Chapter 1

It was half an hour after employee number two hundred and fifty-six's shift was supposed to have ended, but she couldn't remember the last time she'd managed to leave work on time. It must have been last year, she realised, before her new boss had raised the daily quotas again.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps: the slow, purposeful steps of someone in control, accompanied by the stiletto-heeled steps of the company secretary, not the bare-foot shuffle of a co-worker.

She slid off the bed she was sitting on, and crawled on her hands and knees to the room's entrance, a locked door comprised of vertical metal bars modelled on a prison's. She tried to look alluring as she slinked along on her hands and knees like an animal. Even if no one was watching - and she could never be completely sure of that

- it never hurt to get more practice.

Human resources had insisted the prison motif was provided merely to protect the workers from gangs of teenaged boys who might somehow break into the place of business, and to ensure that over-eager potential clients would never touch the merchandise before completing a transaction.

They'd never explained the closed circuit television cameras to her satisfaction, but they claimed they also had something to do with protecting employees from overzealous clients and from any disputes that might arise over services rendered. She tried not to picture the lenses set into the top four corners of the room, watching her every move, let alone the security guard or manager who might be watching her at any given moment.

Men had a lot of repressed sexual desire, the welcome pack had said, and it was the company's responsibility to protect its employees from any improper outlet of this desire - improper presumably meaning free. However, she suspected the prison theme was much more likely to do with maintaining the illusion that the clients were in complete control of the workers, when in reality they weren't even in control of themselves. Power play, amongst those without any.

"Please," she begged as the client approached her room, "let me suck you off! I'll do anything you want. Please use me." She'd long since learnt to say it with feeling, as if she meant it. That was the only way to compete with countless other workers all giving the client pretty much the same spiel. You had to stand out in some way, just like in natural selection.

Looking up through the bars, she could see that the client was a middle-aged, balding man in a smart business suit. Repulsive as he looked - and, more to the point, acted - his appearance was hardly surprising. Cute young men who knew how to be true gentlemen seldom visited places like where she worked. She still had fond memories of the last one who had, and that had been months ago. This man's type, on the other hand, was all too familiar: a pillar of society by day, and a loathsome, mysogynistic child by night. It was her job, in a sense, to make sure he got what he wanted. She felt her skin crawl as he looked down at her naked, cowering body. "Display yourself properly," he ordered.

Employee number two hundred and fifty-six realised she'd reflexively placed her hands on the bottom of the door's bars again, her arms almost covering her breasts. Such timidity was seldom popular amongst the clients, and although there was no official corporate stance on proper protocol, such a position was certainly frowned upon.

She shuffled back, her bare feet and knees barely making a noise on the cold tiles. Once she'd scrambled back far enough, she knelt on her legs, her feet tucked under her bottom, spreading her thighs wide open. She made sure to keep her arms at her sides, proudly displaying her body in all its unclothed glory. The only part of herself that she couldn't show was her vulva, as it was locked away inside her chastity belt, the same as everyone else's.

"You are an eager little whore, aren't you?" The man's tone of voice was approving.

"Yes, sir," she said, her eyes fixed on the cold, white tiles of the floor.

"No, let me do it!" came a voice from the next room. "Let me go down on you, please, sir! I'm much better than her. I won't spill a single drop or anything." Shit. The voice belonged to two hundred and fifty-seven. That tramp was just as eager to fulfil her quota as she was, and she had no shame. Two hundred and fifty-six watched helplessly as the man turned around and walked towards the next room.