This Is Just 4 U

(Author's Note: This is the seventh "4U" story. The intended reading order is "I'm a Slave 4 U", "Even the Stars Fall 4 U", "Bent 4 U", "Kill 4 U", "I Would Die 4 U", "4 U 2 B Free", followed by this one. There will be two more stories in the series, "I'm Coming 4 U" and "All 4 U". Hope you enjoy them!)

I'm--I'm in a little bit of a fugue state right now. I'm also in Antwerp, but that doesn't matter. I'd be just as confused no matter where I was. One place is the same as any other to me right now; I'm in Antwerp because that's where the last traces of volition happened to sputter out, but it could just as easily have been Prague or Vienna or Lisbon. They're all just names on a list now. My Master isn't in any of them. For the first time in over three years... I really don't know what to do.

This isn't normally a problem. So much time and care and effort has been put into the layering of instructions in a service unit's brain that there's never a situation where we can't fall back on one protocol of obedience or another. Mission not going well? We've been programmed to seek out all kinds of alternative methods for carrying out every objective. Sudden change in circumstances? I can adjust to pretty much any unexpected contingency. Objective no longer achievable? Contact the Masters for further instructions. No matter what else happens, I've always been able to fall back on that last option, as long as I've existed within Haley Keene's mind.

It's always felt so good, having that constant sense of certainty in the back of my head. No matter how out of control a situation seemed, I always knew what to do because I was perfectly programmed to obey. I never had to worry about making a bad decision, because I never had a decision to make. My brain was smooth, placid, and untroubled by any existential concerns because I knew my exact place in the universe--an obedient tool of my Masters' will. Even when my Masters turned to killing each other, I still knew who to turn to for my next command. There was never a moment of doubt.

But now I don't have a Master. I. I'm a slave without a Master and I don't know what to do. I don't have a goal, I don't have an objective to execute, and I can't return to my Master for further instructions because I don't know where she is. Nobody put a contingency plan into my head for this. Nobody anticipated this. Even thinking that feels unexpectedly terrifying, like staring into a vast, yawning abyss that I never even knew existed. My Master, all of the Masters I've had, they're... perfect. Infallible. They know everything I need to know. How can I even be Service Unit 4U without a goal or a Master?

I try to tell myself that I'm doing something productive by going back over the facts. I know it's a lie. I know I've 'gone over the facts' 372 times in the last thirteen hours, my brain endlessly looping through the same steps over and over and over and over and over and 367 additional times over because at the end of those steps, I run out of things to do and I can't do things that aren't obeying so I have to keep trying to obey even though it's impossible. But I can't. I can't think properly. I don't have a direction to send my thoughts, so they keep going in circles. In a fugue of confusion.

I'm in a little bit of a fugue state right now. I'm also in Antwerp, because that's the last place my Master could be. She didn't respond to my secure text message telling her that I'd completed my surveillance of Service Unit 2B and was returning to her, but we discussed that contingency--when you're on the run from a global conspiracy with mind-controlled agents in every government, sometimes it's hard to check your messages. I went on to the safe house in Lisbon as per our established protocol, expecting to touch base with her in person.

She wasn't there.

She also wasn't in Paris. Nor was she in Prague, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Florence, Madrid, Rome, Budapest, Barcelona, Vienna, Berlin, Athens, or Edinburgh. I checked personally, racking up an absurd number of frequent flyer miles as I went down the list of my Master's hidden safe houses one by one in the order we'd discussed. I knew by the fifth one that I wasn't going to find her--anyone who'd managed to track her through that many destinations must have the same list I did. But I'm a slave. I don't think; I obey diligently and precisely. If you give me a list of thirteen destinations, I will go to every one in the order specified.

Antwerp was the last destination on the list. The safe house of final resort. If my Master wasn't here, and she isn't, then I don't know where she is. I found no evidence at any of the safe houses that could point to what happened to her, and she hasn't responded to any of my attempts at communication. I've been checking the news, and I've got a Google alert set up with a number of specific words and phrases that I'm not allowed to consciously remember, but... there's been nothing.

And there's not likely to be anything, either. Even before the MKPerfect Corporation raised the scope of its ambitions, they were ridiculously good at keeping secrets, starting with the secret of their own existence. When your entire board of directors is composed of ex-CIA agents who've just stolen a breakthrough in mind control technology from the federal government, paranoia comes baked in. If they killed my Master...

I clamp down on a surge of existential panic that wells up inside my brain at the thought of not having a Master at all. It's not easy.

If they killed my Master, there's a good chance I'll never know it. They have places they can hide bodies where they'll never be found (I know), they have people they can go to who will bury inconvenient news (again, I know), and sooner or later, every law enforcement agent in the world reports to a brainwashed servant of the MKPerfect Corporation. I... may have some personal experience with that, as well, but it doesn't help me. I can't go to any of their sources of information, or they'll simply collect me and reassign my loyalties back to them. And while a part of me desperately yearns for that, simply to end my fear and confusion, my programming won't let me abandon my Master.

But I can't find her, either. And I can't look for her, because I don't know where to start looking. And if I go looking for her, and she comes to the safe house in Antwerp without any way to communicate with me, I'll never know it. And if they find her here while I was looking for her somewhere else, and they kill her, I'll be without a Master. Without instructions. Without hope of ever receiving instructions. I'll never be able to obey ever again.

I. I'm a slave. How can I be a slave if I can't obey?

I feel my mind slow to a halt as I reach the end of the train of thought. There's nowhere else for it to go. I eat mechanically, I sleep automatically, I exercise because I need to maintain the machinery of Haley Keene's body, but... I don't have a Master. And without a Master, there's nothing left for me to do. Except go over the facts again, hoping that this time, something will change. I know the repetition isn't helping anything, that it's just my obedient brain recycling the last few atoms of compliance to avoid the chasm that's gradually widening at the very core of my identity, but... what else can I do? What else can I do when I can't even ask someone what to do? I give up and let my brain loop around again, staring vacantly into space as I remember the chain of circumstances that led me here. I'm in a little bit of a fugue state right now, I know. I'm also in Antwerp, but--

My phone buzzes. I stare at it like a trapped miner looking at a ray of sunlight.

It's a text message from the MKPerfect Corporation. 'Unit 4U is called into service.' It seems strange to me, seeing that message and not instantly falling into a haze of obedient bliss, but MKPerfect's directors have no hold on me anymore. Their message means nothing next to the pure and perfect pleasure of obeying my Master, and they have to know that. So why text me, unless...?

Unless they think I'll fall into compliance. They must know that I don't have a Master right now, and they're probably hoping that if they send me a message then enough of my programming remains intact to give them a hold on my mind. They probably figure they don't need much, just enough to make my muscles twitch into an automatic response telling them where I am. So that they can pick me up and tie off their last loose end. The sheer, existential despair I feel is almost enough to make me reply.

But then there's a second message. And a third, only moments after that. 'Unit 4U is called into service. Unit 4U is called into service.' It reminds me of Genoa, when the directors tried to force Service Unit 2B back into compliance with repeated uses of her trigger phrase. It worked--eventually, possibly--but they kept using it because they didn't know what was going on. They didn't know why she wasn't responding correctly. They... they were panicking. Because they didn't know what was going on and they fell back on their instincts just as surely as I fall back on mine.

And suddenly everything snaps into place. I still don't know where my Master is, but at least now I know where to look for her.

*****

Four hours later and I'm back in Lisbon, having paid a frankly ridiculous sum to a charter service to get a nonstop flight across Europe. I'm not worried about the cost--Master made sure to leave a wide variety of untraceable ways to get hold of absurd amounts of money in the event of misfortune, and I'm in something of a hurry. I've been unaware of it, but I am on a tight deadline and my Master's life is at stake.

Seeing those text messages taught me one important thing. The director of MKPerfect doesn't know where my Master is any more than I do. He ordered those texts sent in the hope of ferreting her out, a last-ditch effort in the face of a total vacuum of information about us. Normally, that wouldn't be of much significance, since a total vacuum of information about us was exactly what Master and I were trying to achieve, but if they don't know and I don't know, that completely changes all of the scenarios I was trying to construct.

I'd been working on the assumption that MKPerfect was responsible for her disappearance, but that's clearly not the case. Brainwashed slaves are too wonderfully efficient to let something like that get lost in the shuffle--if they found her, she'd be dead by now and the Director would know it. If she was in police custody, then they'd know that as well--my Master's prints wouldn't register on any regular database, but they'd send red flags up to the highest levels if she was in jail for any reason. And if the corporation knew where she was, they wouldn't have any trouble arranging for something fatal to happen to her in jail. And that would bring us right back to 'dead by now and the Director knows it'.

So if she's not at any of the safe houses, and also hasn't been captured or killed, then something must have happened to her. Something that's left her incommunicado, but that also hasn't put her into the sphere of influence of the MKPerfect Corporation. Something that must have happened quickly, before she had a chance to respond to my text from Genoa. Something that must still be preventing her from responding a week later. And also something that didn't result in her death, because I hacked into the databases of every morgue in Lisbon on my way here and I have pictures of every single dead body that's turned up in the city in the last week. (I'm not morbid. Just very very thorough.)

And because I am very very thorough, I check every room of every hospital in the city of Lisbon personally. There are twenty of them. I find my Master in the eighth.

She's listed as a Maria Silva, which means she was probably unconscious when she was brought in and someone just wrote down a placeholder name when they couldn't find any ID on her. According to her records, she got into a bad taxi accident less than three blocks from the safe house and came to the hospital with a broken jaw, a fractured skull, a bad break to her left arm and another to her right leg, and lacerations on both hands from shattered glass. Stupid, random injuries, but between that and the painkillers they put her on, it's more than enough to keep her from communicating with anyone. And until she recovers enough to talk lucidly, they're just going to keep treating her until she's better.

Only they're not, because I've had a full database of medical knowledge implanted in my brain and I can take her to a safe house with a fully stocked mini-hospital. The only trick is to get her out of here, and frankly, that's a trivial concern. Five minutes inside the hospital database and I've worked up fictional transfer papers to a private health care facility in Seville. Five minutes more, and I've erased one of their own ambulances from their ownership records so that when I hotwire it and pull up outside the front entrance wearing a nurse's outfit I stole from one of the locker rooms, they actually wheel my Master right out to me and apologize for the delay.

I have to ditch the ambulance in the warehouse district and bring Master down through the secret passage on a stretcher, which can't be pleasant for her despite the industrial strength painkillers they've put her on. But she bears it well, and soon I've got her settled in the hospital suite. I set up a cot next to her, and sleep properly for the first time in eight days.

When I wake, I began the tasks of changing her dressings and replenishing her IV and giving her another dose of painkillers. To anyone else, even the most dedicated of private nurses, it would be tedious work, but I feel an almost sexual pleasure going down my new mental checklist. It's the opposite of Lisbon-to-Paris-to-Prague-to-despair, a focus for my energies and a duty to yoke my identity to. I don't need to think anymore. I don't need to wonder what to do, I don't need to doubt; I only need to obey. I just need to make my Master feel better. It doesn't matter how long that takes, not when it's a purpose again. Every time I apply antibiotics, every time I run a sponge over her body, I can feel that terrifying void of just a few days ago get a little bit further away.

Master doesn't respond to my ministrations, but I find that I don't need her to. She doesn't need to give me specific commands to give me purpose and direction; she only needs to be the person I focus my obedience on right now. There are layers upon layers upon layers of structured compliance in my head, but she's the foundation of every single one of them. She's what gives me meaning. I'm not sure that's exactly healthy--I've now seen first-hand how it feels to lose that meaning--but it feels to good to have it back for me to worry about that. Plus, I'm not actually allowed to worry about it or change it, so I might as well enjoy it. And I do... tending to Master feels better than any masturbation possibly could. I'm constantly wet, every second I spend taking care of her.

I lose track of time nursing her back to health; we're fully stocked on supplies down here, and the only thing that matters to me is making my Master better again. It's frustrating--I know that every day we hide is another day that MKPerfect has to tighten their stranglehold over the world's governments and businesses and cultural figures; the old MKPerfect worked with those people, carefully shepherding the kind of soft influence that was so much easier to maintain than overt control. But the new director has no patience for consensus. He wants everything.

And he may yet get it. Master's injuries will take weeks to recover from, months to rehabilitate. The cuts are healing nicely, and it's the most wonderful feeling in the world when she reaches down and rests her right hand on my head while I sleep. But I know that when we emerge, she will be that much weaker and he will be that much stronger. I can only do so much about that as a slave.

But that's the most wonderful thing about having Master back. I don't need to worry, not when I can report to her for further instructions. "How can I best serve you, Master?" I ask her, unwinding the bandages from her right hand so that she can at last communicate to me her desires. I don't imagine they'll be sexual--as much as I fantasize and daydream about licking her tender pussy until she comes on my face, I'm aware that my pleasure always comes, ultimately, from the purity of my surrender to Master's control. I'm happy with any command, blissful and fulfilled simply by the act of compliance. Whatever command she gives me, I will joyously perform. At least... that's what I think until I see her response.

'U need 2 b free'

I look over at the brainwashing suite, identical to the one in London. I look back at my Master. And somewhere inside myself, Service Unit 4U finally looks full-on into the abyss of independence.

THE END