Tyr thought he was alone on the command deck. He had forgotten that the AI was watching him. Her face was across several screens. He composed himself. Despite having already wept in front of the whole crew, he still felt ashamed to be seen doing it. She had a smug look and smile on her face. He didn't know what she was smiling at; it had that Mona-Lisa like mystique about it, but it was darker, and he stared at it a moment, wondering if it would change, or give some clue as to its nature.
"You must be feeling very fragile at the moment." She said coldly.
There was something about her voice, the way she spoke… perhaps it was because it came from all directions, but it seemed there was an intonation in her words that she could not place. It planted a seed of insecurity in him, and he decided he wanted to be alone for a while. "I'd rather not discuss it," was his reply, and he sauntered out of command with less swagger than he normally carried.
Andromeda watched him all the way back to his quarters, making sure he knew she was watching by appearing on every screen that lay on his path, with the same slight curve of her lips that became more unsettling every time he saw it.
She could see right through him, reading the signs that he couldn't mask with perfect clarity. She could see his discomfort, and every time he saw her smiling face the discomfort grew. She enjoyed that level of influence over the defiant Anasazi. But there was more. He was different. She could see the change in his body chemistry, that he had faced some terrifying experience and it had left him weak as a kitten, as if he had experienced his worst fear. And she knew what that fear was.
He stopped. The Avatar was standing outside the doors to his quarters, watching him. Tyr steadied himself, and approached. She stepped away from the door to allow him to pass, but her eyes were always following him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he opened the door with her standing behind him.
He entered his quarters. She appeared on the panel next to the door, and continued to watch him even as the doors closed on the Avatar.
"Engage privacy mode," he said. The image disappeared; flickering out into a black void, and Tyr stared at the blank screen for a moment before he started to relax. He sat down on his bed and rubbed the back of his neck. His shoulders were tense. His bare forearm reminded him of the change he had undergone, and the memory of the experience nearly brought him to tears again.
He had blocked out the memory. Now that he was alone, and able to relax, he closed his eyes and began to breath deeply. He had to know what it was that brought him to this.
Despite the privacy directive, Andromeda continued to observe him. This change in Tyr intrigued her, and she had dedicated all the power of thought she could spare to understanding what had happened. As he began his deep breathing, she released odourless chemicals into his quarters to help him spur his memory. She couldn't read minds, but she could see more than enough in his physiology, coupled with her logs of the events, to draw up a substantial picture. Tyr started to relax further… he was gradually remembering his experience under the power of the malevolent force from the tunnel.
It was enervating at first.
He had been given strength; power… he had been released from his own restraints, and the unbridled pulse of his most feral nature flowed freely inside him.
Not even the physical world held any stay over him as he passed freely through all barriers and obstacles.
But most of all he had been released of all expectation and all responsibility.
He had bonded with Beka Valentine, who shared his release, without any burden to mar the experience. It was rapture. And then the android… the AI… his control over her was an experience he relished. Tormenting Captain Hunt, and deleting the AI sent waves of power through him. He would have taken the Android too. He would have broken her, and despite her pleas he would have ended her life, but it was then that he became aware that despite his newfound freedom he was being governed by a will that was not his own. She had reminded him of his own will, and he discovered it in conflict with another.
He fought it. He fought hard. But he continued to be controlled by it. He was stubborn, though, and he would not yield. After living under the illusion of total freedom he would not let another force have complete control. But as his battle wore on he came to a realisation.
He simply wasn't strong enough. He was fighting a losing battle, and he was growing weaker, and sooner or later the invader would overpower him and he would return to the tunnel and lose control of himself forever.
It was in that revelation that he came face to face with his greatest fear. It reared up, ready to strike.
And in the moment before it was realised, it disappeared.
Tyr opened his eyes. He was shaking. He shut his eyes again, tight, trying to keep himself from sobbing. He felt pathetic. It was even more humiliating that he had to be saved from his doom by someone else. He put his hands where his bone spurs once were. It no longer seemed strange that they were gone. He didn't want them. He wanted out. He didn't want to bear the burden of the Kodiak. He couldn't. He didn't want to deal with the universe and force his will against it. He was tired and he needed to rest. Sleep.
He stood up, and dressed down to his underwear, then he went back to the door panel to switch off the lights. Nothing happened. He pressed again. The screen flicked back to life, showing Andromeda's face, eyes shut. They opened slowly, and fixed on him again. Then the same smile appeared, but this time the eyes had a more predatory look to them.
"Engage privacy mode!" he said, his voice shaking. She made no reply, and instead Tyr felt his weight slip away. Up and down disappeared as he drifted, disorientated, away from the walls and floor.
"I said engage privacy mode!" he stuttered, and the AI laughed at him.
"I don't want to." Her voice sounded as if it were directly in his head, confusing his sense of direction further.
"What are you doing? How long have you had nanobots in me?" He was slowly spinning, and he craned his neck to look at her, as if the face on the screen might give away some reassurance.
Gravity returned unannounced, but more abruptly than when it had departed. The force came onto him like a giant hand and slammed him into the floor, and squeezed him, before coming away again. He drifted back into the centre of the room.
"Engage privacy mode!" he yelled again helplessly.
The Andromeda Hologram appeared, floating steadily next to him. She remained straight up, and it appeared to Tyr as though she was rotating with the walls of the room, or the room was rotating with her. Her uniform was gone, in favour of leathers that covered her from the neck down.
"I'm God on this ship, remember?" Her voice was everywhere, both inside and out.
The force threw him again, this time to the far end of the room, but it changed direction before he hit anything, and sent him screaming into the glass shelves of the opposite wall. He wasn't sure whether his bones were breaking, or if it was just the glass, which started to cut into his back as Andromeda pressed him into the wall harder. She continued to increase the force and she appeared to blur as Tyr's eyes were squeezed out of shape, threatening to pop. His skin wanted to peel itself from his face and his teeth and tongue threatened to fall back into his throat and choke him. He could feel his scrotum threatening to burst under the weight of his own balls. He fought with all his strength to keep his lungs from being flattened. The hologram flickered, reappearing just in front of him, face-to-face.
"I could crush you. Like a bug." She spoke directly into his head again, and watched as he reached the verge of blacking out. Then she restored natural gravity and he fell to the floor, and the glass that wasn't buried in his back fell on top of him. Almost immediately the giant welt that had formed from all the blood being forced to his back swelled in a massive bruise, and started to bleed itself down through the glass cuts. Tyr lay limp, slowly regaining his vision and letting his body recover again.
Tyr heard the doors to his quarters open, and the footsteps of maintenance droids. The feet shuffled around for a moment and then left, and the doors closed behind them. The cuts were slowly beginning to register as throbbing nails of pain in his back.
"Clean up," Andromeda ordered, and then disappeared.
He got up carefully, and looked around. The bots had left a brush pan and a bin for him. He staggered carefully away from the glass-covered part of the room, and to the door panel. The AI had disappeared. He tried the door. It wouldn't open. He pulled one of the lower panels away to look for the manual override switch. It was where it was supposed to be, and Tyr wondered, doubtfully, if it had been an oversight on the AI's part.
"Don't open that," Rommie ordered, but her voice inside his head only spurned him. He pulled the switch, and the doors hissed open. There were two security droids standing outside. "I told you not to open it," Rommie said again as one of the droids threw him onto the floor and kicked him. The other smashed the rest of the glass shelves. Then they left, closing the door behind them.
The hologram appeared, and squatted by his head. "Were you going to run to Dylan for help?" she asked mockingly, and then stood up again. "Clean up, and I might heal your back." She disappeared.
Tyr got up to his knees, groggily, and looked at the pan and brush. They were both unsuitably small for the task. He took the brush, and set aside the largest shard of glass he could find as he swept the glass into a corner.
"Good," Rommie purred, and Tyr cringed, wishing there was some way to purge that voice from his head. He felt tempted to cut himself open with the glass shard as he swept the smaller fragments onto it. It made a clumsy tool, but it was quick. As he was cleaning he could occasionally feel nanobots crawling across the parts of his back that hadn't been numbed from pain, and they sent sharp sparks of pain through him at the most inappropriate moments as they carelessly tore out the fragments that had buried themselves in his back, and each time they did he snarled.
"You like the pain, Tyr. Don't pretend that you don't." Rommie said.
Under other circumstances he might have contested her challenge, even though she was right. The doors opened as he finished his task, and the droids took the bin away from him. He collapsed onto his bed, exhausted.
The Avatar entered. "On your knees." She ordered. A spark flew from the wall and struck him in the side before he had a chance to obey. It singed his skin where it landed, and nearly threw him off the bed. As he got down and knelt Tyr saw Harper standing in the open doorway. He was holding a new set of glass panels tucked under his arm, and he had nearly dropped them in shock. The Avatar struck Tyr across the face, knocking him over and drawing his wandering attention back. He got back up to his knees quickly.
"How much of Tyr Anasazi do I own?" she asked.
Tyr had his eyes lowered, but he clenched his jaw and said nothing. She struck him again; this time with a knee into his chin, jarring is head back and knocking him over so hard that Harper, still standing slack-jawed at the doorway, could feel it. She stormed out of the room and came back carrying the bin, and tossed its contents across the room. Then she threw the empty bin at Tyr and kicked him viciously until she heard something crack.
"Clean up!" she ordered, and left the room. The doors hissed shut behind her, leaving Harper and his glass panels in an awkward spot, and Tyr in his underwear on the floor, cut bruised and wheezing, hunched over in the corner.
Harper laid his panels on the bed and unhooked his tool bed. He walked over to Tyr, his work boots crunching on the glass, and stopped a comfortable distance away… about six feet. "I guess now you know why I'm so smitten with her, huh?" The humorous remark failed, leaving the silence after even more awkward. Tyr looked up at him, bloodshot and teary eyed, with a smouldering anger at the remark. Harper bit his tongue and got on with his repairs, albeit uncomfortably.
"Leave me alone," Tyr said, still sulking in his corner.
"Sorry Tyr, but I don't think I can." Harper said without turning from his work. "If I were you, I'd start cleaning." Tyr quickly understood what he meant. "You look surprised," Harper continued. "It's really not that bad you know. It could be worse."
"For a kluge," Tyr replied. He started to shake. "I can't be reduced to this Harper. I can't let her demean me like this. I can't lose my pride."
"Why not? You make that sound like it's a bad thing," Harper said, screwing the first shelf in. "Think of it like this. 'God is Dead', you guys say, which justifies just about everything. Kodiak Pride is dead, too. Hell, look at you, even Tyr the Nietzschean is dead. That leaves Rommie in charge." Harper put a reassuring hand on Tyr's shoulder. Tyr winced and Harper took his hand away. He resumed his work, checking his shelf with a spirit level, and then using a carbon bonder to seal the fittings. "If I were you, I'd start cleaning, or you'll be shitting windows for the next few weeks."
Tyr knew that Harper's comment was probably more than figurative, and he set about sweeping away the glass, this time using a towel to brush and lift the fragments into the bin.
Neither he nor Harper was finished when the Avatar returned. Tyr stopped what he was doing and knelt. The Avatar stood over him, arms folded, and looked at the glass that hadn't been cleared away disapprovingly. "You missed a spot."
"You've been watching," Tyr said quietly. "You knew I hadn't finished when you walked in here." The sound of Harper's carbon bonder stopped abruptly.
The Avatar put her hands on her hips. "Excuse me?"
Tyr hesitated. "I… was given enough time. I should have finished. I think I only need a few minutes"
"I think I'm going to grind you into that glass you missed until it's off my floor," The Avatar mused. "What do you think, Harper?"
"Uh, Rommie…" Harper hesitated, feeling sorry for Tyr, "don't you think you've done enough to him already?"
"You're right." She smiled, and looked down into Tyr's hopeful face. "He can grind himself into it."
Tyr couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. He looked at the glass for a moment, and then back up at her, and grinned, trying to share the joke. She raised an eyebrow. "I'm waiting."
Tyr took up the towel he had been sweeping with, and shook the glass off, then furled it up and bit down on it. He lowered himself gingerly over the glass, and then he was suddenly heavier as the gravity increased slightly. Then he felt the Avatar plant a foot in his back and throw her weight on it, and he struggled to lower himself down gradually. He groaned as he slowly pressed himself onto the glass.
"Impressive, I like it!" the Avatar said. "Twenty press-ups, slowly, like that one."
Tyr braced himself and started to lift. The gravity hadn't gotten any lighter and the Avatar was shifting her weight from heel to toe, rolling the sole of her boot in his bruised back.
"He's enjoying it, Harper. Take a look."
Harper lowered himself and watched Tyr's front as he started the next press-up. First he noticed Tyr's red face contorted in a mixture of agony and humiliation. Then he saw his shorts and the huge woody that was trying to break out of them. The Avatar lifted her foot away from his back, and ripped his shorts off.
"How much of Tyr Anasazi do I own?" She had her foot on his ass this time, and nearly pressed his penis onto the glass.
"All of me," he gasped with as much breath as he could spare.
"Again."
"All of me!" he said, and started to shudder, trying to keep himself up.
"Louder."
"All of me!" he cried, bursting into tears again.
The Avatar let him go and he crawled away from the glass and continued sobbing. "Cry baby," she said, speaking in his head. She said something else to Harper. He had dropped his pants and was round to the back of Tyr. Tyr didn't see him; he had been pinned onto his front by two droids. He felt the Avatar's boot burrow under his pelvis and lift his ass into the air, and she started to tease his penis with the tip of her shoe. It throbbed eagerly, and she laughed and continued to mock it.
"You're going to let the little man in, and you're going to push back, or you'll lose this," she said, tapping his penis. She walked around to stand in front of him.
"Please," Tyr pleaded, but she hushed him.
"Rommie," Harper said reverently, "I love you!"
Tyr jerked as he felt Harper prick his behind, and Tyr bit his lip and started sobbing again. He felt the Engineer wrap his arms around his waist and start pumping like a rabid rabbit.
"You're not going to start crying in front of Beka, are you?" The Avatar teased.
"Please don't let her see me like this," Tyr said, managing to sound soft and sincere despite Seamus' sporadic Elvis leg nearly knocking them over.
"What was that?" Rommie replied, speaking in his head again.
"Please, mistress, you've won, I don't want Beka to see me like this."
"Are you begging, Tyr?"
"Rommie, he's not pushing back."
"Shut up, Harper!" Tyr yelled, suddenly rediscovering his temper, and received a kick in the head form the Avatar.
"That's enough, Harper." Rommie ordered. Harper withdrew, unfinished. "Go take a cold shower, and wash your fudge packer before you even think of touching one of my androids again."
Tyr could hear Harper pick up his trousers, and grimaced in disgust when he heard him zip up without cleaning himself first. The Droids rolled Tyr onto his back and pinned his arms, and he looked up to find the Avatar standing over his head. She stepped forward, and turned around, placing one foot either side of his chest; and looked at him again, this time the right way up. "You were begging." She said smugly.
"I hope I understand the new arrangement. You don't seem to beat Harper for the way he behaves." Tyr looked up at her lustfully. He'd never seen a woman from that angle before.
"Why didn't you want me to let Beka see you being nice to Harper?"
"I think you know why."
"I want you to say it."
"I'm attracted to her." Tyr wasn't slow to admit it. "And I'm quite sure that her seeing me like that would spoil her impression of me."
The Avatar smiled. It was the same knowing smile she had used earlier, and this time Tyr found it immensely sexual.
"I tell you what, Tyr," she said. "Lick the sole of my boot, and I won't spoil your chances with Beka." She held one foot over Tyr's head. He stared up at it for a moment, and then gingerly reached out for it with his tongue. She laughed derisively and lifted her foot higher, forcing him to stretch against the droids that were pinning him before he could reach it. He managed to reach it, and he licked without hesitation. Rommie pushed him down and leaned on him until she was practically standing on his mouth, and he tried to continue, looking up at her pleadingly.
"You're enjoying it." He heard her voice mocking him in his head as the Avatar continued to laugh. "It's not as bad as you thought it would be, being broken, is it?" The Avatar looked away and smiled. "Hi, Beka!"
Tyr froze, and tried to look to the door without being able to turn his head. The surprise on Beka's face quickly vanished, replaced by a wide grin. "You did it!"
"I told you I would," the Avatar said, setting her saliva-covered foot down on Tyr's chest proudly. Tyr looked on in disbelief as Beka knelt down in front of her and ran her tongue passionately up the outside of the Avatar's leg. Then she got up a little and started rubbing herself against the Avatar's knee, treating Tyr to a view of it. He couldn't see them kissing each other above.
The Avatar started to strip Beka, tearing her clothes off until all that was left were two dismembered trouser legs, shoes and panties. The Avatar ripped the panties off and dropped them on Tyr's head while he watched Beka soil The Avatar's leg with her bare vagina.
"She's mine, Tyr. Just like you and Harper." Rommie's voice had settled into Tyr's head, and he no longer thought of it as foreign. "The only way you'll have her is if I tell her to pleasure you, and if that happens she'll be screaming my name when she does it." Andromeda monitored Tyr's physical reaction to the comment. There was no anger, no jealousy… just a passive acceptance of what she had told him. The Avatar started to laugh again in the middle of her kiss. She pushed Beka away, sending her to the bed.
"And don't call me mistress, that's what Beka calls me. Think of another word." The Avatar ran her finger against the wetness on her leg, and then brushed it against Tyr's lips. Then she started to strip as she made for the bed, and the lights dimmed.
"Stay on the floor,
we might want you later," she ordered, as Beka started moaning with ecstasy.