Evan's Artifact

Editor's note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.

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Purely a work of fiction.

This ISN'T meant to be a long, thorough, fleshed out story. It is meant to be a story revolving around a theme I only wanted to try to write about. Any comments and suggestions are more than welcome. Thank you!

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Lee sat cross legged in front of me, staring wearily at the fire between us. Though she was two years my junior, it was at moments like this that I was reminded why I gravitated toward her so naturally. The sternness of her sharp eyes caught the gleam of the fire, dancing excitingly in her gaze. I smiled inwardly. No one else knew what we would be up to later tonight - and no one would find out. We'd prepared too long for it to come to such a boring end.

I coughed, the chill of the air having coated my throat with its touch. Lee's eyes darted in my direction, and for but half a moment, we shared a knowing look.

"Are you cold?" Nessa quickly asked.

I stared blankly in the direction of Lee, the afterimage of her eyes still swimming before me.

"Evan?"

"Uh-n-no yeah!" I finally stammered, turning to the small bodied girl sitting next to me. "Yeah, I'm good Nessa, thanks. Just a dry throat." I massaged my throat comically, laughing lightly at my brief disconnect.

Nessa eyed me quietly before her lips curved into a smile synchronous with mine. "Well then, here," she said cheerfully, handing me her glass of water. "Stay hydrated, Evan. After all, we're in the middle of nowhere."

And that we were.

It was hardly half a motion, but Nessa inched closer to me, the smell of her shampoo or conditioner pungent. She made it too obvious, her attraction for me, and therefore it was no fun. Where was the excitement of the chase? Of the game? Either way, it wouldn't, or shouldn't matter after tonight, if everything went smoothly.

—

I opened my eyes, seeing nothing but the remnants of light emanating from the nearby coals. Everyone was probably asleep by now, it being two in the morning, so I took my time letting my vision acclimate to the darkness. After a moment, the outlines of tents strung about the forest floor became clearer and clearer. I had purposefully pitched mine far behind the others, but on higher ground so I could see anyone approaching. Wearily, I made my way to the tent closest to mine - Lee's.

Pushing gently on the entrance, I smiled inwardly. Like she'd told me earlier, it was left unzipped so I wouldn't have to deal with its obnoxious sound.

Lee was already making her way out when I opened the flap. I couldn't help but smile at her, and seeing her slowly return her own made my chest swell. I reached out to her, making to help her get out. Her hand grasped tightly in mine, I pulled her toward me gently, making sure to make as little noise as we could in the kerfuffle.

As we walked away from the enclosure, we kept our hands together. Once we were far enough to not be heard, Lee whispered, "Are you ready for this?"

I didn't answer. I only looked into her eyes, the only light illuminating us being the stars and the moon. Her lips, slightly parted in question of me, were more alluring than ever. In a gentle and fluid motion, I kissed her.

It seemed at first, Lee wouldn't be having any of it. My hands rested on her shoulder, and through them I could tell she tensed greatly at my sudden advancement. With the same gentleness, I slid one hand down to her slim, soft waist, while the other slid up to her hair, grasping it lightly but with ferocious protectiveness. As if a switch had been flipped, Lee kissed me back feverishly. Pressing her body into mine, she made no attempt to hide the lust that had overcome her, sucking and lapping away at my own lips and tongue. Our bodies were up against each other, our hands wandering among the others' body freely, with little regard for decency in the frozen night.

If we continued at the rate we were going, we would've easily been there till sunlight. With as much will as I could muster, I broke away from her, the taste of her lips still raw on mine.

"Let's do this," I said, eagerly.

—

The place we'd mapped out earlier was the crash site of an asteroid that hit close to five decades ago. Lee's mother, being one of the archeologists in charge of the site, had left all of her documents in her office for Lee to see, and in them Lee found details of an artifact that when touched, granted the inflicted a brief secretion of pheromones that almost seemed to control others, though for a very limited duration. It was this that we were after, this that would finally let us ditch the rest of our company. It was this that would let us see the world, free from the burdens of life.

It was noted to be able to make people go into an almost trance like state, wherein they would be highly responsive to suggestions, both mental and physical. It meant people giving us whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

I laughed internally, rolling my eyes at the memory of the stories. There was no way any of it was real. But regardless of the fairytales, its rarity couldn't be refuted. Money was sure to follow. Money that we needed to get out of the horrid small town we'd grown up in. There was so much more to do, out far away from the confines of our home. Artifact or not, they were done here. They were leaving.

After what seemed like an eternity of walking through the darkness, following only the slightly trodden path ahead and GPS in hand, we finally approached an area closed off by makeshift fences. A simple matter of jumping over them. The documents had detailed how little to no security was present owing to the classified nature of the intel - few souls knew of this excavation - which was why our meddling was the perfect plan. No one would expect two university students hijacking a UN operation.

"People were definitely here earlier," Lee whispered, kneeling behind a large tree to my right. "Look."

Her gaze was toward a large, expansive tent, coals of a banked fire still gleaming in the dark.

"Probably best if we just ran for it, no?" I asked. "Your mom did say no one remains on premise off hours."

Lee continued to scan the area, nodding at my suggestion. "Yeah, maybe. Doesn't look like anyone's here."

"And even if we were caught, we could just say we were out to do sex stuff, and saw an abandoned, discreet area," I smirked at her, pinching her ass as I went forwards. "People get awkward when sex is involved."

Even in the dark I could see Lee blushing. Another reason I was so tethered to her. "Fuck you, Evan."

"After this, sure."

"Oh fuck off."

I smiled, knowing I'd pay for the smart-assery sooner or later. It's just how I show my affection.

Focusing again on the task at hand, I continued onto the site, leaning nimbly into the tent closest to us. Slowly, I unzipped the entrance, and peeked inside. Pitch black. What was I expecting?

Feeling like an idiot, I reached for my phone. I could hear Lee sniggering behind me. Ignoring her, I turned on the flashlight to its lowest setting, and shone it inside the tent hastily.

"Anything?" Lee whispered.

"Just a bunch of...storage boxes? And some tables. Looks like some kind of makeshift lab they were using." Seeing no one inside, I unzipped the tent all the way, stepping inside and beckoned to Lee.

We sifted through the boxes for close to half an hour, hoping to find any part of the meteorite. No such luck. Most of them simply contained expendable lab materials like measuring equipment, gas burners, and dirty old microscopes. They probably packed up the good ones worth anything back with them.

For the first time that night, worry caught up to me. "What if they took the space rock back with them?"

Lee gave me a wry look. "And I thought you'd read the documents I scanned for you. It's like, the size of a house, how on Earth could they transport it? And even if they could, wouldn't they have already done so and taken it to a less obscure location to observe?"

Touche.

All I gave her was a shrug, however, before turning to leave the tent. No way something that large wouldn't be found tonight.

But apparently, we were wrong. We spent the better part of an hour turning the remaining tents upside down, but every single one of them only had what you'd expect to see in a laboratory. No rock.

"I guess we tried," Lee murmured, playing with her hair as she sighed dejectedly. "I was so sure it would be here."

Though I was upset that we didn't find the artifact, I also couldn't help but feel the night wasn't entirely a waste of time. I still felt extremely sure we were done with our small town life, and that it was a turning point for us. "Maybe it just wasn't meant to be." I offered, knowing Lee was rolling her eyes at me in the dark. "Either way, we should probably head back before they notice we're gone. Don't want to cause any commotion."

Ducking back under the tape that encircled the site, we turned and gave it one last scan, more to serve the futile hope we both clung onto, than out of any rational belief there would be anything. Of course, no giant rock materialized. I sighed, continuing back toward our tents.

"Lets try to get some sleep, however little we might get, huh Lee," I spoke softly, but loud enough that she would hear me amidst the constant rustling of fallen leaves crunching under our footsteps. "Lee?"

She was gone.

—————

"Yeah, we should. Weirdly enough, I'm not even that tired right now," I answered truthfully, surprised at how awake I was feeling. In one crashing moment, a wave of nausea overcame me.

What the fuck.

It was cold. Freezing cold. And it must have been too dark - no, too bright. My eyes couldn't adapt to the blinding brightness quickly enough, and I could only see red through the thin skin of my eyelids.

What the fuck happened? Where was I? What was going on? Question after question raced through my mind in but a moment. It couldn't have been more than a second or two, before all was calm. Everything would be okay. I didn't feel it, I knew it, and it made me feel silly for the burst of panic I had earlier.

My body quickly relaxed from the tense position it was in before. It was with alarming preciseness that I moved my hand to cover my eyes from the blinding light. Or at least it should have been alarming. As I perceived the motion my arm made, I knew it to be too perfect, too mechanical. But while I knew that, I also knew it was normal, and that I shouldn't worry. So I didn't.

After exactly 5 seconds, I opened up my hand a little to let some light in. After 7 more seconds, I let even more light in. It took 32 more seconds before I was able to bring my hand back down to my sides, my eyes having entirely adapted to the bright light.

I knew the room I was in like the back of my hand. It was perfectly dome-like, the ceiling arching up to a highest point of 30 meters. The bright lights were fluorescent LEDs that were spread so evenly that nothing in the room cast a shadow. It should have been strange, but it wasn't.

Along the walls of the room were the motionless bodies I knew to belong to the scientists of the expedition above. I knew all their names, their titles, their circumstances, and I knew why they were here. They were slaves. Just like me. A twinge of sorrow permeated my calm demeanor when my eyes gazed past the still portrait of my mother. She was a good person. She shouldn't have been a victim. She didn't deserve this. But the Artifact did. The Artifact was worthy of her, and so it was okay. Ease flowed through me as if doused atop of my head.

There was only one thing left to do now. I moved to the Artifact in the center of the room, and quickly but perfectly removed my clothes, folding them and placing them on the metal table beside me. For a moment, the cold temperature of the room bit and stung my soft skin, but it didn't last, because I remembered that everything was meant to be. This wasn't uncomfortable, because I knew it was only temporary. I was so close.

With the clothes neatly piled to the side, I walked over to the Artifact, gazing at its gloriousness. Though it looked like but a simple chair, not unlike ones most schools use, I knew better. I knew of its power, its capabilities, and what it would do to me. I couldn't wait.

I sat on the Artifact. Mm. Perfect. Contentedness flowed through me, and I felt genuine, unadulterated peace permeate the fiber of my being.

Wait, why am I here? Where even is here?

"What the-," I managed to yell before my senses caught up to me. It was fucking freezing. I'd never felt so cold in my life. And I was naked?? Sitting on a metal chair! For a brief moment, I wondered if my skin was frozen stuck to the chair, before trying to get up. But I couldn't, not when my arms and legs were clasped in metal locks that looked directly fused onto the chair. 



"I don't understand!" I yelled into the room, my voice echoed violently against the smooth walls of the room. "Please, someone, anyone, help!" The people to the right of me seemed inert, unmoving, uncaring. Their eyes blinked in unison, staring blankly ahead. Fucking hell.

Then the chair seemed to start to hum. The soft vibrations steadily increased in power as the floor beneath me seemed to change in color. That was when I noticed the floor wasn't what I thought it was. The middle part of the floor, where I and the machine were sat, was almost flat like a floor, yes. But toward the edges of the room, they seemed to curve down. It was as if I was on top of a giant sphere. The size of a house. The size of a very, very large house.

"Oh," I whispered.

But the realization of what I was being affected by wasn't meant to last. Seemingly out of nowhere, something sharp pressed into the nape of my neck, and I felt the pressure of what must have been a needle press deeper and deeper into me. For a moment, the irrational part of my mind thought it would continue until it came out the other side, but it stopped.

"Wha-," I started, before just as quickly, a metallic arm forced a soft, but very solid ball into my mouth, clasping it to my face and rendering me unable to speak. I continued to try to shout, all the while craning my head to look for the source of the arm - it came out of the floor. My eyes widened in disbelief. This kind of thing only happened in horror stories, no? How could any of this be happening in reality? It was impossible.

The room, quiet without my futile shouting, was suddenly alive with sound. Machinery whirred brazenly in the brightly lit chasm, as feeding on the silence. I tried to look around to see what was happening, but some of the machines clasped my neck and forehead in cold metallic braces, keeping me entirely still. The same coldness clasped around my waist and thighs, pinning me down with absolution.

My eyes were the only part of me I could still move. I looked frantically around me, using my periphery as much as I could. As far as I could tell, the machines had all erupted from the floor I was on. Any hope I had that the machines would stop with my immobilization was crushed when I heard and felt even more churning around me. The usually gratifying sound of locks falling into place and metal being pieced together only worsened the terrifying things I was imagining. Was I going to be killed? My organs harvested for sale? Or was some sick pervert going to keep me here forever, alive, but existing only for their twisted pleasure?

I couldn't tell how many minutes the obnoxious whirring went on for, but before long, silence permeated the air again. My eyes were tired from being strained left and right, but in my periphery, I could tell there were all sorts of tubes and arms surrounding me now. Fear had thrummed in me for so long, it felt like a sedative that kept me from insanity.

Rumbling broke the short silence. In front of me, I could instantly see the source of the sound. A curved wall seemed to be slowly rising up from the floor - not a wall, but a mirror. After a moment, the rumbling stopped, and I gazed at my pale reflection.

I was right. Machinery had surrounded me completely. From metal arms that looked like they could only be for surgery, to tubes that ran along the underside of the chair and around my extremities, it did little to console my awakened horrors. I still had no idea what was happening, or why, and it was worse still that the people against the wall didn't react at all during this entire process.

Once again, I wasn't given any time to calm myself down. Just as I had been about to try moving again, I felt pressure from the needle in the back of my neck. Something was being injected into me.

Oh my god.

It was probably a good thing I was entirely unable to move, because if the clasps had been loose by even the tiniest bit, I would have probably caused the needle to tear my neck to pieces.

This was the only consoling thought I had.

Just as the needle began injecting something in me, the clawed mechanical arms around me moved into action. I stared into the mirror in horror as more arms than I could count in my lucrative state sprang out into position.

I didn't need the mirror to see what was happening anymore, because the arms were right ahead of me now. There seemed to be an arm for every single part of my body, hovering mere millimeters over my skin as if waiting for something. I swore I could almost feel the cold emanating from the arms, as they were so close.

My arms, chest, hips, waist, thighs, calves, feet, even one that must have been for my mouth, as it was shaped thusly. What in the world was going to happen to me?

Without warning, the claws near my arms seemed to transform as if they were liquid, into moulds that fit the size of my arm and hands perfectly. Split into a top and bottom half, the machine clasped over my arms, enclosing them. It was freezing. As my brain tried to process the cold, I felt sharp jabs from different parts of my arms, from my shoulders down to my finger tips, as if little needles pierced through my skin. Like the needle in my neck, they began injecting something in me.

I sat helplessly, my eyes darting from the machines in front of me to my scared reflection. As they did my arms, one by one the other machines began to mould over the rest of me, encasing me in what felt like an icy tomb. They too injected the mysterious substance into me. Only the mouthpiece hadn't yet engaged on me.

This went on for a timeless period, my mind awake only out of fear of falling unconscious. My body was practically numb from the cold, so I really couldn't feel any part of myself - just enough to know there were still needles stuck in me, though the pain was nonexistent. It was almost like I was just a head, floating and observing the supposed mutilation of my body. At this point however, I had no idea what was going on, and was only glad I at least could feel something at all.

When the mouthpiece began moving toward me, I'd lost any capability to feel more fear. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen, and I hoped more than anything that it would at least all be over soon. The arm moved toward my face, slowly, purposefully, and in front of me I could see the mouthpiece inch closer and closer. It looked like a pair of lips with a suction cup around it, obviously to better stick to my own face. The cold lips pressed into my own, and my first thought was that they were at least soft. It didn't feel to differently from the lips of any other person, ignoring the temperature, so I wasn't too concerned at first.

Then it forced my mouth open.

Between the machine's two silicone halves, an appendage - a tongue - forced its way into my own mouth, before prying my lips open. I panicked, trying to push back against it with my own tongue, but there was no stopping the machine. My own tongue felt powerless against the machinery, its movements stronger and more forceful than I could have thought. My mouth was forced into a permanent pucker, with the machine's tongue making sure my jaw was pushed open. As with the other parts of machinery, I felt needles stab into each part of my mouth, from my lips to my tongue.