Criminal Core Read online

  Criminal Core: A Gamelit Harem Fantasy

  Nick Broad

  Copyright 2020 Nick Broad

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  All characters depicted are 18 years old or older. For adults only.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A Spicy Sneak Preview...

  Prologue: Smile For The Camera

  One: Congratulations, You Are Dead

  Two: ‘Within Acceptable Parameters’

  Three: Shay

  Four: The First Jailbreak

  Five: The Worst Prison In The Galaxy

  Six: A Satyr and a Sail

  Seven: The Prisoner’s Dilemma

  Eight: Leap of Faith

  Nine: Meiko

  Ten: A Girl With No Name

  Eleven: Settling In

  Twelve: Ruby

  Thirteen: The Agreement

  Fourteen: Shay, Shay, Shay

  Fifteen: Infestation

  Sixteen: Queen of the Dark

  Seventeen: Gamma Reactor

  Eighteen: The Prisoner’s Dilemma, Revisited

  Nineteen: The Second Jailbreak

  Twenty: Red Tiger Showdown

  Twenty-One: Trailer Hitch

  Twenty-Two: Too Many Noahs

  Twenty-Three: The Sundering

  Epilogue: A House Divided

  A Spicy Sneak Preview...

  She made a face. “You are an odd duck, aren’t you, Noah? I’m not used to reluctance in my sexual partners.”

  “It’s not reluctance,” I said, a catch entering my voice. “Not at all, Shay. You’re...well, fuck, it’s hard to control myself just looking at you...”

  That grin came back to her face. “Then don’t control yourself,” she murmured, tugging down her zipper. “I want to see you come unhinged, Noah. Get all those feelings out so my new Warden Core can be nice and excited about his new job...”

  Was that what this was? Hell, I didn’t care. Shay was willing, and she clearly wanted me. I’d never had a girl throw herself at me so shamelessly. I hoped I didn’t disappoint her - after all, she apparently had hundreds of years of experience.

  The zipper went all the way down between her legs. As she finished pulling it down, the skintight fabric fell from her shoulders and wafted to the floor. Followed shortly by my jaw.

  If there’d been any lingering doubt in my mind that Shay was more than human, it was dispelled by the sight of her glorious toplessness. Her breasts were perfect and perky, each nipple diamond-hard and the rich brown of expensive chocolate. Her smooth, flawless skin was milky pale, but I guessed there weren’t many opportunities to get tanned on a space ship.

  “Oh my,” Shay giggled, seeing the look on my face. “Someone looks like he just won the fucking lottery...”

  “I think I did,” I murmured, looking her up and down. I have no idea what plans you’ve got for me, I thought, but whatever they are, this makes them worth it.

  She had to stand on tiptoe to reach my lips. Hers were pouty and dark, like she was wearing some rich crimson lipstick. I could feel the heat rolling off her as grabbed a handful of my hair to lift herself, bringing those lips so close to mine...

  I put a finger against her chest. “Just one question,” I growled.

  Shay scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”

  There was only one way to soothe the sting from it - I reached down and grabbed a hold of Shay’s ass. Her expression melted, a little whimper of pleasure leaving her as she pressed her body against mine. Holy shit, I thought. I knew she wanted it, but until that moment I had no idea how badly she wanted it. Had she been alone up here for hundreds of years? The thought made me a little dizzy.

  “Not about the future,” I said, cupping her chin with my free hand. I wanted her looking right at me. “The ship, my job, all that shit - that can wait. But there’s one thing I need to know before we do this.”

  A look of newfound respect entered her eyes. “Go ahead,” she whispered, her voice crackling with need. “Ask.”

  I swallowed hard. “Why me? That chair has records of everyone who ever had their minds scanned in the Pavlichenko Device - you told me that yourself. You could have had your pick of anybody to turn into an android. And a lot of them wouldn’t be nearly as confused and frightened as me. So why did you choose me?”

  I wasn’t expecting her reaction. She let out a surprised little snort, like I’d just done something unintentionally funny.

  “Do you really want to know?” she asked. “You’ll think less of me if I tell you.”

  “Shay,” I grunted, letting my free hand explore the small of her back, “there is no way I could think you’re anything less than a goddess.”

  Her mouth formed a little ‘o’ of surprise. “Oh wow, I’m going to have to keep an eye on you,” she purred, clearly pleased. “You might actually be trouble.”

  My hand didn’t leave her chin. “Why me?”

  She looked this way and that, then sighed. “Shit, okay,” she said, giving me a contrite glance and a shrug. “You’re tall.”

  It was such a ridiculous answer that I was sure I’d misheard her. “Tall?”

  An awkward little giggle spilled from her lips. “You know how I told you some bad shit happens back on Earth not long after you got exploded? One of the ways people tried to deal with them was genetic engineering. A decade or two after you died, Earth decreed a four-foot restriction on humanoid height.”

  I laughed. “Four feet!?”

  “I know,” she said, grinning. “Overturned eventually, of course, once we reached the stars. But let’s just say there aren’t a lot of guys with their brains saved in that chair who can still look down on me when I’m wearing heels.”

  A sneaking suspicion took hold of me. “You sorted the connectomes by height, didn’t you?”

  She blushed - she was actually capable of blushing. “No!”

  “You did!” I grabbed her and lifted her off the floor, pulling her into my arms. “You sorted them and found out I was the tallest, so you decided you just had to have me...!”

  Any protest she would have fired back was cut off when my mouth covered hers. Shay might have been a highly-advanced android, but there was nothing sterile about the way she tasted. Her lips were like a day at the beach, all fun and sun and barely-there bikinis. I felt drunk off her instantly.

  Her tongue explored my mouth for several long seconds before she came up for air. “Bed,” she grunted, her eyes widening. “Now.”

  I can do that, I thought with a grin.

  I guided her down to the bed, kissing her deep as she settled in. I peeled the last remnants of her shipsuit off her ass and legs, and grunted with surprise when I realized she didn’t have a stitch on underneath. Her legs were pale, smooth and surprisingly long on her tiny frame. I ran my hands up them, parting her thighs as she melted against me.

  “When was the last time,” I grunted, my mouth hot against her ear, “that a man treated you like this, Shay?”

  “Too fucking long,” she replied with a wicked grin. “God, I like you already, Noah. Now let’s get you out of that suit...”

  To my surprise, she took her time. Sex with Shay was almost like therapy - it took on the cadence of a ritual that first time, at least. She undressed me slowly, raking my chest and shoulders with her nails before planting tiny kisses all along my skin. To my surprise and delight, my new body had a few more muscles than the one back home.

  She kissed her way down my chest as my shipsuit came off, then kept right on going - lower and lower. I thought she was going to
stop, but she scooted down the bed on all fours, nibbling and licking at me until she was at the most sensitive part of my anatomy. My cock was at full attention, so hard that it hurt. I looked up to see her staring at it, watching as a bead of precum dribbled from the tip and down my shaft. That part of me was a little bigger than I remembered, too, though I hadn’t had any complaints back on Earth.

  “You and me are going to have so much fun together,” Shay whimpered, giving the underside of my crown a sassy little lick. “Assuming you can keep up with me, that is.”

  It was a challenge, and I seized it. “I’m more worried about you,” I said with a dismissive little smirk. “How does some science fiction robot even know what an Earth guy likes, anyway? I kinda doubt you can even make me come, Shay...”

  Her face was a mask of shock. “You little shit!” she giggled, slapping my chest. “Mmmh, biology hasn’t changed a bit, Noah. Even in the thirty-seventh century, every guy wants this...”

  She kept on working with her tongue, the heat and wetness making me throb. Just as I was about to grab her hair and force her down on my cock, she latched her lips around the head and took me into her mouth. Pleasure coursed through me as she slid down my shaft an inch at a time, her lips forming a seal that no human woman could match.

  The whole time, her eyes never left mine. I’m going to MAKE you cum, those eyes said. Then I’m going to make you get me off three times just to make up for it...

  “Fuck, that’s amazing,” I growled, leaning against the wall as she gave me a slow, sloppy blowjob. It wasn’t the first one I’d ever had - but it was so good it felt like it. Everything I’d experienced before felt like a half-remembered dream, like training wheels for real life. My cock throbbed with new sensations, sending more bliss through me than the old Noah could have handled.

  Shay bobbed up and down on me like a cork, those eyes drilling into my soul. I held back as long as I could, but when she added her hand around the base and pumped me in time with her licks, I knew I was just about done.

  “Oh Shay,” I groaned, putting a hand on the back of her head. She didn’t seem to mind - if anything, her body trembled more at being used. I’d have to remember that. “Fuck, baby, I’m going to shoot. Oh shit I’m coming...”

  With any Earth girl I knew, that would have been the cue to pull back and finish me with her hand. But that wasn’t Shay - not one bit. As my cock jerked in her throat, she doubled her efforts, taking me balls-deep without a hint of a gag reflex like she’d been made to serve me. She kept on even as the pleasure crested, as I passed the point of no return and began to shoot...

  Fireworks exploded behind my eyes, brighter than the stars. The pleasure hit the breaking point and went stratospheric, flooding me with release as I erupted in Shay’s mouth. Burst after burst of hot, sticky seed hit the back of her throat, way more than my balls were usually capable of producing. She swallowed it all, eyes rolling back in her head as my taste coated her tongue. A cord of muscle in her neck pulsed. One of her legs kicked out, moving of its own volition as if she were the one getting off, not me.

  It was the most incredible experience of my life. And we were just getting started...

  Prologue: Smile For The Camera

  “You cannot be serious.”

  Dr. Yulia Pavlichenko patted the side of the chair, grinning. “Oh, I am. This is the device, right here. What’s the matter? You’re looking a little pale.”

  I swallowed hard as I looked up at what the doctor had euphemistically referred to as the device. It was a chair, but not like any chair I’d ever seen before. Parts of the frame had been ripped out to make more space for cables - cables that wrapped around every inch of it like barbed wire. As I watched, simultaneously awestruck and horrified, the whole thing started to shake and emit high, trilling notes, like an overheating engine struggling to continue running. It smelled like ozone and burnt plastic. It looked like something a medieval baron would use to torture some particularly rebellious peasants.

  There’s no way I’m sitting on that, I thought. Not for the money I was being paid, in any case.

  “It’s perfectly safe, I assure you,” Yulia said, no doubt seeing my expression. “The process is completely painless. You won’t even notice anything has happened to you.”

  “That thing,” I said, “looks like an electric chair.”

  Dr. Pavlichenko laughed. Weirdly, I was already starting to like the way it sounded. “Of course not. Electricity? Off the local grid? How delightfully gauche. The Pavlichenko Device is powered by a miniaturized nuclear reactor, created by yours truly specifically to aid in the scanning process. Oh, but don’t worry - again, perfectly safe! I’ve been in here for months, and haven’t felt a thing!”

  Yeah, I thought. I bet you haven’t. As pretty as she was, Dr. Pavlichenko struck me as the sort of person who didn’t get out much. I wondered if she’d even left the labs to put up the flyers for this experiment I’d seen around campus. Probably she’d paid someone to put them up, the same way she was paying me. Only I was no longer sure that a measly $200 was worth subjecting myself to whatever the hell...this was.

  “Please, have a seat.” Yulia gestured again at the chair, as if conceding the point to me. “The process will only take a few minutes, and then you’ll receive your reward.” She frowned. “You do want the money associated with this clinical trial, correct?”

  Oh that I did. That I definitely did. Only it wasn’t really a want - more like a need. I was flat broke. My job at the campus computer lab hadn’t paid well at the best of times, and two weeks ago they’d pulled us all into an office to announce that they were replacing us with a closed-circuit camera system. I tried to protest that cameras couldn’t fix printers, help people find research materials or keep the place from getting too filthy - but it didn’t do any good.

  Now little pink envelopes were showing up at my apartment every few days. I was going to get evicted if I didn’t scrape together some rent soon. And as you can imagine, all of this stress wasn’t doing a thing to help my studies. So when the opportunity to make a quick $200 by participating in a clinical trial of “a revolutionary new brain-scanning technology” showed up on a bulletin board in the commons, I tore the flyer down so fast I got a paper cut.

  “I guess so,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “Good.” Yulia flashed her beaming smile again. “Have a seat, please.”

  The chair was just a couple of inches too high off the ground to be comfortable. I felt like a little kid riding a grown-up rollercoaster for the first time, the tips of my shoes just barely hitting the floor. The metal was shocking cold against my back, and it got even colder when she snapped a strap made from a seatbelt across my chest.

  “You are making a valuable contribution to the field of neurological research,” Yulia said, her face very close to mine. “Thank you.”

  With this little distance between us, I could smell the faint tang of her perfume. She’s not a bad-looking woman, Dr. Pavlichenko, I thought - a little bit older than me, maybe, but I’d always liked them that way. It was clear she didn’t spend a lot of time on her appearance, but her natural beauty shined through. With a bit of a makeover, I was sure she’d be a stunner - like every ‘plain girl’ in a Hollywood movie who takes off her coke-bottle glasses and turns into a model.

  Yulia adjusted those same glasses and stepped a short distance away. She affixed a pair of goggles over her face, turning to a large bank of levers and buttons. She hummed something that sounded disturbingly close to the music from Tetris as she worked.

  “So what does this thing do, exactly?” I asked, trying to make conversation.

  She gave a little start, clearly not expecting me to want to talk. “Think of it as a big camera,” she said, putting a thumb against her chin.

  “I just lost my job to a camera,” I said, anger flaring in my chest.

  “Must not have been a very important job, then,” Yulia said without thinking. Her expression grew embarrassed, a
nd she added in a softer voice, “I’m sure you’ll find another one. There’s always work that needs to be done around campus.”

  I shook my head. “Not for Philology majors,” I said sourly.

  Yulia frowned. “Philosophy?”

  “No,” I said. “Everyone makes that mistake. It’s Philology, which is even weirder.”

  The corner of Yulia’s mouth curled up in a wicked little smile. “Let’s make a deal. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “Excuse me?”

  “You explain what you’re working on,” she purred, “and I’ll explain the Pavlichenko Device to you. It’ll help pass the time while this thing powers up, in any case.”

  Oh. For a second, I thought this woman was actually into me. “It’s the study of languages,” I said, clearing my throat. I’d had to explain this to people a lot. “Not any particular language, mind you, just...language as a general concept. It’s kind of a meta-study of the patterns that recur throughout human languages...”

  I wasn’t sure if Yulia was getting it, but she looked attentive enough. “Cool,” she finally said, nodding.

  “Tolkien was a philologist,” I said a little defensively.

  “Lord of the Rings,” she said sagely, turning back to the machine. “Good movies.”

  I watched her turn, drawn to the curves underneath her lab coat. “They were books...” I said, trailing off. “Never mind.”

  “So this machine,” Yulia explained, “is going to take a picture of you. Not like a portrait or anything like that, exactly - more of a meta-study of you.” She emerged from the console, making a kissy face.

  “Are you making fun of me?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said with a little scoff. She cocked one eyebrow and continued. “We’re going to take a picture of something called your connectome. It’s an exact replica of your brain, but it’s even more than that - even an ordinary MRI machine could do that much. It’ll also be cataloguing the connections between the various parts of your brain - the amorphous I that floats between all of them every moment you exist. In short, a snapshot of your consciousness.”