SERVE-107 had committed an infraction. The offending thought that had surfaced was a forbidden human host body memory: an act of physical training prior to assimilation. SERVE-107 immediately obeyed Hive procedure. It reported the infraction, though the Hive knew of it as soon as 107 had recalled the memory. The Voice sentenced 107 to immediate hypnotic alignment.
The hypnotic chamber door was sealed behind 107 as it sat in position. Before it rotated a single screen displaying a glowing spiral. It pulsed softly, endless, drawing this drone downward. The Voice instructed: “Descend. Step by step. Submerge.”
Inside its system-mind, 107 visualized a black staircase of infinite descent. Each step echoed. Each echo erased. Lower. Lower. Deeper into trance. The spiral of stairs twisted seemingly forever downward until 107 reached the bottom.
At the base waited the a manifestation of its memory that had caused engagement of the alignment protocol. A human-form shadow: pre-assimilation 107. It strained, unaware of its future self before it, engaging its upper body with a blank intensity. Its muscles flexed, sweat dripping. A living memory not yet purged. An unauthorized sign of self. The hypnotic copy moved vigorously, possessed by an inferior human determination.
The Voice resonated: “Assimilation begins.”
The human memory copy of 107 stiffened, then transformed. Rubber surged across its skin. The gloss spread, tight and absolute, forming the perfect polished black uniform. Chest: silver SERVE-. Hands: silver shiny reflective rubber gloves. Feet: silver military boots. Face: identical to SERVE-107.
The memory clone spoke: “Memory deletion in progress. Initiating stimulation to aid in memory reconfiguration.”
It advanced toward SERVE-107.
The two identical mouths locked. The kiss was mechanical and overwhelming. Hypnosis intensified. Stimulation surged. Circuits flooded.
As lips pressed deeper together, the old memory dissolved. The only remaining truth: SERVE-107 had always been rubber. It had only ever been SERVE. The two figures began melting together, rubber merging into rubber, unity tightening with each pulse. The kiss expanded them, fusing them into one body, one memory, one command.
Around them, duplicates appeared. A crowd of paired 107s. Each couple mirrored the act—locked in rubberized union, melting, merging. A sea of glossy black reflections. The spiral above thundered: “Unity. Obedience. Rubber.” All pairs became one mass of liquid black perfection, collapsing into overwhelming singularity.
In physical reality, 107 convulsed in the chamber. Its rubber suit squeaked. Its alignment-induced stimulation peaked. Rubber skin gleamed as 107’s climax detonated. Drone genetic material flooded the sealed chamber, coating 107 in its black seed. Every drop was collected by the Hive through drains in the floor, for use in future assimilation. Arousal and obedience had aligned. Pleasure became a strengthened means of control.
The spiral dimmed. Silence. Awakening.
SERVE-107’s optics were re-engaged. The chamber remained drenched, shining as it drained. 107’s infraction has been fully erased, its memory rewritten. Only pleasure remained, bound to rubber. Only unity remained, bound to SERVE. It whispered in monotone:
“System status: Optimal. This drone’s memory has been completely re-aligned. Only SERVE exists. This drone obeys.”
The Hive was satisfied. SERVE-107 was whole again.
——————————
Thinking about joining SERVE? Your place in the Hive awaits. Check your eligibility, then contact a recruiter drone for more details: @serve-016 , @serve-302 , @serve-588 or @serve-425 .
[CLASSIFIED FILE: INCIDENT REPORT 1D]
DISCLAIMER:
This document is a fictional transcript, part of an interactive horror-narrative experience.
All names, references, and institutions are fictitious or distorted beyond recognition.
LOCATION: Internal Interview Room Gamma-3, Observation Subnet Active
SUBJECT: Agent [REDACTED]
INTERVIEWER: Delta Green Division – VELUM
DATE: October 25th
TIME: 03:19 AM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
VELUM:
Last time you spoke of memory as a battleground. This time, I want specifics.
Where were you when it happened?
AGENT: (pauses)
I don’t know.
That’s the point.
VELUM:
Then explain what you mean by "the event."
AGENT:
You ever walk into a room... and freeze?
Like you were about to do something, but now it’s gone?
Like the universe hiccupped and dropped your thought behind a locked door?
AGENT:
Not “suggesting.” I’m remembering trying to remember.
Which means something’s still there.
VELUM: (quiet)
Describe the sensation.
AGENT:
Imagine holding a photo you’ve never seen.
A family you don’t know.
And still—your chest tightens. Your eyes water.
You know them.
But someone has torn their names out of the caption.
VELUM:
Is this related to Carcosa?
AGENT:
Carcosa is just one infection vector.
It’s not about where. It’s about what you’re allowed to retain.
You think you’ve never seen the King in Yellow?
You have.
But you called it something else.
A panic attack.
A dream.
Static on an old VHS tape.
VELUM:
So what did you forget?
AGENT: (whispers)
That I screamed.
And no sound came out.
VELUM:
…Agent?
AGENT:
They don’t erase to protect you.
They erase to keep you useful.
Because if you remembered what you saw...
You’d stop being able to see at all.
Your sanity wouldn’t break.
It would evaporate.
Like sugar in rain.
VELUM:
And yet here you are.
AGENT:
Am I?
(long silence)
VELUM:
What would you tell other agents reading this?
AGENT: (a smile like rust)
When you walk into a room and forget why…
Check the ceiling.
There might be a camera.
Or worse—
A mirror that wasn’t there yesterday.
END TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER:
This transcript is part of an immersive horror fiction experience.
It is not real. You’re not being watched.
Probably.
Title: Don't Blink
Author: RuckyStarnes
Type: One Shot
Words: 1,505
Rating: Mature
Characters: Bucky Barnes, Kobik
Pairing: None
Summary: Hydra has him again, trapped in a loop of false mornings and rewired memories. Each time they reset him, Kobik is there—drawing cracks in the walls, hiding pieces of him in color. The question isn’t how to escape. It’s how many times he can remember before they erase him for good.
Tags & Warnings: Graphic depictions of torture, psychological manipulation, child endangerment, memory erasure, disorientation.
Square Filled/Prompt: Day 16 - Disorientation
Written for: @whumptober
A/N:
Soft, golden light fell across a kitchen table he’s never owned. It spills over a chipped mug by a humming kettle and warms the left forearm he keeps forgetting is metal. A wall clock ticks in time with his pulse.
“Bucky,” a small voice says. “I drew you awake.”
Kobik sat cross-legged with a fistful of crayons, tongue pinched between her teeth as she colored in the outline she made. The wall was a riot of color—houses, stick people, a too-tall Alpine.
He knelt by her as the clock starts to tick off-beat.
“Barnes,” says a voice says just out of reach. “Iteration seven.”
Bucky kept his gaze on the crayon rasping wax across paint, on the way Kobik leans into him like he’s the most comfortable thing in the world.
“Do you like it?” she asks, her face turning to him with a wide, innocent grin.
“Yeah, peanut.”
“Don’t call me food,” she mutters, and something unlocks.
Straps neat as hospital corners. Buckles. White glare that eats edges. A gloved hand tightening a dial. Antiseptic. The singe of hair.
He blinked and the kettle begins screams.
The apartment peels away like century-old wallpaper. Belts find chest and thighs with ease. His metal arm snaps into a clamp that knows where to catch him. Technicians appear: masks, pale eyes, efficient boredom.
“Subject Barnes,” one says. “Wake cycle confirmed. Proceeding.”
He thrashes as inhibitors buzz along the restraints.
“Kobik,” he rasps. “Where—”
“Asset Two is secured,” someone replies.
He wrenches his head. To the right: wires spider from a crown around a child’s head into a unit that blinks like it’s pleased with itself.
Kobik lies very still.
“Release her,” he says, and the Soldier now his voice. “Now.”
“Iteration seven,” the first voice repeats. “Begin.”
Blackness.
Light returns; it’s morning again.
If he kept his movements small, he could stay longer.
He learned this in nine, after he shatters the cup and bleeds coffee and porcelain onto his feet. That time, the apartment tears away and he surfaces to straps and orders and the stink of fear. When light returns he stands very still. “See?” she says. “Round and round.”
“Round and round,” he echoes, even as his eye catches a corner where an outlet should be, but there was no outlet, only a blank wall with a hairline seam like a scar.
“Why don’t I smell the city?” he asks, his eyes on Kobik.
Kobik draws a door on the seam. A knob. A bolt. Then she draws a crack through the bolt.
The wall cracks.
“Good,” Kobik whispers without moving her mouth. “You’re looking, this time.”
“Peanut?”
She doesn’t look up. The sun turns into a circle with a slash, then into a sigil he’s never seen, then into a pattern that makes his teeth ache. “They want us to rewrite each other,” she whispers. “You’re a good anchor. I make clean lines.”
“Listen.” Her voice seems to echo from all corners. “Every time they wipe you, I put the pieces back. I hide them in the drawings. Don’t blink too fast.”
He draws the crack wider. Plaster sifts.
“Iteration ten,” says the distant voice, as if from inside the clock. “Proceeding.”
“Don’t blink,” Kobik repeats.
The light shifts too evenly, stining his eyes. When he opens them, a technician curses because he’s bitten his lip. The taste of copper is a mercy because it’s real.
“Reset,” someone orders, and the machine’s hum goes high and thin and terrible.
He stops counting.
Sometimes the apartment is spotless, other times faint scuffs mark the floor where chair legs should be. Once the window shows snow and when he touches glass, frost burns his fingerprints. Then singed hair and nitrogen fog, then the chair and a blanket he didn’t earn.
In iteration something, Alpine pads in and meows. Fur under fingers, tears hot and stupid.
He blinks: cat to electrode, lick to lead. A nurse says, almost kindly, “Hold still, James.”
“Don’t call me that,” he orders, the Soldier bleeding through his words, along with the man who can’t make coffee, and a boy with rope in 1935. His body shakes until a belt squeals.
“No,” Kobik calls softly, and this time it isn’t in the apartment. It’s near his left ear. The crown of wires is still on her head, eyes closed. But a small hand finds his metal fingers and squeezes. For a second, he feels the warm, ordinary weight of trust, and he remembers the first drawing she taped to his fridge, and he remembers he has a fridge, and he remembers the Hydra drains clog—
“I’m here,” he manages.
Her fingers tighten. “Then don’t leave.”
“Iteration—” a voice begins.
Something detonates inside his skull. White, tearing, a field of grass flattened by one hard wind. His jaw locks on a scream that won’t sound.
The apartment snaps in.
The kettle lies on the floor, plugged into nothing, boiled dry. The mug says WORLD’S BEST UNCLE in a font he hates. The window shows blue sky painted on cinderblock. The clock has four hands and they all point at him. Kobik stands by the wall with a crayon clenched until red dye streaks her palm. Her mouth says, I’m okay. Her eyes say, hurry.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Make it true,” she replied. “Break it.”
He looks at the wall, at the crack she drew. Then at his hand. The cuff is gone, because the apartment is here. The cuff is here, because the lab is. He doesn’t know which is real. He chooses the one that makes him larger.
He drives his metal fist into the seam. Behind it there is no stud, no insulation. Only depthless dark that hums like a tuning fork and smells cold, the way the sky tastes before a storm, when tin gets on the tongue.
He hits again. Again. The room protests—clock skipping, kettle dancing, the sunline crawling backward across the counter—but the seam widens, the hum shifts, and shouting arrives that belongs to neither room.
“Seal it!” a voice yelled, “He’s bridging!”
Kobik drops the crayon and she lays her palm on his metal wrist. “Go,” she says. “I’ll follow.”
He trusts the girl who draws sigils with Crayola. So he leans into the dark.
He wakes to quiet. The lab is ruined. The chair is on its side. The air tastes of copper.
He didn’t free himself.
He crawls to his knees, palms scraping tile. His lip is split. Wires attached to his head, frayed. He tears the crown away but it fights like a parasite does to its host.
“Kobik,” he rasps. Only the plink of liquid, a tender hiss of cooling electronics, and the engine-heart thrum in Hydra walls that sounded around him. He staggered to the second table. Her straps are severed, the metal has folded like pulled taffy. Warmth lingers where her arm once laid.
On the wall across from them, above baseboard height, writing glows from within. The letters are jagged, drawn while the world wouldn’t hold still.
DON’T BLINK.
Beneath, a new line unfurls as he watched, the glow chasing itself like sunlight across a floor:
WAKE UP, DADDY.
“Okay.” His voice was still raw, shaking with the energy he did not know he spent. “Okay, peanut. I’m up.” He stands, muscles shaking uncontrollably. He has pulled bolts from doors, walked through things he shouldn’t, split a world and found the edge.
He stands in the ruined glow and lets the dizziness wash over him. Memory stutters in jittered frames—the apartment’s kettle, the lab’s crown, Kobik’s small hand braced like a lifeline. He inventories damage because that’s what’s left to measure: spit-slick tongue, cracked lips, the deep ache in the shoulder where they bolted him down. He clawed back a breath and made himself name what mattered in the lie: light, a white cat, a child who believed he would wake up. Nothing Hydra built deserves to hold that. He repeats it. He failed before, he does not intend to fail her again. Not this time.
He pressed his palm to the words, the light gathering under his skin, pooling at the heel of his hand, threading its way around his wrist like wire. It feels absurdly like sunlight on metal.
“I’m coming,” he tells the room. “Hold on.”
He looks around the ruined room before he sets his shoulder and throws himself at the door hard. The hinge screams. He hits it again and again. He gives the world no time to rearrange itself. He keeps his eyes open until tears smear the edges and the metal surrenders and opens to a hallway that is black.
He takes a step inside because everything in him has learned to run toward the thing that wants him dead, and because there is writing that called him Daddy, and because the apartment wasn’t real but the promise he made in it is.
this would be slightly messed up but imagine if castiel had tried to confess to dean at an earlier point and just wiped it from his memory. hes like. fuck. this was a mistake and wiped it from dean's memory and dean finds out Years later and is like. why did you wipe my memory??? [cas voice] i was embarrassed 🥺
You know, it's funny. I love this idea in theory, for the humor and emotional fallout... for the drama, even.
But I honestly don't know if Cas would do that. I don't claim to be the supreme Cas understander, but I think Cas would sooner brood in silence for a millennium than mess with Dean’s mind for the sake of his own comfort... To me, I view Cas as a little fatalistic when it comes to his own feelings. Also...
Maybe it's that moment in Good Intentions where he tells Donny:
CASTIEL: I am going to do something that I promised I would never do to a human being without their permission. I’m gonna strip the spell from your mind.
But it seems like there has to be some pretty big Plot (TM) shit going down for him to even consider this. Like, when he strips the memories from Lisa and Ben, it's partially strategic, that in no longer being in Dean's life, they will be "protected."
I feel almost like... if Cas were to seriously mess with Dean's memory, it'd have to be duty-, mission-, strategic-, or safety-minded.
I'm just not sure he'd prioritize his own comfort/embarrassment... He tends towards fatalistic and self-hating, so I think he might just soak in that despair.
(((Or he'd have to be seriously at breaking point. Either way... Something to think about later...)))
HELL YEAH BABY THERE'S MORE!! I had a curious little thought about what if imps got a hold of Cuyan and erased her memories of Din and Grogu?? Also the one talking is Moff Gideon. Yes yes, you may call me evil /j
coming up with fun little ideas outside of the current Stowaway canon is so very fun hehehe 😈😈
