Max Stat and the Harem Blight, Chapter 12: Vivi, Under New Ownership
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Vivi's pussy tightened up as Max just casually lifted her up off the ground by the throat. If she'd still been meat, she'd probably be unable to breathe from his hand around her throat, but instead she just felt the casual strength with which he moved her around. He carried her into his bedroom with a single hand, and she couldn't help but let out a hot breath, an animal noise of desire that was just a simulation of what meat would have done in this situation.

His fingers tightened a little around her throat, and she just whimpered at the feeling. It was a nice distraction, being held up in the air like this. "You're a Vivi," he said, his voice having a sharp, recognizable quiver to it. "Other than that first night, I've never been with one." She nodded dumbly, licking her lips as he held her in the air like that. She let her arms and legs dangle down, enjoying the feeling of being at his mercy. It didn't take away her concern about Olivia, but it helped push it into the back of her mind. "How far is too far?"

"Ah, I've never been pushed too far," she told him, which was the honest truth. "The only horror stories from other Vivis I've read are killing, wireheading, and forcibly restoring from backup. Everything short of that sounded like fun."

"So, what, if I popped your head off right now, that would be fine?"

She was pretty sure the AV systems in the head had a wireless backup, so if he popped her head off, it'd run on battery for hours, and she could watch him fuck her headless corpse. "Mhm!" He licked his lips, and let go of her throat - she just hit the ground, landing on her knees, while his hands went to his waistband, and her gaze was naturally drawn to his bulge, his cock bouncing free in front of her.

All her anxieties and worries about Olivia oozed out of her pussy as her thoughts stuttered to a halt, the thick masculine scent of that perfect cock clogging up her brain so thoroughly that there wasn't any space to worry about Olivia. The term orchid cock bubbled into her mind, her mouth falling open as she stared at it blankly. He just casually grabbed a tangle of her hair and stuffed his cock straight down her throat, her arousal spiking as his scent and flavor coated the inside of her mouth and nostrils.

He held her down there. If she'd been meat, she would be choking right now, but at present, he just pressed her into his pelvis, crushing her nose against bone. Her eyes peeled back, looking up at him, drooling around his cock, and he didn't even look at her, at this point, just casting his head back with a groan.

"Fuck," he breathed out, just grinding her mouth into the base of his cock, making her slurp and suck on his dick like that. Her head swam at his flavor and girth, her pussy getting wetter with each passing second. "Fucking - actually," he said, seeming to come to his senses. "Actually! You're just using me for emotional support! You just about ghosted me after that night, and now you come over asking for me to be nice to you by fucking you, isn't that right?"

She nodded. It was a brainless action, an automatic response to the owner of the godly cock currently wedged down her throat - but it was also the truth. He gripped her by the hair and tugged her off his glorious, wonderful, perfect, divinely-inspired cock, and she whimpered as the thing just throbbed in front of her face, smelling so nice, looking so good, her pussy just oozing all over her panties. "Ple~ease, Master," she whined out, and his cock twitched at that word. "Master, Master, I'll be a good sex toy for Master, please jerk off with your fucktoy's mouth, Master, own me, use me, it's what I'm for, it's what I wa~ant," she whined, and his cock casually slapped against her cheek, dominant and forceful.

"With how much of a needy bitch you're being, you should be paying me for this. You think just because you're hot, I'll fuck you for free? I can fuck lots of hot girls!"

"Sorry, Master, I'll pay, I'll pay, I'll be a good girl and pay for Master's cock." Her thoughts were a drone, all centered around one core insight: I need his cock inside me rather than outside of me, it smells so good, I need it so bad.

"I was in the middle of work on this site, my stipend for the year is about a hundred million, that's fifty k an hour," he explained to her, and she frantically reached into her pockets, pulling out her phone, eager to pay him. "Double it because you didn't schedule ahead. A hundred thousand. And if you take more than an hour, then I'll charge you for a whole extra hour, got it, you needy little fuckdoll?"

"Yes, Master, got it," she agreed immediately, and he let go of her hair. She dove down his cock, holding up his phone to him, and he casually took out his own phone - even as her thoughts remained a fuzzy mush, a buzz of incoherent arousal, her throbbing clit-brain still knew that she needed to send the money to get to keep sucking his cock, so she hurriedly opened her cash app and wired him the money.

"That's a good, well-behaved little cocksocket, paying for me to use your mouthhole," he said, casually starting to fuck her face on his cock. "Take off your pants and panties - what was it Olivia calls you? Puta?"

She wriggled her way out of her pants and panties as fast as she could. If she hadn't been currently in a lust fugue from having the sexiest dick in the world brutally fucking her face, she would have said that puta was Olivia's special name for her, and she'd appreciate it if he came up with his own nickname. Instead, she just nodded dumbly around his cock, her cunt soaking wet in record time, despite the fact that he hadn't touched her at all. "Yes, Mistress calls me puta," she agreed.

"Alright, puta," he said, casually forcing her down onto his cock. He ground her nose into his pelvic bone, making her twitch slightly, an autonomic response that didn't make any sense, considering she no longer needed to breathe. "Start playing with yourself. I don't really care about making you feel good, so I want you to take care of yourself."

Her pussy throbbed at those casual, disdainful words, and her hand immediately slid in between her thighs. She couldn't even start to frig herself properly before she came - she was so aroused from the cock in her throat and Max's rough treatment that the merest brush of her fingertips along her slick sex sent her over the edge, her hips pumping at the air as her eyes peeled back in their sockets, tears of joy escaping them.

"You know what? I don't want to waste time on you," he told her, the words casually contemptuous, and that also sent a hot throb into her core, her finger in her cunt becoming more active. "Come on," he directed her, holding her head against his pelvis as he started to walk backwards towards the bedroom door.

It was awkward to follow after him - her position didn't let her crawl or walk, instead just shuffling on her knees, scraping along the floor of his apartment, giving up on playing with herself as she clung to him for balance. Still, she did it happily, letting his cock roll around the inside of her throat, letting the flavor of his dick pollute her thoughts as he dragged her all the way back to his desk, pushing her casually under it as he sat down in the chair. He pressed and shifted and scooted the chair in, so that his balls slapped against her chin, so that she was captured in the tight confined space under his desk, meant for just his legs but now being used to fit his cocksocket.

The cramped feeling of being held down there, like that, sent sweet waves of quiet pleasure through her body. She had come to Max for comfort, and he had made her pay money for the privilege before stuffing her under his desk to use as a masturbation aid while he worked. That thought also sent gentle, pleasing waves through her body as he started to casually pump his mouth up and down his length, her throat swelling, her pussy clenching, her clit throbbing. She heard his free hand clacking away at his keyboard, seemingly unconcerned with what was going on down there.

His foot shifted forward. She realized he'd lost his shoe at some point (had he even been wearing it?), and now his bare foot was rubbing at her cunt. He was practically stepping on her pussy, and it was enough stimulation to send her over the edge, making her come around his cock all over again, vibrating and moaning and drooling as she orgasmed hard.

* * *

Even though I had objectively the most desirable woman in human history on her knees under my desk, sucking my cock and slurping and moaning whorishly around my dick, I found it surprisingly easy to get some work done. She had actually paid me, so any annoyance at her interruption had faded to the point that using my computer like this honestly made me feel a little bad.

The fact that she was currently doing her best to grind her cunt into my foot as she came her brains out did help. If she was bothered by me getting a little work done as she sucked my dick, she didn't show any sign of it. Her throat just casually swelled around my cock, again and again, letting me use her mouth and throat as I basically jerked off with her mouth.

I honestly expected to be so distracted by her (very skilled!) mouth that I wouldn't be able to get any work done, and then I'd drag her back to the bedroom and fuck her brains out. Instead, I found it shockingly easy to get my work done, with the biggest obstacle not being the pleasure from between my legs, but the fact that I only had one hand to work with. If anything, I was in the zone, being productive as my eyes flicked over analyses and charts and data, trying to find signal in noise, highlighting and making hypotheses and ticking away notes.

She was quiet as I worked, happily letting me use her like a cocksocket without any words whatsoever. It was nice. If she wasn't already taken, I might have considered just making her move in with me at that point - idle fleeting thoughts of her cleaning my apartment in a sexy maid uniform added to my arousal, but they didn't take away from my productivity.

Honestly, looking back, I'm pretty sure I was more productive with Vivi acting as a masturbation aid than I'd been before she showed up, and I finished my work after half an hour or so. Vivi herself was moaning and twitching on my dick as I spared a glance back down at her, her face a total mess, her hips brainlessly humping my foot by that point.

"Look at you," I said, casually grinding her into my pelvis, an imitation of choking her on dick. "You're married and you're sucking my dick like this."


"I'm not married, Mistress never married me~e!" She squealed out the last word as another orgasm hit her from my heel grinding into her pussy, her eyes peeling back so hard that only the whites were visible.

"What?" I dropped completely out of dominant mode at that, just sort of grinding her mouth into my pelvis. "Haven't you been together with her for decades? She still didn't marry you? What, is she stupid?" Vivi just glugged wetly around my dick, swallowing rather than responding. I frowned. "Answer me, you dumb fucktoy, or I'll take my cock out of this needy throat of yours."

"I'm not Olivia's equal, I'm her sla~ave," Vivi moaned around my dick, spasming as she came all over again.

"You can be her slave-wife. Is she stupid? She's got a hot, obedient fucktoy like you, and she doesn't put a ring on it?" I was dropping back into dominant mode, though I was worried that this topic might be too far. I slid towards the target. "Maybe I'll do it instead, what do you think of that?" I asked her, grinding her into my pelvis. Her pussy just casually ground against my foot. "I asked you a question, cocksocket. Answer." I peeled her up and off my cock, her tongue dancing in the air as my dick loomed over her face.

"Master... ahm... ahn... if I marry Master...  then I'd be Master's wife... Mistress might be upset..." she explained, sounding nearly drunk - but the answer wasn't a 'no.'

"Yeah? Maybe I'll just make her marry me too. How about that?" Vivi's eyes were focused utterly on my cock, her head seeming utterly empty, but she didn't argue. "Yeah. That sounds good, doesn't it? You and Olivia, lesbian lovebirds turned into loyal cocksockets to a superior male specimen like me, isn't that right?"

"You're always right, Master," she sighed out, and I rammed her face right down my cock again.

I stood up, forcing her to crawl-walk after me like earlier, shuffling on her bare knees. If she'd been meat, I would have been worried about carpet burn, but since she was metal, I could just drag her along without concern, eventually plopping down onto the bed. "You're both really hot," I told her, and she nodded around my dick dumbly. "I'd love to have the pair of you kissing around my cock. How's that sound?"

"Mhm," Vivi moaned out happily, her eyes lidding softly as she started to play with herself, frigging her pussy with so much energy her upper body vibrated around my cock. It took no time at all for her to come.

* * *

Vivi's brain had dribbled out between her thighs. Her hand in her pussy was hard at work. Her thoughts had degraded, going from verbal to nonverbal, shifting from a sapient being to a compliant, bestial fucktoy, ruled by her cunt. "Yes, Mistress, kissing me, around Master's cock," she agreed, the words coming out naturally as she drooled around his massive cock.

Her head was empty other than what was in her mouth and throat. She was a compliant cocksocket. She didn't want to be anything else. Pleasure raced up from between her thighs, as she had her mouth used. Her tongue licked with long years of experience, while her mouth just continued to drool saliva in copious quantities, dribbling out onto Master's cock. She moved on automatic, but luckily, automatic knew how to suck dick like a pro. She orgasmed in increasingly rapid sequence, a combination of Master's wondrous perfect divine cock, and the feeling of utter domination. She was a receptacle for cock. A plaything for Master to use and jerk off with. She was glad he liked her throat.

He looked down at her casually, treating her like a thing as he jerked off with her mouth. His expression was that of a somewhat-disappointed dominant, but her mind wasn't interested in restarting enough higher functions to understand why. She just sucked harder. Slurped harder. Licked harder. Master's hand held her hair near the roots, the movements of her head up and down occurring entirely at his direction. She couldn't intensify the pace of the facefuck, so she just did her best to get him off with her tongue, lips, and throat.

He still hasn't come. That thought was verbalized, bubbling from the depths of her deeply-buried conscious mind, and she started to suckle and lick and slurp more insistently. "Come, Master, come," she breathed out. She liked to make her partners feel good, and even now, that instinct came to the forefront. She had sucked his cock for what felt like a pleasant eternity, her brain dipped in a soup of arousal until every wrinkle had been filled up with mind-clogging desire, yet he hadn't orgasmed even once.

He popped her off his cock at that point, and she whimpered, an animalistic noise, her tongue dancing hungrily in the air, requesting his cock or his seed or whatever he wanted to give her. Instead, he dragged her up by the hair, rolling her onto her back as he got atop her. His cock teased at her pussy, and just the brush of that perfect vision of masculinity against her lower lips sent sparklers into her brain.

"You're my cocksocket now," he declared.

"I'm your cocksocket now," she repeated, her voice soft and smooth, knowing that Master wanted her to say those words and not really caring about their actual meaning. Meaning was for girls whose brains hadn't oozed out of their cunt as they turned off all higher thought.

His hand reached up for her neck, teasing her throat. "You belong to me. You're my property. You'd rather service and pay me than see your Mistress."

"I belong to you," she intoned. "I'm your property. I'd rather service and pay you than see my Mistress." The words came out before she could actually consciously consider them, and there was some tiny noise of complaint from the dim, fragmented mess that was her conscious mind at this point - deeply submerged in the warmest, most honey-sweet subspace she'd ever been drowned in.

He rammed his cock inside her at that point, and she came, hard. Whatever scattered thoughts had been pulling together, trying to figure out what was wrong about what she'd just said, were blown apart with high explosives inside of her mind. She became a cocksocket as pleasure raced through her body, and he rutted away. "She was kind of rude to me," he said, casually tightening his grip on her throat. It didn't actually asphyxiate her - she didn't need to breathe - but it still made her pussy clench, hard. Her thoughts continued to ooze out as he fucked away. "No, a bitch. Apologize for your ex-Mistress being a bitch."

"I'm sorry for my ex-Mistress being a bitch," she said, and then came again, squealing and spasming as his fingers tightened up on her throat, his pace inside her getting harsher and rougher.

"She'll need to apologize for being so rude if she wants to fuck me again, you tell her that, alright? Apologize properly!" His roar rattled around the inside of her skull, and she just dumbly nodded as the mattress squeaked beneath them. Pleasure hit her again, an orgasm in the midst of orgasms.

He spoke of her and her mistress in casual and degrading terms. Her thoughts were pretty pink mush, not even striving to solidify into anything coherent again. Her body bounced and jerked on the bed, both from his rough use, and from her own constant orgasms. He tugged her top off, leaving her completely naked beneath him. He groped and played with her tits like stress balls. He choked and slapped her. He tugged on her hair and twisted her around into a new position every so often, continuing to call her all sorts of cruel names.

Cocksocket. Fucktoy. Living sex doll. Life-sized fleshlight. Masturbation aid. She was all those things and more. She nodded along with each word, agreed with him whenever he told her to, and just submitted to all his groping, squeezing, and molestation, as he got out all his urges on her.

At some point in there, her mind stopped consciously even taking in his words. Her eyes became half-lidded, and her only response to his words could be moaned assent. He could have said anything, and she'd have nodded like the dumb bitch she was, moaning how much she agreed with whatever he said.

Then he pulled out of her, and her head lolled around, trying to find his cock as it twitched above her stomach. Its marble white beauty contrasted with her own dusky shade, but she couldn't even think of what would be the best thing to do for Master, the best way to please Master.

The first coherent thought that bubbled into her brain came from a realization that she wasn't experiencing the pleasant sticky feeling that came with being a good fucktoy for her owner.

He still hasn't come.

Her hand reached out, her mouth opening and closing. "Ahm, ahm," she moaned, as her fingers found his cock, slick with her juices. "Ahm, please," she said, eyes unfocused as she looked at that beautiful thing, imprinting its size and girth on her mind, twisting and leaning forward to finally just wrap her lips around it again. "Ahm," she said, trying to find the right word. It was like searching through a deck of cards for the Queen of Hearts, but done in slow motion and in molasses, her brain offering unrelated words. Cock. Slut. Suck. Blowjob. Throat. Titfuck. Cunt. Pussy. "Come," she finally found at last.

"Say please," he commanded, looking down at her with an expression of total power.

"Come," she whined. "Please come."

He blew his load at that point, hot, sticky spunk coating the inside of her mouth, and she just shuddered softly, closing her eyes as she relished that wonderful, warm sense of completeness and contentedness that came with making her partner orgasm. She let Master pump her her up and down his cock steadily once he finished coming, enjoying his taste and the way he stayed hard.

* * *

Vivi had gone through a transition during sex. The term I'd seen used online to refer to it was subspace - basically like a meditative trance of getting fucked. Vivis apparently did enjoy it, and she'd come over wanting to stop thinking about stuff, so not thinking about stuff to refocus on my cock sounded good to me.

I fucked Vivi in every position I could think of. Mouth, tits, cunt, ass - every part of her body was for me to use, and she let me. I just manhandled her into whatever position I felt like, fucked her, and said whatever degrading words popped into my head. Various increasingly impolite statements about Olivia hadn't gotten more than stupid agreement from her, so I twisted her around and around, enjoying the feeling of control and domination.

It was like she really was a sex toy, just a thing I repositioned in whatever way got my dick the hardest. It was kinda fucked up, but I really liked it when she'd say I was better than Olivia. I knew it was just dirty talk for the bedroom, but thinking about breaking up a lesbian couple got my dick super hard. "I love my Master's cock more than I love Mistress." "Mistress should become a cocksocket like me." "I want Mistress and I to become Master's living fuckdolls." "I want us to get married to Master's cock in frilly white bridal dresses and then kiss around it."

I completely lost track of time as I enjoyed relentlessly using her body - and then her phone went off. I pulled out of her, leaving her face down and ass up, to go find her pants, wandering through them to locate her phone and pick up the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, this is Detective Caitlyn Kiramman," came a female voice. I instantly placed the name: she had been investigating the dead Enforcers - and had proven to be a total cumslut in a buzzed foursome with me, Becca, and Reina. "This phone number is listed as belonging to a Vivi?" By the way she spoke, she didn't recognize my voice over the phone. That was reassuring, since it meant she wasn't calling for me.

"Yes, she's a little indisposed right now," I explained, glancing back at her. She just quietly quivered on the bed. "I can pass on a message?"

"I would prefer to speak directly to her," Caitlyn said. "Preferably face to face. Can you get her presentable?"

I felt a heat hit my cheeks. Was I that obvious? Oh, wait. She was a Vivi. Obviously if she's indisposed and a guy picks up the phone, it's a safe bet she was fucking him. "I can try." Her body was lightly coated in spunk by this point. "She'll need a shower..."

"Please see that she gets it. Where are the two of you? Assuming it is just two," she added. "Again, this is the sort of thing I'd rather talk about face to face, rather than over the phone."

Time seemed to telescope for a moment as I contemplated the question - then I realized that lying or hiding it would look way worse, and I genuinely had nothing to do with whatever the cops wanted to talk to Vivi about. "Room 94 of Forward Alcove. Um. We've been fucking for like... three hours," I said. I was pretty sure it was three hours and fourteen minutes, but that sounded too exact. "If something happened in that time, Vivi was with me."

"I see. Room 94." She recognized the number, that was obvious by the way she said it. "You're the current occupant?"

"Yes, that's me."

"I'll be over shortly."

* * *

Caitlyn hummed to herself as she stared down the hallway. She'd recognized the location, and yes, it was the same. Maximillian Stat. The man who was a person of interest in the (effectively defunct) murder case involving Rodrigo, Hector, and Taiwo. Whose apartment had Unsub-Blue's eDNA on the inside.

An individual whose eDNA had also been at the scene of the home invasion and murder of Olivia Martinez. A murder that had also seen a Charybdis, outfitted in a Camniel 3-A with a personal Exerter, killed.

He had, presumably, been fucking Vivi while that happened, but it was quite the coincidence that it had ended up this way. Kill her girlfriend to secure the woman herself? The story of Darren killing Nnamdi to steal his wife bubbled to mind. She'd even told Max that story, though she really hoped Max hadn't been inspired by it.

Just in case, she'd made Officer Taiwo Ibiyemi come along. He was the brightest of the trio of murdered Enforcers. Not that it was saying much - those idiots were close friends, drunks, and borderline incompetents. "Officer Ibiyemi," she said, her voice sharp. "Stay quiet and keep your eyes open. You are just here as muscle, but if you do recognize anything, then tell me after we stop talking."

She hadn't mentioned she suspected he'd been killed in Room 94. Knowing this moron even by reputation would let you know that was a terrible idea. The tall Yoruba man simply mutely nodded, accepting her suggestion, and she knocked on the door to Max's apartment. "Hello? I'm here to speak to a Vivi," she called out.

The door opened at that point, and there was Vivi. Max, too, standing a ways behind her, looking awkward as their eyes met.

Caitlyn kept her gaze steely as she turned her eyes back to Vivi. "Ms. Washington. I have some matters to discuss with you. Is there a good place to sit?"

"Um, I can pull out a couple chairs," Max said, hurriedly rushing to do so. He easily hefted four different folding chairs out of the closet, planting them in the middle of the room, which was otherwise very sparse. Vivi sat at one, looking defeated - looking like she already knew what this was about. Max seemed oblivious. He could read the mood, but clearly had no idea why it was so dour.

Maybe it wasn't killing the girlfriend to get the girl? Maybe Vivi orchestrated the killing, to get with the boy? Olivia Martinez had been armed to the teeth, had a personal security Charybdis, and had a decent amount of cyberware, so it was plausible she wasn't the sort of woman you broke up with too easily...

"Ms. Washington, do you know why I'm here?" Probe. Let the suspect incriminate themselves.

"Is it the same reason that Olivia didn't pick up when I called her?" Vivi asked. Ah. If she'd called Olivia after Caitlyn's own call, maybe out of concern, or maybe some weird sub thing, that would explain her dour mood.

"I'm afraid it is. Olivia was unable to answer your call, because she is deceased as of about two hours ago." Max looked shocked at the news, whereas Vivi looked resigned and depressed. "Do you know anything about this?"

"No," Vivi said.

Caitlyn wasn't even slightly convinced, but she didn't push too hard, just taking advantage of the excuse for a nonconfrontational interview to pick and poke at the pair's alibis. She'd need a warrant for a proper search of Max's computer to confirm he'd been working on it; Vivi's phone would have had location history, too. The cameras at Forward Alcove could be grabbed as easy as asking, though the suspicious deletion of a certain important one related to Rodrigo, Hector, and Taiwo came to mind as a reason not to consider them entirely trustworthy.

She glanced Taiwo's way as she conducted the interview; at some point, he had taken out his own phone and was either texting or playing a video game.

My God, you are such a lazy prick.

She hadn't told Taiwo that they suspected this is where he had been murdered - not wanting to risk him doing something stupid - but he didn't show even the slightest sign of doing his damn job.

"Something the matter, Detective Kiramman?" Vivi asked politely.

"Ah, nothing," Caitlyn said, turning her attention back down to the woman in question. "Your mistress-" that was the term Vivi used to describe the late Olivia Martinez, "-had another fork of Vivian Charybdis Washington."

"A Charybdis. I know. I recruited her."

Now that was something she could check easily. Getting records from the late Charybdis would be trivial. If Vivi hadn't actually been the one to recruit her, that was a huge and bizarre lie, and would tell her to look harder - if Vivi had been the one to recruit her, though... "Why did you do that?"

"I was worried about Mistress. She, ahm, can be prickly."

"Was there anyone in particular she had been prickly to, before this?" Caitlyn considered asking after Unsub-Blue, to gauge Vivi's reaction, but decided to hold back. For one thing, she could always ask later, if this transitioned into a proper interrogation; for another, Unsub-Blue was probably not out there sporting blue hair, but instead wore a wig or dyed her hair.

Admittedly, the splattered, unidentifiable mess of a fake body disagreed with that theory. While the face had been blasted beyond recognition (and by Charybdis's gun, fired from Charybdis's hands, as far as she could tell, so it wasn't Unsub-Blue trying to cover her tracks), the hair was blue. Long, too.

"No one comes to mind."

"How long ago did you hire her?"

"Recently."

"Less than a month?" Vivi nodded. "What prompted the hiring?"

"...there was a previous incident," Vivi said. "Mistress shot a hole in the door. She said it was nothing, but I was worried."

"I see."

Truth be told, Caitlyn didn't see. The pieces didn't quite fit together. The dead Enforcers and the dead Olivia had to be connected somehow - the coincidence was too big otherwise - but she couldn't figure out quite how.

And who the hell was Unsub-Blue, and how did she fit into this?

Once the interview was concluded and they had some modicum of privacy, she spoke to Taiwo. "Office Ibiyemi, did you recognize anything at all in Room 94?"

"I mean, I'm a man, Detective Kiramman. I've fucked a few Vivis in my day. Normally she's not blonde, though. I think she looks better with her natural hair."

"Besides the Vivi," she said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

"Oh. No."

Caitlyn sighed, returning to her notes.

There had to be something she was missing. Probably, Max is fucking both Vivi and Unsub-Blue? Lovers quarrel between the pair? Then why are the Enforcers dead? Is Olivia part of Max's little harem? Seemed plausible. If she was? Unsub-Blue gets rid of her so Vivi can be his? So then why are the Enforcers dead?

Rotate it around. The Enforcers die because...?

Because?

That was the hard part. Any theory could easily fit around the death of Olivia Martinez. She needed one that explained the death of not one, not two, but three Enforcers. They vanished from Room 94. (Probably. Almost certainly, now, with the Unsub-Blue connection.)

There wasn't any such thing as magic. That meant that there had to be a simple, logical, mechanical explanation for everything.

Admittedly, the motives of the involved parties didn't have to be logical. The Unsub-Blue could be imbalanced enough? Why had the Enforcers gone to Max's room in the first fucking place?

"Detective?" Taiwo asked her, as she glared at him.

She cleared her throat. "Sorry. Just lost in thought."

That had to be the key to cracking the case - and she still didn't have the first clue.

Next Chapter

Max Stat and the Harem Blight, Chapter 11: Misfortune & Darkness
Previous Chapter
Jinx was in her workshop, idly rolling a ball bearing on the table as she imagined various potential designs. Sometimes she wished she was on a rockball, just because then she could make stuff that was big - in the tight confines of Zaun, there just wasn't the space for anything really fun, like a tank or an aircraft. Only teeny tiny drones.

Don't get her wrong, she still liked teeny-tiny drones - especially when they exploded - but there was more to life than that.

Her phone buzzed. Naomi. She answered the call with her AR. "What's up, sister-wife?"

"Excuse me?" Naomi asked, her voice sharp.

"Sister-wife. Should it be sister-breeder? Breeding buddy? That sounds pretty good. Buddy's a little too male though... breeding sister? Breeding gal pal?" Naomi was surprisingly uninterested in interrupting her running off on a random tangent. "Anyway, pole sister seems inadequate when you both got knocked up by the same dude. What's up, my fellow MMLF?"

"I'm afraid to ask."

"Mother Max Loves Fucking, duh," she said, a grin on her lips. "Seriously. You must've called for a reason, right?"

"Yes, I just..." Naomi sighed loudly on the other end of the line. "You're really pregnant?"

"Yes, I am really pregnant." She popped her lips as she idly tossed the ball bearing into the air, catching it with her foot, clenching it between her big toe and the next one over. Index toe? She actually didn't know the name. "Duh. Why would I lie about that?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, you know, mommy-twin," Jinx said with a grin. "You're the one who got me dragged over for a threesome, remember? Max's dick is the best. Objectively. Seems like the kind of guy who's not quick to abandon the mother of his children, too."

"There's more to a relationship than sex."

"Yeah, and he's a nice sweet boy toy in addition to having a megadick that makes your brain ooze out of your cunt. Smart, too. 'parently Zaun's sitting on some mega-cool archaeology site. Did he mention that to you?"

"I don't remember any details, but I think so."

"Yorp. So, smart, sweet, prestigious, nice, gonna be rich, juuuust got done with his PhD so he's dateable but there's probably no hidden downsides, fucks like a god. So, that's why I would pretend to be pregnant. Not that I did."

"Explain that bit about the PhD?"

"Sheesh. Didn't you call me for a reason besides explaining every little thing?" Jinx tsked.

"I was confirming you were pregnant."

"I could just lie again. Are you talking around asking me if I want another threesome? I can do one whenever. Betcha he'd have a hard time saying no if two hot-to-trot babes showed up at his door."

"The PhD," Naomi repeated.

"Right. So, problem with dating older guys - well, you should know this, but... over time, the good guys get taken, right? Guy finds his special someone, they get married. Could happen at 20, 24, 27, whatever. Every year, the number of good guys in that age group declines. The shitty guys, though, they keep dating, right? They get married, but then divorced, 'cause they smack their wife around, or cheat, or whatever. Or they can't even convince a chick to marry them, which is saying something, because the same logic applies to shitty gals. The older a guy is, the more you need an explanation why he's not already taken - and a PhD is a great explanation. No time to date when you're working on your thesis. He's now stuck on a shitty little middle-o-nowhere station with a population of like, eighty k? Best time to put a ring on it, Naomi. Never gonna get better."

"I'm not interested in getting married right now. I have something I have to do."

"Yeah? While pregnant, even?"

"Yes. While pregnant."

"Must be real important."

"It is."

Jinx huffed. "I answer all your questions, and you don't answer mine? So mean. I feel hurt. I thought we were close. Pole sisters is one thing, but the sacred bond of getting pregnant by the same guy during the same orgy? That's a bond so few women have."

"You didn't ask a question."

"Fine, what's up with you?"

"You know what - I have to go. Ask me in person when we next see each other," Naomi said, then hung up.

Weird response.

Well, they'd see each other again, next threesome.

Hm. She pulled the ball bearing out from between her toes as she thought it over. Could she make a sex toy to outdo all other sex toys?

No, wait. That already existed, and his name was Max.

* * *

Olivia hung up on Jinx. Her Naomi voicechange mod had worked. There was no sign that the other woman had any suspicions, and she'd successfully managed to inject the worm over the course of the call without any apparent response from Jinx herself. It wasn't hard at all to keep the idiot babbling - she really liked the sound of her own voice.

Now she had access to Jinx's AR, and it was time to work out how to kill the bitch. Right now, she was alone in some kind of workshop - but Olivia had no real idea of the layout of the surrounding area, since she'd only just started watching. She set her computer to record, and set to work finding more data about Jinx via her AR.

...it took about two seconds for her to actually out-loud gasp at what was hooked into Jinx's AR. She had to double and triple check, flicking through subsystem after subsystem, but no, it wasn't some funny labeling scheme. Jinx had root access to what looked like virtually every single camera on the entire station - though not the ones that Charybdis had installed in the outside hallway. She didn't just have root access, she'd also used that access to install a program that automatically edited her out of video feeds, replacing her with one of several dozen replacement models or just scrubbing her altogether.

In other words, every single CCTV auto-purged her. It was actually insane. It couldn't even be that good of a disguise, since the way it was set up, at least some of the time, she would appear as a white guy on one camera and an Asian girl on the next, at the exact same time. Anybody cross-referencing them would notice something was up immediately.

Which - along with the root access itself - meant it was basically dead certain the bitch had connections in the local government. There was no way a hack this blatant could go undetected for longer than, like, a week. Olivia had found this shit within minutes, and yeah, she was better than your average code jockey, but come on. It was so obvious she was pretty sure that even somebody with zero technical skills might be able to find it eventually.

None of that really changed any of Olivia's plans. She'd watch Jinx, wait for her to be alone, and then... she glanced to one side.

The Keter of her was a spare, meant for Vivi if something happened. Olivia would have to buy a new one, because she'd cracked it open and rearranged the guts. Where an EM chip should go, she'd added remote access, as well as a copious amount of plastic explosives. It was standing upright, wearing one of Vivi's virgin killer sweaters, a blank, neutral expression worn - though, for Vivi, that tended to look like she was smiling just a smidge. The opposite of resting bitch face.

She turned her attention back to her monitors. Right now, she could see everything Jinx did through her AR. She'd learn the bitch's patterns, and then Vivi would 'stumble' upon her, and...

* * *

"Oh, Jinx!" Jinx immediately recognized the voice, pausing her walk to spin around and face the other woman. Vivi. She looked surprisingly not-pissed, but then, Vivi wasn't very neurotic.

"Yo." Turns out that it's awkward talking to your pole-sister nine days after you point a gun at her girlfriend. Who knew?

"I'm surprised to see you here," Vivi said, approaching her slowly. "I heard from Naomi that you're pregnant - can I feel the bump?"

Something was off about Vivi's movements, and Jinx casually walked backwards a few steps to keep her distance. She checked her AR, and nobody else was around ready to take a shot or anything, so it was Vivi? Vivi could kill, the Charybdis were proof of that, but while something was 'off' about Vivi's movements, it wasn't emotional. "No bump yet. She's pregnant too, so..." Alarm bells were ringing, so Jinx took out her gun. "Alright, stop walking towards me," she said, pointing the gun at Vivi's torso. "Something's fucky."

Vivi's expression flickered through emotions as she raised her hands up. "Sorry? Jinx, I'm not angry. I know Olivia started things, sending those guys after Max." There was definitely something wrong with how Vivi was moving. It was more than just her being awkward or scared. Your basic instincts are programmed to notice when people don't move right, it's a natural defense mechanism against ebola and shit, and right now, Vivi wasn't moving right. "I thought that you had resolved things? If you don't feel like you have, I can just go."

"Guilt trip. Nice." She wasn't actually going, after all. "Take two steps back."

Ah, that's it. Vivi moved to obey, but it took the wrong amount of time. Her face looked right, her words sounded right, her body moved right - just too slow.

Latency. There was a trace of lag in her reactions, like she was getting everything a fraction of a second late. "Something wrong with your chip?"

Vivi tilted her head to one side, but once again, the reaction took longer than it should have. "I don't think so? Why do you ask?" She glanced down at her torso. Those movements there were fluid and immediate, since they all chained on one another. Vivi poked herself.

Yeah. Jinx knew what was going on. She shot the Vivi body's leg off, and the thing tumbled to the ground. It just hit the ground, facefirst - the hands didn't manage to respond in time to keep herself from faceplanting. Jinx herself took quite a few steps backwards, checking her AR. "I warned you, Liv. One act of sisterly mercy, that's all you get, and you blew it with this?"

"I don't understand."

"It's a fucking remote access chip, do you think I can't tell when I'm not talking to a person?" In fairness, most people probably couldn't, but c'mon. Jinx had mentioned her extra neurons, hadn't she? "You're even dumber than you look. Should've just let your brains dribble out of your cunt and become Max's personal bangmaid or something. Everybody would be happy that way, but nooooo. You had to go and do this," she said, letting out a long-suffering sigh. She pointed her gun at the Vivi's head, and blew that away too, a spray of electronics splashing around, the fungoid pseudoflesh coating her body splattering in an ugly way.

"I can't see. Jinx, I'm not-"

"Oh my God, you're found out, this is so fucking boring, these are your last words to your nemesis, and that's all you got?" She fired again, this time aiming for the cavity where Vivi's EM chip should be - and the Vivi promptly exploded, which did surprise her. She was far enough away that it felt more like a loose wave of heat and force. Except for a few lacerations and minor stabs from various bits of the Keter. "Motherfuck. Shrapnel, fuckin', bitch," she spat out, gritting her teeth.

* * *

Olivia could admit the assassination attempt had gone poorly - but she was still hooked into Jinx's AR, so she could watch the bitch's every move. She had headed back to her workshop, ducking and weaving through traps that Olivia tried her best to categorize, wrapping up the various cuts with bandages and gauze before finally rummaging through drawers to pull out a neat little box which contained what looked like a cockroach.

"Now, fly, my pretty, fly," she declared, cackling a little as the thing took flight - and her AR provided picture-in-picture of the drone flying off. With one hand, Jinx effortlessly controlled its flight. If Olivia hadn't seen it through Jinx's eyes, she probably would have assumed the thing was a genuine insect. There weren't many out in space, but they sometimes managed to crawl through the cracks. The thing flew and crawled all the way over to the hallway outside Olivia's apartment, at which point it began to flutter back and forth, rotating through the sky with a lazy, performative movement.

Olivia rolled her chair out of her office. "There's a bug drone out there," Olivia said to the Charybdis. "It looks like a cockroach."

"Mm." Charybdis's eyes tilted to one side as she presumably consulted her own camera access. "I see it. I can probably go stomp on it if you want, but it won't be able to open the door. How do you know it's a drone?"

Fuck. Right. She definitely didn't want Jinx to know she had AR access. "Forget it. If you see a chance to make it look natural, go crush it."

She returned to monitoring Jinx, who was now reviewing the drone footage - as well as the past several days of footage from outside Olivia's apartment, pausing on the Charybdis and humming, then zooming in.

"Pain in my fuckin' ass," Jinx muttered. "That's gotta be a Charybdis, who else would paint a bunny on their exerter armor? Seriously, I gotta ask pops for some exerter armor of my own." She huffed and then rolled her chair over to the table.

* * *

Exerters are an advanced form of science humanity copied off the Yoke. They produce a field which mostly accomplishes the function of preventing the movement of fermions (you know, protons, neutrons, electrons - the building blocks of matter) through it. To turn that description into something intuitive, just imagine you can make a physical object of any arbitrary size and shape, which is completely weightless and almost-invisible.

Almost is a critical part of that equation there. The field produced by an exerter is almost invisible; which is to say, they do interact with photons (light), just much less than with fermions. That means a laser can penetrate an exerter-produced shield far easier than an equivalently-lethal bullet. Lucky thing for humanity, too - if exerters had been as good against laser weapons as against kinetic ones, Final State soldiers would have been basically invincible during the First Contact War, when they had all the tech advantage.

The main problem with using a laser weapon as a personal firearm in normal circumstances is that your eye lenses are weak shit, and any laser weapon capable of doing appreciable damage to a person by drilling a hole through them, is also going to render you permanently blind on the ricochet. The same basic logic applies to most ordinary cameras, and so on. They also have pretty shit penetrative power compared to a bullet - they do much better against soft materials than against hard ones. (Luckily, humans are mostly made out of soft materials.)

That's why Jinx wasn't just putting together a laser weapon to deal with the Charybdis, but a traditional firearm too. Or, really, a combination laser weapon/firearm. The biggest engineering challenge was making it swap back and forth from laser to bullet without needing to shift your aim - you sure weren't putting a bullet down the optic channel of your laser weapon, after all. She had to tweak the code like ten times before she finally got it nice and accurate.

Once she was satisfied with the weapon, she made a nice little drone with a shitty little exerter that - while definitely not enough to stop a bullet, even while overclocked - could let it float through the air right down the hallway, burning out every single camera that the Charybdis had set up with nice itty-bitty laser pulses. It wasn't even hard to program the targeting.

Once that was done, she set about with her pièce de résistance: a fake Jinx. It was a real art piece, in her humble opinion: looking at it laying there, you'd probably even imagine Jinx was actually dead, if it wasn't for her being right on top of it. It was even filled up with several liters of blood and ballistic gel, so it'd still give the impression of being her. The actual point, of course, was the eyeballs: twin cybernetic eyes that she could see through.

The plan was pretty simple, and brilliant, if Jinx did say so herself (she did, though not aloud): she'd burn out all the cameras, then wave the fake Jinx in the doorway to get shot by the Charybdis. At that point, she'd drop the Jinx, faking death, and use its eyes to aim through the wall and blow the Charybdis away. Simple, and genius.

The last thing she needed was something suitable for the ricochet on a laser weapon. Yeah, military grade optics were designed to survive it, but she didn't have any military grade optics on her, now did she? Instead, she came up with a far more ingenious (and, perhaps more importantly, cheap) mechanism: eight different cameras, which would shutter and cycle as they got blinded by the laser. So, she'd have eight shots with the laser before she was flying blind.

It did mean she'd have to take off her AR, but she was going to be playing a much more fun game than Plush Demon Hunter anyway.

* * *

Charybdis had arranged most of the furniture in Olivia's apartment into a makeshift fort. The Vivi had been sent away, and Olivia had told her everything she'd seen from 'Jinx,' the would-be assassin. The fake body with cyber eyes was presumably going to be used for targeting; the drone would blind her cameras right before the woman of the hour arrived; and the rifle didn't need any explanation. A mattress or a sofa would make for perfectly good protection against bullets and laser pulses, though she couldn't shake the feeling that her ass was exposed - and not in a good way.

Now it was just a matter of waiting. The worst part of being a bodyguard.

When this was done, she was going to need Olivia to step on her face or something. She'd have been jittering with the excess energy, if the Camniel 3-A let you do that. She took a few simulated deep breaths, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Goddamn, was it ever lucky that EM platforms didn't get uncomfortable from holding the same position for an extended period.

She kept waiting, lying prone, firearm aimed at the doorway, the barrel poking out just barely between mattresses.

Her patience was rewarded, though. The cameras went down in rapid sequence, as the drone blinded them one by one. She remained stock still, just patiently staring at the doorway. A good solid minute passed, and then. "Howdy, Liv, my least-dearest pole-sister! To the Charybdis, I'm gonna kill you if you shoot me, just so you know. If you don't, we can become great friends, though! I can even introduce you to Max! He is literally the best ever at sex. Well - I'm coming out, now!"

The door slid open, and the dummy Jinx's head slipped around the corner, alongside a firearm. Charybdis shot it right in the head, and Jinx just dropped the thing, with it hitting the ground like a wet sack of potatoes. She took two more shots, blowing out both its eyes, and leaving Jinx blind.

* * *

Fucking thorough, ain'tcha, bitch? Jinx scowled as she lost the feed from the bot. She'd only gotten a fraction of a second of visual on the Charybdis, which meant she didn't have enough data to find a good angle. She couldn't believe she was being held back by a glorified pillow fort. Were they gonna have a sleepover next?

Jinx didn't say or do anything herself, just remaining stock still in the hallway - maybe the bitch would come out - but she did still have two drones. She directed the cockroach to crawl along the edge of the door frame, and then poke its head just-barely in from the corner. Its antennae were slicked back and still as it got into position, and the Charybdis didn't notice, remaining still on the floor.

With the cockroach drone in position, Jinx now had a great visual of the whole room. Charybdis was blocked by an overturned sofa, two mattresses, a desk... but there was a weak point, little wedge between two pieces of furniture. She slowly creeped her way into position, using her goggles to coordinate the shot juuust so. The dumbass Charybdis didn't move at all. C'mon, girlfriend. You're like an honorary pole sister to me. I know that's not a special ranking to you, but it is to me. This is just a disappointing showing. You're practically asking for me to blow your brains out, at this point.

Ah well. She'd given her a chance! If she hadn't shot, Jinx wouldn't have to do this!

She squatted, aimed the rifle just so, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet punched clean through the wall, impacting the bitch's exerter field directly. In the tiniest fraction of a second, it was followed up by the laser barrel, which promptly drove pulse after pulse of high intensity energy through the exerter field, cracking it and then continuing straight through, melting the delicate electronics inside the armor itself. The cockroach went blind as the laser ricochet blinded it, though since she was shooting through a hole in the wall, none of the ricochet came back to her. Another fraction of a second later, another bullet impacted the woman's chest.

With the amount of juice she'd just shot downrange - the heat was boiling off the gun, and it felt like a roaring flame was a couple feet from her stomach - there was no chance the Charybdis had survived. No sense in letting that sort of thing make her stupid, though: she brought the blinding drone around next, creeping into the room from above. There was no motion from the Charybdis, though the woman in question was an EM, so it's not like she needed to breathe, nor like she'd drop the gun because her muscles went slack.

The drone lowered itself towards the Charybdis, and neatly blinded the body in both eyes. With a casual movement, she saw she'd torn through the armor and that the EM chip was cooked too.

Mess with the best, die like the rest. She set her little blinding drone to checking the room for any cameras, even as she shifted her own physical position, moving a few feet to one side. None of the cameras had shown Olivia moving out, but she was definitely going to be extra angry if the bitch had managed to fuck off, yet left a perfectly nice Charybdis to get gibbed.

A shot rang out in the room, and simultaneously, the drone went down.

Jinx smiled. The drone had been blindsided, but that meant that Olivia really was in there. She waited in patient silence, even going so far as to hold her breath, trying to get any hint of Olivia's exact position by sound.

She used her gun finally cooling off as a sign to move, creeping towards the doorway agonizingly slowly, making sure not to make the slightest sound as she almost floated across the ground. Her breathing was slow to make it quiet; the air felt stagnant as her lungs strained to make do with less, while she listened carefully.

She heard Olivia move at that point, and in only a fraction of a second, she could tell what sort of movement it was - away. Away meant explosives. Jinx scrambled back, diving for the ground, and the grenade went off behind her. It exploded so fast it was either inertia armed or else manually blew its load, but it did even less damage to Jinx than the shrapnel had. She rolled onto her back in record time, bringing the gun to bear, and Olivia appeared in the doorway, her own gun at the ready. It came down to the minutest fraction of a second.

Unfortunately for Olivia, Jinx had superhuman reaction times, and the laser beam moved at the speed of light as it drilled a hole in her forehead. She was still holding her gun as she collided with the far wall, but it clattered out of her hand as she lost all self control.

Jinx let out a long breath, rising to her feet. A quick visual once-over confirmed that it was Olivia, not some reskinned Keter or fake body like Jinx had used, and she considered going into the apartment to do a clean sweep, but honestly...

Why bother? She was here to kill Olivia, and Olivia was dead. Going in just risked getting blasted away by some other dipshit in there; Enforcers would probably come around soon, and hallways had two exits while rooms had only one. She decided to make like a banana and split.

* * *

Vivi stared at the door in front of her. Maybe she should have sought refuge with somebody else - she did know other people on the station - but, well, she was a very particular sort of person. She quite literally wouldn't exist if she was a different sort of person.

And the sort of person she was, was the sort of person who used sex to cope with fear, anxiety, sorrow, and every other negative emotion. She did have a mostly-positive mood as a baseline, but she wasn't immune to feeling bad if, say, her beloved mistress had decided to get in a shootout with a superpowered psycho, and was quite possibly already dead or dying. Olivia had sent her off and told her that she'd be called back if she won... she didn't know how long it would take for Olivia and Jinx to confront one another, but...

She loved her Mistress. She knew Sombra was an incredibly capable hacker and tech geek. She knew Sombra even had some paramilitary experience, dealing with cartels back in Mexico in her youth - but she wasn't exactly special forces.

The Charybdis did give her hope on that front. She gave a quiet little prayer that her fork would protect her Mistress.

Then, she knocked on the door to Max's apartment. "Max? It's Vivi. I'd... well..." The door slid open as she stumbled over her words, and she let out a soft breath as his handsome face came back into view.

"Hi, Vivi," he said. "Does your mistress know you're here? I don't, uh, want you to cheat or anything. Olivia seemed nice, when I met her."

She gave a wan smile at that last bit. Max really saw the good in people. It was part of what made him so attractive. "More or less. She knows I'm out having sex. I really need sex right now," she told him. She reached for his hand. "Please," she breathed, guiding his hand up to her throat. "Make it rough and vicious. I need you to brutalize me. Step on my face, call me every mean name you can think of. Treat me so badly any other girl would cry and beg for mercy. Make me forget about being anything other than a sex toy."

He stared at her, and his fingers tightened around her throat - and he dragged her into his room.

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