Chapter 99

Time: Sunday, October 3, 2019 10:30 AM

Amber, Whitney and Kiyoko were almost finished in their inspection of the circumference of the linear building. There were a total of ten doors into the complex, four each on the north and south faces and one each on the short east and west faces. So far all nine of the doors tested had opened easily when probed. The expedition was approaching the tenth door on the eastern face. A quick turn around the corner would bring them back to the building’s northern face where they had started their probing two hours ago.

Whitney tested the last door and found it also opened easily. She allowed it to close and then turned to her companions, and in particular to Amber. “I didn’t realize how boring this would be. So, what’s next great leader? Do we test the next building?” she asked gesturing with her arm to the great three-story building to the south, “or head east for a while?”

“Uh, Amber, could rest for a while before we decide?” asked Kiyoko. “We’ve been on our feet for hours.” Which was true. The group by now had walked over twenty kilometers since leaving the Black Mall home complex, and had had very little rest.

The group wound up taking an extended break, snacking on some food and stretching out on the grass outside the eastern door. Today was turning out to be a cool and very pleasant day, a big contrast from yesterday’s humid thundershowers. There was a clean dry wind blowing in from the west and the temperature around 15C in the bright morning sunshine. It would be hard to imagine nicer hiking weather.

While Whitney and Kiyoko chatted, Amber got up leaving her backpack by her friends. She casually walked over and put her face against the transparent eastern door, gazing into the room with rapt attention. After a while Whitney called out, “Hey Amber, what’s so interesting?”

“I think it’s some kind of museum,” Amber called back, “The paintings are incredible, old master stuff, really impressive. And the room across the hall contains sculptures. You want to take a look at this?”

“No, not really,” Whitney answered with a shrug. She turned away and got out a notepad and began making a rough sketch of the area.

Amber slid the door open again and found a simple latch that would keep the door retracted. She played with the door for a while, letting it slide open and closed several times and testing the sturdiness of the latch. And then seemingly on a whim she stepped inside.

“Hey, Amber!” yelled Kiyoko as she stood up. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“I just want to see one of the paintings. It’s magnificent.”

“Amber, what the fuck?! Are you crazy?!” shouted Whitney as she also got to her feet. “Get your butt back out here!”

“This is so beautiful,” Amber called back, ignoring their protests. “I know this work of art. It’s a full sized reproduction of Monet’s Waterlilies, Green Reflections. Come take a look. Look at the colors. It’s looks”

“Amber!” yelled Whitney. “We agreed not to enter any buildings! And you call yourself a leader?!”

“Oh, this is safe enough. The door has a latch to keep it open.” Amber was now a good ten meters within the room. It was a large and well-lit gallery with numerous displays of fine art. Kiyoko and Whitney were standing just outside the doorway looking very annoyed.

“Amber!” Whitney growled in a warning tone of voice. “This is not what we agreed to.”

“I know. Whitney, come in here and see this. You won’t be sorry.”

“You think I’m crazy too?!”

“The door opens easily. Just take a look at the latch. There’s no risk.”

“No!”

“Oh, all right.” Amber paused. “How about you Kiyoko? This is really worth seeing up close. Whitney can stay outside as a back-up. Come on in.”

“Uh, I think I’ll pass. Thanks anyway. Amber, you really should come out now.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing. Sure I can’t change your mind?” Amber let the question hang for a moment and then after a last look at the painting muttered, “Pity.” She turned and back to walk towards the open door and called out. “Oh, all right. Let’s hit the next building to the south.”

She walked calmly to the open exit and got within two meters of it when suddenly the door shot closed so fast it hit the opposite side of the frame with the sound of a pistol shot. All three women recoiled from the bang, and then Amber rushed and began jerking on the door from the inside, trying to open it. Her efforts were completely futile.

“Amber, you dumb fuck!” Whitney screamed.

Kiyoko meanwhile looked on in horror. She and Whitney then tried to open the door from the outside, but their efforts were fruitless. And they soon realized that the closed door blocked all sound. The women began communicating with hand gestures. Whitney and Kiyoko would carry Amber’s backpack and go to another door of the linear building, the closest one was about 700 meters away on the building’s southern face. Amber would try to work her way there from the inside. Perhaps she could exit from there. She waved goodbye and walked into an interior corridor of the building. Whitney and Kiyoko picked up all their gear and started hiking south.

Kiyoko seemed surprised that Whitney took the burden of carrying Amber’s gear. “You want some help with that?”

“No, I got it,” Whitney replied brusquely as the two women began to walk. At the southeast corner of the linear building, Kiyoko turned the corner and continued west, but Whitney held her position. After several steps Kiyoko realized she was alone and she turned around to stare at Whitney. “Why are we stopping?”

“Kiyoko, be realistic. What do you think our chances are for getting Amber out?”

‘I don’t know. All ten of the doors opened.”

“That means nothing. Think of the doors as ten mousetraps. Do you really want to be the next mouse?”

Kiyoko blinked as she heard the question. She then turned and studied the long building with a critical eye. “No, of course not. Stupid Amber! Why did she have to go in?!”

“Yeah, stupid is right, and who’s the bigger fool, Kiyoko? The fool who goes in, or the fool who follows her?”

Kiyoko paused to consider. “Well, I might push a door open, but I’m certainly not going in.”

“Me neither. But do you want to risk getting your hand smashed? Did you see how fast that door closed? How many broken fingers do you want, Kiyoko?”

Kiyoko looked down and flexed her hand for a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps we should just let Amber come out herself. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Of course.”

Kiyoko by this time had drifted back to Whitney’s position at the corner of the building. She looked along the eastern face of the building stared at Amber’s entrance door. “Too bad we can’t tell Amber of our change in plans.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Amber deserves what she gets. And if she does get out, she’ll know where to find us. One thing though, I’m through following her as leader.”

Kiyoko looked at Whitney closely. “You want the job?”

“Yep. If you want to stick with me, if you want to share supplies, I want this perfectly clear. I’m in charge.”

“What about Amber’s backpack?”

“What about it?” Whitney glanced down at the extra backpack in her arms. “I’ll say this one more time, Kiyoko. You want to share supplies? I’m in charge.”

There was a quiet pause, brief but pregnant, and then Kiyoko nodded. “Okay, you’re in charge.”

Whitney smiled. “We meet up with Amber again, she can carry this if we decide to accept her, but the gear belongs to the group, all the gear, and I’m in charge of the group. You want to eat something, even if you’re carrying it, ask me first.”

Kiyoko nodded again. “Understood. Amber was not a very good leader anyway. You have my vote now, Whitney.”

“Make sure it stays that way,” Whitney said darkly, and then she dropped Amber’s backpack on the grass and started walking east southeast, towards the corner of the nearby three-story building. Kiyoko obediently picked up the backpack and followed.

Time:?

Cold. So cold. And her mind hurt. Amber had a really awful headache. Maybe she was over the worst of it. She had a dreamlike memory of something even worse, much worse in fact, really gruesome. She couldn’t breathe! That was it! She had been trapped in a small dark place and couldn’t breathe. The air had gotten so stale ... It was hard to remember.

The touch of a hand brought her out of her drowsiness. It was warm at least, pushing in against her bare tummy, squeezing her at first and then a finger pushed in and began exploring her navel, not so aggressively as to cause pain but none too gentle either. Another hand, this one warm too, latched onto her right butt cheek with another very firm grip. Amber could feel the thumb of the grip nestling into the crack in her ass, the fingertip pressing against her anus. As the hand beneath her pumped her stomach again, Amber realized she must be naked. She was also lying prone on an extremely hard surface, hard and cold.

And her arms, her legs, her neck, her whole body felt so incredibly stiff. Major muscles groups were beyond protesting. They were numb from fatigue. No, not just fatigue Amber decided. They were numb from constraint. Amber was hog tied, lying face down and hog tied. There was some sort of spreader bar keeping her knees very far apart, and her legs were folded back and tied tightly to both her arms. It was complete and effective restraint. She might be able to jerk her torso a bit, but her four limbs felt welded to her body.

“Think, Amber!” she silently admonished herself. “Think and remember! Where am I? How did I get like this? Think!” Through the diminishing pain in her head, the memories started to return. After waving goodbye to Kiyoko and Whitney at the eastern door, Amber made her way easily through the interior of the building, reaching the destination of the next exit location in about twenty minutes. As expected, the exterior door in the new lobby was locked. Also expected was the lack of anyone on the other side of the door, but Amber pretended to fret a while over the absence of her comrades.

Through her boot she noticed a painful pressure on her ankle. Looking down, she noticed a servo had silently snuck up on her and attached itself to her foot. The pressure continued to build and Amber realized it would soon break her ankle bone. Her eyes beginning to water from the pain, Amber took a step towards the interior lobby door and was rewarding by a brief partial release of the pressure. Then it started to build again.

Her training time was both brief and merciless. Continuous steps in the right direction would keep her ankle free of pain. Anything less and the punishment would be swift an brutal. At every junction, she quickly learned to probe with her free foot and the servo would inform her through ankle pressure which was the pain-free direction. Amber experimented only once, slightly slowing her gait and taking smaller steps. She cried out in agony before managing to regain her normal walking rhythm.

Amber had taken off her watch too when she stowed her Leophone into her backpack, so the passage of time was difficult to estimate, but she guessed it was about an hour after leaving the second lobby. She entered a new room and the servo forced her into a small airlock on the opposite wall. From her many discussions with Kiyoko in preparing for this mission, Amber recognized the setup as the entrance to a Section-0 executive area.

After the door behind her sealed, the servo released her ankle and the air vent in the floor began to whoosh with a very strong breeze. Within moments Amber felt the air in the chamber getting very stale. No particular odor, just staleness. In dismay she guessed she was breathing a very heavy concentration of CO2. Amber soon started suffering from the symptoms of CO2 poisoning, dizziness, nauseous, her skin becoming sweaty and she could feel her heart racing as it struggled and failed to cope with the elevated level of CO2 in her body. Gasping for air and suffering a splitting headache, Amber passed out.

And here she was now, some indefinite time later stripped naked and thinking she was tied up like a turkey and ready for the oven. She had no idea yet how deadly appropriate her analogy was.

“You’re awake,” said Ricardo in a flat voice. He was directly behind her on counter. His statement was not a question, but Amber decided to answer it anyway.

“Yes.” There was no need to say more. Amber tried to focus her wits, forcing herself to remain in character. How would Ricardo expect her to react? After all the days and weeks of thinking about scenarios, the moment of truth had arrived.

She couldn’t turn her head. Her hair had been pulled and tied very tightly behind her, pulling her neck up and having her stare at a stainless steel wall less than a meter from her nose. Her throat felt very exposed and vulnerable, and she could dimly see a blurred image of Ricardo in the steel wall. Ricardo stood up for a moment and repositioned himself before squatting down again. Amber saw the blurred image of a penis flopping between his legs. He was as naked as she was.

Glancing down, Amber realized she was lying on a stainless steel counter of some kind. No wonder her breasts and pelvis and thighs felt so cold. By tearing her scalp, she might succeed in taking one look behind her to where Ricardo was, but she discarded the idea, at least for now. The attempt would have an almost zero probability of success. Amber would bide her time.

“Such a pretty Amber,” said Ricardo absently as he stroked thighs with his hands. From the direction of his voice, Amber thought he must be sitting or squatting on the counter very close to her, in the triangle between her pubis and the spreader bar at her knees ... His fingers were everywhere, exploring her pubic fur, probing her thighs, hefting her butt cheeks, and then a brief fierce burst of pressure on her anus. Before she could react the pressure was gone. A moment later her vaginal lips were separated. The fingers continued their exploration, tracing the pink flesh of the inside of her labia.

“Is this your urethra slit?” he asked. Amber twitched at the rough contact of his fingernail probing her sensitive opening.

“Yep. That’s where I pee.” Her tone of voice told him they both knew this was a game.

Ricardo smiled. “Such a pretty Amber. You’re the only girl I know that would play with me like this.” Amber felt his finger enter her vagina slightly and then press down towards her urethra duct. An image formed in her mind of a finger searching for the pulse of a vein, only in this case the finger’s target was the duct from her bladder. “Now pee for me,” Ricardo commanded.

“Will I wet you?” Amber asked.

Ricardo cocked his head. “That’s not a question I was expecting. Just pee. I want to watch.”

Amber sighed and released her bladder. She could feel Ricardo’s two hands on her, on holding her labia open so that her vagina and urethra slit were on full display, and the other hand positioned so that a finger could feel her pee running through her urinary duct. Amber emptied her bladder knowing Ricardo’s eyes were riveted to the point where the urine was leaving her body. She tried to push out everything she had and near the end she felt the warm piss running past her knees on the counter. She guessed the counter must be slightly tilted. Somehow she found that thought frightening. What was this place?