"Inhuman"

-1-

Maxwell watches the reactions of the soldiers in the mess hall, the full realization still not dawning on them.

The images of the RLA headquarters building switches to an image of Lansing Prescott a young, serious looking man who’d been serving as the Eastern State spokesperson during their campaign into the Republic. He’s sitting behind a neutral white background with an equally neutral expression.

 “Good Evening citizens of the former Western Republic,” Prescott says in a rehearsed voice. “I am here to report that General Meredith Baxter-Finch is under arrest and has resigned her position and authority to the Eastern State Guard. The Republic Liberation Army is to be disbanded effective immediately. All RLA bases and outposts are to remain business as usual and we will be in touch with your leaders soon for transition.

“We will be working with officials to return the Republic back to the people. Please keep calm and  stay turned for more information.”

The screen returns to live footage of the RLA headquarters as Meredith Baxter-Finch is brought out in handcuffs by the Eastern State Guards. She’s followed by a succession of RLA advisors and senior staff—including Lt. Cassia Winthrop, mascara stained tears streaming down her confused face.

That had been all Maxwell really wanted to see. He’d wanted to see the loss in Cass’s eyes as her position was stolen from her. Wanted to see her when she realized the RLA had lost and she’d likely be jailed or executed for her participation.

Maxwell turns the hologram off and turns to his men, who looked  up at him  slack jawed. A few looked ready to turn on him.

“We will follow the orders of the Eastern State,” Maxwell tells them. “We will continue our work and prepare for the transition until they come for us.”

“Sir,” A soldier calls, raising his hand. “Does this mean we’re all going home ?”

Maxwell knows he should be careful with the words he chose, but caution tended to fuck him over. Better to go with instinct.

“Yes.”

 

-----

 

The soldiers at Ft. Pride pretend to keep up with their duties for a week, but there minds were elsewhere, ahead of this place.

Maxwell attempts to follow the Eastern State’s keep calm order, but after eight days he begins to get nervous himself. Ft. Pride was located at the farthest point of the RLA’s command region, there was even a chance Cassia had destroyed all references to it’s location before she was arrested.

But, no.

They had to know Maxwell was here.

They had to.

He looks down to where Haley was kneeling between his legs.  His mind had wandered and the tension he’d been hoping to relieve comes back all too quickly.

He growls through clenched teeth as his worries are temporarily overtaken by the strong orgasm coursing through his body and into Haley’s warm, wet throat

“Swallow,” Maxwell commands,  moving  to shove the gag back between his lips.

Haley turns sharply from the gag.

“Sir--”

“Shut up--”

“I--”

“You want to know what’s going to happen to you when the Eastern Guard comes ?”

Haley nods.

Maxwell pulls him up by his wrist to sit in his lap. Haley moans over the pain in his  already sensitive wrists as Maxwell forces their lips together, his tongue searching every inch of his mouth. Despite himself, Haley’s body lights up against Maxwell’s touch and he matches the bruising kisses until Maxwell draws blood.

“Does everything need to be about you ?,” Maxwell whisper against his now  swollen lips. “You’re  a prisoner…there is an entire camp of drafted soldiers here, including me. How can you be so fucking selfish ?”

Maxwell’s tongue touches a sensitive part of Haley’s lips and he sits up higher on Maxwell’s waist, straddling Maxwell’s thigh and rutting against him, gasping for just a moment of his own release as Maxwell turns on the pipe he kept in his shirt pocket. Shame still clung to Haley every time he found himself lost in his own lust for the man who had made his life hell.

But nothing else good had ever come out of Haley's almost 7 years at Ft. Pride. He may as well feel physical pleasure for a few seconds.

A harsh tone sounds on the biggest screen in Maxwell’s office, a sound that usually meant Cassia or whoever she had assigned to Ft. Pride for the month was checking in on them. Maxwell had stopped caring if anyone saw them together years ago. He kept a near permeant place on Maxwell's lap and  nearly every soldier assigned to Ft. Pride had walked in on them.

But this time Maxwell shoves Haley quickly to the ground, he lands on his side hard,  a sharp pain spiking through his body at impact.

“Keep quiet,” Maxwell orders forcing the gag back into his mouth and tossing the  pipe down to the floor as well.

Maxwell adjust his zipper, straightens his uniform, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before answering the call.

Lansing Prescott, the Eastern State Guard spokesman, appears on the screen in the crisp blue and gray uniform of the Eastern State Guard. He is arranged professionally, almost like he was in a movie

“Good Afternoon. My name is Lansing Prescott. I am working on the transition of power from the RLA. Please state your name, rank and your base’s purpose.”

“You don’t know ?,” Maxwell asks.

“The RLA’s files on this outpost are sparse,” Prescott continues.

“Of course,” Maxell says quietly. “My name is Command Sergeant Kenneth Maxwell. Ft. Pride is a prison.”

“POW prison ?,” the man asks, his eyebrows knitted in disapproval.

“No. Death row inmates. Serial killers, rapists mostly and a few alleged cannibals.”

“Alleged cannibals?,” Prescott chokes

“It’s a very hard thing to prove. Anyway, I’d like to speak to--”

“You are now under the orders of the Eastern State,” Prescott continues reading from a script he clearly had floating to his right. “We will send a transfer team out in the next few days to discuss the transfer of authority and--”

“I’d like to speak to your commander,” Maxwell interrupts. “Tell them you have reached Kenneth Maxwell.”

“I beg your pardon, sir  but you don’t make the rules,” Prescott responds and looks back to his script. “Please send us your coordinates and a team will--”

“I need to speak to a senior Eastern State intelligence officer,” Maxwell interrupts. “Tell them who you are speaking to, they’ll want to talk to me.”

“I will do my best,” Prescott says before returning to his script. “Please send us your coordinates and a team will be arriving soon. Please confirm you understand this information.”

Maxwell stares at the man on the other side of the screen for a long beat.

“I do,” Maxwell says and the screen shuts off.

Maxwell reaches down and picks up the abandoned pipe, taking a long drag and smiling as he blows the thick white smoke into the air.

“Only the last three years,” Maxwell smiles, rolling back his chair and looking down at Haley, who was staring  up at the blacked out screen from the floor. “That’s what you want to know, right ? How long I’ve been leaking information to the Eastern State Guard.”

Haley’s eyes widen and the gag pulls itself tighter as he tries to speak.

“I know…I know,” Maxwell says, leaning down to stroke Haley’s face. “I would have done it sooner If I’d figured out how.”

Haley stands, clumsily bearing his weight on his elbows to pull himself upright before perching himself on Maxwell’s desk. He presses the dulled sole of his boot into Maxwell’s chest, right above Maxwell’s heart where Maxwell had an RLA insignia tattooed.

Maxwell rolls his chair closer to the desk, hooking the boot around his waist and pulling Haley into his lap. 

“You want to know why I did it?,” Maxwell asks.

Haley shakes his head no, staring at the ground.

“I don't mind. It's an easy answer. I figured...why not? Ending this war is my only shot out of here."

Maxwell slowly unbuttons the top buttons of shirt, pushing it aside to and looks down at his RLA tattoo. Like most RLA tattoos it had been done during his first week at boot camp, nearly a decade ago for Maxwell. He'd never wanted to join the RLA, but those weeks at boot camp made him feel apart of something.

 All of the propaganda has foolishly worked on him.

“I’m going to have to have DeCartes cover this up,” Maxwell says running his hand over the lines of the RLA insignia on his hard chest. “It turns out, Haley, that the RLA is  quite corrupt.”

Haley makes a sarcastic sound through the gag and Maxwell slaps him across the face.

“Even more than you think you know.  It’s bigger than you and me. Cassia gave me the ammunition—the way she made me file all her litigation. I read every page of every suit and testimony accusing the RLA of cover ups, extortion, cruelty and collusion. And you know what ? It didn’t take a first year law student to see it was all true.

“The RLA was even working with the Mjollner’s Rektor...that should really piss you off. I’m sure that’s how that L3251 bitch got away during the breakout and you lost your ability to jerk off properly.”

Maxwell takes a long drag from his pipe, blowing the smoke against Haley’s mouth. He coughs under the gag.

It still pained Maxwell that even knowing the Mjollner had the RLA in their back pockets he could never put together how the breakout had been orchestrated.

 Only five  prisoners who had escaped during Ft. Pride’s infamous breakout were still free. If news reports were true, one escapee had crossed the border and clearly taken to hacking up women in the Eastern State.

 

***

 -2-

Underneath Maxwell’s dulls eyes, heat weathered skin and graying hair he was deceptively strong. Haley knew that. The  bruises that covered his own body were evidence of it.

But today he was beginning to think Maxwell inhuman.

Haley sat on the bottom bunk in Forge DeCartes’ prison cell, watching Maxwell lie, shirtless, on his back on the bunk opposite him.

DeCartes’ cell was generous by most standards at Northland Penitentiary. He was housed in an abandoned wing of the penitentiary that had once been used when Northland housed nonviolent offenders; the cells in this wing were made for four men and had running water and a power connection.

Over the years, with Maxwell’s patronage, Forge had collected personal effects for his cell, most prized of all the tattoo machine Maxwell let him keep with him.

Haley had never been in this position before. He never got to be the one watching Forge work. Usually he was the one getting tattooed as a punishment and usually he was strapped down in the execution room. But now the sadistic tattoo artist was sitting on Maxwell’s abdomen leaning over Maxwell’s prone body to touch his searing needle to Maxwell’s bare chest.

 Maxwell’s body was pulled tight and strained, exaggerating the deep lines of his muscles, but he doesn’t scream or show any indication of pain on his face. Haley knew the pain of Forge’s needle and Maxwell was either highly drugged or completely inhuman. 

The buzzing needle stops and Forge flicks on his lighter.

Maxwell grits his teeth and grunts as the ink is burned into his flesh, sweat pour down his face but he laughs, the sound echoing around the cell.

“I guess you don’t just like giving pain. You like taking it too, big man ?,”  Forge says, running his hand down the plane of Maxwell’s stomach to the bulge in his pants.

“Are you finished?” Maxwell asks in a heavy tone.

“With the tattoo—yes ? Unless there is something else you want me--”

Maxwell pushes the tattoo artist off him and walks to the dingy floor length mirror in the corner of the cell to examine the cover up work.

“I thought I  told you to make it something subtle,” Maxwell growls.

As Maxwell turns, Haley can see that in the spot where there was once an RLA insignia tattooed on Maxwell’s chest; there was now an almost lifelike reproduction of a snake.

“You should have been more specific,” Forge says, examining the half full bottle of dark rum before opening it.

Maxwell had cleaned out every piece of contraband from his quarters and given it to Forge as a final payment. The Eastern Guard’s transition team was arriving to take over the post in a matter of hours and Haley hopes to never see Forge again once they left.

“You’re not done yet,” Maxwell says running a small towel under the room’s dingy faucet before, wiping his face and upper body with it. “I need you to do one last tattoo for me.”

Forge smiles. Haley knew Forge would miss this when they left. The Eastern Guardsmen didn’t seem to be the type who got off to watching their subordinates get tattoos from a convicted murderer.

Maxwell walks across the cell to the bunk bed and runs his fingers through Haley’s hair, sitting on the bed next to him.

“This is the last tattoo I will ever ask you to get,” Maxwell tells him, kissing the metal of the gag, causing it to tighten.

Haley nods because he knows Maxwell isn’t asking him if he wants it. Maxwell had never asked him.

“I’ll hold you down so you don’t hurt yourself. Do you want a drink ?”

He nods, but again, he knows Maxwell isn’t asking.

“I say we all drink to the end of an era,” Forge adds and pours three generous shots of an unidentifiable liquor into cups that were meant for medicine.

Maxwell pulls the square metal key from his pocket and releases Haley gag. With Maxwell’s help Haley takes back the shot and then another. Alcohol didn’t work like pain killers but it was better than nothing.

When the last shot is empty Maxwell forces Haley’s head into a headlock in his lap and uses his leg to pin his arms to his side.

“I want it right here,” Maxwell says, moving a length of blonde strands and  twisting Haley’s head to the side to expose the length of his neck.

“What do you want ?,” Forge asks, getting on the bunk.

Maxwell displays something on his Syndicate that Haley can’t see  from his position. He can only feel the  familiar bite of the needles as Forge begins.

Haley screams like he always did, but without the gag the sound is louder and gutteral. He writhes and fights Maxwell’s grasp, but Maxwell holds him still.

This session takes less than 20 minutes. The strokes of Forge’s needle where short and precise, whatever it was it wasn’t an image. It had felt simpler than that.

When the tattoo is done, Maxwell takes a handful of Haley’s hair and brings his face to his, biting and sucking at his lips  before pushing him on his knees, and roughly forcing his cock so deep into his throat that all the liquor comes right back up. Maxwell doesn't bother to pause for him to vomit, he continues fucking his mouth until he gets his release, pulling out  strands of hair as he releases Haley.

“Drink this,” Maxwell barks, holding a cup to Haley’s lips. Maxwell's expression is hard. He sounds angry with Haley so he  complies quietly. He hated how much he still burned for Maxwell's approval.

Haley thinks it must be more liquor but it’s ice cold water, he empties the cup washing away the taste of vomit, Maxwell and the alcohol before Maxwell shoves the gag back in. Maxwell kisses the edges of the gag, forcing it to seal and push deeper into Haley’s gums.

Reaching into his back pocket Maxwell places the open compact mirror in Haley’s hand. He looks into it and at first he doesn’t see the new tattoo. It wasn’t bold like this others. Just a series of faint black lines going from the back of his ear and down his neck.

 

VII

XX

MM

CI

V

XII

MM

CVIII

III

The Scriptures that had been drilled into Haley's head when he was in school has been in all Roman Numbers, he  easily turns the lines into digits in his head 8.20.2000.101.5.12.2000.108.3.

He stares longer, trying to make sense of it.

“Alex,” Maxwell says stroking his chin, it always disarmed him when Maxwell used his first name. “There was a time when I thought there was something connecting us together. I thought we were supposed to save each other... but you were just an ugly trick in a very pretty package.”

Maxwell takes a small step back and the clear doors of the cell shut in front of him leaving Haley inside and Maxwell outside the cell.

“I thought when I saw you at City of Hope I really thought you were  sent to save me…I really did. But every time something fucks up in my life there you are... Not anymore.  The Eastern Guard has offered me a position in the rebuilding of this country. I’m getting a second chance to get what I deserve and I just can’t risk you fucking that up for me this time.”

Haley stares as Maxwell’s words cycle through his head. Maxwell actually blamed him for everything that had gone wrong.

Maxwell means to leave him here.

And more so Maxwell was wrong.

Maxwell had ended up at City of Hope because an RLA pilot made a mistake during an operation. The RLA put him at Camp Harmony. Audrina had been the one to bring Alan Gray into the camp and gotten them locked in that room. Haley had suffered right beside Maxwell if not more.

He shouts through his gag.

The gag.

Remembering it’s still locked, Haley touches it.

“Oh, that,” Maxwell says holding up the key to the gag.

Haley presses his face to the glass.

“I’m throwing this key into the incinerator,” Maxwell tells him. “You have loose lips. But don’t worry. I’ll be sure your new keepers know you’re here…I’m sure they’ll figure something out so you don't starve to death.”

Haley slams his body against the glass, hot tears of frustration and fear pricking at his eyes.

He begs through the gag, screaming, promising to stay out of Maxwell’s way , promising to leave the country if Maxwell lets him out but it all comes out as strained muffles against the gag.

“I’m going to tell the Eastern Guard you aren’t on death row, so they won’t kill you...atleast not right away.” Maxwell tells him as if that is comfort.

Haley wants to spit at Maxwell through the glass, but he can’t. He slides to his knees, begging, scratching at the glass and Maxwell only looks down at him, smiling.

“Look at you. You’re dumbass brother was right about you, you know ? You are fucking pathetic. ” Maxwell says.  “ Don’t worry, I know how much you like being someone’s bitch. That’s why I’m not leaving you alone.”

Haley suddenly remembers he isn’t alone in the cell. He turns to see Forge standing behind him, tattoo machine in hand and a hungry smirk on the man's face.

Haley turns back to Maxwell who just stares at him. Haley throws his body into the smart plastic covering the cell but it barely cracks. He does it again. And again. He’d spent nearly seven years being fucked and marked by Maxwell he deserved a better end than this.

It wasn’t fair.

Maxwell’s eyes roll upwards as he reads a message on his Syndicate.

“It looks like the Eastern Guard’s transition team is here,” Maxwell announces, backing away from the cell.  “I’ll be back through here in about an hour. I’ll be giving the new warden the tour before I get flown back to Ft. Perch. I hope you two are playing nicely by the time I come back.”

Haley screams, loud and pleading.

Maxwell turns from the cell, activating the soundproofing and darkening the glass.