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Goretober [5/15]: BEATEN UP

The Memory Circuit [V]

Bite Down

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⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

TW: graphic depictions of physical and psychological torture, child abuse, grooming, sexual violence involving minors, institutional exploitation, non-consensual medical/technological procedures, trauma flashbacks, violence, captivity, dissociation, systemic abuse.

Line dividers by @sister-lucifer!!!!

It’s in the bones. In the soft tissue. In the places they didn’t bandage, because they didn’t care to.

His ribs are packed wrong—wrapped too tight, maybe broken in three places. His knees are locked in crude external splints. The shoulder—left—burns. Swollen. Dislocated. Maybe shattered? It feels like it. His right hand won’t flex. 

The chair holds him upright, fixed in place. Mechanical restraints at ankles, wrists, chest. A gentle hum. Cold metal bolted to colder floors. Bok can’t breathe easy. He can only sit in the wreckage of himself, eyes half-lidded, mouth dry and sticky.  

He shifts. Just once.  

The pain flares, vivid and immediate.

The door opens.

He doesn’t lift his head. He can hear the steps: unhurried, expensive. A rustle of real fabric, not synthetic. Cotton. Maybe silk.

“You know,” the voice says lightly, “you’ve got a remarkable pain threshold.”

Bok does look, then. Just a little. His neck protests, loud.

The man who enters is not dressed like a soldier. Civilian clothes: deep blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar loose; dark slacks. Wavy red hair pulled back loosely, some of it still curling at the sides. A gold necklace glints at his chest. Black gloves sheath his hands, and at his hip, a sleek holstered gun rests.

Pretty. Bok hates that it’s the first thing he notices. Pretty, in that careless, born-with-it way. Sharp nose, clean lines, dry eyes.

Coffee. He’s holding coffee.

Bok stares.

The man sets it down on the table beside him and gestures with an elegant little flourish, like they’re starting a chess match.

“Broke a man’s tibia with your elbow, apparently. While your own leg was already broken. I don’t know if I’m impressed or nervous.”

Bok can’t tell if he’s being mocking or not.

The man walks closer, retrieving the neural tap cable.

“You were still kicking. Still biting. Ribs broken, hand crushed, and you still managed to stab someone. So forgive me—” he glances at the restraints, “—for being a little cautious.”  

He crouches. Close now. Bok can smell the coffee.  

“I’m Ricky,” he says, tone clipped, unbothered. “You and I are going to get very close.”  

Ricky picks up the bit next, turning it between his fingers—black polymer, soft—and holds it up like a peace offering.

“Bite down.”  

Bok doesn’t move.

Ricky rocks forward onto his toes, his face barely beneath Bok’s eye level, but Bok gazes coolly back down at him nonetheless.

“It’s not for me,” Ricky snorts. “It’s for your tongue. Once I go in, it’s going to get ugly.”

He slips it into Bok’s mouth with steady fingers. Bok bites down hard.

Ricky jerks his hand back with a hiss. “Shit,” he mutters, shaking out his hand. “Yeah. Good man.”

He finally rises, shakes out his fingers one last time, then turns and strides to the console.

The rig hums to life. The tap slides into position, and Ricky’s fingers fly over the controls, quietly humming to himself.

“Not personal,” he adds—and hits one last switch.

¶¶¶¶

Whatever it is slams into Bok’s skull like a hammer.

He jerks in the chair. Screams against the bit. His back arches. The restraints groan. Every nerve lights up like a live wire.  

On-screen, the first images begin to flash.

¶¶¶¶

Age 13. Training Facility: Unit 17

A dorm. Sterile. White. He’s naked from the waist down.  

A clipboard passes between two adults. One nods. The other gestures.  

The handler steps forward. Grabs his jaw. Lifts it. Examines him like a horse.  

“He's grown,” they note. “Ready for evaluation.”  

He tries to speak. Voice cracks. They slap him. Open hand. 

He’s twelve. Maybe thirteen.  

The handler grips his shoulder. Turns him. Presents him.  

“You’ll be perfect,” they murmur, adjusting his collar. “Lower your eyes.”  

Bok watches from the chair, shaking.  

NO. No no nonono stop—stop this—no more, not now—

But it only digs in further.  

¶¶¶¶

Age 14. Night Session: Red Room

A velvet bed. Cameras in every corner. A glass wall.  

Three men sit behind it. Watching. Grading.  

Bok is told to strip. He does.  

Hands guide him. Lotioned palms. Voice at his ear.  

“Do it sweet this time. Smile like you mean it.”  

Sharp cologne. Bok kneels.  

His eyes are dead. Inside, he’s somewhere else.  

Behind the glass, someone nods. A ‘pass’.

Bok clenches his fists in the chair. Restraints grind against metal.  

His whole body is taut. Teeth digging into the bit.  

Ricky shifts. He clears his throat. Tries to skip ahead.  

Bok slams a mental wall in place.  

The machine screeches. Screen fuzzes. Glitches.  

But it finds another path.

¶¶¶¶

Age 15. First Kill

A hotel room. Expensive. Marble tub.  

A client lies back, champagne in one hand. His pupils are slow.  

Bok is dressed in silk. Lipstick.  

He laughs. Touches the man’s shoulder. Drops something into the drink.  

“Bottoms up.”  

The man drinks.  

Thirty seconds. His lips go slack. Bok leans in. Whispers something that isn’t picked up. Then drives the needle into his neck.  

The body spasms.  

Bok pins him with a knee. Watches the light fade.  

Then calmly strips the bed. Wipes the prints. Changes clothes. Twirls the keys, pockets them, gone. 

The whole act—flawless.

On screen, it replays twice.  

Ricky exhales. 

“Why did they pivot you to assassination?” 

Bok curls his lip. “Maybe I got bored.”

¶¶¶¶

Age 16. Assault

A handler. Drunk. Furious. Slams Bok into the wall.  

“You want to make me look bad?”  

He’s been failing evaluations. Slipping.  

Too much resistance.

The man forces him down. Belt off. No camera this time.  

It’s fast. Violent. Bok doesn’t scream.  

Afterwards, he lies there. Eyes open. Something gone.  

¶¶¶¶

Bok thrashes in the chair. Screaming now. Wordless. Gut-deep.  

The restraints dig into broken skin.  

On screen, the memory degrades. Fragments. Blurs.  

Then another—

¶¶¶¶

Age 17. Redress

A locker room. Same handler.  

Bok follows, humming.  

Injector in hand. Sharp. Fast.  

Stab to the neck. Hold it. Hold it—until the body stops moving.  

The blood freckles Bok’s cheek.

He laughs—soft, breathless.

¶¶¶¶

Back in the chair, Bok shoves with every ounce of mental force left.  

The screen hisses. Static. Feedback stutters.

Bok’s pushing back against the onslaught. Slamming doors in its face.

Ricky types frantically. Tries to reroute.  

Fails.  

Tries again.  

Fails.  

Overload. 

Sync disruption. 

Neural resistance spike: critical. 

“Stop fighting,” Ricky snaps. “Stop it—”  

Bok glares at him. His lips are bleeding dark.

He spits the bit to the floor with a slick clack.

“You get off on that, Ricky?” he sneers, voice tight, eyes wet, betraying him. “You enjoy it?”  

The screen explodes into white noise. Hard cut.  

Bok crumples. Not quite unconscious. His head pounds.

Ricky stares at the console. Then at Bok.  

His voice is thin.

“You little bastard.”  

Ricky crosses the room. Pages someone on the intercom.  

“We’ve got a failure,” he says. “Tap’s down. No data retrieved. He—overloaded it. I don’t know how.”

A beat.  

“No, don’t send a tech. He fried it.”  

He turns his back, pinching the bridge of his nose. Silence.

He clicks off.  

Ricky stands by the door, one hand resting on the frame, his gaze tracing the tense lines of Bok’s body as his chest heaves with ragged breaths.

“You know,” Ricky’s voice is hollow, the words hanging in the space between them, “I was hoping you’d make this easy.”  

“Go… fuck yourself,” Bok wheezes out.

The door hisses shut behind Ricky, sharp and final.

The lights dim.

And Bok lets his head fall back, eyes shuttering.

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The Memory Circuit MASTERLIST

⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

The Memory Circuit [I] TW:

The Customer Is Always Wrong [II] TW: sex work, intoxication, dissociation, emotional numbness, implied exploitation.

Get In Line, Mister! [III] TW: physical assault, attempted sexual assault, substance use, internalised trauma, psychological breakdown, imprisonment, coercion, manipulation, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Good Morning, Sunshine [IV] TW: police brutality, physical assault, vomiting, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Bite Down [V] TW: graphic depictions of physical and psychological torture, child abuse, grooming, sexual violence involving minors, institutional exploitation, non-consensual medical/technological procedures, trauma flashbacks, violence, captivity, dissociation, systemic abuse.

------------------------------------------------------

ART!!!!

The Memory Circuit

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The air is thick with the cool breath of night. The light—sharp, blinding—flickers, then fades, swallowed by the dark. Wetness has seeped into their hair and scalp; rough cement bites into their back.

A voice.

A hand pulling them up. Another hand, setting them on their feet. Brushing debris off their sodden green garb; inquisitive tones.

“What’s your name?” they ask.

Joyeux—

Bok... Joyeux.

But their throat hurts and the words don’t spit, and they want to lie down again.

Hal Hawkins hesitates before he reaches out, pressing a hand to their shoulder.

They flinch.

“Hey, easy,” Hal murmurs. “You with me?”

A pause. The sharp scent of damp concrete. The hum of something electric, distant.

Bok blinks, sluggish. “I don’t know.”

Hal exhales sharply through his nose, rubs a hand over his jaw. “That’s not great, is it?”

¶¶¶¶

Bok and Hal live together. It is a small flat, crammed with too many books, too many wires, things with blinking lights whose purpose Hal won’t explain.

Mornings, Hal hands Bok a cup of tea, frowns when Bok wraps both hands around it and doesn't flinch. The steam curls against Bok’s face, but he only tilts his head, watches it rise, unreadable.

Bok scalds himself pouring out boiling water for pasta. Someone shouts. He glances down at his blistering skin, pressing a fingertip against the raw patch with a curious gleam in his eye.

Hal grabs his wrist, voice sharp. “Hey. What the hell?”

Bok doesn’t answer.

¶¶¶¶

Bok tries his hardest to get into religion.

“I think fear was the first thing I ever learned,” he tells Hal, flipping through pages of an old, cracked Bible. “Fear and shame. I abandoned God but kept my shackles.”

Hal hums from where he sits on the floor, working on a delicate network of luminescent capillaries. “Sounds exhausting.”

Bok considers this, then shrugs.

¶¶¶¶

He slices himself on accident. The cut isn’t deep, but the reaction is instant. Someone yelps. Bok lifts his hand, turning it this way and that, watching thick black liquid bead and streak down his wrist. Someone rushes to grab a napkin.

“Your pen exploded,” they say, pressing the paper against his palm. Bok says nothing.

¶¶¶¶

Curled together, their bodies tangled in the dim glow of the ceiling light, Bok traces slow, deliberate patterns against the nape of Hal’s neck. The warmth of his breath ghosts over skin, his voice slipping soft into the space between them.

“I am one tiny part of this vast universe,” he murmurs, “offered the chance to comprehend myself ever so briefly, and to fall in love with what I see.”

Hal stills. The hum of the city filters in through the open window—distant, electric, alive. Bok feels the shift in Hal’s breathing before he hears his voice.

“Poetic.” A pause. “Did you read that somewhere?”

Bok tilts his head, considers. “No.”

Hal says nothing. The light buzzes overhead, flickering once.

¶¶¶¶

Bok finally suspects something is wrong.

“Two years ago,” Hal says, a little softly. “Here, in Rome. You were wearing emerald green.”

Bok gazes into his mirror, loose strands spilling past his eyes, at a reflection both carnal and utterly alien. 

He hadn't known how long he'd been in Rome, or how he'd gotten there.

¶¶¶¶

Their flat is raided. Bok locks Hal and himself in the bathroom. The door rattles on its hinges, a fist pounding against it. The sound of gunfire, of things splintering.

Hal is bleeding out on the tiled floor. Bok is deliberating.

“Joyeux,” Hal breathes, voice rasping.

Bok freezes. The name feels like a bullet to the skull.

¶¶¶¶

There is no time. He drops through the window, eight stories up. The pain is muted as he crashes onto the pavement below, vision swimming, systems struggling to recalibrate. He is left to peer up at a sky that sprinkles softly back down on him.

For a moment, Bok just lies there, feeling the rain sink into his clothes, feeling the static fuzz at the edges of his mind. The pavement is cold against his cheek. Somewhere above, inside the flat, Hal is dying.

Someone's shouting. Boots slamming against wet concrete. A distant siren wailing through the city streets.

A tremor runs through Bok’s fingers. His limbs feel leaden, sluggish, but his body is still trying to move, to repair itself.

He presses a hand to the ground, tries to push himself upright. A jolt of something sharp lances through his spine, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t. He was programmed to survive, after all.

Survival...

The word echoes in his head, cold and hollow. Hadn’t Hal said something, once, about survival? About living versus being alive?

Bok doesn’t remember.

All he knows is that Hal’s voice is already slipping from his memory, like ink bleeding into water. His fingers clench against the pavement.

The light overhead flickers. A streetlamp, swaying in the wind. For a split second, Bok swears he hears Hal’s voice—low, exasperated, fond.

Joyeux.

Then, the moment is gone.

Bok drags himself to his feet. His systems are stabilising. The rain is coming down harder now, washing the black streaks from his hands.

Somewhere in the city, he knows, there are answers.

He takes a step forward. Then another.

And then he starts to run.

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The Memory Circuit [IV]

Good Morning, Sunshine

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⎉: @chaotic-orphan @morning-star-whump Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the taglist!

TW: police brutality, physical assault, vomiting, surveillance, systemic abuse.

Line dividers by @sister-lucifer!!!!

The door buzzes.

Hal jabs the button again, hard.

Nothing.

Then: “It’s four-fucking-thirty in the morning, Hal.”

Her voice crackles through the speaker like it’s pissed, too. He presses his forehead to the doorframe, eyes closed.

“Hey, Piggy.”

The lock clicks.

Jules stands in the doorway in a billowing shirt and one sock, hair a frizzy halo of sleep and pure, undiluted fury.

“You look like shit,” she settles venomously, stepping aside.

The flat smells like chamomile and burnt oil. There’s a threadbare orange blanket on the couch and a spider plant hanging in the corner, definitely named something like Milo. Hal sinks onto the couch, spine curling in on itself. Jules crosses her arms.

“Is this about Bok?”

Hal’s head jerks up.

She sighs, already turning for the kitchen. “I’m putting the kettle on. Start talking before it boils.”

¶¶¶¶

The kettle clicks. Hal’s in the kitchen, shoulders hunched as he pours water into sleek mugs. His hands shake.

Jules watches him from the table, unreadable.

“He’s gone,” Hal says, voice hoarse.

“I figured,” Jules replies. “The silence wasn’t exactly reassuring.”

Hal lets out a slow, ragged breath. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Lucky me,” she mutters.

Then: Knock knock knock.

Jules’ eyes snap to the door.

“Please tell me that’s not—”

“Open up, Jules,” comes Ricky’s voice, carrying that signature lilt of his.

She doesn’t move. Hal, already pale, goes corpse white.

Jules opens the door just enough to glare through. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

Ricky smiles coolly. “Just here to chat.”

“Go chat with a blender.”

She tries to shut the door. He plants a booted foot in the frame.

“We’ve got Joyeux,” he says. “You know what that means.”

Her jaw tightens. She steps aside, reluctantly. “You’ve got five minutes.”

Ricky walks in like it’s his flat, brushing droplets off his shoulders. Hal retreats to the sink, one hand braced on the counter like it’s the only thing holding him up.

Ricky’s eyes flick to Hal. “I assume you know Hal was keeping company with a nomadroid.”

He halts mid-pace, catching Jules’s look.

A beat.

“I’m assuming you didn’t know it was unregistered. Fully illegal. Possibly unstable.”

Hal makes a noise—half breath, half choke. Jules glares at him too.

“I know it’s complicated,” Ricky hums. “But Joyeux was dangerous. The raid was clean. We have footage. And Hawkins’ prints.”

“Shut up,” Jules says.

Ricky lifts an eyebrow.

She turns to Hal, voice quieter now. “You didn’t tell me everything.”

Hal can’t look at her.

“Did you love him?”

The air goes still.

Hal’s grip on the counter slips. He doubles over and vomits into the sink, body wracked and shaking.

Jules doesn’t flinch. Just grabs a dish towel, runs it under cold water, and presses it into his hands.

Ricky looks away; pulls out his datapad.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says lightly, and walks out.

The door shuts behind him.

Jules exhales—long, slow, furious.

Hal leans against the wall, towel clutched in his hands, face pale.

“You loved him,” she says again, not asking this time.

And Hal, eyes puffy, just nods.

¶¶¶¶

Earlier.

They blow the door in.

No warning, no pause. Just the shockwave and splinters, smoke curling into the hallway like fingers.

Bok’s head snaps up from the mattress on the floor. He doesn’t move fast enough.

They’re already inside.

Three soldiers. Black gear, black masks, silent. Their eyes glint faintly like glass behind the visors. A flick of motion, and the room is theirs.

Bok reaches for the blade on the counter. Cheap boxcutter. Pathetic. He grabs it anyway.

The first soldier closes in.

Bok swings.

Steel kisses flesh—a shallow cut across a gloved arm. The soldier barely reacts.

Bok bolts.

One grabs his shirt, misses. Another’s faster. A baton slams into Bok’s spine. His knees buckle. He drops, scrambles, still crawling, still fighting—

Another hit—his side caves in around it. Something cracks. He sucks in air.

He twists, knife in hand, jabs upward.

The blade rakes a thigh—deep. The man swears. Stumbles. Bok surges forward.

It doesn’t matter.

A boot catches his shoulder. Slams him sideways into the wall. His skull hits plaster, leaves a dent. He falls.

They’re on him.

He thrashes—kicks, claws, spits black.

Someone grabs his hair, yanks him up. His neck strains. He stabs back—nothing.

A baton hammers down.

His hand breaks. Knife drops. Gone.

They don’t stop.

Two hold him down. One crushes a knee with the baton—crack. Bok jerks, bites his own tongue. Ink floods his mouth.

“Still fighting?” one mutters. Disgusted.

Second knee. 

Crack. 

He goes limp, twitching. Ribs heave. Eyes wide. Still conscious.

One more hit to the jaw. His head snaps sideways. Something dislocates.

They drag him.

By the arms. His head falls back, eyes dull, breath fogging through slightly parted lips. His bare heels scrape against the floor. Sweat clings his hair to his forehead, dripping down his face. The rest of his body hangs limp, trailing behind them like a trainwreck.

“Secure,” one says.

Another checks a watch. “Thirty seconds over. Let’s move.”

They vanish into the hallway.

The door hangs from one hinge. The room still smells like smoke and metal and blood. 

And they’re gone.

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