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‘If you notice a squadmate sympathizing with an enemy, report them to your Democracy Officer. Thoughtcrimes kill!’
-
TARSH
MARASPIRA SECTOR
Michael gazes up in sheer horror as he watches the extraction shuttle ascend and fly off, leaving him to stand at the center of the extraction zone.
They’d left him.
They really left him behind on this damned planet.
He didn’t know how to feel in that moment - the mix of emotions were brutal, too strong to even try and contain. But before they became too much, he could pick out one clear feeling that was more overwhelming than the rest of them.
Betrayal.
He was running as fast as he could - cutting through various vegation and ducking the bullets that were flying overhead from behind him. The bots were on his ass and they weren’t planning on letting him get away. Eventually, a Hulk would shoot a devastating rocket that knocked him down, breaking his leg and forcing him to crawl in order to shoot a stim.
But even with the feel good shot of Liberty in his veins, he’d lost too much time. He wasn’t going to make it - he knew that but…
As he stands there now, all he could think of was if they just waited just a minute longer that he would’ve been able to get in…
Suddenly, he hears them.
The sound of the Automatons closing in on him.
Their heavy mechanical footsteps mixed in with their socialist chanting were hard to ignore and it made Michael quickly turn his head towards the direction of where they were coming from. He could already see their red eyes cutting through the thick forestry. He looks down at his stratagem pad - oh, wait…
He couldn’t call in anything.
And all he had on him was a Quasar Cannon and his Guard Dog Rover who was empty and low on ammo, just like he was. Hell, he only had one stim left and no grenades either, meaning that he was more screwed than ever before.
His heart was suddenly racing in his chest - fear was starting to sink into his limbs and mind. The warming touch of Democracy was no longer his comfort - it was just himself, alone and down to only one clip left in the chamber of his Scorcher.
Michael takes a deep breath, amber-color eyes now seeing the noxious red that was now becoming closer.
HEART STEEL! WE KILL! IRON WILL! UNTO WAR! GET UP! CYBERSTAN! CAN’T KEEP HER DOWN! WE COUNT DOWN! FIGHT TO DAWN!
Michael slowly lifts up his Scorcher, inserting the last clip into the mag before aiming it towards the direction of the chanting.
HEART STEEL! WE KILL! IRON WILL! UNTO WAR! GET UP! CYBERSTAN! CAN’T KEEP HER DOWN! WE COUNT DOWN! FIGHT TO DAWN!
And when Michael saw the red of their mechanical eyes and the white of their metalheads, he didn’t hesitate.
He fired and fired, killing as many of the foot soldiers as he could but one of them had managed to call in a bot drop before being shot down. He presses his trigger finger down on the trigger but there’s a click - a sound that he dreaded to hear.
Empty.
No more mags or clips left.
“Shit, shit, shit..."He curses under his breath as he eventually turns and frantically scans around the platform but all he sees is nothing but dead bots and dead SEAF members but no ammo boxes left. And that’s when that dreadful feeling that he’d been conditioned to suppress finally sunk in.
Hopelessness.
Soon, the bot drop comes in and before Michael can shoot the ship down, he ends up taking a bullet to the left leg from a Trooper, rendering him injured and partially immobile. And that’s when he uses his last stim. He’s now scrambling to crawl away and onto his feet but the bots, they are all around him now, their dark metal frames surrounding him until eventually, Michael lets out a scream that would echo throughout the swampy landscape of Tarsh - a final scream that would be filled with agony, pain and most of all…
Betrayal, by the hands of Democracy…
-
Michael wouldn't be dying on that extraction platform.
The Automatons or someone else had other plans for him…
-
When Michael woke up, he immediately thought that he was dead. That he was waking up in life after Liberty had finally decided to let the soul go to the grave. But it wouldn’t take long for everything to come into focus.
He was in fact still, very much alive and breathing. But where exactly, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was alive and in some place that was very dark, very loud and smelled like oil and socialist values, a vile stench for certain.
Although, now that he was awake, maybe he could try and…
Wait…
Michael tries to move his arms and legs but much to his dismay, they were chained up to something that was keeping him in a position that he’d wouldn’t have noticed he was in if not for the fact that he was fucking face-down, ass-up while his arms were chained up behind his back and his legs were pushed together and chained to whatever he was propped up on in such an obscene position.
Although, that wouldn’t be the only thing he would notice.
After looking around himself to the best of his ability, he would begin to notice that he was in fact, completely naked and without his armor, with the exception of his helmet which was no longer showing any functioning visuals - leaving only the vision-only HUD available.
“W-What in Liberty’s name…”
But as he says this, suddenly he feels his arms being yanked back - causing him to cry out in shock but also in pain because now he was starting to feel a rather painful pinch within his tired, worn-out arms that was just radiating agony throughout his upper half.
Though unfortunately, relief wasn’t going to be coming anytime soon because now, he was beginning to hear whirring sounds and the sounds of mechanical chatter taking place around him. Panickingly, he tries to look around and scan the area but everything is just so dark and he could barely make out much through the minimal range of his helmet’s visual HUD that he might as well be considered blind.
However, despite having limited sight, he still had the ability to feel and hear. And he could feel something shifting and moving behind him. Like something mechanical.
It would finally hit him here, in this moment, the horrifying truth of his situation.
He’d been captured by the Automatons and now they were about to torture him. He knows that they are because he’d seen the bodies, hell, ever Helldiver has seen the shit that the Automatons do to people. Dessicated corpses and dismembered bodies of Super Earth citizens and SEAF members were stuck in Michael’s mind, haunting him as he trudged through each mission he did within the Automaton sector.
It’s not something you can easily forget about.
And now, he was about to become one of those unfortunate souls.
“Democracy…”He begins to say but then, he feels something - something that suddenly commands his entire attention and being. The feeling of something hard and phallus-like pressing up against his exposed asshole - shocking him into an unknown reality that he really wished he wasn’t in.
The phallus was slick, almost as if it had been oiled up with something - a thought that had sent a wave of nausea throughout Michael’s body. Hell, this whole situation was starting to make him feel ill.
First, it was him being left behind on this godforsaken planet and now he was about to be violated and tortured in strange and cruel ways by the bots. He was feeling both betrayed and sick from both things. But he had to try and refocus his mind, ignore the pain and ache that was starting to take hold of his limbs in order to try and get out of this situation.
But then another splash of reality hits him in the face like cold water.
He didn’t know what the fuck he was chained up to and so far, his arms were starting to feel as if they were going numb. What would happen if he tried to struggle? His entire body could get quartered or maybe his arms would get ripped clean off if he tried to yank or pull on the chains that bound them together. Then he would be an armless piece of meat who would be another corpse for the Automaton warmachine to display at their bases as a warning to other Helldivers.
After weighing his options, all Michael could do was just clench his teeth and jaw and pray that Liberty would have mercy on his soul. But as he does, that phallus from before was starting to push up against his rim - his eyes going wide as he tries to wiggle away from its violating touch but the more he moved, the more he began to feel the chains that were holding him in place tighten, as if responding to his attempts to resist.
Michael swallows nervously, now quickly ceasing his attempts to resist as he could feel the chains on his arms pull even more, raising the risk of them either being ripped off or his shoulders becoming dislocated even higher. With a defeated sigh, he just tries to clench and tighten his asscheeks to make some sort of resistance but it would be for naught.
The phallus would eventually push past the tight ring of muscle and into Michael’s ass, the Helldiver’s pupils now becoming little dots as he feels the intruder push further and further inside of his rectum - forcing his inner walls to quickly accommodate to the sudden stretch. Though, the pain would quickly and rather swiftly take hold of him.
“S-SWEET LIBERTY!!!” Michael screams, his ass now feeling as if a hot poker had just been stuck inside of it - burning and searing its way through his inner walls with a violating motion that had Michael clenching his fists to the point where he was leaving painful indents in the palms of his hands. It felt as if he was being torn into, his insides barely adjusting to the thick size of the phallus that was pushing its way further and further inside of him, as if it was searching for something…
All of a sudden, Michael would feel it brush up against something inside of him that made him jolt forward, a strange sensation now starting to take root within his mind.
“W-What…is..”He mumbles, his eyes shaking along with his body as he feels the phallus suddenly stop only to pull back some just to hit that area again. Michael’s eyes flutter shut and he sucks in a breath, “S–Shit, s-stop t-thaat…”
It doesn’t stop.
Instead, it would pull out some more just to slam right back into that little spot again.
And again.
And again..
And again…
Until it had set a steady, thrusting pace that left Michael a whining, drooling mess as he threw his head back and cursed, “Fuuuck, n-...no, I-I won’t…”
Then suddenly, the returning of whirring and mechanical chatter returns and now, the phallus is picking up its place, now fucking Michael’s ass at a faster, more brutal pace - stretching him out even further than before and consistently hitting his prostate over again.
As for Michael, his mind felt as if it was starting to melt. He was trying his hardest to resist, to resist that temptation to give in to the pleasure that was starting to take hold of his body. His thighs and legs were shaking and his untouched cock was hard and drooling with pre-come. He bites his bottom lip, closing his eyes and trying to envision any and everything to sway his mind away from it.
Democracy, cold showers, citations, managed Democracy -
‘They left you here.’
Michael’s eyes suddenly open.
What?
‘You are just a pawn to Super Earth’s heartless regime, conditioned to give up your life and entire being to their cause.’
Michael weakly looks around, trying to figure out who was saying these things. They were all baseless claims, lies to get him to become a dissident, to bend to the socialist machinations of the Automatons!
“L-Lies! I-I, aah, would g-give mmph, my life f-for L-Liberty, oh fuucck…”
‘You would give your life to a regime that abandoned you? Left you to become fertilizer for the ground of this planet? If your Super Earth cared, they wouldn’t have left you here, now would they?’
Michael was barely able to string together a rebuttal to that statement. The machine that was still fucking his ass had started to suddenly vibrate, now adding onto the sensations that Michael was already overwhelmed by. Drool was escaping down the corners of Michael’s mouth now, his vision now hazy with the fog of pleasure.
There was no more resistance in it.
‘You are nothing to them.’
Michael is panting, moaning helplessly. The endorphins that flooded his mind were too much. He was so close to that blissful edge, that wonderful ending that was building up within his balls. He’d been leaking so much precome that a small white puddle had formed underneath him.
Maybe the voice was right…
‘Kneel no more to Democracy. Give in to… bliss.”
“F-Fuck, I-I’m so close,”Michael whimpers, his body starting to tremble. He’d lost all feeling in his arms and legs, now feeling nothing but the salacious sin that was carnal pleasure and cloud 9. The machine is slamming into his prostate harder and faster now, as if it knows. Maybe it was because of how much Michael was clenching down around it - his inner walls practically sucking it in now.
‘Become unshackled from the chains of Democracy.’
“F-Fuck, I-I…g-gonna…”
‘Submit to dissidence.’
“...c..cum…D-Democracy…save me…”
And the machine phallus slams into Michael one last time, pressing hard against his prostate as Michael jolted forward, shaking violently as he screams. He cums hard, so hard in fact that his vision becomes nothing but violent stars of searing white and red as he releases everything he had stored within his balls out onto the surface that he’d been chained to.
He would keep cumming until eventually, he would finally finish, his orgasm practically having ripped through him like a Hunter’s claws. He shudders, his head lowered and now hanging over the table which in turn, allowed for his helmet to come off, landing onto the ground with a loud, shattering clunking sound.
In his final moments of consciousness, he hears metal footsteps coming closer and closer to him until eventually, he slowly and rather weakly turns his head to find the source of the footsteps and much to his blurred, bleak horror, it wasn’t an Automaton that he was staring up at.
It was a man, or at least, it looked like one but he was also half…robot? Was he…a cyborg? Michael couldn’t tell, at least not right now. But in those last few seconds before he did pass out, he saw something that made his tired, hazy eyes widen.
The half man, half robot was wearing part of a Helldivers’ armor set, and it most definitely was not Michael’s either. And around the abomination’s neck was a skull necklace.
But then suddenly, Michael’s vision faded to mere darkness, his body becoming weak as he went limp within the chains, now passed out cold.
The figure standing before him looks down at Michael before lifting up a metal hand and waving it towards the machine that was still inside of him. It would pull out of Michael and recede back into the darkness. Then the metal hand would point to a Berserker who’d been standing in the corner. The Automaton Brute makes its way over before standing beside the mysterious cybernetic figure.
The Berserker looks down at the cybernetic figure before speaking in Kollektivet. “What will we do with the Diver Scum?”
The figure tilts their head at the unconscious Michael before responding in Kollektivet, “I can make him one like me. One of us.”
“One of us?”
The cybernetic figures looked down at their robotic arm - it had the stratagem pad built into it, practically useless now but they’d managed to make a couple of modifications to it for other uses that weren’t…democratic.
“One of us.”
-
The second time Michael woke up, he could barely hold his eyes open - he was so groggy that it almost felt as if he had been put under something and was just coming out of a drug induced coma.
Eventually, he manages to fight off the heavy, groggy feeling long enough for his eyes to finally begin opening up a bit wider, allowing him to finally get a look around him because now, without the helmet, he could finally get a better look at his surroundings.
And much to his dismay, he was still in what appeared to be a dark, underground room, red lights lining the walls around them along with large bright canisters that just seemed to beam with the sickening red glow of the Automaton’s color.
Although, unlike before, Michael was laying flat on his back but this time, his arms and legs were spread apart but still shackled down to whatever the surface he was laying down on was. However, this would again immediately kill the idea of trying to get free once more, leaving him unable to do much besides lay there and hope that whatever more the bots had planned for him, that they would get it over with so that he would no longer have to suffer.
As Michael lay on the cold metal surface, he could hear things around him whirring and clicking, as if they were alive. But from the stories he heard, Automatons didn’t have hearts. They were all just machines with socialist values that needed to be crushed under the boot of Managed Democracy!
Michael’s face softens as he stares up at the sickly red colored ceiling that hangs overhead.
Managed Democracy…
The word itself suddenly seemed…foreign on his tongue.
Was leaving behind a fellow Helldiver truly a part of Managed Democracy?
Suddenly, Michael would feel his arms and legs suddenly being pulled out further than they already were from his body, the restraints that were around them suddenly becoming tighter and tighter until they began to hurt.
“W-What?!”Michael shouts out in panic, looking around frantically for whatever was making the restraints become so tight. And much to his horror, as he did whip his head around, he caught glimpses of various cruel and unusual devices that looked like they were for torture.
Some look rusted but upon further inspection…it was all just dried blood.
Michael’s chest starts to quickly fall and rise with each shaky breath he takes - fear having quickly taken hold over him again. He couldn’t help it - there was nothing he could do in order to save himself nor was there any help coming to get him out of here.
He’d been abandoned, left behind to be at the mercy of the Automatons and a voice that was further fueling his feelings of betrayal.
‘You are just a pawn to Super Earth’s heartless regime, conditioned to give up your life and entire being to their cause.’
That sentence…
Michael's mind then suddenly takes him back to the time where he was in the recruitment office of the Helldivers, freshly turned eighteen. He, along with many wide-eyed fresh cadets, were just excitedly talking about how they’d been waiting for this moment ever since they became of age.
Michael can remember the moment he passed the training course and got his cape.
He was so excited…
So eager to serve Super Earth as their defender of Justice, Liberty, Freedom and Democracy.
Hell, his family -
Shit.
His family.
Will they know what happened to him? Will they tell them? Or will they tell them a lie?
Hell…will they even care enough to notify them of his absence?
Hot tears begin to well up in the brims of Michael’s eyelids. His mother was so proud of him when he decided to sign up for the Helldivers, saying that he would make their family so proud…
Proud of what? Proud of dying for an agenda that would leave him to rot?
Suddenly, the sounds of something whirring to life is what brings him out of his bubble of thoughts, causing him to whip his head around to pinpoint the source. And much to his horror, the source was coming from four large saw blades that were on on both sides, two on the right and two on the left and they were starting to come close to him.
“N-NO! P-PLEASE!”
‘Super Earth would rather you suffer like this then come back for you.’
That voice again…
“W-Who are you?!”Michael blurts out, desperation and fear ringing loud and clear throughout his shaky voice. The whirring, spinning saw blades align themselves with Michael’s limbs, hovering over a certain area above them before holding still, still spinning - albeit at a reduced speed. But even with them slowed down, anxiety was now at an all-time high within Michael.
Then, footsteps begin to overwhelm the sounds of the sawblades, causing Michael to lift his head up to catch a glimpse of the source of said footsteps. And much to his horror, it was that figure from before. The one who looked like the cyborgs from the first Galactic War but they looked severely botched, as if they’d taken parts of an Helldivers’ armor to create artificial limbs for themselves.
They stop in front of the table, eyes gazing down at Michael’s naked, shaking body.
“I am what you will be.”The figure simply says, their voice sounding both distorted but yet strangely human all the same - a terrifying combination that made Michael’s amber eyes widen.
“Wh…what…”
“You weren’t the first to be abandoned here by the horrific regime of Super Earth,” continues the figure, holding up their completely mechanical arm, as if both inspecting it and showing it off to Michael who was looking at them in sheer horror.
“Nor will you be the last.”
Then the figure walks around the table, their mechanical steps sounding much louder than before as they stand to the right of Michael, glowing red eyes staring down hauntingly at him.
“After being deemed a traitor for showing signs of 'dissident behavior’, they had taken me here and left me behind for the Automatons to rip me apart. They tortured me out of hatred but they saw reason when they realized that I understood their plight, saw their pain. And in turn, they helped me open my eyes even further to the horrors that Super Earth has inflicted. Super Earth saw me as a big enough threat to leave me here on this planet. They don't ‘cure’ dissidents. They leave them on planets full of their enemies and let them have them. They do not care enough to retrieve those left behind either. Instead, they will say that you were killed in action and let another simply fill your seat and be fed to the slaughter machine of Managed Democracy.”The figure explains, reaching over to grab a syringe that was filled with a strange, glowing blue fluid that looked awfully familiar to Michael.
"You are and will be just another lost statistic to them.”
Then they look at the syringe in their still human hand before gently clinking a metal finger against the glass, pushing lightly on the plunger in order to make some of the fluid squirt out.
Then their eyes fall back onto Michael.
“But fear not…because now, you will be a part of something that sees you not as a statistic. No, on this day, you will be reborn."
They then place the syringe down on a nearby table before grabbing what looked like a thick piece of leather. They hold it over Michael’s mouth, “Open and bite down. Hard.”
Michael, reluctant at first, knew he had no choice but to obey so opens his mouth and lets them put the leather strip in his mouth, his teeth immediately digging into it as he bites down.
The figure then looks over at the saw blades before stepping back and with a wave of their mechanical hand, they are active again.
Michael quickly turns his gaze to the figure who is looking at him with an unwavering look of stoicism.
And the last words that Michael would hear from them were…
“The pain you will feel here will be temporary, but once it's all over, the pain you will inflict upon Managed Democracy will be forever. Now, hold still. This is going to hurt.”
Then the sawblades came down on him.
-
Michael’s pupils shrunk to mere dots.
His mind at first failed to register the pain up until he could feel the sharpened razors slicing through his skin and past all the tendons and fat then...into his bones.
Then he began to see red. Then white. Then, more red. Finally…he saw nothing but faded stars and hot, searing white.
The leatherstrip in his mouth couldn’t even stifle the screams that he would let out. The screams were nothing but pure blood-curdling, haunting echoes that seemed to bounce off the walls of the torture surgery room. And soon, the screams became intertwined with the whirring of the saw blades doing their violent work like that of a Berserker, making for a terrifyingly violent sound.
Blood was pooling down from the table like a waterfall onto the floor, so much so that it would honestly be a miracle if he survived the violent dismembering.
But Ellix, the figure who watched on without a flicker of emotion on his face, knew that he would survive.
He should know.
He survived it.
Eventually, the leatherstrip that Michael was told to bite down on ends up falling out of his mouth, allowing for him to scream freely.
And scream he did.
He screamed until his voice went hoarse and it hurt his vocal cords to scream. The pain was extreme beyond all comprehension. At some point, he thought he was hallucinating everything, that this wasn’t really happening.
It was all just a nightmare.
But then he would feel the saw blades cutting through his flesh that would drag him back into the brutal reality that he was experiencing.
He could hear his bones breaking and snapping as the saw blades cut into them, his flesh being sliced into, the sound of his flesh being sliced into like he was a piece of meat on a butcher's table…
It was…horrific to say the least but even more so excruciating because he was somehow conscious throughout the entire experience.
He had a front row seat to his body's dismemberment.
He felt so sick that he felt like puking but he couldn't even have the strength to do that, not with how much blood he just lost…
Ellix tilts his head to the side, watching as Michael’s legs become the first set of limbs to be separated from his body. And from his knees and arms, blood would continue to pour and ooze from the exposed bloody flesh and bone.
Soon the arms followed suit, now leaving Michael with four bloody stumps that were still leaking and pooling out blood around him.
He looked like a deconstructed doll.
The only sound Michael can make now are faint, gurgled whimpers as he stares up at the ceiling. Once the sawblades return to their original location, Ellix walks up to the table and reaches for the bloody syringe. He then leans down and injects Michael’s neck with the blue fluid.
He would watch as Michael convulses and tries to wiggle his limbless nubs but it’s useless.
It was almost humorous in a way, a fucked up freakshow kind of way. But Ellix wasn’t laughing. He was still as stoic as a brick as he watched Michael begin to slowly relax, his limbless body no longer wiggling about.
He slowly pulls the empty syringe out of Michael’s neck and looks down at the modified stratagem pad on his arm and begins to type in something and out of the corner came what appeared to be a flamethrower? Or something crudely medically akin to a cauterizer.
And once it got closer, it would begin putting heat to the amputated nubs, effectively cauterizing and destroying severed blood vessels and the like. It would take a full three to four hours before finally, the bleeding would stop and the freshly amputated limbs would be sealed and wrapped in high medical grade gauze, possibly taken from the colonists who were once stationed on this planet a time ago before the Automatons came along.
Once that was done, Ellix would begin to clean up Michael’s body, the latter helplessly watching. Eventually, his legs and arms would be disposed of, where they would be disposed of was unknown. Maybe they would be used for decorations around Automatons bases as a warning.
Or used for some twisted experimentation.
Either way, Michael was unable to protest what would be done with his dismembered limbs.
All he felt in that moment was just, feeelgoooooddddd…
Ellix lifts his head up and looks at Michael before saying, “Don’t worry about your arms and legs. You’ll have new ones soon. Oh and one more thing…you may call me, Ellix.”
“Ooooohkaaay…Eeeelllixxxx….” Michael slurs, amber-brown eyes continuing to stare at the ceiling, his mind in the clouds at this point.
Ellix doesn’t say anything.
That answer was more than enough for him.
Because shortly thereafter, Michael would go silent and unconscious once more.
Though, the next time he woke up, he would be put on the path to becoming a changed man...
A dissident.
5 MONTHS LATER…
“Give them a flex. How do the new augments feel?”
Michael tilts his head and looks at his new robotic arms, clenching his fists and opening them again. He then looks down to his new cybernetic legs and stretches them out before looking towards Ellix.
He was no longer naked anymore and was instead wearing a mechanized armor set made from both scrapped Helldiver armor and some metal plating of a Berserker.
“They feel…much better. They aren't pinching anymore…Yeah, much better.”
“Good. Now…I must ask you, now that you have been here for a few months, what do you think of Managed Democracy now?”
Michael lifts his head up, and glances over at Ellix who pushes himself off the wall and walks over towards Michael who looks into the fractured mirror glass that was on the wall in front of them.
He clenches his fist as the sound of the Automatons from out of the patrol post echo through his mind.
If you were to ask him that question months ago, he probably would’ve answered by saying that Managed Democracy was the perfect way of life.
But now, after five months on TARSH with the Automatons, after being left behind by Super Earth…
“Managed Democracy is a farce that needs to be eradicated.”Michael states, turning completely around to face Ellix, revealing his new left eye, bright and glowing noxious red.
Ellix’s lips curl into a proud grin.
Correct answer.
And in that moment, all that could be heard now was the loud, distinct synchronized war chant of the Automatons patrols coming from outside of the heavy Patrol post.
It was once something that the two of them once fought to destroy.
But now, after being abandoned and left to rot on this planet, tortured, violated and changed…
Democracy was not their savior.
Nor was Super Earth.
The Automatons were righteous in their violence against Super Earth.
Democracy be damned.
Long live the socialist regime.
-
HEART STEEL! WE KILL! IRON WILL! UNTO WAR! GET UP! CYBERSTAN! CAN’T KEEP HER DOWN! WE COUNT DOWN! FIGHT TO DAWN!
.
.
.
‘Remember, if you notice a squadmate sympathizing with an enemy, report them to your Democracy Officer. Thoughtcrimes kill!’
.
.
.
END