Chapter 22: The Dawn Protocol

I awoke to a profound, textured silence. It was Wednesday, June 17, 1992. The clock’s red glow read 5:07. The room was pre-dawn gray, the world outside the thin curtains a slate-blue void. My head was on the pillow, the unfamiliar weight of sovereignty still settling into my bones from the night’s consolidation.

Beside me, Ash slept, her head sharing the same pillow, her breath a soft, even tide against my shoulder. One hand was curled on my chest, a tiny, warm anchor of trust. Her skin was cool where it touched mine, a perfect counterpoint. With one of my hands resting on her inner thigh, with the fingers resting on her pubes.

The other sounds in the room were not from my doll.

They were wet, soft, and rhythmic. A muffled, purposeful cadence coming from the other bed.

I turned my head slowly on the pillow, the starch-stiff sheets whispering.

In the gloom, the scene was painted in grainy silver and deep shadow. Claire and Megan were a tangled, moving sculpture of pale limbs. No sheet covered them. Megan was on her side, her back to me, her head buried purposefully between Claire’s thighs. Claire was on her back, one hand fisted in Megan’s dark hair, the other pressed flat over her own mouth, stifling shuddering, rhythmic exhalations. Her hips lifted in a slow, grinding piston motion against her sister’s face. It was not passionate. It was efficient. A synchronized system update, performed with the focused diligence of a maintenance ritual.

They were fully engaged. There was no self-consciousness, no furtive glance. They were simply performing the protocol that Magan told me about yesterday in the stairwell. The air in the room was thick with the intimate, humid scent of it.

Ash’s eyes opened slowly beneath my touch. She looked at me softly, waiting, then let her gaze drift past my face to the other bed. No shift in her expression, no surprise or question. She noted it as I had, like the distant hum of machinery, and brought her attention back to mine. They are in maintenance. I am here. Her palm pressed once, lightly, against my chest.

Then the room phone tore through the silence.

BRRRRIIINNNG!

A jolt in the intimate dark. In the other bed, the wet rhythm faltered. Claire’s fingers clenched in Megan’s hair; Megan went still, a listening device, as I switched on the light.

Time split. The order arrived fully formed, cold, immediate. The ringing wasn’t an intrusion; it was protocol. A test woven into the dawn.

I didn’t look away. Megan’s face was buried between Claire’s thighs. In the low light, only Claire’s eyes were clear and wide, fixed directly on me. Neither moved.

My voice cut the air before my hand even lifted the heavy receiver, a clean wire of command through the resonant quiet.

“Megan. Claire. Consider yourselves fused. You do not stop until I say so.”

Claire’s eyes widened, a sharp flare of surprise, then softened into something liquid and surrendered before closing completely. As my fingers tightened around the cold plastic receiver, Megan moved. With a fluid, decisive economy, she swung one leg over Claire, reversing their positions in one slick, straining motion. Now she was on top, straddling Claire’s face, lowering herself back onto her sister’s mouth. A seamless recalibration. The wet, rhythmic sounds resumed without a break. The circuit remained unbroken.

I brought the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Sam? It’s Mom.” Her voice was calm, bright, utterly awake. No greeting. “What’s happening in your room right now?”

I told her the truth, clean and without inflection. “Megan is on top of Claire. They are engaged in mutual oral sex. They have been since before the phone rang. I ordered them not to stop until I said so. They are continuing now.”

A silence on the line for three full seconds, filled only by the faint hiss of the long-distance connection. Then, her voice returned, warm with a pride that vibrated down the wire. “Perfect, Sam. Perfect composure. You maintained command under an unpredictable stimulus. That is exactly right.”

“Now,” she continued, her tone shifting to an operational briefing, “tell them to dig in. Continue with focus until we arrive. We’re on our way up. And Sam ... prepare to command. You will direct their rotations.”

“Understood.”

I lowered the phone from my mouth but did not hang up. My gaze returned to the tangled, moving forms on the other bed.

“Claire. Megan. Mom and Dad are on their way up. They said to dig in. Continue with focused intensity until they arrive. And prepare for my command of rotations.”

From beneath Megan, Claire’s response was a deep, shuddering moan, a sound of pure overwhelm and total acceptance. Megan’s rhythm intensified, becoming more deliberate, more pronounced. A silent demonstration of capability for the approaching architects.

I hung up the phone with a soft, definitive click. Ash nuzzled into my shoulder, a silent question in the curve of her body.

“We shower now,” I told her, my voice dropping back into its normal register, a space made just for her.

I led my doll from the bed, clicking on the harsh bathroom light. I left the door ajar behind us, allowing the rhythm of the room to follow, an insistent score to our movements. Under the lukewarm, anemic spray, we washed each other with swift efficiency. I lathered her body, my hands moving with practiced care over skin that tightened into gooseflesh at my touch. She stood pliant, eyes shut, a silent vessel offering no distraction from the sounds that seeped through the crack in the door.

We stepped back into the room, damp and smelling of sharp motel soap, our bodies sheathed in thin, while the doll was holding the abrasive towels. The relentless, wet symphony from the other bed continued, unabated.

Then came three firm, measured raps against the door.

I pulled the door open.

My parents stood framed in the dim hallway light. Dad, fully dressed in pressed khakis and a polo shirt, held a neat bundle of my clothes from the night before. Mom stood beside him, serenely and gloriously nude, a small canvas bag slung over her shoulder.

Their eyes did not meet mine at first. Instead, their gaze swept past me into the room, absorbing the scene on the bed with the serene, appraising approval of curators surveying a masterpiece in progress.

They entered without a word. Dad extended the bundle of clothes to me. I accepted them and turned, holding them out to Ash.

“Dress me.”

With a palpable, quiet pride, my doll took the proffered garments. She knelt, sliding my socks and shoes onto my feet with ritual care, then rose to guide me into my boxers, my khakis, my t-shirt. It was a silent ceremony of ownership and service, performed to the unabated, intimate soundtrack from the other bed.

My parents watched, their expressions one of deep, silent satisfaction.

As the doll was dressing me, I was expecting the parents to tell the sisters to stop. Instead, they walked to the sister’s bed as if approaching the couch at home. Mom sat on the edge near Claire’s head, her nude body a calm extension of the scene. Dad sat in the chair he pulled close to the bed, near Megan’s hip. They flanked the moving tableau like surgeons observing a delicate, living procedure.

And they began to speak, their voices calm, conversational, layering over the wet, rhythmic sounds and ragged breathing.

“Excellent pelvic form, Megan,” Mom observed, as if noting a dancer’s posture. “You’ve compensated for the spinal asymmetry Claire always exhibits in this position. Good adaptation.” In response, Megan’s hips drove down with harder, more deliberate precision.

Dad leaned slightly toward Claire’s ear, his voice a low, steady murmur. “The resistance you’re feeling in your diaphragm, Claire, is just old wiring. A somatic echo. Let the sensation be a pure signal. No narrative. Translate it into kinetic energy.” Claire’s back arched off the bed, a silent cry tearing from her throat, her hand slapping against Megan’s thigh.

Mom turned her head to me, her face a mask of serene strategy. “Before we proceed with the morning’s rotations, a strategic update. We spoke with Chelsey Waller for forty minutes last night, then again this morning. The conversation centered on the optics of the remainder of the pilgrimage.”

Dad nodded, his hand resting calmly on the bedspread near Megan’s trembling thigh. “Complete agreement between us. Until the legal process is formally initiated and the initial media attention reaches its inevitable fever pitch, we need to manage the visible geometry with more nuance. We are a family living in our truth. But to the blind world, we must appear to be making a conscious, rational concession.”