Just want to warn you this is not a pleasant chapter to read. There's some background, a bit of world-building, and no sexytiems this time. Sexytiems will all be in the next part if this one doesn't turn you off the rest of the story (the next part will make up for this one I swear!)
Please read the warnings for this part and take them seriously: Bondage, drug use, electrocution, lobotomy, noncon, OC death, sadism, violence.
If there's anything listed that's triggering for you, please don't read this chapter. If in doubt, please don't read this chapter. I actually shocked and disgusted myself writing this part, but that's how the story has chosen to unfold for me.
One Billion Credits
Part 2 – Compliance
We are going to make an example of you.
That was when Alfred knew everything had gone horribly wrong. The screen brought up his records – name, age, home address, photographs, and university registration; everything that made up his existence in the eyes of the State – and deleted them from the Database.
He was no longer a Citizen.
Before he could protest, somebody grabbed him from behind and slammed him forward onto the table, fighting to restrict his arms behind his back. He screamed to be released, to be given a second chance – this was a mistake!
The State does not make mistakes.
"Let me go!" he cried.
He elbowed his assailant hard in the gut and almost shook himself free, but a bigger, burlier man stepped up in his place and threw him back down. The edge of the table slammed painfully into his midriff, winding him, his breathing growing erratic as panic crippled him.
"Lift your eyes for the laser now," one of them – a woman? – said coolly, sounding almost bored.
They had to force him to do it. Somebody yanked him back by his hair and forced his eyelids open with gloved fingers. He stared into the laser, tears welling up and tracking down his cheeks as the beam scrambled the pattern of his irises, destroying his biometric identification.
Subject is in prime physical condition.
Penalty for crimes committed: Recalibration to the Pleasure Facility.
Six months later…
Alfred woke up with a sharp, choked scream.
He had a nightmare, it had to be a nightmare…
He blinked, wincing up at the harsh, bright light glaring down on him from the ceiling. The entire room was bathed in white; white floors, white walls, white countertops, a cold, clinical room with a stale, air-conditioned non-scent. The whiteness proved to be disorientating as he looked slowly around him.
Just where was he?
He tried to sit up, but found he was strapped to the table he was lying on, and thumped back down. He ached all over. He was very thirsty.
Then everything came flooding back: the Justice courts, the sentencing, the screams and the terror, and… and…
"Let me out! Let me out!" he yelled, his fear rising and bubbling over. He tugged at his restraints. They have put him in a straitjacket, he found, and that tipped him into greater panic. He took to rocking violently from side to side, roaring, "LET ME OUT!"
Where was he? Where have they taken him?
A door slid smoothly open from a corner of the room. He stopped shouting then and dropped deathly still, gazing fearfully at the figure advancing on him. It was a man dressed in a lab coat, with an amused, unfriendly smile fixed to his face.
"Wh-who are you?" he demanded in a small, timorous voice.
"Someone who is going to make it all better now," the man said as he stepped up to the table.
He had blond, messy hair and a pair of sharp green eyes that did not seem to register Alfred at all. He reached over to the side of Alfred and picked up something from a metal tray – a syringe. Alfred shook his head.
"No," he begged. "No, stop! Stop!"
The man held Alfred down and twisted his head to the side, exposing his jugular. Alfred shuddered in the confines of his bonds, his eyes screwed tightly shut, Adam's apple bobbing as he gulped and swallowed.
"No wonder you've woken up on the wrong side of bed," the man said with a little tut, his hand touching something plastered to the side of Alfred's neck. He picked under it with a fingernail and tore it loose, holding it up for Alfred to see.
It was a square, transparent patch with one word stamped across it in big, bold letters: COMPLIANCE.
"You were all out of Compliance," the man cooed, waving the patch as he stroked Alfred's hair in what was meant to be a soothing manner. "Not to worry, dear, I'll sort a new one out for you after we've fixed you up a bit."
"Just wh-who are you? And where am I? Wh-what's happening?"
The man heaved a great, heavy sigh.
"You ask the same bloody questions every time you come back… now if they had only allowed me to carry out the procedure…"
"C-come back?"
The man smirked. Alfred did not like the look in his eyes.
Crossing his arms across his chest under a pair of stethoscopes slung around his neck, the man said in a weary, monotonous tone that suggested he was repeating himself yet again, "I am Dr Arthur Kirkland. I am in charge of your… welfare, shall we say? It's my job to keep you under, and to make sure you're always in tip-top condition… free from diseases, that sort of thing… every bit of you clean and in order…"
His eyes flicked down the length of Alfred's body, wrapped as it was in a straitjacket, with a lingering, suggestive leer.
"Now as to where you are…"
Dr Kirkland leaned curiously over Alfred, bringing their faces close to within inches apart. Alfred stared up into the pitiless depths of his cold green eyes, his own prickling with tears.
"…have you really not a clue?" the doctor whispered.
Alfred knew, or thought he knew, but he did not want to believe it. He looked beseechingly up at Dr Kirkland, begging for an answer that was not… not that… anything but that…
But Dr Kirkland only straightened up, re-crossing his arms. "You're in the Pleasure Facility," he said briskly. "You're been recalibrated. You'll find the memory of it somewhere in your mind, I'm sure, I haven't touched anything beyond your last birthday…"
"B-birthday?" Alfred repeated stupidly. He felt numb all over as the words sank into him.
"Yes, boy, your bir– why, but it's today!" Dr Kirkland said with exaggerated delight, glancing down at a silver timepiece strapped to his wrist. "Fourth of July, was it? Well, congratulations, but I'm afraid it's still work as usual for you. No rest for the wicked!"
He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, took up the syringe again, uncapped the plastic top from the needle, and held it up to the light as he squirted out a little of whatever was in it, to make sure there was no air bubbles trapped inside.
Alfred started to struggle again at the sight of it.
"Be still, boy, it's only a sedative," the doctor said impatiently.
"Please let me go!" Alfred sobbed. "I'm begging you, please! I want to go home, I want t–"
The doctor made soft, shushing noises as he held Alfred down once more. Alfred tensed up. His breathing came out sharp and shallow, and his eyes poured with tears, blurring his vision until everything was blotted out. The doctor brought the needle down.
"It's all right now," he murmured as he forced the needle into Alfred's jugular. Alfred let out a low, whimpering cry.
The sedative was very potent and worked quickly. As blackness began to creep in from all four corners of the room, Alfred felt his mouth go slack, the strain in his body lifting as his muscles loosened and relaxed. His fight to stay conscious quickly turned into a losing battle as his eyelids grew heavy with sleep.
"There, isn't that better?" Dr Kirkland's voice sounded as if it was floating from over a great distance, but Alfred could still detect the laugh in it as he sneered, "Feels good, doesn't it? Oh, and one more thing before you go back to sleep…"
"You are home."
The Hive is a metropolis home to over eight million people. The Citizens of the Hive are those who are registered in the Database, which excludes sex dolls (euphemistically labelled sub-Citizens, listed in a separate registry similar to pets and property) and illegal immigrants from neighbouring Hives. Anyone not in the Database is excluded from access to housing, education, health care, legal services, and state protection – even a basic right to life.
Among the Citizens, there is a strict three-ranking class system that is vigorously policed. At the top are the Elites, a select group of only ten people who have inherited their positions from the founders of the Hive many hundreds of years ago. They govern all the inner workings of the Hive, and live separate from everyone else in the very heart of the city, in opulence that was rumoured to be beyond the conceivable.
The class below them are the State Citizens who make up a little over a quarter of the total Citizen population. They are the middle class, the ones who run the general affairs of the State in businesses, schools and hospitals, with the legal right to marry, have a family, and buy property, including, if they so wish, their very own sex dolls.
Making up the majority of the population at the bottom are a nameless class of workers who live all their lives in the outskirts of the Hive in Designated Areas. All workers are given only the most basic education and health care, and are strictly forbidden from owning property. They eat, sleep, and play in State-provided cubicles, and work every day of their lives at machines that generate food and power for the whole Hive.
For a worker, access into the Hive proper is very restricted. A majority of workers will never put so much as a toe out of their Designated Areas in their lifetime, but permission to travel can be granted to exceptionally hard-working Citizens. Outings to the Zoo, Park, the Shopping Centre and, of course, the Pleasure Facility, can be bought with credits earned from clocking in to work.
Which was how Ivan came to be where he was that day. He had just stepped out of the Tube station into the heart of the Hive itself, and for a moment he simply stood gaping around him. This was the first time he had ever gone beyond the borders of his Designated Area, and looking around, he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
For one, there was just so much space. When he tilted his head up there was no ceiling, only floors and floors as far as his eyes could see, making him dizzy. Around him were milling with people of all backgrounds, many in unbelievably lavish clothing; wool, cashmere, leather, fabrics he did not even know the name of, and all in a dazzling array of colours and cuts. There were long coats and dresses, smart suits and cute skirts; hats, shades, gloves, shoes and jewellery, more accessories than he ever knew existed to adorn a person, and his mind reeled from the extravagance.
Beside them, he thought he must stand out in his simple worker's attire of a cotton shirt and overalls. He felt very self-conscious as he wandered through the city, following the route he had been directed to earlier at the station.
As he walked, he was struck by a sudden observation: not everyone here was equal. This might seem a strange thing to notice for somebody who knew that his place was firmly in the lower class, but he had only ever seen his equals among his colleagues in his Designated Area. He had never seen the classes clash like this. Once he noticed this, he was unable to put it to the back of his mind, and everywhere he looked, he was making a conscious distinction between a worker, a State Citizen, and a sex doll.
The more beautifully dressed, heavily made-up, lavishly decorated people he had taken for rich State Citizens were actually sex dolls. He saw now that they sported barcode tattoos on the nape of their necks and both upper arms, and often trailed a step or two behind who must be their owners. Some were got up in blatantly sexy costumes that flattered their curves and exposed flesh. Some even wore a collar, with a leash tugged along by their owners. As he walked amongst them, gawping at all the excess, Ivan came to realise that in comparison, the sex dolls advertised to him and his colleagues back home were actually quite conservatively dressed.
There was so much to take in, he could spend all night just looking; the giant billboards advertising luxury goods, the night clubs heaving with patrons and blaring music, the shop windows as high as four floors, decked with mannequins modelling the latest fashion, or displaying small, shiny gadgets he did not know the functions of…
He was staring so much around him – head twisting from side to side, trying to see everything – that he did not see the Thought Police standing by the lamppost until he was almost on him.
"Excuse me!" the Thought Police said, bristling with indignation.
Ivan jumped almost out of his skin. "Sorry, I'm so sorry!" he babbled.
"Watch where you're going!"
Ivan stood meekly by as the Thought Police brushed down his uniform and straightened himself.
The Thought Police had a pair of dark, disconcertingly red pupils that were in sharp contrast to his pale complexion. In his jack boots, hat with the insignia of the State pulled over white-blond hair, and the handle of an electric baton peeking out from underneath his coat, he cut for an intimidating, authoritative figure, even though he was a fair few centimetres shorter than Ivan.
As his unusual eyes travelled up and down the length of Ivan in his worker's uniform, they narrowed sharply together in suspicion.
"Not from around here, are you? You got a permit?"
He raised a leather-gloved hand and made an impatient beckoning motion with it, and Ivan rushed to give him his hand to show the travel permit stamped to his wrist.
Just then, a girl let out a piercing scream from the middle of a crowd. The crowd parted in a circle around the scene but continued to move along, unwilling to get involved. Ivan stared in bewilderment. A man was holding a girl tightly by her upper arm in one hand as he beat her savagely with the other, yelling, "I'll teach you to steal from me, you fucking whore!"
The Thought Police looked up with a frown. "What the…"
He dropped Ivan's hand and ran over to the scene, the crowd parting easily to give him way. Ivan pulled down his shirt sleeve as he stared. He was not sure whether or not he was free to leave, so he decided to stay and watch, a morbid curiosity overriding his initial apprehension.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" he heard the Thought Police demand. If the crowd before had been sidestepping the scene, they now gave it a wide berth.
To Ivan's astonishment, the man looked pleased to see the Thought Police, whereas the girl took to trembling all over, her eyes bloodshot with terror. She could not have been older than sixteen.
"Officer, this piece of trash tried to steal from me," the man said. He threw the girl violently to the ground, and she fell limp as a marionette with her strings cut, weeping. A dozen or so plastic credit cards clattered out of her pockets on to the pavement, glimmering in the city lights.
The Thought Police stared down at the girl weeping over her stolen credits. After a while, he waved for the man to leave them. The man did so reluctantly, but not before hacking his throat and spitting at the girl, stalking away with his nose in the air.
Ivan noticed then that the girl had barcode tattoos on her arms. She was a sex doll, but what a pitiful sight she made. Her frock, once magnificent, undoubtedly, was torn and caked with grime. Ivan had assumed she was a short-haired model, but upon closer inspection he saw that the ends were unevenly cut; somebody had hacked off her hair, and none-too-gently by the looks of it. As she sat in the dirt on the ground, weeping piteously and rubbing her swollen eyes with the balls of her palm, Ivan felt his heart go out to her.
"Someone discarded you, eh?" he heard the Thought Police say to her.
He had unsheathed his baton, and was prodding the tip of it at one of her barcode tattoos; she flinched from it, hiccoughing. He withdrew his weapon.
"Don't worry," Ivan heard him say in a strangely flat voice. "I'll put you out of your misery."
The baton slammed across the side of her head, and she fell without another sound and stopped moving, stopped weeping altogether. Seeing her lying so still and silent made for a more upsetting picture than when she had been crying, but the Thought Police was not finished with her. As Ivan watched with mounting horror, he plunged the baton into her frock down between her breasts and let loose the full voltage of his weapon through her.
Her body shuddered as the current ran through her. She was a puppet dancing to an ugly tune, jerking up and down, head lolling from side to side, as the Thought Police delivered enough ampage to kill a full grown man. Ivan felt sick watching her. But he was the sole witness to the scene, as everyone else walked past the girl as if her murder was of no consequence to their lives.
And why should it? She was only a sex doll, a lobotomised sub-Citizen with no rights, and an abandoned, thieving one at that…
It seemed to take the Thought Police a long time to finish his grim errand. When he was satisfied that the girl was dead, he pulled the baton from her smoking, twitching body and sheathed it again.
"Another one?"
A second Thought Police, taller and bigger built with gelled blond hair and dark blue eyes, came jogging up to his red-eyed colleague. He held two steaming Styrofoam cups in his hands.
"These goddamned sex dolls," Red-Eyes grumbled. He accepted a cup with a curt nod of thanks, adding with a jerk of his thumb, "Get her cleaned up."
His colleague tuned in a radio to order a clean-up, and Red-Eyes turned away from the girl as if he could no longer bear to look at her. That was when he noticed that Ivan was still standing there by the lamppost.
Raising his coffee in a small toast, he said in a booming voice that travelled over the babble of the crowd, "Welcome to the Hive!"
Ivan wished he had left earlier after all.
Author's note
I did debate whether or not to use Hetalia characters for the 'villain' roles, and settled to do so in the end because otherwise the chapter would be nothing but OCs. But not to worry, they only appear fleetingly for this part. The focus is still squarely on Ivan and Alfred's relationship!
In this part I've lifted extensively from Shieunni's recalibrated!AU doodles and creepy lobotomising nurse!England doodles on Tumblr.
The concept for a Compliance drug was taken from Fifteen Million Merits (see end notes in previous chapter), and the idea for the drug in patch form was taken from a Doctor Who episode I saw a long time ago (sorry I don't remember the season or episode it was from, but I think it was during Tenth's era).