The Sinister Contraption
Mille Dynamite
© Copyright 2025 by Millie Dynamite
The Sinister Contraption
Chapter 1: An Innocent Walk
Chapter 1: An Innocent Walk
The door chimed as Willow stepped out of Starbucks, hot espresso trailing behind her in vaporous ghosts. She took a deep, open-mouthed breath and swiped the green apron off her waist, stuffing it into her backpack with one swift motion. The freedom of Friday afternoon hit her bloodstream like a sweet caffeine spike.
Finding the familiar groove against her shoulder, she adjusted the weight of her bag and started down the sidewalk with a dancer’s economy. Always light on her toes, she strode along, unhurried. Escaping wisps of hair clung to frame her face, with her wavy chestnut mane twisted into a messy bun.
The sun danced on her porcelain skin and brought out every freckle on her nose and the upper edges of her cheeks. Wearing her favorite canvas shorts and a thrift shop tee with faded whales leaping across her chest.
Actual whales, Willow thought, would’ve hated this weather. But she didn’t. With her eyes closed, she tipped her face into the warmth and grinned, eyes closed, letting the late-spring sun soak through.
A bird called from the power line above. The short, sharp chirp of a mockingbird. But Willow heard another, fainter song layered beneath it. Off in the distance, a cardinal, probably perched in the oak near the corner, added to the symphony. Scanning the tree canopy, Willow found a flash of red high in the green. The sight made her happy in a way she’d never admit aloud.
Moving away from the strip mall, she angled right, into the latticework of suburban streets. This was the nicer part of town, the mid-century houses and brick, lawns tight as golf courses, driveways marked out in chalk for impromptu basketball. A yellow dog dozed in the triangle of shade beneath its owner’s mailbox.
A pair of old men in Cubs hats leaned against a Camry, talking in low voices while one of them used a shop rag to polish the hubcaps.
Never going straight, Willow’s route home always zigzagged. She liked to mix it up, claiming, ‘The long way is the scenic one.’ Even though the view barely changed from block to block. Preferring an unhurried route home, she liked this kind of automatic movement led by her whims. Her body found its pace, and her brain went semi-idle, free to hopscotch from one thought to another.
“Actually,” she muttered, only slightly embarrassed, “suburban lawns are basically ecological dead zones. If I had my way—” She broke off, catching herself mid-rant. No audience today. However, she still liked to say the words out loud.
A wind gust carried a fragrance of fresh-cut grass and exhaust vapors. Willow wrinkled her nose, not in distaste, just awareness. On the curb ahead, a landscaping crew struggled with a sputtering mower while one worker texted someone, and their hands were all stained green. The men ignored her, so she offered them a nod in solidarity. They looked up and nodded back.
A red Prius rolled past at exactly the speed limit.
The driver, a woman in medical scrubs, gave a small, tired wave, and Willow waved back mechanically. Catching her reflection in the tinted glass, she frowned. Too bright green eyes, a burst of freckles, restless fingers constantly fidgeting with a ring on the strap of her backpack. The good thing was that she looked as young as she felt. With the accompanying bad, her mother said, the freckles made her look ‘endlessly innocent,’ as if that were a good thing.
Twasn’t. Who’d wish for such a thing?
The crosswalk light ahead flashed yellow. Willow slowed, waiting for the walking man icon to appear. Her phone buzzed in her pocket: a notification from the student eco club group chat. She considered ignoring it, but curiosity won.
When she scanned the message, yet another plea for volunteers for Sunday’s river cleanup. Despite wanting to say yes, she also wanted her first full weekend off in a month.
“I can probably do both,” she decided. Tapping out a quick reply: “Count me in! But I’ll have to leave by three for my shift, sorry.” Nevertheless, she wasn’t sorry at all, and as lies go, it was a harmless one. A small proof she wasn’t as blameless as her mother believed.
A shadow flickered over her.
As she moved, she glanced up and caught the movement. It was a hawk gliding on a thermal, wings fixed, eyes hunting the lawns for an easy target. The sight made her shiver, as if she’d caught a secret glimpse of something not meant for human eyes. Oh, how she loved that feeling.
When she crossed the street and detoured through a pocket park, she found three benches, a patch of clover, and a battered, blue slide for the elementary schoolers. A little girl in pink overalls balanced atop the slide, arms out like airplane wings. Her mother hovered below, hands ready, knees bent.
Willow watched, transfixed, as the girl launched herself down the slick plastic and landed squarely in her mother’s lap. Both burst out laughing. For a second, Willow envied the certainty of that catch, the guarantee of arms waiting at the bottom.
Smiling, she shook her head and continued along the trail, sneakers crunching over sidewalk grit. Someone had planted milkweed along the park border. Monarch caterpillars inched along the thick leaves.
“That’s new,” Willow said, crouching to inspect a clutch of eggs on the underside of a leaf. The city must have caved to the butterfly initiative after all.
“One small victory for caterpillars, one giant flight for butterfly kind,” Willow said, pleased with her witticism, saddened that only she heard it.
Stretching until her spine crackled, she brushed dirt from her hands and straightened up. Her phone buzzed again, another group chat. Letting the anticipation build instead of checking it immediately, she ignored it, confident her input wasn’t required. The sun had shifted, settling lower, bleaching the world to a high-contrast clarity.
A glint caught her eye from a second-story window across the park. For a moment, it looked like someone watched her. A lens flash, maybe, or the sun bouncing off something. Willow didn’t dwell on it. The window darkened as the observer stepped away. Dismissing it, she attributed it to the common curiosity of adults monitoring teenagers or nosy neighbors policing the park.
For some reason, all this perceived intrigue gave her a tiny spark between her legs. A trace of moisture, a hint of arousal, lingered inside her quim.
As she reached the end of the path, a sedan idled at the curb. It wasn’t a familiar car. Feeling the subtle pressure of unseen eyes, she walked past. The driver, a man in mirrored sunglasses, pretended to scroll on his phone. Even though Willow tried not to look, her reflection in his shades caught her off guard. And her own features distorted, alien, yet weirdly recognizable. Her moisture thickened.
Some instinct urged her, and she quickened her pace.
And foregoing further wanderings, she turned onto her own street. The houses here were newer, still boxy, cookie-cutter, and beige, but softened by younger trees and ornamental shrubs. The HOA enforced a strict code of sidewalk etiquette; not a weed or trash can in sight.
A van parked halfway up the block emitted a faint hum as its engine ran. Then she noticed the tinted windows, the slight dip in the chassis from a heavy load. Willow guessed delivery. But she didn’t recognize the name on the side, Custom Services. Nor the logo, a blue triangle over a white circle.
Pulling her backpack tighter to her body, her skin prickled. Refusing to look over her shoulder, she moved toward where she’d cross to the other side of the street.
From inside the work vehicle, eyes watched her, marking her progress. One of those inside flicked a button. And a sign appeared, almost like magic, at the most frequent spot where Willow crossed to the other side of the road.
The scent of warm pavement mingled with the sweet tang of honeysuckle climbing a fence post. For a moment, she let the fragrance distract her. Careful not to touch, she leaned in to sniff a cluster of flowers. A honeybee trundled over a bloom, legs thick with pollen.
Willow grinned at it.
Her own house came into view, a single-story with a large porch and too many potted plants crowding the entry. She felt comfort in its scruffiness, the relief of the finish line.
Noticing the odd placement of a temporary sign ahead, WET PAINT, she slowed at the intersection. Staked into the narrow grass strip between the sidewalk and the street, she saw nothing painted anywhere in sight. Oh, wait, the stripes were new. The sign didn’t look right. Tilted off-axis, leaning toward the crosswalk as if nudging her attention.
When, how had she not noticed? And Willow frowned. She hadn’t seen city workers all week.
Cautiously, she approached the crosswalk. The sign caught the sun, blinding her for an instant, and she raised a hand to shade her face. Hesitating, Willow peered at the base. A drop of white paint clung to the tip of the metal stake, still wet.
Curiosity itched inside her. So, she bent at the waist to inspect the sign more closely. Oblivious to the van idling two houses down and the second-story window that glimmered, for a heartbeat, before going still again.
Squinting at the sign, she considered it. From this angle, she could see that the “WET PAINT” warning was on a weatherproof plastic, not cardboard. Concluding as she eyed the strange way the stake leaned, it was too deliberate to be wind-blown.
When she glanced up the block, the van sat there, still idling, engine rumbling. No sign of any city crew or anyone at all. The silence pressed in, somehow louder than the motor and the birds behind her.
Willow edged closer, putting a cautious foot on the curb. The sign was right up against the small utility box where the walk button was located. She had to sidestep and pivot to reach it. She did this always, like a dancer marking steps in a rehearsal, first testing the weight and rehearsing the motion before committing.
“Why would they repaint a crosswalk on a Friday?” She said, running a fingertip over the seam where paint met metal. The sign wobbled, shifting the faint wet line at its base. Willow’s nose crinkled. She could smell nothing, not paint, not even the staleness of new plastic.
Odd.
She bent low, face nearly level with the sign. Her hand hovered above the “T” in “PAINT.” The material glinted in the slanted sun, and she caught her own green eyes mirrored back at her, doubled and distorted.
Half-amused, half-perplexed, she snorted.
“Actually, that’s not even the city’s usual font,” she muttered, and pressed the walk button with the heel of her palm.
The mechanical click came, but so did something else, a subtler, quieter snap and hiss, like the opening of a vacuum-sealed jar. Startled, Willow flinched and felt a slickening of moisture across her cheeks. Some of the stuff seemed to hit her eyes, and she blinked. Her eyes teared up involuntarily. She wiped them with her sleeve and immediately looked for the source.
The moisture inside doubled and tripled.
“What the fuck?”
Nothing visible. No jets, no paint, no spray. The sign rocked once on its stake and stilled. Expecting some sticky residue or splatter, Willow scanned her hands, but they were dry except where she’d touched the cold metal of the button box.
Rubbing her finger with her thumb, she shrugged. Why was she turned on?
“Whatever,” she said.
But her voice sounded thick, a half-step lower than normal. Being stubborn, she shrugged one more time and hit the button again. Another click, no hiss. Satisfied, or at least bored, she stepped back and crossed the street, trying to blink the watery feeling from her eyes.
Gooseflesh rose, and she thought of a boy she’d kissed the day before.
A warmth budded along her skin, feather-light at first. Her arms prickled, and more goosebumps appeared, despite the pleasant weather. She blamed the sudden temperature drop. Sunlight faded as a cloud moved overhead, and the wind shifted, carrying a sharper, more electric tinge.
Willow rubbed her wrists together, the motion unconscious. Her legs felt oddly heavy, but she chalked it up to the five-hour Starbucks shift, the endless rounds between espresso machine and drive-thru. She wanted nothing more than a shower and a cold drink.
Halfway up the next block, the wetness perturbed her between her legs more. Her eyes dried, the back of her throat grew cottony, and her heartbeat rushed. It was subtle, a tingling, and a rush of heat that raced from her neck to her belly. She breathed out hard, fighting the urge to cough.
Her skin flushed, she knew this from the way her freckles seemed to stand out, islands in a rising tide of red. She pressed her palm to her cheek. It felt fever-warm.
She kept walking, pace unchanged, but her body registered a gathering tension. Each step rolled up her calves and into her thighs, which tensed, relaxed, and tensed again. She felt an odd slickness in her shorts, a humid bloom against the cotton lining. She frowned, baffled. She hadn’t even been sweating that much.
She checked her phone screen for her reflection. Her pupils had gone wide, nearly swallowing the green. Her lips tingled. She licked them and tasted salt, or maybe something metallic—like the tang of a penny, or the air after a thunderstorm.
Willow rolled her shoulders and tried to reset. Whatever chemical had been in that spray—if there was even a spray—couldn’t be that bad. She’d survived worse in the high school chem lab, or on the city buses that sometimes reeked of pesticides. Still, the aftertaste lingered.
“Fuck, where’s my house?”
At the next corner, the same model of van, bearing the same blue triangle on a white circle, pulled away moments after she arrived. She noted it in the periphery but couldn’t muster the energy for concern.
Her mind spun, but not in a panicked way, more like the gentle spinning of a lazy river. Willow’s thoughts turned to the simple pleasure of walking, of air on skin, of the way her hips swayed when she let her stride go long.
Her breasts tingled. She felt the cool air through her shirt and a subtle throb at the root of her nipples. She coughed, surprised at her own awareness, and hugged her backpack tighter, as if to contain the fizzing energy inside her.
The moistness between her legs was unmistakable now, a humid friction with each step. She’d had similar reactions before. Usually, after seeing someone beautiful or thinking about some half-forbidden thing in the dark of night.
But never in daylight, never on a random walk home, and certainly never from a traffic sign.
She glanced behind, ahead, found no witnesses, and let herself move faster, almost jogging, enjoying the way her body buzzed. The feeling wasn’t scary. It was exhilarating, like running barefoot over hot sand, or the first deep breath after a swim.
Her house came into view. She ducked her head and darted up the driveway, heartbeat rapid, thighs tight, skin alive everywhere.
When she touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, she tasted the coppery tang again. Embarrassed by her own reaction, she smiled and caught it. She wondered if she was coming down with something, some weird allergic bloom.
She didn’t know, couldn’t say, that her bloodstream had already taken in a dose of something much stranger.
The door unlocked with a satisfying click. Letting the heavy air of home settle around her, Willow stepped inside and dropped her bag to the floor. Her hands shook a little as she untied her shoes. She pressed the cool tile of the entryway against her cheeks and forehead, savoring the contrast.
Then, still grinning, glowing, Willow made for the bathroom, peeling off her shirt as she went.
Closing the bathroom door with her hip, Willow laughed, a little too loudly, and turned to the mirror. Reaching back, she flipped the lock. The resonance of the latch startled her, and her heart leaped.
Her face flushed.
Not simply the usual sun-pink on the tops of her cheeks, but a deep, even color that crept down her throat and over her collarbones. She leaned in, nose inches from the glass, to check for signs of rash or irritation. None. The gleam of sweat pearled along her hairline.
“Maybe I’m getting sick,” she said. For a second, she pinched her cheeks, watched the pink recede, and flooded right back. She poked at her own pupils. Wide. A little glassy. Willing them to shrink, she blinked several times.
They didn’t.
Lying in a careless heap on the tile, her shirt was already off. She peeled her shorts down, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, elbows to knees, staring at her own bare legs. The tingling hadn’t faded; if anything, it had spread, tiny electric points of sensation running up and down her legs, along the slope of her hips.
Willow reached for the faucet, intending to splash her face, but paused. Fingers twitching with some excess energy, her hand hovered over the lever. She shut her eyes hard, let her palm rest against her cheek, savoring the way heat and cool skin met and mingled.
When she turned on the water, the sound was louder than she expected. She cupped it and brought it to her lips, guzzling. The first mouthful went down rough; she gagged, coughed, spluttered. A steely flavor clung to the back of her tongue, distinct and unfamiliar.
She waited for nausea, but it didn’t come. Instead, a wave of pleasure rolled up from her belly, a low, sweet ache like hunger. It filled her chest and climbed her spine, making her shiver.
She stood, legs unsteady, and toweled herself off. The terrycloth felt almost obscene against her skin. Every loop and ridge was a tiny caress. Needing the pressure, she gripped it tight.
Her phone buzzed on the sink. She picked it up, barely glancing at the screen. The words didn’t register; her mind skittered off the surface of each sentence. She dropped it, screen down, and pressed both hands flat to the cool marble.
The tingling grew stronger, sharpening into something she couldn’t ignore. It concentrated low in her belly, radiating outward. She squeezed her knees together, but the friction only intensified the sensation.
Willow grabbed a clean pair of shorts from the laundry basket, tugged them on, reconsidered, and peeled them off again. The elastic bit into her hips. She tossed the shorts to the floor, along with her underwear, and stood naked for a moment, every inch of her skin alive and alert.
And for a moment, she thought about calling her mom, or at least texting her. But what would she say? Hey, I feel weirdly horny and maybe poisoned from a paint sign? Scoffing at the mental image, she refused to make a deal, big or small, out of whatever this was.
Instead, she dropped to the bathmat, knees drawn up, arms hugging her shins. The position helped, sort of. Still, it rocked her, and her body shuddered once, and again.
She let her hand drift between her legs. Her fingers found slickness, hot and immediate. She gasped. The sensation was shocking, almost electric, not the slow build of arousal but a fast, insistent need that bordered on pain. She moved her hand in slow circles, breathing through her mouth.
Frigging herself, a hot flash exploded. Admitting to herself, she needed this release.
In her mind, she tried to think of something, anything, mundane. Biology class, the river cleanup, the taste of her last cappuccino. But each thought dissolved into the physical, the sense-memory of touch and heat and friction.
Her thoughts tangled and knotted, useless.
She worked her fingers faster. Her knees quaked, her toes curled against the mat. She bit her lip to keep from screaming, but the sound slipped out anyway. It came as a short, helpless moan. Her other hand clawed at the towel, searching for something to grip, to anchor her.
The release came hard and sudden, a sharp, pulsing pleasure leaving her trembling and gasping. She rolled onto her side, pulled the towel around her body, shivering with aftershocks.
For a long time, she lay there, staring at the base of the toilet, waiting for the red in her cheeks to fade. It didn’t. Instead, a fresh wave of heat crept in. Subtle but no less urgent. She groaned and forced herself up, washing her hands and face, splashing cold water on her neck.
Again, she eyed her reflection. Her pupils remained dilated, her lips swollen from biting. She had to admit it; she looked thoroughly fucked, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.
With her tresses up again, she dressed in loose shorts and a tank, but this time in a slightly neater style. She spritzed herself with deodorant, the sharp scent grounding her.
Once more, her phone buzzed, this one a text from her eco club president. Along with a follow-up from her Starbucks shift lead, both reminders of regular life. Thumbs flying, she answered the first, ignoring the tremor in her hands.
Down the hall, the kitchen clock chimed. Legs shaky but functional, she followed the sound. First, she poured a glass of juice, gulped it, and poured another. The coppery taste faded, replaced by a sweet and citrusy flavor.
Setting the empty glass on the counter, Willow looked out the window. A hummingbird hovered at the feeder, wings invisible, body iridescent. For a moment, Willow envied its impossibly energetic nature.
With her thoughts already flitting ahead to the next thing, she pressed her palm to the cool glass and let herself smile. Ready for the next walk, the next adventure, she felt good. Better than good. The memory of her own orgasm already felt like someone else’s story, an embarrassing anecdote for a future self.
As she turned away from the window, she didn’t see the glint from the van two blocks over, or the lens that tracked her every move.
With her body electric, Willow simply existed, brain awash in sunlight and sensation, ready to take on the world—one strange day at a time.
Fuck this, she was going for another walk.
Chapter 2: Lured into Darkness
Stage two began. The sun hung low, baking the suburban grid to a glare. For no reason, Willow walked. Well, that is, no purpose she was aware of. Not because she had anywhere to go. Though there was a place the watchers wanted her to go.
In her mind, she moved because motion helped quiet the tension inside her. The edges of her world still shimmered, soft and bright, as if the universe itself pulsed with faint electricity.
The drug and microbots that got on her face and in her eyes went to work. Upon contact, they entered the bloodstream, and the machines rushed to their assigned locations, where they proceeded to direct her actions.
Sweat prickled behind her knees and pooled in the hollow at the base of her throat. She should’ve gone back home, shut her body in a dark, cool room, but the idea of standing still unnerved her.
On top of all that, the nanites didn’t want her to! In fact, her nano-overlords made her think she’d combust if she stopped moving.
‘No, not that way,’ she thought, ‘this way.’ Only it wasn’t her thoughts at all!
Keeping her eyes low, she stuck to the sidewalk. The world was brighter, and she floated a half-step above the cracks of the crumbling concrete. Creation thinned by the aftereffects of whatever had taken over. The flush on her skin never faded. Nor the fire in her cunt.
Every brush of clothing seemed to shoot a spark along her groin, her arms, her back. Each footfall seemed louder than the last. She counted them in pairs and fours but lost the pattern and started again.
At the corner of Cog Avenue and Goldberg Boulevard, she paused. The stinging inside her became more of a burning, which stimulated more sensuality.
The street lay empty ahead, a sun-bleached corridor. Somewhere, a lawn sprinkler clacked out its rhythm, but Willow couldn’t see it. Squinting at the horizon, she wiped her hands on her shorts. Something tugged at her, a nagging sense that she had missed a detail.
At that point, she closed her eyes, trying to inventory her own framework. Heart rate: Elevated. Sweating: Yes. Lungs: Clear, but the haunting ghost of the blood tang aroma clung tenaciously in her nostrils. And something inside her drove her onward.
With her sandals catching on a seam in the sidewalk, she pressed forward. When she stumbled, she caught herself and continued with a laugh. It came out choked, and her face burned. Counting her breaths, she slowed.
In, out.
The heat pressed in on Willow like a weighted blanket, but she felt cold at the edges. A shiver crawled up from her ankles, joined together at her tailbone, and rushed up her back. The invading technology pestered her mind and her crotch. All that stimulus kept her moving with a sense of insistence.
It was at the next intersection that she heard it. A baby crying. Small, desperate, all alone with no one to care for it. The element she’d absorbed perturbed her. Adrenalin rushed through her.
With her body suddenly alert, Willow stopped dead. The noise was faint, almost drowned by the drone of cicadas, but it was unmistakable. A sharp, rhythmic wail, not far off. Scanning the row of houses, she craned her neck, saw no sign of strollers, no parents loading up minivans.
The racket came again, louder, as if it bounced off the brick facade of the laundromat across the street. Inside, the hormones raged, and Willow slickened. Do something, echoed in the most primitive part of her mind.
“Actually,” she hesitated, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “Someone should check on that.”
No one else appeared. The windows stayed blank, the street silent except for the far-off sprinkler, and the baby’s insistent voice was all she discerned. It’s hard to think when you’re overexcited and horny.
Drawn by some reflex older than reason, she moved toward the alley between the laundromat and a bakery. Into the darkened area, her feet followed the curb, past a trash bin with its lid propped open and a burst of garbage bags spilling out. The sun barely reached between the walls of the passageway. The air cooled, turned damp and heavy with a reek of yeast and wet cardboard.
The bawling grew clearer and, without explanation, faded. It returned with a different pitch. Willow’s head swam. The alley narrowed, walls of cinderblock and peeling paint hemming her in. She glanced behind her. Nothing there, other than the blank sidewalk and the glare of the street.
Not quite fearful, Willow pressed on.
The baby’s voice led her to a cluster of plastic bins. Each overflowing with refuse. Bakery bags, a half-collapsed cake box, and glass bottles sticky with the dregs of orange soda. The wailing had a mechanical edge to it, almost a loop.
But at the moment, it didn’t matter. Because Willow’s body moved on autopilot. Expecting to see a child, Willow rounded the corner, maybe wrapped in a blanket. Possibly dumped, though the thought made her stomach twist.
Instead, she saw nothing but a chain-link fence in a small, open spot, and more trash. The sound faded. Silence washed in, abrupt as a slammed door.
Trying to make sense of what she’d heard, Willow stared at the fence. Her mind fumbled for logic, but the noise had left a residue, a vibration inside her chest. She tried to move back, but her legs wobbled…beneath her. She clung to the brick wall, breathing through her mouth.
Then the sound came again, closer, higher, a baby’s scream filtered through a blown-out speaker. Pressing her hand against the brick wall, that small section moved in a quarter of an inch. It clanged. Something came from above, maybe the fire escape, or…
She heard a faint whir, the motorized twitch of machinery. Cogs ground in gears. At that moment, Willow glanced up.
A small black object clung to the corner of the bakery roof. Its lens glinted in the shadow. Trying to place the device, Willow squinted at it. Camera? Security? The bawling repeated, but her brain lagged two beats behind.
At that moment, Willow’s skin puckered with cold.
Thumb shaking, Willow reached for her phone. She considered calling her mom, or the police, or someone to anchor her to reality. But her phone buzzed in her hand, a new text, too bright against the black glass, and her focus shattered.
Tripping on a loose cobblestone, another click, and a new grinding of gears. Willow took a step back and caught herself against the bin. When she moved to press on, the alleyway ground pitched and she stumbled back against the bricks behind her. The wall felt damp. Necessitude rushed inside her, worming itself into her mind, her twat.
A scent of rot and sugar rose, and her mouth watered, while her nose stung at the same time. Her body screamed at her to leave, but her head floated somewhere above, unmoored. And deep inside, the new invasion joined the previous one, and passions took hold.
Why was her cunt wet, and why did this enliven her? And Willow’s vision doubled. The alley spun. Trying to clear her eyes, she blinked, but the world stayed tilted. The hum in her limbs spread, buzzing now in her fingertips and the backs of her knees.
When her body betrayed her, she realized, far too late, that she should’ve run. At that time, Willow couldn’t process the order of events. She wanted to move, but her feet stuck.
At the singular moment, before everything snapped shut, she understood the weeping baby had never been real. As if it were some elastic band, the world snapped.
So why did it stop weeping?
First, an abrupt clack, sharp as a starter pistol. Something dropped from above, a blur of movement. Before Willow’s brain commanded her limbs, a weighted mesh tangled around her shoulders, her hips, and her knees. The net cinched tight, rough fibers biting through her tank top, pinning her arms to her sides with mechanical efficiency.
Instinct flattened her voice to a single syllable, and Willow yelped. Her body jerked left, right, but the net only tightened in response, cords hissing against her bare skin. When she twisted and strained, every movement pulled the trap closer around her.
The mesh scraped her hips, her ribcage, the crook of her elbows. Her sneakers skidded on the uneven pavement. She lost her footing and crashed against the alley wall, spine jarringly hard.
A whirring started somewhere above. The net drew up, slow and steady, and Willow’s heels scraped the ground until she dangled a foot off the pavement. The pressure on her body was total, compressed into a form-fitting bodysuit, inescapable.
The winch cable, thin and black, traced up to a pulley camouflaged in the brickwork. The groan of the winch drowned out the faint noise of the sprinkler. Even the fake baby held her tongue. Willow’s prison fell silent.
For a few moments, Willow kicked, or tried to. Her legs were bound at the shins, her knees pressed together, but she could still swing her feet. She hammered at the wall, toes catching on loose mortar, but she couldn’t find purchase. The net twirled, sending her into a slow, nauseating spin. Her breath came in shallow gasps. The rancid air stung raw in her throat.
She craned her neck, trying to see what waited above. Nothing but the faded sky and the black smudge of the device that had dropped the net. The rest of the world receded. She tried to scream, but the sound stuck in her mouth. Panic built inside, so huge it crowded out all other thoughts.
The net shifted again.
The cords brushed with every twitch of her body. The friction sent sharp shocks through her, each touch amplified by the chemical in her blood. The panic and arousal warred inside her, impossible to untangle. Her skin felt like a single exposed nerve.
A small climax took her, juices thickened and leaked from her crotch.
The net lifted her higher. With her back pressed against the brick wall, and her cheek mashed into the abrasive fibers. She gritted her teeth and thrashed, desperate to break the rhythm of the winch.
The alley dropped away beneath her, garbage bins shrinking, sidewalk stripes blurring in the distance. She swung above the fence line now, in clear view of anyone who glanced upward.
No one did.
When sweat attacked her eyes, Willow blinked. Her vision doubled, stabilized, and doubled again. Every part of her body screamed for freedom, but the net’s grip only sharpened. With nails digging into her palms, her fingers balled into fists, she tried to free herself. Tingling with pins and needles, her arms, secured tight to her body, went numb.
She felt the chemicals ramping up, the heat in her blood surging like an aftershock. Her hips rocked in the net, searching for something to help, but found only air. The cords grooved into her thighs and backside, pressing into the softest parts of her.
Every twist against the mesh made her shudder, the sensation uncomfortably close to pleasure.
The winch paused, and the cable groaned under her weight. Willow hung there, panting, suspended in the space between the walls. Her body vibrated with tension, a sick fusion of terror and unwanted delight. Her eyes darted everywhere searching for a way out, a thing to bite, a miracle.
However, Willow was one piece of luck away from anything resembling divine intervention.
A round sphere appeared, almost out of thin air, and hovered in front of her. The thing moved closer and closer. The floating bot hung an inch from her. A tube shot out, slid between her lips, and stopped shy of her gag point. Water flooded her mouth.
The mecha seemed to vanish.
Then she heard another sound, a low, mechanical hum, different from the winch. She tried to turn her head toward it, but the net constricted around her neck and jaw, fixing her gaze forward.
A panel in the wall, opposite her, shuddered, and slid open. The space beyond seemed darker than the rest of the alley, a place occupied by negative light. The opening grew wide. But only big enough to admit a person, or a netted bundle like hers. The smell that rushed out was antiseptic, chemical, cold.
Willow’s breathing quickened. The fear spiked, but so did the other thing. Her body thrummed. She tasted metal in her mouth, bitter and electric. As she twisted in the net, the motion only drove the cords deeper into her skin.
The winch resumed, slower this time, drawing her directly toward the gaping panel. Her legs trembled, her feet flexing helplessly against the mesh. She wanted to scream again, but her jaw clenched so tight she could only whimper. She strained her neck for any sign of a person, but the alley stayed empty.
The world shrank to the space in front of her, the dark rectangle of the open panel, and the relentless crawl of the winch. The chemical haze in her head blurred the edges of the moment. Thoughts scattered. She remembered her mother’s face, the way her Starbucks manager raised a single eyebrow when Willow was late, the hum of the crosswalk at rush hour.
And underneath it all, a voice: You idiot, you absolute idiot, why did you follow the sound?
The panel loomed. The net’s cords dug deeper. Every brush of the mesh sent a jolt through her, making her hips jerk and her back arch. The friction stoked the heat inside her until she couldn’t tell where one sensation ended and the next began. Her breath came in short, desperate bursts. When her vision sparkled, dimmed, and snapped back to clarity, she couldn’t process what happened.
Finally, she reached the threshold of the panel. Inside, darkness churned, interrupted by the faintest shimmer of blue light. The net stopped, and for a second, Willow hung motionless.
She sucked in a single, ragged breath. She thought with wild certainty, ‘This can’t be happening.’ The cable jerked, and she vanished through the panel, the alley silenced by the entryway sealing behind her.
The net scraped her through the opening, cords catching on the metal lip of the panel. She swung free for a moment, slammed against the cinderblock wall. Her head rattled, and a spray of white stars filled her vision. The winch hissed, lowering her to the floor of a windowless room.
Inside, the air cut her, icy and sterile, heavy with the antiseptic tang she’d smelled before. LED lights twinkled overhead, casting everything in a sickly, pulsing blue. The net dumped her onto a mat, rubbery, like the stuff in playgrounds, but coated with a layer of dust that gritted against her skin.
Instinct took hold, and Willow tried to scramble, but the cords pinned her arms to her ribs. She bucked and rolled, but the mesh held fast. The net’s strands pressed hard into her thighs, her upper arms, the space under her chin.
Willow saw dots in the mesh, tiny black nodes. Not just knots in the rope, but purposeful sensors or monitors. Each jostle sent a new spike through her, her nerves so raw that she could hardly think. Sweat lubricated her neck and shoulders.
A door opened.
It didn’t squeak or creak; the hinges oiled to silence. The figure who entered wore all black, not the clichéd ninja kind, but a functional, urban uniform. Wearing black cargo pants, a black Henley, black boots, the only specks of color, a pale strip of lavender on the wrist, and the flash of taciturn blue eyes.
The exceedingly tall man crossed the room in three steps.
Willow shrank back, trying to burrow into the mat. Her mouth worked at a scream, but no utterance emerged.
The man crouched beside her, face unreadable. He reached into a pouch at his hip and pulled out a gas mask—black rubber, blank-eyed, with two bulbous filters. The sight of it made her thrash harder, but her movement was more memory than action.
With his fingers strong and precise, he grasped her jaw and fitted the mask over her face. Sealing the mask over her nose and mouth in one practiced motion, his hands worked with professional ease. Willow tried to wrench her head away, but the man’s grip held her steady. And he adjusted the straps, cinching them until the rubber bit into her cheeks and skull.
At her first panicked inhale, she tasted the difference: stronger now, sharper, sweet and acrid at once. Her lungs filled with the new chemical. She gagged, but the mask forced the air back in with every breath. Her vision narrowed to the holes in the mask’s eyes, her world reduced to the blur of the man’s features and the burn in her chest.
Reaching out, he pressed a button on the side of the mask. A hiss of gas flooded the space around her mouth. Willow’s head whipped back, and she felt a rush of heat chase down her spine, coiling in her belly and radiating outward. Her body tensed up and spasmed. Every point of contact—her skin, the netting, the mat—all taken together, amplified the sensation a hundredfold.
After a few beats of her heart, her arms and legs ceased to obey. In her ears, a thudding so loud that it deafened her, and she felt the blood. Sweat poured down her chest, beading on her collarbones. To force the taste out of her mouth, Willow tried to spit, but the mask caught everything, recycling it, multiplying it.
Once she met the man’s eyes. He watched, detached, as if he were observing a laboratory experiment. They were too large, too blue, and altogether nonhuman.
Willow gasped, a dry, sucking sound. The rush of pleasure, unwanted, monstrous, flooded her limbs, drowning out the last threads of rational thought. Her hands clawed at the mat, at the net, opened and closed, grasping nothing. All at once, her hips jerked once, twice, and stilled. She wanted to scream, but the sound stayed trapped inside the mask.
Drifting back, she remembered the alley, the painted sign, and the way her hands had trembled earlier. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m just tired,’ she remembered thinking. The memory faded, replaced by light and noise, an endless horizon of sensation.
With the blue lights swimming, her vision tunneled and faded to black. A fear mixed with some dark desire, and her body ached for the sweet release of climax.
The man checked her pulse, rolled her onto her back, eyes cold and methodical. He clicked something on the tiny mask. When it beeped, the flow of gas slowed. Limbs splaying loose on the mat, her body softened. As the drugs and nanomites moved into her, she trembled once more and went utterly still.
Dusting his hands, he stood and looked down at her, his face expressionless.
Why they didn’t invade, conquer, and be done with humans was beyond him, and well above his pay grade.
The wall panel closed behind them, sealing out the last of the light. In the alley beyond, the fake baby’s sobbing came to life, it looped one last time, and died.
The street returned to silent, wet hunger.
Chapter 3: Underground Transit
For some time, Willow drifted between darkness and heat, her thoughts dissolved into a low jumble, more static than logic. The world pressed in, tight and unbroken, a cradle with no edges. Cold seeped in from the AC, but her skin never cooled. Sweat collected in every hollow and curve, and vanished as the air recirculated and whisked it away.
The fire within her never quenched.
Lights pulsed on the edge of her vision: green, replaced by red, and followed by a blankness deeper than sleep. With her spine aligned to a strip of dense, medical padding that yielded nothing, she lay on her back. The redolence wafted faintly, a mix of plastic, ozone, and bleach, the only evidence of motion a steady vibration in her bones.
The pestering within her continued. Every nerve throbbed with needfulness. Deep inside her, she ached for something. No, it was more profound than sex … she needed something inside her.
For the first time in her 19 years of life, she thought about a child. Not a doll, but a baby growing inside her. ‘Why,’ she wondered, ‘would that desire well up?’
When she tried to move, her body refused. Pinned down with her hands restrained near her head, the vision of a butterfly displayed for others, shimmered into her mind. Curling into her palm, her fingers twitched on their own and splayed.
Something soft caught her wrist, and for a wild moment she thought it was a hand. It was her own hair, spilled loose and sticking to her damp skin. The realization flickered and died before she could grasp it.
Sensations rushed through her body.
A moan escaped her lips. Light, animalistic, almost curious, reacting to what was happening inside. And her knees parted, her legs trembled, and she pressed them together, as if fighting an invisible current.
The same warmth she’d felt on the sidewalk now burned in her belly, legs, and between, swelling and subsiding in waves. Every nerve was coaxed to the surface as her body moved with the rhythm of the chamber’s pulse.
Tiny shudders ran through her pussy.
The hum of the chamber changed pitch. The floor beneath Willow’s feet vibrated harder, softened, and for a moment, Willow floated, weightless, above her body. Colors flashed through her eyelids. The green glow made her feel transparent, as if her skin had thinned to a membrane. The red washed through her, saturating her vision, heating her until she shivered in an unrelenting chill.
Somewhere in the darkness, a shutter clicked.
Another series of little orgasms flooded her, and Willow’s mind jerked toward the snapping. She couldn’t open her eyes, but she sensed it. A presence in the corners, a watcher. The air sharpened. The tick came again. Softer, a camera’s iris fluttered. She knew she was being recorded. She tried to speak, to scream, but her throat made only a wet, hungry sound.
Her heart hammered. Each beat thumped louder than the one before, almost ringing against the chamber walls. Sweat trickled down her temple, pooling beneath the angle of her jaw. The padded surface absorbed it, the scent of her body rising and merging with the rancidity of cleansers.
A gush of climax rushed from her.
In fact, she remembered nothing of how she’d arrived. Only fragments. The sidewalk, the hot net of sensation, a flash of nearly non-human, blue eyes. Everything after blurred to a white, featureless noise. When her fingers scrabbled at the padding, nails scraped against the slick material, holding her still. She couldn’t grip anything.
Fear, anxiety, and excitement flooded as Willow couldn’t find the edge of the world. Not the real world, not her world, or this strange, new world.
A droid appeared, pressed a tube between her lips, all the way back into her esophagus, and water dribbled down her throat. Must keep her hydrated. As soon as it had come, it vanished.
The hum grew louder. A fire inside Willow scorched her, and a flood of juice seeped from her cunt. Ants traipsed over her flesh as she inched closer to something unholy.
Arching off the mat, her hips bucked involuntarily. Her chest rose, straining against the invisible grip of gravity, and crashed down again. The chemical need, unsatisfied, sharpened. She writhed, not with intent, but with the raw instinct to be free.
That notwithstanding, she rolled through an orgasm.
Another moan slipped from her lips. This one lasted, curling up at the end into something that sounded like pleasure. Willow heard herself and recoiled, but her body did not listen. Her breasts ached, nipples hard against the thin tank top they had left her in.
The orgasms didn’t let up; her thighs trembled with each spasm of heat. The machine worked on her, preparing her for what was to come.
The indicator lights above her cycled faster, reacting to the sensors wired through the chamber. Every fluctuation of her pulse or breath flicked a new sequence: green for calm, red for spike, amber for something in between. The lights mapped her every response, painting her body in shifting patterns.
A machine moved above her, hovering in the air. A beam of light moved from her head to her toes and back. With each sweep, a new unwanted pleasure took her to new heights.
She felt the air shift as the chamber took a turn. The scans sped up, and the sensualism tore into her. The g-force pressed her into the mat and squeezed her lungs.
Willow whimpered.
For a moment, her consciousness threatened to surface. She saw the ceiling, the machine scanning her, and the polished metal. Walls with only the faintest seams running their length. In every corner, a red dot glimmered as camera lenses watched, tracked, and recorded.
Her body never stopped. It responded to every change, every jostle, every new chemical pulse in her blood. Her knees parted, toes curling, and flexed to point. Her hand drifted to her thigh, fingers tracing up, nails leaving white streaks on her skin. She didn’t control it. She only felt it, a passenger in her own body.
A flush burned across her cheeks and chest, the skin mottled with fever. Her breathing quickened, shallow and harsh. Each inhale pulled more of the chamber’s air into her, and with it, a more profound craving.
Willow pressed her hand between her thighs. The damp there shocked her, even though she should’ve expected it.
She rocked her hips against her own hand, desperate for friction, for relief. Her body arched, jaw slack, a whimper building in her throat. She came with a series of short, ragged spasms, legs quivering, head thrown back. The aftershock left her limp, barely able to move.
The scanning light over her flickered red and slowly faded to green. The camera lenses followed her every twitch. The hum of the chamber softened, a lull in the system.
Willow sagged, muscles useless. Her body cooled, and she shivered again as the craving built anew. She tried to sleep, to shut it out, but her body refused her escape. The next wave of sensation started, and she surrendered to it.
Time passed without measure. The only constants were the throb in her veins, the icy smell of bleach and sweat, and the gaze of the cameras. She wondered once if someone watched her, if they cared what happened to her inside the box.
She hoped they didn’t.
A siren chirped from the ceiling. The chamber slowed, the vibration fading to a gentle shudder. Willow’s limbs opened wide, with no strength left to gather them in. She breathed, slow and uneven, her mind empty.
Her locks spread in a tangled fan beneath her, sticking to her cheeks and forehead. She blinked once, vision blurred. The lights dimmed, casting the chamber in a flat, anesthetic gray.
The camera lenses blinked, one by one, and powered down.
The chamber continued, now with only the low hush of machinery for company. Willow drifted, not asleep but far from waking, waiting for the next shock to bring her back to the surface.
The rhythm of the chamber broke, just once. A click, sharper than the hum, cut through Willow’s fog. The jolt ran up her spine. For a second, she thought she might wake, but her body slumped deeper into the mat.
A hiss followed. Cool air blasted over her, thinning the stench of sweat and chemicals. She sucked it in, lungs greedy. Her skin pebbled, and the sudden frostiness chased goosebumps up her arms and thighs. Her nipples tightened, dark against the damp tank top. She exhaled with a sound that might’ve been a sigh of relief.
The lights in the chamber froze. The green faded to blue, the red thinned to pink, and finally all color vanished except for a single strip above her head. It brightened, buzzing with hidden energy.
A panel slid open above her. LEDs flickered to life, shining straight into her eyes. Even behind closed lids, she sensed the invasion. Felt the heat of it, the scrutiny of someone or something. Her body tensed and arched in a reflex she didn’t know she had. The mat below remembered the shape of her back.
The nanobots went to work, keeping her stimulated.
On the ceiling, a rectangle of colorless light revealed itself as a status display. The letters meant nothing to Willow, but the numbers in red columns climbed: Heart rate. Oxygen. Body temp. Chemical levels. A graphic of the human body—her body—pulsed in the corner, soft parts illuminated to show the highest activity.
Her skin burned, especially at her throat, her breasts, and between her thighs. The diagram pulsed there, bright and insistent. As if she fucked a million tiny bots. Her eyelids fluttered. The drug in her veins quickened her pulse. The nanites continued to work until the entire chamber seemed to throb in time with her heartbeat.
As the pulsing between her legs increased, the pulsation inside flared to match.
A second click. The chamber shuddered and resumed motion, as Willow’s body responded as if satisfied with some protocol. The display stayed on, casting her in a white haze. With each twitch, the pleasure she felt was visible and undeniable.
Willow’s hair clung to her face in wet ribbons. Her cheeks shone with sweat, the fevered blush never leaving her. She opened her mouth but found nothing inside except the taste of ozone. She flexed her hand and touched her own belly, feeling the heat of herself, unable to stop.
With every stop, the chamber repeated its ritual. It paused, clicked, hissed. Sometimes the cool air blasted. At other times, the vents hummed with a warmer breath. Sometimes the light sharpened, stinging her closed eyes. It faded to a soft, almost merciful glow.
Each time, the status display spiked. Each time, Willow’s body responded. Even unconscious, she was at its mercy. She rocked her hips once, twice, and came quietly, the pleasure so intense it left her gasping, mouth wet with saliva.
The chamber’s brain registered everything. It adjusted the humidity, dialed the lights, and modulated the temperature. Willow sweated, shivered, and sweated again, a cycle that had no end.
Willow drifted in and out. Fragments of a dream snapped to the surface: a crowd of people, all staring at her, her body naked and strange, the sound of her own name seemed to reverberate from the floor. She moaned, and the chamber caught it, recording the pitch, the duration. The display updated. She had no secrets here.
The tightness of the space closed in on her. She sensed the walls at the limits of her reach, the floor beneath her, the ceiling pressing down. It was a cell, a vessel, a coffin.
Even when the camera lenses went dark, Willow realized she was being watched. The feeling of exposure never faded. The constant awareness that she was on display made her skin tingle. Every inch of her body belonged to the machine.
The longest pause came near the end of the journey. The chamber stopped so abruptly that Willow’s body jerked, arms flung wide. The air in the cell grew still and heavy. The display above her pulsed one last time, the numbers all bright red.
Her eyes rolled back. Her body arched one last time, every muscle tight, her throat raw from sounds she did not remember making.
When the lights finally died, Willow sagged, boneless. Her breath slowed, sweat cooling on her body. She knew nothing of where she was or where she was going. She only recognized that she was being carried, and that her body would betray her again and again.
The chamber glided forward, the next destination already set.
The trek ended with a jolt. The chamber snapped to a stop, the forward motion crushed to zero by a block of engineered certainty. A locking pin rammed home. The whole pod vibrated once and fell still as a corpse.
Willow felt the change before she understood it. Her body, mid-spasm, stilled into inertia. A brief aftershock fluttered through her hips and vanished. For the first time in hours, the hum and sway of transit had disappeared.
A grid of red light blinked to life above her. The status display ran a final diagnostic, scrolling her vitals with pitiless regularity: pulse 136, temp 101.4, pupil response maxed. The system hesitated, as if checking with an invisible judge. It flashed “SUBJECT STABLE” in a block of green, and the display snapped off.
A latch disengaged beside her left shoulder. The hiss of hydraulics pealed through the pod. The seal broke, and a gust of new air rushed in—cold, humid, sharp with alcohol and ammonia. It cut through the accumulated sweat on Willow’s skin, making her tremble even in her sleep.
The door opened, a petal unfurling, and exposed her to the room beyond.
The world outside the pod was darkness and cold metal. Overhead, fluorescents flickered to life, a pulse at first, after which a steady glare. The room stretched wide and shallow, concrete walls painted hospital white but already scuffed and stained along the base. Everything inside was new, engineered to intimidate and to clean. No windows. No sound except the whir of recirculation fans.
Willow’s chamber extended on a rail into the center of the space, like an offering. As the door slid wider, she caught the details in freeze-frame: a squat bank of monitors lining the left wall, each blinking with unreadable data.
Two IV stands, sterile and empty, loomed at the foot of the chamber. A utility cart stood to one side, loaded with gloves, wipes, syringes sheathed in hard plastic, and rolls of athletic tape.
Front and center, under the brightest bank of LEDs, waited the examination table.
It was not a table, really, but a sculpted block of foam and composite, upholstered in matte gray. Padded restraints sprouted from the sides and headrest—heavy-duty, with locking buckles. The restraint points gleamed, freshly polished. A sheet of waterproof paper stretched across the surface, crisp and untouched. At the far end, the table split to accommodate bent legs or spread knees.
Breathing in the new air, Willow was still unconscious.
Her chest rose and fell, the movement calm but shallow. Sweat beaded along her collarbone and the dip of her navel, cooled to sticky nothing. Her tank top clung to her, translucent. Her shorts had twisted up her thighs, baring the sharp points of her hipbones. Her hair, hopelessly tangled, obscured half her face.
On the ceiling, a camera cluster tracked the pod’s arrival. Four domed units, each stamped with a red triangle, spun silently to keep Willow centered in their glassy gaze. They recorded everything: the twitch of her toes, the way her fingers curled, the slow emergence of drool at the corner of her mouth.
A servo arm emerged from the utility cart and hovered by her head, ready. A mechanical female voice, almost gentle, spoke overhead.
“Delivery confirmed. Subject responsive. Fertility confirmed. Ovulation approaching. Awaiting further instructions.”
Nothing in the room moved except the cameras, their indicator lights strobing in perfect synchrony. A unit hovered in the air, moving closer and closer. A needle came out; it moved towards Willow. In one swift move, the syringe moved to her arm, and a shot of something surged into her vein.
At that, Willow’s left hand spasmed and settled on her belly. When her face twisted into a frown, she went slack. Quietly, she moaned once, as if answering a question only her body heard.
Beyond the interior wall, somewhere above, rain hammered the warehouse roof. The sound was faint, a steady static, but it did nothing to soften the harshness of the space. The chamber, now part of the room, let go of her with a final whir and powered down. She lay exposed, completely visible under the lights, every inch of her body catalogued and archived.
Inside her, the warmth reignited. The chemicals had not finished their work. With a fresh surge, her thighs pressed together, a new patch of wetness spreading between them. Hips lifting, Willow’s back arched off the mat, and dropped again. Along with her breathing, which was shallow but surged up, her heart rate also climbed in response.
The closest camera zoomed in, lens clicking. The monitor bank revealed the raw feed: Willow’s flushed face, her lips parted, a thin string of saliva trailing toward her shoulder.
The servo arm extended. With inhuman patience, it lifted her wrist and attached a small sensor to her fingertip. A wire trailed from it, vanishing into the cart. The readout screen presented a new set of data, which was immediately assimilated by the system.
The nanobots in her bloodstream rushed to increase estrogen and to her womb to force an early ovulation. While others maintained her hypersexual state.
Another hiss, this one sharper. A pair of mechanical hands deployed from the table. They grasped Willow under the armpits, careful not to bruise or jostle. With her body limp as a child’s, she offered no resistance. They lifted her from the pod and rotated her, laying her flat on the table.
The gentle impact caused her eyes to flutter.
However, she did not wake, not entirely. Her head lolled to the side, cheek pressed into the cold paper. Her hair fanned out behind her, haloed by the bright light. Her mouth opened and closed, an involuntary gasp, as if her body remembered something it needed to say.
The restraint straps cinched around her wrists and ankles, and across her chest and thighs. Each buckle clicked into place, perfectly measured, never tight enough to leave a mark. The machine checked the fit, retracted its hands, leaving her locked to the table.
The room regarded her in silence. The monitors blinked. The cameras fixed on her every motion.
On the far wall, a second panel opened, revealing a supply closet with steel shelves. Inside, vials lined up in careful rows, blue and clear, some labeled, some not. Syringes waited in racks, their plungers gleaming. Above, a glass case protected several soft, curved objects—medical, or perhaps not.
The intention behind them was impossible to guess.
Willow’s chest rose higher with each breath. Her nipples pressed hard against the thin cotton, leaving clear impressions in the fabric. Sweat gathered again, but this time the room’s cold drew it out, made her shiver. Again and again, Willow’s body tensed against the straps and relaxed.
The system logged it all.
An unfamiliar voice, live and filtered, sounded from the wall speaker: “Subject delivered. Prep sequence initiated.”
The servo arm returned. It drew a line of antiseptic along the inside of Willow’s elbow and positioned a needle above the vein. Even in unconsciousness, her arm flinched. The needle slid in smoothly and painlessly, and a slow infusion of clear fluid followed.
Within seconds, the monitors registered the change. Willow’s muscles slackened. Her breath evened out. At that instant, her heartbeat slowed to a steadier rhythm. Her lips parted, curved into a faint smile.
The system released a final puff of disinfectant into the air. The smell lingered and faded under the weight of concrete and rain.
The last action belonged to the cameras. They pivoted, focusing on Willow’s face, her chest, her separated legs, and it zoomed out for a full-body shot. They captured her as a specimen: contained, restrained, ready for the next phase.
The room went still.
Willow, more alive than she had ever felt and yet deeply, deeply unconscious, lay perfectly motionless. The chemical inside her pulsed, waiting for a new command.
At the edge of her dream, she heard the faintest sound—a man’s voice, too far away to reach, but real enough to make her shiver. Then everything faded, and the room watched over her in silence.
