Slaves of Elysium (12 page)

But was it a punishment or unlikely reward? Jeni could smell Rebecca's pleasure as her glistening fluids coated the plunging, remorseless dildos. After her own earlier contribution the chamber seemed to reek with the scent of female arousal.

With a muffled shriek and a final contraction of her muscles so that the tendons on her neck stood out, Rebecca climaxed, seeming to make nonsense of all her earlier outraged protests with a display of unalloyed pleasure and total release. Then she sagged back in the chair, chest heaving and utterly spent.

Mykran smiled in satisfaction.

Limp and used, coated with sweat, Rebecca was dragged back to the wall and fastened beside Jeni once more. Feebly she turned her glazed eyes to her, as though asking for some explanation for what she'd just been through and her own startling response to it.

But what could Jeni say?

It had been their first taste of a forced sexual experience, but not, she was certain, their last. They had learned that their new masters could manipulate not just their bodies but also their most intimate emotions. But more shocking was that they had succumbed so easily to their base instincts.

It was the first step on the path to total subjugation.

 

 

 

Jeni and Rebecca were still recovering from Mykran's testing when a pair of guards entered the laboratory. They exchanged a few words with the scientist, and then came over to the restraining wall.

With practiced efficiency they slipped bridle-like assemblages of broad clear plastic straps over the girls' heads. The bands crossed over the crowns, the bridge of the nose and under the chin. The broadest strap went across the lips and had a ball attached to the inside, which was forced between their teeth. Their gaping mouths could clearly be seen through the transparent material.

As the straps were tightened about her head, Jeni shivered at the unaccustomed contact against her face and the unexpected response it generated within her. It was far more intimate than the cuffs and collar. She saw Rebecca's bridle being fitted and noted how it smoothed out her dismayed expression, leaving only her wide eyes to show her resentment.

Jeni felt herself being both contained and shaped by the bridle. The steady pressure of the straps against her skin restricted not only her speech but the range of expressions she could form. Even her freedom to display dissent was being restricted. That was true bondage.

She doubted the bridles' intended function was anything so subtle. Perhaps they were to stifle any protest they might make so they could be moved in decorous silence, or to stop them trying to bite their captors, or just to remind them that slaves only spoke when permitted. But the effect on Jeni was to make her feel more controlled, more of a slave, than anything that had yet been done to her.

Leashes were fastened to the fronts of their collars. They were released from the wall only to have their wrists secured behind their backs. Then they were led out of the door.

Rebecca hung her head as they were led along the bustling public corridor, her shame in her enforced nakedness clearly renewed by the many eyes that passed over her body. Jeni on the other hand felt a fluttering excitement at the passing attention she received. It occurred to her that she had never consciously attracted many admiring looks in the past, and certainly not while in Rebecca's far more glamorous company. Now they were equal, stripped of both clothes and status. Which of them made the more interesting slave?

They were led into an alcove opening off the main corridor, which proved to be a door-less lift platform. This carried them silently and swiftly down to a lower level of the great stepped pyramid. Led along another corridor they came to a series of heavy doors that slid open as they approached, and closed again at their heels. Beyond them was what was obviously a small prison block, with a ring of heavy doors opening off a central atrium. Jeni and Rebecca were checked in with a man seated behind a desk, who served the function of duty officer.

He entered their details on a handheld computer pad, and then from beneath his desk drew out a rectangular device the size of a paperback book with a handle on one side. He adjusted something on the device, moved towards Jeni, and as her guard stood behind her gripping her arms, the officer pressed the flat face of the device to her chest just below her collar.

She squeaked in alarm, but there was no pain, only a fleeting sensation of coldness. The officer pulled the device away from her skin, leaving her anxiously trying to squint down her front. A pattern of bold black marks had been stamped across her chest.

The officer adjusted the device then moved to Rebecca, whose eyes widened in alarm, and repeated the process. When he pulled the device away from Rebecca's chest Jeni saw that a triangular symbol followed by three squared-off shapes that might be numerals now stood out starkly on her golden skin.

They had been numbered like animals.

Formalities completed, they were taken along a corridor to their cell.

It was spartan but clean and more spacious than Jeni had expected, being about three metres by four and made of blocks of plain white stone. In a recess was the low pan of what appeared to be a squat toilet, and to one side an inset basin and water faucet. Two stone slabs cantilevered out from the wall formed simple beds, each covered with a sponge-like mattress. There were more of the sets of copper plates set about the walls, the slab beds and even the ceiling and floor, leaving no doubt that if required a prisoner could be totally restrained.

The guards left them bridled and cuffed, the door sliding shut with a solid click of latches. Jeni and Rebecca sat on the beds and tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. There was nothing else they could do. Jeni kept squinting down at the number on her chest and glancing sideways at Rebecca to see how she must look. Of course it made sense that they should carry identification numbers like all prisoners, and if they were to be kept naked then where better than their flesh. But it still took some getting used to.

After half-an-hour, just as Jeni was beginning to wonder how they were supposed to eat or drink restrained as they were, the door opened again to admit a guard and a man in a civilian tunic trimmed with a green sash, leading a naked girl on a leash. Though she was of the same physical type as the men, with reddish skin, dark hair and a strong nose, there was no doubt of her status. A green-tinted moulded plastic muzzle covered her nose and mouth, with two holes over her nostrils so she could breath. What might have been blinkers extended forward and back from her cheek straps. The style and colour of the muzzle matched her collar, chastity belt and sandals. Her wrists were cuffed in front of her while strapped to her back was a flattish black case.

The man glanced at Jeni and Rebecca with a brief look of mild interest rising above an air of routine activity. After exchanging a few words with the guard he pointed a controller that hung from his belt at his slave.

Immediately the blinkers folded over her eyes, while the rear-facing flaps closed round her ears, leaving her deaf, dumb and blind. Keeping her back straight she bent over from the hips, spreading her legs slightly and sliding her cuffed hands down between her shins until she grasped her ankle cuffs. There was a click as bracelets and cuffs locked together, bringing the case on her back level with the floor. She had become a living table. The man opened the case to reveal a neat array of plastic vials and glittering metal instruments.

Suddenly Jeni understood. The newcomer was the local equivalent of a doctor to give them a medical examination. And of course, a doctor would not carry is own medical bag if he had a slave to do it for him. She was masked and blindfolded for hygiene, and because of the sometimes personal and confidential nature of his work.

Meanwhile the guard had unhooked a controller from his belt. Motioning for Jeni and Rebecca to stand in the middle of the room over a set of copper plates he pointed the device at them and pressed a contact. They felt their wrist cuffs parting, only to have their arms jerked upward to the ceiling even as their legs were pulled wide and down.

And so they hung spread-eagled while the doctor examined them, running his odd devices over their taut bodies, occasionally prodding their flesh with probes and nodding over whatever they revealed to him. At one point he touched a metal disk with a small empty plastic tube projecting from it to their necks, and moments later removed it with the tube filled with blood. The tubes he then plugged into a socket in his case and appeared to read lines of data displayed on an inbuilt screen. Reaching some conclusion, the physician picked out a drug ampoule from his selection, loaded it into a larger tube-like device and pressed it to the upper curves of their left buttocks. Jeni felt a cold/warm sensation in her muscle, which slowly faded away. The man loaded a second ampoule, and this time pressed it to the inside of their forearms.

They had been injected with different doses of medication, one muscular and one intravenous. But what was their purpose?

The doctor closed his case and pointed the controller at his slave again, who had remained completely motionless throughout the examination. Now she straightened up and her blinkers and ear covers folded back. Catching up her leash, the doctor nodded to the guard and left the cell.

For a moment the guard contemplated Jeni and Rebecca, still suspended between floor and ceiling, with a knowing smile. Jeni heard Rebecca give a muffled whimper from behind her gag. He walked around them, running his hands over their taut bodies, feeling the smooth curves of their backs and the swell of their rumps, tweaking their nipples and running his fingers through their hair. Jeni felt her heart thudding. They were prisoners, slaves. He could do anything he liked with them...

He removed their bridles, and while they were still licking their stretched lips he cut the force that held them, so that they dropped to the floor. By the time they had picked themselves up the cell door was closed once again.

‘What did that... that doctor, inject us with?' Rebecca asked tremulously.

‘I don't know,' Jeni said simply. She was feeling tired, though that could have been simply fatigue catching up with her rather than the effects of any medication. After what she had been through during the last few hours it would not be surprising. Wearily she sat down on her bed.

‘It might be something horrible,' Rebecca persisted.

‘Why should they bother to do anything so stupid?' Jeni pointed out. ‘We're no good to them sick. And if they wanted to experiment on us we'd still be in that laboratory. No, I think it must have been inoculations of some sort. We might carry infections they don't have here, as well as the other way round. Anyway, there's nothing we can do about it. We might as well make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the meantime.'

Rebecca rubbed at the numbers stamped across her chest. The symbols remained bold and sharp. She went to the recessed basin and fumbled with the faucet until it flowed. Splashing water across her chest she rubbed harder, but without result. ‘It won't come off,' she wailed.

‘I shouldn't think it's meant to,' Jeni said, and Rebecca's shoulders sagged in defeat.

 

For an hour after they had been taken down, Rebecca sat on her bed with her back to the wall and head resting on her knees. Jeni watched her from her own bed in silence. She could think of nothing more to say at that moment, and was preoccupied with her own thoughts. Between pangs of concern about Bradley Ash, she tried to make sense of her deeper feelings.

Her contemplations were interrupted by Rebecca, who said in a voice of weary contempt, ‘I suppose you're loving all this. For a little masochist like you it must be heaven. You're going to be a slave. Isn't that what you've always wanted?'

‘I don't know,' Jeni replied honestly, ignoring Rebecca's demeaning undertone. ‘There are moments when I feel excited by the thought, but I'm scared as well. It's too big a step to say; great, I'm a slave at last, and give up on everything else. I don't know what being a slave in a slave-owning society is like. I never imagined I'd find such a place.'

‘How did you want to end up, then?' Rebecca asked. Jeni suspected she was only partly interested, driving the conversation along primarily to distract herself from her own fears.

‘Well, as somebody's secret slave, I suppose. If you'd been nicer I might have come out to you earlier.'

Rebecca stiffened. ‘How dare you...?' she began, then bit her lip. She was hardly in a position to take any action against Jeni now. They were employer and employee no longer. ‘Do you think I'd have kept you once I'd known what you were?' she said after a pause.

Jeni smiled mischievously. ‘You might. Think how you would have felt having something none of your friends had. I would have been quite an accessory. I think if I truly liked somebody I could give myself to them totally. If I was your willing slave, you could have done almost anything you liked with me. You got a taste of it on the beach. Don't pretend you didn't enjoy the feeling just a little.'

Rebecca said nothing.

‘But what I am doesn't stop me being a person as well,' Jeni continued. ‘There are other things that I wouldn't want to lose.'

‘Do you really think you'll have the choice?'