Fifteen Steps Down: An AR Anthology

Chapter 2
Intensive Testing

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Chapter Description: Content Warnings: Mind Control, Gay (Male/Male), Nonconsensual Sexual Activity, Nudity

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Sweat trickled down Daniel’s neck as he stared at the cards in his hand, studying them over and over as though the ranks and values would morph in his grasp. Feeling eyes upon him, he delayed the moment for as long as he could – and then finally met Aiden’s eyes, met the shimmering eyes of the pale and trembling man sitting across from him.

‘ …do you have any sixes?’

Aiden let out a long, shuddering sigh.

‘Go fish.’

Dr. Delerio grinned as he stood above them. He idly stroked the barrel of his gun.

Though Daniel had had some indication of the inventor’s mental instability, he considered it little more than a harmless, quirky byproduct of his undeniable genius. For the past few years Daniel had been something of a Marty McFly to Delerio’s Doc Brown, visiting every so often to peruse the latest inventions that the odd, brilliant recluse had whipped up. Most of them were beyond useless – a megaphone designed to communicate with dogs, for example, had done nothing more than draw every howling stray within ten miles to Delerio’s doorstep – but Daniel was fascinated just the same by the doctor’s strange and often silly devices. There was something compelling about the idea that one of these ridiculous bits of blinking machinery could actually work.

He kept coming despite Delerio rarely even acknowledging his presence, the inventor often continuing at his muttering, scattershot work while Daniel putted around in a graveyard of half-finished ideas and abandoned epiphanies. When Delerio did notice, he would jump in surprise and throw an arm around Daniel’s shoulder as though he were a beloved friend that hadn’t been seen in years. Though Daniel knew that this was the inventor’s way of buttering him up – of getting Daniel to help him test his latest invention – this was, to him, just another incorrigibly charming aspect of Delerio’s eccentric personality.

In retrospect, it should have occurred to Daniel that Delerio was dangerous. Over the past few months the old man had grown unpredictable and violent, the brunt of his sudden rages borne by the instruments and shelving he would smash to bits whenever he’d hit an impassable roadblock in his work. Still, Daniel had never been hurt – as with any other day, Delerio hardly ever realized that he’d been rampaging before an audience. And on the rare occasion that he was noticed, Delerio’s reaction was just the same as ever – a pat on the back, a hearty ‘how are you,’ and a passionate diatribe about the latest experiment that Daniel simply had to help with.

Though Daniel could have seen this coming, his main regret was not that he’d put himself in danger – it was that he’d gotten Aiden involved.

A friend for many years, Aiden was visiting from New Zealand and had asked Daniel to show him a bit of the local color. Daniel – with what he now realized was unbelievable shortsightedness – eschewed the local art and food scene and instead took his friend right to Delerio’s doorstep. If Delerio flew off the handle, they could just skedaddle – and there was always the chance that Aiden would get the once in a lifetime experience of helping the inventor with one of his experiments.

That, in fact, was what they were ostensibly doing right now. Daniel should’ve known that something was up when Delerio immediately became aware of their presence, when he greeted the pair with an effusiveness that went well beyond even the friendliest of his past receptions.

Then he pulled out a gun.

At first, neither Daniel nor Aiden were afraid – the gun, after all, looked like a cheap sci-fi toy that someone had spruced up with a bit of chrome paint and a few blinking lights. It was not until Delerio’s demeanor suddenly shifted – when his pleasant smile became wry and twisted – that Daniel knew he had screwed up. Though Delerio admitted that the gun could not harm them in a firearm’s traditional manner, he promised with no shortage of glee that its usage could make things very unfortunate for them if he so chose.

Aiden had laughed at that, laughter that ceased when Delerio scowled and pointed the barrel at the bewildered Kiwi. He was coming to understand what Daniel already knew. Even if Delerio’s devices never worked in the way he intended, that didn’t mean that there was no danger in handling them. An attempt at a perpetual motion machine had resulted in a parachute-sized hole being blown through a wall of solid concrete. A new kind of liquid coolant had put the lab in such a deep freeze that Daniel would come around for weeks to find that it had not yet defrosted, that the whole of the run-down and isolated warehouse was still surrounded by a frosty layer of strangely illuminous ice.

Put another way, Delerio’s incompetence was just as dangerous as his competence.

The inventor was a fair man, however – or so he claimed as he waggled the gun at his increasingly fearful guests. The device he held required only one person to test it, and as such he proposed a competition to decide who that poor soul would be. That’s how Daniel found himself playing Go Fish – a game that Delerio had chosen, which Daniel felt suited his madness quite nicely – with his life potentially on the line.

It was of little relief to Daniel when he drew his fourth four from the deck. As he laid his hand on the table in reluctant victory, he looked across the table and tried, solely through expression, to convey to Aiden how sorry he was for all this.

Aiden stared at Daniel’s cards and said nothing.

‘Capital!’ Both men jumped at Delerio’s declaration, having in their dread almost forgotten that he was there. ‘Well played, my boy. To the winner go the spoils.’

He raised the gun at Aiden and fired.

Both men cried out as a bolt of emerald energy sank into Aiden’s skin, both frozen in horrible anticipation of what its no doubt devastating effects would be. To Daniel’s surprise, nothing happened – in fact, Aiden looked more relaxed than he’d ever seen him. But a closer look revealed that his friend was more ‘tranquilized’ than ‘relaxed.’ His shoulders slumped. His jaw went slack. His eyes were half-lidded and hazy.

‘Aiden?’ Daniel’s voice rose a to a panicky shout as he shook Aiden’s shoulders, desperate to rouse his friend out of whatever trance he’d been sucked into. ‘C’mon mate, tell me you’re in there.’

‘Oh, he’s in there.’ Delerio chuckled. ‘Entirely cognizant, I assure you. He just doesn’t have any control of his body.’

Delerio bared his teeth in a cobra’s grin.

Daniel jumped back and cried out when Aiden suddenly lurched to life, straightening up and staring ahead as though he had just been plugged in. For a moment Aiden was still, eyes twitching in their sockets as though he were absorbing a command or attempting, with what miniscule control he retained, to beg Daniel for his help.

‘Aiden…’ Daniel whispered, holding his hands up and backing away at his friend advanced on him. ‘Please, mate. You’ve got to snap out of it.’

‘You’d get more of a response from a brick wall, my boy.’ Delerio clucked as he pointed the gun at Daniel. ‘Please stay where you are, if you don’t mind. I’ve waited to conduct this experiment long enough as it is – I won’t tolerate any more delays.’

Though Daniel couldn’t begin to comprehend the sort of control Delerio had taken over Aiden, he knew that any hope of he and his friend escaping would be dashed if he were to fall under a similar spell. Seeing no other choice, the man stood his ground as Aiden drew closer. He stared his friend in the eyes – seeing not so much as a spark of the self – and trembled in horrible anticipation of what Delerio would force Aiden to do to him.

Daniel was, to say the least, very surprised when Aiden fell to his knees and unzipped his friend’s fly.

‘Whoa! Hey!’ In his shock, Daniel jumped back from Aiden – only to freeze once more when he heard Delerio click his tongue in disapproval, when he saw the inventor bring his finger to the trigger of the gun. Trapped and overwhelmed, Daniel could do nothing but stand there and which as Aiden blankly fished his friend’s flaccid cock from his jeans.

‘Mate…don’t…’ Daniel groaned as Aiden started mechanically stroking the shaft without even looking at it, staring off into the middle distance as he gave his friend a robotically efficient handjob. He felt himself stiffening despite the horror of the scene, his penis caring more about the stimulation than the fear and despair in which Daniel drowned. ‘Please…please stop…’

‘Brick wall, Daniel.’ Delerio sighed, annoyed at having to repeat himself. ‘Do me the kindness of listening a little more closely to this next bit, will you? If you can pay attention while your friend flogs away at you, that is.’

Though Daniel inwardly scowled at the coy inventor’s cruelty, there was no denying that Aiden was making it very hard – difficult, Daniel scolded himself in correction, difficult, don’t even think the word hard – for him to focus on Delerio’s boasting. Though there had never been a whiff of sexual tension between himself and his friend, Daniel had admittedly imagined more than once what it might feel like for Aiden to do just what he was doing now. While whatever pleasure he might have received from Aiden’s touch had been strangled by surreality of the moment, that alone wasn’t enough to keep himself from growing achingly erect. Delerio leered as Daniel squirmed and panted, his already-tumultuous emotional state thrown into even greater discord at the thought that – if his body’s irrepressible response was any indication – there might’ve been a small part of him that was enjoying this.

That part became far more pronounced when Aiden closed his lips over the head of Daniel’s penis.

‘Aghhh…ahhhh…oh God…’ Daniel moaned and threw his head back in deeply-conflicted ecstasy as Aiden started swirling his tongue around his friend’s turgid tumescence, lapping at its leaking slit and bobbing with increasing speed on the throbbing shaft. Though Daniel’s initial instinct was to pull away – Delerio’s consequences by damned – his attempt at doing so was stymied by Aiden’s hands clamping onto his hips, keeping him still with a strength Daniel had never before witnessed. That initial instant proved his best chance to escape, as Daniel was all but paralyzed by the trembling pleasure that shivered over his goosepimpled skin. His insides resonated with the sheer sensation Daniel received from Aiden’s surprisingly expert technique – he felt as though every part of him were unifying to drive his body towards the climax his friend seemed determined to bring him to.

‘You’re a bit of a dull boy, Daniel, but I’m certain that even you could deduce that I’ve taken control of your friend.’ Delerio studied the coerced fellatio with a sort of amused detachment, with the brutally blank smile of a disturbed child torturing an animal. ‘Think me a pervert if you wish, but I couldn’t conceive of a better way to test whether my device can completely overpower the will of another. Even if your friend is of that persuasion – and good for him if he is, who am I to judge – I suspect that the last thing he’d want is to fellate his friend while the likes of me are looking on.’

Daniel only heard about every third word, gleaning enough from the inventor’s boasting to confirm that Delerio was entirely responsible for what Aiden was being forced to do. He was devastated at the thought of what Aiden must be going through, devastation that took on a bloat of guilt at the thought that one of his darkest and most forbidden fantasies was coming true at his friend’s expense.

His mind may have been conflicted, but his body couldn’t have cared less about the origin of the pleasure onto which his whole being had become focused. Daniel bit his lip and jammed his eyes shut – partly out of ecstasy, partly because he didn’t want to watch himself doing this – as he ran his hands through Aiden’s hair, as he, with increasing tempo and need, fucked his friend’s mouth.

‘That’s the spirit!’ Delerio crowed. ‘Science will march on with or without you, my boy. Might as well enjoy yourself while you’re caught up in such magnificent tumult of innovation.’

Daniel no longer heard or cared to hear the inventor’s taunts. There’s was nothing else in the world but Aiden’s mouth on his cock, nothing else that mattered but swelling ecstasy that had grown so unbearably great within him. An itchy sheen of sweat roiled over Daniel’s skin as he began thrusting his hips with new intensity, as he – even while inwardly blubbering silent apologies to the helpless man that he so readily took advantage of – held Aiden’s head still to squeeze every last drop of pleasure out of his friend’s pumping lips and swirling tongue. Daniel needed this. He needed it worse than he’d ever needed anything. He told himself that he merely wanted to end this nightmarish moment as quickly as possible, but deep down he knew he wanted nothing more than to attain the shattering climax with which he had been so torturously teased.

He got his wish.

Daniel screamed as it crashed down on him all at once, as he threw his head back and thrust his dick as deep into Aiden’s mouth as it would go. He felt his friend’s mouth contracting and working around him, and it was with a low groan of painful pleasure that Daniel realized Aiden was swallowing every last drop. That alone was enough to drive him to another couple contractions, the man shuddering and gasping every time his surging shaft throbbed within its warm and wet and delightfully stimulating confines.

Finally, he finished. Daniel inhaled sharply as though coming up for air, his softening cock slipping from Aiden’s lips as he looked down at his defiled friend. His heart fell into the cold pit that had once been his stomach, Daniel immediately remorseful beyond reproach at the sight of Aiden’s still-blank eyes – at the traces of masculine essence still clinging to his lips. The befuddling, overwhelming pleasure of the moment had passed, leaving Daniel with naught but the guilt over what he’d done and the fear that his friend would never forgive him.

‘Alright.’ Daniel addressed the beaming inventor in a small voice that shook with rage and regret. He needed every ounce of his self-control to not leap at Delerio and sock him right in his stupid smirking face, needed a second to remind himself that they were still very much at this lunatic’s mercy. ‘That’s all you need to test, right? Aiden and I can go now, right?’

Delerio twisted his lips and bobbed his head in indecision.

‘Mm.’ He shrugged. ‘Not quite yet.’

He raised the gun and fired.

Daniel had just enough time to cry out and throw up his hands in defense – hands that fell slack to his sides as he was seized by that strange green energy, feeling as though a trillion needles had sunk into his skin and pinned down every last numbed nerve. Though he screamed within his own mind – raged and cried and cursed and howled – Daniel could not, even through the most fervent resistance, so much as lift the tip of his little finger. The only control he possessed was that over his eyes, his vision possessing just enough range to see Aiden out of the corner his sight. In his friend’s eyes Daniel saw pity, despair…retribution? Something less than forgiving, at least. Daniel knew that he deserved that scorn, and resolved right then and there to do whatever he could to earn Aiden’s forgiveness.

At the moment, however, there were more pressing matters to consider.

‘Splendid!’ Delerio set the gun side and clapped in delight. ‘There’s a whole new world of experiments to conduct now that I’m certain I can control multiple minds at once. I think this calls for a celebration.’

The inventor fell silent as both Daniel and Aiden braced themselves for this new horror, the former experiencing for the first time what it was like to receive one of the inventor’s commands. He groaned within himself as a maddening itch roiled over his thoughts, swarmed over its surface before infesting the very meat of his mind. It did its horrible work in those hallowed halls before simultaneously screaming out to Daniel’s paralyzed nerve endings, body stiffly straightening as it prepared to follow the counterfeit command.

Daniel could not know what Delerio would have them do, could not guess even as he and Aiden robotically lowered themselves to all fours. Neither man could do anything but feel themselves burn in the most bottomless shame as they crawled over to the inventor, who smirked down at his captives as though they were misbehaving curs come to beg their master for forgiveness.

It was not until Delerio unzipped his fly that Daniel – with a choked inward sob – came to the crushing realization of what their task would be.

‘This, admittedly, is an unashamedly perverted act.’ The inventor snickered as he idly stroked his growing cock. ‘Certainly, it’s excellent to see that my control over my subjects remains as strong as ever even with multiple minds at my command. But really, I just need a bit of release and you two happen to be in a prime position to provide it. Do not begrudge me my indulgence, boys. Take pride in the fact that you’ve been given the opportunity to please the brilliant herald of our new and shining future.’

Pride was the furthest thing from Daniel’s mind. His entire world had become about this cock he’d be forced to suck, its girth filling his field of vision as his nostrils flared with its heady musk. As he drew closer, Daniel realized that he and Aiden wouldn’t even be granted the dignity of using their hand. They were to stretch their necks and lap at Delerio’s dick like dogs.

Daniel shuddered in revulsion when his tongue made its first long lick from base to beet-red head, the flavor of this deranged old man so appalling that he’d have gagged if he’d had the capability. Aiden looked to be enjoying the moment no more than he was, the disgust and shame evident in his gaze as he sucked alternately on the inventor’s heavy, dangling balls. Perhaps even worse than all that, however, was the way Delerio purred as he ran his hands through Daniel and Aiden’s hair. He spurred them on as though they had a choice in the matter, patting and petting as though they were beloved pets performing a trick.

This was Daniel’s lowest moment, the coerced cocksucker unable to even take solace from being this intimately close to his friend. Whether it was part of Delerio’s command or whether the contact was coincidental, he couldn’t know – what Daniel did know was that his lips brushed against Aiden’s more than once, their simultaneous fellatio so enthusiastic that it felt at times that they’d be making out if Delerio’s cock weren’t in the way. Of all the fantasies he’d had about kissing Aiden – not because he was gay, of course, just because his friend really was very handsome and his lips seemed perfect for it – none involved that barrier-breaking moment coming packaged with such base and devastating degradation. Daniel didn’t know if he’d be able to look in Aiden’s eyes after this, much less remain friends with him.

Those were matters to resolve later, though – at the moment, Daniel had to grapple with the fact that Delerio’s dick was swelling beneath their enthusiastic stimulation. Delerio grabbed at their hair as he added low groans and a grinding of his hips to his disgusting display of arousal, chuckling down at Daniel and Aiden when they begged with their eyes to not force them through this final and most shameful humiliation.

‘Sorry boys,’ he grunted. ‘I never was one to leave a job half-finished. You may consider that braggadocious, but – seeing as how I’m essentially sucking my own cock right now – you can probably guess that I don’t really care. Now open wide.’

He didn’t need to say it out loud – every other command they had been forced to follow, after all, had been a silent strangling of their will, a secret sabotage whose nature could not be known until the act was committed. No, Delerio spoke that particular command to satisfy his own depravity, to grin maniacally down at Daniel and Aiden as they stared up at him with open mouths and screaming eyes…as they, by his word, made themselves little more than targets for his essence.

The one kindness Delerio granted was the closing of their eyes right before it happened. It was as though Daniel and Aiden were before a firing squad and allowed this last mercy of darkness, though in this case it actually mattered very much if what was shot got in the target’s eyes. Still, it was a minor consolation compared to the awful reality of the moment, compared to the feeling of it splattering warm and sticky against every part of their blank faces. So much worse than that, though, was the sizable portion that landed in their waiting mouths, that thickly and bitterly coated their tongues as throats as they unwillingly, uncontrollably swallowed every last little drop.

At this point, it mattered little to Daniel if held any control over himself. He felt like doing little more than curling up into a ball and wishing away the memories of what had happened, wishing he had never stepped foot in this madman’s lair.

Relief would not be theirs just yet, however. Though they were eventually allowed to open their eyes, no other control had been returned to either man. They remained on all fours with Delerio’s seed dripping from their chins, the inventor’s disgusting flavor still lingering on their tongues as he chuckled and carelessly wiped their faces with a filthy rag.

‘Well! I’d call that an unqualified success. Wouldn’t you agree?’ He laughed again as Daniel idly scanned his surroundings for – if he were to get the chance – anything sharp he could plunge into Delerio’s throat. ‘Though there is the question of what to do with the two of you.’

Delerio rolled his eyes at the obvious horror in Daniel and Aiden’s gazes.

‘No, I’m not going to kill you. What sort of barbarian do you take me for?’ The inventor pondered over the issue for another moment before snapping his fingers in inspiration. ‘Of course! I had planned on testing it on the rats first, but I’m certain that neither of you boys mind making another small contribution to the march of progress.’

Daniel was certain that he’d grown numb to any new bout of fear or despair – and yet he felt terror seize him once more when Delerio plucked a syringe from his lab pocket, a gleaming silver instrument filled to the brim with an effervescent emerald liquid. The inventor hummed a little tune to himself as he prepared the injection, as he tapped the air bubbles out of the cylinder and without a moment’s hesitation plunged the needle into Aiden’s neck. Daniel’s heart roared in its desire for vengeance, his need to stand and strike Delerio down so great that he swore he could feel his fingers and toes moving just a bit, swore that if he kept fighting he could break free of Delerio’s grasp and –

The inventor injected Daniel. All fight fled from him. There was now nothing to be done but pray for Delerio’s mercy, to hope that he and Aiden would survive whatever he had just put into them. That very real fear – inspired not only by the inventor’s insanity but also by the malevolent, toxic appearance of the strange substance in the syringe – ramped up into overdrive as the solution churned and surged within them. It felt as though their veins were being corrupted from the inside out by being forced to carry this vicious invader to the furthest extremities of their paralyzed bodies.

Daniel numbly realized that he was going to die. That, in retrospect, might have been preferable.

The one thing that could have given Daniel solace was the knowledge that his friend was still okay, that he hadn’t yet succumbed to the strange poison razing them from within. He looked at Aiden and saw the fresh-faced, slightly awkward young man he had known in college.

Daniel wouldn’t have been able to move even if he hadn’t been paralyzed. The sight of Aiden’s youthful, almost boyish features would have been shocking enough on its own – much, much more shocking than that, however, was the realization that those features were growing more youthful and boyish by the second. The lush, manly beard of which he had been so proud was sinking back into his rounding chin, growing more scraggly and less impressive until nothing remained but the barest traces of adolescent stubble. His sleeves crept further and further down the shockingly smooth skin of his forearms as both his shirt and pants grew loose and baggy on his slimming form.

It wasn’t, Daniel realized, just because Aiden’s masculine definition was fading away – it wasn’t just because his once-broad shoulders had become unimpressively slight, nor because his increasingly gawky form could no longer fill out his fitted outfit. It was because he was shrinking.

And when Aiden met Daniel’s eyes – met them with the same evident awe, fascination, and unbridled terror – Daniel knew that he was, too.

‘Yes…yes, this is excellent. Simply excellent!’ Delerio gushed. ‘Forgive me if this feels a little too cliché, boys, but even the most brilliant among us have issues of funding to consider. I can’t just control people’s minds and make them give me money – far too clumsy, far too much of a chance of being caught. No, the way to loosen the pursestrings of those fat pigs at the top is to offer them something that all the wealth in the world cannot buy. Still, it’s a disgrace that I must apply my infinite genius towards creating something as base and uninventive as a mere youth potion – and all for the sake of a few mere dollars, no less. I must remember to add ‘smash capitalism’ to my to-do list.’

Delerio, unconcerned by the details of the transformation he had set into motion, continued spewing revolutionary rhetoric to an invisible audience as Daniel and Aiden – with dreamlike dread and overwhelming panic – were forced to accept the reality of what was happening to them. Even if the inventor hadn’t tipped his hand, there could be no mistaking the nature of their transformation once the comparatively subtle development of adulthood was behind them. Their pants slipped from their waists as their bodies contracted in on themselves, both men’s now-smooth cheeks turning a deeper shade of scarlet at the sudden exposure.

If there was any consolation to be taken, it was that their shirts now hung so ridiculously loose on their shrunken forms that they easily covered their dangling, reduced organs – a job that became much easier when said organs became small enough to be hidden by a well-placed leaf. Though Daniel sobbed inwardly at this devastating loss – tears streaming down his perpetually stoic, frozen face – his anguish was as much about his now-tiny endowment as it was what that reduction signaled. Delerio’s intent in injecting them, after all, had been to get Daniel and Aiden out of the way without killing them – meaning that he planned on ensuring their silence by making them too young to talk.

‘But I say that it is not enough to merely tear down the wage system! We must strike at the heart of power and – ’ Delerio was snapped out of his anarchistic rant by the sight of his victims passing into prepubescence, gaping at them for a moment as though he’d just remembered they were there. ‘Oh! How silly of me. All this talk of revolution and I haven’t even finished cleaning up my own backyard.’

Delerio chuckled to himself as he plucked out his phone, dialing out a number and bringing it to his ear as he smirked down at his still-shrinking subjects. The endearing awkwardness of preteendom gave way to the silliness and scrawniness of childhood, gave way once more to the bright-eyed wonder of preschool. Down, down, down, down, younger and younger, each man’s agony amplified for how closely they were forced to watch the other’s descent.

‘Hi there!’ Delerio chirped into the phone with sociopathic cheer. ‘I’m having a lovely day, thanks for asking. Listen – do you think you could send someone by my address when you get a moment? Someone’s abandoned two babies on my doorstep and I want to be certain that they go to a good home.’

It was as the ‘B’ word was reverberating so horribly within him that Daniel finally felt the burning of his insides taper and fade, felt control slowly ebb back into his numbed senses. The control he regained, however, was that of a twitchy, uncoordinated infant – one who could do little more than roll out of his clothes and onto his back, wildly waving his pudgy limbs as he felt the oncoming rush of a suitably infantile tantrum.

He was given pause only when he saw the equally-inconsolable baby gurgling and squirming next to him. Though Daniel had been there to witness every step down, it was still the greatest shock of the day – of his life – to realize that that infant was his once-grown friend. When their eyes met, Daniel knew that Aiden was struggling with the same shock…and he knew that neither curious cat could do anything but impotently wail like the helpless little babies they’d become.

 

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