Author: Hoop

Title: Incarceration Ch.19

Part: Chapter 19

Summary: An attendant is punished, and two of the girls are tattooed with their respective numbers.

Keywords: FF, bd, tort, sad, hj, cbt



NOTE: If you're just here for the porn, go ahead and skip to the dashed line :)

A little way down the corridor to the left, Zoe could see chairs and tables piled haphazardly, and a few cardboard boxes. The path to her right made a T-junction with another corridor, and, as the only viable route out, she hurried towards it. Her mouth was dry. Every sense seemed to be sharpened, doubtless due to the adrenaline rush borne from the prospect, however small, that she might actually be able to escape.

To her right, Zoe could see the door leading into the stairwell, with the storage cupboard ten feet before it. In the other direction, the passage made a left turn, about forty feet further down. Assuming the attendant's threats of further visitations were real, she might encounter her next prospective abuser if she took the stairs. She turned away from the stairwell, moving at a light jog, treading as softly as she could. She had no real idea of the building's layout. The labelling on the doors that she passed wasn't particularly helpful: "Storage," read one. "Sanitation" was written on another, and she felt a surge of dread as she heard a voice from the other side of the door, saying something about disinfectant. There were sounds of movement, and the door handle started to turn.

Zoe surprised herself with her own speed. Between the handle turning and the opening of the door, she managed to flit behind a large trolley filled with laundry, putting it in between herself and the now-open doorway. She curled up against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. She realised she was holding her breath. She could hear the sound of receding footsteps, along with the swishing sound of caster wheels on worn carpet. A voice muttered something to itself about "cleaning up another girl's filth". She leaned around the trolley ever so carefully, to see an attendant's back as he reached the corridor's corner. He disappeared around it. A few moments later there was an electronic chime, and a monotonous female voice announced the words, "Basement. Floor. Going up." There was a sliding of doors, the rattle of the caster wheels bumping over a threshold, and then it sounded like he was gone.

"Basement" made some sense, given the complete lack of any windows here. By Zoe's reckoning, that placed the girls' cell on the first floor, with the visit they had paid to 212 being the first time she'd ascended to floor two. The ground floor seemed like the best candidate for an escape route, but any entrance would certainly have too much activity around it. She needed a different way.  An elevator was a big risk - confining herself in a dead-end space, if anyone else was waiting outside the door then she'd be caught. A stairwell wasn't much better, though, potentially exposing her to people from any floor. She gnawed on her knuckles, trying to clear her thoughts and consider her situation in logical steps.

As she frantically tried to integrate the scattered information into some kind of mental map, she recalled the two flights of stairs from the underground parking area to where her lab was. With her lab on the same floor as their cell, this placed the garage on the basement level where she was currently, although she didn't know in which direction. Perhaps she could get there and take a vehicle?

Zoe crept up to the corner, peeking around it with one eye, making sure that nobody else was there. The metal doors of the elevator were to her left, with a blue LCD above them reading "1". About twenty feet further on, the corridor terminated with a blue door that had the words "ARRIVALS" painted across it in red lettering. A narrow window was set in the door's upper half, the glass reinforced with a wire grid. Through the window she could see a white transit van parked against the bare concrete wall opposite her. 

A noise from the elevator next to her prompted her to glance at the display again - the "1" was now followed by a downwards-pointing triangle. Cold panic seized her. Maybe it was just going to the ground floor? But surely anyone just going one floor down would take the stairs. How lazy were the attendants? The LCD blinked to a "G", and the triangle remained. With her heart pounding in her chest, Zoe stepped back around the corner, faltered at the last minute, and then began to run full-speed for the "arrivals" door. She was going too fast, she thumped against it with a loud rattle and desperately wrenched at the handle, which made useless clicking noises. She looked down in despair to see a black square on the wall, decorated with the yellow icon of a swipe card. A red LED flickered at her derisively each time she tugged at the door handle. 

She became aware of the tears running down her face as she turned back around at the noise of the lift's synthetic voice. "Basement. Floor," it said. 

One of the other doors had to be unlocked. She leaped down the corridor as the elevator began to open, and threw herself at a door to her left. "PLANT ROOM," read the door's lettering. It was locked. There was a clunk as the first two wheels of a trolley emerged from the lift. She grasped at the door handle to her right and silently rejoiced as it yielded to her grip; the door opened into what the sign declared as "KITCHEN STORAGE". She stumbled in, pushing the door closed as quietly as she could, and at the same time plunging herself into complete darkness. She fumbled around the wall near the doorframe, and found the light switch.

The room was filled with metal shelving units, stacked with containers of various foods, all of them industrially-sized. There were two-kilogram cans of peas, piled alongside large plastic tubs of dried mashed potato. Big sacks of flour, lentils and rice took up the whole lower shelf of one unit. The general theme was large quantities of anything that would keep for a long time, and was probably cheap in bulk. She leaned against one of the units, trying to catch her breath. 

On the opposite wall there was another door. Sounds of activity were clearly audible from behind it - the clatter of metal utensils, and the occasional voice. She didn't rate her chances stepping into what was presumably the kitchen, with people working inside. It also meant she couldn't stay here, in case one of them came to get something from the storage area. Reckoning that whoever had come out of the lift would be gone by now, she carefully stepped back into the corridor, closing the door behind her and despairing at her lack of progress.

Zoe shivered, and crossed her arms over her bare chest. It looked like she'd have to risk using the elevator. She decided she'd take it to the ground floor, to minimise the time spent in it. Zoe depressed the call button, and the doors slid open immediately, the lift still waiting there after releasing its previous passenger. That was good. It meant that the lift wasn't in constant use. She stepped inside, and noted the floor numbering was from B, through G, and up to floor 3 at the very top. The doors slipped closed once she had selected the ground floor. She stood with her back against the wall, fidgeting nervously. She stopped chewing her fingernail when she noticed she was biting into the quick badly enough to draw blood.

The electronic voice announced her arrival at a volume that felt like the whole world would hear it. "Ground. Floor," it said. Zoe peeked out from the lift's doorway. She could see that the floor plan corresponded to the level below: the lift was situated on a corner, with one stretch of the corridor turning back to her right. A few doors were visible in the corridor to her left, all of them closed, with squares of frosted glass in their upper halves. The carpet was a garish design of orange and brown shapes that had probably looked stylish in the seventies. There was nobody else around.

She reasoned that if the secure doors were arranged in any kind of sensible way, there would always be one between her and the car park. That meant she wouldn't be able to leave the interior without a swipe-card. What if the card access was controlled from a central computer? If she could reach it, she might be able to unlock an exit remotely, assuming she could work out how to use the system, and assuming she just happened to find an unattended, logged-in computer terminal. Her heart sank as the realities of the plan became apparent.

On the basis that she had to do something, she took a left out of the elevator, crouching below the levels of the windows as she sneaked down the corridor. A door without a window declared itself as the entrance to the "SERVER ROOM," which seemed vaguely hopeful, and she opened the door to be met with the dull sound of rushing air. She ducked through the doorway, closing it behind her.

The noise was the collective chorus of all the cooling fans in a cabinet of computer equipment six feet high, set in one corner of the small room. Banks of green LEDs flickered behind the cabinet's glass front. The air was warm. Zoe grinned as she beheld a computer monitor on a folding table next to the cabinet, with a post-it note stuck to the bezel. On it was written "user112," and below it, a collection of characters reading "p455w0rd". She clenched her fists, letting out a brief sigh before hurrying over to the computer. She couldn't believe her luck.

Hammering the space bar seemed to rouse the machine from its slumber, and Zoe was presented with an outdated-looking login screen. She entered the details from the note. The login process seemed to take forever. The sound of footsteps coming past the door made her breath catch in her throat, but whoever it was carried straight on past the room. She sat down, trying to calm herself as she took in what was on the screen. It looked like some sort of database program, with a list of names, sorted numerically. The current entry on screen was number 160, which apparently corresponded to a "Mitchell, A". There was a photograph of a blonde-haired girl who, judging from her closed eyes and blank expression, was asleep. Scrolling through images revealed photographs of her walking along a street, and one of her waiting at a train platform. There was an image of the girl sitting on a park bench, reading a book. She didn't seem to be aware she was being photographed in any of the pictures. A table of data to one side of the images noted, among other pieces of data, that she was twenty-one years old, weighed fifty-five kilograms, and had a "suggestibility rating" of "high".

Zoe's eyes wandered from the screen to the table's surface, where there were a few papers scattered haphazardly, along with a half-eaten bag of crisps. More worryingly, there was a cup of coffee, half-full. Extremely worrying was the fact that it was still warm. She didn't know how much time she would have. She scrolled down the list, noting that the numbers didn't seem to be in any sort of consecutive order, and stopped when she recognised Claire's face in one of the pictures. They were of the same type as the previous girl - photographs of her leaving a block of flats and crossing a car park. An image of her sitting and reading on some steps outside a library, with a rucksack beside her. Zoe hadn't realised Claire was quite so young - apparently she was nineteen, making her Zoe's junior by four years.

Another category noted that Claire was apparently undergoing "preliminary conditioning". Elsewhere in the entry were time-stamped notes: "314's first session was satisfactory overall," read one, and then later, "314 is learning not to resist quite so much". The most recent entry noted that "314 decided to try and escape today, during administration of tryptamine B. Mental state probably not as compliant as initially thought. Suggest additional basic dependency training, sensory deprivation treatment."

A few entries above Claire, Zoe recognised the number 212 from the day's earlier milking session. The first photograph showed the auburn-haired girl sitting at an office desk, mid-way through taking a sip from a water bottle. There was an image of her standing outside a bookstore, a carrier bag in one hand. Zoe physically shuddered at the next picture in the sequence, which showed her bound to a metal rack, with her limbs outstretched. Her mouth was covered with a leather gag, held in place with a complicated head-harness. There were a pair of suction cups attached to her nipples, at the ends of long hoses. There was a dull look in her eyes. The associated entry noted: "212 has completed the first course of hormone therapy. Milk yield is satisfactory, but the product lacks real flavour. Consider dietary changes."

The horrid, clinical manner in which the girls' torments had been catalogued was gruesomely fascinating. Zoe managed to force herself to close the database access and look for something more useful. Time might be running out. She loaded up a program calling itself "card access," and was greeted with an archaic interface. There was a list of doorways and rooms, sorted by floor and description, and another column for "permissions". It looked like there were different grades of accessibility. She expanded a menu for "arrivals", which contained three entries, apparently corresponding to doors at the north, south, and west of the area. She moved the cursor over a small icon of a closed padlock, and clicked. She closed her eyes, so that even if it didn't work, she would be able to enjoy a few seconds' fantasy where she could imagine that it had. Dreading what she might see, she opened one eye ever so slowly, to behold that the icon had changed to a stylised "unlocked" position, with the padlock loop over to one side.

A thrill of excitement seized her. She hurriedly returned the screen to the state she had found it in, and logged off. She stood up, turned around, and had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stifle a cry as she saw the door opening. Another rush of adrenaline hit her, making her guts sink. Without thinking, she grabbed the coffee cup from the desk and stepped back against the wall, putting the opening door between her and the intruder.

A man sniffled as he walked into the room, reaching back to close the door behind him. He caught Zoe out of the corner of his eye and turned around: he was a huge, pale creature, wearing grey tracksuit trousers that struggled to contain his ample belly, and a black t-shirt with something written on it that was probably hilarious to those who knew about computers. Wispy facial hair reached halfway down his neck. He drew in a breath to say something, and Zoe hurled the cup's contents into his face. He gave a surprisingly high-pitched shriek for somebody of his size. He started to raise his hands, and Zoe followed up by punching him in the face as hard as she could, feeling the impact jolt her arm into numbness. Her knuckles throbbed painfully, and the man let out a pathetic howl as he clutched at his nose. She pushed him over, somehow summoning the strength to send him toppling into the computer table, which collapsed under his heft with a crashing noise.

Somebody would have heard that. Zoe dashed back to the lift. "2," declared the LCD above the door. She hammered the call button repeatedly, hopping from one foot to the other, frantically glancing around. She could hear voices from another room, the scrape of a chair against the floor. The display changed to "1", and a door opposite the server room swung open. A figure emerged and Zoe ducked around the corner, unsure if she'd been seen. Footsteps, and the click of another door. "What the hell happened?" came a voice.

"Ground. Floor," said the lift.

"...girl, ran out...," came a voice from the corridor to her left. There was the sound of doors sliding open. Zoe waited for a few moments before reaching around the wall and swinging herself around the corner, into the lift. She glimpsed the bent-over form of the large man, one hand still clutching at his nose, with red dripping between his fingers. A woman stood next to him, one hand on his shoulder. She shouted "Hey," and then Zoe was in the lift, pressing "B" and then hammering the door-close button with her thumb, pleading under her breath to God or Buddha or whoever else was listening to please let the doors close in time.

"Hey, stop!" the woman's voice came, and then, louder, "escape! We've got an escape!"

Her voice grew closer. The door opposite Zoe opened as the lift doors closed, and then the electronic voice spoke, infuriatingly calm. "Going. Down," it said. There was a thump on the lift doors, but the descent had already started, and they didn't open again. Zoe's heart was beating so hard she could feel it all throughout her chest. She felt like she might be sick. Her hands were trembling. The door slid open, and halfway through the lift's announcement she was into the corridor, sprinting towards the garage door. She wrenched the handle down and the door burst open before her, the card pad LED now a steady, calm green. She felt nothing beneath her feet, and realised she'd completely misjudged the concrete steps leading down from the doorway. She sprawled out onto the hard floor, scraping her hands painfully as she put them out to catch herself. The shock knocked the wind from her, and she took several awkward, gasping breaths as she scrambled to her feet. 

She was halfway towards the vans when she heard a voice from somewhere in the ceiling, electronically degraded as if spoken through a telephone: "All staff, we have an escape in the basement level. All available attendants report. Secure the perimeter."

No amount of secure perimeter was going to stop her ploughing through it in one of these vans, she thought. She ran over to the driver's side door, gripped the handle, and jarred her arm painfully as she tugged at it.

"NO!" she screamed. She yanked the handle again, and still the door remained closed. "No, no, Jesus Christ!" 

She was suddenly aware of how exhausted she was, and of the cold, clammy feeling all over her skin. She blinked sweat from her eyes. Of course they didn't keep them unlocked. The keys were probably in some other room, to be signed out when needed. Zoe pulled at the handle again, desperately, pathetically, and still there was no result. It couldn't end like this. She hadn't come this far to fail; she'd flee on foot if necessary.

Alongside the garage's metal roller door was another doorway. She was at the door when she heard other movement in the garage: attendants came running in from two of the other entrances, shock batons raised. They were thirty feet away. She opened the door, letting out a desperate cry quite involuntarily. She kicked it shut behind her and sprinted up a tarmac ramp, walled either side with bare concrete blocks, towards the outside light and the sky. The tarmac scraped her feet cruelly as she ran, but it didn't matter, she was going to be free. She could outrun the attendants behind her - they were just doing their job, but she was moving with the sort of speed that the human body reserved for situations of pure, animal terror.

Zoe reached the top of the ramp where the ground levelled out to a flat road, leading towards a gate set in a tall, wrought-iron fence. It was open. She could barely feel her legs as her feet pounded against the ground, her breath burned in her throat, it was as if her whole field of vision had narrowed down to the view of that sacred, precious stretch of road leading away from the gate, off between the trees. She took another stride, and then stumbled once. Zoe tried to lift her leg again, but it was feeling impossibly heavy. Her feet tangled beneath her as she took the next step, and she fell on to her front, grazing her bare chest on the abrasive tarmac. 

She rolled to one side and looked back, uncomprehending. She saw the small dart protruding from her left buttock: a narrow shape of white plastic with bright green flight-fins. Her focus shifted to the building behind her, and to the figures standing on the steps leading up to the main entrance. One of them, clad in the attendants' uniform, was holding a rifle. The other was fairly short, and Zoe could make out that the figure had brown hair, which came down to shoulder-height.

Zoe reached for the dart and grabbed hold of it. She pulled weakly, and the it tugged at her skin in a manner that looked like it should be quite painful. The numbness was spreading up her body to her arms now. Her legs felt heavy and warm, although part of that was due to the apparent relaxing effect that the dart's drug had had on her bladder. It took all her strength to drag herself a couple of inches closer to the gate, and then she found she no longer had the ability to hold her own head up. She drooped down limply onto the tarmac. The stomping of the attendants' boots reached the top of the ramp, and then they were upon her. One took hold of each completely numb limb, and they picked her up off the ground. Her head lolled backwards as they carried her off, affording her an upside-down view of the gate as it receded further and further away from her, blurred by her tears. It was the last thing she saw before consciousness left her altogether.

---

"You think that's how it works? You think you can just fuck my girls, whenever you like?"

Zoe awakened to the sound of Helen's voice, which was quivering with rage. She was standing the other side of the room from Zoe, where a man was held against a vertical pole with his wrists bound together above his head. A pair of cuffs likewise secured his legs. Zoe realised it must be the attendant, and that it was the first time she had seen any of them without their masks. He looked to be in his early thirties, with an unremarkable face made less attractive by a tattoo on his cheek. His body was stocky, but not overly muscular. He was completely naked.

Helen was standing with her back to Zoe, facing the man. She had apparently decided to dress up for the occasion: a skirt of burgundy leather covered her legs down to her knees, below which they were clad in black stockings. Her black leather shoes had a considerable heel to them. Her hair was tied back, held in place with a few simple red clips that matched the colour of her blouse. The elegance of her outfit was spoiled a little by the latex gloves covering her hands. In one of them she was holding a long cane.

While she was unconscious, Zoe had been thoroughly secured to a padded chair that seemed to be mounted on a tilting stand, putting her halfway between upright and horizontal. She couldn't move any of her limbs an inch, she looked down to see that there were six nylon straps fastened over each of her legs, secured with plastic clips, and the same number down each of her arms, held against the chair's armrests. A set of thicker straps crossed over between her breasts, constricting her chest uncomfortably. There were a few bandages and plasters on her body - presumably they had been applied to the cuts and grazes she'd suffered during her escape attempt. Her mouth was gagged with a perforated plastic ball that was easy enough to breathe through, but would prevent her from uttering any intelligible words. Whoever had put it on her had been overly enthusiastic about tightness; she could feel the edges of the strap chafing against her lips.

"Miss Stanford, I can-"

"You will be silent!" she snapped. Helen rested the cane against the man's lip. "Nothing you could possibly say at this point will make it any better for you," she said, "so I suggest you keep your mouth shut."

She looked back. "Ah, 271, I see you've finally decided to come round. That's good. There was a limit to how much I could amuse myself with this wretch."

She ran the tip of the cane down the man's chest and over his abdomen, swishing it to one side when she reached his crotch. "It seems this man thinks he can put his dirty little prick inside my girls without my permission," she said. She rested the tip of the cane beneath the head of his penis, and raised it up. The man screwed his eyes shut. Then Helen removed the cane, allowing his member to flop back down between his legs.

"Disgusting," she said. She dropped the cane to the ground, and knelt in front of the man to cradle his testicles in her hand. "Male genitals are so unsightly," she said. "I honestly don't know how you cope with it, hanging all over the place and getting in the way. Look at this!" she said, lifting his cock up to a vertical position and gesturing at his scrotum, "all wrinkly and horrid." She took the man's prick in her hand and rolled back the foreskin. "Although even in a situation like this, I bet I can get you excited," she said. 

A few dozens of strokes later, and with a little of her spit for lubrication, he was indeed fully erect. She bounced it up and down on her outstretched fingers, and then the man gasped as Helen delivered a hard slap to the underside of his prick. She closed her fist around his testicles, which had the man grinding his teeth with the pain of it. Without letting go, Helen turned to address Zoe.

"This man will be the first part of your punishment," she said. He groaned again. Zoe could see the muscles in Helen's forearm tensing. Then she released him from her grip, coming to Zoe and wheeling the chair over to the man. Helen used her foot to operate a lever that dropped Zoe down by a couple of inches, and pushed her into place so that her face was just below the man's cock. The eventual form of the punishment became clear as Helen began to stroke the man's penis, before segueing into a firmer, closed-handed grip around the shaft. She jerked it back and forth, over and over, and Zoe had a close-up view as the first droplet of precum emerged from the tip, a few inches away from her face.

"Maybe your disobedience is because you've got no other outlet," she was saying to him. "So you decide to take it out on my subjects, just because you can't find a girl who actually wants to fuck you herself. I wouldn't be surprised," she said. "Maybe if I milk it all out of you, there won't be any left for you to go around fucking the girls here. And I'm sure 271 will be just fine with this," she said, "seeing as she was apparently so eager to please you earlier."

The minutes wore on, with the man occasionally making anxious noises as Helen jacked him off, her motions sometimes seeming almost violent. Eventually, the inevitable happened. Helen had positioned Zoe in just the right place to catch a face-full of warm semen as she wrung the man's prick of its payload. It splashed over Zoe's cheeks in sticky blobs. More of it found its way to her lips, running down through the holes in her gag to drip into her mouth. She spluttered and coughed, it was ten times worse than when she'd just been sucking his cock.

Helen didn't stop. The man was grunting in pain as she carried right on with the same motion, back and forth, even though the end of his cock was now bright pink and sore-looking, and rapidly softening. "Come on!" she said, "is that all you've got? The way you're behaving I'd have thought you had lots of sperm you were just dying to unload!"

Zoe let out a whimper. She could feel the stuff congealing in her hair, one glob of it running slowly down her cheek as it dried to a sticky trail. She didn't like the idea of fresh ejaculate making the situation worse. Eventually it did happen a few minutes later, with the man letting out a cry as Helen coaxed another squirt from his very sore-looking cock. "Please!" he gasped, "Stop it! There's no more!"

"Are you sure?" Helen said, still not breaking pace. About half the second load had splashed against Zoe's gag, and, even lying with her head to one side, some of it still made its way into her mouth. She thrashed her tongue around, but that only seemed to emphasise the taste. She managed to spit some of it out through the gag and it ran down her chin, leaving a wet trail. Zoe moaned dejectedly.

"You'll have a lot more to complain about later, 271. We're just getting started. In fact, I think this episode might be over," said Helen, squashing the man's now-soft prick between her thumb and forefinger. "I don't think I can milk any more out of this pathetic little cock."

The man sighed. His relief turned out to be premature - Helen pushed Zoe's chair to one side to allow herself enough room to swing her cane, and then brought it to impact against the top of his belaboured genitals with a horrible, soft squishing sound. He let out a roar of pain, which mingled with Helen's laugher as she rained down a series of brutal cane strokes from all angles, all focussed on his withered prick. His breath was coming in desperate gasps by the time she had finished with him, face contorted with the pain of what he'd endured.

"I don't think you'll be bothering any of the girls with that thing for a while now, hmm?"

He shook his head fervently.

"Good," said Helen. "As of now I'm re-assigning you to sanitation." She released the man's arms, and then unfastened the ankle cuffs, freeing him from the pole. He crumpled down onto the floor, curling up into a tight ball with his hands between his legs. Zoe thought for a moment that she could hear him sobbing.

"When you're feeling better," she said, "go and pick up your uniform, and report to sanitation. They're expecting you. There'll be a colonic irrigation session to clean up after, and there'll be at least one girl down in sens-dep who needs her diaper changing. Actually, don't wait," she said. "Go. Now." She kicked him in the side with the tip of her shoe. Another kick from behind, between his legs, and the man scurried out of the room, practically on all fours.

Helen ran her gloved fingers over the mess of semen and saliva on Zoe's chin, and then sneered as she wiped them across Zoe's nose and cheek. Zoe grimaced. "And now for you," she said. 

"What, my little escapee, should I do with you?"

---

Claire had found the cell empty when the attendants returned her there. They had removed her straitjacket and, to her surprise, they hadn't applied any other restraints. She had been clothed in a simple one-piece, nightdress-like garment made of synthetic-feeling, white material. She had still been feeling disoriented from the drug's after-effects, although the worst seemed to have passed, now replaced with a general feeling of grogginess. She managed to sleep for what felt like around ten minutes before she found herself once again dragged from the room, an attendant gripping her wrist far too tight as he hauled her away by her arm.

Helen was waiting for her. Claire experienced a feeling of overwhelming dread as the attendant shoved her into the room, once again in the presence of her tormentor. Perhaps it was a consequence of the drug's action on her brain, but she found it very hard to look at Helen. It only reinforced the very recent memories of her unpleasant experiences. There was another, unfamiliar girl in the room, fussing around with a box of medical implements. The lower half of her face was covered with a pale green surgical mask; a smattering of freckles was visible on her cheeks above it. Her hair was a coppery red colour, tied back in a ponytail.

Zoe was here too, looking dishevelled and very miserable. She was kneeling in the room's centre, manacled wrists resting on her thighs. Her eyes were red from crying. Claire could make a reasonable guess as to the nature of the pale, slimy stuff on her face and chest. A few plasters and bandages had been applied to her in various places. She was taking sobbing breaths, which her ball gag made into wet slurping noises. She looked up once at Claire, and then away towards the floor.

"Zoe... what happened?"

"271," said Helen, enunciating each number very clearly, "somehow thought it would be a good idea to try and escape. I want you to see how I deal with girls like that, 314. Sit and watch. Against the wall, there," she gestured. Claire sat down, wishing the attendants had given her some underwear. She folded her legs to one side to avoid exposing herself. 

"I suppose we should clean you up now," said Helen. The redhead handed her a roll of paper towel; she tore off a wad and used it to wipe the worst of the mess from Zoe's face. She used a second to wipe away the trails of drool and semen running between and over her breasts. Zoe's eyes were closed. Her chest shook as she sobbed again. She seemed to be trying to push her gag out with her tongue, having no success in doing so.

The redhead brought her box of implements in front of Zoe, placing it on the floor. Claire could make out a lot of plastic packages, all with the word "sterile" written on them. The girl stood up to plug a power cord into an outlet, and then pulled on a pair of purple nitrile rubber gloves. She sloshed some disinfectant onto a wad of cotton wool, and looked at Helen expectantly.

"I think here," Helen said, pointing to the top of Zoe's left breast. "Where she'll be able to see it."

The girl swabbed the area with a few applications of disinfectant, and then set about unpackaging the rest of her tools with a rustling of plastic wrappers.

"I don't always do this," said Helen. "It devalues you a little. But you clearly need some sort of permanent reminder that you belong to me, now."

The redhead was holding the powered tool in her hands. It looked like a pen with a small clump of machinery at the opposite end to the tip, which buzzed loudly as she thumbed a switch. Then she brought it against Zoe's chest, to the spot where Helen indicated. It buzzed again, and Zoe flinched backwards, giving a shriek of pain.

"It's only going to be worse if you move, 271," said Helen. "You could do some serious damage to yourself if you twitched the wrong way. Here, maybe I can help with that." Helen sat on the floor behind Zoe, putting one arm across her abdomen and locking Zoe's arms down against her thighs. She clamped her other forearm across Zoe's neck, who let out an uncomfortable choking noise as her head was pulled back.

"Go ahead," said Helen.

The girl's tool buzzed again, and this time Zoe was unable to move as the needle-tip stabbed into her skin. She cried out from the pain as the tool made its way in a slow clockwise arc, down across her breast. Claire could see the thin black line the tattoo pen left in its wake. It progressed gradually across Zoe's skin, describing the outline of a number two. Zoe's knuckles were white, her fists were trembling. Another cry turned into a retching noise as Helen tightened her grip on the girl's throat.

Claire felt completely powerless as she watched the girl suffering. She came over to Zoe as the redhead started drawing the second number into her skin, and took her hand. She was surprised at the strength of Zoe's grip as she held on, not looking at her, but perhaps taking comfort in the solidarity. Helen shook her head slowly, fixing her with a cold glare, and Claire had to pull her hand free before retreating to the room's corner, curling her knees up against her face. She didn't want to watch any more. The buzzing of the tool and Zoe's moans echoed around inside her head inescapably.

Perhaps Zoe had got used to the pain after a while. She didn't seem to cry quite so vocally when the redhead swapped the needle in her tool, replacing it with a thicker one and using it to fill in the outline of the numbers she had drawn. Some time later, Claire looked up when she heard the buzzing cease, and saw that the girl had put down her tool. She was dabbing at Zoe's chest with more cotton wool, which was coming away from her skin stained black. Zoe's number, "271", was written in two-inch letters on her chest, in the middle of a patch of skin that had turned bright red. The girl placed a sterile medical dressing over the freshly-inked skin and stuck it in place with tape. Then she set about putting her equipment back in its box.

"Wait," said Helen. She looked over to Claire, and grinned. "We may as well do her too, seeing as you're here."

The redhead shrugged, before removing her gloves and replacing them with a fresh pair. She ejected the needle from the pen, and loaded a new one.

"Come here, 314."

Even though it was pointless to resist, fear of the pain kept Claire huddled in her corner. Helen released Zoe from her grip, and came over to drag Claire by her hair to the room's centre. The redhead forced Claire down onto her front and straddled her, sitting on the small of her back while Helen pulled Zoe over to one side, and bound her ankles with strips of tape. "Better be thorough," she said in a mock-cheerful tone, "don't want you running off again!".

Helen's thoroughness apparently consisted of about half the roll of tape wound around Zoe's legs in several thick bands, and more of it holding her elbows together in front of her. An additional strip of tape, around her back and over her forearms, forced her to hold her hands up next to her face. "That will do," said Helen, "for now. Let's get you into something a little more sophisticated than sticky tape later on, yes?"

The feeling of cool air against Claire's thighs made her wince as Helen pulled her dress up over her buttocks. She felt the touch of Helen's finger at the top of the left cheek. "Here," she said, "she's number 314." A moment later she felt damp cotton wool wiping down the indicated area. She wheezed for breath, it was quite uncomfortable having the other girl sitting on her back. Helen's hands closed around Claire's ankles, holding her legs in place. Then she heard the sound of the tool buzzing to life once more, like an angry hornet.

Claire gritted her teeth as a hot, stinging pain spread across her buttock. It brought to mind the childhood incident that had triggered her fear of wasps, when she had been stung one warm September afternoon during a P.E. lesson. There was no school nurse to make her better this time, though. The stinging came again and again, as if a squadron of wasps had all lined up and were taking turns to fly in and prick her with their venom. She swallowed hard, tears formed in the corners of her eyes as the burning line inched across her skin in a slow curve. She savoured the bliss of the short moment between digits, when the pen was lifted, but the contrast only served to make the next even more terrible. Claire let out a helpless cry of pain as the redhead began to draw the new digit.

Claire was sure it was taking a lot longer than when she had watched Zoe receive her number. By the end of it, her skin felt like it was on fire. The cotton wool was like sandpaper as the girl gave her skin a final wipe down, and then smoothed a bandage over it. The weight on her back finally disappeared as the girl stood, and then Helen released Claire's ankles. She rolled on to her side, and curled her knees against her chest.

"Good," said Helen. "I'm looking forward to seeing them when the bandage comes off. 271... I'm going to have to think about what I want to do with you next." She spoke to the redhead. "Watch them for a moment, will you?"

Helen was out of the room for what felt like far too short a time, before returning with a pair of attendants. One of them carried Zoe off over his shoulder. The other brought Claire back to the cell, which was still empty - apparently Emma and Laura were still elsewhere.

She sat on the floor very carefully, wincing as the bandage shifted over her sore buttock. Half an hour later she was provided with some bland, unappealing food. She ate alone, feeling miserable. There was slightly less misery at being able to use the cell's bathroom fixtures in private for once. The day's activities had her feeling worn out, and yet her body didn't seem to think it was time to sleep yet. She realised she had no idea what the time of day was - it felt like a long time since she'd seen the sky, or been outside.

Claire lay on her front, drumming her feet against the floor. She idly picked at the tape holding her bandage in place. She supposed she should be grateful just for being left alone.

