The first thing to return was a touch, a dampness on her forehead, and a gentle, familiar pressure, a hand carding slowly through her short, damp hair. The gesture was a language Kaelen knew better than any spoken word; it was Eva’s native tongue, a dialect of pure, unconditional love.

It meant I’m here. You’re safe. I’ve got you.

Two out of three wasn't a bad ratio.

The second thing was the pain, or rather, the glaring, screaming absence of it. The memories were a maelstrom of agony: the impact of the floor, the crushing weight, the strangulation, the brutality, the near violation. Her body should have been a ruin. Her muscles should have been screaming, her joints bruised, her everything a sore mess. She should have been incapable of anything more than shallow, ragged breaths through a nearly crushed larynx.

Instead, she felt… nothing. A profound, unnerving emptiness where a symphony of torment ought to have been. It was a silence more terrifying than any scream.

Kaelen’s eyes opened, not with the snap of a soldier, but with the slow, heavy dread of a condemned prisoner. Eva’s face swam into view, a welcome island in a sea of grey. Her expression was a heartbreaking collage of emotions: the deep, furrowed lines of a doctor’s concern, the fierce, protective fire of a wife’s love, and an undercurrent of raw, visceral pain that mirrored Kaelen’s own. Her dark curls were a chaotic halo around her head, and the smudge of soot was still high on her cheekbone, a stark reminder of the violence that had brought them here. She was hugging Kaelen, holding her tight against her chest as if she could physically shield her from the memory of what had just happened.

“Hey,” Eva whispered, her voice thick and rough. Her thumb traced a gentle line along Kaelen’s temple. 

Kaelen tried to answer, but the word lodged in her throat, a knot of shame and fury. The memory was too fresh, too vivid. The feel of him, the weight of him, the utter, absolute futility of her struggle. She could still feel the phantom sensation of him pressing against her loins, a threat of escalation she would've been entirely powerless to stop. A choked, guttural sound escaped her, a noise of pure frustrated distress. She squeezed her eyes shut, her hands clenching into fists, the knuckles white.

“I know, Kae. I know,” Eva murmured, her voice breaking. She held her tighter, rocking her gently. “It’s over. He’s gone. It’s just us now.”

But it wasn’t over. It was just beginning. Kaelen knew that with a certainty that settled in her bones like a terminal chill. The Xylian, their warden, the monster, hadn’t just beaten them, he hadn't just nearly raped her. He had… done something else. That final moment, the cold click of the thing inside her throat, the sudden struggle to move, how hard it had become to think, and that single, resonant wordless command that had sunk into her like a poison dart.

YIELD.

She forced herself to move, to take inventory. Her body felt strangely light, disconnected, as if she were a pilot in a foreign machine. She pushed herself up, her muscles responding with a fluid ease that felt like a mockery of the trauma they had endured. Eva’s hands were there, steadying her, supporting her weight even when they hadn't been needed. Kaelen looked down at herself. Her BDU was a wreck, torn and stained, a testament to the violence she had suffered, the open area in her crotch a testament of where their captor had chosen to stop... this time. Yet her focus turned to Eva, her wife, the side of her face sported a nasty bruise, a purple swollen spot near her jaw, and another one on her shoulder where the Xylian had slammed her to the ground. Yet Kaelen was spotless, there should've been bruises, scratches, a hundred invisible pains, her own reflection showed her throat was devoid of the black and blue that should have been there.

“How?” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “How am I not… hurt?”

Eva’s expression tightened, the doctor’s grim resolve overlaying the wife’s pain. She didn’t let go of Kaelen, but her other hand moved to her belt, her fingers closing around the sleek, silver form of the medical scanner. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” she said, her voice low and steady, a deliberate effort to project a calm she clearly did not feel. “While you were unconscious, the... thing, the bio-lock, it was active, it was using power, a lot of it. It had pushed your body into a near fever pitch for hours. I spent that time trying to keep you cool.” She activated the scanner. The familiar blue light and the shimmering holographic display felt like an intrusion, a cold splash of clinical reality on a wound that was still raw and bleeding. “Hold still.”

The beam of light washed over Kaelen, and the hologram resolved into a detailed schematic of her own body. Eva’s brow furrowed in concentration, her eyes flicking across the streams of data. “Vitals are normalizing,” she began, her voice a clinical murmur. “Adrenaline and cortisol levels are still through the roof, but they’re coming down. No internal hemorrhaging, no signs of anything, this... this doesn't make sense."

“Healed,” Kaelen said, the word tasting like ash. “Just like after the explosion.”

“No,” Eva corrected, her gaze fixed on the hologram. “Not healed. This is different. I watched it, Kae. I watched it initiate a full-body cellular regeneration cycle. It repaired the tissue damage. Just an hour ago your body had been swimming in a cocktail, they should've left metabolic markers, chemical traces, this... the bio-lock did something, it erased them, somehow. It's like it filtered your blood, but that shouldn't be this thorough when it's only point of contact is your carotid artery and the jugular veins. There's something I'm missing here." Her finger traced a line on the holographic interface, and the image zoomed in, focusing again on the terrifying, crystalline collar embedded in Kaelen’s neck. She fiddled with the settings and controls, zooming into the device and then back out.

Kaelen could only sit in abject terror at the idea of it. She'd been assaulted, beaten up, and with just one word, the evidence was gone. It was as if only Eva had suffered through the encounter, as if Kaelen had not truly participated in it. A tool that made her body complicit in its own repair, readying it for the next round. It was an act of profound, unimaginable cruelty, a violation so complete it extended to the very cells of her being.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Eva’s face grew paler, her eyes wide with a dawning horror that went beyond the cellular repair. “Oh god,” she breathed. “That’s not all it was doing.”

“What?” Kaelen demanded, her voice sharp with dread. “Eva, what is it?”

“The filaments,” Eva said, her hand trembling as she manipulated the hologram. The image shifted, peeling back layers of muscle and bone, revealing the delicate, terrifying architecture of Kaelen’s nervous system. The bio-lock's tendrils, which had before been more like tiny prickles poking into her veins and nerve clusters, were now a glowing, incandescent web. “Kaelen… they’ve spread.” The scanner’s display highlighted the new growth in a stark, blood-red color. Before, the filaments had been tentative, exploratory threads. Now, they were a fully-fledged root system, a network of alien circuitry that had snaked its way down the entire length of her spinal column. They wrapped around the nerves of her pelvis, a glowing cage of light around her reproductive organs. They branched out, tapping directly into her adrenal glands, the source of her fight-or-flight response. The image was a nightmare, a horrifying fusion of biology and technology, a parasite that had sunk its hooks into the very core of her being.

The sight of it felt impossible, it made her reach out and touch her neck, her back, trying to find anything that shouldn't be there, a bump, a ridge, anything. The fact that she could not locate a single thing out of place other than the bio-lock in her neck sent a chill through her.

“It’s not just in you anymore, Kae,” Eva said, her voice choked with a mixture of scientific disbelief and pure terror. “It’s… it’s changing your biology. Look.” She zoomed in on a microscopic view of Kaelen’s muscle and connective tissue. The hologram displayed a complex, rotating lattice of molecules. “This is collagen, human collagen,” Eva explained, her voice shaking. “The protein that gives your tissues strength and structure. That’s the normal, double-helix structure.” She highlighted a section, and the color flared. “The healing wasn't just a healing, it was introducing some sort of genetic resequencing. Your body's collagen is different." The new molecule was different, longer. "It's some sort of crystalline polymer, I'm not even sure what it's meant to do."

YIELD.

The word echoed in the silent chambers of Kaelen’s mind, no longer a memory but a diagnosis. It wasn't a psychological suggestion. It was a line of code, a biological imperative delivered directly to her cells. He hadn’t commanded her mind to surrender. He had commanded her body to. With a dawning realization, she reached down to her own hand, taking her finger, and slowly bending it upward. Up, and up, well beyond the point it should have stopped. "It's made me more elastic." She whispered, the feeling of the strangennes of her body suddenly clicking into place, a realization that she felt almost as if made out of rubber. The full weight of it hit her, a physical blow that made her stagger. Eva was there, her arms a firm, steadying presence, but for the first time in their life together, Kaelen flinched.

She pulled away, a sharp, involuntary movement, stumbling back a step until her back hit the cold, seamless wall of the enclosure.

The shame was a physical thing, a hot, suffocating tide that rose from her stomach and burned its way up her throat. Her body. Her strength. It was the one thing she had always been able to rely on, the one thing that was unequivocally hers. Her training, her discipline, her scars... they were the story of her life, written in the language of muscle, skin, and bone. And he had taken it. He had hacked into her very code and was rewriting her from the inside out. The thought of Eva touching her, of her wife feeling this new, alien pliability… it was more than she could bear.

“Kae?” Eva’s voice was laced with a hurt so profound it cut Kaelen deeper than any physical wound. She stood with her hands half-extended, her face a mask of confusion and pain.

“Don’t,” Kaelen whispered, the word a ragged, broken thing. “Don’t touch me. Please. I... I need a moment.” She slid down the wall, her legs suddenly unable to support her, and buried her face in her hands.

The image was clear in her mind, the Xylian warden looming over her, his cock as thick as her forearm a monster that would've killed her had he used it. It was with a morbid horror that she suddenly understood, and feared, the deeper implications of what had been done to her. But what could she tell Eva? My body is a traitor. I am being changed so he can do what he couldn't last time, and I don’t want you to feel the shame of it. It made her eyes lock on the closed door with a creeping dread. Meanwhile, Eva stood in the center of the room, a statue of heartbreak, for a long, silent moment. The hum of the station filled the silence, a low, mournful dirge. Kaelen could feel her wife's gaze on her, a weight of love and sorrow. She waited for recriminations, for the anger, for the fear. Instead, what came was the quiet, unshakeable strength that had always been the bedrock of their relationship.

“Okay,” Eva said, her voice soft but steady, devoid of any judgment. She deactivated the scanner, the cold blue light winking out of existence. “Okay, Kae. We can use this.” She took a slow, deliberate step back, giving Kaelen the space she had asked for. “But I’m not leaving you. We’re in this together. We just… we need a new plan.”

The words were a lifeline. A plan. Kaelen had always been good with a plan. A plan was structure. A plan was a weapon. She lifted her head, her eyes red-rimmed but clear, and looked at her wife. Eva’s face was a study in resolve. The pain was still there, etched into the fine lines around her eyes, but she was in control.

“The scanner showed one more thing,” Eva said, her voice now crisp and analytical. “The bio-lock… its power peaked about an hour ago, and now it’s in a low-power state. I think… I think it’s recharging. It uses a burst of energy to initiate the change, and then it goes into a dormant cycle while the changes take root, drawing a slow, steady trickle from you to rebuild its reserves.”

Kaelen’s mind seized on the tactical implication. “A window,” she said, her voice raw. “There's no reason to come back while it’s recharging.”

“Exactly,” Eva confirmed, a flicker of her old fire returning. “Which gives us time. Time to prepare.”

Hope, however small and fragile, began to push back against the tide of despair. Kaelen pushed herself up, using the wall for support. Her body felt strange, the movements too fluid, too easy. There was a looseness in her joints, a lack of the familiar, comforting tension of a body honed for combat. She felt like a bowstring that had been unstrung. “We need to know what this… flexibility… does,” she said, forcing the words out. “We need to know the new limits.”

“I agree,” Eva said, her gaze sharp and focused. “You need to understand your baseline.”

They started slowly, cautiously. Kaelen stretched, pushing her body through the familiar sequence of combat warm-ups. The results were immediate and deeply unsettling. A simple hamstring stretch that should have met with a firm, burning resistance was an effortless thing. She could place her palms flat on the floor without even bending her knees, her spine curving with the impossible grace of a contortionist. A rotational torso stretch went too far, her body twisting to a degree that should have been agonizing, her head able to look almost directly behind her. There was no pain. Just a sickening, frictionless ease. Each test came back with a horrible sense of bendiness that felt right, a sensation of being made for this, which brought a sense of dread to the pit of her stomach.

“The ligaments,” Eva murmured, watching with a clinical, detached horror. “It’s like they’ve been replaced with elastic.”

“I feel… weak,” Kaelen admitted, her voice tight. “My strength is still there, I can feel it in the muscles, but it’s… unanchored. It’s like trying to fire a cannon from a canoe.”

The true test, the one they were both dreading, came next. They moved to the center of the room, the space between them charged with a tense, unspoken anxiety. “A simple drill,” Eva said, her voice carefully neutral. “A straight jab. I’ll telegraph it. I just want to see your block.”

“Okay,” Kaelen said, her own voice a strained whisper. She fell into a defensive stance. The posture itself instantly felt wrong. Her newly flexible ankles and knees made the familiar, solid grounding of her stance feel wobbly and uncertain, as if her position was no longer meant to remain fixed in place.

“Ready?” Eva asked.

She gave a sharp, curt nod.

Eva moved, her motion deliberately slow. Her fist came forward, aimed at Kaelen’s shoulder, a slow punch that a recruit on their first day could have blocked. The soldier saw it coming. Her brain sent the command, the familiar neural pathway lighting up with a decade of ingrained training: left arm up, deflect, counter. It was a response as natural to her as breathing. But her body did not obey the way it should have. As Eva’s fist approached, Kaelen’s body did something else. It didn’t block. It didn’t resist. It yielded. Her left shoulder, instead of rising to meet the blow, softened and rolled back. Her spine curved, absorbing the negligible impact not with a solid frame, but with a fluid, S-shaped ripple that dissipated the force along its entire length. Her hips tilted, her knees bent, and she flowed around the attack, ending in a low crouch that felt like it should've led into something else, but Kaelen's brain couldn't answer what that was.

The movement was beautiful. It was graceful. It was efficient.

And it was the most horrifying thing she had ever experienced, her own body betraying the image of the action in favor of the intent in some twisted way. She stayed there for a moment, frozen in the unfamiliar posture, her mind screaming in silent, abject terror. Her body had refused a direct order. It had chosen a different path, a path of non-resistance, of accommodation. It had chosen to yield to aggression.

“Kaelen?” Eva’s voice was a choked whisper. She hadn’t even completed the punch, her fist hovering in the air where Kaelen’s shoulder should have been.

Kaelen looked down at her own hands. The shame, the feeling of being powerless in her own skin, was a suffocating wave that threatened to drown her. This was his victory. Not the physical defeat in combat, not the threat of rape, not the imprisonment. This. This deep, cellular betrayal. This was the true violation. She straightened up slowly, her movements forcefully stiff, her face a pale, emotionless mask. She couldn’t look at Eva. She couldn’t bear to see the pity, the horror, in her wife’s eyes. The silence stretched, thick and agonizing.

It was Eva, once again, who broke it. Her voice, when it came, was harder than before, forged in the fires of her own terror and tempered with a core of pure, unyielding steel. “No,” she said, the single word sharp and definitive. Kaelen finally looked up. Eva’s face was no longer that of a horrified wife or a clinical doctor. It was the face of a soldier. “What he did to you… it’s a weapon,” Eva said, her eyes blazing. “He designed your body to bend. To break without breaking.” She took a step closer, her voice dropping, intense and urgent. “So we’re going to use it. We’re going to take his weapon and turn it against him.”

Kaelen stared at her, uncomprehending. “How? Eva, my body won’t even obey me.”

“Practice," Eva said. "Your body is running on different rules. You just need to learn them and weaponize them faster than he thinks we can.” She gestured to Kaelen’s arm. “I've seen contortionists who'd kill to be half as flexible as you are now."

The unintended praise made Kaelen's clench jaw, finding something to latch onto. "Maybe it could help me escape things?" A wild, desperate idea began to form in her mind, a flicker of light in the overwhelming darkness. “Dislocation,” she breathed.

“Exactly,” Eva confirmed, her expression grim but resolute. “A normal human can’t just dislocate a shoulder on command without extreme training and immense pain. But your ligaments are like rubber.” She looked her dead in the eye, her gaze unwavering. “He gave you a body that yields. Let’s see how much it can yield before it breaks out of his hold.”

The plan was insane. It was grotesque. It was an idea born of pure, undiluted desperation.

It was the best plan they had.

Kaelen took a deep, steadying breath, the first one that hadn't felt hitched with shame in what felt like an eternity. She met her wife’s gaze, and for the first time since waking, she felt determination. “Show me,” she said.

They moved to the center of the enclosure, the air between them now charged with a new, grim purpose. This was an intimacy of a different kind, a partnership not of comfort, but of shared resolve. “Okay,” Eva began, her voice slipping back into the calm, instructional tone of a doctor. “We’ll start with the shoulder. It’s the most mobile joint. I want you to relax the arm completely. Let it go limp.” Kaelen did as instructed, allowing it to hang loosely. “Now,” Eva said, her hands gently taking her arm, her touch now clinical, precise. “The principle is simple. We need to pull the humerus out of the glenoid socket. Normally, the labrum and the rotator cuff would fight you every step of the way... tell me when it starts hurting.” Her fingers probed the joint, feeling the strange, unnatural looseness of the muscles and tendons. “They feel... different.” She positioned one hand on her shoulder to stabilize it, the other gripping her arm just above the elbow. “Ready?”

Kaelen locked her jaw, her eyes fixed on a point on the far wall. She gave a single, sharp nod.

“Okay,” Eva said, her voice a low, steady murmur. “On three. One… two…” She took a deep breath. “Three.”

Eva pulled. It was not a sharp, violent jerk, but a steady, firm traction. For a moment, there was only a strange, stretching sensation. Kaelen’s body tried to yield to the pull, the muscles around the joint going slack, accommodating the pressure as if her arm were being sucked into a hole, every vertebra, her clavicles, her shoulder, it angled further into the pull. It was as if her whole body was trying to compensate for it, lean into it. Eva groaned and kept increasing the force, until her arms were shaking and had to let go with a heave. "What the fuck," she whispered.

"You need to be rougher," Kaelen said. "You're giving my body room to lean into it. We need an angle I can't move from." She moved to lay on face up on the warm floor. "Try it like this. You know the move, right?"

It was basic grappling, something that'd been drilled into them since training. Eva nodded, moving to the ground wrapping her thighs around Kaelen's shoulder, one leg pinning her head to the floor, the other her torso. Eva then gripped her arm, twisting it to an angle that could give her leverage, that could force it into an uncomfortable position. "This is so freaky," she whispered as she'd rotated Kaelen's palm a rotation before she found the tension, the limit. Then she started to use her own hips and her full body to leverage the arm further. Like before, the soldier's body tried to compensate, but there was no room, the pressure increased.

Kaelen moaned.

They both froze, Kaelen's breath hitching, her muscles, her skin, they were being bent to their limit, and her breath was coming ragged, the sensation was a fluttering in her chest, a rightness that seeped into her bones like untying a knot she never knew she had. "Keep going," she groaned, face flushed, jaws clenched tightly as she teetered at the edge of scratching an itch that went all the way down to her marrow. She squeezed her eyes shut, but her whole body just twisting itself into that rotation, trying to bend like a piece of rubber in a dull blender. The feeling spread up her arm and down her spine, into her shoulders, her neck, the muscles in her torso groaning in satisfaction as they joined in.

And then there was a pop. It was a quiet, almost anticlimactic noise that she felt more than she heard, but it heralded a universe of pain. A wave of nauseating, white-hot agony exploded in Kaelen’s shoulder. The satisfaction soured into fire, her vision swam, the grey walls of the enclosure blurring into a smear of indistinct color. She tried to make a sound but her lungs refused to heave. Her instincts told her to tense up, her body responded in the opposite direction, it relaxed every muscle and every tendon leading to the source of the pain, it was a sudden ease in the agony that reduced it from searing agony into an immediate dull throb.

"It's out," Kaelen said, trying to clench her jaw but unable to. There was a terrifying sense of victory, but was mixed with horror. "It's out."

"Breathe with me, in through the nose, out through the mouth. That's it. You did it. We just need to set it back in."

"It... barely hurts." She had to put hard conscious effort into moving anything leading to the afflicted area, but the pain was like a fresh bruise. Tender, but manageable. 

Eva didn't say anything. She'd retrieved the scanner and was now checking her shoulder with that same look of morbid terrified fascination she'd shown when studying flesh-eating amoebas. "We're going to put it back in." She quickly tucked the device away, moving to straddle Kaelen's shoulder.

"Careful, I bite," she said with a forceful wry chuckle, nibbling Eva's rump that was now within perfect reach.

"Stop it." Eva's voice held back a laugh, trying to sound contrite but failing.

"You knew what you were getting into when you put the ring on it." Her joke was followed by a deep, resonant thump-clunk that vibrated through her entire torso. It was the sound of a heavy component locking into place, of a machine being reassembled. It was followed by a wave of relief and Eva's sudden jolt. "What?"

"I barely touched it, it set itself back almost on its own," the doctor whispered, almost horrified. "This is so freaky, it shouldn't be possible."

"But it worked."

"It did more than just work, look." Eva sat next to Kaelen, bringing up the scanner and showing her the readings. "The more I stretched you, the harder it became to keep going. Your muscles work almost like rubber, as they're forced to bend, crystalline bonds form, it makes them tougher, harder."

Kaelen tried to process that. "You're saying that I can take more punishment?"

"Yes and no." She pointed at Kaelen's arm. "If I hit your muscle while it's curled up, it will do more damage than if I hit it while it's stretched."

It was like a light had been turned on, a flicker of understanding of the way she'd reacted during the mock spar. Slowly, she stood back up. "We need to spar some more, I think I'm understanding something."

Eva knew better than to ask, Kaelen was not the sort to be very good at putting vague ideas into words, and right now the soldier was swimming with that sense of vagueness. With barely a nod, Eva attacked slowly again, and Kaelen didn't just expect the flow of her body but leaned into it. She repeated the process until she began to grasp a sense of directionality in her own movements. Unlike in a normal fight, her responses weren't based on the threat of the fist, but in the directionality of Eva's movement. It was as if her own body was almost as if it considered the fist secondary in the engagement.

"Faster," she said. When the next attack came, she confirmed the concept. Eva's jab wasn't even a threat, despite being well within arm's reach, Kaelen's body just bent back and around it, the fist never even touching her. "Get more serious." When Eva threw the next punch, this time it came with a full step forward for added weight into the hit. This time Kaelen's body didn't try to weave around it while standing in place. It yielded the space, twisting itself into Eva, the doctor trying to chase her target and nearly losing her balance in the process despite Kaelen not even touching her. "Harder," the soldier said. "Don't hold back."

Eva tentatively started getting serious, each missed strike finding nothing but air, each kick and sweep always finding Kaelen's reliance on the existence of a floor to be far less solid than they'd been taught in the army. The more Eva attacked, the more Kaelen felt like she was less like a cactus and more like a leaf in the wind. The concept of personal space, of a threat area was no longer there, every strike, kick, and movement Eva made came with a turbulence around which she could bend her impossible body and flow. The room could've been just a meter across and the doctor would've still been unable to catch her, if there was empty space, then there was somewhere to move into.

After a few minutes of this, of Kaelen adjusting into this strange and almost exhilarating new sense of power, Eva called for a stop.

"Wow, that's... wow," Eva heaved, drenched in sweat even though her sparring companion had barely warmed out. "I need a break."

"You always were too much of a desk jockey," she replied with a teasing smirk. "Scan me."

"What?"

"The bio-lock," Kaelen said. "How much has it charged?"

"Oh, one moment." Drying the sweat from her forehead, she took aim and watched the hologram. Then frowned. "It's charging faster."

That was a splash of cold water. "What?!"

"It's..." Eva paused, tinkering on the variables of the device. "I think it's tied to your metabolic rate. Being active probably means it has more energy to suck on." A few more tweaks followed. "If we stop now, we'll have maybe ten or twelve hours before it's full. But it'll be closer to six hours if we don't." She didn't say anything else, but her eyes on Kaelen spoke the question loud enough: what do you want to do?

"I need to understand this thing better," she said, pointing at herself. "Four hours of on-off sparring, two of rest so we're ready. If he takes longer than that, we use it to rest some more."

And so the training continued.

It would be nine hours before he returned.

The sound, when it came, was an alarm. A soft, pneumatic hiss, the sound of a vacuum seal breaking. He was back. The fragile peace shattered, they had five seconds to move into positions. Kaelen was on her feet and closest to the door. Their previous status of Eva being the support had been reinforced since she was still sporting the bruises from the fight from the cycle before while Kaelen was in perfect condition. They'd fashioned themselves a mockery of padded armor from the bedding and sheets they'd been provided, it was all they had, and it would have to be enough.

The Warden stood just inside the entrance, a towering silhouette against the harsh light. His presence was an immense, silent weight that seemed to suck the very air from the room. His gaze swept over them, unreadable.

The silence stretched. Then, he moved with a slow, deliberate, almost casual grace. He was a predator in his own territory.

They did not wait to give him space to maneuver. Fueled by discipline, determination, and the burning memory of her own pain, she attacked. She launched herself, a whirlwind of flowing motion, throwing a punch aimed at his midsection. The warden moved instantly as if to block, and... fumbled. It had been a strange thing, his arms had moved as if to catch something that should've been coming from the side rather than in a straight jab, and in that fractional mistake her punch landed against his rippling naked furry chest. It was like hitting a wall that had a layer of velvet fur.

Both of them stared in clear confusion for a split second, then reacted at once.

The massive claw swept against Kaelen's position and she realized this was not like Eva's sharp attacks, the warden didn't so much strike as he laid claim of a space, a space that would be soon occupied by his massive open hands if she didn't lunge out of the way. Something about that spiked her sense of concern, but there was no time to think, just act, she twisted into his side and moved to strike into the ribs of his overextended arm. And again something seemed to go weird as he'd used his other paw to block for an attack that he'd expected to come from a different angle. It had all the signs of an expert, of a trained warrior, yet aimed at a shadow that was not following her own movements. The strike landed again, and again it was like smacking a wall, it didn't even feel like she was hitting that hard in the first place, her new muscles just did not seem to want to coil into that furious jab.

It was then that Eva had tried to capitalize on the moment, having moved in to strike from the flank.

The warden let out an annoyed chuff-like sound and flowed into Kaelen's space, arms spread wide and claiming the space around her, denying all routes of escape.

Panic turned her body into a spring. She did not brace, she did not try to block or dodge like a soldier would. She yielded in the only direction there was for her to take: up. She flew, body bending and arching over the blur of orange and black underneath like an Olympic high jumper. And in that instant of thoughtless grace, her desire to strike manifested not as a punch but as a spin that originated in her arms, twisting her torso, traveling down her spine like a coiled rubber and into her legs. Kaelen spun like a car-crash rolling down a hill, and all that inertia turned her leg into a whip that struck with a thunderous CRACK against the warden's lower back that sent him face first to the floor.

Time flowed again, and Kaelen landed, but fell as a sudden jolt of pain, her leg giving out under her weight. With dawning horror, she realized her kick had carried so much power it had shattered the bones in her foot, and the warden was starting to get up, not looking any worse for wear but entirely pissed. The decision came without hesitation. "RUN!" She shouted at Eva who was now closest to the open door. Her wife hesitated. "FIND HELP! I'LL STALL HIM! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

Determination, pained short nod, and she ran.

She turned to the warden in a limp, holding her knee high for the foot that could no longer touch the ground without sending screaming pain through her. The Xylian had gotten back up, golden eyes locked onto her, not even seeming to acknowledge Eva was gone. "That's right, she doesn't matter, I'm the gal with the billion-credit toy stuck in her neck, right?" Kaelen growled lifting her fists, a wicked satisfaction coursing through her at the slight wince when he pressed a paw against the spot she'd landed the blow. "Bring it."

The cold detachment in his gaze had shifted into something... different. He gave a low chuff that dripped with amusement, raising his paws and keeping one leg raised in a blatant mockery of her stance. He pounced, covering the distance in a single one-legged jump, his tail lashing out like a rudder to guarantee perfect stability, sending a closed-fist punch telegraphed directly at her chest. It was almost a work of art worthy of a championship, and Kaelen could do nothing but lean away from the attack in a horrible attempt to avoid the impact, but her bad leg was forced to the ground just to keep her from falling.

The pain ripped a scream out of her throat, the fist she'd avoided turning into a backhand that sent her sprawling on the floor. There was no chance to get up this time, the Xylian was on her in a flash. He pinned her with a knee in the small of her back, his weight a crushing, immovable reality. Her struggles were useless. He held her there, letting the futility sink in. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, he gripped the back of her neck, his thick calloused digits reaching an indentation she hadn't known been there, slotting perfectly into the unseen ridges of the bio-lock, applying a fractional amount of pressure.

Click

The effect was instantaneous and overwhelming. The lethargy that had been a fog before was now a leaden weight that turned her muscles into pudding, a crushing gravity that made even twitching a finger a monumental effort. But it wasn't just her body, her thoughts suddenly felt heavy, hard to hold onto, a blanket of lead that turned the very act of focus into a struggle, the world gaining a fuzziness around the edges. Then came something new, a heat that pooled in the back of her neck and then dripped its way down her spine, causing her to arch her back and attempt to raise her hips, the liquid sensation pooled into her core, turning into a distinct, shameful pulse of arousal, a wet, heavy throbbing that coalesced deep between her legs and radiated outwards. Her mind felt porous, her defiant thoughts slipping away as intrusive waves of pleasure washed over them. The world narrowed to a single point of sensation: the perfect, absolute pressure of her bones and muscles stretched under his weight, insistent pulse of her own clit.

Rolling her over, he moved Kaelen, her body a dead weight, a puppet he could arrange as he saw fit. He pushed her legs apart with his knee, and her body, true to its new nature, yielded without resistance, finding a strange thoughtless satisfaction in the stretching of her thighs as he forced her legs open wide, exposing her completely. He settled between them, and as he pushed inside her without finding any resistance, the horror was not in any pain, but in the slick, welcoming heat and content of her own body stretching around the massive invader in a way that should've been impossible for a human. There was a horrifying perfection in how her body accommodated him. Her muscles, slick with her own arousal and unnaturally pliable, yielded to accept his full, thick length without a hint of tearing. Her hips, of their own accord, tilted up at the precise angle to present herself to him, to allow him a deeper, more complete access. She was a lock, and he was the key, and her body celebrated its purpose with a fresh gush of arousal even as her distant, fading consciousness screamed in silent protest.

Kaelen found it harder and harder to retain any one idea or emotion in her mind other than the unnatural forced waves of pleasures. So she held on to the only thing that mattered: The more time he spent here, the more time Eva would have to escape.

He moved within her, a steady, powerful rhythm that her body received without any discomfort. The wet, slapping sounds of their joining filled the air, a sickening counterpoint to the silent war in her head. He rode her until he was done, his climax a deep, shuddering finality accompanied by a satisfied purr. And in that moment, as he flooded her womb with his hot, thick seed, he leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. The vibrations of his voice came without any words that she understood, yet they sank deep into the bio-lock and then raced up into her brain like a red-hot lance piercing into her core.

SMELL.

Kaelen fought to hold on.

She lost.