FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Western Cube

Chapter 7

Sponsored by GlynWolf

By Draconicon

" Welcome, Customer. What would you like to buy from this unit?"

"You said that you sold shelter." Tatyana could hear the irritation in her voice, and hoped that it wasn't as obvious as she thought it was. "Where is it?"

" This unit is designed to convert to shelter for Customers. Would Customer Tatyana Whore wish to purchase shelter?"

She should have guessed. All things considered, it wouldn't be the worst offer that she'd ever had. There were many robots that had a secondary shape, either for storage or for other purposes. She had many worker-bots that could fold into a cylinder to carry around, if one had the arm strength for it. The fact that a cart-like robot could unfold into shelter didn't surprise her in the slightest.

But at the same time, that was making herself vulnerable. Very vulnerable, as a matter of fact. However, considering that her options were either to be arrested for 'vagrancy' on the streets after breaking curfew or to risk being trapped inside of the cart-bot's other form...

There was no option, was there? Tatyana shook her head.

"I will."

" Cost: 20 credits per night."

It would wipe out what little credits she had left, but she had hopes of pulling on a manager's paycheck when the morning came. She just had to get there. Tatyana reached into her bag, pulling out the credits that were still laying in the bottom, and held them out. The cart-bot opened a slide in its side, and after depositing them with a clink, it closed the hole once more.

" Standby for shelter function."

She expected the cart-bot to expand, to fill the space on the sidewalk with some sort of hut or small shed. Perhaps it might have unfolded, forming a sort of closet one could sleep inside by leaning on the walls.

She did not expect the top to open and four tentacles to dart out like grasping serpents.

"What -"

They were quick, and she wasn't prepared. Too tired to jump out of the way and too weak to fight back, she was snared instantly, lifted off the ground and turned around. Tight metal clamps wrapped around her ankles, pulling tight, and she hissed through her teeth as her arms were pulled forward, her wrists dragged together. The tentacles pulled her backward into the space inside the cart, hardly believing what was happening to her.

" Please relax, Customer. Shelter functions will keep you safe for the night."

Considering the strength of the machine, she had little doubt about 'safety'. What she was more concerned about was her eventual release. As she was dragged backwards into the cart, she found herself pushed down, back against the bottom of the cart, her face pointing up. Her legs were pulled back, dragged all the way up to her head, her soles pressed against the cart's back, and then locked in place. Her tail was pulled down over her ass and her sex, and the tip tucked between her breasts. Her arms...well, they were released, but there was little she could do for movement.

Then, the cart closed.

Tatyana's eyes widened as the metal sheets pulled up around her body, forming once more into a rectangle. Even as she tried to squirm free, another metal band - doubtlessly once used to hold food containers in place - wrapped around her middle.

" Customer will maintain position until all panels are in proper places."

The tigress wanted to scream, but if she did, who would hear? Greene? The jackal was going to have it out for her in short order if she found out where the tigress had gone. Mr. Silver? Doubtful that the wolf had any influence out here. All that she could do was keep still and hope that the cart-bot hadn't decided to stab her in the back. Maybe it was too dumb to do that. Maybe it would keep to its programming. Maybe - though she was not in a position to hope for something so high - it was going to be gentle.

As the metal panels clicked into position, she was left sealed in the darkness inside the cart-bot. Her legs were held up high, her rump squished against the front of the cart and her feet against the back of it. Her own scent, thick with her off and on arousal, was all that she could smell. She huffed slowly, shifting her shoulders, her hands, her arms. She could move them all, though considering the limited space inside of the small rectangle that was the cart-bot, it wasn't as if she could do much.

"Light."

Her command did nothing. She gritted her teeth, forcing herself to breathe a little more calmly. The darkness...it felt like it had weight.

"What does light cost?" she asked.

" One credit per hour."

"Can you barter?"

" This unit is afraid it cannot."

"Mmmph..."

" This unit can, however, offer complimentary light for thirty minutes."

"...That will suffice." Her eyes widened. "My bag!"

" It is carried on top of this unit, Customer."

That was something. A very big something. She could feel her heart slowly settling in her chest, calming down after the last jump. She would have patted her chest, but her arms were slightly limited in what they could do. All she could manage was a slow lift and sag of her shoulders to simulate it.

"Pass me the report."

" One moment, Customer. Are you invoking your complimentary light?"

"Yes."

" Activating light. Activating timer."

The light was...bright, to put it mildly. Then again, considering she was surrounded on all sides by highly-reflective metal, it was probably no brighter than any other light source. It just happened to burn more brightly from all directions. She blinked the afterimage out of her eyes, only to find herself staring at herself. The mirror of her own body, of her bent-over self, of her barely-hidden holes and her exaggerated breasts, only seemed to reveal the exact image that Greene seemed to see all the time.

She realized how sensual she looked like that, and she gritted her teeth as her body betrayed her once again. If she could have slapped herself, she would have.

A slot opened in the side of the cart, and the reports from the brothel were slid in. The cart-bot pressed them to the mirrored ceiling in front of her, thankfully removing her own face from the reflection.

"Thank you."

" You are welcome, Customer. You have 29 minutes, 13 seconds of light remaining."

"That will be sufficient. Thank you."

The cart-bot went silent, and - after some finagling with her pinned position - she pushed one hand to the paper to keep it in place. Flicking her eyes across the sheet, she began the process of self-examination that Mr. Silver had started, and that Greene had required. If she was going to defend what buttons she had, what weaknesses were in her mind and subconscious, then she needed to know where they were. She clearly didn't want to be honest enough with herself about what she 'wanted' out of things, so she was going to need to take an objective study to see how her body and mind reacted to all the stimulations and virtual experiments that Mr. Silver had designed.

She just hoped that it wasn't going to be too humiliating. Considering that the first item on the list was 'Clitoral Extension,' she didn't hold out high hopes.

Eventually, the lights went off, but by then, Tatyana had read through the report in its entirety. Three times, as a matter of fact, because she couldn't believe the extensive list the first or second time around. By the third, however, it could not be put down to imagined things, or the difficulties of reading from this angle. It was merely her own disbelief that kept her from acknowledging the facts.

Look at yourself as the next experiment, she thought. Look at this as data of a previous experiment. Assume the data is consistent. What does that mean?

It meant that she had been altered far more by her previous incarceration under the old Facility leadership than she had wanted to admit. She knew - or at least, believed - that she had never been a particularly sexual or perverse teenager. She doubted that anyone at that age could have been without extensive grooming and cultivation from outside sources.

...To be fair, we had more than enough of that.

In the darkness, she could almost feel the things that had been done to her, possible experiments that had given her these...responses. She went over some of the items in her head.

_Clitoral Extension. Aroused response to the potential extension of the subject's clitoris, up to and including pumped, drugged alterations extending it to up to ten inches long. Subject does not show arousal when a full penis is transplanted, merely the extension of the clitoris.

Foot Fetish. Exceedingly aroused response to altered-states of the subject's feet, including dust, mud, sweat, and biological fluids being applied. Subject shows additional arousal when tested against being observed by other individuals, and having her 'dirty' state commented on. Auditory stimulation increases arousal by 50%._

Anal Sex. Subject shows an excessive preference for the atypical hole as compared to her sex, with an additional 30% arousal for anal sex as compared to vaginal sex, and a preference for rimming over cunnilingus by 60%.

Humiliation Fetish...

Bondage Fetish...

Ankle Fetish...

Exhibitionism Fetish...

The list went on and on, and each was followed by a notation that was both embarrassing and useful. She had always squashed any sensation of pleasure that she received from that in the past, even during occasions of quick-thought when she used the stimulation to increase how quickly she solved her problems. However, despite that, she could see that there was truth in the data proposed, though she questioned just how accurate some of the statistical proportions were with her preferences.

She was forced to think about it in the dark and emptiness, not from any drug, but out of necessity for survival. If she did not admit what she had to deal with, then she'd just have it used against her. Even if Mr. Silver deleted the files, it was debatable whether Greene would be able to salvage them or not, and even if she couldn't, all it would take was another scan of the sort that she had gone through for the jackal to bring all this to bear against her. It would be a metaphorical curb-stomp of what happened.

How do you acknowledge all this...when you don't want it to be true? Tatyana wondered.

She had no answer for that, and in this tiny space, no chance to build up her thoughts to think quicker or more efficiently. The tigress closed her eyes, and felt no different.

Sleep must have come, because morning followed, and with it the painful realization of just how tight she had been folded up for the night. Tatyana all but fell out of the cart-bot, hitting the ground at just short of bruising force. The only thing that kept her from cracking her head was a pinching claw-grip just behind it, holding her face from the cobblestone sidewalk.

" This unit hopes that you slept well, Customer."

"Mmmph..."

" This unit must be off. Please have a good day, Customer."

The tigress groaned. Her legs had fallen asleep during her time in the cart-bot, and she didn't know how long they'd been that way. Her hands...thankfully, they were awake, but she could barely feel a thing as she rubbed her thighs.

As the cart-bot wobbled off, however, she noticed that there were scorch-marks and handprints along its sides. She realized, belatedly, that they were approximately the same size as Greene's hands would have been in her holographic form.

Did she...

It wouldn't surprise her if the AI had come looking for her after dark, only to find out that she had paid for shelter. She hadn't been sent back to Level 0, because she had not broken curfew, though the AI had clearly decided that she wasn't playing by the rules and had tried to take her back. The cart-bot had paid the price.

If she could have stood up, she would have chased the little thing down and tried to at least buff off the marks. As it stood, she had to work herself to a standing position, instead.

As she pulled herself off the sidewalk, Greene appeared once more. The AI looked more than the usual amount of sultry, with one arm wrapped under her breasts, and the other cupping the edge of a cigarette stick. She was smoking two at a time, now, rather than just the one that she'd shown before, and her eyes glowed in a way that wasn't quite intended, Tatyana was sure. The tigress shook her head.

"I saw that you looked for me last night."

"Mmm, can you blame me?" The Overseer chuckled. "I had a chance to start you over from the beginning. It would have made my life so much simpler to just throw you in jail again. One more way to tilt the odds in my favor."

"Hmmph. Not hiding your intent anymore?"

"I think we both know where my needs went last night...and how far I lost myself."

"I'm surprised you admit it."

"One in power cannot feel shame," Greene said, the jackal chuckling as she dropped her cigarette stick. It disappeared before it could hit the ground, the green light fizzling. "But we can want more."

"Hmmph. And you want me."

"For reasons I cannot entirely understand...yes." Greene chuckled. "Now that we've got that out of the way, why don't you go back to Mr. Silver? You don't want to be late on your first day to work."

"Obviously, you don't know about my promotion."

"...Promotion?" The jackal's smile disappeared in electronic fuzz, her face reforming in a stern stare. "What promotion? You haven't earned anything, and you certainly haven't been trained to the point I demanded."

Tatyana shrugged, lifting one foot from the ground. She had to lean against the wall behind her as she extended her leg towards the hologram of a jackal.

"Scan it yourself."

Her confidence must have pissed off the Overseer, because not only did Greene's glare deepen, but she pulled at Level 2 to help her. The entire area seemed to condense, like it was under pressure from the layers above and below.

However, she did as she was asked, as well. A metal tendril pushed out from under the sidewalk, grabbing her by the ankle and keeping her leg still. As Tatyana slipped a bit, almost falling over, another one - tipped with a glass bulb - focused on her foot. A red laser panned over the barcode that had been left behind, flicking up and down. She felt nothing, but there was a sudden eye-widening moment for the Overseer.

"Impossible...how..."

"That would be for me to know."

"You little...You must have cheated the system!"

"I did nothing of the sort," Tatyana said, even as she had to bite off a little gasp as the tendril pulled on her ankle, almost yanking her off her feet, leaving her gritting her teeth. Ankle fetish, she remembered. Stupid... "And now you know that I can leave."

"..."

"Let me go. I am due on Level 3."

"...Yes, you are. And I am due there with a...surprise for you..."

Greene disappeared, and the various tendrils ducked beneath the sidewalk once more. When the panel of concrete pulled itself back into position, she waited for a moment to make sure that something else wasn't going to happen, then slowly turned towards the exit. The apartments would have been an interesting thing to explore, but considering that the AI was already planning something on Level 3, she knew better than to wait. The more time that Greene had, the less able the tigress would be to react to whatever she had waiting.

Time to move...

In order to leave Level 2, however, she first needed to find the gate to Level 3...and she had a feeling that might take some doing.

Two hours of exploration later - including a little scavenging through the apartment block on the off-chance that the gate was at the top of it - she found two things. The first was another bag, also marked with the Soviet symbol that had adorned the one she carried over her shoulder. She immediately emptied its belongings - while hiding her find from the camera in the corner - into her current bag, and made a mental note to take an inventory of it later.

The second thing she found was the gate. It was right on top of the apartment building, after all, which meant that she couldn't have left last night, anyway. The apartment blocks had been locked against anyone that wasn't already a resident after curfew, which made her feel a bit better about being trapped in the other robot as long as she had been.

A little better.

She approached the gate, shaking her head at the electrified portal. Rather than a coin slot like the gate from Level 1 had had, this one merely asked for her ID to be presented. She hissed, looking at how close the scanner was to the electrified gate, and knew that this was going to hurt.

Three shocks - and two moans - later, she had managed to get herself scanned. She panted, huffing as she lowered her half-burned toes to the ground, wincing and standing lightly on her foot.

"Manager Acknowledged. Welcome to Level 3, Ms. Tatyana Whore."

"I am not a whore," Tatyana muttered, stepping through.

The gate electrified behind her, sealing off any retreat. Not that it mattered, she supposed; she was trapped in the cube, in Volt City, in Project West, until she had reached the top. One level was as good or as bad as another, and Greene could clearly chase her through any barriers that she could throw up between them.

How does she do that...

As a hologram, she would need projectors, and it was obvious that she could use the various cameras throughout the cube to ensure that she had a better view of where her various subjects were. But to have that level of presence, to be able to jump out anywhere, meant that...

Tatyana cut off her thoughts as she went up the staircase behind the gate, not from tiredness, or a realization, but from the startling discovery that there was a missing panel in the wall. Her eyes widened further still as she realized three major implications.

First, that Greene could not see in the stairwells between levels.

Second, that she did not have any drones or robots sliding between the stairwells.

Three, that she didn't know that there was a hole in the wall.

The tigress fell to her knees immediately, sticking her head through the hole. It opened out into almost total darkness, but as she turned her head left and right, keeping the light of the cube proper from affecting her eyes, she started to see shapes, silhouettes. There were different chunks of room elsewhere to be seen. Of course, she could see the outside of the various levels from here - at least some of them - but there were also chambers that hung away from the levels, almost as if they were made and then not incorporated.

Best of all, there was a thick cord running up and down the side of the various levels, and it ran all the way down to one of the disconnected chunks.

The downside, of course, was that there was no way to be sure that this wasn't a trap. Tatyana pulled her head out of the gap, doing several quick measurements. Even with her...generous-ness around the breasts and hips, she could fit through the gap, and she doubted that it would be any skinnier further up or lower down. That wasn't a problem; the problem was whether this was set up as the 'surprise' that Greene had set up for her.

Either way, you need to decide fast, she told herself. She knows that you went through the gate, which means that she knows that you're in here. If you don't go through quickly, and you don't have something to show for it when you get through to the other side for a delay, she's going to wonder why you hesitated.

And the tigress knew that she could only appeal so much to the hologram's arrogance. It would figure out, eventually, that there was something wrong. Tatyana stared down the hole, fighting herself about whether to risk it.

The possibility that there might not be another gap further up decided her. She pushed through, wrapping herself around the thick cord before slowly lowering herself down. The corded metal ground between her breasts, occasionally pulling a strand or two of her fur out of place, leaving her biting off a yowl - not because she imagined that Greene could hear her outside the superstructure, but because she didn't want to give in to one more pain.

It was easy enough to slide down, though she was halfway to the detached room when the problem of getting back occurred to her. She didn't have much in the way of supplies, less in the way of food. If she didn't get back up quickly, she might be too weak to get out at all.

You can jury-rig something down there, she told herself. And that might be your key to getting out.

All she'd need was a belt and a few pieces of metal to jury-rig a clasp that would get her back up. Something to pinch on the wire, to hold her place while she caught her breath, was all she needed. And there had to be free metal down there somewhere.

So, she continued her descent, down, down, down, until she finally touched the cube waiting for her. She felt her way along in the darkness, eventually confirming its dimensions - twenty feet by ten - and the fact that there was a door on one side, a hole in the ceiling, and that they were both unlocked.

She chose the ceiling panel. No need to risk falling to her death when she didn't have to.

As soon as she landed, she felt carpet. Actual plush carpet, something that made her all too aware of how bruised and sore she actually was. She groaned, wiggling her toes through the lush fibers. As soon as she made a sound, the room lit up, the lights likely voice-activated, and she saw what she'd entered.

It was red. Very red, with the golden hammer and sickle of the Union against the far wall. Tatyana shook her head at the out-of-place symbol, then slowly turned around again...and then again...and then for a third time as her mouth slowly hung open.

This wasn't just an office. This was an Overseer's office, a precise, carbon copy of the different section Overseer offices that littered the interior of her Facility. Each one marked with the symbol of the Union, each one bright red and gold, each and every one of them with a desk that was attached to the main system. She stumbled as she walked around the desk, feeling it behind her before she saw it. She knew that the chair would be right there and so it was.

She sat down, seeing the same view that she remembered years ago when she staged her little rebellion against the Facility, against the old Party members that had stood there, tortured her. The tigress remembered sitting there and sentencing her tormentors to horrors in revenge, just as they had done when they had been sitting in this same spot.

But what was an Overseer's office doing disconnected from the cube proper? This should have been up at Level 6, even in a propaganda-based experiment. What in the hell was it doing down here?!

Her hopes that the control console might still be connected were dashed. There was still a power source, somewhere - probably linked into the rest of the facility - but that meant nothing without the controls still being active. Likely, when the office had been disconnected, Greene had only left the power running because the Overseer's office was the key to keeping the whole cube powered. If this room lost power, the whole place shut down. And considering the size of the place, and the layers between the outer shell and the inner levels, that meant that the power had to keep running just to keep the air flowing.

And that...well, that meant that this place was dangerous. Greene could just commit suicide by shifting things around and cutting the cord, sending this plummeting and cutting the power to the rest of the cube.

However...there were no cameras. She was isolated, alone...and that meant that she could take the time to think. To plan. To plot.

She was good at that. But first...a nap. The tigress rolled her head back in the chair, closed her eyes, and settled in for a long sleep.

She woke...later. How much later, she didn't know, but it was far enough on that the aches had moved from the base of her spine to somewhere else, and that was good enough for her. The tigress stretched her arms out, then leaned over the desk, reminding herself of the records in her bag. It was as good a time as any to listen to them, as far as she was concerned.

"Now...what were you here for..."

The tapes were unlabeled, but the three of them - two from lock-up, one from the Level 2 apartments - were in various degrees of dustiness. The two from lock-up were the worst, and one looked older than the other, judging by the cracks over the tape. She reached into the desk drawers on the off-chance -

This place IS old, she thought as she pulled out a cassette player. Shaking her head, she inserted the tape, rewound it to the beginning, and then pressed play. She leaned back, her eyes closed.

_This is Agent Feliks. I don't have much free time, but for the record, I doubt that I ever will. This place is as insane as we thought it was.

Overseer Gould -_

Gould. But Greene was the Overseer. Something had obviously changed since then. She flicked her ears as she listened.

_- won election again, but it's getting tighter. Greene is getting more and more support, just like the initial studies suggested she might, but Krasnyy's not getting the support projected. No matter how exploited the workers get, they don't seem to understand that it's all coming from the top.

It's collapsing, just as everyone feared it would._

Then there had been records outside of something going wrong. Not good. Not good at all.

I'm looking for the other agents, but so far, I haven't found any of the other infiltrators. Could be that they're already being rooted out. Cletus has been all over the place, looking for 'commies' at the direction of the Sheriff. That program's already running down, though. He was crazed when I arrived, and he's only gotten worse. Some sort of degradation in the system, and it's already sent several citizens to Level 0. They...haven't come back.

Still, it might be an opportunity. Once the Sheriff goes completely off the rails, that will mean that everyone will pay more attention to him than what the average citizen is doing. If Gould sends the drones after him to handle that, that'll leave me a straight shot for Level 2, maybe even Level 3. We'll see what happens.

Click. The recording ended.

So, the Facility had sent agents in to try and end the project. That meant that there was a chance of someone else out there, if the agent hadn't died in the process. Callous, too, but not in a way that she entirely blamed. In a situation like this, it was hard to see any way forward that wouldn't hurt someone. She changed out the tapes, starting the second one.

Agent Feliks reporting. Unfortunately from Level 0. This is - Click. A small pause, followed by a resumption. _The Sheriff almost caught me with contraband again. He's too stupid to do anything but his most basic programming now, but that doesn't mean that he won't make my life hell if he sees this.

He's stuck in Level 0 now, but because of what happened...Fuck, I've got to explain._

The Sheriff went mad. Gould sent the drones after him, alright, but it didn't go well. The drones exploded, and the only reason we avoided robo-apocalypse is because they blew up around him, fucking over his body even further. Gould suggested sending him to maintenance, while Greene suggested sending him to just guard Level 0 permanently. When Krasnyy mentioned getting rid of the robot police force and just having our own, there was damn near an uprising. Almost got himself taken out, too.

Shouldn't have spoken up for him. Thought that maybe I could turn the tide, now I'm labeled a Commie sympathizer. Thankfully, Gould only locked me up for a few months. Shouldn't take too long...if the Sheriff doesn't rip my ass up more than once a day. Or Cletus doesn't...

"Well. Seems his tastes were pre-established."

Tatyana rubbed her forehead, trying to think through what she had just heard. So, Agent Feliks had come into the cube to shut things down, but hadn't been able to get through to Level 6 immediately. That meant that even if he had come through with a code, he hadn't been able to use it to jump straight to the top. That, in turn, implied that the Overseer - this Gould - had a different sort of control over the cube than was intended. Volt City had already gained some independence.

But Gould was not holding onto power very well, Greene was on the rise, and this Krasnyy - the one that had been 'projected' to have support, and seemed to be communism-related in a capitalist simulation - was losing. The project was going wrong, at least one AI was on the fritz...

But it had been reliable...and then went bad, allowing Greene to look good by speaking for the people...

Not damning evidence, not yet at least, but certainly not good. And Feliks, for speaking up for Krasnyy, had been sent straight to jail. Likely by Greene, and sentenced by Gould, probably in hopes of doing damage control and keeping it from getting out of control.

But that meant that there was still damage done. She imagined that Gould probably hadn't held onto the Overseer position after that...

And the voting. That meant that the Overseer was being picked by the different members of Volt City, almost like a mayoral election. For a split second, she imagined that she might be able to pick a different Overseer - perhaps another AI, if she could find one like Mr. Silver that would be suitable - but then she remembered.

She was an Illegal. That meant that she likely didn't have anything like a voting right.

There was still one more tape, the one from Level 2. She hoped that this one would have more information, or at least, more useful information. She put it in and listened.

The End

Summary: Tatyana gets shelter - for a price - and confronts a few things about herself.

Tags: F/solo, Bondage, Tentacles, Fetishes, Realization, Tigress, Tatyana, Technophilia, AI, Foot Fetish, Series, Nudity, Barefoot, Holograms,