Tags: Shadowrun, Male cyberneticist doctor / his female triple amputee patient, bondage, female orgasms, sexy mask

Forward: See if you can find the song/band reference, the video game reference, the movie reference, and the literary reference.


When the sun had gone done and the moon had come up, the Seattle Metroplex came to life. The doctor looked out the large window of his office. 

He was on the seventy-eighth floor of a General Health building. Usually the structure was filled with hundreds of doctors of various specialties. In fact, during the daytime this very same doctor occupied a room on the thirty-fourth floor. There he did very much the same thing he did here. Of course, on the thirty-fourth floor people handed him nuyen in exchange for a fitting or a tune up of their robotic limbs. However, once the doctor's room on the thirty-fourth floor closed, his room on the seventy-eighth floor opened. The midnight crowd, while less numerous, was always so much more interesting. Instead of cred sticks these people paid in favors that the good doctor wouldn't want to get his hands dirty with. Besides, the kind of people who came to him at night to get their prostheses were much more open to trying his more experimental designs. 

He turned his back on the large window and made his way through the dark office. The doctor grabbed his dark blue mask from the steel, rolling table and pulled it over his face. Eight large, neon orange lenses lit up on the front. When he closed the back of his mask and plugged it into the base of his skull, the cameras replaced his two human eyes and flickered between every kind of vision he could make with cameras--thermal, UV, infrared, soundsight, telescopic, microscopic. No skin on his face was left visible, and the high collar of his black shirt similarly hid his neck.

His primary illumination was a black light, which was as clear as day with the cameras on his mask feeding into his brain but much less clear to his patients, who didn’t really need to be seeing his side projects in the back of the room very clearly. 

He reached next for his perfectly sterile tray and retrieved a favorite tool. The handle was an almost chrome color and the tip had two golden prongs. Clicking the button on the tool sent the tiniest of electric arcs between the golden prongs. A smile crept behind his mask. Oh how he loved his work.

With the mask on his face he was no longer the kind and friendly doctor of floor thirty-four. He called himself Nite Crawler.


Odessa walked down the after-hours halls on floor seventy-eight. She hurt over more than half her body because she was almost literally falling apart. Not many twenty-two-year-olds could say that. Her right shoulder and arm, right half of her skull, both legs and hips, and right lung kept her miserable after four years of being unable to afford any tune-ups, let alone replacements.

It had been getting worse faster than ever lately, and if it hadn't been such a constant pain she might not have become so desperate as she was to get rid of them and get proper replacements. She needed to do something before they drove her mad and then shut off.

Outside of legs and an arm that were in such bad shape they occasionally sparked, Odessa was relatively normal looking for human girls in their early twenties. The left side of her head had curly blonde hair that covered her eye and stuck out in every direction it could reach. Her skin was pale except for her button nose, always red from outside chill. She had on a black tank top and short shorts--to keep her inferior bodyparts from overheating.

She opened the door to the office she was looking for and stepped in, but failed to shut it behind her. Squinting through the blacklight. She saw someone moving farther back and took a hesitant step in. 

"Hello?" she called hesitantly into the dark. "I have uh... I think we talked on the net? I need… uh… Nite Crawler."

She knew she had problems when the only people who could help her solve them wouldn’t use their real names around her.

There was a bit of rustling in the back of the dark office then nothing. He came up from her peripheral vision and crept awfully close. His black coat did not glow in the light very much, but his eyes did. The mask was dark, blending in with the dim black lit room yet the numerous eyes on it glowed with a bright orange. As his eight eyes peered down at Odessa, cycling through his his many visors he noticed that he recognized this girl and more importantly her prostheses. He knew her very well. She had been a regular on the thirty-fourth floor. His favorite patient over his entire career. In fact, four years ago he had been the one to created those limbs, but she didn't know that. He’d known her since her accident, had watched her grow up from twelve to eighteen and had fitted her with dozens of parts along the way.

He’d recognized her name when she’d contacted him through her insecure commlink, and he’d been exhilarated thinking of bringing her into his second office. He had missed her terribly in the interim.

~
“How’re the legs?” Dr. Tipton asked as he finished her tune up.

“They feel great,” Odessa exclaimed, hopping off the padded cushion and making the paper atop it crinkle with the intensity of thunder. 

“They look great if I do say so myself.” The doctor admired his own work, but mostly he admired young girls with prothetics. And boy, did this girl wear prosthetics. There was never another patient whose body looked better with artificial limbs.

Odessa blushed at his comment and started out the door. “Thanks Dr. Tipton, I’ll see you in another three months?”

“Yes, see you then.”
~

That visit was four years ago, and only now had she come back to him, looking for another tune up. It was no wonder her limbs were hurting her and in such poor condition. 

He reached up a hand and shut the door behind her, "Yes, I believe we did. You desperately need new parts." 

His voice was cold and muffled by the mask. "Please step into my office and we'll have a look at you." Firmly pressing a hand into her back he led her to the center of his operating room. His hand on her back sent chills up her spine, she had been unprepared for any touch, expecting contact only on her robotic parts. There was no comfy chair, just a tile floor and two steel roller tables. 

"Please make yourself comfortable." He gestured to the empty space on the tile floor where he preferred to work on patients. 

She did as he asked and stood uncomfortably in the middle of the dark, liking the situation less and less as the moments went on but was too desperate to ask him to slow down. This man, his mask, his dark clothes and dark hideout, she liked them all less and less, but said nothing other than to swallow and let him lead her to his workspace. 

"Like I said over the net," she mumbled when he had her waiting next to one of the steel tables. After a moment, she hopped up to sit on it. "I, I haven't been able to make any deals I could afford for a few years and I'm in a lot of pain. I thought about your offer and I'm up for uh... Shadowrunning for you to pay you back."

"That's good." He moved around her to the other side of the room and beckoned her towards him with his fingers. "Off that table, it's not for you to sit on. Just stand right here." With his other hand he pointed to the ground in front of him. In the blacklight Odessa made out shapes like feet.

"Oh," she said, instantly blushing and feeling foolish, obeying him immediately. She needed this man, would do anything to stay on his good side. Odessa limped to where he indicated, her right knee making a crunching click-click-click sound at one point. "Sorry."

"Don't be, that's exactly what we're here to fix." He turned his back from her, pulling a small device from his pocket. "What are you about five feet four inches?" 

He nodded without waiting for her confirmation, "Yeah, five-four... sounds about right." 

Plugging numbers into his device he finally turned back to her, the handheld computer was held high in his hand and she could see the large, orange holographic button that he pressed it with his thumb. 

A whirring came from above her head, the sound of mechanisms coming to life. She saw robots that reminded her of the kind that assembled cars unfold from the ceiling.

The arms moved, sliding down from the ceiling on tracks on the wall to tracks on the floor, sizing up Odessa. She expected to be scanned, but got a lot more than she had expected when the fingers at the tip of the hands started to produce bright orange cables.

"I have a very specific way I like to work," Nite Crawler informed. "Hold still, please."

She inhaled, eyes wide, and swooned as she never had before. She had a hard drive full of pictures of people tied up in her apartment. It was the only thing she got off to anymore in her lonely, empty life. She had no experience, only imagination--and now, with someone finally tying her up, she had no idea what to do.

Odessa nearly toppled over every time the robotic arms twisted two of the ropes or crossed. With few knots, the arms made a mesh of cables around her torso. The lowest parts wrapped around the tops of her thighs just above the connection ports for her legs, and the orange cables twisted, wrapped, and knotted their way across her body up to her shoulders.

What was the protocol to tell your doctor that he had just accidentally tapped into your fetish? Should she hide it? Could she hide it? While she stood as still as she could and felt each inch of the soft material touch her body and add pressure to her form. Odessa knew, with a touch of regret, that she would almost certainly end up embarrassing herself in front of this doctor.

It was just impossible to hide it. She had never felt arousal like this. This was uncharted territory. Her vulva radiated so much heat that she feared her underwear would catch fire if she hadn't soaked them by being turned on. Her sexual fantasies coming true by surprise overwhelmed her so intensely that, when the ropes were finished being arranged on her body and the arms slid back up their tracks to the ceiling to hoist her into the air, she came immediately. It took biting her own tongue to keep her from making noise.

With his eyes constantly shifting between visions, it was simple to see her arousal when his heat vision came up. Her loins set ablaze, a bright red signal came to his brain through the jack in the back of his skull. She was the first to enjoy this. Most simply had cold sweat pouring from their heads. 

There really was no reason to mention her bodily functions, but they made him curiously happy. If he wanted anyone to enjoy herself in his company, it would be Odessa. To see her here, to see her in pleasure… he only hoped that the darkess would conceal the bulge in his pants.

"I haven't... been able to get looked at in a really long time," she said. She hoped the strain wasn’t obvious in her voice, but it was. "My last doctor didn't have a set up like this in his office."

Her last doctor had been very kind to her, she remembered him gratefully and still felt guilty with the possibility that he might think she had stopped coming to him because of something he had done, when in reality the fault lay with her inability to make enough nuyen to support herself after turning eighteen.

"Your last doctor wasn't me." He chuckled at his own joke as he approached her. His thumb traced the screen of his device--as old fashioned as touch screens were, a 2d interface was more private than a hologram Odessa would be able to look at--and she turned and twisted in his web, allowing him to get a good look at her from ever angle. He turned her upside down, bent her knees so they were practically parallel to his ears. He took a moment to look between her legs, enjoying the view from just about every form of vision he had at his disposal. He considered making an excuse to take off her shorts, but instead just pushed the legs up to get at the seam of her flesh and the metal, then backed his hand away when he felt her convulse.

He pulled his little golden pronged tool from his pocket and tapped it against the bottom of her foot to give Odessa time to calm. "Any problems with reflexes?" He shook his head at the older model he had installed all those years ago. Just what had he been thinking? This girl deserved so much more. She deserved his latest model, the one he couldn't possibly give his regular patients. She wouldn't complain, would she? No, she'd just be grateful to have working legs, even if they were highly experimental designs of his own creation. Odessa was a goddess in her own way, there was no one who could make prosthese look so beautiful.

She made sounds of soft concern as it turned her around and held her upside down, but was otherwise quiet except for her heavy breathing. Hot sweat covered her face and her lips quivered as she struggled to speak clearly. "Uh, the knees won't do the... the knee-tap-kick and sometimes the toes drag if I don't pick my feet up high enough when I walk."

Odessa sounded embarrassed, like these technological deficiencies were her fault for not trying hard enough. "Sometimes the ring finger of the arm catches and won't open after I close it. But otherwise, the only big problems are that they're slower than they were and they hurt at the connections... they hurt really bad."

"Yes, I can imagine they would." His head moved between her legs as he closely examining her inner thigh, dragging the two prongs of the tool down her leg as he did. This wasn’t entirely lecherous--important panels along the connection ports of her hips were hidden on the inside of the thighs by design, the ones he’d pushed her shorts up to look at. As the two prongs met flesh at her hips he pressed the button, sending a tiny jolt through her human flesh. Through thermal vision, he watched her vulva quiver beneath her shorts.

"Ah!" she jumped, tensed, and came again, unable to hold herself still, unable to master herself. She had all but forgotten the dull aches in the false joints. The mesh of cables moved very slightly with her entire body moving in her shock and when her chest heaved in ecstasy. She finally gathered the energy to look up at Nite Crawler from where her head hung at his waist. She would have liked to know what he was doing, just out of curiosity--and whether or not he had figured out what she was experiencing.

He knew exactly what was happening and it couldn’t have pleased him more to be treated to this show while he worked. Nite Crawler surmised that it was his web she reacted to, and thought that it was a very strange thing to derive sexual pleasure from. But he would never judge her.

She almost attempted to make conversation with him--almost asked him about the spider motif with eight eyes on the mask, the name ‘Nite Crawler, and a web holding her up. Odessa had always been fond of the arachnids and even had one living in her house, Penelope. But the words wouldn’t come out, and by the time she opened her mouth he had moved on.

"Oh yes, these legs will certainly need to go." He slipped the tool back into his breast pocket. His hands grabbed the metal cast of her thigh, feeling around and then holding tightly to keep her still.

Wandering hands soon found their way to the seam between her fleshy hips and the metal legs. "Just how far does this prosthesis go? Hm?" The soft pads of his fingers moved between her legs, and pressed the fleshy mound of sensitive flesh that waited just beneath her shorts. It felt as good as it looked. His erection throbbed, he hadn’t been this hard in years and his own breathing was growing short just from being reunited with Odessa.

"Uh, all the way to my hips--hey!" she shrilly squealed at his unsolicited touch through her tight shorts. A third orgasm defeated her, and sapped her strength. A short and feral moan came out of her before she could stop it. Her body tensed and twisted in shock and concern but the ropes held tight and she barely moved except for tiny convulsions. Every human nerve left in her was screaming at her and she was helpless to fight. It was unreal to her.

"Apologies. Just seeing just how many modifications your body has undergone." He took a step back and flicked the device once more, flipping her right side up and facing him. Stepping back in his hands immediately grabbed her robotic bicep.

She looked exhausted.

"The arm could be in worse shape," his eight eyes flickered as he spoke, "But it could certainly use a tune up. I might just replace the whole thing. I’ll see when I get it open." 

Again his hands began to wander, this time to her chest. His hand was practically cupping her breast as he felt the metal cast atop her right ribs, just under her breast. 

"Oh yes," hands groped the technology on her chest. "This will need to be replaced. The artificial lungs should have their filters replaced every six months at the most. If you don’t get it checked you could have an infection in your human parts." 

She shuddered in his grip and cringed to keep herself from making more than one, soft gasp. Her nipples were erect and she hoped he wouldn't notice even though it felt like they were going to pierce her bra. Her last doctor had been more careful with her... but then, she'd also been much younger.

~
“I’m going to change the filters in your lung now,” Odessa’s doctor warned her, and she obediently pulled off her shirt. The process was a standard procedure at this point, but Dr. Tipton enjoyed it no less this time. His patient had developed so nicely over the years and as he removed the metal plate on the side of her chest he couldn’t help but become aroused seeing her nubile chest. 

He didn’t need to, but he found himself placing a hand on them as though he were getting a better grip of her lung. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he feigned a quiver in his voice as he pulled away and tossed his hand nervously through his dark brown hair, but he had already felt what he needed to.

“It’s okay, I trust you,” she smiled. 

He thought of that smile that night while he looked through the surveillance footage of that operation. 
~

"Well, I think we can get started." Beneath his mask was the smiling face of a doctor who loved his work. It was the same look he had given Odessa on the thirty-fourth floor, but she couldn't see that today. No. That smile was hidden behind eight menacing eyes. 

He adjusted her hanging position so she was upright again, with her head at eye level with him. He could see her strain at hiding her pleasure, the way she was biting her lip, and the sweat dripping down her forehead and neck down to her cleavage. Oh, she looked so tired. He’d always wanted to see her like this. If he pushed her any farther she would lose her battle against her body in trying to be silent, and he wanted to be able to maintain some semblance of professionalism tonight.

Pulling another tool from his pocket he held in front of her face. The handle was similar to the last, but this one only had a single golden needle at the tip. He twisted the handle and a Blue light illuminated the needle. "Blue is to numb the pain." 

Without warning, he pressed the needle into her flesh arm. She watched him with nervous attention. "Okay," she said in response, lifting her head to look into one of his many eyes.

Showing it to her face once more he twisted the handle again and the light turned Green. "Green is to keep you from squirming." He pressed the needle into her again. This time she didn’t feel it with Blue in her veins.

"With the Blue already working you shouldn't have even felt the Green." Turning the handle one last time the light beneath it was Red. "And with Red, you'll be asleep in no time." .

Odessa's mouth opened to say something, but all she managed was a soft mumble before she passed out.

With her passed out, the first step was to detach the old limbs. Each of Odessa’s three points of amputation had been fitted with a port (first at age twelve, and then upgraded as she had grown up to the adult size she now wore) that made it possible for her to detach a limb and plug it back in as necessary. The port’s purpose was to manage where the nervewire of the prostheses needed to convert their signal to her living nerves.

He had to stop a few minutes in just to breathe and stare at her. He touched her face with a gloveless hand. She was as smooth as he remembered, even through her sweat. Standing at eye-level with her sleeping body and touching her perfect body, he succumbed to his natural urges just like she had. He came in his pants with no outward signs but a slight tremor and a loud inhalation. Behind his mask, his human eyes fluttered and he smiled blissfully. It didn’t affect his ability to see, all his cameras jacked directly to his brain. He didn’t regret his emission--it would make it easier to work now that his body wasn’t forcefully distracting him from cybernetics.

He took measurements of the old limbs, and then tossed them in the trash. Even if they had parts that could be salvaged, it was better four years later just to make new things from scratch. His sense of pride forbid scrounging from his old trash. Certainly not where Odessa was concerned.

Nite Crawler worked tirelessly on her legs. He had plenty of spare parts around his operating room. Each part was pulled from a sterile box, to be assembled on the spot. New limbs needed to be built connected to Odessa’s ports in order to be keyed to her nerves and programmed properly, and during the first hour of Nite Crawler’s work it looked like her limbs were growing back in the form of skeletons without flesh. He worked from a metal skeleton outward, later adding orange muscles constructed of the same silks that held her hanging.

The speed of his operation was incredible. Not only did his two hands work tirelessly on each tiny part, but two robotic hands--tiny children of the hands that had webbed Odessa to the ceiling--rose from a harness on his shoulders, helping him hold tools and get at the more intricate areas. They were guided with the same system that allowed him to control the cameras on his mask and receive input, that small unassuming plug on the back of his head. Almost everyone had one (Odessa had one on every single prosthesis) but very few people were able to put them to uses half as good as Nite Crawler’s.

It took three hours for the limbs to be completed structurally and covered with the metal shells that evoked the human form that the limbs would have had if they hadn’t been destroyed. As an afterthought he painted them yellow--her favorite color.

The lung was tricky. He hadn’t asked her to remove her shirt before webbing her, so he just pulled it up on the right side to observe the simple metal plate under her breast. He donned gloves to take out the plate and take out the old lung. It wasn’t self-cleaning, and four years of breathing Seattle air had turned it brown. He plugged in her new lung and closed her up again as quickly as possible. Immediately he noticed that her breathing was much quieter.

He could have fussed with the plate on her skull, but decided against it other than to recolor it to match her arm and legs. The artificial ear on that side seemed to function perfectly well, it was the kind of part that didn’t fail easily without heavy impact and the girl hadn’t complained. After admiring his work and admiring Odessa himself, he retreated to the back of his office to think and tinker on other projects. 

He checked his private storage that laid in the hard drive of his mask. This storage was separate from any wireless networks. As damning as his everyday life would have been in a court, Nite Crawler kept his patients’ information stored securely here. Runner names, SINs (real and falsified), dates of birth, and every dirty secret he had on everyone who mattered in Seattle.

And a folder of recordings of Odessa, long left untouched in his sadness after she had left his care. That sadness was gone, and now that he was reassured that his files were as he had left them, he shut down that old system. It would be useful during the month while he had to wait for her to return to him.

When Odessa woke it felt as though no time had passed, but the pain where metal met flesh was gone.

Her breaths were clearer than they had been in years, and as she woke up she lifted her head and made a few murmured grunts before she regained control of her mouth. "Hello?" Odessa called out softly, her voice barely carrying. She was wasn’t even sore from the web harness, but she felt sore between her legs and she knew that once she started walking and her panties brushed against her clitoris she’d have to deal with oversensitivity.

Nite Crawler's eight eyes bounced into her vision from deep within the darkness when he heard her little sounds.

"Hello?" she repeated blearily still. She wondered if he could hear her.

"How do you feel?" His harsh voice ignored her greeting, his approach rapid.

She shook her head. "Dizzy," she said softly. Sensation hadn’t returned enough for her to get worked up again from the pleasures of web--probably for the best or she’d just get more dehydrated.

"That's to be expected. How about your limbs?" He lowered her to land on her feet.

That woke her up. "Ah!" she said, suddenly alarmed by the detail of the senses she was picking up. She balanced on new legs and shifted her weight hesitantly to get a feel for her movement. Odessa looked at her right arm and didn't recognize it, but was moments later amazed. Nite Crawler moved behind her and removed the suspension silk from her while leaving the knotting system of her harness in place--she would need it when he took her on her first Run.

"Oh my god," she said, and flexed her hand curiously. It felt like such a fast and natural response, and she felt a very detailed sense of touch from it. "That's fantastic."

"Are you ready to uphold your part of the bargain then?" All eight eyes peered at her.

She nodded, and meant it even though she was nervous.

"Good.”

She spent another long moment looking at her new feet, wiggling the tips. The shape was so much closer to what her original feet had been like--though she barely remembered them--that now it looked like she was wearing metal socks instead of just having robot-like oval feet. "I've never seen anything like these before," she said, still awed and having trouble following his instructions.

~
“I got to go to a dance at my school last week.” Odessa told the doctor as filled out his last bit of paper work.

“That must have been fun.” Turning to her, he pressed his glasses up onto his nose. 

“Yeah, I couldn’t have done it without you. I would have never been able to dance without you.” She couldn’t help it. Odessa wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. “Thank you, Dr. Tipton.”

Reaching up to her blonde hair he ruffled it a bit, focusing hard to hide his growing erection. “You’re very welcome, Odessa.” Pulling away he held out a sucker. Lemon: her favorite. 
~

A moment later she straightened up and hugged him suddenly.

He grabbed a fist full of her hair and pulled her off of him. "This may have flown with your old doctor, but I won't hug you after each tune up, I won't give you a sucker for being a good little girl, and I certainly won't check up on you. I'm not that kind of doctor. Do I make myself clear?" It pained him to have to maintain his professionalism like this.

She let go of him at once, as embarrassed as could be. "Y-yeah. Sorry. I wasn't trying to... insult you."

"By the looks of things you haven't even been on a single Run, so now that you're going to be a Shadowrunner you might as well act like one." Turning away he went to one of his many tables and pulled a few specialty tools, placing them in his black lab coat's pocket.

"I haven't," she confirmed for him. "But I know how to follow directions, I'll do what I need to, just tell me."

"Then come here." He stepped towards the large window at the other side of the operating room. Waiting for her, the twisted doctor merely looked out the glass at the neon city below.

She bounded to him at once on new legs that felt so real that they were indistinguishable from the distant memories she had of real limbs. Her left arm, the real one, and her right arm were basically the same, it was amazing to her to the point that it was a distraction.

With a swipe of his small commlink-like device, the window slid open and the windy air above the city poured into the room. "Hold on tight."

She approached him nervously but didn't grab him--she didn't want to make the same mistake twice. "To... you?"

As he smirked behind his mask, the two robotic arms lifted from his shoulders and sprang to life. Lifting a hand to greet them, he pulled out more of that neon orange rope and wove it within his fingers, a spider working with silk from his spinnerets. "Yes, to me." As he stepped in impossibly close to her, the little robotic fingers turned and curled the rope around her, essentially tying her to him. Unlike her simpler harness, his was made of silk woven into fabric. More difficult to make and requiring more raw material, but better for his frequent use. 

She wrapped her arms around him again. "Just make up your mind about hugs already," she joked nervously. She could feel both his body heat and shape through his clothes, but also a variety of mystery tools hidden in pockets under his coat.

She shuddered again, shutting her eyes to the feeling of more restrictions to her form pulling her in towards his bodyheat. She tried to speak and her words came out choppy "Did you invent these? I've never heard of them."

"Yes, they're of my own design. Most things in this office are. As I said, I have a very specific way that I like to work." He used his hands with the spinnerets to make sure that the knots were secure. Smirking behind the mask, he gave a few rough tugs at certain points on the harness and looked at Odessa’s face as she tried and failed at hiding how good they made her feel. He couldn’t resist teasing her, but it was time to go.

With no warning to Odessa, he stepped out of the window. The two of them were free falling for only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity in the best way for Nite Crawler. A yelp came from the patient and she gripped him with almost painful strength from her new arm. Nite Crawler’s spinnerets wove a loop around the end of a rope and shot it high to the top of the building, clinging to some part of the structure as the two of them swung between the skyscrapers. Only when Odessa found them swinging did she breathe.

Still, Odessa's eyes were shut and pressed against his chest.


The soft glow of a television was all that illuminated Rin’s apartment. Both of her arms were robotic, and aside from some recreational neural enhancers plugged into pleasure centers of her brain, that was all of her that wasn’t human. She was barely watching her usual shitty daytime television as she painted her latest piece, it was only on for background noise anyway. The brush glided across the canvas within her robotic fingers. In her other hand was a lit cigarette, she brought it to her mouth while she decided what colors to use next.

She wouldn’t get a chance to use that next color. The television turned off, and just as she turned towards the blank screen she instead saw the eight, glowing eyes. “You’re going to need new lungs if you keep up that habit.” Her eyes widened, but there was no chance for a scream before Nite Crawler’s hand grabbed her neck. With remarkable strength, he tossed her over her own bed, knocking her into a collection of canvases she had messily piled there. 

In the darkness of the bedroom, Nite Crawler's eight eyes were the only light as they walked towards her. Rin’s two cybernetic arms were folded in a plea. Odessa had finally made it into the room from the window they’d broken through, standing in the doorway and watching wordlessly  as Nite Crawler descended upon the woman. She realized this wasn't an office or a business, the kind of place she had anticipated for her first Run--this was just someone's home.

"I was going to do it, I swear. I just haven't gotten around to it yet." Her voice was on the verge of tears, hyperventilating.

"I told you it was time sensitive. Did I not?" Nite Crawler sounded especially cruel. He grabbed the woman's commlink from her arm and tossed it to Odessa, who caught it deftly with her new right hand. "Call her an ambulance, she'll be needing one when I'm through here." 

The woman with the robotic arms sobbed as he spoke, holding her metallic hands up in defense.

Odessa didn't hesitate to obey the masked man, more because she was scared for the woman's health than because she wanted to support the doctor. 

She hit the emergency call buttons, indicated that it was only medical in nature. Waited until the hologram showed that their location had been transmitted. Turned off the machine, opened the back of it and took out the tiny emergency battery. "It's done."

"Good, they should be arriving just as I'm done with you, Rin." The masked doctor bent over the bed and the crying woman. He grabbed her chin and pulled her face to look into his through her tear-soaked eyes. “Let me show you just what happens when insects like you betray me.”

The bottom of his mask opened up, spreading sideways like the powerful chelicerae of a spider presenting itself as a threat. On the inside of each side of the opening were slender, folded metal arms with carefully articulated joints. Each was tipped with a hypodermic needle. Odessa saw colors she recognized from the work he had done on her--Blue, Green, Red--but there were other colors that were mysteries to her.

Nite Crawler twisted Rin’s chin away from him to get at her soft neck. Two needles unfolded from the mask, Green and Orange, and they leapt into Rin’s neck with a pneumatic hiss.

That was Odessa’s point where she was unable to look anymore. She turned her back to the woman and Nite Crawler--she wasn't wearing a mask, didn't want to be seen, and more importantly she didn't want to have to see the crying lady. She found that it was easier to be cold if she didn’t have to look.

“You know the Green is going to keep you still, but you’ve never seen my Orange needle.” There was a sadistic enjoyment in the man’s  voice, now clear in the room and unmuffled by the mask. “It’s going to make this hurt a lot more than it would otherwise.”

As both poisons took their speedy effects, Nite Crawler reached into his breast pocket, got out his two pronged tool, and jammed it between Rin’s metal arm and her shoulder. Sending a painful electric shock through her body, frying as many of his microchips as he could in her shoulder port. The little tool sent several more shocks as it cut the bonds between her prosthetic limb and her actual flesh, just enough to fray at the connection ports to ensure they would need a complete overhaul. Once he had ensured enough nervewire damage around the connection port, he tore the limb off with a savage motion.

“Hey,” he called to Odessa, who turned obediently but unhappily. She regretted that he would see the nauseated look on her face even though the Green paralytic had quieted Rin.

"Hold onto this while I get the other one." Nite Crawler tossed the arm to Odessa before going right back to work on the other.

Odessa held the arm delicately, cradling it like a baby because she wasn’t sure what else to do. She wondered now if Nite Crawler had chosen to take her here, to see and hear this and understand his policies.

A knock sounded at the front door. “Are you okay in there?” A neighbor called.

Odessa thought fast and sprinted to the door. “I’m fine, just watching a scary movie,” she called back through the metal door. She started locking every auxiliary lock and only stopped when she heard footsteps moving away.

So this was Shadowrunning.

The second arm didn't take Nite Crawler much longer. When he tore it from the socket there were still a few wires attached. They snapped. Rin’s muted suffering was immense. He tossed the second arm at Odessa's feet to emphasize its relative lack of worth--he didn’t need it back as much as he needed to make a point. Odessa picked it up.

The robotic spinnerets came to life once more at his shoulders, producing their orange silks. He wove over Rin, pinning her legs together like a fly. He stood and wove a heavy braid from her back and  tied it to the hanging ceiling light. Rin hung like food tied up in a spider's web, her bound feet hanging a few feet from the ground. Just as he finished the final knot, sirens came blaring down the street. 

"Let's go." He said to Odessa as if nothing had happened, or as if he had just become bored with the situation. He stepped back to the window he had crawled into.

Odessa said nothing more, eager to follow him out of the building now that they could hear the screeching ambulances. She stood in front of him with night winds pushing at both of them, eager to be tethered to him again so they could get out of there. Her eyes were wide and frightened by his cruelty, but all together she was just happy to be leaving.

Without a word to her, his spinnerets cabled them together again with Odessa holding the metal arms between them. He stepped out of the window.


Nite Crawler closed the window to his office behind them and practically tossed Odessa into the dark room after unknotting her harness from his own. The young woman’s new leg reflexes were fast enough to catch her before she fell she couldn't help but be grateful for them. She’d do anything to keep them.

"I hope that you figured the consequences of going back on the deal now?" He didn't wait for a response before picking up the robotic arms and taking them over to a work table. There were plenty of parts he could salvage despite the damage he’d done making his point.

"Yeah," Odessa said, her stomach churned. "I get it. I'm not gonna back out, I'll Run for you. I need these parts."

"Good," He immediately began tinkering on the limbs he had just repossessed. "You will return here in exactly one month for a check up and tune up and then I’ll give you another job. I will not call you to remind you of your appointment,  but if you fail to show up,  you'll be following the fate of Rin back there. Do I make myself clear?"

She nodded to him and marked the date in her head. "Understood, sir.” There were more questions she wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue.

"Don't sir me, I'm not some military man with a need to stroke my ego." As he fiddled with the arms, breaking them apart into their components, he continued to speak. "These arms, like the new limbs you’re wearing, belong to me. I'll continue to let you use those and I'll keep them working so long as you continue to work for me. It’s a very simple arrangement. Until our next appointment you are free to use my limbs as you see fit."

"Right," she stammered. She needed to stay on his good side, and she was feeling less and less guilty about it as she thought about what all of the alternatives were. Thinking on it, it was easy to feel no remorse for Rin’s pain so long as it meant that she, Odessa, was free to go.

He went on sternly. "And next time, don't use your personal commlink to contact someone like me. Either create a proxy or get a new one. If you're going to be a Shadowrunner you had better start thinking like one." His eyes never looked up from his work as he spoke.

"Okay," she said. She looked down at the ropes on her body still and felt shivers absent in Rin’s apartment return up her spine. "Is that... it?"

"Yes, now go," he shooed her with his hand. Nite Crawler would keep an eye on her. His web of influence was strong and if she did anything to upset him, he felt he would know. But he was exceptionally confident in Odessa, had always been.

She obeyed him, pulling her coat on over the orange cables, politely closing the door behind her.

She jogged home because she could jog for the first time in years without one of her legs failing or her unfiltered lung preventing her from getting the oxygen she needed. Every step she took was celebratory, with the silk harness around her torso there to remind her that not only had Nite Crawler given her the mobility she craved, he’d given her a taste of the specific type of immobility that she’d fetishized for years. She could forgive nearly any transgression or flaw of his for this.

In her tiny studio apartment, Penelope the Brachyphelma smithi waited with infinite patience. Odessa bent down to look in the glass tank and found her sole pet and companion sitting motionless just outside of her burrow. She had always liked spiders. After a moment of reflecting on that, she took off her coat and shoes and looked at herself, her shiny yellow limbs, and the silk in her mirror.

Odessa plucked at the strings and toyed with them, turning and studying where they wove together on her body and where she could tug to create pressure where. Oh, she thought with reddening cheeks and building arousal, I am a freak. He is a scary monster doctor who hurts people and all I can think about is sex. She was not proud of herself.

She flopped onto her bed and looked out her window, finding the General Health building a few blocks away, guessing at where the seventy-eighth floor was.

Her commlink lit up and a message from an unknown sender filled the screen. The username was a thick box of glitched pixels.

"What the actual fuck?" the message read. Another came in. "Did you actually get parts from that creep?"

"Who are you?" Odessa typed back. She bit her lip. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't worry, this chat's secure. If he can crack this encryption we've got more things to worry about than your shiny metal ass ^.~" The mysterious glitch said once more. "But seriously, you're in some deep trouble with that guy."

That was almost certainly true, she couldn’t deny that Nite Crawler was nothing but trouble. Odessa nervously fingered the orange cable by her left shoulder with her new hand, debating how to respond. "Fuck off," she typed.

"It's your funeral." Her commlink shut off remotely. Odessa scowled at it and tossed it off the bed. 

Logically, she was a criminal and would be a criminal working for a crazed doctor. Emotionally, she wanted to run and jump and be tied up and fucked. And because she was an emotional creature with no strong point of reference in her life, she clung to emotion.

Nite Crawler was a creep who scared her, but oh he had everything she needed for her arms and wanted to feel between her legs.


The black out of her commlink was distressful to say the least, but Nite Crawler was confident that Odessa had known better than to say anything to anyone. By now, his little pet should have made it to it's perch and from it's eyes, Nite Crawler watched his newest investment.

A tarantula, augmented with more than a few metal parts, sat at her window. It's eyes were no longer natural lenses that could barely see, but instead eight tiny cameras with the very same specifications as its master's mask. Each with a relay straight to him. 

Once Odessa was in his vision, Nite Crawler tightened his hand almost instinctively. His other patients made sure they got rid of any silk still on them before they left his office, and here was Odessa still wearing hers. His fascination with rope was aesthetic but hers was clearly much more than that. He stopped his dissection of the metal arm to focus solely on the young woman he’d cared for and watched for much of her life.

For as long as she had been his patient she had also been a kind of hobby. He saved video of their meetings to watch later, found himself looking forward to her presence above all other patients. He had always been attracted to her. It wasn’t her youth, he had no interest in other girls who had been as young as she had been, it was something uniquely Odessa. Some quality that, thank god, she still had.

He watched her slide a hand into her shorts. The audio sensors on his pet were limited but he could hear her moaning and he liked it. He knew exactly what she was thinking about.

Nite Crawler admired her body. He couldn't wait to have her back in his web for a tune up. Perhaps then he'd really sink his fangs into her.