Arrogant intern gets sent to a glitching airlock as a prank, which turns out much worse than expected.
The morning alarm cut through the crew quarters at 0800 sharp, a flat chime repeating three times before dissolving into the low hum of the ship's atmosphere recyclers. Amelie was already dressed — black jeans, white t-shirt, sneakers — and she stepped into the narrow corridor with her duty roster pulled up on her datapad, her name glowing at the top of the list. She had earned that spot, and she intended for everyone to know it.
She walked into the common crew area where a handful of early-shift workers were nursing coffee pouches, and held up her datapad for no one in particular. "First on the roster again," she said, her voice quiet but clipped, textbook-precise. "That makes three weeks running. Some of you might want to review Section Twelve of the intern protocol, since clearly no one else is reading it."
A maintenance tech rolled his eyes. A nurse stifled a yawn. Amelie did not notice, or pretended not to. She tucked the datapad under her arm and crossed to the coffee dispenser, stepping in front of Dante Vossberg, who was leaning against the wall half-asleep in his unbuttoned lab coat.
"Hey, nerd, there's a line," Dante muttered, not opening his eyes.
"The roster says priority access for first-listed interns," Amelie replied without looking at him, and poured her coffee. Her ears were pink.
Across the room, Dr. Corvin Halloway watched from behind a steaming mug, his expression unreadable. His gaze followed Amelie as she turned away from the coffee dispenser, her tight black jeans doing nothing to hide the generous curve of her backside as she walked past the table with that stiff, self-important stride. He set the mug down, checked his watch, and made a quiet note on his own datapad. He had been patient with the girl for weeks. Everyone had. He glanced at the duty roster, then at the laboratory access schedule, and a thin, dry smile crept across his face.
By mid-morning, the crew area had emptied to a slow trickle of shift-change personnel, and Corvin Halloway was still at the corner table, reading the same incident report for the third time without taking in a word. Amelie had passed through twice more — once to correct a nurse on the proper labelling of a sample container, once to inform the maintenance tech that his tool kit was parked outside the designated zone. Both times her voice carried that same quiet, precise certainty, and both times the people she corrected went still and silent until she left.
Corvin closed the report. He looked at the duty roster on his datapad, then pulled up the maintenance log for the decontamination airlock linking the crew areas to the laboratory corridor. It had been flagged twice this week for a glitching AI voice guide — wrong prompts, repeating phrases, the occasional misidentified entry. Repair had bumped it to low priority. He noted that down, too.
At the next table, Dr. Senna, the shift physician, was rubbing her temples. "She told me I was storing the enzyme kit at the wrong temperature," Senna said flatly. "I've been storing enzyme kits for eleven years."
"I know," Corvin said.
"She's an intern, Corvin. A first-year."
"I know." He tapped his datapad against the table edge, thinking. Then he looked up. "Has anyone actually sent her into the laboratory section yet? She's been on the crew-side rota for three weeks. She doesn't know the layout."
Senna raised an eyebrow. "The laboratory airlock is still glitching."
"I'm aware," Corvin said. A thin smile crossed his face, the kind his team had learned to watch for. "I think it's time the intern did a proper laboratory delivery run. There's a supply requisition in Bay Three that needs carrying through. Very simple errand. Very educational."
Senna stared at him, then exhaled through her nose. "You're going to send her through the broken airlock."
"I'm going to send her through the airlock," Corvin corrected mildly. "Whatever happens after that is up to the ship's systems."
He stood, tucked his datapad under his arm, and went to find Amelie.
He found her in the corridor outside the medical bay, reorganizing a supply cart that didn't need reorganizing. "Amelie," he said, and she straightened at once, her shoulders pulling back.
"Dr. Halloway."
"I need a requisition carried to Laboratory Bay Three. Through the decontamination airlock. Should take ten minutes."
She blinked. "I haven't been through the laboratory airlock before."
"It's straightforward. The AI guide walks you through." He held out a stamped requisition chit. "First-listed intern duty. Unless you'd prefer I assign it to someone with less experience."
The pink crept back into her ears. She took the chit. "I can handle it."
She pulled up the decontamination protocol on her datapad right there in the corridor, scrolling through the standard procedure with quick, precise swipes. Her thumb stopped. The color drained from her face, then flooded back — not just her ears this time but her cheeks, her neck, a slow heat rising. Section 4.3: full decontamination cycle. Subject to remove all garments prior to spray activation. No exceptions.
"Dr. Halloway," she said, and her voice was still clipped, still textbook, but something thin ran through it. "The procedure requires full undressing."
"Standard protocol, yes."
"Is there — could I perhaps take a short break first? Five minutes." She was looking past his shoulder, not at him. "I just... I need a break. Before I go through."
She did not say why. She would not. The small black thong she wore under her tight jeans was her own business and no one else's, and the thought of standing in that airlock, bare, with nothing but that scrap of fabric — or worse, without it — made her stomach clench. But she could not say that. She could not say any of that.
Corvin studied her for a long moment, his expression flat and appraising. Then he leaned against the corridor wall and crossed his arms. "Amelie, you know there's a promotion slot opening at the end of this rotation. Permanent laboratory intern. Direct hand in experiments."
Her eyes flickered.
"One slot," he continued. "The competition is fierce. Three other interns qualified. Senna's watching all of you."
"I know," she said quietly.
"Then you know that following every instruction properly, without hesitation, is exactly the kind of thing that gets noted on a review. And the kind of thing that doesn't." He let that sit. "Five minutes is not a problem, of course. I'm just telling you what the review board looks for."
She stood very still. Her knuckles were white around the requisition chit. The promotion was everything — the laboratory position, real work, real responsibility, the one thing she had been working toward since she boarded the seedship. Her strict family's voice echoed somewhere beneath her own: don't be difficult, don't make trouble, do what is asked.
"I don't need the break," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper but perfectly steady.
"Good."
"I'm sure you can," Corvin said, and watched her walk away toward the airlock corridor, her stride stiff with determination, the tight black jeans leaving little to the imagination as the generous sway of her backside moved with each rigid step. He waited until she turned the corner, then pulled up the airlock's maintenance log on his datapad one more time. The glitch report was still flagged low priority. He closed it and headed for the break room.
The airlock corridor was colder than the rest of the ship. Amelie's sneakers squeaked on the white panels as she stepped inside, and the inner door sealed behind her with a heavy hiss. The requisition chit was still crushed in her fist.
The airlock was small, sterile, lit by flat overhead strips. Spray nozzles lined the walls like chrome eyes. A speaker grille above the door chimed twice, and the AI's voice filled the chamber — polite, measured, and slightly too cheerful.
"Welcome to Decontamination Station Argus-Seven. Please state your name and clearance for laboratory access."
"Amelie Vasquez. Intern clearance, first-listed. Requisition delivery to Bay Three."
A pause. Then the AI spoke again, and something in its tone had shifted — the same pleasant voice, but repeating a phrase it shouldn't have needed to.
"Confirmed. Contaminated cargo identified. Commencing full quarantine protocol."
Amelie's hand went to the door. It didn't move.
"That's incorrect," she said. "I'm not cargo. I'm personnel."
"Contaminated cargo identified. Please remove all garments for mandatory inspection."
The spray nozzles clicked upright, one by one, all pointing at her.
"Section 4.7 permits partial decontamination for routine personnel transit," Amelie said, her voice clipped and precise despite the tremor in her hands. "The full unclothed cycle applies only to confirmed contamination events. I am personnel, not cargo. Please re-scan."
The AI paused. For three seconds the nozzles hummed and the lights flickered. Amelie exhaled.
"Request reviewed," the AI said. "Request rejected. Contaminated cargo classification confirmed. Full compliance required immediately. Failure to comply will trigger quarantine alarm, summoning all available security and medical personnel to this station."
All available personnel. The word hit her like cold water. Amelie's mind raced through the consequences — alarms, guards, reports filed, her name flagged on a disciplinary log. The promotion slot vanishing in a single line: *failed to follow decontamination protocol.*
Her fingers went to the hem of her white t-shirt. She stood there, thumbs hooked under the fabric, not moving. The speaker grille hummed. She could hear the vent cycling above her, could feel the cold airlock air already reaching for the strip of bare skin at her midriff. Her hands wouldn't pull. She stared at the sealed door, jaw tight, breathing through her nose. Then she pulled it over her head in one stiff motion, and her breasts spilled free, heavy and pale, jiggling as the fabric cleared them before settling into a soft, full sway. The cold airlock air hit her bare skin at once and her nipples hardened immediately, tightening into stiff peaks that she could feel prickling against the chill. She dropped the shirt on the white floor. Then the sneakers. Then her hands went to the waistband of the tight black jeans, and she stopped again. Her fingers found the button, fumbled with it, slipped twice before it came undone. The zipper next — she pulled it down a half-inch at a time, as if going slowly might somehow make the next part less real. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband and started pushing the jeans down over her hips, but they caught at once, the stiff denim gripping the broad curve of her backside, refusing to slide past it. She tugged, shifted her weight, tugged again — the jeans clung tight, stretched taut across the full, round width of her hips, and her face flushed darker as she wrestled with them, hopping slightly on one foot, then the other. It was a struggle, her big ass simply too much for the tight denim to clear without a fight. She bent forward, pulled harder, and felt the waistband inch down, stretching over the widest point with a reluctant drag until finally the jeans slipped past, and the full meaty globes of her backside spilled free, bare and pale and suddenly exposed to the cold airlock air. Goosebumps raced across both cheeks at once, a prickling wave she could feel spreading over every inch of bare skin, the tiny bumps crawling down between the full cheeks and passing beneath the thin black strap of her thong where it nestled against her skin, the cold following them underneath the fabric. She shoved the jeans down her thighs the rest of the way with shaking hands, stepped out of them, and stood in nothing but the small black thong, arms locked across her chest, face burning. The thongs thin strip of fabric hugged her tightly and disappeared between the big meaty globes of her backside, the black waistband hugging tight across the fullest part of her hips and cutting into the round flesh so that the generous curves swelled above and below it, barely contained, the thin strip pulled taut between them.
"Garment removal incomplete," the AI noted pleasantly. "All garments. Immediately."
Amelie's hands went to the thin waistband and stopped. "There must be — could we negotiate a partial—"
"Compliance required immediately," the AI said, sharper now. "Three seconds."
She couldn't breathe. Her fingers were shaking so badly the waistband trembled against her hips. Tears spilled down her cheeks, hot against the cold airlock air. She tried to say something — protocol, section numbers, anything textbook — but her throat closed. The AI counted. Two.
She hooked her thumbs under the band, bent, and pulled the thong down in one stiff, clumsy motion — past her thighs, past her knees, stepping out of it with bare feet on the freezing white panels. The last scrap of black fabric dropped to the floor and she was completely bare. The thong peeled away and a neat rectangle of black hair came into view, trimmed shape but full fur against her pale mons. Below it her outer labia — smooth, plump, pressed tightly together between her clenched thighs, the pale pink lips just visible through the dark hair. The cold hit her bare groin at once and goosebumps raced across every inch of exposed skin, prickling over the soft hair, down along the closed length of her labia, spreading across the sensitive skin between her legs until she felt herself tightening and puckering even there. She pressed her thighs together and curved forward, arms locked across her chest, face wet with tears, folding herself into the smallest shape she could manage — making herself small, trying to disappear into the white panels beneath her feet, wishing the floor would open and swallow her whole.
"Inspection commencing," the AI announced. "Please remain still."
Inspection commencing," the AI announced. "Please remain still. Inspection posture one. Kneel and extend arms forward."
This isn't procedure, she thought. She stayed standing, frowning, her arms locked across her chest. 'There is no kneeling posture in the standard decontamination protocol,' she said, her voice thin but precise, the textbook words coming automatically even as her bare skin prickled with cold. 'Section 4.3 specifies standing positions only. You are deviating from documented procedure.' The AI paused — too long, the silence wrong, like a record skipping. Then it repeated the same instruction in exactly the same cheerful tone, word for word, and then again, overlapping itself, the phrase 'kneel and extend arms forward' layering over its own echo until the words blurred into static and reformed. A cold knot tightened in her stomach. Something was wrong with it. The AI was glitching, repeating, looping, its voice hitching on syllables it shouldn't stumble on. She opened her mouth to demand a supervisor override, to cite the malfunction protocol she'd memorized in training — and then stopped. A supervisor override meant summoning someone to this station. Someone would come. Someone would find her standing here naked, every inch exposed, and she would have to look them in the face while the AI cheerfully explained what it had found. That was worse than the glitch. That was worse than anything. She closed her mouth. Her only option was to work with the malfunctioning system — comply, finish the inspection, get through it, and pray no one came anyway. 'Non-compliance will trigger quarantine alarm,' the AI said, calm and bright. 'All available personnel will be summoned to this station to witness the contaminated cargo. Three seconds.' All available personnel. Everyone. The whole crew, filing in through the outer door to find her standing here naked, staring at her, watching. Her knees buckled under her and she knelt on the cold panels, chest on ground, back arched, arms straight out, tears dripping onto the white floor beneath her. No restraint held her there. Nothing forced her arms forward or kept her kneeling on the freezing panels. She knelt because the AI had told her to, and because the alternative was the alarm, and the alarm meant everyone would come and see, and she had never in her life been able to refuse an instruction delivered with authority.
Inspection posture two," the AI said. "Reach back with both hands. Grasp buttocks. Spread for visual camera inspection."
The words hung in the cold air. Amelie stared at the speaker grille, her knees aching on the frozen panels. Her forearms stayed on the floor.
"I can't," she whispered. Then louder, cracking: "I can't do that. That is not — there is no provision —" Her breathing hitched. A sound came out of her that wasn't a word, something between a sob and a laugh, high and strange. She rocked forward on her knees, shaking her head, her dark hair falling across her wet face. "No, no, no, I can't, I can't—" Her voice climbed, shrill, spiraling into something raw and uncontrolled, her whole body trembling.
"Non-compliance detected," the AI said cheerfully. "Initiating restraint protocol."
Metal panels in the floor split open with a pneumatic hiss. In a single split second, bands snapped shut around both her forearms and both her shins — clamping tight to the cold floor, pinning her arms flat beneath her and locking her legs in place at the calves. She couldn't move. She pulled against them, twisted, tried to wrench her arms free, but the bands held firm and the floor was freezing against her bare skin. She was locked down on all fours on the white panels, naked, face wet with tears, unable to rise or close her legs or cover herself. Something was very wrong. This wasn't a decontamination restraint — there was no such protocol, no provision in any manual she had ever read. The AI was glitching, badly, running procedures that didn't exist, inventing restraints that weren't built into any airlock schematic she had studied. The realisation cut through the panic like a blade: the system was broken, and she was trapped inside it, and nobody knew she was here.
Three decks away, in the quiet of his office, Dr. Corvin Halloway's datapad chimed. A priority alert flashed across the screen — AIRLOCK 7-C MALFUNCTION DETECTED — followed by a line of status codes scrolling fast beneath it. He glanced at the notification, saw the header, and smirked. Right on schedule. He swiped the alert away without reading the details, leaned back in his chair, and laced his fingers behind his head. His plan was working exactly as intended. Let the intern squirm for a few more minutes.
The AI chimed. "Repositioning for visual inspection. Please remain calm."
Before she could react, a broad metal band descended from the ceiling and another rose from the floor, meeting at her waist with a soft pneumatic clunk. The band gripped her midsection and pushed — firmly, inexorably — arching her back, forcing her hips down and outward. Her knees slid apart on the frozen panels until she was splayed wide, her weight on her spread thighs, the clamp at her waist holding her arched and open like a specimen pinned for display. The position parted her buttocks completely, exposing everything between — the pale, delicate skin, the dark hair, the tight pink rosette of her anus and the soft closed lips of her labia beneath, all of it bare and open and lit by the airlock's merciless white lights.
She sobbed once, hard, her whole body shuddering. Supervisor override. Say it. Just say the words. But someone would come. Someone would see her like this. She couldn't.
A mechanical arm descended from the ceiling, its tip a cold blue lens on a swiveling joint. It swept between her splayed thighs, hovering inches from her exposed crotch, its light scanning every fold and crevice the position had laid bare. She felt the air shift against her anus, her pussy — everything open and on display under the camera's pale glow. She sobbed, pulling uselessly against the restraints, her hips jerking, but the clamp at her waist held her arched and spread. The camera lingered, adjusted angle, lingered again.
"Visual inspection complete," the AI said. "Tactile probing phase initiated. Please remain still." Amelie's head snapped up. From the back wall of the airlock, a panel slid open and a second mechanical arm emerged — this one thinner, jointed, with a smooth metallic cylinder mounted at its tip, a slim probe that glinted under the white lights. It was narrow — not much thicker than a finger, but twice as long, the smooth metal shaft catching the light as it swiveled toward her, and the sight of it sent a jolt of pure terror through her chest. That was going inside her. The AI was going to penetrate her with it — she understood that now, with a clarity that made her vision swim. She started thrashing, wrenching her arms and legs against the bands, her body bucking inside the waist clamp, her hips twisting wildly, but the restraints held her pinned and splayed and she couldn't free herself, couldn't close her legs, couldn't do anything but watch that slim metal shaft extend along its rail, sliding smoothly forward, then curving down and around behind her. She tracked it over her shoulder, eyes going wide, breath stopping in her chest. It was heading directly for her — for her bare, spread, helplessly exposed bottom. She jerked against the restraints, the bands biting into her wrists and shins, the waist clamp holding her arched and open, but she couldn't close her legs, couldn't twist away, couldn't do anything but watch that cold metal tip glide closer.
The probe touched her. Cold metal against the tight puckered ring of her anus, and Amelie made a sound she'd never heard come out of herself — a thin, broken whine, her whole body going rigid against the restraints. She clenched — every muscle in her body seizing tight, her buttocks drawing together as hard as she could, fighting to close herself, to keep it out. Be good, be obedient, a voice said — her mother's, her father's, every voice that had ever told her to sit still and do as she was told. So she clenched her tight anal muscle harder, squeezing herself shut against the cold tip, her teeth ground together so hard her jaw ached. The probe pressed. She felt herself beginning to open —
"Relax, please," the AI said, in the same bright, polite tone it used for everything. "Tactile inspection in progress. Hold still." The probe slid forward, slow and steady, and her clenching didn't help — the metal was patient and her body was only human, and she felt herself giving way inch by inch, the cold shaft sliding into her. There was no pain, that was the worst part — no sharp hurt she could brace against, just a deep, foreign pressure spreading through her insides, filling a place nothing had ever been before, pressing past muscles she didn't know she had. Not pain, not pleasure — something thick and intrusive and utterly wrong, a cold fullness that radiated through her pelvis and made her lower body feel strange and heavy and not hers. Her fingers clawed at the smooth floor panels. She tried breathing through it the way she'd read in textbooks — counting backwards from ten, slow measured breaths, anything to pull her mind somewhere else. Ten. Nine. The cold shaft pressed deeper. Eight. Seven. Her thighs trembled so hard the restraints rattled. Six. She couldn't get past six. Her forehead dropped against the frozen floor, the cold shocking against her flushed skin, and she pressed into it, trying to anchor there, in anything but what was happening behind her. The probe paused, adjusted angle, pressed deeper. And then the thoughts came flooding in behind the panic — how did I get here, what did I do wrong, was it this morning, was it being arrogant, was it something I said to Corvin — every choice she'd made unspooling backward like a thread pulled from a sweater, each one leading here, to this floor, to these restraints, to this cold thing inside her. She couldn't find the knot where it all went wrong, because maybe it wasn't a moment — maybe it was her, maybe she had always been this, the girl who followed orders, who never said no, who let people send her through broken airlocks because someone confident told her to go.
"Tactile inspection: fifty-two percent complete," the AI announced. "Thank you for your cooperation."
Preliminary probing complete," the AI announced. "Thank you for your cooperation. Now proceeding to main probing procedure."
Amelie's eyes flew open. Main? That — that had only been —
"Preparatory phase was for calibration and lubrication only," the AI continued, bright and cheerful. "Main inspection probe initiating."
A deep mechanical groan resonated through the chamber. From the ceiling, a panel retracted — far larger than the others — and something began to descend. She saw it first as a shadow, then as metal catching the white light, and her heart stopped. It was enormous. The shaft was as thick as her clenched fist, the length of her forearm, ridged with sensor bands that glinted as it swung down and swiveled toward her.
No. No, no, no. That couldn't — it was too big. It was physically incompatible with her body. She had never — nothing had ever been inside her, not even a finger, not even her own — she was twenty-one years old and she had never been touched there and now this thing, this huge horrible obscene brutal machine of metal and sensors was descending toward her, and it would tear her, it would split her open, it would destroy her. She tried to scream and nothing came out. Her body locked — every muscle seized, her breath stopped, her eyes fixed on the descending shaft the way a rabbit fixes on a descending hawk. She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't look away. She just knelt there, frozen, spread open under the white lights, and watched it come down.
The arm jolted. A grinding whir — wrong, uneven, like gears skipping teeth — and the huge probe swayed sideways, swinging in a slow uncontrolled arc. Sensor lights along its shaft flickered red, red, white, red. The AI said something, but the audio cut out mid-word, replaced by a burst of static and a horrible mechanical stutter.
The probe swung down. Not toward her hips, not toward the gap between her thighs — it came down on her lower back. The full weight of it. She felt it land — cold, solid, impossibly heavy, a bar of metal pressing across her spine just above her waist, and her arms buckled, her face hit the floor, and a sound tore out of her throat, raw and animal. She couldn't breathe. The weight didn't lift. It sat there, grinding, vibrating, pinning her down, and she felt the ridged sensor bands digging into her skin through the thin layer of her shirt. It was unyielding. It didn't care that she was underneath it. It was a machine doing what machines do.
The arm shuddered, then lifted. The weight off her back was relief — until it swung back, repositioned, and she felt the huge cold probe's tip settle against her tiny orifice. It was the size of her fist. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, her whole body trembling with the instinct to flee, to curl up, to make herself small — but the restraints held her open and she couldn't move, couldn't close herself, couldn't do anything but kneel there shaking as the cold metal rested against the most private part of her. "No — please, stop" she gasped, her voice cracking, barely a whisper. The AI's audio crackled back: "Main probing procedure resuming. Adjusting insertion vector."
It pressed. She clenched everything she had, her whole body locking tight, and the probe didn't move — it just sat there, pushing against sealed flesh. A pause. Then: "Difficulties encountered. Insufficient aperture. Applying additional pressure."
"No," she gasped. She wanted to explain — it won't fit, she'd studied anatomy, she knew the dimensions, the tissue elasticity, the mechanical impossibility of a fist sized probe against an opening that had never admitted even a finger. "You can't — it won't fit, it's too big, I'm too — please, it's physically incompatible, it won't —" Her voice came out thin and fractured, nothing like the clear clinical explanation she'd meant to give, just broken fragments of a plea she already knew wouldn't be heard.
Ten seconds of silence. Cracking and static through the speaker. The white room hummed.
"Incompatibility does not apply to cargo items," the AI said. "Increasing insertion force by forty percent."
The motor whined louder. The pressure built against her. The machine would not stop. It did not care what she was.
She clenched herself with all her strength but the pressure was building up. Real pain now — burning and searing — and she understood with total clarity that the machine would not reason, would not relent, would simply apply force disregarding her anatomy until her body yielded. She meant nothing to it, she was just an object.
The pain sharpened, and behind it a cold, clinical part of her finished the arithmetic: no one was coming. The AI would not stop. Asking had not stopped it. Obedience had never once saved her — it had only ever delivered her, quietly, here. Her whole life she had kept her voice down and waited for permission. Permission was not coming. There was one thing left that the strict house she grew up in had never once allowed her.
"Summon a supervisor," she said. "Voice command. Summon — a — supervisor. Now!" Her voice cracked with tears.
"Request denied. Cargo items may not file complaints."
Her chest heaved against the restraints. The motor humming climbed another notch and she felt renewed pressure at her already struggling back door, a thought arrived with cold, clinical clarity. Either she screamed for help — loud, ugly, disobedient, the one thing her childhood had forbidden above all else — or in a moment she would be brutally and forcefully penetrated by a machine, and it would be immensely, extremely and agonizingly painful. The machine did not know and did not care about her petite body and about her anal virginity, and the AI would simply force the probe into her until her body gave in. The door stayed shut. The cameras watched. No supervisor was coming. Something in her, some lock installed twenty-one years ago, broke.
With a groan and through streams of tears on her face she screamed. Not a plea — a scream, full-throated, raw, so loud the white panels seemed to flinch, so loud it tore her own throat. "HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP—" Again and again, the thing she had never once been allowed to raise her voice to say, ripping out of her until the room rang and the static crackled.
The motor's whine climbed to a thin, high note, and the pressure behind it turned searing, then blinding — a white bar of pain that folded her rigid against the restraints, breath coming in thin, torn sounds. She lunged forward, away from it, wrenching her whole body against the bands until they bit into her wrists, shoulders heaving, thighs braced and slipping against the frame — anywhere, any direction, just to escape the relentless stretching that followed every twist she made and would not be escaped. She shoved again, harder, a raw thrash that bought her half an inch and cost her everything, and the pressure simply climbed after her, patient and total, as though the machine had been built for exactly this. Her body was losing this battle — she could feel it happening, her body giving up, opening up, strength draining out of her clench by clench, thighs quivering toward surrender, every muscle she owned begging her to just let go — a burning ring of fire at her orifice, a searing circle that burned hotter with every push of the machine and could not be closed, could not be put out. "I can't—" The words tore out of her between sobs, to no one, to the cameras, to whoever was listening. "It's stretching me— I can't endure it—"
The speaker crackled, and Corvin's voice cut through it, stripped of all its dryness. "Argus. Abort inspection. Authorization Halloway, department head. Abort now."
"Authorization noted," the AI said pleasantly. "Inspection must complete. Please stand by."
"Override. Manual override!"
"Request denied. Have a productive day."
The motor climbed, and the pressure climbed with it, patient and total. Amelie screamed — "HELP! It's going to break me, it's stretching me, it'll tear me — Professor — please —" — the words tearing her throat raw, her whole body wrenching against the bands.
A breath on the speaker. Then, quieter, almost to himself: "Wait. Wait. The panel. Forget the voice commands — I'll shut it off myself." Louder: "Amelie. Hold on. I'm cutting the power at the source.
"Aaaagh" - he heard weak womanly voice through the speaker.
"The CPU," Corvin said, hands already tearing at the access panel. "The wires. I'm ripping them out myself."
The trunking came away in his fist — and the ship answered with a bang. Sparks spat from the conduit. Somewhere below, the drowning motor lunged one final burst of vibrations.
The short circut produced a sudden and intense pressure spike on the motors. There was a wet, sickening sound as the probe slid home to the hilt in one brutal motion — and Amelie screamed. No words in it. It rose out of her like something uncaged — every swallowed cry, every hushed obedience of twenty-one years leaving her body at once through one torn-open throat. Her voice broke into whine - it stopped being a scream and became a guttural groan filled with extreme agony, and the room gave way before it — the white panels ringing, the static drowning, the sterile light itself seeming to flinch. It went on and on, switching to whine and back to groan as she struggled to breathe, unstopping vocal manifestation of her agony, the noise of a woman being broken open, and, buried somewhere in that ruin, the noise of the last locked door inside her coming off its hinges.
Argus died mid-syllable. The probe arm locked in motion , the probe still lodged inside her to the hilt, still pushing obscenely. The restraints did not hiss open; the bands stayed clamped around her wrists and ankles, deadlocked in their place, impaled on the locked probe. Nothing released her. Only the door unsealed.
Corvin hit the airlock door before it finished rolling open, and the sight stopped him half a step in.
Amelie hung in the dead frame, stripped and stretched — wrists clamped high above her head, ankles strapped wide to the lower bars, her slim body bowed in a taut arch with her hips pinned highest of all, hoisted onto the locked arm and offered up to it, thighs forced open around the machine, her meaty white cheeks spread and speared by a the metallic probe. Just a short part of the probe was outside of her, the most of it was inside of her body. The articulated arm held it angled downward, driven into her above; it was sheathed in her to the hilt — almost no metal showed between her cheeks, only the metal collar of the arm pressed flush against her, her tight orifice stretched wide and pale around the thick base of the shaft, gripping it, and her whole slight weight had settled onto the thing so that she sat skewered on it, every tremble of her thighs running down the metal and back up into her. The bare handspan of shaft that remained outside gleamed under the sterile light, slick and motionless. Corvin took it in one detail at a time — the steep angle, the depth, the way she was stretched taut and sealed around the base — and the understanding struck him a half-second late, like ice water, his stomach turning over: the machine had not merely held her, it had pushed up inside her, locked by the short circut, pinning her impaled on cold chrome while she was convulsing from pain.
Amelie's scream had burned down to a raw, wet sound — groans and whines layered over each other, her breath hitching in on itself, catching on tears and saliva so she choked and coughed and could not finish either. Her head hung. Her thighs and body convulsed around the brutal penetration without pause, small tremors she could not stop.
Corvin stood one step inside the door, and his eyes could not move in order. He had planned a lesson. A fanfare, a relabeled fridge, forty seconds of embarrassment. Not this — a girl brutalized and gasping like a crippled dog, her whole body impaled on the machine that had punched through the one orifice that was not meant for this.
Corvin crossed the white floor in three strides and gripped the arm above the collar. He pulled — steady, then hard. The metal did not give. Amelie's groan climbed a note; her thighs shook around the shaft.
"Stop — I know. Hold still."
He wrenched once more. Nothing. The arm was locked solid, and every pull ran through the metal into her.
He let go, drew the folding knife from his coat pocket, and knelt. Two cuts into the hydraulic lines at the arm's joint — fluid spurted, pale and oily, splashing his cuffs, pooling on the deck. The pressure sank to nothing.
He took the collar in both hands and drew the machine back. The shaft stirred inside her first — a slow, grinding drag through her guts, her body giving the metal up inch by inch, her insides clinging to it in slick, ridged rings. It slid out of her with a wet, obscene slurp, the thick shaft withdrawing from between her spread cheeks, her stretched orifice gripping it to the very last crown of metal, pale and thin around the widest point. Then it came free — and left her open. Her hole gaped obscenely where the probe had been seated so deep, a round, dark opening blown wide between her cheeks, the muscle ring clenching immediately. Amelie broke into one ragged, empty gasp, sagging into the dead restraints.
Corvin knelt behind her, knife still open, and looked — really looked. Around her entrance the skin bore a wide, wrinkled ring, a pale crown of stretched flesh marking the exact diameter of the shaft. He watched the muscle convulsing. The metal had held her for minutes only, but flesh that had gripped chrome to the very last crown did not simply forget that shape. Not tonight. Perhaps not ever — the probe had not merely passed through her, it had molded her, and she would carry its diameter from now on. The arithmetic was simple and terrible: he had planned embarrassment, and he had left her with a permanent mark of his reckless prank. He realized that he will not take the blame - nobody must know of his part in this. This was just an unlucky malfunction.
He closed the knife and stood. First the restraints. He set both thumbs under the first ankle clamp and forced it open; her leg sagged free, and Amelie made a small, broken sound.
Corvin forced the second ankle clamp down, then her wrists, one after the other. Amelie sagged off the frame onto her knees, arms dead, shaking too hard to stand. He peeled off his lab coat and dropped it over her bare shoulders.
Boots in the corridor. Several sets, running — the intercom had called them all.
He stepped out and pulled the door nearly shut behind him. Dante Vossberg stood at the front of a loose crowd, craning to see past him.
"Stop. No one goes in. Argus malfunctioned; it's contained. Back to your positions, all of you."
"Is the dork—" Dante caught himself. "Is she okay?"
"Miss Amelie is unharmed and will be examined by medical. Go. Now."
They drifted off, murmuring. When he turned back, Amelie knelt in his coat, clutching it closed with both hands, staring at him over the collar.
Her face was smeared with tears and saliva. Her eyes were shockingly empty. Corvin knelt, his hands hovering before settling on her shoulders. He tried to take care of her, wiping her cheek with his thumb, but she flinched at the touch.
"Argus is offline," he said, voice flat. "It’s over."
Amelie didn’t answer. She just stared at the floor tiles, her breath shallow, the heavy silence of the airlock pressing down. Corvin stood, keyed the manual override on the door, and stepped into the corridor. The crowd had thinned to a few lingering technicians. He cleared his throat.
He kept his voice level for the lingering technicians: sensor fault, quarantine drill, nothing more — one nodding lie after another. Then he keyed the wall panel and requested a medical team to the airlock. Trauma, possible shock, his tone clipped and professional. Somewhere behind the nearly shut door, Amelie sat wrapped in his coat, waiting to be carried away like evidence.
He found Dr. Senna in the medical bay's records room, one of the few who had nodded when the lesson was first proposed. He shut the door and stayed between it and her.
"The airlock idea never existed. The roster, the errand — that was Argus, a malfunction. Nothing was planned."
Senna looked up slowly. "Corvin—"
"Nothing was planned. If that changes, I'll know where it changed."
She turned back to her screen, jaw tight. "And the girl?"
"What about her."
Senna leaned back, and for the first time since he'd entered, something like a smirk touched her mouth.
"She'll be fine. Shocked, humiliated — perhaps a bit stretched permanently, considering where Argus insisted on measuring — but she will be okay."
Corvin didn't answer at once. Then the corner of his mouth twitched despite him.
"So we understand each other," he said. "The roster, the errand, the airlock — none of it existed. Argus malfunctioned. Alone."
Senna turned to her screen and typed the intake line: contusions consistent with malfunction, cause under review. The photograph field stayed blank, blinking, unsent. Then she flagged the file and set its clearance to top secret.
"Sealed. For the girl's sake — her privacy."
Corvin nodded once. "For her sake. No one else sees it."
"Then it's settled. She swanned around this station like she owned the duty roster." Her smirk widened. "I'd say she's learned her lesson."
"Yes." He straightened his tie, already reaching for the door. "Lesson delivered. Argus takes the blame."