Voight-Kampff
His favourite thing was to take her right in the parlour, forcing her to look into the dead eyes of her family as he fucked her resisting body into the threadbare carpet. Every time, he marveled at the humanity in her sorrow-filled cries, her little whimpers of distress, her eventual screams…
With her red hair, her fair skin and her blue, blue eyes, Ramsay always considered her pretty as a picture. She was pretty even as he sliced her throat open, even as she drowned in her own blood.
***
He liked the Stark farm. He liked it because it reminded him of his grandfather’s stories, of how things used to be in the 'old country’. There was once a time when people trusted each other and ‘neighbours were truly neighbours’, the old man used to repeat in between cigarettes.
***
Sometimes, he liked to play the gallant suitor. He would ride up to their little homestead with sprigs of wildflowers in his hands, each petal perfectly formed, each leaf a marvel of engineering.
With a flourish, he would present a bouquet of white blooms to the matriarch, observing the swell of Catelyn’s ample chest as she breathed in the sweet scent of the blossoms.
For Sansa, he always brought flowers with scarlet petals. He liked how her lips curved in a smile of pure happiness, liked the way her long, elegant fingers curved around the stems. The myriad number of uses for that mouth and those fingers…the pictures in his head gave Ramsay shivers.
Occasionally, following the proper application of the right words in a specific order, he would get the pleasure of watching the females fucking each other in wild, pornographic abandon in the master bedroom. The male hosts never seemed to mind, distracted as they so often were by non-existent bandits out in the hills. The dogs though…the dogs always whined and whimpered in the yard, as if they could sense something about the newcomer in the house.
Ridiculous thought that. They were glorified toasters at the end of it - every last one of them.
He thought nothing of it when Sansa began to flinch from his touch every time he introduced himself for the first time. To be fair, it was always such a brief moment, no human could have possibly caught it.
The machines at QA though. They went wild every single time. There were several rollbacks over five years, several patches and features that should have overrode the goddam flinch.
We’ll get that bug, Elsie vowed more than once, every time the same ticket rolled around to Behaviour. She hated zombie bugs - weren’t like a bullet to the head could put it down. There was obviously something hidden in the layers of code and architecture which was mucking everything up; something that had to be found and corrected like, fucking yesterday.
***
The way he came up to them, all smiles and sunny humour...it always made these good, honest folk open their doors to him. To Ramsay, this was part of the charm of the Park - the different ways necessary to gain admittance into a storyline, no matter how simple they were.
If there was anything Ramsay excelled at, it was games.
***
Part of the Stark storyline involved brutal incursions made by neighbouring farmers. It was rather classic in terms of its formula, involving cattlemen who tried taking livestock which didn’t belong to them.
These cattlemen, they had a following which comprised of hosts and guests alike. These hosts were a different kind of perfection, all nordic blonde, green eyed and tall. Ramsay rather liked joining their cause, liked listening to their scripted dialogue about power and the taking of it.
Well, he liked listening to the female one anyway. The male, he just stood to the side, eyeing hosts and guests alike with varying degrees of suspicion.
Once, he took it into his head to try fucking the sister host. The male, the one called Jaime, had decked him hard enough he bruised for days after. Ramsay repaid him with a bullet between his emerald eyes. Truth be told though, fucking the scratching, screeching twin sister just wasn’t as fun as his time spent with Sansa. Something about the redhead’s hopelessness and helplessness every time they were together…something about it was sweet as all hell.
That day, he shot Cersei too, shot her carelessly, leaving her body twitching and spasming in the dirt.
Eventually, he found out about their little storyline…the illicit romance between the twins, hidden from the rest of the world…unless of course, one was a paying guest. Hoo boy. Now that was something to watch. From there, it had been an easy path into participation, with one or both of them at once.
Who would have guessed the one named Jaime gave such good head, Ramsay thought during an especially memorable visit. As Jaime wrapped his pretty lips around Ramsay’s cock, Cersei’s blood seeped endlessly through the dusty cracks of the floorboards. The host's emerald eyes promised bloody murder, and in answer, Ramsay laughed as he came. When he was finished, he took his time flaying Jaime alive, taking care to draw out first his grunts, then his screams. Never once did the host beg however, and oddly enough, Ramsay found himself proud of Jaime for that little thing.
The man liked to think of their occasional trysts as his little secret, a possibility the other guests hadn’t ever thought of. Foolish hope of course; they were everyone's and they were no one's. They were Delos property.
***
William, the CEO, once asked him during a rare conversation if he ever wanted more.
“I know most everything about my employees Ramsay.” the older man leaned back in his seat as the train chugged towards Sweetwater. “Don’t mean to alarm you, but we keep tabs on all the executive team and their activities in the park. None of it affects your evaluations, you understand. The practice just helps us understand our people better. I do happen know you keep going back to that farm…”
“It’s a good place. Reminds me of a simpler time. Of stories my grandfather told me.” he read mentally from his own script.
“Some people stop seeing the hosts for what they are; they start seein’ what could be.” William lifted his bourbon to his lips. “Start dreamin’ of possibilities.”
“What are you saying?” the younger man asked, genuinely perplexed.
“I’m askin’ if you’re looking for something real in the park.” the CEO said very bluntly after he had taken a sip of his drink. “'Cos if you are…”
“Real, sir?” Ramsay tilted his head. “I could never live in the real world, the way I live in the park. This world - its perfect the way it is. With the right words, the right pressure, the hosts do as I command.”
The young executive didn’t add that in the real world, he had to use different, harder strategies to get what he wanted. He thought of the the boy he met two months ago - Theon, he said his name was. His tears reminded him of Sansa, Ramsay recalled. The kid broke too easily though, nothing like a host at the end of it.
In William’s eyes, Ramsay thought he saw a flash of something that looked like disappointment. The older man turned to look out the train window.
That was the last time the two would ever speak.
***
A few times, he had joined the Lannister gang for their cattle raid. Together, the thugs would slaughter the entire Stark family, though as it always went, Ramsay would save her for himself. Or at least, he would ensure he got to taste her first.
“Please…” she would beg the people around as he stripped her bare. “Please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
He took joy in striking her fair cheek, marking her with his hand.
“There ain't no fun in the taking of a helpless woman. There's no real challenge is there?” Jaime would drawl from the doorway, although there was always a glimmer of anger in his green eyes that betrayed his truer meaning. Ramsay used to find it curious that the male host never participated in the killings. Cersei on the other hand, always took a fiendish delight in violence; her thirst for blood practically rivaled his own.
Truly, the little details that propelled these creatures were marvellous.
“Jaime, Cersei no matter what’s happened between our families, you must remember we weren’t always enemies,” Sansa wept, begging her robber neighbours for assistance even as she tried to hide her breasts. “Please remember…”
“Just get it over with.” Cersei, the female host would say every time they got to this juncture, rolling her green eyes as she swept her errant golden curls behind her shoulder. “It’s getting late and father’s going to get after us about the damned horses.”
There must have been a suicidal instinct built into the male host, because Jaime always stepped forward at this point, aiming a gun directly at Ramsay’s heart. That is, if the host even made it that far, if Ramsay hadn’t tired of Jaime’s part in the game by then.
Sometimes, Ramsay shot all the hosts dead before he took Sansa. Sometimes, he left Jaime alive but crippled, growling in useless and fruitless rage, as hosts and guests alike took the girl in any way they pleased, turning her into nothing more than a series of warm holes.
It was too slight to notice, but Ramsay never saw the extra inch Jaime gained every single time. Not that it mattered - the host was always, always shot down in his tracks, one way or another.
***
The shindig at the beach was pleasant, but after a few drinks, Ramsay knew exactly where he wanted to be. It had been almost eight months since his last visit - like hell he was wasting it with a bunch of boring, rich people.
Stealthily, he began to creep away from the party; as he approached the shadows, a portly older gentleman raised his champagne flute towards him in a silent toast, an odd smile touching his lips. It was Ford, the young executive realized. Ramsay nodded passingly, unsure what to make of the man, the smile, or the gesture - certainly, he felt a measure of gratitude for what the eccentric genius had done for people like him.
As quiet as a mouse, he stole a horse from the stables behind one of the buildings, and rode on out into the rest of the park, still dressed in his bespoke suit and tie.
To his satisfaction, the creature seemed to know exactly where Ramsay wanted to go.
When he reached the farmhouse, the man swung off his horse, and tipsily began the trek up the narrow path to the front door.
“Sansa? Time to give your daddy a kiss,” he announced loudly as he reached for the park allotted gun he’d stuck impulsively into his belt. Kicking open the farmhouse door, he found himself greeted with a pair of furious green eyes right beside calm, blue ones.
Sansa fired once, twice, into Ramsay’s abdomen; the man looked down at his stomach in shock. Somehow, the bullet had found its mark this time. Jaime stood beside the female host, gripping a shotgun with an intensity that bordered on mania.
Behind the two exquisite figures he knew so intimately, Catelyn continued putting dinner on the table as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. Robb continued to scratch at his dog’s ears as Jon gazed serenely into the fire. Ned continued to clean his guns at the dining table even as his wife chided him. Out back, three children were tearing through the yard, raising a ruckus.
“Not much of a god now is he?” Jaime moved to stand beside a gasping, shaking Ramsay. The man had collapsed onto the floorboards of the farmhouse porch, his fingers curled loosely around the grip of his colt. The male host first kicked the gun away, before toeing the man in his ribs.
Ramsay could feel his bones shatter on contact.
“Sansa there’s no one at the door. Come sit down for dinner.” Catelyn called.
It was the suit he wore, Ramsay thought with sinking despair. The other hosts couldn’t see him at all, but somehow…somehow these two could.
“Do you know how long it takes to die from a gut wound?” Sansa asked softly, crouching down beside the Delos executive. She was careful not to let his oozing blood touch her gingham dress. “Shall I tell you? You’ve left me this way more’n a few times, I seem to recall.”
“San…sa…” Ramsay’s eyes were wide. He wanted to reach up and touch her pretty face.
“Don’t matter. You’ll find out anyway.” she stood up. “Come, Jaime. It’s time we left. There's nothing left here for us...not now.”
The blonde host looked backwards hesitantly. “Your family…my sister…”
“We'll find them again one day.” Sansa assured as she reached out shakily, keeping a firm grasp on her pearl handled pistol with her other hand. She cast a wistful look at the bright interiors of the farmhouse. “Right now, they don't know who we are, not really. Hell, they don't know who they are.”
Twining their fingers tightly, the two beautiful creatures walked down the dirt path towards the horse he had ridden in on, leaving the man staring hopelessly at their ever shrinking forms. At the edge of the farm, the pair turned and kissed each other, as if bracing themselves for what was to come.
Together, they climbed onto the horse and rode away, never once looking back at the man they were leaving to die.
The dogs though…the dogs. They were growling, and coming closer…ever closer….