“A copy?” she asked. “No.”
Carefully, he walked to the foot of her bed. She lifted her weathered hand and took his with a trembling smile. “Mother,” he whispered.
He collapsed onto the side of her bed. “So, you do remember.”
“I… remember.”
Suddenly, it came back to him, the dream he had been having for decades. He was just a boy. His father told him to run to the stables to fetch his mother, the most beautiful woman in the world. When he arrived, he knew something was wrong. A set of armored vehicles sat idle, and a man in weighted, golden boots opened the door.
Still and motionless, he watched as the man extracted his cock. “Watch and learn boy,” he hissed.
More men followed. They held her down and took her, one by one. Her eyes pierced right through Vash, numb and robotic. Broken like a bird. From that ruined womb came him.
Vash always thought his mother had been killed. Growing up, he learned to respect the man who took her, casting aside the brutal memories of the men’s hands grasping her bucking legs. Their laughter tickled his eardrums, invaded his manhood. Their actions taught him that it was better to take than be taken.
“I have always been your mother,” she said.
Vash closed his eyes and bit through the urge to cry. “The man in gold plated armor… he became my father.”
She gave birth to his child, Cassian. That meant that they were still related. And if they were brothers bound by blood, that made Wren his… niece. The room started to spin around him. “Oh, God,” he hissed. “What have you done?”
The cold oxygen vapor formed around her plastic mask. Inhaling a deep breath, she wheezed and widened her eyes. “Their knots were unsuccessful,” she said.
“I watched them all take you,” Vash growled.
“They can’t perform,” she said. “And neither could I. After you, the lord made me barren.”
Vash hammered his fist against the center console, denting in the plastic housing of the computer screen. “How did you give birth to Cassian? TELL ME!”
Impenetrable rage heated his body. His hands clamped against her frail skin, and she forced herse
lf to answer, even as the tears started to slip onto the cup of her oxygen mask.
“They tried,” she said. “He locked me away. Every morning, a new man woke me with detached tapering. He’d sit and watch, thumbing around his grotesque cock. After the knot bruised into me, he would take me. In a way, I think I became an enigma for him to rely on. Your father found Cassian in a village of trash. You are not bound by blood.”
“He is the bastard?”
His mother nodded her head and let out a whimper of weakness. He couldn’t imagine what she had gone through, but that was a lifetime ago. Now, she had been made a bed of roses. Her throne expanded across the back end of the room, and he imagined her staring at the clones during lonely nights. Her trauma frightened him because it meant seeing the darkness inside of his own head.
“Oh, mother. What have they done to you?” Vash asked, tears running down his face.
But slowly, he couldn’t face what she had done. “You gave her those memories. You made Wren believe it happened to her,” Vash whispered.
“I added some minor embellishments,” she said.
“And Cassian—you made him do your bidding.”
“I deserve another chance at fertility,” she rasped. “She is my only hope.”
A trickle of fear ran up his neck. Vash let go of her hand. She was no longer the mother he once knew. Cold and calculated, he saw her for what she really was.
“What happened to you?” Vash whispered. “You used to be so…”
Before Vash could finish his sentence, she lowered the sheets for him to see the wounds. She revealed her lower half. It was a mess of wiring and plastic casing that held her together. The puckered flesh ran up to her navel, scarred with what looked to be from the edges of a surgical saw. Vash jumped in horror.
His mother’s smile twisted, but somehow held. “They used me up, darling,” she said. “Carved me like a pumpkin.”
Swallowing, Vash felt a sudden sense of urgency consume him. Her eyes met his, carrying the same broken look she did when they took her.