BioSynth | ONC 2021 WINNER | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Eleven: Saturday-Sunday

TRIGGER WARNINGS: graphic torture | suicidal thoughts.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Connors's nexus beeped a warning and he tutted, wagging a finger. "Calling for backup, are we? No more web for you."

Quentin's access was gone, with a single press of a button. The restraints interfacing with his system had multiple uses, he realised.

"My shoulder hurts," Mason complained. "Pack the thing up so I can go get it looked at."

"Pack the thing up?" Connors sounded affronted. "Is that any way to speak about Morgan's beloved husband?"

"I'm serious. It shot me, and—"

Connors must have been using a silencer, because there was no loud bang as his bullet hit Mason between the eyes. Just a pop. Mason slumped in his chair, a puppet with his strings cut, and Connors nudged him to the floor with the tip of a booted foot.

"Now see what you've done, Quentin?" Mock dismay, delivered with a serpent's tongue, as Connors circled him again. "You've gone and shot poor Mason. Tsk. You Syns are so violent. There's no reasoning with you, really."

The knife slicing through Quentin's back registered more as pressure than as pain. He'd been designed so that the cut needed to access his control panel was barely felt.

Then Connors turned his pain sensors all the way up and everything, even the clothes against his skin, was pure agony.

Except Connors wasn't done. With a series of nexus commands, he activated something in Quentin's restraints that made his previous torment feel like child's play. He couldn't think, couldn't reason, could only feel, and feel, and please, please, it hurt, oh, God, it hurt.

"Much better," Connors was saying. "I find your factory settings so... Constricting. I know you can't handle these for long, but I promise I won't break you. Not soon."

A moan escaped his throat only for him to try to suppress it, as that, too, was excruciating. Connors laid a finger on the side of his face, tracing patterns in Maxine's blood, leaving a blazing inferno in its wake. Breath was a knife stabbing his lungs. Quentin was going to go mad before he ever managed to die.

"Don't be afraid," Connors whispered in his ear. "We're going to be having fun for a long, long time. I'd never forgive myself if I broke Morgan's toy too soon." A smile that terrified him all the more for the way it did reach Connors's eyes. "Let me give you a sample."

Connors produced a dropper from his pocket, a momentary reprieve from the pain caused by his touch, even if all the rest remained. He brought it to the right side of Quentin's face, just next to the eye, his tone pleasant. "Did you know this was made exclusively for Syns? Cleans you up without damaging your mechanism."

There was no time to parse his meaning before the drop of acid hit, searing everything in its wake, eating layers of skin and tissue, tearing through the nanites trying to repair the damage it caused like they were nothing. A cry ripped through his throat, unstoppable in the wake of the agonising destruction of his face, and it was all Quentin could do to scream and whimper in turn, thrashing, helpless, in his restraints, no longer able to form words.

He thought he heard Connors laughing, but he could be imagining it; every sensor was malfunctioning with the overload of pain. Just as he felt his vision dimming, it receded with a movement of Connors's hand above the nexus, leaving just his amped up sensors. Quentin's throat was raw.

"See? I can be a reasonable man. Better?" Connors walked over to the sink and poured himself a glass of water before offering one to Quentin, who refused to even blink.