AnnouncementTranstion infoAll foreign nguage segments of the chapter were transted using an online transtor, apologies for any inaccuracies.

  Content warningPlease read the content warning before proceeding.

  SpoilerMolestation, rape, graphic violence, misogyny

  [colpse] fifteen

  [5 august 2024]=-=[monday]=-=(1902)

  Morgan walks down the stairwell to the ground floor, holding an AK-47 in one hand, and a satellite phone in the other that she liberated from a dead Russian mercenary. She’s currently dialing a number on it.

  “Who is this?!” the voice on the other end asks. It’s Kelly.

  “It’s me. Do we have people on the ground?” Morgan asks as she rounds a corner and puts a bullet between the eyes of a mercenary.

  “Morgan, you’re okay?” Kelly asks, surprised.

  “Almost wasn’t. Levin was pnning to lobotomize me today.” She rounds another corner and empties the clip into the dick of one of the mercenaries who was trying to sneak up on her. “I hope your people are close.”

  “I had to buy locals,” Kelly says. “They’re an hour out.”

  “Damn it,” Morgan says. “Okay. It’s just me against about sixty or so mercs, and God knows how many more are on the way. No pressure or anything. Listen. There’s not just one other girl to rescue here. There are five boys, all in various states of physical and mental transformation. I’m going to get them all out.”

  “It’ll be harder to smuggle six of you into Finnd, but we’ll see what we can manage,” Kelly says. “You’re still looking at a couple of days of nd travel, though.”

  “Where the hell am I?” Morgan asks as she fires again. She dumps the gun with the empty magazine and picks another one up off of one of the bodies.

  “You’re about 50km out of Izhevsk, Russia,” Kelly says. “That’s where your GPS went out. I’m assuming you broke the tracker?”

  “Yeah,” Morgan says as she finds the basement. “I need to focus here. Tell the others I’m alright. I don’t intend to die here.”

  “Remember the most important part of the mission,” Kelly says.

  “Trust me, Levin is leaving here in a fucking bag,” Morgan says.

  “No. Keep yourself safe. Everything else is secondary to that, even killing Levin. You’re coming back to us. You are too important,” Kelly says.

  “I will. I’m hanging up.” Morgan turns off the phone and goes into the basement. If the above ground is set up like an old church, then the basement must have been a sanitarium in its past life. There are multiple cells lining a slender hallway. She hears whimpering from one and immediately makes a beeline to it. As she unlocks the door, she is assaulted by the stench of human waste. What she finds inside is a naked girl – downstairs and all – who looks like what that one pop star who is dating the football pyer would look like if she were a teenager.

  “Please don’t hurt me!” the girl cries as she sees that Morgan is armed to the teeth.

  “I won’t. I’m here to rescue you,” Morgan says. “What’s your name?”

  “Garrett,” the girl says. So, he’s one of the ones that’s been transformed closer to fully. Obviously, Jason hasn’t managed to make any mental changes to him yet. “You’re really here to free me?”

  “Yes. Come with me,” Morgan says. As she steps out of the cell with Garrett in tow, she sees a mercenary down the hall, and immediately fires.

  Garrett screams as Morgan fires the AK at the merc.

  “It’s okay. There are all kinds of bad guys around,” Morgan says. “I’m taking care of them. Please trust me, you’re safe with me.”

  “I do… I’m just traumatized, ma’am…” Garrett says.

  “Morgan,” she says. “Call me Morgan.” She turns to walk down the row of cells to try to find the other prisoner, and soon finds her about four doors down. This girl is obviously traumatized, nearly catatonic like Joy was when she first met her. She’s also been surgically transformed fully into a girl, in body. “Are you okay?”

  “She won’t talk to you,” Garrett says. “She was beaten every time she tried to speak, until she just quit doing it. She was beaten every time she tried to move on her own, until she quit doing it. Everyone calls her Barbie, because she’s pretty much like a doll now, but I don’t know what her name used to be…”

  “Jesus,” Morgan says. This complicates things. She looks at the catatonic girl. “Get the fuck up,” she says, as harshly as she can.

  The girl doesn’t respond.

  “Can you carry her?” Morgan asks Garrett.

  “Yeah…” Garrett says as he lifts the doll-like girl into a fireman’s carry. “She doesn’t really eat much…”

  “That’s fucking sad…” Morgan starts to say as she heads out into the hall, before hearing a scream from upstairs. “Shit… I’m going to guess that’s Cecelia… stay with me, we’re going to get her out of there…”

  Garrett nods as he follows Morgan out of the basement.

  As Morgan gets back to the ground floor, she looks to see if any mercenaries are coming – none are. But she hears something closer, a girl protesting in French. “Amélie…” she says. This is followed by a man arguing in Russian. Then the girl screams.

  Cecelia can wait for a few minutes; Amélie is closer. Morgan makes a beeline to the kitchen.

  One of the mercenaries doesn’t seem to realize Morgan is loose and armed, and he is instead busy molesting Amélie. He’s groping her genitals underneath the tiny skirt. “S'il vous p?t, monsieur, arrêtez!” she shouts. Please, sir, stop!

  Morgan has heard enough. She sneaks up behind the mercenary, hits him in the side of the head with the butt of her AK, then before he can figure out what happened, she puts a round between the man’s eyes. She then looks at Amélie. “Il ne te fera plus de mal.” Roughly, ‘he won’t hurt you anymore.’ She’s getting a lot of mileage out of that high school French css that she barely paid attention in a decade ago… and a real Francophone would probably be offended at how amateur her usage of it is.

  “Merci! Merci beaucoup!” Amélie says through tears as she runs over and hugs Morgan. “Il alit…” He was going to…

  Morgan shushes Amélie gently. “Viens avec moi. Tu seras en sécurité.” Come with me. You’ll be safe.

  Amélie nods. “Oui! Merci, madame!” she shouts.

  Morgan signals for Amélie to fall in with Garrett, and the girl complies. “All that’s left is Cecelia.” She looks to Garrett and Amélie. “Amélie, porte fille pour que Garrett puisse m'aider à me battre.” Carry (her) so (he) can help me fight.

  Amélie nods. “Oui, madame.” She looks to Garrett, holding her arms out.

  “Garrett, hand her to Amélie, she’s going to carry her,” Morgan says.

  Garrett nods and hands the doll-like girl over to Amélie, who puts her over her shoulder. “Why’d you do…”

  Morgan interrupts him by handing him the dead mercenary’s machine gun. “Two people fighting are better than one. I don’t think Amélie can fight.”

  Garrett looks petrified. “...I don’t like these…”

  “Look, I can’t do this myself,” Morgan says. “My help is at least 45 minutes out. I’ve killed only sixteen mercenaries. God only knows how many are left. We still have to rescue Cecelia and Evan and take care of the man behind all of your misery. Please. Look past your discomfort and help me. Help us. Help yourself.”

  “S'il vous p?t, soyez courageux,” Amélie implores. Please, be brave.

  “Fine,” Garrett says. “But can I get some clothes soon?”

  “Evan’s in his room. He has clothes. I just hope you can stomach traditional-style dresses,” Morgan says as she hears Cecelia scream and sob loudly.

  “...I can stand it. Let’s get the bastard,” Garrett says.

  The four go down a vish hallway and find a locked door, and the sobbing is on the other side of it.

  It’s biometrically locked. “Fuck…” Morgan growls.

  Inside, Jason is in the middle of raping Cecelia. She’s sobbing uncontrolbly at this point.

  “There’s got to be a way in…” Morgan says as she looks over the door. It looks like wood, but it feels like metal. There are no visible hinges on this side.

  Curiously, however, there is a doorknob. Is it just there for show? She presses the gun against where the door’s striker should meet the frame, then she fires.

  The door opens.

  The door opens!

  Morgan kicks the door wide open as Jason is still inside the naked Cecelia, who… could very well pass for Evan’s twin. “You sick fuck…”

  “You! How dare you interrupt this holy act!” Jason yells. “Guards!”

  “I’ve already taken care of any of them that could hear you,” Morgan says as she straps the machine gun to her back and pulls out the combat knife. “These boys are going to be free, and you’re going straight to Hell.”

  Jason reaches for the control for the shock choker, then realizes too te that she’s not wearing it, before he withdraws from Cecelia’s entrance. “No… how…”

  “I got wise to your game,” Morgan says. “The rest of you, watch the door. You don’t want to see what I’m about to do…”

  Jason pulls a small pistol from a nearby desk drawer before firing at Morgan, striking her in the hand holding the bde, her right hand.

  Morgan winces as she drops the bde.

  “Morgan?!” Garrett calls out, looking back at the two adversaries.

  “Watch. The. Door,” Morgan says, gritting her teeth as she picks up the knife with her left hand and swipes at Jason’s gun hand. She manages to make him release his grip on the gun. “I’m not right-handed, you sanctimonious hypocrite!” she growls as she sshes low.

  Jason screams like a small child and falls to his knees, as a pool of blood starts to pour from his crotch.

  Morgan hurt him in the worst possible way without killing him immediately; she cut off his dick. “How does it feel? You’ve lost everything that mattered to you. Your child has renounced everything connecting aer to you. I’m taking away your sves, and I just took your manhood.”

  Cecelia looks on in shock at the scene unfolding before her eyes. “You… you stopped him…” she says through sobs.

  Morgan leans in and holds the combat knife to Jason’s throat as he whimpers in pain. “Your money can’t save you, and neither can your God.”

  As Jason is about to say something, to speak some defiant final statement, Morgan sshes his throat.

  “I didn’t say you were allowed st words, Daddy,” Morgan spits as Jason desperately gasps for air, gurgling as he chokes on his own blood.

  Jason looks up in disbelief at Morgan as the life starts to fade from his eyes.

  Before he dies, however, Morgan adds insult to injury as she stabs him in the heart, just to be sure. “Huh. I didn’t think you had one,” she says as she stands up. Her dress is soaked in blood. “Don’t look,” she says to Garrett and Amélie as she walks over to help Cecelia. “You’re free.”

  Cecelia is in such shock that she completely ignores the fact that Morgan is covered in Jason’s blood and hugs her. “Thank you… thank you…” she says softly.

  “My people are about twenty minutes out by now,” Morgan says. “Let’s go to Evan’s room and get him – and yes, Garrett, I haven’t forgotten about getting you some clothes. The same goes for you, Cecelia.”

  “I hate that name,” she says. “He didn’t just alter me and rape me over and over, he tried to convert me…”

  “Well, what do you want to be called?” Morgan asks.

  “My name was Bke. I see no reason to change it,” she says. “Bke can be a girl’s name.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s get you some clothes, Bke…” Morgan says as she leads the group out of the room. “...And get away from that.”

  They manage to get back upstairs, with Morgan and Garrett only having to shoot one mercenary apiece along the way. Morgan seems to take the killing in an eerie stride. Killing is unnaturally easy for her, the others silently surmise. Garrett nearly shuts down and drops the gun as he ends the life of the mercenary he shot. Their numbers are thinning as they’re starting to be assaulted from outside by the group Kelly bought the services of.

  It’s a firefight and bloodbath outside, and Jason’s mercenaries are losing badly. They would have been horribly outnumbered even before Morgan singlehandedly took out a third of their numbers.

  They eventually reach Evan’s room and are let inside. “Oh my God!” Evan says, almost screaming. “What happened?” He’s freaking out over Morgan being covered in blood, and her right hand being injured from the gunshot.

  “...You’re free. He can’t hurt any of you ever again,” Morgan says. She looks to Garrett, Bke, and the catatonic girl on Amélie’s shoulder. “We’re going to need clothing. I hope you have a few dresses to spare.”

  “Just promise that when your people rescue us and we get to your pce that I never have to wear a dress again as long as I live,” Evan says.

  “Bet,” Morgan says, smiling.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [9 august 2024]=-=[friday]=-=(0218)

  The private pne nds without incident. Kelly is waiting at the airfield for it to stop and for the passengers aboard to get off. She has Danni and Zell with her to help out.

  It took three days of nd travel to smuggle Morgan and the others out of Russia. During that time, plus the time in the air, what had happened to each of them really started to set in for them.

  Garrett had killed for the first time, and he was uncomfortable with the thought of it. Morgan reassured him that he would never have to do it again in the future, but then again, wouldn’t a born killer say that to try to assuage his guilt? He also had the pressing problem of being completely outwardly female, and he hadn’t decided yet whether he would transition to a feminine identity or try to recim his masculinity – though he was leaning toward the former.

  Bke was trying to come to grips with being a girl physically now. She had never really thought about gender before, until it was changed on her and used as a vector to viote her. Still, she was in no hurry to try to change back. She was a woman now, and she’d simply adjust accordingly. That was how she wanted to approach it, anyway...

  The nameless catatonic girl hadn’t moved a muscle on her own or spoken a single word since being rescued. She was going to take a lot of work to repair. The others chose a less demeaning name to refer to her as, until such a time that she could come back to herself and could choose her own. For now, she was Bire.

  Amélie actually spoke a few words of English on the pne, which was a major accomplishment.

  Evan had discarded the dresses he wore as the fake “Tiffany” at the first opportunity. The problem now was that he looked like a girl desperately trying to look like a man. And reversing what was done to him would be traumatizing in itself. A double mastectomy would help restore his chest, but there was no undoing the facial, voice, and genital reconstruction surgeries. His facial and body hair would never return, even if he took testosterone injections. He also had the burden of the memory of Jason’s constant rapes.

  Each was facing a long road ahead to try to return to something resembling normal lives, some longer than others.

  And Morgan would be with them to help each of them find their way. As the pne stops, Morgan and Garrett carry Bire on their shoulders to help get her out of it and over to the stretch Hummer Kelly had her driver use for the trip to the airport.

  Amélie follows the three down the steps. “Où sommes-nous?” she asks. Where are we?

  “Colorado,” Morgan says, not missing a beat. “Mon patron est venu nous chercher.” My boss came to pick us up.

  Kelly runs over to Morgan as she approaches the stretch Hummer. “What happened to your hand?” she asks, worried, just like a mom.

  “Levin shot me. I sliced him up,” Morgan says. “He won’t hurt anyone else in the future. These five are going to need a lot of help, though. She points at Garrett, who helps load Bire into the vehicle. “This is Garrett. Despite his appearance, he’s still a guy. We don’t know the name of the girl he just loaded into the car, so we’ve just been calling her Bire for now.”

  “You’ll have to give me details ter,” Danni says with a smirk.

  As Evan and Bke step out of the pne st, Zell looks like ae’s seen a ghost. They look like twins of aer old self! “Who are they?” ae asks.

  “The one in the dress is Bke. The other one is Evan. Jason was trying to turn them both into duplicates of your former self for his own gratification,” Morgan says.

  “And the maid?” Danni asks.

  “Amélie,” she replies as she walks up and curtsies.

  “You understand English?” Danni asks, confused.

  “Oui,” Amélie says. “I… wasn’t allowed to speak it…” she adds, at the volume of a whisper. “Je comprends le fran?ais et l'angis.”

  “She understands and can speak both nguages,” Morgan says, “but she was punished if she tried to speak English. She eventually stopped doing it.”

  Danni looks at Morgan with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t know you spoke French.”

  “You never asked, Mistress,” Morgan says.

  “...Mistress?” Bke asks.

  “That’s a story for another day, I think,” Danni says. “Let’s get in the car. We’ll try to get you in touch with your families if we can.”

  “Non,” Amélie says, firmly, as she shakes her head. “Mon père m'a vendu.” My father sold me.

  Morgan looks to Danni. “That wouldn’t be a good idea in Amélie’s case,” she says. “But it’s on offer if you want it,” she says to the others.

  “I think I’d like that… but not yet,” Evan says. “I can’t face them as… as this.”

  “No rush,” Kelly says. “Right now, the most important thing is that all of you get a chance to heal from everything he did to you.”

  “Je ne peux pas te rendre ta gentillesse,” Amélie says.

  “She says she can’t repay your kindness, Miss Kelly,” Morgan says, transting.

  “Hon, none of you will ever have to worry about paying for anything as long as I’m helping you,” Kelly says. “The only repayment I want is for you to heal.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1003)

  The transformed boys are sleeping in guest rooms in the sub-basement at Kelly’s compound, except for Bire, who is being monitored by doctors in the infirmary, and Amélie, who insisted on cleaning the mess after breakfast for the contractors.

  Meanwhile, Morgan is having her hand looked at by the doctors.

  “Through and through,” the doctor says. “I’ll stitch it back together and bandage it. I’d suggest you not use it for a couple of weeks, though.”

  “...But that’s my masturbating hand!” Morgan mockingly protests. “How am I supposed to jill off?”

  Danni, standing nearby, reaches over and sps Morgan in the back of the head. “Little girl,” she says.

  “Oh, come on, Mistress, I can’t have a little fun here?” Morgan says, pouting. “I just went through hell and got threatened with having part of my brain scooped out. I’m allowed to have a little fun!”

  “Nope. No fun allowed,” Danni says, being a hardass buzzkill.

  Morgan sighs and jumps out of the bed. “I’ll be gd to be out of this dress and back in my cargos,” she says.

  “I don’t know,” Danni says as the two start to walk. “I think I might have your entire wardrobe swapped out for dresses like that. That one really ftters your body.”

  “...Please be joking,” Morgan says, crestfallen.

  “I’ll never tell,” Danni says as the two get over to where Bire is. “Any luck with her?”

  “Nothing so far,” the doctor says. “She hasn’t even moved. We have her on an IV drip, but if she doesn’t start moving on her own soon, we may have to consider a feeding tube. This is frustrating,” he says, before cursing in Ukranian.

  That sparks something in the girl. What if she just couldn’t understand what Morgan and the others were trying to tell her about being safe because of a nguage barrier? “Doc, what nguage was that?” Morgan asks.

  “Ukrainian, why?” he replies, and Bire’s head tilts ever so slightly.

  “Tell her she’s safe. I have a hunch,” Morgan says.

  “Ви тут у безпец?,” the doctor says to her. You are safe here.

  “...Де я?” she replies, softly. Where am I?

  “Ви серед друз?в,” the doctor replies. You are among friends. “Як тебе звати?” What’s your name?

  “Олег,” she replies. Oleg.

  “Ask her what happened,” Morgan says.

  “Him,” the doctor replies. “His name is Oleg.”

  “My apologies,” Morgan says. “Ask him what happened.”

  “Як ти там опинився?” the doctor asks. How did you end up there?

  “Мене вкрали п?сля початку в?йни. Солдат в?ддав мене американцев?. В?н перетворив мене на... це,” Oleg says, before starting to cry.

  “‘I was stolen after the war started. A soldier gave me to the American. He made me into... this,’ he said,” the doctor transtes.

  “Я не можу повернутися додому таким…” Oleg continues.

  “I can’t go home like this,” the doctor reys.

  “We will help you,” Danni says.

  The doctor transtes.

  “Ти можеш знову зробити мене хлопчиком?” Oleg asks.

  “...Can you make me a boy again?” the doctor reys again.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll try,” Morgan says. “Ask him how old he was when he was taken.”

  The doctor nods and turns back to Oleg. “Ми спробу?мо. Ск?льки тоб? було рок?в, коли тебе вкрав солдат?” We’ll try. How old were you when the soldier stole you?

  “П'ятнадцять,” Oleg replies.

  “Fifteen,” the doctor transtes. “Assuming he was taken right at the start of the war, he can’t be more than seventeen.”

  “We need to teach him some English so we can communicate with him, or find a dedicated transtor,” Morgan says.

  “I’ll tell Miss Kelly,” Danni says. “Still… God damn. I can’t believe Levin did this shit to a literal child.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s paying for it now,” Morgan says softly. “Thank you, doctor.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1546)

  Evan wakes up in one of the guest rooms. He’s sharing one with Bke, who he sees through bleary eyes, and he is almost startled, thinking he’s seeing himself in the mirror, wearing a nightgown. He does shriek slightly, though.

  “Huh?” Bke asks. “What’s wrong, Ev?”

  “I thought someone put me into a nightgown in my sleep,” he says. He’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts; about the most masculine thing he can find around here. It’s actually one of Joy’s old outfits from when she was still a boy. The shorts barely fit over his ass, and the shirt is stretched over his breasts.

  “Nope,” Bke says. “You’re dressed like a boring boy with C cups.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Evan says. “You have C cups too; you have nothing to rib on me about.”

  “Ah, yes, but I’m a girl, and I’m supposed to have these,” she says.

  “Don’t remind me,” Evan says. “I’m sorry, but… how? How can you be okay with what’s happened to you? He stole your manhood.”

  “Okay, and?” Bke says. “It’s just a body part, and it’s not like I have nothing down there. I’ll adapt. Why can’t you?”

  “It…” Evan starts to become flustered. “It’s the principle of the thing! We were all born boys, and we’ve all been turned into some fvor of girl, and you’re not pissed off?”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” Bke asks. “You heard them. We’re never going to be able to get our dicks back, not without a lot of hardship and surgery. If we try to get changed back, we’ll basically be freaks since we’ll never be able to grow things like beards and body hair. At least as a girl, I’ll be somewhat normal, and that’s honestly all I want. I honestly wasn’t attached to the whole masculinity thing anyway. Too demanding. Too many expectations.”

  Evan looks as though his brain is about to explode.

  “Seriously. Amélie’s fine with staying a girl, and she still has her dick,” Bke says. “Even Garrett’s considering staying a girl, even if it means getting mistaken for a younger Taylor Swift.”

  “How can you…?” Evan starts to say, before his train of thought derails. Why is he so dead set on returning to being a man?

  “Look,” Bke says. “We’ve got all the time in the world to figure this out. If you want to think of this as damage, well, the damage is done already and it’s not getting worse now. There’s no need to rush to fix it, especially if it turns out nothing’s actually broken – or if the damage turned out to be repairs.”

  “Repairs? Repairs?!” Evan screams. “You call this gash between my legs a fucking repair?!”

  “What’s with all the misogyny, Evan?” Bke asks, trying to defuse the situation. “I have the same thing between my legs that you do and its not pissing me off so much, but you… you’re going full manosphere over this.”

  “I am not!!!” Evan shouts.

  “You’re acting like being a woman is the end of the world, Ev,” Bke says with a sigh.

  “I’m not a woman!!!” Evan protests. “I… I’m not a woman, but that didn’t stop him from…”

  “From using you like one…” Bke says, softly. “He did the same thing to me. He was in the process of doing it when Morgan killed him…”

  “...I wanted it to stop so bad; I just gave up…” Evan says as he brings his knees up to his chest. “I gave up and became her, and yet you’re just choosing to be her…”

  “Ev, no,” Bke says. “I’m choosing to be me. It just so happens that that’s a girl now.”

  Evan shakes his head and starts crying. “I can’t… I can’t be a…”

  Bke walks over and hugs her effective twin. “You don’t have to be. But you don’t have to cling to being a man anymore either. Being a man wouldn’t have stopped him anyway. It’s not your fault. What you need to do is figure out who you are now – boy, girl, or otherwise.”

  Evan cries more. “I don’t want to…”

  Bke hugs Evan tighter. “Shh, sib. You need the cry more than the mentations. Let it all out.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [10 august 2024]=-=[saturday]=-=(0628)

  Amélie smiles and hums a song as she cooks. Despite being offered a change of clothing, she is quite content to be dressed as one of the maids. At the least, the skirt is a lot longer with this uniform, and none of the military contractors here are trying to molest her.

  “Amélie, what are you doing?” Kelly asks as she walks in to get her morning coffee.

  “Cooking for the boys, Madame,” Amélie says, smiling. She seems to be more comfortable speaking some English now.

  “I have people for that, honey,” Kelly says. “You’re supposed to be focused on recovering. You’ve been through hell.”

  “But I don’t need to recover,” Amélie says. “I need to do this, madame. I need to do this…”

  “Amélie… were you like this before you were sold to Levin?” Kelly asks, sitting down, motioning for her to come over. She’s in mom mode again.

  Amélie stops for a moment as if she’s trying to process things. “Non, Madame,” she says, softly. “It… it hurts to try to remember.”

  She’s been brainwashed bad, Kelly thinks. “Hon… it’s okay, you don’t have to try to remember right now. Come here, please.”

  Amélie sits down and looks at Kelly.

  “I won’t stop you from doing some housework here if you really want to,” Kelly says. “But you need to spend some time on you as well. If I need to make it an order to get you to listen, I will.”

  “Oui, Madame,” Amélie says. Kelly’s gambit has paid off. She’s very submissive and obedient and she can’t refuse an order, just like a good maid.

  “Call me Miss Kelly,” she says.

  “Oui, Miss Kelly,” Amélie says, almost automatically.

  “Now, finish what you were doing, and go feed the boys. Then you are to spend some time on yourself. Reflect on things, watch some TV, read a book, I don’t care. I leave that choice to you,” Kelly says. “But no housework, no undry, no cooking, no maid things for... let’s say two hours. Are we understood, honey?”

  Amélie nods, smiling. “Oui, Miss Kelly, I will try.”

  “And don’t worry. Morgan told me what that mercenary was doing at Levin’s pce. The soldiers here already know you are off limits to them. It won’t happen here.”

  Amélie nods and cries a little bit. “Merci, Miss Kelly. Merci beaucoup!” She reaches over and hugs Kelly.

  Her family sold her… such a sweet girl, it feels wrong that she’s the product of… of the same brainwashing I’ve used on Morgan and Delih, Kelly thinks as she hugs the girl back. She has nowhere to go back to. Well, she has a home here if she wants it. She has a life here if she wants it.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1339)

  As Morgan unloads her pistol into a target sheet with the headshot of Joshua Callis taped to it, Garrett walks in. He’s wearing one of Zell’s old outfits from after ae got away from aer parents, but before ae transitioned. It just fits better right now than men’s clothing would.

  Morgan reels the target back. All bullseyes.

  “Holy shit,” Garrett says. “I didn’t realize you were a trained killer…” he says softly.

  “Yeah… they teach you a lot of things in the Army,” Morgan says as she pops out the magazine and flicks the safety on.

  “No wonder the mercenaries didn’t stand a chance against you,” Garrett says, in awe, but also scared that someone so ruthless can be so… pleasant to be around. “I couldn’t have ever seen myself in the military, even before I was transformed…”

  “You didn’t find your way down here just to watch me shoot,” Morgan says. “What’s on your mind, Garrett?”

  “I… what was it like to kill for the first time?” Garrett asks.

  “I…” Morgan’s mind goes back to her first kill, one of the rival military contractors that Kelly’s people had kidnapped. At the time, she was heavily brainwashed and drugged. “I didn’t feel anything from it, but my head was pretty fucked up at the time.”

  “I feel… I feel guilty over it, even though it was him or us…” Garrett says softly.

  “Good,” Morgan says as she puts the pistol in the locker. “Good! You should feel something like that after your first kill. It means you’re less likely to ever do it again unless you really have to.”

  “So… I’m not going to devolve into a serial killer or some shit like that?” Garrett asks.

  “If you’re asking yourself that question and you’re worrying the answer could be yes, especially with all the shit you’ve gone through, the answer is most likely ‘no,’” Morgan says. “Honestly, I think you’ll be okay.”

  “That… that’s a relief,” Garrett says. “I… I have another question.”

  “Go ahead,” Morgan says as she starts walking out of the room and toward the elevator, signaling for Garrett to follow.

  “Would I be wrong if… if I decided to stay like this? A… a girl, I mean,” Garrett says.

  “Do you want to?” Morgan asks. “Look ahead in your life. Could you see yourself being the girl and not the guy? Could you see yourself as a girl if you ever chose to get with a girl?”

  “I… er…” Garrett says, crossing his arms nervously. “...I was never attracted to girls, even before I was changed.”

  “Okay, could you see yourself as a girl if you ever got with a guy?” Morgan asks.

  “It feels like a more natural fit…” Garrett says, still nervous.

  “Not what I asked. Forget about the fact that you have a hole that a cock is more suited to go into now,” Morgan says, being pretty candid. “Could you see yourself as a girl when you’re cuddled against him at night? When you’re out and about with friends? In how you interact with people? All that shit is different for girls and guys.”

  “I… I honestly… I think I could,” Garrett says. “This doesn’t mean I have to go all high femme and shit, though, do I?”

  “Nah. Some guys like that, but ultimately, it’s about doing what makes you comfortable. If he gets off on it, that’s called a ‘bonus,’” Morgan says. “I will say, though, makeup and dressing nice can be fun sometimes. And that’s coming from a girl whose preferred outfit is a sports bra and a pair of military-style cargo pants. But those are things you could do as a guy, too. Gender can be as restricting or as liberating as you allow it to be.”

  “I think… I think I want to be a girl, then,” Garrett says. “It just feels like it fits better.”

  “It may have all along,” Morgan says. “I mean, hell, it seems like you might have gone in this direction on your own one day.”

  “Maybe… I just wish I didn’t look like a pop star,” Garrett says, ughing nervously. “I can’t carry a tune to save my life, even with the voice surgery.”

  Morgan just shrugs. “So… got a name in mind?”

  “I like who I am, so… I’m only going to change my name a little. How does Jeri sound?” she asks.

  “I think it fits,” Morgan says. “How does it feel on you, Jeri?”

  “It feels nice,” Jeri says, smiling.