He woke to the smell of antiseptic and the sound of the chamber door rolling back. The frame had stopped humming sometime in the night, and his wrists had gone from burning to numb, and the blood in his hands had settled into a dull throb that matched the pulse behind his eyes. The lights came up slow, a surgical white that made him squint, and Cassiday's silhouette stood in the doorway with a tray in his hands and a grin that showed too many teeth.

"Morning, pet. Sleep well?"

Jay's mouth was dry enough that his tongue stuck to his palate. He worked up enough spit to speak. "Fuck you."

Cassiday set the tray down on a rolling cart and crossed to the frame. His liver-spotted hands found the release clamps at Jay's wrists and worked them loose, one at a time, and Jay's arms dropped to his sides like dead things. The blood came back into his fingers in a rush of pins and needles that made him hiss through his teeth. Cassiday watched his face while it happened, the way a man watches a gauge.

"Good. Pain response intact. That's important." He unclamped the ankles and Jay's legs folded under him. He caught the frame's crossbar with one numb hand and hung there, knees on the cold deck, breath coming hard. "Up. You have a fitting."

Jay looked up at him. The tunic was stained at the collar, and the man's spectacles had a fine crack down the left lens, and behind them the watery blue eyes were already cataloging him — the cinched waist, the small breasts hanging under his chest, the softness that had come into his jaw overnight. Jay could feel it. All of it. His skin didn't fit right. His face felt like a mask that had been left too close to a heater.

"What did you do to me."

"I told you last night. I'm making you into something useful." Cassiday crouched so their faces were level. Up close the man smelled of antiseptic and something older underneath it, like a wound that had been kept open on purpose. "You're going to be very valuable, pet. The bone work i snow complete. Today we break in the plumbing before the broker arrives this evening."

He stood and walked to the door. Jay heard the cart's wheels turn. He got his legs under him and stood, and the room tilted, and he put a hand on the frame to steady himself. His nipples dragged against the cold air and stood up hard and dark, and he crossed his arms over his chest before he could stop himself.

"Don't bother," Cassiday said without turning around. "You'll be showing them off to the whole crew soon enough."

The corridor was narrow and lit by strips that flickered at the far end. Jay walked behind the cart, naked, and the deck plates were cold enough that he felt every seam of them through the soles of his feet. The ship was louder out here — the deep groan of the hull, the hiss of a pipe joint, a voice somewhere ahead laughing at something Jay couldn't hear. He counted the doors they passed. He didn't know why. He had no plan for any of them. It was just something his hands wanted to do, and his hands had nothing else to do.

They took a lift down two decks and came out into a wide space that smelled of ozone and rust and something animal. The cargo bay. Work lights hung from the ceiling on cables and threw hard shadows between the lashed-down crates. In the center of the open floor, ringed by a painted yellow square, stood a frame.

It was taller than the one in Cassiday's chamber and built of heavier stock, the kind of steel that held cargo in a storm. A crossbar at chest height. A padded bench at hip height, angled down. Clamps at the four corners, thick as a man's wrist, with threaded bolts and locking levers. Jay stopped walking. His feet did it on their own, the way they'd stopped in front of the airlock on the Vixen the night he and Birdie ran, and for one second he thought about turning and running back down the corridor. He didn't. His legs wouldn't have carried him three steps.

"Up you go," Cassiday said. "Hands on the crossbar."

"No."

Cassiday sighed like a man who'd been asked to repeat himself. He set the tray down on a crate and took a small injector from his tunic pocket. "This is going to happen either way, pet. The only question is how much of the morning you spend conscious." He held up the injector so Jay could see the amber fluid inside. "Your choice."

Jay looked at the frame. He looked at the door he'd come through. He looked at his own hands, which were shaking, and at the small breasts that hung under his collarbones, and at the soft pale forearms that didn't have a single callus left on them. He put his hands on the crossbar.

"Good boy."

The clamps closed over his wrists and Cassiday threw the levers. The bolts bit down through the leather padding and Jay felt the pressure all the way to the bone. Then Cassiday took his left ankle and pulled it out wide, and the bench tilted under him, and he had to bend forward at the waist to keep his balance. His right ankle followed. When the last clamp locked, Jay was bent over the padded bench with his arms stretched forward and his legs spread wide, his ass up at hip height and his small tits hanging free under his chest, and there was nothing he could do with his hands and nothing he could do with his feet and the cold air moved across his exposed back and between his legs like it had been invited.

"There," Cassiday said. "Now you're proper fuck meat."

He heard the man cross to the cart. Heard the clink of glass. Then Cassiday's hand was on the small of his back, and it was warm, and Jay hated how good it felt after a night in the frame.

"What's that."

"Synaptic primer. Second generation." Cassiday's thumb pressed a spot at the base of Jay's spine and Jay's whole body flinched. "The first injection rewired the pleasure-pain nexus. This one opens the receptors. Every nerve ending you have is about to become a great deal more interested in what happens to it."

Jay heard the injector hiss against his skin and felt the cold spread under his shoulder blade. It didn't hurt. That was the first thing. It didn't hurt at all, and then it did, a deep chemical burn that spread out from the injection site in waves, down his spine, into his hips, out along his ribs, and by the time it reached his fingertips he was gripping the crossbar and sweating and his breath was coming in short pulls through his nose.

"Breathe," Cassiday said. "It passes in a minute."

It didn't pass. It settled. That was worse. The burn faded into a low hum that lived in his skin, and when the air moved across his back he felt every individual molecule of it, and when his own hair — what was left of it, the fine down that had grown back overnight — brushed against his neck he shuddered like someone had run a fingernail down his spine. He looked down at his chest. His nipples were standing up so hard they ached, dark and tight and obscene in the cold, and he could feel the fabric of the air against them, and he could feel his own pulse in them, and he couldn't stop looking at them. They were his. They were his and they were wrong and they were so sensitive that the simple act of existing in a cold room was making him hard.

"There it is," Cassiday said softly. "You see? The body learns."

"Please." Jay didn't know what he was asking for. He was bent over a frame in a cargo bay with his ass in the air and his tits hanging down and his cock — his cock, the one thing they hadn't taken yet — was filling against his belly, and every breath he took dragged his nipples across nothing at all and sent a bright wire of sensation straight down into his balls.

"Please what, pet?"

"Please don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't—"

The cargo bay door hissed open.

Jay's head came up. He couldn't turn far in the clamps but he could see enough — the wide door sliding back into its housing, and behind it a corridor full of men. They came in slowly, unhurried, the way men walk into a bar. Twelve of them. Maybe more, and Jay lost count as they spread out along the edge of the yellow square, because he was trying to look at all of them at once and he couldn't, and every one he looked at was worse than the last.

The closest was a man in his sixties with a face like a melted candle, thick ridges of scar tissue where his cheeks should have been, and when he smiled his mouth was wet and wrong. Beside him stood a younger one, broad through the shoulders, with a fist of bone growing out of the side of his skull like a horn and a cluster of warts across his throat that moved when he swallowed. A fat man with blisters weeping down his forearms. A thin man with too many fingers. A man with a patchwork of grafted skin across his chest in three different colors, and a man whose eyes were set too far apart and whose pupils were slits, and a man so old he had to lean on a pipe wrench to stand, and a man so young his face hadn't finished deciding what it was going to be, and every one of them was looking at Jay bent over the frame with his ass up and his tits down and his cock stiff against his belly.

"Gentlemen," Cassiday said. "The sissy is ready for you. She's been primed. Every hole is live. Use her however you like — she's been trained for it, and what she hasn't been trained for, you'll teach her."

Jay pulled at the clamps. The bolts didn't give. He pulled until the leather bit into his wrists and the crossbar creaked and his shoulders screamed and nothing moved, and the men watched him do it, and one of them — the one with the bone horn — laughed, a low wet sound like a drain clearing.

"Look at her go," he said. "Little thing's got fight in her."

"Not for long," Cassiday said. He picked up the tray and carried it to a crate near the door, and Jay heard him sit down. "I'll be here to observe. Don't damage the merchandise — she's worth more than all of you combined."

The men came forward. Jay watched them come and his body did the thing it had learned to do on the Vixen, the thing he hated, the thing that made him want to claw his own skin off — it got ready. His ass loosened. His mouth went wet. His cock, already hard, twitched against his belly and leaked a thin string of pre-cum onto the padded bench. He felt all of it through the primer's new nerves, every drop and every twitch, and the shame of it was so total that it came out of him as a sound, a low wounded noise that he tried to swallow and couldn't.

The first hand landed on his ass. It was the young one, the one whose face hadn't decided yet, and his palm was hot and rough and he squeezed one cheek and then the other, testing the meat of it, and Jay's whole body arched into the touch before he could stop it.

"Oh, she likes it," the young one said.

"She's wired to like it," Cassiday said from his crate. "That's the point."

The young one's fingers found Jay's asshole. He circled it once, twice, and Jay felt every millimeter of the contact, the calluses, the heat, the wet smear of his own pre-cum where the man had wiped his hand on it. Then two fingers pushed in, no warning, no spit, and Jay cried out and his body opened for them like it had been waiting.

"Tight," the young one said. "Tighter than the bulletin said."

"She's been idle a few days," Cassiday said. "She'll loosen up."

A second man stepped up on Jay's other side. The fat one with the weeping blisters. He put a hand on Jay's head and pushed it down until Jay's cheek was against the padded bench, and then he dragged his thumb along Jay's jaw and pushed it into Jay's mouth, and Jay tasted salt and pus and something sour, and his tongue moved against the thumb before he told it to.

"Good little cocksucker," the fat man said. "She's already sucking."

"I'm not—" Jay started, and the thumb pushed deeper and cut him off.

The young one pulled his fingers out and Jay heard the buckle of a belt, and then the rustle of fabric, and then the young one's cock was against his asshole. It was thick and blunt and hot, and the head of it pressed and pressed and Jay's body stretched around it and took it, and the young one grunted and pushed all the way in with one stroke that knocked the breath out of Jay's lungs.

"There she is," the young one said. "There's the whore."

Jay felt it. He felt all of it — the stretch, the burn, the fullness, the way the cock dragged along the inside of him and found the spot that made his vision white out at the edges. The primer had done something to the nerves in his ass, or maybe the first injection had, and every thrust lit him up like a circuit, and he heard himself moan into the fat man's thumb and hated himself for it.

The young one fucked him hard and fast, no rhythm, just the raw need of a man who'd been waiting. His hips slapped against Jay's ass and the frame creaked and Jay's tits swung under his chest with every stroke, the nipples dragging against the air, and the fat man kept his thumb in Jay's mouth and used his other hand to pinch one of those nipples, hard, and Jay's whole body jerked and his cock jumped and he came — not a real orgasm, not the kind that came with release, just a thin spurt of pre-cum that ran down his belly, but it was enough that the young one felt him clench and laughed.

"She's coming already. Barely got started."

"She'll come a lot before we're done," Cassiday said. "That's what the primer's for. She can't help it. Every time you fuck her she'll come, and every time she comes she'll hate herself a little more, and that's the point."

The young one finished inside him with a grunt and pulled out, and Jay felt the wet rush of cum follow the cock out and run down over his balls. He didn't get a breath. The fat man shoved the young one aside and took his place, and his cock was shorter but thicker, blunt as a fist, and he pushed into Jay's ass with a grunt and started fucking him in short brutal strokes that punched the air out of Jay's chest.

"Say it," the fat man said. "Say you want it."

"No—"

The fat man pulled out and slapped Jay's ass so hard the sound cracked off the crates. Jay screamed. The primer turned the pain into heat and the heat into need, and his ass clenched around nothing and his cock throbbed and he heard himself make a sound that wasn't a word.

"Say it."

"I want it."

"Want what?"

"I want—" Jay's voice broke. The words came out of him like something being pulled with pliers. "I want your cock. Please. Please fuck me."

The fat man shoved back in and Jay heard himself moan, and behind him the other men were starting to move, unbuckling, unzipping, arguing about who was next, and Cassiday sat on his crate with his spectacles catching the work lights and watched Jay's face the whole time, the way a man watches a fire he built.

The fat man came fast, and the next one was the old man with the pipe wrench, who had to lean on the frame because his hips couldn't take the angle, and Jay had to arch his back and push back into him to make it work, and he did it, he pushed back, and the old man patted his ass and called him a good girl and Jay's eyes stung and his cock stayed hard. Then the man with the grafted skin, who fucked him slow and deep and kept stopping to make Jay ask for more, and Jay asked, every time, because the stopping was worse than the asking. Then the man with the bone horn, who was rough and didn't care if Jay came or not, just used him like a hole, and Jay's ass was so slick with cum by then that every thrust made a wet sound that carried across the cargo bay.

Somewhere in the middle of it Jay stopped pulling at the clamps. He didn't decide to. His arms just gave up. They hung from the crossbar and his shoulders ached and his wrists were raw and he let them hang, and he put his forehead down on the padded bench and let the men use him, and the primer turned every thrust into pleasure and every pleasure into shame and every shame back into pleasure until he couldn't tell the difference anymore, and when one of them pulled out and another pushed in he heard himself whine like a dog being moved off a warm spot.

"Please," he said, to no one, to all of them. "Please don't stop."

The young one — the first one, who'd come already and had been standing back watching — laughed and stepped up again. "She's begging for it now."

"Told you," Cassiday said.

The young one grabbed Jay's hips and pulled him back off the bench, and the clamps held his ankles but his knees came off the padding, and he was hanging bent between the crossbar and the ankle clamps with his ass up and his tits swinging, and the young one fucked him like that, deep and hard, and Jay's mouth hung open and he drooled onto the deck and his cock bounced against his belly with every stroke and he came again, a real one this time, a thin hot pulse that spattered the deck under him, and the young one felt him clench and came too, and Jay felt the second load fill him up on top of the first and the third and the fourth.

When the young one pulled out, Jay sagged in the clamps and the frame held him up. Cum ran down the inside of both thighs and pooled on the deck under his knees. His asshole was open and wet and he could feel the cold air moving in it, and the primer made even that feel good, and he hated it, and he pushed his hips back an inch anyway, an invitation, before he could stop himself.

There were still men waiting. He could hear them behind him, the shuffle of feet, the low talk, someone spitting. He turned his head against the bench and looked at Cassiday, who was writing something in a small notebook with a pencil, calm as a man taking inventory.

"How many," Jay said. His voice was wrecked.

Cassiday looked up. "Twelve. You've had five." He checked his notebook. "By my count."

"I can't—"

"You will." Cassiday closed the notebook and stood up, and crossed to the frame, and looked down at Jay's face. He reached out and brushed a strand of the fine new hair back from Jay's forehead, and Jay felt the touch all the way down his spine. "You're doing very well, pet. Better than I expected. The body's learning faster than the mind."

"Please," Jay said. He didn't know anymore whether he was asking them to stop or to keep going. The word had stopped meaning anything. It was just the only sound he had left that wasn't a moan.

Cassiday patted his cheek, twice, the way you'd pat a dog. "Seven more," he said. "Then I will break that arse of yours again." He walked around in front of Jay and dropped his trousers to reveal his flacid horse cock. “In the meantime you can warm me up.”

Jay closed his eyes in shame as he realised he was not just going to be fucked by that horse cock again in front of the entire crew, but that he was going to enable it by taking it in his mouth first. Still he opened wide and let the old man slide the head of his metant cock past his lips.

Cassiday's cock was soft against Jay's tongue, a heavy rope of flesh that smelled of antiseptic and something older, something animal, and Jay had to open his jaw wide to take even the blunt head of it past his lips. The skin was hot and slack, sliding over the shaft beneath like a sleeve, and the taste of it — salt and old sweat and a faint chemical bitterness — spread across his tongue and made his stomach turn. He heard himself make a small sound around it, a wet noise of protest that he couldn't have stopped if he'd tried, and the men behind him laughed.

"Look at her go," the bone-horn one said. "Old man's horse dick barely got a chub and she's already gagging for it."

Cassiday's hand came down on the back of Jay's head, not pushing, just resting there, the liver-spotted fingers spread wide across his skull. "Slowly, pet. You're not trying to finish me. You're trying to wake him up."

Jay pulled his mouth back until only the head sat on his tongue and then pushed forward again, and the flesh in his mouth began to thicken. He felt it happen — the first twitch of blood, the slow swell, the way the skin drew tighter over the shaft and the head rounded out against his palate. He pulled back, dragged his tongue along the underside where a thick vein ran, and the cock jumped against his lips. Cassiday made a low sound above him, not quite a word.

"There," he said. "You feel that? That's you. That's what you do."

Jay felt it. He felt the cock growing in his mouth the way you feel a wrench turning in your hand — the resistance, the give, the way the thing in your grip becomes heavier and more insistent with every stroke. He worked his mouth down the shaft, taking more of it, and the head pushed against the back of his throat and his eyes watered and he pulled back before he gagged. Spit ran down the length of it and dripped off his chin onto the padded bench. He licked up the underside again, slow, from the base to the head, and Cassiday's thighs shifted and his hand tightened in Jay's hair.

"Good," Cassiday said. "Again."

Behind Jay, a man cleared his throat. "How long's this gonna take, Doc? We got a schedule."

"You'll wait," Cassiday said without looking away from Jay's face. "She's got to get me hard enough to take her, and I'm not a young man. Patience."

Jay heard the man mutter something and the shuffle of feet, and then the fat one with the weeping blisters stepped up beside the frame and put his hand on Jay's ass again, and the touch went through Jay like a current. The primer was still in his skin, still humming in every nerve, and the fat man's palm was warm and rough and the contact made Jay's hips push back before he could stop them. He felt the cock in his mouth twitch at the same moment and realized his own body was answering, that the weight on his tongue and the hand on his ass were feeding each other, and the shame of it burned in his chest and did nothing to stop his cock from filling against his belly.

"She likes being watched," the fat man said. "Look at her hips."

"She likes being used," Cassiday said. "There's a difference." He pushed his hips forward, just an inch, and the head of his cock nudged the back of Jay's throat and Jay swallowed around it and his throat worked and the cock slid deeper. "That's it. Take it. You've had worse in this mouth."

Jay had. He'd had worse in this mouth a hundred times over a hundred nights on the Vixen, and the knowing of it made his jaw ache and his eyes sting, and he bobbed his head anyway, because the alternative was to stop, and stopping meant the men behind him would take over again, and at least this — this was one man, one cock, one rhythm he could control. He set a pace: down until his nose touched the coarse hair at the base, up until only the head rested on his tongue, down again. Spit ran freely now, slicking the shaft, and the wet sound of it carried across the cargo bay, and Jay closed his eyes and tried to make his mind go somewhere else and found it wouldn't go anywhere, that the primer had wired even his thoughts to his skin.

The cock hardened in stages. First the length of it filled out, the slack skin drawing tight against the shaft until it was a smooth hot column in Jay's mouth. Then the head swelled, the flare of it widening until Jay's lips had to stretch around it, and the slit at the tip began to leak, a thin salt taste that spread across his tongue with every stroke. Then the base thickened, the whole thing pulsing with a heartbeat Jay could feel against his palate, and Cassiday's breathing changed above him, went deeper, and his hand in Jay's hair tightened until it pulled.

"There," Cassiday said. His voice had dropped, lost its clinical edge. "There she is. Feel that, pet? That's all you. That's what your mouth does."

Jay pulled off him with a wet sound and looked up. The cock stood out from Cassiday's trousers, thick and dark and glistening with Jay's spit, and it was longer than any man's had a right to be, the head flared and ruddy and the shaft veined like a length of cable. It bobbed with Cassiday's pulse. Jay's mouth was full of the taste of it and his jaw ached and his throat was raw and his own cock was so hard it hurt, and the men behind him had gone quiet, watching.

"Please," Jay said. He didn't know what he was asking for. He never knew anymore.

Cassiday looked down at him, and behind the cracked spectacles the watery blue eyes were bright with something that wasn't quite hunger and wasn't quite pride. "You've done well," he said. "The broker's going to like you." He reached down and took his cock in his hand and stroked it once, slow, and a bead of pre-cum welled at the slit and hung there. "Open."

Jay opened his mouth. Cassiday fed the head back onto his tongue and Jay took it, and this time the cock was hard and heavy and there was no give in it, just the dense weight of flesh filling his mouth and pressing at the back of his throat, and Jay had to breathe through his nose and swallow and the taste of Cassiday's pre-cum was sharp and bitter and he took it anyway. He worked his tongue along the underside, found the vein, followed it up to the ridge of the head and back down, and Cassiday's hips began to move, small thrusts that pushed the cock deeper each time.

"That's it," Cassiday said. "That's it. Take it down."

Jay took it down. The head pushed past his soft palate and into his throat and his eyes streamed and his nose ran and he held it there, breathing through the narrow channel that was left, and Cassiday's hand on the back of his head held him in place and his hips worked in short strokes that fucked the cock into Jay's throat and Jay's body convulsed around it, gagging, swallowing, gagging again, and the men behind him were making sounds now, low and appreciative, and Jay's own cock dripped onto the bench beneath him and his ass clenched around nothing and he was so hard he thought he might come from this alone, from being used like a hole, from the sheer fact of his own mouth being a thing that men put their cocks into.

Cassiday pulled him off by the hair. Jay gasped air, coughed, spit hanging off his chin in a string, and looked up at the old man with his eyes streaming and his mouth open and his face a ruin.

"Good girl," Cassiday said. He let go of Jay's hair and stepped back. "That's enough warming up. You've got seven more men to take, and the broker arrives at dusk. I want you loose and wet and used by then. I want you to smell like the whole crew." He turned to the waiting men. "She's yours. Finish her."

The old one was already moving. He grabbed Jay's hips with both hands and pulled him back off the bench, and Jay's knees left the padding and he hung bent between the crossbar and the ankle clamps, his weight on his wrists, his ass up and open and still slick with the loads already in him. The old one didn't bother with spit. He pushed in with one stroke and Jay screamed — a raw, cracked sound that came out of his throat and bounced off the crates — and the primer turned the burn into heat and the heat into a need so total that Jay's hips pushed back to meet him.

"There she is," the young one said. "There's the whore from the bulletin."

He fucked Jay hard and fast, no rhythm, just the raw need of a man who'd been waiting to long, and every stroke punched the air out of Jay's lungs and every withdrawal left him empty and aching and every re-entry filled him so full that his vision whited out. Jay's tits swung under his chest with the motion, the nipples dragging through the cold air, and the fat man stepped up beside him and caught one of them between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it, hard, and Jay's whole body arched and his cock jumped and a thin rope of pre-cum swung from the head of it and spattered the deck.

"Look at her leak," the fat man said. "She's gonna come before he does."

He did. The young one fucked into him at an angle that dragged the head of his cock across the spot inside Jay that the primer had lit up like a fuse, and Jay's body clenched down around him and his cock pulsed and he came with a sound like a sob, a thin hot spurt that ran down his belly and dripped off the end of him onto the padded bench, and the old one felt the clench and groaned and drove in deep and came too, filling Jay's ass with a second load of hot seed that ran out around the shaft and down over Jay's balls.

"That's two," Cassiday said from his crate. He was writing in the notebook again. "Keep count."

Cassiday's hand found Jay's skull again, the spread fingers settling over the crown like a man palming a ball, and he drew Jay forward with a pressure that was almost gentle until it wasn't. The cock slid back over Jay's tongue, thick and hot and tasting of iron now, the pre-cum smeared across the head so that every stroke carried the sharpness of it to the back of Jay's mouth. He breathed through his nose and worked his jaw and heard the wet noise of himself — a slick, rhythmic sound that carried across the cargo bay and told every man listening exactly what he was doing and what he was.

"Slower," Cassiday said. "You're rushing it. Take the head and hold it."

Jay held it. The head of the equine cock sat heavy on his tongue, flared and blunt, and he could feel the slit leaking against the roof of his mouth, a thin steady trickle of salt that he had no choice but to taste. His throat worked around nothing. His hands were still cuffed above him to the crossbar and his shoulders burned from the weight of his body, and the burn was part of it now, folded in with everything else the primer had done to him, so that the ache in his arms and the stretch in his jaw and the taste in his mouth all arrived as the same single fact: he was being used, and his body had been made to want it.

"Good," Cassiday said. "Now take it deeper. I want to fuck your throat."

Jay took it an inch at a time. The head pushed past his soft palate and he stopped, waited, swallowed, and the cock sank another inch into his throat. Spit ran out of the corners of his mouth and down the shaft and dripped off his chin onto the padded bench between his knees. He could hear the men behind him shifting their weight, the creak of the frame, the low mutter of the bone-horn one saying something Jay couldn't make out. He didn't care what they said. The only thing in the world was the column of flesh in his throat and the instruction to keep it there.

"Look at that," the fat man said. "She's got her nose in his pubes."

"She's got a job," Cassiday said. "And she's doing it." He pushed forward — not far, a half-inch, a test — and Jay's throat convulsed and he swallowed and the cock slid deeper and Cassiday made a sound above him, low and satisfied, like a man settling into a chair. "There. Hold it. Don't pull off."

Jay held it. His eyes streamed and his nose ran and the world went narrow and bright at the edges, and in the middle of the narrow bright world was the pulse he could feel against the wall of his throat, steady and slow, the heartbeat of an eighty-year-old man who had wired Jay's nerves to his own pleasure and was now taking his time collecting. Jay's own cock hung between his legs, dripping onto the bench, and the primer had made even that part of the same circuit — every swallow he made pushed a fresh throb down his shaft, every pulse he felt in his throat answered by a pulse in his groin, until he couldn't tell which body the arousal belonged to.

"Breathe through your nose, pet," Cassiday said. "You're turning colors."

Jay breathed. The air came thin and whistling past the cock plugging his throat and his chest heaved and his vision steadied and Cassiday's hand on his skull began to move him — a slow pull back until only the head rested on his tongue, then a slow push forward until his nose was buried in the coarse gray hair at the base, then back, then forward. A rhythm. A pace set by the old man's hand, and Jay's job was to keep his tongue moving along the underside and his throat open and his jaw slack and his mind exactly where the primer had put it, which was nowhere but here.

"She's good at this," the young one said. He had his cock out in his hand and was stroking it slowly, watching. "Bulletin didn't say she was good at this."

"Bulletin said she was a whore," Cassiday said. "The rest is just detail." He pushed Jay down again, held him there longer this time, and Jay's throat worked and his eyes watered and his cock jumped and a fresh rope of pre-cum swung from the head of it and spattered the deck. "You hear that, pet? You're a detail. A very useful one."

Jay heard it. He heard it the way he'd heard every name he'd been given since the Venture's Star — whore, cumdump, fuckmeat, detail — and the primer turned the hearing of it into heat in his chest and heat in his cock and heat in his ass, and the shame of it was a separate thing that lived somewhere behind his eyes and watched him do this and could not stop him. He sucked the old man's cock because his mouth had been told to and because — and this was the part he couldn't look at — because some piece of him had learned to want the weight of it on his tongue.

Cassiday's hips began to meet his hand now, small thrusts that fucked the cock into Jay's throat in time with the pull of his fingers in Jay's hair, and the rhythm built. The men behind him had gone quiet and the only sounds in the cargo bay were the wet suck of Jay's mouth and the creak of the frame and Cassiday's breathing, which had gone rough and deep and labored. Jay worked his tongue along the vein, found the ridge under the head, followed it down and back up, and the cock in his mouth grew heavier with every stroke, the skin drawing tighter, the head swelling until his lips stretched around it and his jaw ached with the width of it.

"That's it," Cassiday said. His voice had lost its clinical polish entirely now, gone thick and low. "That's it, pet. You feel that? You did that. Your mouth did that."

Jay felt it. The cock was fully hard in his mouth, a thick veined column that filled him from lips to throat, and he could feel the pulse in it now, fast and heavy, and he could feel the pre-cum leaking steadily onto his tongue, and he could feel his own body answering — his cock so hard it ached, his ass clenching around the loads already in him, his tits dragging against the cold air with every bob of his head. He pulled back until only the head sat on his tongue and looked up the length of Cassiday's body, past the stained tunic, to the old man's face, and the watery blue eyes behind the cracked spectacles were fixed on him with something that was almost tenderness and was not.

"Please," Jay said. The head of the cock rested on his tongue and the word came out wet and cracked around it.

Cassiday looked at him for a long moment. Then he took his cock in his hand — the liver-spotted fingers wrapping the shaft, slick with Jay's spit — and stroked it once, slow, and a bead of pre-cum welled at the slit and hung there, catching the light.

He grabbed Jay’s head and plunged his horse cock deep into Jay’s throat skull fucking him, once, twice, three times. Then he held it there, his pubic bone grinding against Jay’s nose. Jay felt the cock in the throat twitch and pulse and with a groan Cassiday emptied his huge balls into the sissy whores gullet as the rest of the crew cheered. With no option but to swallow the foul seed Jay cried a single tear of humiliation and gulped down the disgusting load.

"Fuck the bitch up. She want’s it!” Cassiday told the crew and instantly Jay felt the blistered guy slamb his fist deep into his gaping arsehole. Jay screamed and his arse was stretched and in its hyper sensitive state it registered every blister and wart. Suddenly he pulled his closed fist out of Jay’s anus leaving it gaping for the next man.

The warty one took her by the back of the neck — not the hair this time, the whole scruff of it, thumb and fingers digging into the tendon — and walked her off the frame. Her cuffs came free on a latch Jay never saw, and her wrists dropped and her shoulders screamed and her knees hit the deck before she could catch herself, palms flat on the cold plating, and the young one's boot came down on the small of her back and pressed her chest to the floor. He was already hard again. She could feel it against the back of her thigh, the blunt weight of it, and she knew what he wanted before he said it, and the knowing was the worst part, worse than the burn in her shoulders, worse than the taste still coating her tongue.

"Open up, bulletin," he said. "Mouth's warmed. Keep it that way."

Jay turned her head and took him and he was nothing like Cassiday — shorter, thicker, the shaft straight and hot and tasting of sweat and the soap they used on the ship, and he fucked her face with the same no-rhythm he'd used on her ass, like a man beating a nail. She got her tongue under the head and her hand up between his legs and cupped his balls, and the small weight of them in her palm was a thing she could hold, a thing she could work, and the young one grunted and his hips stuttered and his boot came off her back. She breathed through her nose and swallowed and the spit ran and the deck was cold on her tits and the primer turned the whole of it — the ache, the cold, the stretch — into the same low hum of want that had been running under her skin since the injection. The fat one stepped around behind her and she felt his hand find her hip, and then the head of him at her entrance, and he pushed in without a word and she was full at both ends at once, a column of flesh in her throat and a column of flesh in her cunt, and the young one's hand fisted in her scalp and the fat one's fingers dug into the soft of her waist and Jay stopped being a person with a name and became a hole with two jobs.

"That's it," the young one said. "Both ends. That's what the bulletin's for."

The fat one laughed and drove deeper and his belly slapped against the backs of her thighs and the sound of it — skin on skin, wet and rhythmic — filled the cargo bay. He was slower than the young one, longer strokes, and every one dragged the head of his cock across the spot the primer had lit and left her clenching around him, and the clench was a thing she couldn't control, a thing her body did without asking, and she heard herself moan around the cock in her mouth and the young one laughed and pushed her down until her nose was in his pubes. She held it. She held it and counted the seconds and swallowed and the cock in her cunt kept moving and the cock in her throat stayed put and the men were talking above her like she wasn't there, like she was furniture, and the shame of it was a separate body that floated near the ceiling and watched and could not look away.

"Doc," the fat one said, "how many's she take before the broker gets here?"

"As many as I say," Cassiday said from his crate. The notebook was open. He was writing. "She's got a number to hit. A whore who's been used by every man on the ship and can still spread her legs for a buyer's cock is a whore who's worth buying. I want her reeking of it. I want the broker to smell the crew on her before he sees her face."

Jay heard the words and the words went into her and became heat, and the heat was the thing she hated most, more than the taste, more than the ache, because the heat was hers. Her body was answering a question she hadn't been asked. The fat one's cock was thick and she could feel the vein on the underside drag along her inner wall and the drag was good, that was the word, good, and the good was a betrayal that lived in her hips, in the way they pushed back to meet him, in the way her cunt gripped him like it wanted to keep him. She got her hand around the young one's shaft and worked it with her mouth and the young one's balls drew up tight in her palm and she knew he was close and she felt something that was almost pride, which was the worst thing yet.

"She's gonna make me come," the blistered one said, and his voice had gone thin. "Little fuckmeat's gonna make me come."

He did. He pulled out of her mouth and stroked himself fast and came across her face — hot stripes across her cheek and her closed eye and her lips, one rope landing in her mouth and she swallowed it on reflex because the primer had taught her that too. The fat one came a stroke later, deep, holding her hips against him so she couldn't pull away, and the heat of it spread inside her and ran out around him when he finally withdrew and dripped down the inside of her thigh and onto the deck between her knees. She stayed there on her hands and knees with her face wet and her cunt dripping and her tits hanging and her cock — her cock, still hard, still leaking, still the one part of her that hadn't been asked and had answered anyway — bobbing between her legs.

"That's four," Cassiday said. "Bone-horn. Your turn."

Jay got her hand under her and pushed herself up onto her knees and wiped her face with the back of her wrist and the wrist came away streaked with the young one's come and she looked at it for a moment, the way you look at a tool that's done its job, and then the bone-horn one was in front of her and she opened her mouth without being told, because the primer had made that the easiest thing in the world, and because the alternative was worse, and because — and this was the part that lived behind her eyes and watched and could not stop — because some piece of her had started to want it.

The bone-horn one's cock was in her mouth before she'd finished wiping her face, and he wasn't gentle about it. He grabbed the back of her skull with one broad hand and drove himself in to the root, and Jay's nose ground into the coarse hair at his groin and her throat closed and her eyes watered and she stayed there, breathing through the narrow channel that was left, because the alternative was to fight a hand that weighed more than her head. He pulled out and pushed back in, once, twice, and the third time he held it, and Jay's throat worked around him and her spit ran down the shaft and dripped off his balls and onto the deck.

"Look at that," he said. "Bulletin said prizewinner. Bulletin didn't say she could take it to the hilt."

"She's been trained," Cassiday said from his crate. The pencil scratched. "Every hole's been broken in. You're not special."

Bone-horn laughed, a wet sound that came up through his throat, and pulled Jay off him by the scruff and turned her around and bent her over the closest crate. The metal edge bit into her belly and her tits mashed flat against the lid and her feet came up off the deck and she had to brace her palms on the crate's far side to keep from sliding. He didn't ask. He pushed into her ass with one stroke and the slick of the loads already in her made it easy, and Jay's mouth opened and a sound came out of her that she couldn't have named, and her cock — hanging free beneath the crate's edge, dripping onto the deck — jumped and leaked and stayed hard.

He fucked her like a man who'd stopped caring what the bulletin said. Short, brutal strokes that punched the air out of her lungs and drove her hips into the crate's edge with every thrust. His balls slapped against her slick thighs. His hand came down on her ass once, twice, three times, and the primer turned each slap into a wash of heat that spread through her hips and pooled low in her belly, and she hated the slaps and she hated the heat and she pushed back into the next one anyway.

"There it is," he said. "There's the whore from the poster. Look at her push back."

Behind them, the fat one was already unbuckling. The old man with the wrench leaned on the frame and watched. The one with too many fingers was stroking himself through his trousers, and the one with the slit pupils had his cock out and was working it slow and unhurried, and the man with the grafted skin was arguing quietly with the young one about who had next and who had last. Jay heard the argument through the wet slap of bone-horn's hips and the creak of the crate and her own breathing, and the argument was about her, about whose turn she was, and the hearing of it did something to her chest that the primer turned into heat.

Eleven men in the yellow square. She'd counted them when they came in. She'd lost the count somewhere around the third cock and she wanted it back, because the count was a thing she could hold, because the count was a shape to put the morning into, because if she knew how many were left she could put a number on the end of it. She turned her head against the crate's lid and looked across the bay for Cassiday, and found him on his crate with the notebook open on his knee and the pencil moving.

"Doc," she said. The word came out wet and split by bone-horn's thrusts. "Doc—"

Cassiday looked up. His spectacles caught the work light and threw two small white rectangles back at her. "Yes, pet."

"Let me—" She had to stop. Bone-horn had gone deep and held it, grinding his pubic bone against her ass, and the pressure inside her was a full bright thing that took the words out of her mouth and left her gasping. When he pulled back she got the rest of it out. "Let me count. Please. Let me count them."

Cassiday's pencil stopped.

"Why," he said. Not a question. A probe. The same voice he used when he was reading a gauge.

"So the broker knows." Jay's cheek was flat on the crate lid and her voice was flat with it, and every word cost her something she couldn't name. "So he knows I took all of them. Every one. So he knows I'm—" She swallowed. Bone-horn's hips had slowed to a slow grind and he was listening, and she could feel his cock shift inside her with every word she said. "So he knows I'm worth what you're asking."

Cassiday looked at her for a long moment. The pencil hovered. Behind him, the men had gone quiet — the fat one's belt buckle hung open and forgotten, the young one's fist had stopped on his shaft, the whole yellow square had turned to watch the exchange like a card game.

Then Cassiday smiled. It was the first real smile Jay had seen on his face, and it was worse than the clinical look, because it was pleased.

"That's a good idea, pet," he said. "A very good idea." He turned the notebook to a fresh page and drew a line down the center with the pencil, slow and neat. "Whore's count. We'll do it properly. Every man who uses you from now until the broker docks, you say the number out loud. Out loud, pet, so the whole bay hears it. So there's no argument afterward about what was done to you and how many did it." He looked up. "The broker pays for used goods. He pays more for a whore who can tell him exactly how used."

Jay's throat worked. The words sat in her mouth and tasted of copper and cum. "Yes."

"Say it properly."

"Yes, Doc."

"Good girl." Cassiday wrote something at the top of the page — a date, maybe, or a heading, Jay couldn't see from where she lay bent over the crate. Then he closed the notebook over the pencil and set it on the crate beside him, and he stood, and he walked around to the front of the yellow square where every man could see him, and he raised his voice for the first time that morning. "Listen up. The whore wants to keep score. From here on in, every man who takes her, she counts. Out loud. You hear your number, you know it's your turn. When she gets to the last of you, we're done with the breaking-in, and she goes to the wash rack and gets made presentable for the broker. Any man who tries to take her out of order answers to me."

A mutter ran around the square. The young one laughed. The fat one said something Jay couldn't hear and the man with the grafted skin said something back, and the old man with the wrench thumped the deck with his pipe wrench like a gavel, and the sound of the metal on the plating rang off the crates and shut them all up.

"Count loud, pet," Cassiday said. He sat back down on his crate and crossed one thin ankle over the other and folded his hands on his knee, and his watery eyes found Jay's across the bay and held them. "So everyone hears the whore keep score."

Jay turned her face back against the crate lid. Bone-horn's hand was on her hip, waiting, and his cock was still hard inside her, and the men were watching her the way men watch a machine they've just been told how to operate. She could feel all of it — the crate edge in her belly, the load dripping down her thigh, her own cock hanging heavy and wet under the crate's lip, the primer humming in every inch of skin that the cold air touched. Cassiday was right. She'd asked for this. She'd asked to count, and now the counting was a thing she would have to do, out loud, with every man in the bay listening, and there was no version of the next hour in which she got to be quiet.

Bone-horn shifted his weight and pulled back until only the head of his cock sat in her ass, and Jay felt the emptiness open up under her like a dropped hold.

"Six," she said. The word came out cracked and loud in the quiet of the bay. "That's six."

Bone-horn drove back in and the men laughed and the fat one said, "She's counting," in a voice like a man watching a dog do a trick, and Jay's forehead pressed into the crate lid and her hands scrabbled for a grip on the far edge and her body took him and the primer turned the taking into heat, and somewhere behind her eyes the part of her that watched — the part that had learned on the Vixen to float near the ceiling and catalog what was done to the body beneath — wrote the number down.

Six.

Bone-horn came fast after that. He was a man who'd been waiting his turn, and the waiting had done its work, and his strokes went short and hard and his balls drew up tight against her slick thighs and he grunted and emptied into her with a sound like a man setting down a heavy box. The load was hot and there was a lot of it — more than the young one, more than the fat one — and Jay felt it fill her and then felt the overflow run out around his shaft and down over her balls and drip off the end of her cock onto the deck, and the dripping was a thing she could feel now, every drop of it, because the primer had made even the leaving of it into sensation.

He pulled out and stepped back and the wet sound of it carried. Jay stayed bent over the crate with her ass still up and her legs still spread and the emptiness inside her suddenly enormous, and she heard the shuffle of feet behind her and the fat one saying "my turn again" and the young one saying "you already had a turn" and the old man with the wrench saying "order's order, he had her mouth, I had her cunt, bone-horn had her ass, that's three of us done and she counted six—"

"Seven," Jay said.

The argument stopped.

"What?"

"The count's seven." She got her knees under her and pushed herself up off the crate and stood, wobbling, with her hands braced on the lid, and she turned her head and looked at them — the whole yellow square of them, the fat one and the young one and the old man and the grafted one and the slit-eyed one and the one with too many fingers and the one with the weeping blisters and the one so young his face hadn't finished deciding — and her voice came out level for the first time in a month. "You had the mouth, that's four. Fat one, that's five. Bone-horn, that's six. The one who comes next is seven. I say the number. Doc says I say the number. So that's how it works now."

The young one laughed. "Listen to her. Little fuckmeat's running the show."

"She's not running the show," Cassiday said from his crate. He hadn't moved. The notebook sat closed on his knee. "She's keeping the ledger. There's a difference." He looked at Jay over the tops of his spectacles. "Seven, then. Who's seven?"

The fat one stepped forward. He'd gotten his trousers down around his knees while they argued, and his cock stood out of the blistered folds of his groin, thick and short and flushed dark, and he took Jay by the shoulder and turned her and bent her back over the crate without a word. He pushed in and Jay felt the stretch of him all over again — he was thicker than bone-horn, blunter, and the loads already in her made him slide but didn't make him small — and her hands found the far edge of the crate and her feet came up off the deck and she took him.

"Seven," she said, into the crate lid. "Seven."

He fucked her slow. That was his thing — the fat one liked it slow, liked to feel every inch of the drag, and he held her hips and pulled her back onto him in long deliberate strokes that turned her insides into a single continuous line of heat. Every withdrawal left her gaping and every return filled her to the root, and the primer made the gaping into a loss and the filling into a relief, and Jay's cock hung under the crate's edge and dripped and her tits mashed against the lid and her breath fogged the metal in front of her face. The men watched. She could feel them watching — eleven pairs of eyes on her back and her ass and the place where the fat one's cock went in and out of her, and the being-watched was its own sensation now, a warm prickle that ran up her spine and settled in her scalp.

"She's got a nice cunt for a sissy," the fat one said. "Bulletin didn't say the cunt was this good."

"Bulletin said she was a prizewinner," the young one said. "Bulletin wasn't wrong."

The fat one came with a grunt and a long shudder and pulled out and stepped back, and Jay felt the rush of his load follow the cock out and run down the inside of her thigh, and she stayed bent over the crate and said "eight" before anyone had to ask, and the old man with the wrench shuffled forward and put a hand on her lower back and said "that's me, then," and got himself in position.

He was old and his hips were bad and he had to lean on the crate beside her to get the angle, and Jay had to arch her back and push back into him to make it work, and she did it, she pushed back, and the old man made a sound of relief that was almost grateful, and fucked her in short careful strokes that barely reached the spot the primer had lit, so that the heat built in her without ever cresting, and she stayed bent over the crate with her ass up and her cock dripping and a need in her belly that had nowhere to go.

"Nine," she said when he finished. Her voice was hoarse now. The counting had worn a groove in her throat.

"Nine," Cassiday repeated from his crate. He'd opened the notebook again. The pencil scratched. "Keep going."

The one with the grafted skin was ten. He took his time about it — he wanted to make her ask, the way he had the first time, and he stood behind her with the head of his cock resting against her asshole and waited, and Jay said "please" before he'd asked for anything, because the waiting was worse than the asking, and he laughed and pushed in and fucked her slow and deep and stopped every dozen strokes to make her say it again. She said it. She said it four times, and each time the words came out of her easier than the last, and by the fourth time she could hear how she sounded, could hear the whore in her own voice, and the hearing of it did not stop her from saying it a fifth time when he stopped again.

"Ten," she said, when he pulled out.

Eleven was the young one again. He'd been waiting with his cock in his hand and he didn't bother with the crate — he took her by the hips and pulled her down onto the deck and turned her over onto her back and got between her legs and pushed in while she was still looking up at the cargo bay ceiling, and the change of angle put the head of his cock right against the spot the primer had lit, and Jay's back arched off the plating and her mouth opened and a sound came out that wasn't a number or a word.

"Say it," he said.

"Eleven—"

"Say it again."

"Eleven."

He fucked her hard and fast on the cold deck with her legs wrapped around his waist and her tits bouncing with every stroke and her cock trapped between their bellies, and the friction of his stomach on her shaft was the first thing all morning that had touched her there, and her body took it and ran with it, and she came — a real one, a hot pulse that shot up between them and streaked his chest and her own belly — and the young one felt her clench and laughed and kept going, and Jay lay under him with her eyes open and her mouth open and her cum cooling on her skin and the count in her head like a rosary.

When he finished and rolled off her, she got her elbows under her and looked past him at Cassiday.

"Eleven," she said again. "One left."

Cassiday looked up from the notebook. He'd been writing the whole time. The page was full. "One left," he agreed. He turned the page and drew a line under the last entry and closed the notebook over the pencil and set it on the crate beside him, and he stood, and he crossed the bay to where Jay lay on the deck with her legs still open and the young one's load running out of her and her own cum drying on her belly. He stopped at her feet and looked down at her, and the watery blue eyes behind the cracked spectacles were bright and calm and entirely satisfied.

"Twelve, then," he said. "The last one's me."

Jay's throat closed. She'd known. She'd known since he'd stood up. But knowing it and hearing him say it were different things, and the difference was the thing that sat in her chest now, the thing the primer turned into heat, the thing that made her hips shift on the deck before she could stop them.

"You said—" She stopped. Started again. "You said you'd break my arse again. After the count."

"I did." Cassiday dropped his trousers and stepped out of them, and the equine cock hung out of the gray hair of his groin, half-hard and heavy, still slick from her mouth, the head dark and flared. "But the count's not finished, pet. You said twelve. You don't get to stop at eleven."

He knelt between her legs. He put a liver-spotted hand flat on her belly, over the drying streaks of her own cum, and pressed down, and Jay felt the pressure of it inside her — the loads, the fullness, all of it shifted under his palm — and her breath went out of her in a rush.

"Twelve," she said. The number came out of her like something being pulled with pliers. "Twelve."

Cassiday smiled. He took his cock in his hand and laid the head of it against her asshole, and the weight of it was already more than any of the others, and Jay looked up past the hanging work lights and the lashed-down crates and the ring of men standing quiet around the yellow square, and she turned her head on the deck and found Cassiday's face above her, and she said the only thing left in her mouth.

"Twelve. Please."

"Please what, pet?"

"Please fuck me. Please make me your brood mare. Twelve. Please."

He pushed in.

He pushed in and Jay went up.

It wasn't a choice. It was the same thing her body had done on the Vixen, the same thing it had done in the frame last night when the pain got too big to hold inside one skin — a kind of stepping back, a letting-go of the handles, so that the girl on the deck and the girl watching from above were two different people who happened to share a face. The ceiling of the cargo bay was close and ribbed with conduit and strung with the cables that held the work lights, and she floated up into the warm dark between the lamps and looked down, and there she was: her own body, spread on the cold plating, pale and small and bent open around the old man's cock.

She looked like something from a med-bay chart. That was the first thing the watcher noticed. The narrow waist, the small breasts fallen flat to either side of her ribs, the soft jaw turned up, the mouth open around a sound. The fine new hair on her skull was dark with sweat. There was cum drying on her belly in streaks, and cum on her cheek, and one thigh was slick from hip to knee, and her cock — the one part of her that hadn't been changed, the one part of her that still belonged to Jamie Miller — lay against her belly, hard and wet and utterly useless, twitching with each thrust like a separate animal that had forgotten it was attached to her.

Cassiday's hands were on her hips. The liver spots stood out against the pale skin there, and the fingers were spread, and the old man's back was arched over her with the whole of his weight coming down through his hips. He was talking. The watcher could hear the words from up here, small and clear, the way sounds carry over water.

"There it is," Cassiday said. "There's the fit. Every one of you watch this — this is the arse that's going to make the broker open his purse. Feel that? That's the bone work. That's two hundred years of genetic engineering and a good sharp needle, and it's all for you."

The watcher drifted a little to the left and looked at the men. She had never seen them from up here before. From the ceiling they were a ring of shapes inside a yellow square, and she could see the tops of their heads, the bald spots, the bone horn rising out of the young one's skull like a stub of chalk, the warts clustered on the fat man's throat, the weeping blisters that ran up his forearms in long wet lines, the too-many fingers of the thin one where they hung at his side, the grafted skin on the third man's chest in three different colors like a quilt somebody had stitched in a hurry. They all had their cocks out. Every one of them was stroking himself, slow or fast, and the light from the ceiling lamps caught the wet on all of them at once, and the watcher thought, without heat, without anything: twelve of them, and they've all been inside her, and the one inside her now is the twelfth.

She tried to remember the numbers. One through eleven were somewhere down there in the body on the deck, and the body was saying them, had said them, had said twelve, please in a voice the watcher recognized as her own and could not feel. The notebook was on the crate. The page was full and Cassiday's pencil had stopped moving and the notebook sat closed with the pencil laid across the top like a knife across a plate.

Down on the deck the body took a thrust and arched, and a sound came out of it — a wet, cracked sound, half a word — and the watcher watched the sound come out and thought about how strange it was that a person could make a noise like that and not be in the room for it. She had done this on the Vixen. She remembered doing it. It was the trick that had kept her alive through the showcase and the Dracons and the cheerleader set and the gang-bang in suite four, and she had never been able to do it on purpose. It just happened when the body went past a certain line, and the line had a shape, and this morning the shape was an eighty-year-old man with a horse's cock and a notebook and a buyer coming at dusk.

She looked at her own face. It was turned up toward the ceiling, toward her, and the eyes were half closed and the mouth was open and there was spit at the corner of it. The watcher looked at her own face for a long time and tried to feel sorry for it and found that she couldn't. Sorry was a thing that happened in the chest, and the chest was down there, and she was up here.

The body on the deck took another thrust and made another sound and the young one laughed and said something the watcher didn't catch, and the fat one said something back, and the men shifted their weight and their cocks moved in their fists and the watcher understood, from up here, that none of them had come to see Jay. They'd come to see a product. Cassiday had told them so — worth more than all of you combined — and the men had believed him, and the thing on the deck that used to be Jamie Miller was the product, and the product was doing well. That was what the notebook was for. The notebook was the ledger, and the ledger said the product was taking its twelfth cock with its mouth open and its legs spread and its hips pushing back, and the broker would pay for that.

Cassiday drove in deep and held, and the body under him made a sound like a door opening slowly, and the watcher drifted closer to the ceiling and looked at the cables. The cables were steel and braided and they ran from the lamp housings to eyebolts in the deck, and each lamp hung at the end of its own cable with a small sway to it, and the sway was the only thing in the whole bay that moved the way she wanted to move — slow, and out of anyone's reach, and with nothing to do with the men below.

"She's gone quiet," the young one said. He had his cock in his fist and he was watching the body's face. "Doc, she's gone quiet. That normal?"

"It's normal," Cassiday said. He was breathing hard now, the words coming out in pieces between thrusts. "She's done this before. The bulletin said she was a runaway from a brothel. A whore who's been used as much as she has learns to go somewhere. Look at her eyes — see that? She's not here. She's up on the ceiling somewhere, watching us fuck her." He laughed, a thin wheeze. "Let her. She'll come back down when I'm done with her, and the broker will get the whole package — the body and the mind and the little trick she does to keep from losing it. That's worth money, gentlemen. A whore who can take twelve cocks and still be able to look the buyer in the eye afterward."

The watcher heard this and thought, distantly, that the old man was right, and that being right about it was the worst thing anyone had said all morning. He knew where she went. He'd put her there. The primer had opened the door and the pain had walked her through it, and now the old man could stand in the doorway and point at her like a thing on a shelf. Look at her. She's up there. That's the trick. She wanted to hate him for it. Hate was a thing that happened in the chest, and the chest was down there, and she was up here, and so she watched him instead, with the mild curiosity of a person reading a label.

The body on the deck came. The watcher saw it happen from above — saw the hips jerk, saw the cock jump against the belly, saw the thin rope of it spatter up onto the body's own chest and lie there in a streak across the drying cum. The young one saw it too and shouted something and the men laughed, and Cassiday didn't stop, he just kept going, driving into the body while it shuddered and clenched around him, and the watcher watched her own face twist and her own mouth open and her own throat work, and thought: that's twelve. That's the last one. That's the count done.

Cassiday's hips slowed. He was old, and he was close, and the watcher could see the way his back had gone rigid and his hands had tightened on the body's hips and his balls had drawn up tight against the body's slick ass. He was saying something, low and fast, and the watcher drifted down a little to hear it, and the words were: "That's it, pet, that's it, take it, take all of it, that's the last one, that's twelve, that's the whole crew in you, that's the whole ship—"

And then the primer pulled.

It came up through the body like a hand through water, and the watcher felt it from above — a bright, hot line that started somewhere deep in the body's belly and ran up the spine and out to every inch of skin the cold air was touching, and the line was a hook, and the hook had her name on it, and it dragged. She fought it. She fought it the way she had fought it every time on the Vixen, with the part of her that still wanted to be a person, and the fight lasted as long as a breath and then it was over, and she came down through the ceiling and through the lamps and through the top of her own skull and slammed back into her body in the middle of the thrust.

It hurt. That was the first thing. It hurt everywhere at once — her shoulders, her wrists, the small of her back, the place where the crate edge had pressed, the raw inside of her where eleven men had been and a twelfth still was. And under the hurt, the primer had already turned the hurt into heat, and the heat was enormous, and the body was full of it, and she was the body again, and the body was screaming.

She heard the scream as her own. It came out of her throat and bounced off the crates and came back, and Cassiday was laughing above her, and the men were laughing, and the young one was saying there she is, there's the whore, she came back, and Jay's hands scrabbled on the deck and found nothing to hold and her hips pushed down to meet the old man's thrust without asking her first.

"There you are," Cassiday said. His face was close above hers, and the cracked spectacle lens caught the lamp light and threw it back at her in a small white bar. "Welcome back, pet. Did you have a nice trip?"

She couldn't answer. The cock inside her was too big and too deep and the primer had turned the whole of her into one long nerve, and every inch of the old man's withdrawal dragged a fresh line of heat through her guts, and every inch of his return filled her until she couldn't breathe. Her tits were flat against the deck and her nipples ground into the cold plating with every thrust and the friction was a bright wire that ran straight down to her cock, which was hard again, which had come and was already hard again, which was leaking onto the deck under her in a thin steady string.

"Doc—" she got out.

"Say it, pet."

"Twelve—"

"Say the rest."

She turned her face against the deck and looked out across the yellow square at the men — at the fat one's open trousers, at the young one's fist, at the old man with the wrench leaning on his pipe wrench with his eyes half shut, at the bone horn and the warts and the blisters and the grafted skin — and she said it the way Cassiday had told her to say it, loud, so the whole bay could hear.

"Twelve. That's twelve. Fill me up like that fucking cunt arsed whore I am."

"Good girl." Cassiday's hips stuttered and his breath went out of him in a long groan and he drove in to the root and held, and Jay felt the cock in her ass swell and pulse and then the hot flood of it, load after load, more than any of the others had come, more than all of them put together, and her body took it and her belly filled with it and it ran out around the shaft and down over her balls and dripped off the end of her onto the deck in a long rope that pooled between her knees. Cassiday held himself there, grinding, and his balls emptied into her until she could feel the pressure of it inside her, a fullness that had nowhere to go, and the fullness was the thing the primer had been building toward all morning, and Jay came again — a dry, wrenching spasm that pulled a sob out of her and made her hips buck against the deck, and there was nothing left in her to come with, so the orgasm was just the clench, just the long shudder, just the body doing what it had been trained to do with no seed left to spend.

Then Cassiday pulled back.

He pulled back slow, and the drag of it turned Jay's insides out, and he pulled back further than any of them had, further than she thought a man could pull and still be inside her, until only the very head of his horse dick sat in the ring of her ass like a plug in a drain. The emptiness opened up under her like a dropped hold, vast and cold, and the loads he'd put in her began to run out around the head of him in a slow hot trickle down the inside of her thigh, and the primer turned even that into sensation, every drop of it, every inch of the leaving. Jay's hands found the deck and her forehead pressed into the plating and her mouth hung open and her breath came in ragged pulls and her whole body shook with the aftershock of a climax that had nothing left to give.

“Look at you. What a filthy, disgusting, sissy whore you are.” Cassiday breathed into her ear. Almost instantly pre cum beaded at the tip of Jay’s cock at the words. Spent and exhausted still the degradation made him wet. “Nothing but a cum rag used, barely human, by the entire crew for their entertainment.” Hearing the words Jay felt like filth, ashamed and humiliated, but at the same time horny as he became aware of blood once more rushing to engorge his penis. As the rest of the crew jeered and laughed at his humiliation.

The old man rotated his hips gently causing the head of his now flaccid horse cock to twist and squirm inside Jay’s anus and like the worthless cockslut he was Jay couldn’t prevent the groan of desire escaping from deep within him. Just as he was sure that the old man was once again going to use the sissy whores body he had created Jay suddenly felt him rip the huge glans of his obscene dick from Jay’s arse. Instantly Jay felt the rush of cold air enter him through his stretched and gaping asscunt, just as the warm sperm filling his guts rushed out like and obscene enema to form a puddle of filth on the deck beneath him.

“Of course that is not completely accurate.” Cassiday noted in a cold but amused tone. “There is one member of the crew that has yet to enjoy your body.” A cold shiver raced down Jay’s spine as he realised his debasement was not yet complete. As if on cue the cargo bay door swished open and the Captain strode into the caverous cargo hold his boots making a thud with each step like a drum beat of doom. With each beat Jay felt his heart hammer hearder in his chest.