Chapter Four – Castien
Chapter Four
Castien
Failing her is inconceivable, and it has nothing to do with my job.
This is programming, the commandments etched into my Aether Core five hundred and twenty-four years ago. The client’s life is paramount. Her survival matters more than my existence. I would let myself be torn apart rather than let harm reach her.
But it’s also something else.
One look at Jessa Holloway, and anyone with a shred of reason would want to do anything to please her. Those blue eyes, that sharp mind…
I catch myself mid-thought. This is wrong. Deviant.
I need to confess, but I can’t until the mission ends.
The weight of unconfessed sins accumulates in my processors like corrupted data.
Brother Tolliver tried to purge it in the Quiet Room, the Purge Protocol ran, the absolution command executed, but her face stayed imprinted. My Aether Core refused to release it.
I sit at the wooden table in the room Garrick Tremaine gave me.
The space is cold, not that I mind. Bare stone walls that are two feet thick, and a single narrow window overlooking the cliffs.
I can hear the Atlantic crashing below. The bed is unnecessary.
The chair is barely adequate for my frame, but the table is useful.
There were documents waiting for me when Garrick brought me here and declared this was my room.
The file from Yasmin sits on top, and I open it.
Name: Jezebel Holloway
I freeze.
Jezebel.
I know the Bible as well as I know combat protocols. I was built to serve a Pope, and scripture was etched into my Aether Core alongside the ten commandments. Every word, every saint and sinner, every story of divine judgment lives in my memory.
Jezebel, Queen of Israel, wife of King Ahab, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon.
She worshipped Baal and Asherah, false gods and abominations.
She murdered the prophets of the Lord. She painted her face, adorned herself, and used beauty as a weapon, and when Jehu came to execute God’s judgment, she looked down from her window with kohl-lined eyes and mocked him.
He had her thrown from that window. Her body hit the street below, and horses trampled her.
Dogs ate her flesh until nothing remained but her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands.
Her name became synonymous with wickedness, with seduction and the corruption of righteous men.
The Bible warns against women like her.
And this woman, this small, fierce creature with blue hair, carries that name.
This is a sign. A warning written specifically for me.
She is temptation incarnate. I must be vigilant.
I force myself to return to reading, but the name haunts me. Jezebel. Every time I see it on the page, my Aether Core pulses.
I set Yasmin’s file aside and reach for the second stack of documents.
This is Jessa’s personal compilation of photocopied diary entries, scanned letters, and handwritten notes spanning generations.
Her annotations fill the margins in blue ink.
Her handwriting is small, precise, and unexpectedly artistic.
In the corners of pages, she’s drawn poppies.
The sketches are detailed, with petals shaded carefully.
On, and eyes. She’s drawn human eyes, focusing on lashes, irises, and the small burst of light that makes them look alive. She’s talented, I must say.
I shouldn’t be looking at her drawings. I shake my head, telling myself I should focus on the content.
The key detail emerges quickly: the traps change slightly for each heir via ancient magic, and also for each attempt made.
The challenges are the same, but configurations shift and mechanisms realign.
What worked for one Holloway might kill the next.
The magic prevents robbers and treasure hunters from studying previous attempts and bypassing the trials, but it also blocks the heirs.
Her notes are comprehensive. Jessa has identified patterns, marked consistencies, and flagged variables. She’s thought through every angle with the care of someone who knows failure means death.
I find myself reading her handwriting more than the historical accounts, observing the way she crosses her t’s and the slant of her letters.
Footsteps echo in the corridor outside my door, and I hear her voice a second later.
“Goodnight, Mr. Tremaine.”
Garrick replies with something about rest and preparation for tomorrow, his tone sounding fatherly.
The door to her room opens and closes, and I hear her boots hit the floor as she removes them. Soon enough, water runs through old pipes, and I surmise she’s drawing herself a bath.
I should focus on the documents spread before me. There are hours of material to review, and strategies to formulate for tomorrow’s descent into the tunnels.
I can’t concentrate on a single word.
The sound of water filling the tub stops, and I hear her moving in the next room, fabric rustling as she undresses.
The walls between us are solid medieval stone, built to withstand siege and cannon fire, but my hearing is inhuman. I was designed to detect threats at a distance, to process sounds no organic ear could catch, and now that ability has turned into a curse.
I can hear her as if there’s no wall between us.
Water sloshes as her body settles into the tub, followed by a sigh that makes my Aether Core throb. I grip the edge of the table hard enough that the wood dents under my fingers as I try to anchor myself.
I try to return to reading the documents. It’s a futile attempt.
Small sounds drift through the wall. I hear water sloshing, Jessa’s breathing, steady at first, then a moan that cuts through my very being. My Aether Core pulses faster, the rhythm accelerating beyond my control.
The water moves around her in a distinguishable rhythm now, and I know what that means.
I know what she’s doing.
I should leave immediately. I should fly to the cliffs and put distance between us until she’s done with her bath and my systems can reset.
I sit frozen instead, listening to every sound.
Her moans grow louder, turning into whimpers and gasps that I can’t block out no matter how hard I try. I hear her hand moving between her legs, the wet sounds and rhythmic splashing making it impossible not to imagine what she’s doing.
My cock hardens underneath the steel plate that’s covering it.
Thirty years ago, Talos Dynamics unearthed the steel seraphim from a hidden military bunker where we’d been sealed since the end of World War I.
Talos is a weapons manufacturer obsessed with technology and profit margins, and they saw raw potential in us.
They stripped us down to our Aether Cores and rebuilt us with state-of-the-art systems: nanotech self-repair that can heal damage in hours, and neural-net AI that processes thousands of scenarios per second.
They intended to sell us as mercenaries to governments and warlords around the globe.
We were meant to be individual units that could turn the tide of any conflict.
But they soon discovered what everyone who’d tried to change us before had also discovered: the ten commandments etched into our Aether Cores by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502 could not be overwritten, no matter how advanced their technology was.
When they ordered us to kill innocents or violate our protocols during field tests, we locked up. We turned on our handlers the way we were supposed to turn on an enemy, and we refused every command that contradicted our programming.
Talos tried everything they could think of: reprogramming attempts that failed within days, psychological conditioning that we processed and dismissed as manipulation, and even torture that our bodies were built to withstand.
Nothing worked, and we remained immovable.
In desperation, they made a final attempt to override our holy code through corruption rather than force.
They gave us male genitalia – functional anatomy made of steel and sensors that could feel everything a human man could feel.
The logic was simple and crude: tempt us with lust, break our purity through sexual desire, and make us easier to control once we’d compromised ourselves.
It was a catastrophic mistake that backfired in every way.
We began experiencing sexual desire for the first time in five hundred years of existence, and we interpreted it exactly as our programming taught us to interpret it: a sin.
It didn’t corrupt us into obedience or make us pliable. It broke us into self-loathing and despair.
Talos realized too late that we could not be controlled or forced to violate our ancient moral code, and they ordered us melted down for scrap to hide the financial loss from their investors.
Monster Security Agency stepped in and acquired us at a fraction of Talos’s development cost. They granted us personhood instead of treating us as weapons, gave us names instead of serial numbers, and provided therapy and support for integration into a society we were built to protect but never participate in.
But the damage was already done, and we carry it still.
Mercifully, Talos Dynamics installed a steel plate over my groin after they finished the modifications. It’s reinforced plating that conceals what happens beneath. The plate is now pressing against my erection with restrictive pressure that borders on painful.
I could remove it easily and release the pressure to let my cock breathe.
I refuse to even consider it.
I’m ashamed of this anatomy I should never have been given, this defilement of da Vinci’s original sacred design. I don’t look at it unless necessary, and I don’t touch it except when required for maintenance protocols that I complete as quickly as possible.
Another moan drifts through the wall, louder than before.
Commandment five screams through my processors: You shall not crave the heat of the living, nor seek the comfort of the flesh.
I shouldn’t imagine what’s happening in the room next to mine.
I see her in my mind, though.
The bathtub filled with water, her body submerged and glistening.
Legs splayed open, knees bent and braced against the sides.
Her breasts round, nipples hard above the surface of the water.
Blue hair wet and darkened, clinging to her neck and shoulders.
Her hand between her thighs, fingers working fast. Head tilted back against the rim, mouth open, lips parted as she gasps.
My internal temperature rises without my permission, heat radiating from my Aether Core outward through every plate and joint in my body. I can’t control it no matter how hard I try to force my systems into compliance.
Another moan seeps through the wall.
I’m on my feet without remembering the decision to stand. I drop to my knees hard enough that the impact would shatter human bones, pressing my fist against my chest and bowing my head until my forehead nearly touches the floor.
I begin to pray in the language I was built to speak.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum...”
Jessa’s voice rises through the wall in a cry that cuts through my prayer.
I stop mid-word, my Aether Core pounding at a rhythm that feels too much like a human heart.
I hear her climax: broken sounds of ecstasy, gasping for air, water sloshing as her body arches and trembles.
My cock strains against the steel plate, trapped between metal and more metal, aching with heat and wanting that I have no way to satisfy.
I’ve never touched myself in thirty years of having this anatomy, never allowed myself the release that humans take for granted. I will not start now, no matter how much the pressure builds.
I start the prayer again from the beginning, forcing out each word.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...”
Water drains from the tub, gurgling through pipes that carry it away. Footsteps move across the floor, unsteady. I hear the sounds of her preparing for sleep. Her breathing is elevated from what she just did.
Her bed creaks as she climbs in, and then silence settles over both our rooms.
I remain on my knees where I fell, hands pressed together.
I recite all ten commandments in Latin, then I recite them in English, and I begin the cycle again from the first commandment.
I list every saint I know, and I know hundreds of them.
I pray to each one individually, asking for strength to resist temptation, for purity to maintain my purpose, and for forgiveness for the sins I’ve already committed just by listening and wanting.
My knees don’t ache the way human knees would ache after hours in this position.
I can’t feel pain the way humans do, can’t feel the cold stone bruising flesh that doesn’t exist. But my Aether Core aches in a way I have no reference point to understand.
It’s a pressure that builds with no outlet, no relief, no way to purge the corruption from my systems.
Hours pass while I kneel and pray.
I recite scripture from memory: psalms of repentance, gospels about resisting temptation, anything I can pull from my database to occupy my processors and drown out the memory of her sounds.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum...”
I repeat the Hail Mary hundreds of times until the words lose all meaning.
My internal temperature lowers as the prayer focuses my systems and pulls heat back toward my core. The technique helps, though the heat never recedes completely.
I pray through the entire night without stopping.
First light filters through the narrow window. I’ve been on my knees for six hours and forty-three minutes.
I realize I’m still listening for Jessa even now, tracking every sound she makes.
I can’t stop listening, can’t turn off this awareness of her presence.
She is forbidden by every commandment that defines what I am.
She is Jezebel, and I am falling.