Collected

Lin left the cabin and started her morning run through the forest. She liked to begin the day with rigorous physical activity to compensate for the hours she would later spend glued to her desk, studying for her exams.

Her running shoes beat a steady rhythm on the dry forest floor and for a moment she wondered about this observation, given that last night lightning and thunder had briefly disturbed her sleep, but apparently the storm had passed without bringing any rain. While her body automatically followed the familiar trail she let her mind dwell on the lessons she planned to cover today. Neurobiology was not her strong suit, hence she had to apply herself especially hard on the subject, but if she made good progress during the day, in the evening she would treat herself to some self-bondage play with her handcuffs. Although her parent's cabin lacked internet access, its remote location did not leave it entirely without interesting possibilities to entertain herself.

Lost in pleasurable thoughts she only noticed the strange puddle at the last moment and was barely able to stop before stepping into it. In front of her, filling a shallow depression in the track, a strange metallic liquid gleamed in the early morning's light. It looked a lot like a pool of quicksilver, except its silvery bright surface glittered with an otherworldly, iridescent sheen.

"Beautiful," Lin thought to herself and crouched down, moving to touch it, but at the last moment snatched her hand back. What was she thinking? Whatever the substance was, it certainly did not belong on the forest floor in front of her. She wondered if it was indeed quicksilver or some other toxic waste that somebody had dumped here instead of paying for its professional disposal. Alternatively, considering last night's flashes and booming sounds, maybe it was a spill left behind by a crashed plane or satellite? Yet, a quick look around confirmed that no smoldering wreckage was in evidence anywhere nearby. The mighty trees around her appeared as serene and undisturbed as ever.

Picking up a fallen twig, she gingerly probed the puddle's shiny surface. To her surprise, the liquid turned out to be rather viscous, offering stiff resistance to the stick's prodding and indeed, when she pulled her hand back, a layer of the stuff clung to the stick, stretching back to the pool's surface as if unwilling to release its quarry. Lin watched dumbstruck when more of the substance seemed to gather around the twig, strengthening the pull that tried to suck it back.

With a startled cry she let go of her probe and fell backwards onto her bottom. The strange substance had moved of its own volition, like a living being! Instantly, she was reminded of an old action flick featuring a shapeshifting, liquid metal killer robot sent into the past to dispatch some annoying youth who happened to be mankind's future savior. Lin considered it highly unlikely for this role to be her own destiny, yet caution suggested she should better quit playing researcher and and get into reverse gear posthaste.

In panic she scrambled back on her butt, but when her desperately kicking legs grazed the pool's edge, a thick tendril shot from the liquid and wrapped itself around her ankle. Immediately, her other foot was grabbed as well, rooting her in place. She violently attempted to pull up her legs, hoping to break the metal's hold, but only succeeded in sliding her torso closer to the pool. An irresistible force drew her legs together while more and more of the strange material flowed towards her and joined the strands already encircling her legs.

The fact that she had been endowed with a long-legged model's physique that many of her fellow students lusted after granted her only a few milliseconds reprieve while yet more tendrils spiraled around her legs, rapidly approaching her hips. Lin reared up and screamed at the top of her lungs, thrashing wildly to escape the cool metallic strands that had mated her legs into a single column of tightly compressed flesh. She had to break free! Instead, the inexorably advancing appendages reached her belly and quickly thickened into a broad cinch around her waist.

"Ahrg!" Her screams were cut off when the belt abruptly constricted around her middle and took away her breath. Lin felt as if she had been cut in half! Thankfully, the murderous compression relented momentarily, but not before her weakly flailing arms had been captured as well, then became welded to her sides. Immediately, at the front, the liquid metal slithered under her top and up between her breasts as well as in the back along her spine to form a wide collar around her neck. Lin ceased her futile struggles and became perfectly still. If the collar contracted like the belt had, it would surely crush her windpipe and strangle her. To her immense relief, the collar tightened only a little until it exerted a noticeable, but tolerable pressure. Nevertheless, she did not fail to miss the implied threat.

More and more of the metal encircled her body, wrapping her into an inescapable mesh of interlocking strands so that within seconds, the web extended from the soles of her shoes to the crown of her head. At first, its strands had been quite flexible, but as soon as they had ensured her captivity, they hardened and turned the web into a rigid shell: Her arms were pressed to her sides, her legs formed a single column and her skull was ensnared by a framework of metallic straps that left only her face free and kept her head totally immobilized. Although Lin strained against its tight embrace with all her strength, she failed to move her limbs even a single millimeter. The metal was far from done with her, however.

Lin gasped when she felt questing metal appendages slither into her underwear and enter her lower orifices. A rapidly expanding phallus formed in her pussy, filling her to capacity. At the same time, another wormed its way up into her urethra and extended into her bladder. The unwonted pressure was as discomfiting it was uncomfortable. Her anus was not spared the indignity of being violated in the aggravatingly familiar manner as well and once within her bowel, the intruder first swelled to painful dimensions, before relenting and becoming slightly smaller again. She felt like a goose stuffed for an upcoming feast and moaned disconsolately.

Perhaps the metal took issue with her noises, or maybe her mouth was simply the next point on its agenda; either way, Lin felt with trepidation how twin fingers of the stuff crept along her cheeks and insinuated themselves between her tightly compressed lips, then into her mouth. Quickly, as more metal flowed inside, a slightly flexible lump swelled between and behind her teeth, trapping her tongue and spreading her jaws apart, but it did not stop there! Suddenly, an appendage plunged down her throat deeply into her stomach, while yet another branched out into her airways. For endless seconds, Lin could neither breathe nor swallow, and with a sinking feeling she thought that surely the metal had moved in for the kill; but then, the blockage was gone and she gasped, greedily sucking in air in the shallow breaths allowed by her constricted chest.

Still trying to recover from this latest ordeal, she was assaulted by the oddest sensation yet, when a strange tingling began to suffuse her entire body. Unbeknownst to Lin, microscopic filaments of the liquid metal spread through all of her flesh, seemingly intent on attaching themselves to every cell. Actually, it was primarily her nerve cells that were targeted, hence the highest concentration of the fibers found their way into her brain. Although Lin was not aware of the fact that she had been compromised on the deepest level, for sure she noticed the effects: It felt like her frenzied thoughts had developed a faint echo; almost as if they were projected beyond her own head's acoustically dead confines into some wider space.

For the next several minutes nothing further happened. The respite gave Lin the opportunity to calm down a little and impose a modicum of order on her panicked mind. So far, the strange liquid metal had not harmed her, so probably it was not some killer robot sent into the past to terminate her. Instead, it seemed content to have immobilized and silenced her, but for what purpose? She was quite confident that humans were not part of the metal creature's diet, so maybe it was an alien just looking for a native symbiont it somehow depended on for its own survival? If she was very lucky, the alien would turn its host (i. e. herself!) into a dashing heroine with some really cool superpowers ...

With an effort, Lin reigned in her burgeoning fantasy before it could go completely off the rails. She examined her state of mind and noticed with astonishment that her previously predominant fear had been relegated to the background. It seemed as if the alien had flipped a switch to turn off her fight-or-flight reflex. Calming her down was probably a prerequisite before commencing the next phase of its nefarious plan: Lin experienced a bewildering barrage of sensations when the alien began to probe her body and mind and gauge her reaction to various stimuli.

Parts of her became alternately hot and cold; sounds of all frequencies flooded into her ears; bright, colorful flashes where projected into her eyes while a variety of sweet, sour, salty and bitter flavors assaulted her taste buds. At first, all of her senses were flooded indiscriminately, but soon a pattern emerged. Predictably, the liquid metal ceased its full spectrum onslaught and began to concentrate its efforts on the area between her legs.

The intruder buried so deeply in her pussy soon exhibited an amazing range of movement and rapidly employed it with a level of skill easily surpassing any lover she ever had ... and there had been quite a few. Given her model-level good looks she had never found it difficult to attract men or women (whom she actually found more congenial) to her bed; yet she was not ready to settle into a serious relationship until she had achieved her professional ambitions. Besides, she had never felt safe enough to reveal her rather peculiar sexual needs to anyone, which incidentally would have been a prerequisite for a fulfilling, long-term relationship. Hence, she had always preferred to assuage her masochistic fantasies of bondage and slavery with occasional sessions of self-bondage.

Now however, since the alien metal had tapped directly into her mind, a perfect feedback loop had been established and every bit of stimulation it provided was perfectly attuned to her needs. As a consequence, the twin phalluses within her loins not only moved, rotated and vibrated, but in addition administered electric shocks of varying intensity, these ranging from mildly aggravating to acutely painful, to her pussy and bowels.

With her fear artificially suppressed, she had no chance but to succumb to these insidious ministrations, especially since the entire scenario could easily have been taken from one of her own erotic fantasies: Inescapably bound and gagged, she was helpless to resist the skillful advances of a demonic lover with supernatural prowess. In record time, her arousal skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both propelled along and held in check by the carefully timed electrical shocks that did not allow her to climax prematurely.

Learning at a prodigious rate, the sentient metal constantly introduced new elements to the mix, thoroughly compiling an all-encompassing map of Lin's erogenous zones. Soon she found her tender, blood-engorged nipples being sucked and pinched and her firm breasts roughly manipulated, while unseen teeth nibbled at her earlobes. Her clit received special attention, a delicate appendage delivered bursts of tingling electricity interspersed with feather-light touches that caused her to unabashedly scream her unendurable lust into the gag plugging her mouth.

After an interminable stretch of time, it simply became too much. Her mind blanked and her insides seemed to melt when the continued assault finally drove her over the edge. The long-delayed climax lit up every cell in her body like the EMP from an exploding atomic bomb. Lost in the throes of an incredibly intense sexual release, she wildly thrashed against her bondage until blissful oblivion engulfed her at last.

When she regained her senses, for long minutes she lay stunned. Never before in her life had she experienced sensations of such wondrous intensity and she immediately craved to repeat the experience with an almost desperate poignancy that frightened her. Like an addict, she knew she would do almost anything for that wish to be granted, although it would probably inure her to any lesser pleasures forever and thereby turn her into the metal creature's abject slave. She wondered if that had been the plan all along and if her sensations had been artificially amplified somehow to produce this outcome. Yet suspecting she was being manipulated did not help at all: The conditioning worked nevertheless.

For the time being however, her captor was content to observe and learn. Within her mind, it had discovered a promising link between pleasure and pain that merited further exploration and fortunately, it did not need to be shy about it. Through direct stimulation of the subject's nerves it could simulate the most severe tortures without causing actual injuries.

A sharp pain in Lin's left breast destroyed the last vestiges of her orgasm's afterglow. It felt as if her flesh was being skewered by a white-hot needle. Instinctively, she struggled to assume a protective fetal position and raise her hands towards her chest, but try as she might, the metal did not permit her to budge a millimeter. Then the pain was suddenly gone, only to assault her other breast after a few seconds of blissful respite. She snapped her eyes shut and howled mindlessly into her gag.

For the next minutes, she was mercilessly tortured. All her body, but especially the parts that had been instrumental in giving her so much pleasure, were now subjected to the same almost intolerable agony. It seemed to her that any torment ever invented (and creativity abounded in this field) was visited upon her. Everything hurt like hell! Every single nerve poured white hot pain into her feverish brain! The metal granted her only short respites lest her mind shut down and she could escape into unconsciousness. During those lucid moments, Lin was terribly scared that she would be left permanently damaged in body and mind by the ordeal, provided that by some miracle she even happened to survive it. Obviously, she was allowed to experience fear again and she put her regained ability to good use.

She was at the end of her mental and physical endurance when, all of a sudden, everything changed. Out of nowhere, the image of an imposing figure loomed in her mind, a radiant goddess too beautiful and terrible to behold by a mere mortal like herself. At the same time, the conviction grew in Lin that her torture was not simply an act of random cruelty, but was in fact a test; a way to prove herself worthy of the goddess' regard. The chance to make an offering of her suffering was a privilege that could not be refused and instinctively Lin began to deal with the excruciating pain in the only way left open to her: reframing her torment as an act of submission, her brain was suddenly able to derive pleasure from it. One moment she was at the brink of total collapse, then in the next instant her latent masochism became ascendant and transformed her suffering into an irrepressible erotic experience.

In short order, her muffled screams turned into throaty moans when pain turned into pleasure and both became indistinguishable. Buried under an avalanche of raw sensation too acute to process or endure, her overwhelmed mind succumbed to another earth-shattering orgasm.

This time, Lin took even longer to recover. She remained in a near catatonic state for nearly an hour while her sweat drenched body dried in the day's mounting heat. The sun had risen high enough to shine down through the dense leafy canopy and reflect in multicolored highlights off the iridescent prison that continued to hold her in its unyielding embrace. Far from idle itself, the alien metal was busy analyzing the data it had collected.

Interestingly, not all pain was created the same. Most pain was only that, yet, depending on its nature and the subject's state of mind, some could be transformed into sexual pleasure. The first kind trivially lent itself to punishment, while the second fit right into the tool set for the much more effective reinforcement training. Its captive had proven to be highly susceptible to suggestions of submission and promised to thrive in captivity. Even her current state of enforced immobilization met with the subject's subconscious approval and in fact, she secretly yearned for more stringent bondage. The social conditioning responsible for her conflicted feelings towards her repressed fantasies of slavery and submission would be easily overcome, once she had accepted her new circumstances.

The overall assessment yielded an extremely high score: young, in excellent health and with an apparently limitless libido and capacity to enjoy sexual pleasure, the female would be a most suitable specimen for collecting. The sentient metal sent its report and immediately received authorization to proceed with the final phase of the collection process.