Chapter Eleven: Everything's Swell
Tiffany exited the black sedan that had been her transport to, what she assumed, would be her accommodation for the next month. The big building reminded her of a mental asylum out of a horror movie. Perhaps it wasn’t quite that bad. It was only her fear of what would happen to her, she supposed, that made it so daunting. The place actually looked fairly new.
It did, however, have that loony bin look to it, with its big gray walls and glass front. The grounds around the place were extensive, as she’d seen through the car window on the drive in. The part that really gave it that feeling, though, was the prison-like fence around the place and the multitude of cameras on the exterior walls. The sign above the door read, “The NewYou Clinic for Adolescent Addiction.”
As Tiffany had no addiction problems, this was only more curious. She pushed through the doors to the clean, modern lobby. On the walls were posters displaying motivational messages about recovery, help, perseverance, and trust. At the back of the plush lobby sat a reception desk, where a gorgeous brunette looked up from her computer and watched Tiffany’s tentative approach.
“Good morning,” the girl said. “Welcome to NewYou. Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I was just dropped off here and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.”
The girl didn’t seem perturbed by this and asked, “Name?”
Tiffany opened her mouth and paused. It was a simple question without a simple answer.
“Tongue Candy?” she said.
The girl frowned and looked at the collar. She typed at the computer.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have anything under… that name. Is there something else it might be under?”
Tiffany, blushing, took her ID from her purse and showed it to the receptionist. She typed again.
“There you are,” she said. “If you’ll have a seat, please, I’ll page Dr. Swell.”
Tiffany took a seat in one of the chairs. A few minutes passed before a door to the side of the desk opened and a woman in the stereotypical white smock emerged. The woman had the slim and delicate features of an Asian beauty and her hair was raven black, tied up in a neat bun. Nothing about her seemed threatening, but when she looked Tiffany over, what she saw there was not the look of a doctor examining one for signs of distress. It was the look of an expert appraising a piece of work for flaws. Tiffany could almost see the woman making some sort of checklist, deciding where to start fixing those flaws. She couldn’t bring herself to stand.
The woman, smiling in welcome, her face a mask of compassion, approached and extended her hand. As Tiffany took it, she could see that it was, indeed, a mask.
“Hello, Tiffany,” she said. “I’m Doctor Rebecca Swell. Would you come with me, please?”
Tiffany’s hand trembled in the Doctor’s, which was not so much shaking hers as caressing it with longing. She found her feet and, for one of the few times in her life, she was speechless. Not even the Obsequium rush she’d been feeling all morning managed to quell the knot of anxiety in her stomach as she followed the doctor through the door. It closed behind them and an electronic bolt thudded shut with an ominous finality.
“Right this way,” Swell said and started down the hall.
The clinic was a maze of hallways and doors. At first, those doors were offices. Then, they passed a rec room, a gym, and a cafeteria. In the cafeteria were over a dozen girls, all near her age, she guessed, and each of them was dressed in matching scrubs of pale blue. Some were chatting at tables, while others played games or watched TV on the flat screens that hung from the ceiling.
They left all of these behind and then the doors changed. Now, they were heavy doors, with small windows in the front. Once more she had the impression of a madhouse, and she pictured padded rooms where patients drooled on their straitjackets. Bitch Slit’s words came back to her again. If you’re sane enough to drive. She shuddered. Yes, stupid idea.
Swell opened one of the doors and escorted Tiffany into a small room that reminded her of a dorm. It was spartan, with a couple of posters on the walls, a neatly made little bed, and a desk that held a computer. A bathroom stood off to the side and another flat-screen TV hung on one wall. There was a set of drawers but otherwise nothing else. Swell shut the door.
“Have a seat, Tongue Candy,” Swell said, the mask falling away to reveal the monster.
Tiffany sat on the bed.
“These are temporary accommodations,” Swell said. “I have some preparations to make, but you won’t be here long. Do you know why they sent you to me?”
Tiffany shook her head, her mouth dry, but then she found her voice and said, “They said they were going to change me.”
Swell nodded and continued, “That’s right. Only part of that work is my responsibility. You’ll be here for a few days to recover from that work—“
“Recover?”
Swell smiled, ignoring the interruption, and continued, “And once my work is done, you’ll move on. How much work you ultimately require is up to you. If you uphold the company’s values, the work will be less extensive. On the other hand, if you’re a difficult bitch, you’ll need more work. Would you say you’re a difficult bitch?”
“I, um, I don’t think so.”
“That was your previous Master’s thought as well,” Swell said. “He seems to think you have the right mindset for the work we’re doing. Do you?”
Tiffany thought for a moment. She could have lied, she supposed and told Swell what she thought she wanted to hear. Instead, she told the truth.
“Do I think that the company should ultimately rule the world under a global, patriarchal government that sees women as objects, and most of the population as little cogs in a big machine? I wouldn’t say that I completely believe it, but I can see it happening. I believe that it’s going to happen, and I don’t want to be on the wrong side of it. I don’t want the people I love to be on the wrong side of it, either. So, if I have to make myself believe it, then I will.”
“That’s a remarkably candid answer,” Swell said, nodding. “At least you won’t be a sycophant. That will make you useful. What you’re describing is a narrow view, however. I could stand here and tell you that you’re wrong and attempt to convince you that there’s a bigger picture, but right now you’re too afraid to acknowledge it. And it isn’t my place. I have my place in the machine and you’ll have yours. Seeing as you do possess a brain, though as a woman they’ll make you deny it, I’ll give you a piece of advice. Every machine has pieces that are more vital than others. Become one of those pieces. Don’t be an interchangeable screw or faulty circuit that can be changed out in a pinch. Whatever you might think of them, and you aren’t completely wrong, value is recognized, even if you do have tits. I’ll be back for you soon.”
Swell turned to leave.
“Dr. Swell?” Tiffany said.
She turned back.
“Will I still be… me?”
Swell shrugged and said, “That depends on your level of compassion. Once you leave here, that’s your next test. If you think you’re a compassionate person, that test will be harder. If you are, they’ll take it away. If you aren’t, you’ll take it away from yourself. Either way, they’ll have what they want.”
“Are you?”
“Compassionate?” Swell asked.
Tiffany nodded. Swell opened the door and the smile that she fixed Tiffany with now showed the monster in full. The smile was like something out of every psycho-killer movie she’d ever watched. It was the look of satisfaction that a hunter has when it’s killed. It was the look of a child who enjoys the destruction it has wrought on its toys and continues to smash them until nothing is left but the broken bits.
“No,” she said. “I’m one of the worst. Only, I know it.”
She walked out, shut the door, and locked it from the outside.
Chapter Twelve: The 69th Floor
Kayla’s life had become one humiliating day after another and, as she opened the door to her home, it didn’t seem like that was going to end. Her family was under the sway of a lunatic, falling more deeply into their own perversions by the day. Each of those days it became more apparent. Today was no different.
Only last night, the Professor had finally pushed her mother and brother to start an incestuous relationship. Kayla had been able to avoid actually seeing it happen then, but there was no avoiding it now. The Professor himself was nowhere to be seen, but Marie and Rich were here, in all their naked glory, right in the front room.
Working for a misogynist corporate giant on a relentless path toward global domination, Kayla had the mistaken impression that she could handle the sight of two people fucking. She’d watched women raping one another. Men she didn’t know had stopped over to push their dicks into her mouth. Licking spunk from a celebrity’s ass, she’d done. She’d been used like a sex puppet for a group of horny socialites more than once. She now wore chains on her tits while she worked, and referred to herself as Cumhole.
Seeing her mother, on her back, with her legs in the air, and her own son pounding his cock into her as they grunted like animals, however, paralyzed her. She shouldn’t have felt surprised, shocked, or even disgusted. And she didn’t. The biggest surprise was that, for a long moment, she didn’t feel anything. It was as if all the life and breath had been driven out of her and she was rooted to that spot like one of Cole’s statues.
Marie wasn’t making any real words. The expression on her face was a mixture of total confusion, orgasmic ecstasy, and open-mouthed horror. Rich, on the other hand, showed no horror or confusion. His face, as he looked down at his mother’s bouncing tits and sweat-damp hair, was one of determination. It was as though every driving instinct in his body was telling him that his only purpose at this moment was to force another orgasm out of his mother’s audibly aroused, wet pussy.
The bottle of Obsequium in Kayla’s hand fell from her lifeless fingers to spill across the carpet. Even that didn’t draw the attention of the two degenerates humping one another on the living room floor. Marie gave a hot, slutty moan and humped her crotch up to meet her son’s thrusts, giving him the orgasm he’d worked for. Who were these people? She recognized them as little as she recognized herself. The two hump-happy perverts, writhing on the floor, consumed by carnality, might have looked like her family, but they were strangers. And there was nothing she could do about it.
Kayla skirted past them and they didn’t even look up at her as she hurried by.
“Oh, fuck! Milk that dick, cunt!” Rich cried.
She fled up the stairs and threw herself onto the bed, pulling a pillow over her head. Whether to block out the sounds of the porn or to suffocate herself, she wasn’t sure. The pillow wasn’t enough. She could still hear wet thuk, thuk, thuk, sounds from the TV, while another cock-stuffed porn slut gave in to her base desires for profit and the benefit of masturbating horndogs. Masturbating horndogs like Rich. And like her.
Kayla sniffled into her sheets and her hand drifted between her legs. She’d taken off her panties at some point. Probably, she’d left them on her desk. The desk where she’d masturbated while watching roommates rape each other. The desk where she’d orgasmed to the sight of those rapes multiple times. The desk where she had picked out pairs of them to star in a slutty reality show that they had no knowledge of.
She rubbed her cunt as she sniffled in confused, aroused terror at what was happening to her mind. How could she be so hot over it, so fucking horny that she couldn’t keep from touching herself? How could the very things that she hated and wanted nothing to do with be so tremendously exciting that she needed to play with her cunt? Why did the fact that they were changing her get her so hot, and yet repulse her at the same time?
Because they were changing her. She was letting them do it. She couldn’t stop herself. The confused thoughts and images were like a hurricane of mixed feelings as she touched her pussy, rubbed it, fingered it, with her head buried under the pillow and tears wetting her sheets. She humped her own hand to make the good feelings her focus, to take away the worry and the confusion. It was just like when she’d started masturbating to cope with her anxiety. It felt good. It felt so good!
She replayed the pain of having her tits clamped to the desk, and the image of her mother’s own disbelief as her son railed her cunt. That look of aroused shock was so like her own, as though her mind couldn’t quite cope with the fact that she was letting it happen. She couldn’t truly grasp that such a disgusting, slutty act had turned her on; that she was a degenerate fuck puppet, controlled by the hot feeling in her cunt, and sliding further every day into a place where that was the only thing that mattered.
She removed the pillow and reached for her earbuds, with one hand still playing with her pussy. This was better, but it was also worse. When she complied with the policy and listened to the programs, they would take away the worry. She wouldn’t need to think about being a slut, because the programs would tell her that she didn’t need to worry. She just had to be. Just be a slut. Focus on her cunt. Think with it. That was important. Her cunt was an important thing. Her cunt belonged to the company and the company was the most important thing.
The program began, filling her head with the familiar, comforting whine that sucked away her conscious thought like so much water down the drain. The worry was sucked away with it, and then the only thing that mattered was saying the words as she touched her pussy. The last thought she had before she entered that place of almost sleep, was to wonder how long it would be before her mother and brother came for her, too.
***
Kayla stepped out of the elevator onto sub-level nine with a flush in her cheeks. The flush was, as usual, from a mixture of humiliation at the sight of the giant posters in the lobby, and the Obsequium rush from both the collar and the bottle in her hand. Kitty bounded from her chair with wide-eyed excitement as she entered Media and Marketing for her third day.
“Holyfuckin’fuck!” she exclaimed in a rush, the words blurring together comically.
“What?” Kayla asked, suddenly frozen with fear.
The fear, she suddenly realized, seemed to be as constant as her arousal.
Kitty took a deep breath and visibly attempted to calm herself as she said, slowly, “The 69th floor.”
Kayla’s fear only intensified.
“What about it?”
“They want to see you,” Kitty whispered. “The big boss wants to see you!”
“Me?” Kayla asked and had to stop herself, as she realized she was backing toward the elevator and preparing to run.
“It has to be good,” Kitty whispered again. “They don’t call you up there for bad behavior. If you were a Bad Girl, they’d just take care of you.”
Kayla did not like the idea of being taken care of. The terrible sense of dread seemed to be closing off her throat, constricting her airway. She was going to pass out. Kitty helped her sit on the floor and told her to breathe. It helped.
“Why?” she finally croaked.
Kitty shrugged and said, “No idea. Maybe he’s going to fuck you! Can you just imagine? Fucked by the big boss himself?”
Kayla could not imagine it, as Kayla had yet to be fucked by any man. She only shook her head.
“Well, you better get going. Just make sure you’re, you know, good. Call him Sir and all that.”
“You’re not coming with me?” Kayla asked.
“I can ride up with you, but you don’t go up to 69 without an invitation. I’m not looking to get demoted to mop girl. I’d probably look cute with a mop handle up my ass, but I don’t imagine it’s a lot of fun.”
“What about Master Hardik?” Kayla asked, dithering. “Maybe I should go see him first?”
“You wanna keep 69 waiting?”
Kayla did not want to do that. She did not, in fact, want to go up the elevator at all. But there was little choice to be had. She walked with Kitty back into the elevator and pushed the button for the 69th floor. The lift moved with agonizing slowness, giving Kayla ample time to contemplate her doom. Kitty noted her distress and decided to help her by rubbing Kayla’s cunt under her skirt. It helped with the worry only slightly.
Kitty gave her a very wet kiss before the doors opened and Kayla stepped off the elevator with a film of the girl’s spittle on her lips and chin. To either side, a long hallway receded. In front of her was a reception area with two plush chairs and a desk. Kayla assumed that this was where she was supposed to go. Having had no instruction, she walked to the desk on shaky legs. Behind the desk sat a blonde woman a few years her senior. She was topless and the words, “Grope Me,” were hastily scrawled on her tits in black marker. By the faded look of the words, this had been done a few days ago. The woman looked up from her desk at Kayla’s approach.
“Hey, honey buns. What can I do ya’ for?” she asked around a mouthful of gum.
“Um, hello. I… I think I’m supposed to be here. They told me to see the big boss.”
The girl tapped at the air a few times and said, “Yup. That’s you. You want I should slap ya’ first?”
“Um, is that… necessary?” Kayla asked, confused.
The girl shrugged and said, “It can’t hurt. Well, I mean, it’ll hurt, but it can’t hurt yer chances. The boss likes a teary-eyed bitch. Ya’ look afraid, which is good, but I’d say you ain’t been slapped in a good while.”
Kayla felt that she should, somehow, begin quelling her sense of surprise when she was presented with some awful, new humiliation, but it never seemed to happen. It was, somehow, always a surprise.
“I’d like that,” she said.
The girl, her enhanced, balloon-like melons jiggling, rounded the desk and slapped Kayla across the face. The sting of the slap brought the beginnings of tears to her eyes, and the following backhanded crack across her other cheek made them begin to trickle in earnest.
“That should do,” the girl said. “I’ll page you in.”
Kayla stood shuffling her feet as the girl spoke on her phone, then hung it up.
“Go on in,” she said.
Kayla turned to the door, put her hand on the handle, and opened it. The lavish office was different from what she’d imagined. Someone who ran a place like DomCo, she presumed, would have naked sex slaves chained to the walls. He’d have tortured women, contorted into lewd positions, writhing on the floors for his amusement. There would be a naked slut in his lap, spreading her legs, while another naked slut serviced his cock. A man like that would have tits in each hand and bad porn music blaring from expensive speakers.
There was none of that. The office was all dark, polished wood, with only a single leather couch and a large, beautiful desk. The desk had a few small, neatly stacked piles of paper and a computer monitor. Large windows to the left side, she thought, might look out from the tower over the city. At the moment, however, those windows were shut tight with dark, electronic shades.
The man behind the desk was old. Very old. What hair remained on his head was a gray ring and his jowls sagged with age. His eyes, though, were keen and interested as he looked up from his desk at her. Even from across the room, she could see the light of desire and the cold, calculating mind behind them. She shut the door behind her and took a step into the office. The man rose.
Kayla had been so intent on the man that in the second she’d been in the office, she only now noticed the most horrifying decoration within. In some ways, it was more horrifying than the man himself. In one corner of the office, where the old man could look at her, was a blonde woman. She was fitted into some kind of weird metal frame, attached to it by her wrists, her ankles, and a collar around her neck. In her mouth was a ring gag, which she drooled over, flecks of spittle falling to the carpet.
The soft, repetitive hum of a fucking machine slowly worked a dildo in and out of the girl’s wet cunt. Attached to the woman’s large tits was some sort of pumping apparatus, that seemed as though it were painful because the woman was moaning with a mixture of agony and arousal. On her head was a headband with bovine ears attached. This, Kayla thought, was more in line with what she’d imagined.
The old man went to the girl and stroked her hair as he watched Kayla’s astonished face.
“My daughter, Vicky,” he said. “Quite the pretty little cow, isn’t she?”
Kayla’s jaw moved but she couldn’t make any words come out.
“Let’s have a look at you,” the old man said and left Vicky to her painful milking. He stepped closer to Kayla, who felt light-headed again. The old man gave her a quick slap that snapped her back into focus.
“Show me your tits and your cunt,” he said and took a step back.
Kayla, not wanting to get another slap, or end up in a milking frame, quickly raised her top and exposed her naked tits, then lifted her skirt to bare her nude fuckhole. The old man stared at them for a very uncomfortable few seconds, before he nodded.
“The tits are amusing and acceptable,” he said. “Do you know why you’re here, twat?”
Kayla shook her head and then managed to croak, “No, Sir.”
The old man took another step back and sat on the edge of his desk.
“You’re going to learn that I’m not one for sugaring the truth,” he said. “The truth is that I’m your father, and it’s time to come home.”
Kayla looked about in confusion, unable to process the words that he’d spoken. Her father was here? Where?
“I can see by the look of slutty confusion that this knowledge is a bit of a kick in the cunt. That’s no surprise. The slutty confusion, I mean. Also, the knowledge. Likely, that slut who whelped you and raised you these past eighteen had you under the impression that whatever twat she was with was your daddy. Marly? Mary? I don’t write the checks myself and there’s been more than a few. Doesn’t matter.”
Kayla was still not able to speak. The old man was undeterred.
“Here are the facts, Cumhole. Your mother was a whore and I didn’t love her. You were an accident. Like that one,” he nodded to Vicky, “and like the rest of you fourteen girls. For a while, I considered it some kind of divine joke. I build this,” he gestured to his work, “and produce nothing but more cunts. No sons. No heirs. Only, it wasn’t a joke. It was, actually, a reward and a challenge. I like a challenge. You’re going to drool on your tits if you don’t shut your mouth.”
Kayla’s mouth snapped shut so hard it hurt.
“I’ve had my eye on you for some time. All of you. I’ve been watching what sort of girl you are. Unlike the rest of them, I’m not entirely disappointed.”
At this point, Vicky made another noise that was more of a grumble.
“Of course, not you, little cunt,” the old man said to her, “You’re my heiress. Your sisters aren’t going to take away what you’ve worked for.”
“Sister?” Kayla finally managed to say.
“When a man has daughters,” the old man explained, “they are sisters. In this case, half-sisters, but blood is blood. We’re not here to talk about Vicky. I’m talking about you. I watched you, and then I put that two-bit hypno freak on you to steer you in the right direction.”
“Professor Miles,” Kayla said.
“Somehow, though, you managed to get yourself here. Nice job. Since then, you’ve managed to ruin yourself pretty well, which I approve of.”
Vicky mumbled again around her gag.
“Don’t let her worry you, Cumhole,” the old man said. “She’s just jealous. Vicky had to do a lot to win my approval, didn’t you little cow?”
Vicky made another unintelligible mumble.
“As such,” he continued, “Vicky won her place in the pecking order. Here’s another truth, Cumhole. I’m going to die and it probably won’t be long before I do. Vicky’s proven herself a worthy successor, someone who understands both a girl’s place and what I’m trying to achieve. You’re here today because I’m going to make you an offer. You can decline my offer and go back down to the basement, where you can toil away in your obscurity. Or you can accept my offer and take the place that my blood deserves.”
Kayla’s eyes slid to the cow in the milking frame. The old man smiled.
“No. That’s not your place. Vicky’s just getting her milking because she’s carrying my first son. Isn’t that right princess?”
Vicky mumbled more nonsense. Kayla felt nauseous and had to reach out a hand to steady herself against the door. She now realized that she had taken a step back toward it as if prepared to flee. It was all coming too fast, the implications too large, only adding to the hurricane of confusion.
Then, the old man was there and his arm was under her. He helped her to sit on the leather couch. He sat next to her and put a hand on her bare leg. The flesh was wrinkled, calloused, and hot.
“Listen to me girl,” he snapped and Kayla gulped as she met his dark eyes. “I don’t have time for your sensitivity. That’s an asset in other places but not here, not now. There’s too much to put in place. More than I have time. I’ve watched you all and there are skills you have. You might not recognize you have them right now, but you will. I have measures in place to ensure that you learn to use them.”
He lifted his hand from her knee, then waved that hand and the electronic shades rolled up. The morning sun washed over the dark office, bathing it in a white light. Outside, the towers of the city sprawled across the miles, many of them dwarfed by the DomCo building. Kayla thought that this was no accident. The old man went to the windows and beckoned her to join him.
“What do you see out there?” he asked.
Kayla, her thoughts muddled by the drugs and the sudden realization that she was not who she thought she was an hour ago, was unsure how to respond.
“The city?” she answered.
“One among thousands,” the old man said. “I’ll tell you what I see. I see an entire species with great potential, but fractious and short-sighted. I see a world whose cohesion is breaking down, and I see great ideas left unpursued because of meaningless politics or corporate infighting. This place,” he waved his hand over the office, “will either change that or collapse under the effort. It’s the way of systems. They live or die, evolve or become replaced.”
Kayla thought about the Haloes in her eyes, which were showing her the world around her in detail that she’d never considered. Temperatures, air quality, and even potential shifts in weather. All of it danced in her vision like it was part of her. After only a couple of days, she was already adjusting to that.
“Like phones,” she said and tapped her eyes.
“Exactly,” the old man hissed and for a moment he smiled. Then he continued, “Technology is allowing ways of governance that have never been possible. Most of the giants that you think of out there are dinosaurs, lumbering along, slow to change. When the end comes for them, they’ll fall rapidly, because they cannot govern themselves the way we can. They’ve held themselves back through the same fractured ways of doing things that they have for so many years. Banks, governments, and other corporations; all of them are failing to adapt. Some of them even realize it, and that’s why they’re part of my board. The goal, girl, isn’t to dominate this world for the sake of power. It’s about unification toward a common purpose. You’ve never broken someone, so I know you can’t understand that power, but you will. An entire population is, in many ways, no different from breaking an individual.”
He strode from Kayla to Vicky, who looked up as well as she could from the confinement of the frame. He stroked her hair.
“In order to rebuild a thing to serve your purpose,” he said, looking down into her eyes, “sometimes you need to break it first. Isn’t that right, little cow?”
He pulled the ring gag from Vicky’s mouth and she sputtered, licked her lips, and worked her jaw. She looked up at him with adoration and worship.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
“Good girl.”
He joined Kayla again at the window and continued, “The posters in the lobby aren’t just another humiliation for you. I do find it entertaining, and it is degrading. That’s never going to change. It’s the curse of your gender. No one will change my mind on that. On the subject of gender equality, I am as unmoving as those dinosaurs out there. Those posters are part of your place in the pecking order. I want you to be a poster girl for this company. The poster girl, in fact.”
“Poster girl?” Kayla asked.
“One of the faces of what we’re making here when that time comes. Just as Vicky will be seen in her position, you’ll be seen in yours. Your other sisters, when they’ve been brought to heel, will have their places, too. You, Cumhole, Kayla, will uphold the company’s values as publically as I need you to. Britt is one of those poster girls, but a different sort of tool. You,” he put his hand on her shoulder, “will be another kind. What you have is different. You, unlike most of us, are likable, sweet, and sympathetic. In most of our herd, those are characteristics that I work to undermine. In you, it’s necessary. You don’t know the term, I’m sure, but I like to think of you as aftercare. You’re the emotional and moral center. You’ll do the kissing and cuddling after the inevitable spankings.”
“I don’t understand,” Kayla admitted.
“It means that I’m going to humiliate you publically and do it repeatedly. I’m going to claim you as one of my own and make provisions for you when the time comes. You will serve the vision by showing others the rewards that come from being a good girl. In so doing, you’ll wield the power to shape this entity’s policy for the future. You’re soft. You don’t like the things that happen here. I see it. If you want to smooth out some of the rough edges, then you can work at it. I’ll give you that influence. But you’ll toe the line. Does that kind of power interest you? Do the rewards?”
Kayla looked away from him and out over the city, working through the enormity of it all. It was so much, too much, and all at once. She understood how little time it took for someone’s life to change. she thought about it every day, had thought about it since the day her father… the man she’d believed was her father, left. In that short period of time, her life no longer resembled, even remotely, what it had then.
She did not resemble the girl she’d been then, outside or in. All of it was a jumble. Had she been lied to her whole life by her parents? Was this old man lying to her now? If he was, what was the reason? Surely, there were other DomCo girls that he could have here, others who would take his offer without hesitation. That part made her believe that it was the truth.
How much truth was in it, and how much of it was another mind game? If there was truth in it, though, she’d have real power, like she’d talked about with Tiffany. She could impose her own values, temper the coming storm, and maybe make things better for the ones that would come after her. But it was so much and she didn’t know how to do any of it.
There were tears in her eyes and she wiped at them. The old man moved behind her and his hands rested on her shoulders. She could see his reflection in the glass, alongside her own. Through the tears, she studied that face and she thought that she could see small things, similarities, that reinforced the truth of what he’d said.
“It’s a hard road that I’m asking you to walk,” he said. “It will be a hard road for everyone. I understand your tears, but it isn’t the time for them. I’m going to ask you to betray a great deal along the way. You’ll betray yourself and you’ll betray every other girl out there. In the end, though, your betrayal will help to shape a future in which the entire human race thrives across more worlds than this one. Will you betray them with me?”
Kayla brushed the tears away with the back of her hand. The old man was no liar. He didn’t need to be.
They own everything. What they don’t they will.
Suck Pet’s words came back. She was right. Comply or be destroyed. If she complied, she could be a counter to the harsher tactics they used. If she went back down to the basement, there would be no second chance. In the end, she gave the only answer that she felt she could.
“Yes.”
Enjoying the story so far? Catch up on the entire novel, Korrupting Kayla, Book Two before the release of Book Three!
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