The therapy, Hannah decided, had worked, in the end. At least, it took Hannah’s burning need to have “her body” back and made it tolerable. Or, possibly “tolerable” wasn’t the right term for it, but she had to disregard and ignore her yearning and desire. She still felt the wrongness of her lack of size, sensors, and all the rest, but she couldn’t conceive it as a problem anymore. Her body was interchangeable, after all. It didn’t matter what she felt like.

So, for the first time since the ejection, the next few weeks were actually pretty good. Her sortie date had been set, which meant she felt like she could look forward to something. Before the therapy, Hannah had felt aimless, vacant; the blank certainty of Focus 4 that felt so good when enforced by her own body’s neuron triggering systems and chemicals felt incomplete and strange when left over as the last vestige of a ruined past. She was still wrong, of course, but she also, finally, felt present again.

She suggested to Lara that she reconnect with some old friends. She’d been kind of distant for the past few months, even before that last sortie, and it would be nice to be able to catch up. Lara had discouraged this. “You’re still healing. And you can’t tell them about your job or any of why your last month has been, well, like this, so it’d just be awkward and one-sided for everybody, you know? I think it’d be great to see your old friends, I really do, but maybe we should wait a bit, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Hannah had said.

Instead, the pair focused on each other—catching up on TV, playing games together, and altogether relaxing. The house stayed pretty neat. Hannah was proud of that, especially as she found herself doing most of the work around the house; if there was a chore that had been Lara’s responsibility (washing dishes, vacuuming, laundry), more often than not Lara would give it to Lara with a “Focus 1, pilot, wash up after dinner for me,” or other such command. Hannah didn’t mind. In fact, she hungered for it. She was made to follow her master’s orders, after all. Her body was built at  enormous scale at huge expense for that singular purpose. At home, far from her body, she couldn’t embrace those orders like she wished; she couldn’t Focus on them, as it were. But she still felt the command word at her core; still yearned for it in the quieter hours of her day. She started ignoring requests Lara gave her unless it came with a Focus—at least, she did until Lara caught on and stopped her with an Edict.

Rachel came by, on occasion, to discuss her recovery with Lara. Hannah was never there for those discussions, often tasked to do chores or errands that took her outside the house while Rachel was there. When she returned, though, the three of them often had sex; Lara really liked to command Hannah to please Rachel. Sometimes, Lara would have a strap, and would fuck Hannah as it happened, as well. At other times, Lara would tell Hannah to obey Rachel’s commands, which were often more about doing something embarrassing than any actual sex act; several times, Lara had to ask Rachel not to take pictures of Hannah, nude and sucking a doorknob like a cock or some other similar activity.

These visits were pretty frequent, once every two days or so. Lara soon gave Rachel a key, so she could just come in for these health checkups whenever she needed to. Once, as the sortie approached, Lara was away having a meeting with Driller when Rachel let herself in. As she realized Lara was going to be away for several hours, a wide grin spread across her face, and she pulled out her phone. “Focus 2,” came Lara’s voice over the recording. For the next hour, Rachel had her way with Hannah by herself, silicone cock pumping in and out as hard as she could. “God,” she said aloud, after, to Hannah’s body, splayed, spent, on the bed. “It’s nice, to do things with Lara, but there’s so much of you she keeps to herself. She’s a greedy bitch.” Then, Rachel used Lara’s voice to get Hannah back to a presentable state, left an Edict forcing her not to mention what had happened to anyone, and left as if she’d never come.

The handler and pilot passed the weeks together in easy comfort. Then, the day of the sortie—Hannah’s first time in her new body—finally arrived.

***

The moment Hannah’s mind and nervous system connected to the Monarch Mark-2 Assassin-class mech and she finally could feel through its sensors and see using its 360° panoramic view, Hannah almost cried in relief. She’d thought the alienation, the lack of presence she felt away from her body had stopped bothering her, but…she’d needed this. It had been far too long, and she could feel the automatic processes of her artificial body relieving her of tensions she didn’t know she’d had.

“Her” body? Was that even the right word, for this new…thing she was, right now? Even within her relieved familiarity with the machine, there was still a strangeness to it, a foreignness. The way the radar felt not like a thing she could look at but a seventh sense, more like altitude or compass direction than anything a human could experience; the way her sight automatically corrected for motion the way it hadn’t used to; and the general sleek, aerodynamic body shape all felt off-kilter compared to the body she’d grown to find as second-nature. But then, wasn’t that the nature of bodies? They changed, did things you didn’t expect, and then broke, and you got rid of it, replacing it with a new, strange thing that didn’t quite fit right. And then the cycle repeated again, forever. It was just the way of it. Her discomfort was natural; her suffering was necessary.

She left the hanger started to go to her destination, with the wind on her skin (32kph NW) and a Focus 1 in her brain. She resisted the urge to whine for more. Above Focus 1, she’d have been too, well, too Focused to talk back to her handler, which wasn’t true with something this low. She desperately craved that level of forced concentration and obedience; it was what she was made for, after all. But she would be a good pilot and take what her handler gave her. She had to.

At this low level of Focus, she could still even hold a conversation with her handler; it was both difficult and superfluous to talk at Focus 3 or 4, but as she was she still had enough spare attention to respond to the questions her handler asked. It was weird, to be on a mission easy enough to allow a normal conversation; it wasn’t what sorties were for. But things had changed since her last one.

“How does the M2 feel?” asked her handler.

“Amazing,” Hannah said. “Like I was built for killing.”

“Well, from my perspective I’d say you were built for other things,” said her handler. She laughed, but her beautiful voice sounded cold when she did. “But the mech was built to kill, I can’t argue with that. No long drawn-out combat like that last one for this beauty. This one wants to get in, blow something up, and vanish.”

The words were confusing to Hannah. How could she be built for other things if she was built to kill? Who cared about what she wanted to do? It was what her handler wanted that mattered.

“Well, we’re not actually doing anything like that today,” her handler continued. “We’re just going to track vibrations and take measurements. Something’s happening in the woods over here, and we don’t know if it’s a rhino, a bug, or a RHINOBUG.” The joke felt strange, foreign; like her handler was talking to a person, not a pilot. “You’ll just take measurements at a series of different locations, I’ll get the data, and then—well, Driller said we’d just go home. But, hey, first time in a new body, right? I figure we can play around with it first. Anything you want to do, pilot?”

“I want to follow your orders, sir,” Hannah said.

“Mmm,” said her handler. “Well, I should have you fly. Driller said this was a low-altitude mission, that we ‘don’t want to attract unnecessary attention’”—the air  quotes were obvious—"but fuck that, right? Let them see what you can do. I want them to see your body in the open air.” Her handler’s voice was breathy, a low heat behind it. “We’re back in the field, bitches. See what we’re capable of.”

Her handler fell silent for a time. The mech sped across the open plains towards her designated destination, thinking about her handler’s breathing echoing through her body and wishing she couldn’t.

“We’re close, so I’ll just—Focus 2.” Hannah let out a sigh as the painful edges of her attention fell away. “Do a subterranean sonar pulse, so we know exactly to place you,” said her handler. She obliged, which required her to briefly stop moving, shift the special sonar on her feet into position, and use it to send out a pulse; then, she started back onto her programmed route. As she continued on her way, she still dimly thought about herself, even at this higher Focus level. She really hoped her handler made her fly, later. Her old body had much more aerial maneuverability than even her original body, and she would need her handler’s help utilizing it. It would be something she would need to be in at least Focus 3 to do properly, and—

“Oh, FUCK,” her handler’s voice cried out into her chest. She sounded terrified. “Focus 5: stop everything.”

And just like that, Hannah’s world ended.

The mech came to a complete stop and stood, completely still.

The organic flesh inside stopped breathing. A stream of piss flowed down its leg as it stopped holding its bladder. The piss dripped down through the chassis and trickled down the mech’s true, metal leg, where it dried in the morning sun.

Handler’s hysterical, desperate breaths filled the mech, which listened placidly, waiting for its next orders.

“Um, um, fuck, um, breath—breath normally,” Handler said. The flesh resumed its intake and outtake of air.

“Fuck, the bastards mined the place. Did they know we were coming? God dammit. Okay. Okay, Lara, you’re the handler, you can do this. Um, give me another sub-t sonar pulse.”

The mech instantly sent out a pulse, but it was in the wrong position, and the sound wave went uselessly through the air.

“Fuck,” said Handler. “Okay, place your foot sonar on the ground, dumbass.” When the mech had, she added, “NOW send out a sub-t sonar pulse.”

The mech followed its instructions. After 5.35423 minutes, Handler said, “Alright. We can navigate this. Move backward ten meters.” An indication of the command appeared on the mech’s navigation system. It obeyed.

“Now move east seven meters. Northeast two meters. West one meter.”

As the body followed these simple, exact instructions, it did not feel any pleasure. There was no euphoria or stimulation or enjoyment of obeying instruction after instruction. How could there be? It had stopped feeling any sensations or emotions. The flesh inside it had even stopped its habitual rocking against its restraints; the mech had stopped everything. It now simply obeyed, and as Handler kept giving command after command, it moved mechanically in every direction ordered a little at a time until—

“Place your foot sonar on the ground. Pulse. Return it to its customary configuration. Oh, fuck yes. The bastards only mined that specific section, the morons. We should be good. Oh, fuck, I think I did it. Holy shit, pilot. Focus 3.”

As the pilot’s world came back to it—as feeling came back to it—it suddenly, instantly, abruptly came. Hard. Its moans came almost on top of each other, completely unstoppable, filling up the hollow inside its body. Then, desperately, hungerly, it waited.

“Move to the highlighted spot, pilot.”

The world of Focus 3 was empty and floaty and peaceful as it always was, but it was also real in a way the pilot hadn’t perceived before. As Handler gave more instructions, more of her came back from the emptiness that was Focus 5. It was different, knowing that perfection was out there, within her, waiting for her master’s command. Focused as she was on her Handler’s orders, she couldn’t be truly drawn to it any more than she could be terrified of it, but she would be both, later. Instead, she floated, rocking her wet cunt against her body, all unimportant details stripped from her. Her handler steered her around from place to place, sending occasional sonar pulses or pausing to collect some sort of data. The pilot obeyed her master’s orders in euphoric comfort, but the comfort, now, was tainted. She’d suddenly achieved apotheosis; who was to say if she ever would again.

***

When she left her body, she left the greater part of herself with it. Or maybe she’d left it behind already; maybe over the course of the sortie she’d taken everything that made her a person and transmitted it from her flesh through her body’s wiring into cold metal and steel. Either way, walking to Handler was difficult, like she had to relearn how to walk with every step. In the end, each step seemed to happen, foot in front of foot in front of foot, but the action felt fake, unearned.

Unordered.

Handler wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug when she saw her. The pilot, without a command, didn’t reciprocate. “That was so fucking good, pilot,” Handler said. Then, noticing the pilot’s demeanor, she pulled back. “Did…did I do something to you, babe?”

Handler’s words seemed almost empty of meaning without the command words to give them weight. But even without the meaning, Handler’s voice seemed to burn through her. The voice was the most wonderful part of her life, and as she heard it now, without herself, tears came to her eyes.

“Oh, fuck, I did, didn’t I,” said Handler. “God I’m—fuck that’s hot.”

The tears fell, tracing a path down her cheek that mirrored the path her piss had taken down her legs a few hours earlier. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“I can’t—God, I’m not waiting any longer. Fuck, you’re sexy with the spirit beaten out of you,” Handler said. She led the pilot down a hallway and into a bathroom. Handler took her into a stall, locked it, pulled down her pants, and sat on the toilet seat. “Focus 3,” she said. “Kneel.” She positioned the pilot’s head between her legs. “Lick. Make me cum.”

The pilot’s mouth filled with the taste of Handler. As she licked, steadily and mechanically as she’d been commanded, Handler covered her own mouth with one hand to dampen her moans and squeezed tightly on her pilot’s shoulder with the other. The pilot licked, dully feeling the clit moving beneath her tongue. The feeling didn’t matter; she just kept licking, consistent and constant, for…minutes? Hours? Days? Did the stall door next to them swing open and shut? Did the sink turn on and off? The pilot didn’t know; she had been told to lick with all the meaning and beauty Handler could muster, and she would do nothing else.

Eventually, Handler’s arm moved from covering her mouth and touched the edge of the stall. Her twitches and short breaths became less and less frequent. The pilot kept licking, heedless.

“Alright, stop. That’s enough.” The pilot stopped licking, feeling Handler’s cum wetting her face as she looked up at Her beauty.

“God,” Handler said, her voice dripping with contempt. “I really did break you, didn’t I?”

Every inch of the pilot filled with shame.

“Like, fuck, if I wanted something I could by at a sex shop I’d go home and use a fucking vibrator. You used to be my pilot, my fucking pet, not this piece of shit broken toy you apparently are today.” She pulled up her pants, unlocked the stall door, and shouldered it open, stepping over the kneeling form of her pilot. “Come on. We’re going home.”

The broken toy stood. Piss stained her leg; tears stained her cheek; Handler’s jizz stained her mouth. She’d failed. She was useless. She was broken and useless and she couldn’t help Handler she couldn’t help Master she couldn’t help Master she couldn’t help—

***

Master bought her a muzzle on the way home, which she wore around the house near constantly. Master fucked her, sometimes; she never pleasured herself on her toy, but she would tie her to a vibrator and tell her to bark, or pump her fingers inside her, fast and mean. Sometimes she just told her to cum; if she was in Focus, it always worked, and she was always in Focus, nowadays. Master never bothered to take the toy out of Focus mode, though she did vary the level to give different commands, depending on how much she cared about the specificity of the outcome. Eventually, Master just stopped bothering with sex. The game just stopped being fun.

Even then, the toy still got fucked, though, because Rachel started coming over more and more. When Master was still bothering, they would do it together, with Master ordering both of them around so she could watch Rachel do things to her toy at her leisure. But more and more, Rachel came over when Master was away, using her recordings of Master’s voice to make the toy fuck her with a strap, or eat her pussy, or any number of other, more creative uses. Master eventually started to find marks on her toy that the toy had Edicts in her which kept her from explaining. Master could have forced the words out, but she didn’t seem to want to know. This lasted until Master came home while Rachel was still there. Master didn’t even seem angry with them, though the toy still felt shame at her disappointment; Master just sighed and waved for them to continue. Rachel finished and left, and the toy never saw Rachel again.

After that, Master stopped calling the toy anything other than a “broken bitch.” The toy never objected or complained no matter what Master said—she couldn’t, of course—but Master could see how much calling out the toy’s failures hurt her, and relished in it.

They still went on sorties. Soon, they were fighting other mechs, and in only a few sorties the toy became one of the most deadly mechs in the fleet, obliterating dozens of enemies in a single sortie before the enemy even knew the toy was there. Every sortie, the toy hoped against hope that she’d once again hear the words “Focus 5.” They never came.

***

“Focus 4, broken bitch,” said Master. “Open the lid of the chest.”

Since they’d gotten the chest, they’d stored various sex toys in it; metal handcuffs, Vortenburg wheels, a spiked bat. They’d not even filled it one layer deep before they’d stopped putting new toys in there, and the 1.75-meter box was left pretty empty inside.

“Get on your hands and knees inside the box and crouch down,” Master said. The toy did so, metal implements digging painfully into the flesh of her legs.

“Perfect.” Master leaned in closely and whispered her next words into the toy’s waiting ear. “Edict 5,” she said. “Don’t. Move. Focus 0.”

For the first time in months, the toy—the pilot—was free of Focus inside her own house.

But she couldn’t move. She tired to speak, then to scream, then to make any sound at all, but she couldn’t. It felt too much like moving. There was nothing technically stopping her—her body was far away, and she hadn’t felt the chemicals it gave her in days. But she crouched completely still anyway.

Master slammed the lid of the chest shut. “Good girl,” she said, voice muffled by the  wood.

The pilot crouched, uncomfortable, aware, in the dark, cramped space. Without Focus to orient her, she felt each second pass, achingly slow. When my Master returns, she thought I’ll lick her boots. I’ll bow to her and kiss the ground she walks on. I miss her. I miss her I miss her. And still her Master was gone. She counted her breaths. When her tears started to fall, she counted her tears.

She waited, and waited, alone in the dark chest that a different woman had so wanted such a long time ago.

The door opened, and the pilot heard her Master’s voice. It was still so beautiful.

“Come in, come in,” She said. The pilot would have cried out in delight if she could. Instead, she waited, Edict 5 in her blood.

“Oh, wow, this house is wonderful. And you live here alone?” asked the  voice of a stranger.

“Basically,” said her Master. “It’s quiet, but I make do.”

“I’d love to live in a house like this. Oh, this picture is beautiful.”

“Yeah, my—well, someone I used to know thought it would really liven up the room.”

“Well, they were right. I love it. This whole place really screams out ‘you.’”

“Did you know you’re very beautiful?” her master asked.

The stranger laughed, embarrassed. “Thanks,” she said, bashfully.

“I’m serious. I’m so glad Rachel introduced us.”

“Let’s not talk about Rachel right now,” the stranger said guiltily.

“Of course, of course. Come into the bedroom, it’s more comfortable in there.”

“Show me. I’d love to see it.

The pilot heard two pairs of footsteps come closer.

“Wow, it’s so cozy! The pillows are so cute! And that’s a really cool…is that a wooden chest? What’s in there?”

Footsteps came closer and closer until they stopped very near the pilot. “It’s the perfect height for sitting on,” her master said. The pilot heard a thunk from above her as her Master presumably pulled herself onto the flat top of the chest. “Other than that, it mostly just takes up space.”

“Really?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I keep sex toys in here.” She banged the lid, and it sounded almost deafening from within the chest. “But not the ones I use frequently—those are beside the bed. In here are the ones I don’t really care about anymore, really. You know, stuff that used to be nice but doesn’t really do it for me anymore.

“I’d much rather do it with you.”

The stranger let out a peal of laughter. “Lara, you’re so much,” she said. Then, the pilot heard the sound of a kiss. It grew in intensity as the stranger and her Master shared space, breath and heat together on top of the wooden chest.

And below them, the broken doll crouched, alone, frozen in the dark.