the deep subconscious impulses that Quasar had planted inside him had caused him to remember things that he thought that he’d forgotten. But eventually even his hidden memories run dry, leaving his screen full of page after page after page of secrets. He saves the document in the folder Quasar tells him to, and there’s a palpable sense of reward that floods his mind. Good drone. Reward yourself.

Before he knows it, he’s got his pants tugged down and his cock out, stroking himself and moaning in his bliss. He’s already worked up both from sucking the Guardian off and from his ‘treason’, so it doesn’t take long until he’s almost at the edge, slowing the pace of his hand down to make sure it lasts. Or maybe Quasar’s making him slow down. He doesn’t know, doesn’t know if there’s even a difference at all any more. His breath catches in his throat once, twice, and then he moans quietly as he thrusts up into his hand and splatters all over the cold floor in front of him, then slumps back against the wall to catch his breath.

But it’s not long before an urge takes hold: Clean up your contamination. So he gets onto all fours, bends down, and licks his own cum off the ceramic tiles. He enjoys the taste a little, but he absolutely adores obeying Quasar’s command. Once there’s nothing but spit left, he buffs it clean with the sleeve of his uniform, then tugs his pants back up and stands up. Ready for duty.

More orders fill his head: Place your visor in storage. You will return to Purity and inform them that your comrade was lost, but that you recovered enough intelligence for a full-scale assault. Naturally, you will lead them into a trap. Do this and you will be perfected as your comrade was.

Enlightening more members of Purity is wonderful itself, of course, but the reward of becoming a Guardian… it’s more than he’d ever dared to hope! He nods eagerly, then detaches the visor from his temples (and he misses it already), places it back on a nearby storage rack, then makes his way out of the facility. His subconscious knows the way; Quasar must’ve programmed it into him while he was being rewritten.

Purity wants to know what happened as soon as he’s back in their safe house, of course. First things first, the passphrase: “praying chapter snowsuit presoak mowing moving shortcake exhale”. Then they make him strip and scan his entire body for recording devices, neural implants, anything metallic that might’ve been attached or implanted without him knowing. But Quasar was smarter than them, left him with nothing but a stripped-down simulation of sorts of itself inside his head to help make sure that his thoughts stay on the right track (and it chimes in with an Of course I'm smarter at his recognition of its superiority, as well as a little tiny static shock of pleasure). Looking at the hardware won’t get you anywhere if the software’s what was compromised.

So he shows up clean, which means they believe him when he says that he saw Tomas get dragged off by a Guardian, they believe his sketched floorplans, they believe his estimates of defensive weak points. Some of them are even accurate; he knows that if they go in deeper before they realize the betrayal, it’ll be that much harder for them to escape, that much harder for them to avoid seeing the light and joining him and the Guardian in the glory of service. They console him about Tomas, tell him they’ll get back for his loss, and he does his best to nod and look sad.

Eventually they let him go and tell him to get some rest, so he takes the pubtran back to his apartment in downtown Olympus. Being utterly rewritten all the way to his subconscious took a lot out of him. He doesn’t even bother changing out of his outfit before he sprawls out on top of his bed and closes his eyes. Sleep comes easily to him, and when it does he dreams: himself as a Guardian, identical in every way to the one Tomas had become. Overseeing the rest of his cell as they receive the same training he did, Quasar’s influence spreading throughout more and more of Purity until the entire organization surrenders to its benevolent control.

He can’t wait.