Black Box 3.0

"Probably," he said. For the first time in days, he felt like Kevin again, not whatever he was right now. It threatened to overwhelm him and he took a step back and shook his head.

"Are you ok?" she asked. Kevin looked at her like she was insane and they both laughed.

"I am pretty far from fucking ok, but I'm better now than I have been since I woke up from...the box," he said.

Leah looked at him again and gently ran her hands over his body. There was nothing erotic about the touch; she was trying to process exactly how much he had changed. But some switch clicked, and Kevin quickly became hard. Suddenly he could smell Leah. She smelled of gas from the snowmobile and woods and that soap she made herself. He could also catch a hint of something else and realized she was getting aroused.

Kevin hadn't had sex since the last time he and Leah were together, and remembered that AI Leah told him this body had some serious tricks. He took a step back from his Leah because there was still a lot that needed doing and while he wanted to fuck her brains out, now was not the moment.

"Leah, it's probably not too late. You can still turn around and leave. Once you enter the house, you are deep into some seriously weird shit," he said.

"Let me tell you something. I've been in that cabin for the last two weeks going insane. I have to talk myself out of coming here at least a half dozen times a day. Some days it doesn't work until I am on my snowmobile and on my way here. Then I turn around. That's what happened today. I was just about to turn around when I heard the gunshots and that was that.

"So if you think I'm going back home after seeing you look like this without finding out what's going on, you're nuts. Besides, I've been through some pretty fucked up things, Kevin. My weird shit tolerance level is higher than most."

If Kevin was being honest, he didn't want her to go. It was selfish, but there was every chance that Mitchell would likely involve Leah anyway when he showed up. At least here, the two of them could work together and keep each other safe.

"Ok," he said and waved his hand towards the stairs and the door. "But don't say I didn't warn you. Oh, and brace yourself for the smell."

They walked into the house, and while Kevin had grown somewhat used to the smell, it slammed into Leah like a baseball bat to the face.

"Jesus Christ," she said. "You're sure she's not dead because she smells fucking dead."

"I nearly killed her. I might have, but you tripped an alarm approaching the house, which distracted me," he said. Leah looked surprised and realized the old version of himself wouldn't talk cavalierly about murdering someone. One more bloody change to deal with. He reached the door and looked down at her. She gave him a nod and he swung it open.

Leah didn't initially say anything when she walked in. Not from the smell, which was much stronger in the room. Not from the giant bank of computer monitors, not from all the security footage scrolling by or the piles of equipment scattered around the room. It wasn't under he saw her stiffen that he realized she finally saw Lillian. She was barely recognizable as human at this point; little more than skin and bones, with fluids accumulating on the plastic tarp around the bed. Kevin had tried to remove as much fluid as he could several hours ago, but more had gathered.

"Holy fuck," Leah whispered. "That's Lillian?"

"What's left of her, yes. The process strips you down to....this, and then rebuilds you. Her rebuilding will start in a few hours."

"Did...did that happen to you?"

"Yes."

Leah looked like she might cry. Seeing those kinds of emotions with Leah was weird, but then again, this was a deeply weird situation.

"Did it hurt?"

And now he could smile.

"No. I was unconscious. I woke up like this a couple of days ago and have been trying to process everything. The changes aren't just physical but mental. I can process things much faster. I'm not a genius, but I'm getting there."

She walked around the room, giving Lillian a wide berth, which Kevin could understand. Then she saw the black box. She took a step towards it and then thought better, not wanting to get too close.

"That's what does it? That black box?" she asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see one of the monitors flash to get his attention while Leah fixated on the box.

"We need to talk," came up on a monitor..

Kevin realized he had a choice to make. Bringing his Leah in here wasn't part of the plan, but he didn't see any way to remove lingering doubts without letting her in. And now that she was here, he realized he would have to bring her all the way in.

This was going to be fun.

"Do you want to meet her?" he asked his Leah as she stared at the box. She turned around and gave him a weird look.

"Meet who?" Leah asked.

Kevin pointed at the box. "Her."

Leah still looked baffled. Kevin looked towards the computer and spoke.

"She's part of this now. You might as well show yourself," he said.

Leah was still looking at him as if he had suffered some brain damage. And then a version of her voice came out of the speakers.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? It will be a lot for her to process," AI Leah said.

"There's too much weird shit that's going to happen in the next week. Leah's here now and you've been in my memories, so you know she isn't going anywhere. I don't have the time to waste being coy about who you are, so you might as well show yourself," Kevin said.

"Who is..." Leah started saying when a version of her appeared on the computer screen. It was amusing to watch her jaw drop while a computer avatar version of her appeared on the monitor and waved.

"Hi there," the AI said.

Leah looked at the computer screen and then looked at Kevin. There was no anger there, which he was worried about, but there was a lot of confusion, which was perfectly understandable. He was about to try and explain what was going on, when AI Leah began speaking.

"I know this is weird, but when Kevin was unconscious, I interacted with him. I'm a very sophisticated artificial intelligence in that black box over there. I not only perform all the processes around changing the person, but I also help them keep calm and understand what's happening to them. To do that, I appear as someone they trust. He trusts you quite a bit.

"But, as Kevin has so eloquently stated, we are in the middle of some weird shit right now. So I hope you don't mind if I borrow your appearance. If it does, I can change into something more neutral," she said.

Leah managed to get her jaw to click back into place after hanging open for the last minute. She looked at the version of herself on the screen and then back at Kevin.

"I have about a million fucking questions, and you're going to answer all of them. But she said you were in the middle of deep shit right now. So I'm going to focus on that," she said.

As reactions went, Kevin couldn't have hoped for a much better one. Leah could have walked out the door without saying a word. Instead, it was "let's get down to business." One more reason he cared about her as much as he did.

He decided to quickly get her up to speed because she was taking the situation seriously. He moved over to the computer array and sat down. He called up some of AI Leah's information pulled from Lillian's mind. There was more. Assuming he lived through this, there was enough to keep him busy for months.

"Briefly, Lillian was given a black box of unknown origin by a massive piece of shit named Mitchell who works for some real dubious people. She had one month to figure out what it was. She did it in days. Then she drugged me, and put me under, intending to create a supervillain lackey. However, she underestimated our AI friend here," Kevin said, pointing at the screen. "So I adjusted my change. Physically I'm what Lillian wanted. Mentally, we did a 180.

"Now she's undergoing the process to make herself into something new. We've turned the tables on her, which is good. Mitchell will be here with company looking for the box in about two weeks, if we're lucky, which is bad. Oh, and just before you arrived, I found out that Lillian arranged to have a woman I had a lot of feelings toward in high school kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery."

"What?" Leah said, looking at me in disbelief.

"It gets worse, I'm afraid," AI Leah said. She walked down several monitors as if they were stairs until she was closer to eye level with her real-life counterpart.

"Leah, you need to understand that when a person is under, I can read their thoughts. Kevin is downplaying how rarely I do that. Normally I just do a surface read of a person and that's it. But I had to do a deeper dive with Kevin," she said.

"Why?"

"He was being transformed against his will. Normally I only do that with criminals, and even then, rarely. I needed to make sure he wasn't an evil person," A.I. Leah said.

"Him? Evil?" Leah snorted.

On the screen, her counterpart smiled.

"Obvious to you, but I needed to make sure. Now Lillian is going through the same process. And I'm doing another deep dive because she is, unfortunately, a very disturbed person," AI Leah said. Then Erin's picture flashed up on the screen. "She did arrange to have Erin kidnapped and sold. We'll try and rescue her, assuming we get through all of this. Unfortunately, I found other things as I continue to go through her memories. This one involves you."

Before Leah could say anything, Erin's picture faded, replaced by a large, unpleasant-looking man in his 40s. He was bald with a long goatee and several tattoos on his head. Unsurprisingly he was wearing a prison uniform. Practically everything about him screamed 'biker gang.'

"Andre," Leah whispered and took a step back. Until this point, Kevin had been astonished at how much Leah had been rolling with everything she'd experienced. Her lover was now, literally, a different man. She was talking to an AI that looked and sounded like her. In the corner was something that used to be an adult woman and now barely looked human. But the sight of this man made her want to run. He could tell from her body language.

He didn't press her on who he was. He scared the shit out of her; that was obvious. The rest would come when she was ready.

Eventually, she looked back at Kevin. There was a mixture of fear and anger there.

"How the fuck can that computer know about him?!" she yelled at him.

Kevin could tell AI Leah was offended about being called a computer, but he shot her a look and she didn't protest.

"The same way she knew about Erin. She's in Lillian's memories and for some reason, Andre is in there," Kevin tried to explain. It caused Leah to whirl about and stare at the monitors.

"He's in her recent memories. Lillian is...possessive over Kevin. She's hurt people that have been interested in him before, although he was unaware she was doing that. Lillian's known about your relationship for some time. Andre was her way of ending it. Through some clever hacking, she arranged for him to get parole. He gets out next week. She's also found a way to let him know where you are and your new identity. I'm sorry," AI Leah said.

Now his Leah did look shattered. Lillian hadn't designed the room for comfort. There was nowhere else to sit down, so Leah simply slumped to the floor, put her face in her hands, and sobbed quietly for a few minutes.

Kevin crouched down. He was trying to figure out how to help, but Andre getting out and presumably coming to harm her might have been the final straw on this day for her.

"Leah," he started to say.

"Melanie," she responded, and there was a hint of a French accent that hadn't been there before. She pulled her face up from her hands and stared at him with bloodshot eyes. "People called me Mel for short. It's funny, but I hated that name growing up. I wanted to be anybody but Mel. I didn't miss the name until I couldn't use it anymore."

"He's an ex-boyfriend, I take it?" Kevin asked. She nodded.

"I said I'd seen plenty of weird shit and if you run with bikers in Quebec, you will see lots. I did terrible things for too many years, Kevin. But then his asshole friends hurt some kids I knew and it was a slap in the face. I gave up everything I had on him and his gang to the cops and waited long enough to see them arrested. Then I changed my name and ran like fucking hell.

"This has been my life for the last 10 years. I only checked once a week instead of every day to make sure he wasn't out. But considering everything they had on him Andre shouldn't be out until he was in his 70s," she said. Then it dawned on her that the cause of her misery was helplessly lying on a cot. "And this cunt fucked all that up!"

Leah/Melanie went from sitting on the floor to lunging towards Lillian so fast he barely had time to grab her arm. She whirled on him and tried to punch him, but he also caught that hand. She struggled to get out of his grip. Given how much stronger he was now, there was almost no chance of that, but he was trying not to hurt her.

Finally, she calmed down enough to look at him.

"Why are you protecting that cunt?! You said she sold your friend into slavery. How the fuck is she still alive with you knowing that?" she asked.

"Because if anything happens to her while she's under, AI Leah shuts down permanently. And I need her. Because if there's a chance I can rescue Erin and have the last ten years erased so that she remembers none of it, then that's what I'm going to do. I'll let her live until at least that's done," Kevin said.

There were other reasons as well, of course. Kevin promised AI Leah that he would use her to help other people. He'd have to be delusional not to see the gift she could be to people who needed it. But that kind of logic wasn't going to fly well with Melanie right now.

She sagged in his arms. He cautiously let her go. She made no move to lunge toward Lillian, so that was a step.

"So now what? I'm not sure it's safe for me to fucking go back to my cabin. And I can't kill this bitch. So what's next?" she asked.

It was a good question.

"Leah," he said, addressing the computer. Then he glanced back at Leah/Melanie. She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's a dead name now. She can keep it. I'm back to being Mel," she said.

Kevin nodded. "Leah, please tell me you have all you can from her at this point."

Leah nodded. "There's a lot to process and interpret, but I have all we need and everything that might be urgent, such as...Mel's situation. But we are coming on what we need to do next with Lillian."

"What does she mean?" Mel asked.

Before he could say anything, Leah waved her hand and another woman appeared on the screen next to her. She was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen.

The red hair was the first thing that popped it. It was the kind of red hair that was so bright and shiny that it didn't seem possible to have been created by nature. It came almost down to her waist. Her eyes were a brilliant green and while the image wasn't smiling, he bet she had the kind of smile that would make you kill for her.

The rest of her body was out of Playboy; large tits, great ass and hips. She also appeared to be close to six feet tall. She looked like a femme fatale. You knew she was trouble from the very first look, and you'd be helpless to stop yourself anyway.

"Jesus Christ. Really?" Mel said.

"Oh, that's only the surface. What does Lillian have under the hood, Leah?"

"There's not much more to do intelligence-wise. Her IQ is already over 200 and if she pushed it any further there was a risk of serious psychological disorders kicking in," Leah said and then realized the foolishness of the statement. "Well, more than she already has.

"But she would have been going from an introvert to an extrovert. She would have a better understanding of not only how to interact with people, but how to manipulate them. And if that weren't enough she would emit a pheromone making people very obedient towards her. She would have been a fairly terrifying domme. You really wouldn't have enjoyed being her submissive, especially with your enhanced sex drive."

There was something in the way Leah spoke that made Kevin think Lillian wouldn't get her dream body.

"I assume that's not going to happen?"

Leah shook her head and looked...shaken. Kevin was getting used to how human the AI appeared, but it was still an odd gesture.

"We 'spoke' in a way similar to what we did when you were under. But I hid most of my real capabilities from her. Still, she's frighteningly smart. And she has no remorse over what she did. None. She believes what she did was completely justifiable. It was unpleasant to speak with her, even in that limited way.

"Given her actions, lack of remorse and ongoing threat, I believe there is no other choice but to void her changes and create new ones,"

Kevin nodded his head. Good.

"What does all that mean?" Mel asked.

"We have a few hours to implant new physical and mental changes into her. That body up there," Kevin said, pointing at the screen, "will never exist. She's too dangerous, especially given her past crimes."

Mel looked at both of us like we were idiots, as the solution was obvious.

"Plant the cunt back in her old body and leave her a brain-dead vegetable. Leave her here for the assholes looking for her; we take Leah and run. Problem solved.

There was a ruthless efficiency about it, Kevin had to admit. Before he could give it serious thought, Leah stepped in and killed the idea.

"Unfortunately, I can't. Where I'm from, the person has to be transformed into a useful member of society. To try and help the people they've harmed in the past. Leaving her brain dead in her old body is beyond what I am allowed to do," she said.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Mel said, waving her hand at the screen, walking over to some disused computer equipment, and kicking it across the room. "What kind of fucked up place is that computer from anyway?"

"She's not saying, and I wouldn't waste my time asking," Kevin said, staring at Lillian. Kevin was supposed to be more intelligent now. If not a genius, then on his way to being one. So what to do with her?

"Leah, what happened to people you changed when they committed crimes?" he asked.

"I never did many," she said. "Most of us prefer not to as it is distasteful."

"Ok, but there had to be standards in place. Here, you get x number of years in jail if you rob someone. Assault, this many years, murder, this many years. So what were the standard changes for criminals where you're from?"

Leah nodded.

"Without giving too much away, we only did transformations for serious crimes and repeat offenders. Violent criminals had their violent urges removed and their empathy levels significantly increased. They had counselling jobs talking to other violent people and getting them to change their ways. Murders did remedial work that no one else wanted to do to pay off their debt to society," she said.

"And rapists?" Kevin asked. He could tell Mel was watching but didn't want to look at her at this moment.

"Normally something in the sexual industries. Sexuality is very different where I'm from," Leah said. "They became a kind of sexual therapist. Here and now, perhaps the equivalent of very expensive escorts."

And there it was. The idea was rattling around in his head. The old Kevin would have just Lillian plain and boring. Reduce her intelligence, do some upgrades to her body and then sent her off into the world, forgetting who she was - maybe doing some kind of work that would make her happy. Perhaps even make her capable of falling in love and settling down. Kevin doubted Lillian knew what happiness felt like that didn't involve watching someone else suffer.