Riley came to, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. Fighting the urge to silly giggle, she moved her head. No pain or nausea, so she probably wasn’t hit in the head. She looked down and saw that her arms and legs were tied to the armrests and legs of a heavy, mounted chair in the middle of a dimly lit, windowless room. Oh, so she had been caught. She looked at herself. She was still wearing her neutral-looking civilian clothes, but her hidden underarm holster was gone. Welp, so they’ve searched her.

Her playful dizziness intensified. Riley smirked. Sensyl, no doubt. She had tried that drug at some of the sex parties she had attended. It’s the best thing to completely drop your restraints and release your inner sex beast. It was also the drug of choice for rapists because the drugged girls participated willingly and then lost their memories of the details, remembering only the wonderful sex they had. Riley chuckled. Will they rape her? She moved her eyebrows. Her recorder, disguised as a piercing ring, was still in place. Hopefully, they won’t figure it out and remove it. She’ll bring the evidence — if she makes it through.

The door in front of her opened, and three men entered. Two were featureless thugs, who stayed by the door, and the third was a small, nerdy-looking man who was clearly the boss.

Riley laughed and nodded.

“Hello!”

She knew him—not personally, but from the infodumps: Jack Shadow—most likely an alias—a mad scientist and a criminal mastermind. They did not know, however, that he was tied into this Changed Girls case. Nice. Even if this piece of information is the only one she brings out, her mission is already a success.

Jack smiled back dryly.

“Welcome, Detective Riley Morgan.” Oh, so their intelligence is equally good. She was not carrying her ID with her, of course. “My congratulations. You are the first agent who got that close to our depot ... to one of our many, many depots.” He slowly walked around her chair. “So, I suppose, you’ve came to get some answers to some pesky questions? About the Changed Girls, I guess? About your precious daughter, perhaps?”

Riley grinned at the mention of Changed Girls and smiled even more at the mention of Lila, still feeling the pleasant buzz from Sensyl. The mention of her daughter usually caused a pang of guilt and fear to pierce through her professional demeanor. But the drug had smoothed the edges of that pain, replacing it with a strange, pleasant warmth. She wondered if this was how Lila felt all the time now. Happy and free and ... warm. A small smile touched Riley’s lips before she could stop it.

“I’m here for answers, yes. And to stop this ... enterprise.” Her words came out more relaxed than she intended. Sensyl was doing its job well.

Jack laughed with a dry, rustling sound. “Stop this? My dear detective, we’re not criminals. We’re facilitators. We’re liberators.”

Oh, The Villain Speech! Good. Let him speak.

The word hung in the air: Liberators. Riley wanted to scoff, but Sensyl held her gently in its grip.

“Liberators?” She lifted her gaze.

“Of course! We return the purpose that women have lost in our crazy world. We remind them that they are sexual beings whose primary need is to have sex with any man around them. Just like in the happy, prehistoric, tribal times. Isn’t that nice?” Jack’s voice was smooth, almost hypnotic. Sensyl made it sound reasonable. Almost. Riley’s police training fought against the honeyed words, but her nipples tightened, and she felt the familiar warmth in her lower abdomen, the anticipation or a side effect of the drug, she couldn’t tell.

Riley’s professional veneer was cracking under the influence of Sensyl. Her usual steel-clad composure felt like a distant memory. This was dangerous ground. She knew what was happening to her body, her mind. She was a trained officer, experienced in interrogation, in resisting. But this was different. He wasn’t interrogating her; he was— persuading?

“So why the secrecy, Jack? If you’re all about liberation?” Her words dripped with a sarcasm that felt more playful than hostile. “Why kidnap unsuspecting girls and women, and return them a day later, brainwashed into sex addicts?”

Jack just smiled, a gesture that didn’t reach his eyes. “Society isn’t ready for our brand of liberation yet, detective. They still cling to old notions of shame and guilt. We have to prepare the ground, introducing a handful of women at a time, until the change takes hold from the bottom up, and this stupid society crumble.”

He moved closer and ran his fingers along her cheek. Unable to resist, Riley closed her eyes and pressed her cheek back against them. She almost moaned from the pleasure and arousal building up inside her.

Jack chuckled. “Sensyl. You can always count on it. Our first attempt. We thought we could alter the behavior chemically—and partially succeeded—but we didn’t manage to achieve a permanent effect. So, we had to look for another solution.”

She opened her eyes. “Permanent? So, your mission is to turn women—even teenagers!—into sex addicts permanently? Without asking if they want to be changed? You monster!”

He smiled. “I give them the life of purpose and endless pleasure. What did your bosses give you? The order to infiltrate enemy territory, where you could be maimed or killed? Who are the real monsters, huh, Riley?”

Oh, the classical rhetorical trick. But under Sensyl’s influence, it worked. Her mind began to justify that, indeed, maybe it was not all that bad. At least this way Lila would always be happy, even if the path to that happiness twisted her into something else.

Her traitor body responded. A throb pulsed between her legs, deep and insistent. She shifted in her chair, feeling the friction of the fabric against her suddenly sensitive flesh. The room felt warmer, the air thicker. Each of Jack’s words echoed in her ears, not just a challenge to her authority, but an invitation to a world of sensation she could feel stirring to life within her. Her police training, her very identity as a detective, was being systematically dismantled by a chemical and philosophical attack she wasn’t prepared for.

“So...” she heard herself say, her own voice sounding distant. “This ‘other solution’ of yours...” She swallowed, her throat dry. The main question she was after. She was terrified to ask, but her detective training plus Sensyl-emboldened curiosity won out. “What is it?”

He straightened up, beaming at her like a teacher at a promising student.

“You’re going to see for yourself, you are! You came for answers, and you’ll get them all, firsthand. It’s a pity you won’t remember the details.”

He gestured to the two thugs behind him. “Untie her.”

They removed the ropes from her wrists and ankles and stepped back.

He looked at her. “Stand up and undress. Completely. Naked.” He smiled. “You may keep your jewelry on.”

This was it. The point of no return. She knew she should fight. Resist. But that will bring her to the same point, only beaten and forced to do it anyway, for sure. And— her body screamed at her to obey. Sensyl had transformed a direct order from her captor into the most appealing suggestion she’d ever heard. To shed her skin, her armor, the identity that confined her. The promise was liberation.

Her fingers, trembling slightly, went to the hem of her shirt. They fumbled with the button on her jeans, the simple act feeling impossibly intricate. She peeled away the layers of her life—the convenient sneakers, the practical cotton of her bra, the sensible panties. With each item that fell to the floor, she felt another brick of Detective Riley’s wall crumble. The cool air of the room kissed her skin, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with raw exposure.

She stood before them, naked save for the recorder ring in her eyebrow and Lila’s locket, the silver cold against her chest. A strange detached part of her mind cataloged the scene: Detective Morgan Riley, 30, SVU, stripped bare in a secret warehouse, about to undergo God-knows-what procedure at the hands of a madman. The professional observation was a flimsy shield against the rising excitement and arousal.

He admired her firm breasts and a nicely trimmed bush. “You have a great body, detective Riley. And a sexually experienced one, I can tell it.”

She would like to keep silent, but the drug pulled her tongue. “Because I am! I’m attending sex parties, you know. Even BDSM ones. I love to be used!” She giggled.

He was surprised. “A policewoman and a sub ... Who would have thought. A perfect candidate for our cause, one might say. You won’t be resisting ... you will be embracing.”

The final shreds of her defiance crumbled. Embracing. That word resonated deep inside her, a bell struck in a cavern. She had always yearned for a release this total. In her controlled forays into BDSM, she had always kept a piece of herself back, the part that was a mother, a cop, the responsible one. Now, Sensyl was holding that piece in trust for her, whispering that it was safe to let it go completely.

Jack stepped aside and bowed towards a door hidden in the wall, which opened silently.

“Please. After you.” His voice was smooth as velvet, a courtesy that was far more terrifying than a threat.

Riley took a step forward, her bare feet silent on the cold concrete floor. The two thugs fell into step behind her, a silent, menacing escort. The hall beyond was long and sterile, illuminated by dim, cold, clinical light panels in the ceiling. This wasn’t the lair of a simple pervert. It looked more like a high-tech research facility.

He opened another door. “Be my guest. The today’s batch of the women is almost complete, two more, and we will begin. It won’t be a long wait.”

Riley stepped in, and the door closed behind her. She looked around curiously.

A low-ceiling, windowless, dimly lit, cool room. She began to get accustomed to the theme. No furniture, just several thin, worn mattresses on the floor.

And nine more naked women and girls, from about her age down to— fourteen, maybe? All of them clearly filled with Sensyl, just like her, their bodies moving with a loose, sensuous grace Riley recognized from drugged-up orgies. A faint, sweet smell of sexy juices in the air. Her body responded instantly, her own arousal intensifying, dampness spreading between her thighs. This was not the detached observation of a detective. This was the response of a body ready to join.

Some of the women were lazily touching themselves. Others were cuddling and whispering to each other, their voices soft. One young woman, maybe twenty-five, was looking at the girl sitting next to her who Riley estimated was only fourteen. The younger was nervously hugging her knees to her chest.

The woman extended a hand. “Hey. What’s your name?”

The girl looked up, her eyes huge and dazed. “ ... Sophie.”

“I’m Maya. Are you scared?” The girl nodded. “Don’t be,” Maya said, her voice a soothing balm. “I’ve heard. I saw the Changed girls. They say, this is the best thing you can ever experience. Better than Syl.” She paused. “Much, much better.”

A different kind of fear, pure and cold, pierced through Riley’s Sensyl-induced haze. She’s going to become Changed soon. She’s going to lose herself, forever, to turn into the always sex-craving female, like Lila, always focused at her pleasure. This thought, even through her high, felt like a shard of ice in her blood. But the fear was distant, muffled, like a scream heard through thick walls. Her body didn’t care. Her body was warm and ready. Her locket, containing Lila’s innocent face, was a cold weight against her heated skin. What would her daughter want for her? To escape? Or to finally join her in this new, hedonistic existence?

Maya noticed Riley watching them and smiled, her gaze sweeping over Riley’s athletic frame. “You’re new, too.”

Riley blinked, finding her voice again. “I ... yeah. Just arrived. Aren’t you, too? Aren’t we all new here?” Her own words slurred slightly, lazy and soft. The urge to join them, to feel their skin against hers, was becoming overwhelming. This was more than just Sensyl. This was the room itself, the atmosphere of shared, impending surrender.