"Don't worry, sweetheart, just take a sip of this." Drunk laughter. Dirty fingers. Dark room. I wanted nothing more than to cut them to pieces, to tear them limb from limb and watch the smoke emanate from their bodies. I writhed, my skin chaffing on the poorly knotted rope and my skin erupting into goosebumps against the hard cement floor. My chin was forcibly taken between hard fingers and my lips pursed against a cold liquid that wasted along the sides of my mouth and down my chin and neck.

"This fucking Raven won't take it! Pry his jaw open..." I lashed out a leg into the dark and made soft contact against one of the countless bodies surrounding me.

The loudest one ordered everyone to take a limb, two to each. Not to bother taking off my clothes, just rip them up with one of the knives. Some of the drink seeped through the cracks in my lips, and I groaned in effort to fight off the hands. The hands...so many, all over me, ripping at any part of me they could reach. Then in my mouth, forcing their way in and sliding against the outlines of my teeth and pressing against them until they ached. My eyes watered at the taste of them, the ash of cigarette buds and the lasting texture of dried cum and my own blood...

I bit down on the fingers in my mouth, locking my jaw and grinding my teeth on the skin and scowling into the dark as the fingers twitched in time with the high screech of their owner.

"WHAT THE FUCK IT'S FUCKING BITING ME-!" More hands came up to my face, some hands ripping into my mouth and others grabbing at my jaw. They had completely torn away the front of my shirt and jeans, carelessly cutting into the sides of my thighs and ribs. Suddenly everything was blindingly lit and there was a sharp crack of gunfire before the heavy sound of flesh falling limp beside me.

"Enough, boys. What did I say about misusing my new merchandise? Surely I was clear on the rules." A smooth voice. Dark. Sultry. I felt colder now than I ever had, the energy of the room weakened under the tremendous pressure of His voice.

"Holy shit... He's fucking dead..." I heard a troubled murmur behind me. I looked down beside me when I felt blood pooling between the lines of my fingers. I looked up through swollen slits at a monster of a man... Eyes cold and clear and sharp as glass, with hair slicked back tight against the line of his skull, his arm layered in heavy muscle and deep-cut scars. A Smith and Wesson model 19 was gripped tightly at the end of his left hand. He retracted it to the side of his head, scratching behind his ear with the smoking barrel.

"Mm. It would appear so. Though such lowly members of Pixis' payroll surely won't be missed if I explain how you handled the goods I bought off of him. I highly recommend vacating my property before I put in the phone call. He wouldn't hesitate deleting some leeches off of his employment list if he knew how useless you really were."

Shoes scuffled against pavement. Car doors ripped open on the hinges outside and rubber ground into the gravel. I breathed heavily, my body twitching with the cold power of adrenaline pumping with every rough pound of my heart. I pulled whatever scraps of clothing I had left and held it tight around my body, trying to cover myself. Shield my heart and body from this slick looking stranger. I looked up into his face and saw nothing. Cold, calculated movements. Mechanical breathing. Mathematically a predictable human being if not for the eyes. The uniformity of navy encircling a black iris that kept inflaming, then shrinking... something dangerous. Perverse. Something not to be trusted. If not for the eyes, only a machine. A tool of the corruptible system of trade... something that whirred and buzzed, something that ticked within- but this man made no noise. Hardly breath. And the eyes...They were never to be trusted.

Something was leaking out of them. A malfunction of his design. A loose hinge. A gap. Two pin-sized holes that pulsated with a bilious darkness that petrified me.

Lust. Overwhelming lust that had nothing to do with skin, with sex. Machines didn't lust for anything, and for all intents and purposes no one would suspect this one did.

If not for those eyes.