FAILED TO CONNECT / WITH / MY LOVER

Every single time was worse than the last.

The first, perversely, had been the easiest -- swift, efficient, exactly as commanded -- but almost directly after, she'd received the order to accompany him again. Knowing exactly what orders would be coming in her future, she'd gone the infirmary where her target's new body was in the process of being reloaded. She oversaw the process, watching the terminal readouts of his new vital signs and telling him in a quiet voice to move this, switch on that, sit up, speak. Number Nine, Type S, he said with a smile that was exactly as before (bright, trusting, not dripping with blood) and that was the moment 2B first imagined strangling him with her bare hands.

The second time took far longer to come to its conclusion, almost as if he understood on some level what was inevitably going to happen between them. They fought together. They laughed. 9S had once reached up to brush a lock of her hair away from her face as it fell over her visor, and she had briefly laid her hand over his. Their battle, at the end, had been fierce -- 9S hadn't wanted to die, not after all that -- and he'd pleaded with her at first, unable to fathom her betrayal. Eventually 2B had been forced to finish the job by slamming his head into a rusted factory wall until his skull casing cracked, exposing the hardware inside to one last fatal blow. When the light had flickered out of his eyes, they'd been fixed on hers, and she'd barely dared to blink. 2B had kept battering at him long after she knew he was fully deactivated, until his body was a broken heap of scrap barely recognizable as an android anymore, crying out his name every time she felt a part of his internal structure give way and shatter under her hands.

2B had felt that gnawing need before, that dizzying rush of lust that once it came was impossible not to follow to its irresistible conclusion. It came on with the screech of metal splitting on her sword, the crack of a machine's arm against her head as they fought, the death-scream of a rogue D unit crackling through 2B's heel on her throat. But before she'd dealt the final blow, 9S had locked his eyes on her with his chest heaving with the effort of just-almost speaking, she knew in that moment that he felt something sympathetic, if not similar. A desire that fit, tooth into tooth like a grinding gear, into her own. If he'd won their struggle, she knew with absolute certainty, he would have been caught up in that same rush of ecstasy, calling for her over and over as he shattered her body into constitutent parts until there was nothing more left of her to break.

All androids had that lust for violence in them, but it really was different when you met the right person.

By the fourth time, 2B realized she was rushing to meet 9S's new body barely before she had time to wash the splatter of his blood from her face, desperate to see him healed and whole, and desperate to break it again.

Every time, no matter how short their journey togehte,r it always ended the same way -- and 9S's eyes never failed to find hers in the moment they went dark, full of feeling -- full of her.

Emotions are prohibited, she repeated to herself, more a plea than a axiom. I can just kill him, and he can just die, with nothing between us.

Pleading with destiny, of course, was a pointless exercise.

2B tried being cold. She tried being cruel. In the end it was always the same -- it was always 9S, they were always together, she always wished the kill order wouldn't come, he always died with an unspoken promise of we will meet again.

Once, 9S had come close to saving himself -- driving his heavy blade through her chest where it had broken through her ribcage plating and scraped, just barely, across the slick black surface of her heart, making her knees weak and sparks scatter on the edges of her vision. He'd hesitated, in the end. She had not.

Before the next time, 2B requested an upgrade.

She was genuinely surprised when her request was approved, and she wondered if maybe they understood, even anticipated what was happening between her and her target. Perhaps it was intended to be a distraction, something to keep her busy so she didn't simply disconnect from the network and fleeing onto the dark side of the planet or die somewhere her body could not be retrieved. Of course, there was never any hope of escape -- not when she could be restored into a new B model from some unassailable backup --and if she did somehow manage to make herself permanently unsuitable for the job, she would simply be discarded in favor of someone else, and that was a thought she could not bear to entertain.

The first murder they shared after the upgrade was an excruciatingly long time in coming, the feeling of agonizing slowness perhaps extended by the fact that now even being close to 9S ignited her like driving her sword through his throat. Of course, all androids were capable of arousal in the abstract -- a byproduct of their initial programming, an unfortunate misfire of pleasure circuits that could not be ironed out, at least not without compromising their capacity to think. Emotions were prohibited, after all, only because they could not be stamped out entirely and still leave a consciousness useful enough to exploit. By default, however, it was a vague and passing feeling with no hardware to support it. The upgrade, however, had connected unexpected elements inside her, letting that spark of feeling slide along unused circuits and flood new corners of her body with electrical impulse. Maybe she would get used to it, or maybe the novelty would eventually wear off or her tolerance build up like the rough edge of a joint would be worn smooth over time.

Then again, it might only get worse, like the throbbing of her head and the breathless shiver she felt when they always finally turned on each other. Everything always got worse. Emotion, quite unlike a blade, never seemed to dull with use.

More than once before she killed him again, she regretted the modification, even as she reached out to lay a steadying hand on the small of 9S's back, just to feel the heat of his internal processors even through the jacket and gloves, just to see him turn and give her that self-assured smile she'd come to know and crave. He'd say how much he liked having someone to talk to -- even if she didn't talk back much -- and 2B wanted nothing more than to gather him in her arms and kiss him and bite until she drew blood

A week of longing later, 9S was dead, and 2B found herself with her thighs thrown over his slender hips as he lay on the ground, pinned by her sword driven just below where his rib cage began, her hand clamped tightly over 9S's wrist as she ground her new, straight-off-the-factory-floor cunt on the palm of his motionless hand.

Even over the fabric of her clothes the yielding feel of his skin was electric, the tips of his fingers catching on her own flesh as she moved until the stiff, lifeless joints bent to match the curve of her body.

With a low groan, the first sound she'd allowed herself to make, she bucked her hips and tightened her grip. Already partially detached at the shoulder from their battle, 9S's arm fully cracked free of its socket under the pressure, connecting wires throwing up sparks as they frayed and snapped. 9S's hand jerked spasmodically at the sudden surge, making her breath catch in her throat, before it fell still again.

2B reached down and pulled aside the fabric of her bodysuit; with her other hand, she turned 9S's wrist so that his fingers splayed over the opening between her legs, his thumb curving up against the tight knot of sensors just above. It was difficult to do, bending each finger with care until they were positioned between the folds of her cunt, dripping with a slick, colorless, unfamiliar fluid -- difficult to make them stay, and difficult to imagine 9S might do this of his own accord, under his own power. Slowly, she worked her fingers and his inside her. The interior felt tight and wet and hot, like if she pushed further she might force past her internal coolant array and brush up against the blistering heat of her core. And still it was so easy to slip deeper, tight as it was, the carbon fiber strands of her muscles clenching down as she went up on her knees for a better angle. Four fingers -- two of hers, scissoring and sliding past two of 9S's -- the contrast between her desperate grasping and his lifelessness could not have been more clear. It was disgusting, and 2B couldn't believe how good it felt

The final wire connecting 9S's arm to his shoulder snapped as 2B bucked her hips with increasing force. Whoever had done the installation had left every nerve channel unthrottled, it felt like, but from the tittering gossip of the operators and other scanners -- YoRHa units who might live long enough to bother with such an upgrade -- maybe this was just how it always felt. As sensitive and responsive as a raw wound.

The driving force of their fingers and the scrape of 9S's thumb against 2B's clit pulled her to a climax so fast and hard it almost took her by surprise -- back arched, toes curling inside her boots, an unrestrained moan climbing up her throat. It was, in some sense, her first, but she recognized the feeling far too well. The mechanism was different but she and 9S had been here so often before.

It was exactly the thrill, addictive and irresistible, of dealing death.

Did 9S feel that too, she wondered, when he fought back consumed with betrayal or sorrow and the sheer desperation to tear her apart? He must, but was it also ecstasy to die? 2B had, upon occasion, considered letting 9S overpower her, but if she failed her task then they would send someone else to finish it. She wanted him to herself, and selfishly hoped that he only ever wanted her, if death could not be escaped.

Maybe he would fall on her sword willingly if she let him. Maybe he would choose that over his own continued survival -- and someday she would offer that, a quiet and gentle death gladly embraced, but would either of them be satisfied without a struggle, without a victor and a victim?

Of course, neither of them could ever choose anything. Not really, anyway -- plunged into oblivion and awakened for the first time over and over again, 9S would never even possess the capacity to understand his predicament.

2B panted, drawing 9S's fingers out of her cunt and running his hand down the inside of her thigh. Maybe, she thought, he would want to do something like this. She'd caught him staring, from time to time. Maybe he'd reach up to gently stroke her cheek, slide his hand beneath her visor, gouge out her eyes.

One time hadn't satisfied her, and unlike killing him, this she could inflict upon 9S until she exhausted herself.

No YoRHa units had sexual function installed by default, but it was a common enough modification that it barely merited comment. 9S's bodies never survived long enough to consider it, though. When 2B pulled on his clothes until fabric and fastenings gave way and left 9S exposed -- jacket open, bare to the knee -- the flesh beneath was smooth and mostly featureless, except for the reinforcements at each major joint and the open holes where 2B's sword had struck him. They were still leaking blood that had soaked through his clothes, and each one was deep enough that it exposed some of his internal workings -- the dull matte black of structural skeleton, the smooth translucent polymer of subdermal armor plating, the carefully laid lines of wire torn and tangled by the damage.

If his body were still activated 2B could have felt the thrum of electromagnetic current running through them. It would feel so good against her cunt, she thought, as she pulled her sword out of 9S's body with such violence that it left a gash half as long as her forearm, reaching from just below his torso plating nearly all the way to the seam between his thighs. The armor under his skin there had cracked from the stress, and beneath was a bloody nest of wire and coolant tubes.

2B flung her sword to the side and straddled 9S's waist, grinding down on the open wound. It still retained some of his core processors' heat, though that was rapidly fading, and she gasped out loud at the feeling. The wires inside parted around the contours of her cunt and thighs like the two of them had always meant to do this -- like 9S's corpse below her was still a living thing, like 9S was writhing and gasping below her. Like he had when she'd taken him unawares and cut his throat and held him there as he twitched and faded, or like she imagined he might in some far-fetched lover's fantasy when she slid her hands up his body and worked her fingers inside something that wasn't an open wound.

9S's exposed insides were unbearably slick, and 2B found her cunt sliding over the length of the wires with obscene ease. She rutted against them recklessly, hissing through her teeth whenever her sensitive clit scraped against a solid metal spacer or transistor sticking up from the tangled mess but never slowing down. It seemed almost too easy to climax again like this -- as though this was a natural arrangement for the two of them, easy as holding hands -- and 2B's whole body shuddered with it. She barely paused, even though the sensation now verged on painful, threatening to overload her circuits. It was too much, too fast, too rough -- and it let her imagine there was something sparking there between her legs, pretend that she was grinding herself against live wire that pulsed with electricity and transmitted sensation to every inch of 9S's conscious body, leaving him wrecked, panting, calling her name.

When she could force nothing more from her body, either pain or orgasm, 2B collapsed over 9S's still form, and lay there for what felt to her like hours. She was certain she had damaged something.

Shaking, 2B hauled herself upright on legs that would barely hold her weight. Her hips and thighs were covered in blood and coolant fluid, and 9S looked more like a corpse than she'd ever seen him look.

Sheathing her sword behind her without bothering to clean it, 2B walked unsteadily away, leaving a trail of blood dripping below her on the dusty ground.

She'd leave this one here. In all likelihood the body would be retrieved and recycled, but maybe it wouldn't be. Maybe she could come back for it. Maybe 9S would find it, see his own violated body, know how much his consciousness had been scrubbed clean of suffering.

Maybe next time, 2B thought without much conviction, the ending would be different.