Chapter 1 - Everyday Life

Archived Version

When the battlefield medic who lives to heal and save, Mercy, finds herself sinking helplessly into the depths of carnal desire, how does she maintain her disguise in daily life? How does she keep her secret hidden? (Note: This story takes place in a parallel world of Overwatch.)

It's also been a long time since my last update. Thank you to Zeshinya @(user/119462113) for the commission, hope this gives you all a little boost of that spicy energy.

The morning fog of Paris's Voie Haussmann district carried the acrid stench of burning diesel, draping itself over the banks of the Seine like a winding sheet. The shattered facades of Haussmann-era buildings had been stripped to their steel skeletons, like the flayed carcasses of enormous beasts. Notre-Dame lay collapsed in smoke-choked trenches, a severed mechanical arm dangling from the tip of a cross, coolant and human blood dripping together in a slow, viscous mixture from the trailing wires. The morning wind swept over the rubble, lifting the half-incinerated remains of a newspaper whose front-page headline read “Humanity and Omnics Sign Peace Agreement” — the dense constellation of bullet holes beneath it forming an ellipsis of death.

“Watch two o'clock!”

A soldier's shout echoed through the trench, shattering a brief pocket of silence.

Countless pairs of exhausted eyes peeled open, heads turning toward the far bank. The smokestacks of the Omnic factory still belched their gray-yellow steam, and the steady percussion of mechanical movement was closing fast on the river defence line.

Everyone moved at once.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Torbjörn's hammer threw orange sparks behind the barricade, his pace quickening, his hunched back swinging with each blow as he worked to repair the nearly-scrapped gun emplacements. Shrapnel from the last assault was still embedded in his leather pauldron, and with every impact, dark blood seeped fresh from the wound. “Bloody hell! How are these bastards back already!” He spat into his palm and jammed a water-cooling sleeve over an overheated barrel.

On the far bank, the E54 units halted at the water's edge. A sharp clack — and the purple humanoid machines folded and locked into fixed artillery platforms, one after another, a row of gaping barrels levelled at the human line. Dak-dak-dak… dak-dak-dak… dak-dak-dak… The rotary guns spun up and a torrent of rounds poured across the river, hammering the position in a relentless, sweeping deluge.

“Get behind me!”

On the eastern flank, Reinhardt strode out of the trench in full armour, a massive barrier field snapping open around him like a wall of blue crystal. The two-meter metal giant moved like a walking fortress, and the sheer presence of him was steadying.

Bullets struck the barrier like driving rain, bursting into blue ripples that scattered in trails of light before disintegrating into metallic dust. From behind the shield, rifles, and gun emplacements returned fire — but for every E54 that went down, another stepped up to replace it, and the two sides ground into a stalemate.

The sustained fire took its toll. The barrier, already laced with hairline fractures like a spider's web, gained crack upon crack. “Barrier's not going to hold!” Reinhardt's roar came almost simultaneously with the sound of the field tearing apart, the fractures ripping through it in every direction until it shattered completely.

“Barrier's broken — find cover!” His thunderous voice and the brittle crack of the shield detonated together. Tons of powered armour lurched forward as the old Crusader used his own back as a shield for his retreating squad mates. By the time the last soldier stumbled into cover, his pauldron had been punched into a honeycomb pattern, his entire arm bleeding freely, the faint smell of scorched flesh rising from the wounds.

“Is the bloody Brit giving the time-drive a foot massage?!” The dwarf engineer cursed as he slammed his turret into overload, snatching a photo of himself and Brigitte from the mount before breaking into a run. With a heavy thud, Torbjörn's mechanical prosthetic slammed into the concrete barricade, hydraulic fluid jetting from the cracked elbow joint and congealing in his beard as a dark-red film. He beat the flames off the photograph in his fist. Not far away, the burning wreck of his turret roared.

A figure streaked through the battlefield like a meteor — a silhouette that tore a clean seam through the heavy pall of smoke. Behind her, a pair of luminous blue wings blazed open, trailing long arcs of light. That brilliant colour bloomed over the charred wasteland like a painting dropped from another world entirely, something that made the eye stop and the breath catch, that made the pain and exhaustion feel, just for a moment, like something that could be forgotten.

The figure was Angela Ziegler — the woman the soldiers called “Mercy.”

Her entire body was encased in a form-fitting latex combat suit of blue and white, the heavy material tracing the curve of her slender waist and the straight line of her chest. Her hands were sheathed in black rubber gloves that ran from fingertip to elbow — thin as silk, strong as cable, perfect along the elegant lines of her hands, with fine creases at the wrist that gave them an almost delicate texture. On her legs, indigo latex thigh-high boots edged in fine white trim matched the suit's palette, smooth and elastic, hugging the full length of her calves and thighs.

“Mmnh—!”

A faint, choked sound escaped her. Mercy lost control of herself for a moment and crashed hard to the ground.

“Angela!”

“Dr. Ziegler!”

The crowd surged with alarm.

Mercy pressed a hand against a scorched concrete wall and hauled herself unsteadily to her feet, her Caduceus Staff trembling in her grip. Creak— the metal housing ground against her latex gloves in a rapid, stuttering rasp, as though the flight had taken far more out of her than it should have. “I… I'm fine…” Her voice came through with the texture of a bad radio signal — clipped, layered with static distortion, her hands shaking even as she waved everyone off.

What struck people as strange was that her head looked a size too large. The mask she wore concealed much of her face, but the eyes visible above it stared forward in a fixed, vacant way — dull and expressionless, like a machine with no one inside it. Stranger still: the white beret perched atop her head hadn't moved when she fell. It sat there as though welded in place. And her chin-length golden hair seemed suspended, held perfectly rigid by something invisible. Only Torbjörn, among those present, knew that Angela Ziegler was currently wearing a hard external shell over her head.

“I'll… treat… the wounded,” Mercy said, refusing the hands offered to help her. The moment her heel touched the ground, a small, involuntary sound escaped her — mm— — and she immediately clapped a hand over her mask to smother it. Mm-nh… She took another step. Her legs trembled like the wings of a moth, and after only a few paces she seemed on the verge of toppling again. Head bowed, she moved with agonizing slowness toward Reinhardt and the others.

When the tip of the Caduceus Staff lit up, a golden beam fixed on Reinhardt, and within moments the bleeding in his arm had stopped, the wounds punched through his armour beginning to close over. “Ha! Good as new!” he said, studying the newly-formed scars with visible satisfaction — each one another medal.

The golden light moved from soldier to soldier, sealing each wound in turn.

Across the river.

Dak-dak-dak— The machine guns raked the far bank, a flash of light appearing at their point of aim before vanishing, leaving only bullet holes behind. Target not acquired. The Omnics were smart. But Tracer had more experience. Her Recall device flickered again — it had taken some doing to shake those annoying machines, but she'd finally located the Omnic Core. She pressed a Pulse Bomb against its housing and armed it, and as the countdown ticked, wave after wave of Omnics flooded the Core's location.

“Ladies and gents — tea time!”

Her body went translucent, as though this fold of spacetime had simply rejected her, slinging her back to where she'd first blinked in.

BOOM.

Pulse energy erupted across the quantum core's surface, the detonation consuming transistors and circuit boards one by one in a wave of fire. The Omnic Core fractured under the impact, blown apart into hundreds of pieces. The shockwave radiated outward like a factory reset — instantly reducing every Omnic in the blast radius to a scattered heap of components, then continuing to spread in rings, stripping the life from the Omnic legions in its path, returning them to dead matter: E54 fire cut off, their glowing-hot barrels frozen in time; the OR-14 heavy units' alloy axes halted at the apex of their swing; countless airborne Omnic units sputtered out one final exhaust plume before dropping into the Seine like dying fireflies. The titanium joints of the Omnic armies rang together as they locked up — a sound like a pipe organ playing a chord, as though in protest at the unfairness of God.

“We won!!!”

On the human side of the river, soldiers were cheering, jumping, laughing with the relief of men who hadn't expected to be alive. In the distance, a mushroom cloud climbed into the sky.

Tracer dragged her battered body back to the line and arrived with a sizeable chunk of the destroyed Core in her left hand, grinning despite every wound. “Dear friends! I threw a fireworks show in their command centre! Oh, yeah!”

Torbjörn stood by the barricade, working on his prosthetic with the dry irony unique to old craftsmen. “Fireworks show? Any slower, love, and those things would've singed my beard off.”

Tracer blinked, nearly dropping the fragment. She pulled a face. “Hey! Old man, I nearly died doing that!”

“All right, all right, old friend — at least we won, yes?” Reinhardt stepped in, ever the mediator.

Torbjörn grunted and turned back to his beloved turret.

“Fine! Next time, I'll move faster than your turret fires — so you've got nothing to complain about!” Tracer dropped the chunk of Core on the ground and brushed her hands together. “Ow! That stings!” She'd only now noticed the shrapnel fragments embedded in her arm. Should've left the souvenir behind…

A wash of golden light passed over her, and her wounds began to close. “Cheers, Dr. Ziegler!” Mercy said nothing — only shook her head. You're welcome, the gesture implied.

“What's wrong with you, Angela?” Tracer put to words what everyone was thinking.

Mercy shook her head and raised a hand. “Nothing… nothing… just need… a rest… and I'll be…” — the words came out in fragments, as though buffering — “…fine.”

This did nothing to settle anyone's concern. If anything, the sight of her standing there like she might blow over at any moment made her look considerably more unwell.

“Mmnh—?!” Mercy felt herself lifted off the ground. Reinhardt had stepped in and scooped her up in one arm, her slight frame barely registering against his. “Don't worry, Doctor — we'll take good care of you.”

“No— I'm fine— put me down!” Mercy writhed in his arms, desperate to get free, but her body was cotton and water. She had absolutely nothing to fight him with.

“Don't squirm, Doctor — we're nearly there.”

“Reinhardt, I'm fine, put me down!” And just like that, the woman who'd been trembling and limp a moment before became a fish on a riverbank, thrashing in his arms with sudden, urgent energy. He had no choice but to set her down.

Mercy stood on the ground and bounced once or twice, demonstrating via her entire body that she was perfectly well — the complete opposite of her wan, listless state of moments before. She appeared, apparently, to simply have been exhausted. “That's enough! I need to check on the patients at the field hospital!” She spread the luminous wings at her back and lifted off, dwindling into the gray sky.

“Dr. Ziegler's been so strange lately,” Tracer said, tilting her head. “And that weird mask she's got on — can't make heads or tails of it.”

“That's not a mask, it's a biomimetic defensive visor!” Torbjörn whipped around and fixed the aesthetically illiterate woman with a deeply offended stare. “Angela commissioned it from me personally — full integration of camouflage, defence, respiration, vocal relay, and visual interface in a single unit!” He stroked his long beard with evident satisfaction. Another perfect piece of work.

“Pfft,” said Tracer, sticking out her tongue. “Maybe Dr. Ziegler's just really tired…” She shrugged, blinked, and vanished — off to enjoy her tea.

“Torbjörn!” Reinhardt pointed at the cracks in his pauldron.

“You could stand to stop breaking it, you know!” Torbjörn sometimes wondered whether all that armour was starving the man's brain of oxygen.

While the two of them bickered, a young female soldier drifted over to the spot where Mercy had fallen. The soil there was darker than it should have been — darker, and slightly damp, as though water had been poured over it. She pinched a bit of earth between her fingers and brought it to her nose. A faint, sharp-sweet smell. She looked in the direction Mercy had flown, and said nothing.

“Morning, Dr. Ziegler!”

The female soldier — Evelyn — called out with a wave.

“Mm—!” Even beneath the head shell, Mercy's body gave a full, convulsive flinch, as though the sudden sound had landed a physical blow. “M-morning…” she managed, extending a trembling hand in greeting, her voice straining under the weight of something she was working very hard to keep contained — like a child who has done something wrong and knows it, desperately arranging their expression while their hands give everything away.

But Evelyn seemed not to notice a thing. She'd said her hello; she walked on.

“…Hh… hh… finally…” Mercy exhaled. The relief that moved through her was enormous, and her body sagged against the Caduceus Staff as though her bones had quietly resigned.

Focus. You have to focus. She shook her head slightly and drew a slow breath, trying to surface. Angela. You can do this. She curled the latex-sheathed fingers of one hand into a fist — a small, private act of will.

“Right… patients… need—” Her voice caught on something. A wet, burbling sound crept into her words, making them stutter and fragment. She snapped her hand over her mask at once, eyes sweeping her surroundings — and only when she was certain no one had heard did she let herself sag.

“Mustn't talk so much…” She breathed the words more than spoke them, then cut herself off, something helpless and self-soothing in her tone. She gathered herself, drew one more breath, and lifted her heel to take a step.

The moment her heel came down, it was as if she'd tripped a hidden switch. Both legs jolted — a wave of burning heat surged up from somewhere low and deep, straight through her. “Mmnh—!” A high, thin sound escaped through the head shell — a shiver of discomfort, and beneath it, unmistakably, something else. Something she couldn't suppress. She jammed her hand against her mask, fingers pressing hard, trying to pin down the sounds crawling up from her throat.

One hand braced against the wall, fingers digging into the surface from the force of it. The other gripped the staff like a crutch. She moved in inches — lurching forward, legs trembling, each step interrupted by an involuntary spasm as whatever was happening inside her hammered at the most sensitive parts of her. Mm-nh… mm… A run of soft, wet sounds squeezed out of her throat, half-swallowed, half-escaped, broken and breathy and devastatingly suggestive. Every inhale came with a low moan, indistinct and muffled, but impossible to fully smother.

She kept moving. Her gait grew more distorted with every step — her legs rebelling, trembling past the point of control, knees drawing together as though she could clench her way through whatever was overwhelming her from inside. Her hips tilted up slightly, her back arched forward, pulled by something invisible — or perhaps that angle was the only one that gave her any relief at all.

“So hot…” She pressed the head-shelled side of her face against the cold of the wall, grinding against its rough surface, trying to pull any coolness she could from the stone. It was useless. The latex encasing her body formed a perfect seal between her skin and the outside world, trapping every degree of her internal heat, letting her feel only a mocking ghost of coolness that vanished the moment it arrived.

A long time passed.

Hh… hh… Heavy, laboured breathing filtered out from inside the head shell. Mercy, who had at some point collapsed entirely, slowly pushed herself up off the ground. Her legs were still barely functional — melted wax trying to hold her weight, shaking with the effort. Gulp. She forced down a mouthful of accumulated saliva, her throat working around a wet, slurred sound.

She looked down.

The ground beneath her was soaked through. The fabric of her lower suit carried the drying traces of what had happened while she was gone. Before she'd lost consciousness entirely, her body had already been climaxing — again and again, apparently, until it had drained every last reserve of strength and left nothing but this limp, exhausted shell. By some mercy, she'd managed to stagger somewhere secluded before the darkness took her. No one had seen.

She moved like an old woman now. “Mm—” The familiar sensation surged again — not as ferocious as before, just an echo still rolling through the aftermath, but enough to leave her light-headed and floating, her skin slick and feverish under the latex. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus. This spot was hidden, but she needed to clean herself up. If anyone saw her like this, everything was over.

She found a secluded corner nearby where a small, clear pool had collected — just enough to wash away the evidence, the traces, the residue. She lowered herself carefully, keeping her legs slightly apart to avoid unnecessary friction. Cool water ran over her gloved fingers and along the surface of the latex, and for a moment, just a moment, the burning eased. When she was done, she straightened up, checked her reflection in the water, and put herself back together until she looked, more or less, like a person.

The Omnic commander at Voie Haussmann had been eliminated — but Luxembourg, the Palais-Bourbon district, and the Gobelins district all still had Omnic cores of their own. The survivors of the explosion remained a significant force, and Omnics from other sectors were already funnelling toward Voie Haussmann, pressing the attack. The Omnic War was not over.

Mercy drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and walked toward the field hospital.

The stimulation never stopped. It came in waves, and she clenched her jaw against each one, forcing her throat shut, refusing to make a sound — but the sensation went after the deepest, most sensitive parts of her without mercy or pause, making her legs stutter and her knees buckle every few steps, threatening to drop her. This wasn't the obliterating madness of earlier; it wasn't enough to shatter her mind on the spot. But it was enough to make every footstep feel like she was walking the edge of a blade, teetering between control and complete dissolution.

The field hospital, at least, was not far. She made it on will alone.

The entrance was noise and chaos — the screams of the wounded, the clipped commands of medical staff, the rush of bodies moving with purpose. The cacophony was almost a relief. At least the ambient sound would cover anything she couldn't keep down.

“Dr. Ziegler — you're here!” A young nurse hurried toward her, face tight with urgency. “We have a critical case, we need you immediately.”

Mercy nodded and kept her voice even. “Of course. Lead the way.” It came out nearly stable. Only she knew what every syllable cost her — how close she was, with each word, to losing the thread entirely. She followed the nurse, legs held deliberately together, knees threatening to soften with each stride.

She reached the bedside and leaned over to examine the patient's wounds.

The moment she bent forward, the sensation spiked.

Her body locked up. Her fingers found the edge of the mattress and gripped it. She held. The head shell's fixed, forward-staring eyes tracked over the patient with perfect, artificial calm while sweat gathered at the seam between her jaw and the shell, dripping onto the latex and running off. Her chest heaved. Hh… hh… The sound of her breathing came through the shell, rough, and thick.

“Dr. Ziegler — are you all right?” The nurse had noticed.

“Fine… just… a little warm…” Mercy turned her head, raised a hand — it's nothing — but her voice carried a tremor she couldn't fully iron out. Hh. She pulled in a slow breath. She focused. Her hands moved over the patient, doing what they were trained to do, while the thing inside her continued its assault without pause — mocking the performance, mocking her, landing blow after blow against her in perfect silence while she worked.

By some miracle, the patient stabilized. Mercy stepped back and allowed herself to breathe. She turned to go, to make her way to the next line — and that, she would remember, was where the real hell started.

Each step brought another surge. She couldn't shake it. Her legs twitched. Her stride came apart, and then she rebuilt it, and it came apart again. She knew she needed to find somewhere to let this pass — she knew it the way you know about a fire that's eating through the walls — but the battlefield gave her no pause, no window, no moment to herself. She had no choice but to keep moving.

Soldiers and casualties met her along the way. Grateful eyes. Hands reaching out. “Doctor — thank you.” A soldier, soaked in blood, stopped to say it.

She nodded. On the head shell: a permanent half-smile, unchanged. “Don't mention it… it's… what I'm here for…” Steady, mostly. Slightly off. But the soldiers were already running to the next fight; they didn't linger long enough to notice.

She gripped the staff. She used it as a crutch. She kept her movements controlled. The sharp breathing and the low sounds that slipped past her throat despite everything — those she could not fully manage, but they were small, and the war was loud.

And so Mercy moved through the battlefield, treating the wounded, functioning — even as she felt herself coming apart inside, even as she felt the distance between herself and unconsciousness measuring itself in inches rather than miles. Some soldiers found it puzzling that she chose to walk when she could fly. That question had only one answer, and only she knew it.

When night came down and the day's fighting finally broke, Mercy dragged herself back to the field hospital, into her private room, and onto the bed. Hh-mmh… She lay there breathing, trying to surface from the static.

The camp was quiet. Only wind, and the distant sounds of patients.

Evelyn had been watching Mercy for some time now. There was always something off about the field doctor — the occasional trembling in her legs, the fragmented quality of her speech, the face behind the head shell that never changed expression. It had lodged in Evelyn like a splinter. Tonight, she was going to find out.

She eased the door open and slipped in on the moonlight. The room was so quiet she could hear her own breath, the air carrying the thin clean scent of antiseptic layered over something else — something she couldn't name, something faintly sweet and faintly sharp, faintly dizzying. Mercy lay on her side, curled inward, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of deep sleep. Evelyn held her breath and crept to the bedside, her gaze fixed on the face hidden behind the head shell. The eyes on the shell never closed — they caught the moonlight and threw it back, two unblinking sentinels guarding whatever lay beneath.

Evelyn's hand extended, trembling. Her fingertips found the edge of the shell, and the cold of it made her pulse jump. She swallowed. She found the clasp, pressed it — a faint click broke the silence, and the shell gave. She breathed through it. Carefully, both hands, she lifted the shell away from Mercy's head.

The moment it came free, Evelyn's eyes went wide.

Mercy's face was exposed in the moonlight — familiar, precise — and beneath it, Mercy's eyes were open, staring directly at her, an unblinking silent accusation.

“Ah — I'm sorry!” Evelyn nearly yelped, her hands jerked, the shell hit the floor with a dull thud. She bent into rapid, stammering apologies — but then caught herself and went still. Hh… mm… From the bed, only steady breathing, with now and then a faint, strangled sound threading through it — like something held in the mouth, working against whatever blocked her throat. Evelyn forced herself to look again. She scanned the room. No one was coming. She breathed.

She looked back at Mercy. The eyes were open, yes — but glassy. Flat. They stared at nothing. No awareness in them at all.

She… didn't wake up?

Evelyn frowned, pressing a hand to her own chest, where her heart was still hammering. Tentatively, she reached out and touched Mercy's cheek. Cool. Slightly soft in the wrong way — not quite like skin. She pressed a little. The texture gave in a way that skin didn't.

Silicone.

A mask. Hyperrealistic, extraordinarily fine — the sort of thing that would pass as a face in any light except this close, and even now, the mind resisted the truth the fingers were reporting.

Evelyn's heart lurched. She reached around to the back of Mercy's head, ran her fingertips along the edge of the silicone, found a hidden seam. She held her breath. Applied pressure.

Mercy's body gave a sudden shudder. Mm… A low, muffled sound pressed out of her throat — as though something in a dream had touched a nerve, or as though the edge of sensation was closer to the surface than sleep should allow. Evelyn snatched her hand back, half-frozen, staring. The blank eyes stared back at nothing.

There was no going back. There never was. And with the truth right there on the other side of the seam, Evelyn's curiosity tipped the scale. She found the edge again and lifted.

Hh-hh… mm-ugh… Mercy's breathing went heavy and strange, layered now with a wet, sucking sound, something halfway between a gag and a moan. As the mask peeled back, gluk— ugh, ugh— sounds rose from her throat in thick, broken pulses, getting faster, getting wetter — as though something was lodged in her airway, as though she could only push half the air she needed around whatever was blocking her. The heat coming off the space beneath the mask was intense, damp. Evelyn's hands were shaking badly now.

The mask resisted, as if reluctant to come free. She set her jaw and pulled.

The silicone face came off with a pop.

“Ugh—”

Trailing out of Mercy's mouth with the mask, attached to its inner surface: a dildo. Large. Long. Substantial. The tip gleamed in the moonlight, strung with clear, viscous saliva, the strings of it catching the light. The contrast — the dead-eyed blank expression of the mask on one side, the glistening cock on the other — hit Evelyn like a bucket of cold water. She stood there with her mouth open.

Beneath the mask, Mercy lay with her eyes shut. Saliva at the corner of her mouth where the mask had sealed. Then — a sharp, full-body shudder, and Mercy's throat worked, and what came out was hoarse and wrecked: “Ugh… mm-ugh…” She sat up abruptly, hands going to her own throat, and began to retch.

A moment passed.

Mercy opened her eyes. She saw Evelyn standing at the bedside.

“What did you do?”

Her voice was low and unsteady, and in it lived something that was both shame and anger in equal measure. The disguise she had so carefully assembled, the secret she had guarded so completely — gone. She tried to push herself upright, but her body had nothing left. Her arms buckled; she caught herself on the edge of the mattress, half-sitting, barely upright. Whatever had happened to her body while she slept, it was evident it had been considerable.

Evelyn stared back, completely at a loss, and then stumbled into words: “I — I'm sorry! I didn't mean to — I was only — just curious—” Her face was burning, her hands moving without purpose, the posture of someone caught in the act with nothing useful to say.

Mercy's eyes stayed on her. Evelyn's heart was hammering. She swallowed hard and forced herself a step forward. “I really am sorry… I just — you've seemed so strange lately, and I shouldn't have come in here like this…” The apology was genuine enough that it came out nearly broken, her head bowed, not quite able to meet Mercy's eyes — a plea, more than an explanation.

But just as Mercy opened her mouth to respond, something surged from below, scalding — and the words dissolved.

“You — ah — I—”

Whatever she'd meant to say collapsed into sound.

“Ah… mm-mm…”

She couldn't hold herself up. She rolled onto the bed, writhing, her legs clenching together involuntarily, her hips lifting, trying to find some angle that would let her manage what was happening inside her. Ahh, ah— Her breath came in ragged pulls, sweat soaking into the sheets beneath her. Her thighs fell open just slightly, and now — visible, undeniable — two large cylindrical shapes bulged beneath the latex at her hips, vibrating, their movements clearly audible: bzz-bzz-bzz— Each one pulsed in a slow, driving rhythm, extending and withdrawing, extending and withdrawing.

“Wait — hah—” It sounded like a plea. Her hips pushed up higher, following the rhythm that was driving her, her whole body shuddering with each thrust.

“Mm— ahh, ahh—~”

Her hips rolled. Her legs clenched, then spread, clenched again — resistance that was already capitulation, protest that was already surrender. The dildo buried inside her pussy drove up hard, slamming deep, and the shock of it locked her spine straight. A sharp cry broke out of her, “Ahh—~,” her eyes going wide, pupils pulling tight, gaze gone unfocused and lost.

“Ahh, ahh— I'm— I'm going to—~”

Her voice was shaking apart. Her fingers fisted the sheets. Her hips ground up, both holes clenching tight, her whole body twisting on the bed, sheets beyond saving. The two cocks worked inside her without pause, without mercy, their rhythm mechanical and relentless, and then one of them angled into her G-spot and punched through it — “Ahh-mm—~” — her back arched off the mattress in a rigid, trembling bow, her eyes rolled back, and the climax broke through her like a dam giving way. Slick heat poured from between her legs in a gush, soaking her thighs, soaking the sheets beneath her, and she collapsed into the wet mess of it, lying there in the wreckage of herself, breathing in shallow fragments, limp and obscene and utterly spent.

Evelyn had not moved.

She had witnessed all of it, and she stood where she stood, too stunned to do anything else. The image replayed behind her eyes — the sound of Mercy's voice breaking, the fluid, the arc of her spine — and despite herself Evelyn's pulse had picked up, her face was hot, her understanding of the world slightly revised. She had never once imagined that Dr. Ziegler — composed, elegant, untouchable Dr. Ziegler — could become this.

Several minutes passed.

Mercy's breathing gradually evened out. She opened her eyes, found Evelyn's face, and knew — immediately, completely — that there was nothing left to explain away. Her own face warmed with something that wanted to be shame, but exhaustion outpaced it. She tried to sit up properly; her body refused and let her fall back against the pillow.

“What's your name?” Mercy asked, her voice scraped raw.

“E… Evelyn…” Evelyn answered quietly.

“You… saw all of it?” A note of helpless mortification crept into Mercy's voice. To have her secret uncovered was bad enough. To have been witnessed during — she wanted very badly to sink into the earth.

“I — I didn't mean to—” Evelyn started to say something, then seemed to realize it wasn't the moment for it.

Mercy closed her eyes. A tired, private sort of smile passed across her face and was gone. “…Hm.” She let the breath out slowly. When she opened her eyes again, something quieter lived in them — something that was almost a request. “Evelyn… please. Help me keep this secret.” Her fingers tightened without thinking, the latex gloves giving a soft creak against each other, the friction of them betraying what she was working to hide. “I know this is… difficult to understand. But, please. Don't tell anyone. Can you do that?”

Evelyn blinked. Then, without fully deciding to, nodded. “I… won't say anything. I promise.”

Mercy looked at her with something like gratitude. “Thank you, Evelyn.”

She paused.

“Now — may I have my face back?”

There was a thread of embarrassed humour in it. She held out her hand.

Evelyn startled, looked down at what she'd been gripping this entire time — the mask, clutched tight without her realizing it. She stepped quickly to the bedside. “Oh — of course—” She laid the mask into Mercy's waiting hand, and her eyes, helpless, travelled downward — to the faint but unmistakable movement still happening below Mercy's hips, the latex shifting with each small vibration, making her body twitch in little involuntary responses. Evelyn's face went red again.

“Thank you…” Mercy said, and slowly raised the mask toward her face.

In the moonlight, it looked cold. It looked like a face and wasn't one. On the reverse side, connected to the inner surface, the thick phallus protruded — still slick with saliva from when it had been pulled free, gleaming with a lewd, reflected light.

Something complicated moved through Mercy's expression.

Then she opened her mouth.

A slow breath in. And the thing pushed inside — wet, cool at first, and then warming immediately in the heat of her mouth, filling it completely. “Glk…” A thick, wet sound rose from her throat. Then, immediately: “Ugh — glk, glk—” Gagging sounds, her body pulling away from the intrusion on instinct, fighting what her hands were pressing steadily forward.

She hovered there, hands in midair, mouth stretched full, saliva already running at the corner of her lips, tracing a line down her chin. Her eyes glistened. She looked, briefly, like she was in negotiation with the thing — her expression behind it all wavering, the shimmer of tears against the blankness of the mask above.

In the end, she pressed her hands flat and pushed.

The mask sealed against her face, the dildo seated deep, its tip touching the back of her throat. “Mm-ugh…” A last compressed sound, and then the mask was flush — fitted perfectly, seamlessly, swallowing every expression, leaving behind only those two eyes that would never close, staring out at nothing. At the seam between mask and skin, tears and saliva continued their slow descent. That was all that remained — the only testimony to whatever was happening behind the surface.

Mercy reached down and picked up the head shell from the floor. She raised it above her own head, and with practiced ease split it cleanly into front and back halves — a familiar motion, done many times before. The interior lining was soft padding, but damp — saturated with the sweat of long use, carrying a faint salt smell.

She closed her eyes.

She lowered the front half over her forehead first, the moist contact registering and then passing. The back followed, curving around her skull, closing the seal. As the two halves locked together, the air inside became close and humid, and the sound of her breathing through the mask returned to her muffled and resonant, circling in the small enclosed space. The fixed face. The barely-audible breath.

Moonlight came through the window and fell across her. The head shell caught it and gave it back as a faint, cold blue.

At this moment, Mercy looked like a statue — obscene and solitary, radiating something that was somehow both fragility and endurance, something that had no easy name.

The room settled back into silence.

Only the traces on the floor, and the moonlight in the window, remained as witnesses to the ritual of this particular battlefield doctor. Far away, through the glass, the Eiffel Tower stood without comment — standing for her, perhaps, in the darkness. Wishing her what the darkness rarely offers: light. And in the binding of her, something that might, in another life, be called freedom. ❤

Chapter 2 - Escape and Crisis

Archived Version

Layer by layer, the disguise is stripped away — and a prosthetic restraint used against her? The Angel's great crisis!

Likewise, many thanks again to Zeshinya @(user/119462113) for the commission, Chapter Two came together fast, hope everyone enjoys it.

Evelyn stood to one side, mouth hanging open. She had witnessed the entire process of Mercy's disguise being reassembled, listening to those steady, low sounds, and found herself swallowing against a dry throat. Watching Mercy return to exactly how she'd looked at the start, Evelyn gathered her nerve and spoke.

“Dr. Ziegler… you…”

“Heh… strange, isn't it…” Mercy looked at her, shook her head, and laughed at herself.

“No, no, not at all—” Evelyn waved her hands in helpless denial, though the embarrassment written plainly across her face said that yes, that was precisely what she'd been about to say.

Mercy was quiet for a moment, studying Evelyn. When she spoke, her voice was blurred by the thing filling her mouth, but her tone remained calm. “I… need these things, mm…” She paused, drew a slow breath, and pressed on, each word a struggle against the obstruction in her throat. “I've seen… too much… death… comrades… patients… enemies… every day is… fire and blood… glk… I can feel my heart… mm… going cold… going numb… sealed up in ice… unable to feel anything…” The words came in fragments, every syllable a small battle. “These things, mm… give me the most direct sensation I have…” A faint tremor moved through her body, and she gestured — toward what was inside her, behind her.

Evelyn frowned, working to follow. She asked quietly: “But… doesn't it hurt?” Her gaze drifted again to Mercy's lower body, then up to the head shell, and she found it genuinely difficult to imagine what it would feel like to have any of those things inside herself. She suspected it would break her entirely.

Mercy shook her head. “Painful… perhaps… but this sensation… it… it lets me… glk… forget… for a moment… the blood… and the despair… it reminds me… mm… that I'm still alive…” She finished with an effort and drew a long breath, trying to quiet what was moving inside her.

Evelyn nodded slowly. Something in her expression went soft. “I won't tell anyone.” Her voice was immediate and without hesitation.

“Thank you…” Mercy dipped her head.

“I don't think I'll be sleeping in this bed…” Mercy said tiredly, pushing herself upright and surveying the damage. The sheets were twisted into a damp, reeking mass — sweat and arousal saturating the fabric, the smell thick in the air. She pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed, then bent slowly and began peeling the sheets and the mattress pad away. She rolled them into a bundle — creak — latex and fabric grinding together — then carried it to the window, opened the sash, checked that the alley below was empty, and dropped it. Field hospitals were full of discarded things; no one would look twice at a bundle of bedding. When it was done, she dusted her hands together with the ease of someone who had done this many times before.

She shut the window and turned back to the room. From the cabinet beside the bed she produced a fresh sheet and mattress pad — the pad carrying that thin, sharp smell of antiseptic, as though the disinfectant was doing its best to overwrite something else. She laid them out on the bare frame and smoothed the creases flat with her fingers.

“Hh…” She let out a long, slow exhale when it was done. Then she turned her head and looked at Evelyn, still standing there.

“Evelyn… would you help me wash up?…” The tiredness in her voice was bone-deep.

Evelyn blinked, then nodded quickly. “Y— yes, of course, Dr. Ziegler…” The sudden intimacy of the request had caught her entirely off guard.

“Just call me Angela… heh heh heh~” Mercy caught the sight of the girl going red and laughed, just slightly.

Evelyn went to the washbasin in the corner, picked up a rough cloth and a small bar of yellowed soap, and turned on the tap. Clean water rushed out, splashing up in fine droplets that broke the quiet of the room. She soaked the cloth, wrung it out, and came back to Mercy's side.

“Should I… should you take the suit off first?…”

Mercy shook her head. “Just wipe down the latex for me…”

Evelyn began at the back of Mercy's neck, working slowly downward, the cloth pressing gently through the fabric to lift away the sweat and grime. Mercy closed her eyes. Slowly, the tension in her body eased. “Mm~” — a small, involuntary sound of pleasure slipped out of her throat.

When Evelyn reached her lower body, the ends of the two devices were just barely visible as shapes beneath the latex. She cleaned carefully around the sensitive area, and then — out of curiosity more than anything — she pressed lightly on the two protrusions. Mercy's hips gave a short spasm. But she didn't stop her. “Mm~” She simply made a quiet, content sound, and let it happen.

Evelyn's hands moved down to Mercy's thighs, fingertips reaching the upper edge of the latex thigh-high boots. The boots fit the line of her legs perfectly, their surfaces caked with road dust and water stains, the grime catching what little light there was in the room.

She gripped the edge of the boot with both hands and eased it downward. The material was tight against the skin — squelch — the sound of latex releasing from flesh, accompanied by a faint, wet pop, and Mercy's ankle and calf came gradually into view. A trickle of viscous liquid ran down her heel and dripped to the floor, leaving dark spots on the concrete.

Evelyn gave a firm pull, and the boot came free.

The inside was warm — still carrying Mercy's body heat. And pooled at the bottom, a mixture of sweat and arousal, wet and clinging to the interior walls, smelling of salt and something sweeter beneath it. Mercy's foot emerged into the open air, gleaming under the black latex that coated it, the surface catching the light — and at the sole, tiny pores were actively weeping: white, foam-flecked perspiration being pushed steadily outward, beading and releasing.

Evelyn stared at the foot in her hands.

She wet her lips.

She could feel the pull of it — something entirely wordless, coming from somewhere she didn't usually listen to. A small voice, very quietly: lick it. go on. lick it.

“If you want to, go ahead,” Mercy said.

Evelyn froze. Reason and desire held a very brief conference. “What — you'd be fine with—” “You pulled my face off,” Mercy said, looking at her steadily. Beneath the head shell, there was the suggestion of a smile. “And now you're shy?”

Evelyn's face went scarlet. She lowered herself. She looked at Mercy's left foot, turned it slightly in her hands, and brought it to her lips.

She closed her eyes. Breathed in. The smell hit her — sharp and sour, and underneath it, something distinctly Mercy's own, the two combining into something dense and overwhelming. She parted her lips and let the tip of her tongue make contact with Mercy's toes.

The taste detonated on her tongue. She held it. Then, slowly, her tongue travelled the line of the foot — along the top, following the trails left by sweat, up to the ankle, back down to the toes. Shlp— she couldn't quite stop herself from making a sound, small, and wet. Her tongue worked into the spaces between the toes, careful at first.

Then less careful.

She opened her mouth and took the toes in, drawing on them properly, her pace quickening, tasting what was there — Mercy's particular flavour, her sweat, her — everything. She pushed the foot deeper into her mouth, teeth closing gently around the toe pads, leaving faint marks she immediately worried were too hard, then not hard enough. Her tongue pressed between each digit in turn, working through every crease, saliva mixing freely with what the boot had left behind, running down the arch of Mercy's foot and dripping from her chin.

She finished the left foot reluctantly and looked at the right.

It was the same — gleaming, damp, waiting. She took it in her mouth without much deliberation this time, her suction harder from the start, tongue sliding everywhere it could reach, working the last of the taste out of every surface, her jaw moving steadily until there was nothing left to find.

“Mm~ ah~” — soft sounds filtered out of Mercy's throat, faint and satisfied. The small disturbance was exactly what she'd needed.

“All right… little glutton…” Mercy's voice was fond.

Evelyn released Mercy's toes, lifted her head. Her cheeks were the colour of something ripe and overdue, her lips slick with saliva and what the boots had given up. Something shy and satisfied lived in her eyes together. She touched the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

Mercy stood, and walked steadily to the washbasin. The gait was entirely different from the lurching, trembling shuffle of that morning — smooth, controlled. She must have rested, Evelyn thought, watching.

Mercy turned on the tap, let the water run, and bent to rinse her feet in the basin. The cold of it registered in the small sound she made. She straightened up, dried off, and turned back.

“Thank you, Evelyn.” Her voice was warm and real, carrying a small tremor — the sound of something that had been held back for a long time, finally allowed out. “I haven't felt this… relaxed… in a long time… glk…” The sentence ended in a soft, wet swallow.

Evelyn found, to her surprise, that the sound barely registered as strange any more. Given that she now knew exactly what was occupying Mercy's mouth at all hours, the occasional slip of sound had already started to feel like background noise. Almost natural.

“You're welcome… Dr.— Angela…” Evelyn caught herself and corrected it. Then she took a breath. “Angela… I want… your face…” She got it out, though just barely, the hesitation still in her voice. She didn't know if this was the right thing to want. But she'd stepped toward it anyway.

“Hmm~” Mercy made a small sound of amusement. The head shell showed nothing, but Evelyn could almost construct the expression beneath it. “The face is spoken for… take this instead.”

She reached into the cabinet beside the bed and produced a half-face respirator mask, placing it in Evelyn's hands.

Evelyn turned it over, fingertips reading its surface. Nothing unusual at first — and then her palm found something. A protrusion. Solid. Out of place. “What's…” She turned it over.

On the inner face of the respirator, a black latex phallus. Positioned precisely where it would fit inside a mouth. Approximately twenty centimetres in length. The sight of it did something immediate to Evelyn's pulse.

“That length is very appropriate for beginners~ mm-heh~” Mercy said from beside her, arms folded, watching with the air of a person enjoying a very good show. “Would you like help putting it on?~” She took a few steps closer, the eyes of the head shell catching the light, the interest behind them unmistakable. She reached out to take the mask back — she had been waiting a long time to meet someone who understood, and the prospect of watching Evelyn be undone by it was one she found herself almost impatient for.

“I… I…” The words locked in Evelyn's throat. She stared down at the thing in her hands. Glk. Just imagining it — the black latex rod pressing into her mouth — and she could feel her throat going dry. It hung there in her field of vision, absolutely silent, and somehow still managing to mock her hesitation. Her face was burning.

“Ah—!”

The deliberation ended. Evelyn seized the mask, spun on her heel, shoved the door open, and fled — footsteps uneven and fast — leaving Mercy standing alone with one hand extended and nothing in it.

“Mm… that little one…” Mercy let the hand drop. She shook her head, something fond and slightly rueful in the gesture. Though — she supposed — one had to allow people their preparation time. She paced back to the bed and lay down on the fresh sheets.

“Mm…” She bit lightly on the thing in her mouth. Goodnight to you.

“Hh… hh…” Within moments, the slow, heavy rhythm of breathing filtered out from inside the head shell. Mercy was already asleep.

Three months later, the streets of Paris received, at long last, something they had almost forgotten: quiet. The Omnic commanders that had ravaged the city's districts had been destroyed one by one; the surviving units had been swept from the urban zones; the smoke that had hung over everything was thinning, and beneath it, something that looked like order was beginning to reassemble itself. Children were running and laughing in the streets again, which felt like a kind of declaration — the city insisting on its own survival. But the end of this battle was not the end of the war. The Paris forces were already staging to deploy across Europe, to the theatres still burning, to the countries still waiting.

“It's almost over…”

Mercy exhaled after treating her last patient — a genuine exhale, the kind that comes from deep down. She would be moving to the next front, but not immediately. She needed to rest first. Actually, rest. She stepped out of the hospital — mm— — the stimulation from inside her pulled her scattered attention back into her body, sharpened the edges of things the way it always did. The daily performance of normality kept her nerves wound to a constant tension, and though she knew — certain members of the unit had probably noticed things were off — she endured it, and in the enduring, found those brief snatched moments of pleasure.

Bzz-bzz… mm-glk… The sounds moved together in their usual accompaniment as Mercy braced against the wall and made her way home in her particular, halting gait, leaving a long damp trail behind her on the ground.

“Mm-mm… mm…” She drew air in sharply, but the sound that came back out was tangled with something else — deep in her throat, the familiar battle with a significant obstruction. “Coming, mm~—” Her legs gave out. She stopped trying to walk and went to her hands and knees instead, back arching, hips raised, crawling across the ground the way that, for reasons she didn't examine, made things fractionally more bearable. “Mm~” She made slow progress. Crawled through the door of her room.

She hadn't managed to close the door before the surge hit. She collapsed onto the floor, splayed out, throat working around wet, broken sounds, her tongue doing what it always did — pressing and curling around the thing filling her mouth, working against it the way a small creature works against something that has it cornered, searching for any pocket of relief. Glk-glk.

“Mm-mm-mm-ugh~!!”

Her head snapped back. Her latex-gloved hands clawed at the head shell, scrabbling at the edges — and then gave up on that and went to her throat instead, scratching at the skin above her larynx, where the shape of something deep and large moved visibly beneath the surface, rising and falling with each swallow, insistent and relentless.

“Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm~”

With each laboured swallow, saliva built and spilled — leaking out through the narrow gap between head shell and jaw in slow, continuous rivulets, catching the light, transparent and viscous, trailing from her chin in threads that clung and stretched before gravity finally broke them and dropped them onto the heaving surface of her chest, leaving small, gleaming wet patches. The fluid accumulated and grew bolder, seeping more freely, some of it sticking to the inside of the head shell — and every breath Mercy drew came back wet, hh-hh, with that dense nasal resonance of a sealed, humid space.

Bzz-bzz-bzz—

The devices buried inside her went berserk. Low-frequency vibration, both of them, churning — the outlines of them visible through the latex as they drove forward and withdrew, forward and withdrew, the rhythm accelerating. “Mm-mm-mm-mm—” (stop, please, stop—) Mercy shook harder on the floor, her head thrown back and rocking, her hips raised high, knees planted, her whole body locked in a half-prone, half-kneeling arch that she couldn't move out of. Creak-creak— Her small latex hands moved helplessly over the surface of her hips, back and forth.

Bzz-bzz — splash.

The vibration gave way to the sound of liquid. The space between Mercy's thighs became a source. Arousal poured from her in a rush, hitting the floor, “Ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh~” — the moan that came out was different this time, frayed at the edges in a way that carried relief and release together.

“Mm-nh…” (Finally. Finally, it stopped.)

Mercy lay on the floor like something that had been dropped from a great height, chest heaving, pulling air in ragged, grateful pulls.

“Mm-nh—!”

She tried to stand. The stimulation came back the instant she moved, nearly folding her at the knees again. “Mm-ugh…” She gritted through it, made it to the doorway, checked the corridor — empty — and slowly, carefully, closed the door. Then her back found the wood, and she slid down it, ending up sitting on the floor with a low, wrung-out moan. She breathed for a moment. Then she put her hands on the floor and began the slow process of crawling back to the bed, her knees making small sounds against the cold ground as she went.

The white mask affixed to the outside of the head shell was completely saturated — soaked through, translucent, clinging. The wetness had rendered it almost see-through at the edges, and through it the expression fixed onto the head shell was just visible: that unchanging smile, looking back at her. Something in that juxtaposition — the mask's idiot serenity and everything that was happening to the person wearing it — felt like mockery.

She peeled the mask away. Her fingers found the head shell's seam. Click — and the shell opened, and she laid it aside, and the silicone face was exposed.

She began on the boots next — easing each one down and off, the insides soaked, the rubber smell mixing with the smell of exertion and the rest of it. She tipped the liquid out onto the floor. Then the outer suit — the heavy latex bodysuit, peeled back slowly — and the heat that had been trapped beneath it came out in a wave, filling the room with something dense and warm, a sauna's worth of accumulated body temperature. “Mm-hh…” The cool air reached her skin. The burning began to ease, degree by degree.

The blue-and-white outer suit fell away, and what it revealed was this: a latex swimsuit covering chest and groin, and a pair of latex thigh-high stockings coating her knees, calves, and feet in lacquered black.

Mercy reached down and began working the stockings off. They were badly sweat-soaked and clung to every surface — it took real effort, far more than it should have, before they finally released and slid free, and her pale, damp feet came into the air. But the stockings, once removed, didn't fall. They hung. Suspended at her shin level by something — and looking closely, she could see it: a fine line running from the interior of each stocking up to her groin.

She removed the latex swimsuit next.

Beneath it: a chastity belt. Silver-white, a curved metal shield fitted precisely to the contours of her pelvis, covering everything. At the top of the shield, a black harness strap ran around each side of her waist, fitted close. And the fine lines from the stocking interiors — connected to the base of the belt.

“Mm-hh~” Mercy's voice was genuinely pleased, just for a moment. She'd been waiting for this. She began working the clasps open, slowly, carefully — “Mm-nh—” the sensation of the process was more intense than she'd anticipated, but she didn't stop. Squelch. Wet, slick sounds. The interior of the belt was significantly more complex than it appeared from outside: as she eased it away, a black object emerged from her pussy — drawn slowly out, inch by inch. “Mm-ugh—” Her body shuddered around the sensation of the withdrawal. “Mm-mm—!” Only when the belt was fully free did she let herself make the happy, relieved sound she'd been holding back.

She looked at the belt in her hands. Inside it: two rods — black, substantial, their surfaces textured with raised bumps, ugly and practical. The tips were wet, trailing thick, odorous fluid.

She set the belt down carefully — the attached stockings coming with it — and her toes caught, without thinking, the footpad position at the base of a stocking.

Bzz-bzz-bzz—

Both rods inside the belt snapped to life, thrashing upward and retracting, upward and retracting, fast enough that the motion blurred. She pulled her foot back. The belt went quiet.

Ah. There it was.

Pressure sensors. Built into the soles of the stockings. Every time her foot bore weight — every step, every landing — the sensors triggered the belt. Triggered the rods. Drove them into her, rhythmically, involuntarily, for as long as she was walking. Every step had been a test of two things simultaneously: her body, and whatever was left of her will.

Bzz-bzz-bzz—

The random mode. That was separate — the belt ran it independently of the step-trigger, activating on its own schedule at irregular intervals, day or night. It had woken her more than once, at three in the morning, and not let her go back to sleep until she'd been forced through something she hadn't asked for. “Mm-hm—!” — a short, irritated sound escaped her as she watched the belt working on its own. Those two. Always those two. Always doing this to her.

But while she was thinking this, her hands were already moving.

She reached to the back of her head, found the fixing points for the silicone face, and released them. She peeled the mask free — “Mm-ugh—” — gagging, working the mouth-plug out slowly, the rod-shaped form of it emerging inch by inch, trailing saliva, until the whole silicone face came off in her hands and she dropped it onto the head shell.

The room around her was chaos — scattered layers, discarded equipment, wet patches on the floor. Mercy stood in the middle of it, completely bare.

She ran her hands over her own skin. It had been a long time.

She reached back — gripped the skin between her shoulder blades — and pulled.

Rrrip.

A seam opened in her back, a thin vertical split, and she got her fingers into it and tore it wider. Her entire face began to change. The skin stretched and swelled — taut as an over-inflated balloon — and then vibrated, rapidly, violently, her features blurring and distorting until they were no longer features, eyes and mouth running together into nothing. Her golden hair, her scalp, her entire face came off in a single piece — peeled away like the shell of a hard-boiled egg.

If anyone else had been in the room, they would have screamed.

Even Evelyn, Mercy suspected, would not have predicted this — that the face she had seen beneath the silicone mask, the face that had looked so precisely like Angela Ziegler's, the face with its subtle expressions and micro-movements and completely convincing eyes — had itself been another layer. A perfect one. A face-suit capable of simulating every nuance of Angela Ziegler's real expression, down to the most minute flicker of the eyes, with nothing to betray it.

“Ugh…” A dry heave came from deep in her throat, and then a clear, hollow dildo was worked out of her mouth — cylindrical, transparent, still strung with saliva. The face-skin hung from her chest, her shoulders, and she peeled those sections away too until the full body-suit had been removed, and it lay in a pile at her feet like something that had shed itself.

And still, Angela Ziegler did not appear.

What stood in the room was a figure of solid black — a human shape, its surface covered in smooth, tight black latex, like a doll. Its face: a precise, one-to-one reproduction of Angela Ziegler's features. But where the face-skin had been animated and alive, this one was fixed. It stared forward, and it was smiling, and the smile never moved, and in the oil-bright sheen of the latex, it had the quality of a department store mannequin that had somehow gotten up and walked away from its window.

The black figure reached to the back of its own neck. Creak — the sound of latex sliding on latex. The doll's fixed smile began, like the face-skin before it, to distort — pulling, deforming — and “mm-mm—” — a strained sound, and then the latex hood was lifted from the head, and from inside it, as it came off, another dildo slid out of the mouth beneath — hollow again, transparent, and nested precisely with the one from the face-skin. Three dildos, total, that had occupied this throat simultaneously. As more of the latex skin peeled back, it became increasingly clear that this was not quite a suit — it was something better described as a latex body-skin, a second artificial shell.

The latex skin came away.

Beneath it, a face with no face.

Smooth skin, rosy and warm-looking, but blank. No eyes. No nose. Nothing. Only, where the mouth should have been: an opening — but oriented vertically, not horizontally. Its shape was unmistakable. Soft, pink, and breathing — the walls of it moving in slow, wet pulses, glistening, twitching.

She pressed a finger slowly into it.

She felt the walls close around her fingertip, warm and slick, and the opening drew on her with immediate, reflexive greed — a deep, buzzing pleasure radiating outward from the contact. “Mm…” A happy, private sound.

Her other hand moved without waiting for permission, sliding down across the soft plane of her abdomen, parting the petals of her actual sex, pressing into the heat there. “Mm-mm…” Low and wet, muffled at the edges — a sound that would have done considerable damage to anyone inexperienced enough to hear it.

But it didn't last.

“Mm-ugh…” She stopped. After what the chastity belt had put her through — the sustained, remorseless assault on every threshold she had — this was not enough. The nerve-ends were overwritten. She needed more than she could give herself right now. She breathed. Then she reached to the back of her neck again, found the hidden seam on the faceless skin, and took it off as well — practiced now, efficient, her throat contracting slightly around the hollow plug inside this one too as she drew it out. “Mm…” Less reaction this time; the deep-throat stimulation had been so frequent today that her body had simply filed it away.

Beneath the faceless skin, a final black latex suit. This one — the last one. It fit like a second skin, contoured to every line of her body: the curve of her chest where the nipples pressed through as hard, defined points; the taper of her waist; the fullness of her hips; the inner thighs, and between them, the latex drawn so precisely that the outline of her clit was visible, the shape of her rendered in total fidelity.

At her eyes: two small, clean openings in the latex, through which her actual eyes looked out — tired, and very present.

At her mouth: a gag. An open-ring gag, the kind that holds the jaw apart. Her tongue was already exploring the opening, curling out through the hole with each breath, her saliva threading down from the ring in continuous strands and catching the light, dripping from her chin like pearls arranged by gravity. It was absolutely filthy and it was absolutely her.

“Hh-hh…” She breathed in ragged pulls. She had shed so much material that she was measurably smaller than she'd been — all those stacked layers compressed and folded around her, and now gone, and she was what remained: something much thinner, much more exposed, as though each skin she shed had taken some portion of herself along with it.

She reached back. Found the zip on the final suit. Zhhk — and opened it.

“Ah… ah… it hurts… it actually hurts…” She said it quietly to herself, and the voice was different now — warmer, more alive than the flat electronic register the outer layers had produced. She worked her jaw, testing hinges that had gone stiff. She moved her tongue, clumsy at first, fighting through what months of continuous occupation had left behind.

Then she lay down on the floor, completely bare, surrounded by the wreckage of everything she'd been wearing.

She didn't move for a while.

The cold woke her.

She pushed herself up, moved her body around until the joints reported back in, then took a long, hot shower. The heat of it was almost an event in itself.

When she came out, she noticed, on the other side of the bed: a wooden crate, and a metal tin. On top of both, a folded note.

Dear Angela,

I'm so sorry — please forgive me for letting myself into your room without permission. I'm being deployed to another front very soon, and I wanted to leave you something before I go. Please accept these.

Also — the respirator works beautifully… it just meant I couldn't eat properly for three days!! (▼ヘ▼#)

I hope we get the chance to meet again someday…

(Oh — open the tin first, then the crate. I promise there's a surprise! ❤)

— Evelyn

Mercy read it twice. Then she said, quietly: “Evelyn… I hope so too…”

It had been a strange thing, having her secret uncovered like that. And yet — Evelyn was one of a very small number of people who knew, and who had simply continued to treat her like a person afterward. That was worth something. More than she could easily say.

She almost didn't notice that the handwriting in the last line looked slightly different from the rest.

She looked at the tin, then the crate, then opened the tin.

Inside, resting in careful padding: a pair of mechanical arms in silver-white, and a pair of mechanical legs in charcoal grey. The instruction card inside explained it. Evelyn had commissioned the prosthetics from Torbjörn — designed to assist or substitute for limb function. Evelyn had understood: she knew about the chastity belt, knew that every step triggered it, knew that Mercy wasn't going to stop playing this particular game with herself. So she'd sent something that would let the game continue without destroying her in the process. Something that would make the disguise more sustainable.

“Evelyn… thank you…”

She meant it. She hadn't known how much longer she could keep this up at her current rate — and the thought of being found out by someone who was not Evelyn was its own particular nightmare. The image of a headline — BATTLEFIELD DOCTOR ZIEGLER: PRIVATE LIFE EXPOSED — ran through her head and made her shudder.

She fitted the prosthetics on without ceremony. The arms locked at the shoulders; the legs at the knees; the control chip at the base of her spine. She walked a half-circuit of the room.

Effortless. Completely effortless.

She stared down at her feet, which were touching the ground and doing nothing in particular, and the belt was entirely silent.

She started experimenting. She had the prosthetics fold her arms behind her back, wrists reversed against her spine, then fold her legs up until her heels pressed her thighs, her feet flush against her own hips. “Ow, ow, ow—” — the prosthetics were not gentle — tears pricked her eyes before the testing was done. But the results were clear: even with her actual limbs entirely bound and non-functional, the prosthetics could walk, run, crawl, and jump without her involvement.

Which made the wooden crate considerably more interesting.

She walked the prosthetics over and opened it.

“Mm… mm…” Faint sounds came from inside. Bzz-bzz-bzz. Low, rhythmic.

Mercy looked into the crate.

A woman, inside. Naked, because the crate was too small to allow anything more dignified than a semi-reclined curl. Her arms were behind her — single-glove bound — her hips secured in something that functioned very much like a chastity belt, two white vibrators working inside it in a steady, rising rhythm, the source of the buzzing clear now. Liquid had collected at the base of the crate; the woman inside had clearly been climaxing for some time. Above all of this: a face wearing a familiar half-face respirator, eyes rolled back, barely showing.

The respirator Mercy had given Evelyn.

“Evelyn!” Mercy grabbed the edge of the crate. “What — how are you — how long have you been—” She started pulling and found the interior was lined with soundproofing material, which explained why she hadn't heard a single thing. She reached in. “An… glk… gi… la…” — Evelyn's voice, barely held together, forcing the syllables out of a throat that was clearly not at full capacity, the respirator working against her. Then her eyes closed.

“Evelyn! Damn it—”

Mercy tried to reach her with the prosthetics.

The prosthetics didn't move.

“Move! Move!” She fought against the body she was inhabiting, which was fighting back, which was — she realized — being held by equipment that was not responding to her. The prosthetics pulled her away from the crate. “Stop — stop it—” Her actual limbs were pinned and useless. She couldn't override it. Evelyn was unconscious, the vibrators hadn't stopped, and Mercy had no idea how long she'd been in that box.

And then the prosthetics simply stopped. All at once. Not under her control; under someone else's.

She tried to move them. Nothing.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Footsteps, outside the door. Light, precise.

Creak. The door opened.

The footsteps came closer. Mercy felt a presence settle behind her, and then the prosthetics turned her body around without asking.

The woman who stood in the doorway wore a fitted deep purple bodysuit, and over it a holographic-trimmed duster in shifting purples that caught the light differently at every angle. Her hair was black, cut short, with a few streaks of deep violet threaded through it — the suggestion of someone who had made a considered decision to be a little dangerous. Her fingernails were long, each one ringed at the edge with blue-violet light that pulsed with a cold, technological energy.

She stepped forward.

“First time meeting you, Angela.” Her voice was unhurried and slightly amused. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Olivia Colomar.” A small pause, for effect. “You can also call me Sombra.”