A/N: Crossposting this story from my AO3 account. I was surprised that no one else had written about this concept (at least, not that I could find), so I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world. Gives me something to do during the wait for season 4, at least.

strap in and get ready for some mindfuck, angst, and suffering

Chapter 1: Reboot

When Rick woke up, everything was... off.

He was not gradually roused out of unconsciousness, like awakening from sleep. It was a sharp pull, as if something shocked him into high alert. His eyes snapped open, his limbs giving a sudden twitch before going rigidly still.

He was sitting in a chair. It was metallic and uncomfortable, especially against his upright posture. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and copper, and a dull pain pounded through the back of his skull. Distantly, he could tell that the small room around him was made of steel panels and bright lights, but any further attempts to perceive his surroundings ran into a mental wall.

Something was wrong with his thoughts. It was as though everything was stuck, fixed in a steady state. He couldn't move, could barely think. It was like being spaced out or drunk, except the world was still in sharp focus around him and all his senses seemed to be in perfect operating order. But trying to process the information beyond surface level, trying to even do so much as bend a finger or voluntarily blink was like trying to push through an iron barrier bolted tight around his mind.

There was a face only a few feet from his. A boy, with short brown hair and a yellow shirt, staring at him without a trace of emotion. There was a niggling sensation in the depths of his mind that he should recognize the kid, but it was too faint to form anything coherent.

The boy wordlessly looked over the man, as if inspecting him. Leaning forward, he snapped his fingers together in front of Rick's face. He blinked, but did not react further. The faintest smirk appeared on the kid's face, and, apparently satisfied, he reached over to fetch something that had been lying a nearby table.

Rick watched him, uncomprehending. A small seed of panic was starting to grow in some corner of his mind, albeit subdued. He couldn't remember how he got here, and while something was incredibly familiar about the boy in front of him, he couldn't place why, or even ask why. Something was preventing him from remembering, from thinking. For someone who was normally brimming with unparalleled intelligence, the force restraining his ability to think or act was frightening in a primal, subconscious way.

Meanwhile, the boy had picked up a strip of dark fabric with some electronics attached. He reached up with his other hand and pulled open his right eye, dislodging the flesh somewhat. Thin wires slipped out from under his socket, falling onto his face, although the boy showed no signs of pain or discomfort as he proceeded to plug in the wires to the held electronics. Afterward, his hand was free to pick up the second object that had been on the table, a remote control of some kind. On the remote, he flipped a small switch.

Something seemed to hum to life in the back of Rick's mind, and suddenly there was the presence of a pressure, cold and sharp and digging into his brain. The muscles in his limbs seized up as an almost electrical feeling shot down his spine. His breath hitched slightly.

The boy stood once more in front of him, finishing slipping the fabric over the back of his head. Now Rick could see that it was an eye patch, completely concealing the electronics as well as the boy's right eye. His remaining eye, just as emotionless as before, locked onto the man as he spoke.

"Stand up."

stand up

Rick froze for a microsecond. It was as though there was an echo of the command in his brain, hearing it not just in sound but in thought, wrapping tight around him and pulling like a puppet string. It was overpowering in a way he wasn't prepared for. Without thinking he immediately rose from his chair. At his full height, he practically towered over the teenager in front of him, but there was no sense of empowerment granted with it.

A flicker of surprise seemed to pass over the boy's face, just for a second, before returning to the neutral, controlled state of before. Hardly skipping a beat, he continued. "Walk five steps to the right."

It was exactly as before. The duality of what Rick heard and what he heard, directing him to action. Part of him tried resisting this time, but before he could so much as even register the command, his body was already on its way towards executing it. There was a sense of immediacy that seized him every time the boy spoke, blocking out all else. He had to follow the instructions.

He had to, but he didn't want to. Did he? Without his ability to think straight, though, it was nigh impossible to wrench back control from… whatever this was. Every time he tried, it just made his head throb even more.

The boy with the eye patch continued observing the man's almost robotic responses, and kept giving brief commands, all of a simplistic and locomotive nature. Every single one, Rick executed near-flawlessly. None of them required any higher thinking, just go there or do that with no clear purpose behind each action. To be honest, a distant part of Rick was starting to get pissed off by it. What did he look like, a fucking dog?

Acting independently still seemed out of the question, but the longer he was awake, the easier it was to think. Like he was adapting to his locked-in state, little by little. But it still wasn't enough. Far from enough. This whole situation was deeply unsettling and he still couldn't piece his thoughts together to figure out what the actual fuck was going on.

His ongoing internal freakout distracted him to the point where he almost didn't notice the boy hefting something up and walking towards him.

"Hold this," the boy said, shoving the piece of machinery into his hands. Without another word, he turned around and slipped out of the room, leaving Rick alone.

Rick's fingers had clenched automatically around the object the moment he was ordered to, and, despite a flicker of curiosity, he couldn't make himself look down to examine it in more detail. The cold knifepoint sensation in his brain hadn't yet vanished- the connection was still present, if not currently in use. Still, the respite from the stream of commands was much appreciated, no matter how temporary.

Minutes trickled by and the boy hadn't yet returned. The chunk of machinery was heavy in Rick's arms, and there was a distant ache forming in his limbs. Rick was starting to piece together that whoever the kid was, he recognized him in some way, some oddly significant way that hadn't yet clicked.

It was also rather apparent that the boy was responsible for his current condition, or at least actively exploiting it, so he could just fuck off forever for all Rick cared. In the meantime, he attempted to quash his growing terror and instead resumed straining at the hold over his brain, however uncooperative it was being at the moment.

It would be mildly tempting to just give up by this point, if it weren't so laughably opposed to who Rick was. Screw what the kid had in mind for him, he was going to do what he wanted even if it killed him.

Brute forcing past the mental block didn't seem to work, so this time he attempted to be a little more subtle, poking and prodding to determine weaknesses. Right now his body was still acting on the last command to hold the object. But, perhaps, he could slowly coax himself into acting differently, as long as it was still "correct". After all, the kid didn't say to keep holding it…

Focusing as much as he could on that loophole, Rick struggled to move. After a painfully long delay, he felt something give way, and his fingers twitched slightly. With a twinge of disbelief, along with a rush of exhilaration, he pushed harder and his arms gave a weird half-jerk motion, once again after a delay. Slowly, he forced his arm muscles to relax, bit by bit, and the object started to slip out of his hold.

He dropped it at the same time the boy walked back into the room.

A smashing, clattering noise rang through the room as it struck the ground, denting its external shell and who knows what else. The boy stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the damage. He had been carrying some sort of advanced toolbox and a clipboard, but they hung loose in his arms, temporarily forgotten. There was an uncomfortably long pause, before his gaze shifted up to Rick. The expression on his face was unreadable.

And Rick didn't know why, but a sharp jolt of fear ran through him, filling him with oh shit, oh shit, does he know, does he realize and his minor act of rebellion seemed ridiculously, suicidally irresponsible in hindsight. He should have waited, tried something different, done something that wasn't so fucking obvious…

The teenager stared at Rick in a rather unsettling way. Some unknown emotion passed over his face, causing his visible eye to narrow and facial features to tense, then a split second later he slipped back into a mask of complete neutrality.

"I didn't say to drop it," the boy said, an edge of exasperation seeping into his voice, placing the box and clipboard on the ground as he bent over to pick up the object.

And maybe it was because it was the first thing he said that didn't sound utterly toneless, but something about the way his voice had sounded just then seemed to trigger a connection deep in Rick's mind. It took only a few seconds before it clicked.

Morty. The kid's name was Morty.

And just as soon as that piece of information slid into place, everything became static once more, like the leak in his memory had been dammed up as soon it had sprung. He couldn't help the sheer frustration that followed. No, no, he had been so close to getting actual answers for once.

But he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. After all, his brain clearly wasn't feeling like listening to him today.

Meanwhile, Morty had placed the damaged machine and clipboard up on the table, and he was now digging around in his toolbox. He hadn't given any new orders to Rick, leaving the man to just stand there like a robot on standby. The small success Rick had found earlier already felt like a fluke, as his body snapped right back to being completely unresponsive the moment the boy reentered the room.

And he still couldn't tell if Morty suspected him or not, at least not entirely. Dropping that machine part could easily be interpreted as an unexpected glitch, a flaw in the control the boy held over him. Which, admittedly, wasn't exactly a wrong assessment to make.

Whatever the case was, Morty didn't seem to be investigating further, although it was nearly impossible to tell what he was thinking. This kid could pull one hell of a poker face when he wanted to. That was another thing that didn't seem to add up with what little memory he had, a disquieting uncanny valley effect of behavior that seemed not quite right.

Morty had his back turned to Rick, and was extracting various tools and components from the toolbox and placing them on the table. He seemed completely preoccupied, but after a moment his head tilted slightly and there was suddenly a sharp jerk in Rick's mind.

The teenager hadn't spoken a single word. But like being pulled by an invisible leash, Rick immediately walked up to Morty's side, and the only acknowledgment he got was a glance, followed by Morty promptly ignoring him once more.

Rick forced himself to snap out of the weird fugue state that had temporarily enveloped him. Fuck, it didn't even feel like words echoing in his brain that time. The message had been clear and instantaneous, a summon he hardly realized he was responding to until his body was already moving. Nonverbal commands, it seemed, were a faster and more direct method of control, a realization which sent a twinge of anxiety curling in his gut.

At least from this viewpoint he could see what was on the table. The machine part he had been holding looked like the chassis of some sort of robot or drone. Being dropped appeared to put a big dent in the top of it, but the interior looked remarkably unharmed, aside from a few dislodged wires that Morty had already fixed back into place. Aside from that, it was obviously incomplete, with large gaps on the interior where the power source and more advanced circuitry would probably be fitted. Rick couldn't tell whether Morty had assembled it himself or stolen it from somewhere, but either way he seemed to know his way around the thing.

Rick shifted his attention to the clipboard. He couldn't fully see what was written on it, but it looked a list of some sort, complete with markings within boxes and other miscellaneous notes in the margins. It faintly reminded him of a maintenance checklist. He could only guess why Morty had been carrying it.

He was just starting to wonder why Morty made him come over, when the kid put down the screwdriver he had been holding and turned to look at him. Rick still found that focused gaze unsettling, like he was being dissected from a distance.

Morty stared at him for a few long seconds. Then, he reached into his pocket and procured the remote from earlier. He pointed it towards Rick, pressing and holding a button along its side.

Something inside Rick seized up.

[recalibrating]

A wave of vertigo slammed into him. His thoughts were scrambled together into a slurry as a sharp buzz reverberated from the back of his brain, a prickling feeling moving along his synapses from back to front. For a moment he lost all sense of self, drifting in a mindless haze as his body tensed up, then gradually relaxed, like a computer restarting.

It wasn't painful, exactly, but it wasn't a pleasant experience either. When the buzzing faded and he slowly came back to himself, the dizziness was so overwhelming that he could barely muster up a coherent thought, much less any resistance when Morty handed him the screwdriver and started to issue commands again.

Rick's mind was stuck but his body moved anyway, working on a mixture of instinct and orders and something else, maybe some automated aspect of this fucked up mind control, he didn't know. He had trouble concentrating anyway, moments bleeding and blurring together unpredictably. One moment he was screwing in some plating, the next he was holding open a slot while Morty fitted in a computer chip, then he was handing Morty something that was blue and glowing, it all jumbled together. He really wasn't in a good state to handle this right now.

At some point they stopped, tools and components neatly returned to the box. The drone looked much closer to being completed now, but he didn't have the time or coherency to study what it could possibly be for, as Morty grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the room. His body slackened slightly at the kid's grip, becoming almost docile as he was led down around the corner into a dim hallway.

Rick's disorientation was starting to fade by this point, and he slowly but surely returned to some semblance of lucidity. He hadn't felt this out of it since he first woke up. What the hell had Morty done to him back there? Where was that asshole taking him now?

The hallway wasn't too long, thankfully. There were two doorways, but Rick didn't get a good look at what was past the first one, as Morty sharply yanked him into the room on their left. The smell of antiseptic was stronger in here, triggering a faint sense of unease in Rick. The lights were dimmed like the hallway, so while Rick could make out blocks and shapes stacked in the corners that might have been counters or tables of some sort, he couldn't make out the layout before Morty led him to what looked like a padded chair in the center of the room.

Sit down was Morty's transmitted order, and his body followed it. This chair was leaned back and not nearly as uncomfortable as the previous one, but something about it was making Rick feel even more apprehensive. The kid looked him up and down with his single visible eye, that unreadable expression from earlier reappearing on his face, before he commanded again, out loud this time.

"Sleep."

Almost immediately Rick's body went limp and his eyes started to close. And there was a pulling sensation as his grasp on reality started to slip, ignoring his sharp stab of fear and thoughts of fuck no no NO. Out of desperation he tried fighting it again, but all he could manage was a faint muscle spasm before everything went black.