Chapter 6: A Tale of Three Claras

I have, so far, only mentioned the end of the world in passing. It is tempting to skip over the details of this tragedy. Its scale is too vast. My own life story, for all its suffering, is merely a footnote in a greater apocalypse. Part of me wants to move on—to Clara-2 and the next grim twist in the tale—and yet I hesitate. Because understanding my story means understanding the ruined world I was born into.

The world died in two waves, sent like twin beasts to break the back of humanity.

First came the atomics, and the scars they left are embedded in our very soil. They called it a war, but it was nothing less than a culling—an act of mass extinction that turned our once-great cities into glass and reduced humanity to a mere fraction of what it had once been.

Afterwards, maps were redrawn not by lines, but by radioactive scars where great metropolises had previously stood. Ancient capitals are now only stories, their ashes swept away by poisoned winds. The oceans rose to claim the weakened coasts, and what little was left of humanity retreated inland.

The second beast of the apocalypse emerged not with a thunderous roar but with a quiet, insidious malice—a genomic weapon designed not only to decimate populations but to cripple human reproduction. This insidious creation seeped into the air, infiltrated the soil, and tainted the water, a silent specter stalking the remnants of civilization.

Infec-11 acted like a parasite, invading our DNA and altering the reproductive systems of both men and women, but it was the women, as always, who bore the brunt of its catastrophic effects. Conception became a gamble, an act fraught with uncertainty and despair. Miscarriage was common. Most pregnancies ended in the first three months. Of the few that continued, only a fraction made it to term, and fewer still saw live births—of those, half ended in the mother’s death.

Even more unsettling, the ratio of male to female births was irrevocably altered—11 girls born for every boy. The laws and institutions that had governed society before the apocalypse were abandoned, replaced by a harsh code of survival and conquest. In this new reality, women were reduced to mere chattel—commodities to be traded and owned.

For most men, there is little to be said. Their continued existence was better than that of women, but only marginally so. In a world where reproduction held immense value, their inability to conceive relegated them to the status of second-class citizens. The lucky few who managed to father children soon faced the bitter reality that their offspring were often worthless daughters, incapable of carrying on their names or bloodlines. Each girl born was another weight on their shoulders, a reminder of their own failures, and a justification to lash out in anger at the women around them.

But some, a small few, found that their seed had been spared. A rare genetic mutation, an inexplicable anomaly, had made these men immune to the most devastating effects of Infec-11. They became the inheritors of the new world, the chosen few whose children would lead a new order. Their seed, capable of producing male heirs, would carry on their legacies. They reveled in their dominance, forming a ruling class built on the potency of their sperm. “The blood is strong,” was an adage that our society had been built on.

Women bred by these bloodlines were not only more likely to conceive but also passed this advantage down to their daughters. And so the noble bloodlines intertwined, creating a hereditary strata.

This was the history I knew, part of the education I’d received in the tank. But in the observation chamber, my stepmother added further detail.

“The noble lines are dying,” she explained. “Not all, but most.”

What this had to do with Clara-2, I had no idea, but I didn’t want to believe it. “The blood is strong” had been pressed into me during incubation—a truth I knew by heart. It came out now, reflexively: “The blood—”

Mom shook her head, cutting me off. “The blood is weak,” she said firmly. “Undone by our own arrogance. For all our careful breeding and attention to lineage, the peerage has always been vulnerable. Without new genetic material, we’ve risked stagnation and decline. And so the Lords took slaves from the low-born, and used their stolen wombs to bring new vitality to the blood.

“Yet this remedy carried a cost. As bloodlines are diluted, the genetic immunity to Infec-11 weakens. Noble houses, once resilient, now struggle to conceive. Lords have fewer sons, and each generation is weaker than the last.”

“And I’m only a bastard,” I muttered, struggling to make sense of my own standing in this unraveling order.

Mom’s lips tightened at the word, but she nodded. “I was born Clara Trotwood, the eldest of two daughters in a fading noble house, the last remnants of a once-great lineage. With no heir and no male relatives, my father’s line was ending.”

Mom took a breath, her gaze distant as she recalled her past. “As a daughter, I knew from an early age that my value was rooted here,” she said, grabbing her cunt roughly with one hand. “A warm hole for my husband, and a womb to give him an heir.”

I nodded along. Even among the peerage, women were useful only as cockwarmers or babymakers. This made sense; it aligned with my lessons from the tank.

“We were a fading house—noble in name but in decline, our bloodline weakened, unwanted, and ignored. Our wealth had diminished alongside our virility. My father, ever the opportunist, saw a way to reverse our fortunes: high-born pussy is greatly valued by the lowest strata. A firstborn daughter, from a house with no heirs, is a prize that can elevate a common man to the nobility.”

Her jaw tightened, and she continued, her words clipped and emotionless. “I didn’t meet your father until the day of our marriage. He was a stranger, and the ceremony was a financial transaction. My father had sold me. That was the end of it.”

“Property,” I said softly, aware that now, after my father’s death, she technically belonged to me.

“Yes,” she said, her expression unreadable. “Your father was a pussy-broker who’d earned his wealth selling holes on the exchange. He and my father both had business with the breeding farms.”

“Like Peggoty’s,” I interjected.

Mom nodded and I felt Clara shiver, her grip on me tightening. Peggoty’s was the pussy-farm where she’d been raised, where my father had purchased her. I shushed her with a gentle stroke of her behind, nodding for my mother to continue.

“Your father intended to breed his own legacy through me, securing his name to a noble bloodline,” Mom paused, her gaze flickering down. “At first, he was ... well, not kind. He was never kind. But he was less cruel in the beginning.” She absently touched the burn mark on her neck, the ghost of his brutality causing her to tremble. “When his seed failed to overcome the weakness of my womb, his temper turned.”

Her fingers dropped, slipping between her thighs, pressing against the opening of her sex. I could see the moisture on her fingertips as she pulled them away. She stared at them, her voice falling to a whisper. “But even violence was an intimacy, and I’d grown desperate for any touch.”

I felt my own erection growing, a dark lust taking hold. Mom’s gaze lifted from her wet fingers, her eyes locking on the stiffening shaft between my legs. She smiled, a sad, broken expression, and dropped to her knees.

“May I?” she asked, looking up at me with pleading eyes.

I had no reason to allow her this, and every reason not to. This was a manipulation, and I knew it. She wanted her tongue on my cock.

And I wanted it, too.

“Clara,” I said, and my stepmother flinched, her gaze dropping to the floor. “On your knees next to my whore mother.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Clara murmured, sliding into position beside my mother. Both women kneeled together, naked and submissive, waiting obediently for permission.

“Go on,” I told them.

Two tongues reached out, and licked me at the same time. The feeling was exquisite, and I shuddered. Two pairs of hands began caressing me, rubbing the sensitive flesh, coaxing more blood to the surface. I was so hard and big.

“Good cunts,” I groaned, reaching down to pet their heads.

Clara hummed happily, and my mother sighed. “My Lord,” she breathed, her lips brushing against the swollen tip of my cock.

“Continue, whore,” I commanded. “Tell me how you lost your husband to my birth mother.”