Chapter Text
The underground chamber hummed with the low thrum of power conduits threading through ancient stone walls. Flickering candlelight from iron sconces cast dancing shadows across the reinforced holding cells that lined the far wall, empty for now, their heavy doors standing open like waiting jaws. The air carried a faint scent of chemicals, coming from a freshly stocked supply cabinet and mingling with the monastery's underlying incense.
His primary monitor dominated the central workstation, its harsh blue glow cutting through the gloom. The screen split into seven dossier profiles, each displaying a rotating 3D capture of a potential acquisition alongside scrolling streams of operational data.
The system pinged softly as it cross-referenced all seven profiles. A secondary window opened on the monitor, overlaying a tactical map of Earthrealm with scattered position markers showing last known locations based on intercepted communications and surveillance feeds.
Sonya's marker blinked near the Special Forces headquarters. Cassie and Jacqui's markers clustered close together in typical squad deployment patterns. Kitana and Jade appeared on Outworld's borders, while Sindel's signal wavered unpredictably between realms. Skarlet's marker drifted alone through the wastelands, untethered and hunting.
The holding cells behind him creaked faintly as the monastery settled into the mountain's cold embrace, candles guttered in a subterranean draft, sending fresh shadows crawling across the empty restraints hung neatly on the cell walls, leather cuffs, coiled rope, folded cloth gags in varying thicknesses, all waiting.
A new alert blinked on the monitor: intercepted Special Forces communication. Partial transcription scrolled across the bottom of the screen — "...solo reconnaissance sweep...Sector 7...estimated return 0400 hours..." The accompanying voice-print analysis identified the speaker as General Sonya Blade. Her marker on the tactical map separated from the headquarters cluster, moving alone through a mountain pass not far from his position.
A wicked smile crossed his face as the plan crystallized. The workstation hummed quietly while he pulled up the video editing suite, a sophisticated piece of software acquired through less-than-legal channels, capable of generating disturbingly convincing deepfake content.
The monitor split into multiple windows. Stock footage of the Special Forces training facility loaded first, with its recognizable architecture, proper lighting conditions, accurate floor plans pulled from old reconnaissance captures. A neural network began mapping Cassie Cage's facial structure from her dossier footage, analyzing bone structure, skin texture, and micro-expressions. The system needed more source material, so he pulled up intercepted squad comms footage showing her in briefing rooms and training exercises, perfectly mundane moments that now served as raw material for fabrication.
The monastery's silence pressed in as he worked. Candle flames reflected off the monitor's surface, dancing like tiny spirits over Cassie's reconstructed face. The bra and panties would need to match regulation-issue undergarments, Special Forces standard, easily verified by anyone who knew her. He pulled up supply manifests, found the correct specifications, rendered them.
Hours slipped past. The deepfake assembled frame by frame, with Cassie's voice synthesized from comm recordings, her casual speech patterns analyzed and replicated, her body language mapped from dozens of hours of candid footage. The script he fed into the voice generator made her say exactly what Sonya Blade least wanted to hear, including twisted definitions of "an absolute rope bunny "and "a chloroform slut." The synthesized voice dropped the most compromising phrases at all the right moments.
He added visual touches, such as a slight flush to her cheeks, the way she tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, the nervous bounce of her knee. Details that sold authenticity. The livestream format added a timestamp, fake viewer count, realistic compression artifacts from "unstable barracks WiFi."
When it was done, the preview played in a loop.
The completed deepfake looped silently on the monitor, Cassie's fabricated confession playing over and over in the candlelit gloom. Now came the delivery.
He routed the transmission through a series of encrypted relays, each bounce making the message's origin virtually untraceable even for Special Forces' best cyber-ops teams. The final package included a short, unambiguous demand along with a low-resolution preview of the livestream , enough to make Sonya's blood run cold without giving her time to analyze the footage for forgery.
The message found her in Sector 7.
Sonya Blade's wrist-mounted tac-display pinged with an incoming encrypted transmission not on any Special Forces channel. Her boots crunched to a halt on the frozen gravel as she read the sender designation: [UNKNOWN]. The sweep had been routine until now, and her jaw tightened.
The preview thumbnail loaded.
Blonde hair. Slumped posture. Lingering camera angle, too familiar. She knew the regulation-issue bra before she fully registered Cassie's face.
"What the hell?"
The attached message scrolled beneath the preview, cold and precise: Come alone. Monastery at these coordinates. Tell no one. Any attempt at rescue or trace will auto-release the full livestream to every Special Forces server, Outworld diplomatic channel, and Earthrealm news outlet. You have three hours.
The video preview looped again. Cassie's voice filtered through the tac-display's tiny speaker, tinny but unmistakable. The words were... wrong. Filthy. Delivered with a breathy, performative eagerness that made Sonya's stomach clench. Rope bunny. Chloroform slut. And more.
Her grip tightened on the tac-display hard enough to crack the casing.
"Bastard."
Sonya ran every diagnostic she could in the field. Metadata scrubbed, encryption unfamiliar, facial-recognition markers on the preview coming back as 94% match despite the low resolution. Her mind raced through possibilities: Black Dragon remnants? Kano loyalists?
The tac-display dimmed. Sonya stood motionless in the frozen pass, wind whipping loose strands of blonde hair across her face. Her breath misted in the cold air, steady, controlled. She had faced invasions and elder gods without flinching, and now her pulse hammered against her throat.
She re-ran the diagnostics. Same results. No trace on the encryption, no flags in the metadata, facial recognition sitting stubbornly at 94%. The coordinates led to an abandoned monastery in the mountains, a place she'd flagged years ago as a potential smuggling waypoint for Black Dragon operatives, but never assigned stakeout resources. Too remote. Too low-priority.
Now it wasn't.
"Three hours," she muttered under her breath. Her thumb hovered over her comm-link. One call to Cassie's squad channel would verify everything, just one simple check-in. Hey sweetie, you decent? The words almost formed on her lips.
The preview looped again. Cassie's synthesized voice whispered about chloroform with breathless enthusiasm, and Sonya's thumb froze.
If it's real... The thought clawed its way up before she could suppress it. If this hits every server, every channel, every diplomatic contact... Cassie's career would end. Her reputation. Her command authority. Every victory, every promotion, every ounce of respect she'd clawed out of her father's shadow, gone, reduced to a viral humiliation that would outlive them all.
And if it was fake? The 94% match left a sliver of doubt. A six percent chance she'd be exposing her daughter to ridicule over fabricated smut.
Sonya killed the tac-display and turned toward the coordinates. Her boots found the path before she consciously decided to take it. The mountain swallowed her silhouette as she descended through switchbacks of wind-scoured rock, leaving her comm-link dark and her sidearm loaded.
The monastery emerged from the mist like a half-buried skull, weathered stone, sagging prayer flags, ancient carvings worn smooth by centuries of mountain weather.
Sonya approached from the western slope, keeping low, reading the terrain with practiced tactical assessment. No sentries. No motion sensors visible. No thermal signatures beyond what the cold rock naturally emitted.
Just a quiet mountain ruin. And a bastard who wants to play.
She found the entrance — a heavy oak door set into the oldest section of stonework, reinforced with modern hinges that betrayed recent modification. Her sidearm came up in a smooth, practiced motion. The message had said come alone, but it hadn't said come unarmed.
The oak door groaned inward before Sonya could reach for the handle.
Beyond it, the monastery's interior opened into a stone corridor lit by flickering sconces, old iron brackets retrofitted with modern wiring casting amber pools across flagstones worn concave by centuries of footsteps. The air carried a dry scent of aged parchment and something else. Chemical. Sweet. Familiar.
Then footsteps. Heavy. Surely cybernetically augmented, since she could hear the faint servomotor whine in the gait, the kind of noise you learned to recognize after years of debriefing Jax after combat.
He emerged from the shadows at the corridor's end.
A burly, tall man, taller than her by half a head, exhibiting a military posture that clashed with the monastery aesthetics. The cybernetic implants glinted along his forearms, combat-grade anf far from cosmetic, and his deep blue eyes tracked her every move. He stopped just inside the sconce-light, letting the amber glow carve his features out of the darkness.
"General Blade." he said, his voice carrying the weight of someone who'd done his homework. "You made good time."
Sonya's sidearm didn't waver. Her finger rested alongside the trigger guard, not on it yet. Professional courtesy. "You know who I am. That gives you exactly one advantage, and it expires the second I decide I'm tired of this." Her voice dropped, hard as the stone around them. "My daughter. Talk."
The man didn't flinch or blink. He simply smiled, almost welcoming. Like a host greeting a dinner guest who'd arrived fashionably armed.
"That's exactly what I intend to do."
The man spread his hands, a gesture that might have seemed conciliatory if not for the servos humming in his forearms.
"Your daughter is safe. Untouched. The video you received is an AI-generated fabrication. Very convincing, I know. I take some professional pride in it. The facial recognition percentage was intentional, I wanted you uncertain enough to come alone, and smart enough to know I wasn't bluffing." He took one step closer, stopping at the edge of the sconce-light's reach. "Cassie knows nothing about this. And she doesn't have to."
As their confrontation ensued, Sonya realized the sweet chemical smell had intensified. Her eyes flicked past him, toward the corridor's deeper shadows, where a metal table held a tray of neatly arranged supplies: rolls of duct tape, coils of rope, a dark glass bottle. She swallowed hard.
"I'm not asking for secrets, General. I'm not asking you to betray Earthrealm, your squad, or your daughter. What I want is far simpler." His tone remained calm, almost conversational. "You. For forty-eight hours. In this room."
He gestured toward an open doorway to his left, where Sonya could make out reinforced anchor points bolted into stone walls, leather restraints, and a padded surface designed to hold weight.
"During that time, you'll submit to being bound, gagged, stripped, dressed, and chloroformed in any configuration I choose. You'll cooperate. You won't resist. You won't attempt escape." He paused, letting the words settle into the cold mountain air. "When the forty-eight hours end, you walk out. The fabricated video is permanently deleted. Your daughter's reputation remains intact. No one ever knows you were here."
Sonya's knuckles whitened on her sidearm.
"Those are my terms." The cybernetics in his arms gave a faint whir as he crossed them over his chest. "You have thirty seconds to decide."
The thirty seconds stretched like a garrote wire.
Sonya's mind raced through tactical assessments at combat speed. Forty-eight hours. No one knew she was here, because she'd made sure of that, burning up the mountain with her comm-link dark and her location untracked. The man, whoever he was, had chosen his moment perfectly. Cassie was leading a training exercise in Nevada and her check-in wasn't due for another twelve hours. Johnny was filming in Berlin. Jax had retired to his farm in Georgia and wouldn't notice her absence until the weekly command briefing on Thursday.
She was alone and off-grid. Exactly the way the bastard had planned it.
"The video first," she said, her voice clipped as a field report. "Deleted before I set foot in that room. Not after. Before."
He shook his head slowly, almost apologetic. "After. You have my word."
"Your word." The words came out sharp enough to cut. "You're a kidnapper with God knows how many fetishes owning a basement full of restraints, and you want me to take your word."
"Kidnapper is a strong term." His tone remained infuriatingly pleasant. "I prefer negotiation specialist. And yes, you'll take my word, because the alternative is walking out as your daughter's face will be used as the thumbnail for one of the most viral videos in recent history. You're a strategist, General. Run the numbers."
The silence that followed was heavier than the mountain above them.
Sonya's grip on her sidearm trembled from the sheer force of will it took to lower it. She put the safety on the weapon with a deliberate click and holstered it at her hip.
"The forty-eight hours start when I enter the room. Not before." Her voice had gone flat, the same tone she used when ordering soldiers into situations she knew they might not survive. "And if you touch Cassie, if you even think about it, I will spend every remaining second of my life making sure yours ends, slowly and painfully."
The man inclined his head, accepting the threat without offense. "Understood."
He stepped aside, clearing the path to the reinforced doorway.
Sonya stepped across the threshold, and the room seemed to swallow her whole. The stone walls bore the weight of centuries, cold seeping through the mortar like ancient breath. Anchor points gleamed dully with polished steel bolted into rock, spaced with methodical precision. Restraints hung from hooks. The padded surface dominated the chamber's center, its leather surface dark as dried blood. Everything smelled of stone dust and that same faint chemical sweetness that clung to the back of her throat since she set foot in the monastery.
The heavy door thudded shut behind her, the bolt driving home with a sound like a bonesaw.
Sonya turned to face him. Her jaw was set, her shoulders squared. "Alright. I'm here. Clock's ticking."
The man studied her for a long moment, appraising rather than leering on hungry, like a collector examining a piece he'd spent years tracking down.
"Strip," he said.
Sonya's expression didn't flicker. "Excuse me?"
"Down to your bra and panties. Nothing else." He gestured at her body, the tactical vest, the fatigues, the combat boots, the sidearm still holstered at her hip. "No uniform. No footwear. No weapons. Everything goes except the essentials."
The air thinned.
Sonya's fingers curled at her side, chest rising and falling with a single controlled breath, the kind she took before breaching a hostile stronghold. "You want me out of my gear."
"I want the General stripped away. What stays is just Sonya." His tone stayed level, unchanged. "You agreed to cooperate. This is what cooperation looks like."
Her eyes flicked toward the restraints on the walls, then back to him. Calculations ran behind her gaze like the readout on her tac-display: options, risks, the cold arithmetic of compliance versus resistance.
Then her hand moved to her holster. Slowly, she unclipped the retention strap and placed the sidearm on a stone ledge near the door, out of reach. Her fingers flexed once before stripping off her tactical gloves.
Sonya's jaw worked silently as she peeled the vest away. The composite armor plate clunked against the flagstones. Her fingers, now stripped of their tactical gloves, moved to the collar of her uniform blouse, working the zipper down with the same grim efficiency she'd use to field-dress a wound. The fatigues rustled as she shrugged them off her shoulders, revealing the standard-issue compression tank beneath. Scars traced pale lines along her ribs and shoulders, a map of battles spanning two decades and three realms.
She bent to unlace her combat boots. The motion brought a lock of blonde hair falling across her face, and she swept it back with an impatient flick of her wrist. The first boot thudded onto the pile of discarded gear. Then the second. Her socks followed, leaving her feet bare against the ancient stone, cold seeping up through the soles, grounding her in the reality of what she was doing.
"Pants next," she said flatly, not waiting for his instruction. She'd read the terms. She knew where this was going. Better to drive the pace herself than let him savor each surrender.
Her belt came unbuckled with a whisper of nylon webbing. The tactical pants slid down her thighs and pooled at her ankles. Sonya stepped out of them, kicking them aside with a controlled, almost contemptuous flick of her foot.
Now she stood in the center of the chamber in standard-issue black bra and boy-short panties. No rank. No insignia. No gear. Even stripped, her body still resembled a weapon: toned shoulders, core muscles tensed beneath sun-bronzed skin, the stance of someone who'd spent her life learning to kill with or without tools, but the cold was already raising goosebumps along her arms.
"There. Not much General left." she admitted, her voice carrying the same clipped, professional cadence she'd used briefing the Joint Chiefs. "What's next on the checklist?"
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, genuinely appreciative, the way a sculptor might admire a block of marble before setting chisel to stone.
"You're in remarkable shape, General. Twenty years of active duty and you still look like you could run an obstacle course in your sleep." He stepped closer, his cybernetic arm humming softly as he reached for a coil of rope hanging from one of the wall hooks. The fibers were smooth, pre-treated, the kind of professional-grade rope that held knots without leaving friction burns. "Now. On the table. Belly down."
Sonya held his gaze for a beat longer than obedience demanded. A small rebellion, a reminder that she was choosing this. Then she turned and walked to the padded table. The leather was cold against her bare thighs as she climbed onto it, settling her weight with controlled grace. Then, she stretched out prone, her cheek against the leather, arms already moving behind her back without being asked.
The first loop of rope circled her right wrist.
He worked with precision, the rope whispering through his fingers as he bound her forearms together, not cruelly tight, but snug enough that she felt the pressure with every breath. The cybernetics in his hands gave him unnatural steadiness; there was no tremor or hesitation, just the smooth cinching of knot after knot. Her wrists were lashed together, then her elbows, the rope tracing a figure-eight pattern that locked her arms into a rigid fold behind her back.
"There," he murmured, testing the give. "Comfortable?"
"Ask me again in forty-eight hours." Her voice was muffled against the leather.
He moved down the table. Her ankles came next, bound together with the same unhurried expertise, the rope winding around each joint in precise loops before cinching tight. He worked a final length of rope between her wrists and ankles, drawing them together in a classic hogtie that arched her spine and pulled her shoulders back. The strain settled into her muscles immediately, not painful yet, but a promise of what two days would bring.
The final knot cinched tight, drawing Sonya's wrists and ankles into a severe arch that lifted her chest slightly off the leather. Every breath now came shallow, her diaphragm fighting against the compression of the hogtie. Her shoulder muscles stood out in sharp definition, quivering with the strain of holding the unnatural pose, and the rope creaked softly as she tested the give, but there was none. The man clearly knew his craft.
He stepped back to admire his work, then reached down and ran his palm along the curve of her right calf. The muscle was taut beneath smooth skin, warm despite the cold room. His fingers traced the line of her Achilles tendon, then glided over the arch of her bare foot.
"Ngh!" Sonya flinched, in an involuntary twitch, but saying nothing.
"Beautiful," he murmured, almost to himself as his cybernetic knuckles brushed the sole of her foot, and this time her toes curled. "Twenty years of kicking down doors and breaking jaws, and you still have dancer's feet. Remarkable genetics, General."
He let the caress linger a moment longer, palm sliding up to her thigh, thumb tracing the edge of her underwear before withdrawing. Then he moved toward the metal tray.
The dark glass bottle clinked against the steel surface as he lifted it. He unscrewed the cap, and a sickeningly sweet chemical scent bloomed into the room, stronger and unmistakable now. He soaked a folded clean white cloth, letting the excess drip back into the bottle before setting it aside.
"Now for the next part." He turned back to her, the cloth held loosely in his cybernetic hand. "I'm going to chloroform you, Sonya Blade. And you're going to help me make it convincing."
Sonya twisted her head against the leather to glare at him, her blonde hair spilling across her cheek. "Convincing. For who?"
"For me." He stepped closer, the cloth dangling inches from her face. "When this rag touches your nose and mouth, I want a show. You'll protest. You'll curse. You'll beg me to stop. You'll make as much noise as you can, right up until the fumes do their work. Muffled screams, struggling, the whole performance. I want to hear every second of it."
Sonya's nostrils flared at the chemical reek wafting from the cloth. Her eyes, still sharp despite the awkward angle of her head, tracked the damp fabric. She had faced Shao Kahn's war priests in mortal combat and never blinked. But this was different. This was surrender dressed up in performance.
"You want a show," she repeated, her voice flat as a debriefing transcript. "Fine. Let's get on with this."
He didn't hesitate, and lowered the cloth toward her face. Sonya jerked her head away on pure instinct before catching herself. The ropes creaked as she forced herself still, her bound hands clenching into fists behind her arched back. "Wait-- wait! Just..." She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. The word came out as a growl. "Make it quick..."
"That's not how this works." The chloroform-soaked cloth now hovered two inches from her mouth, the fumes already making her eyes water. "You know your lines, General. Say them."
Sonya gasped. Then, with visible effort, she relaxed her expression into something approximating the terror she'd felt the first time she'd faced Kano's laser eye: raw, genuine, pulled from old memories and repurposed for his captor's satisfaction.
"No." The word came out soft at first, testing the waters. Then louder, her voice cracking with manufactured desperation. "No, don't... you can't do this to me. Get that thing away from my face!" Sonya thrashed in the hogtie, ropes biting into her wrists as she twisted her shoulders, selling the struggle. "I'm a General in the Special Forces! You won't get away with th—MMMMRPHHH!"
The cloth sealed over her mouth and nose and it molded to Sonya's face like a second skin, the muffled scream that tore from her throat vibrating through the fabric with genuine, primal fury.
"MMMMRRRPPPHHH! HHRRRMMPHHH! GGUHHNN—MMMPHHH!"
She bucked. Hard. The hogtie should have limited her to token resistance, but decades of combat conditioning surfaced. Her shoulders wrenched against the ropes, muscles cording like steel cables as she threw her weight sideways, nearly rolling off the table before his cybernetic arm clamped around her waist. The padded leather creaked beneath her thrashing. Her bound feet kicked uselessly, toes splayed and curling in the cold air.
"Easy, General." He dragged her back to the table's center, his grip iron-steady. "That's it. Keep fighting."
"HHHRRRGGGHHH! MMM—MMM—MMMMPPPHHH!"
Sonya's protests dissolved into incoherent rage, each scream muffled by the wet cloth but losing none of their intensity. Her blonde hair whipped across the leather as she shook her head violently, trying to dislodge his grip. The fumes swirled around her nostrils, sweet and insistent, already blurring the edges of her vision.
He let her struggle. One hand pressed the cloth firmly over her mouth while the other roamed, palm sliding down her arched spine, over the taut fabric of her underwear, cupping the curve of her ass with deliberate, unhurried appreciation. His fingers dug in, kneading the firm muscle beneath until she let out a strangled, furious shriek.
"MMMRRRPPPHH! BHSSHHRRMMPHH! NNNNHMMPH!"
Then his hand traveled upward, His palm tracing her ribs, her quivering obliques. Then, it closed over her right breast through the thin fabric of her bra. She thrashed harder, her bound hands clawing at the air behind her back, her screams reaching a fever pitch that echoed off the ancient stone walls.
The sweetness from the chloroform invaded her now, the sleepy fumes coiling down her throat with every unwilling breath, seeping into her lungs like warm syrup. Sonya's thrashing lost its military precision, as her shoulders bucked in wild, uncoordinated jerks, bound feet kicking at nothing, her arched spine straining against the hogtie until the ropes groaned in protest.
"HHRRR... MMMrrrphhh... nnngghh..."
The muffled screams softened, not from compliance, but from the drug's insidious weight settling into her limbs. Her eyes, still visible above the cloth's edge, blazed with undiluted hatred, but the lids were drooping, as her pupils swam in and out of focus, chasing the light as it blurred into golden smears against the stone ceiling.
His hand squeezed her breast again, deliberate and savoring, and she wrenched her head sideways with a burst of adrenaline-born fury.
"GGHHNN! PHUUCH YHMMPH! MMPHH!"
Sonya's words disintegrated into a guttural snarl, spit darkening the cloth where her mouth pressed against it. Her bound fingers clawed toward his wrist, finding only air, only the empty space behind her arched back. The rope creaked, her muscles quivering with the effort of staying conscious.
But the chloroform was unrelenting.
His palm slid down her flank, tracing the sweat-sheened curve of her waist, then clamped over her hip. He pulled her against him, her bound body pressed flush to his chest, and she felt the vibration of his voice through her spine as he murmured something she could no longer parse into words. The sounds blurred. The room tilted. The stone walls breathed.
"Mmrrr... nnnhhh... mmmm..."
Her final scream died in her throat before reaching her lips. Her thrashing slowed to twitches, fingers uncurling and toes going limp against the cold air. The hogtie held her in its rigid arch even as her muscles surrendered. One last flicker of defiance crossed her heavy-lidded eyes, aimed at him like a sniper's final shot... then her lashes swept down. Her breathing steadied into the slow, rhythmic rise-and-fall of unconsciousness.
The cloth stayed in place a moment longer, just to be sure. He then withdrew it and set it aside. Sonya didn't stir, her breathing keeping deep and even and her bound body still locked in the hogtied unforgiving arch, cheek pressed to the leather. A thin sheen of sweat glossed her shoulders and the small of her back. The fight had been genuine, every thrash, every muffled curse, every wild buck of her hips, she'd given him exactly the performance he'd demanded.
Now came the part she hadn't agreed to.
He circled the table slowly, letting his fingertips trail along her calf, across the rope bindings at her ankles, up the sweat-damp curve of her spine. Sonya didn't know that the compound he'd mixed into the chloroform was a disinhibiting agent, developed for black-site interrogations, and it would be spreading through her central nervous system. Not enough to wake her fully, but enough to loosen the locks on the doors she kept bolted shut.
"General Blade." He kept his voice low, conversational. "Can you hear me?"
"...hmmph?"
A soft sound escaped her lips, close to acknowledgment. Her eyelids flickered without opening.
"Sonya Blade. I want you to answer me honestly. No filters. No tactical evasions. Just the truth." He paused, then leaned close to her ear. "Did you enjoy being chloroformed?"
The silence stretched. Then her lips parted, the words slurring out on a breath that still carried the ghost of the chemical's sweetness.
"Nnn... no..."
Her brow furrowed. The compound was working, he could see it in the way her bound fingers twitched, in the way her jaw worked as if chewing on a confession. The denial had been too slow and too uncertain.
"Don't lie to me, Sonya. The compound in your bloodstream won't let you lie effectively. Try again." His hand rested on the back of her thigh, thumb tracing the edge of the rope. "Did you enjoy it? The struggle? The cloth over your mouth? Being overpowered?"
This time, the answer came faster. And it wasn't no.
"...part of me." Her voice was distant, dreamlike, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a well. "Didn't... want to. But part of me..." She trailed off, her bound body shifting weakly in the hogtie.
Her bound fingers twitched, grasping weakly at air behind her arched back. The hogtie held her in its rigid bow, but her lips kept moving, the revealing compound prying them apart like a crowbar on a locked door.
"Part of me... wanted it to happen." The words emerged in a slow, dream-drunk murmur.
"Wanted someone to... take control. Make me... powerless."
Her eyelids fluttered again, caught in the limbo between chloroform oblivion and a chemically-induced honesty. The damp cloth had left a faint red mark around her mouth and nose, a ghost of the struggle she'd given him, and her breath now fogged against the leather padding with each slow exhalation.
"Always... always the one in charge. Always the General. Always... making decisions... people die when I'm wrong." A shudder ran through her bound body.
"Twenty years of being... untouchable. No one... no one dares... but you..."
Her hips shifted weakly against the table, the thin fabric of her underwear catching on the leather. The motion wasn't resistance anymore. It was something far more complicated.
"Thought about it. Before. Late nights. Reports piling up. Cassie asleep. Johnny... filming somewhere. Just me and the silence."
Her voice cracked on a syllable, whatever was working Sonya's system digging past her last defences.
"Thought about someone... taking it all away. The rank. The responsibility. Just... being taken. No choices. No orders. No... no escape."
The confession hung in the cold stone air like breath in winter.
"Have you ever been bound and gagged? During a mission, and in the bedroom. I need to know both." he pressed on, the question settling over her like a second layer of binding.
Sonya's lips moved soundlessly for a moment, as the truth was dragged up from depths she'd spent decades armoring over. When her voice came, it was slower than before, the weight of each word clearly tangible.
"Bound and gagged professionally... too many times. Kano. The Black Dragon. Shao Kahn's flesh pits." A tremor ran through her shoulders. "Field interrogations. Hostage situations. Once... once hung from a hook in Shang Tsung's throne room for... for three hours. Cassie doesn't... I never told her."
Her bound fingers curled into loose fists behind her arched back. The rope groaned softly as she shifted, the hogtie keeping her helpless even in this drugged half-conscious state.
"But bedroom?" A ragged exhale fogged the leather. "No. Never. Johnny... Johnny tried. Once. Brought silk scarves. Wanted to... wanted to make it playful." Her voice caught up in something too distant to be a laugh, and not dramatic enough to be a sob. "I couldn't. I couldn't let go. Couldn't stop being... the General. Even with him. Especially with him. He deserved someone who could... could surrender. I sent him away. Told him it was... tactical... incompatibility."
The mask. Twenty years of calling intimacy a tactical issue.
"But you wanted to." He didn't frame it as a question.
The silence stretched.
"God help me. Yes."