twenty-three

  [5 september 2024]=-=[wednesday]=-=(1522)

  “Is this connection secure?” The audio signal is not the greatest, but it is clean enough for both parties to understand one another.

  “Yes. I’m routed through a VPN, several proxies, and I’m on a clean burner device. They won’t notice anything.”

  “What is the status?”

  “Their asset is still alive. You had a security issue, though. Zane’s dead, and his toy stole his credentials to get into the group chat.”

  “I see. His death wasn’t reported. Give me a moment… there. His access is revoked. That’s one less potential vector to get in. What of his toy, then?”

  “It’s in our infirmary. The doctors are trying to figure out how to undo the surgical alterations he made to it.”

  “It’s a loose end. Who knows how long it’s been masquerading as him, learning our secrets?”

  “What should I do, then?”

  “Eliminate it.”

  “That could prove difficult. They know that someone else is leaking info about their operation. They don’t know its me, but it’s only a matter of time. That Swedish bitch is like an attack dog with cybersecurity, and it turns out Levin’s final maid project used to be a fairly accomplished cyber criminal.”

  “I don’t care what it takes, or what risk it poses to you. Eliminate it. Or would you rather see your wife and daughters turned into my mindless broodmares?”

  “...I understand, Big Dog.”

  “Good. As for the asset, I’m not concerned. We all know about him already. He can’t harm the cabal any further. Still, I imagine Jourgensen will try to deploy him again. We’ll be ready. By the time we’re done, he’ll be begging for death, but unable to express it.”

  “Right.”

  “Go on, now. You have a disobedient toy to break.”

  The call ends.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1632)

  Morgan is finally ready to be released from the infirmary. The infection has been purged from her body, and she’s in no more danger from that. She climbs out of the bed and walks over to see the woman who abducted her, tried to make everyone think she was dead, and was probably eventually going to kill her at some point.

  The woman is awake, and gres. “Come to gloat? To tell me to kill myself again?”

  “No,” Morgan says. “You knew everything about us. All I want to know is your name.”

  “It’s in Levin’s records, why not look there?” she asks, hatred in her voice.

  “I don’t mean that name. I mean the one you chose for yourself,” Morgan says.

  “I wasn’t allowed one,” she spits.

  Morgan just shakes her head and turns to leave as one of the contractors walks in. “I feel sorry for you.”

  “I think I’d rather you just kill me instead of trying to feel sorry for me,” the woman says, defiantly.

  “I wish things could have been different for you. I really do.” Morgan walks out of the infirmary and into the hallway. She heads to the armory. After everything she’s been through, she needs some time with her trusty 1911 replica.

  She reaches the armory and takes her gun out of the locker. Just holding it lifts a weight from her soul. She takes a deep breath, then exhales as she starts loading the magazine. She can’t help thinking about that woman, how angry she was. Not everyone is going to get a happy ending like the five captives that she rescued from Russia. Even if it’s possible to undo the damage to her body, there may be no fixing her mind.

  She sets up a target and sends it to the other end of the firing range, then takes another deep breath. She squares up and lifts the pistol.

  BLAM!

  She fires. She’s being extra deliberate with her shots. Normally she imagines Joshua Callis as her target, but today she’s seeing the so-called Master of the woman in the infirmary. Never mind that she doesn’t know his face, nor his name, or the fact that the man is already dead. She’s that infuriated at the man, who callously destroyed this person, having her reconfigured to where existence itself is torture.

  BLAM!

  Again, she fires. Again, it’s a bullseye. “You fucking rat bastard, I hope you’re enjoying Hell!”

  BLAM!

  “I wish you were alive, though, so I could cut off your dick and leave you in a permanent state of arousal!” she shouts as the door opens behind her.

  BLAM!

  There is a little shriek behind Morgan as she fires.

  She turns around, quickly flicking the safety in pce. “What the…” she asks as she looks and sees…

  “I am sorry, Madame, I just wanted to see that you were okay…” Amélie says, slightly frightened.

  “No, no, it’s okay. I’m fine,” Morgan says. She sets the pistol down. “I’m fine. I’m just angry. They say you can’t save everyone. I hate when it comes true. I just had to deal with someone that, but for want of a nail, you, or Tiffany, or any of the others could have ended up as if you weren’t saved in time.”

  Amélie nods slowly. “She was… bought?”

  “Yes,” Morgan says. “By a sadist fucker who had her nullified, but in a botched way.”

  “Mon dieu,” Amélie says softly. “Suddenly getting fondled daily by those brutes doesn’t seem so bad…”

  “No, it was bad too. It doesn’t matter what scale of bad,” Morgan says. “The people that do this… that steal you, that sell you, that change you into some twisted idea of a dream for them and a nightmare to you, the buyers… they’re all monsters.”

  “I…” Amélie begins. “I have been seeing the therapist and… I am trying to work through a lot. I do not know how much of me is actually me and how much of me was put there for their own gratification.”

  “Chère, it ultimately doesn’t matter in the end,” Morgan says. “We all change. None of us are the same person we were as children, as a decade ago, as even a year ago. It’s part of growing and evolving as a person. Now, would it be nice for you to recim some of your former self? Yes. But you can’t stress over it. You’re ultimately becoming a new you whether you retain pieces of the old or not.”

  “I am… remembering things about him. I cannot see ever being him again, but… he was smart and talented,” Amélie says. “I just exist for cleaning and sex.”

  “You have a lot more to offer the world than that, and I hope you see it soon,” Morgan says.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  [6 september 2024]=-=[thursday]=-=(0732)

  Bke and Tiffany exit a stretch Hummer at the private airfield on the other side of town. They’re both identically dressed in knee-length purple dresses, dragging suitcases behind them.

  “I can’t believe it’s finally time,” Bke says. “I’m going home. We’re going home, sis. We’re going home!” She leaps at Tiffany exuberantly.

  Tiffany catches her. “Yeah, I still can’t believe this is actually happening!”

  “Believe it,” Morgan says as she exits the Hummer. Kelly wanted to make sure this went off without a hitch, so Morgan is pying both driver and bodyguard today. She’s happy to do it… except for the fact that she has to wear a suit. It’s a suit with a skirt in what is most definitively a women’s style and fit, but still… it’s a suit. “Miss Kelly’s private jet will fly you two to Maine, and you’ll be able to start your new lives there. We’ve already gotten you an ongoing prescription for the estrogen impnts. You’ll be good for the foreseeable future unless someone comes along and makes them illegal – and then we’ll figure something out.”

  Bke and Tiffany look at the jet as it taxis down the runway.

  “What will you two do once you get home?” Morgan asks.

  “I already know I’m taking a gap year,” Bke says. “I just want some time with no excitement, to get to know myself and my family again, and especially my new sister.”

  “Honestly, I might do the same thing,” Tiffany says. “I’ll resume my studies next year, but for right now, I just want to get used to… well, to all of this. I have a new family, a new body, a new identity… a new life. I mean… I have no actual idea how to be a girl yet, you know?”

  “Me either, sis,” Bke says. “But one step at a time. Which means no boys until the year’s up.”

  “Who says I’m not still into girls?” Tiffany retorts with a smirk.

  “Yeah, well, none of those either,” Bke says, already settling into the protective older sister role. Technically Bke is older by a couple of months, even though their new records have them having the same birthdate – born an hour apart.

  “Honestly, you both might have the right idea. Shit’s been too exciting. I kind of envy you both,” Morgan says, wistfully. “Unfortunately, we still have to take care of Oleg, Jeri, and Amélie until we can find their families, or get them functioning to the point where they can live independently. Well… maybe not Amélie’s family… but I know Oleg wants to get in touch with his.”

  “I hope they find good outcomes,” Tiffany says. “I wish they could have been here.”

  “Unfortunately, opsec,” Morgan says.

  “Right…” Tiffany says with a sigh.

  “That said, I know they’re all happy for you and wishing you the best,” Morgan says as the jet stops. “Well, this is it… get on board. Home awaits. We’ll have a driver waiting for you at the airport when you nd.”

  Tiffany runs over and hugs Morgan tightly. “Thank you so much… all of you. Please extend my thanks to the others too…”

  Bke looks nervous for a moment, but Tiffany gives her a pleading look, and soon she’s joining in the hug as well. “Thank you for giving us our lives back.”

  “Seeing you two so happy makes all the hell I go through worth it,” Morgan says, before freeing herself from the hug. “Go on. You’ve both got our numbers. Keep in touch.”

  Tiffany and Bke both nod in unison, then make their way onto the jet.

  Wiping a tear away as the jet takes off, Morgan smiles. It really does make it all worth it, seeing those two girls resolving to get their new lives going. She soon turns around and steps back into the Hummer, to drive it back to the compound.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (0908)

  Back at the compound, Oleg is in one of the training rooms, still attempting to regain enough use of his legs to not have to use the chair as often. He groans in pain as he tries to force his legs to carry his weight. He’s lighter than he was when he was still fully male, but his muscle mass was completely decimated between the change in hormonal makeup and from being persuaded never to move. Atrophy is a bitch. Now he’s trying to rebuild himself from nearly nothing.

  He is back on testosterone, at least, so he’ll have an easier time building his muscles back up… retively.

  He groans loudly as he tries to take another step… he’s only walked about thirty feet, but he feels as though he’s run a marathon. “Fuck!” he practically screams as his leg muscles burn. He starts to fall…

  Luckily, Jeri is walking up at about that time and sees what is happening. As Oleg screams, she runs up behind him. She manages to catch him before he hits the ground. “Oleg, what are you doing?” she asks, concerned.

  “I am frustrated from having to get everywhere in chair,” Oleg says, angry at himself more than anything. “I try and try with trainer but I make no progress.”

  “Hon, you don’t have to risk yourself like this,” Jeri says, concerned, even as she silently admires Oleg’s will to try to fix himself, no matter the risk. He’s so stubborn, refusing to take no for an answer even from his own body, and… and it’s turning her on. “You’ll eventually be walking again. You don’t have to force it…”

  “I am no good to home in a chair,” Oleg says. “I would rather die on my feet than live in the chair.

  Jeri sighs softly as she helps Oleg walk over to the chair. “You’ve got to let others help for now, though. Let me help, please.”

  Oleg is about to protest, but he sees the look on Jeri’s face. She’s deathly concerned. “Fine,” he says, relenting a bit. “You can help.”

  Jeri nods as she helps Oleg walk back to his chair. She’s starting to fall for him, but there is one looming problem on the horizon – he desperately wants to get well so he can go back to Ukraine and fight for his homend. It’s pretty much the only thing driving him at this point. She’s not sure she can commit to going with him to a war zone. That leaves her very conflicted. If he’s not getting better, then he can’t fight and he has to stay here, with her. But he won’t be happy.

  And if he’s not happy, she’s not happy. But right now she feels happy being with him. Even if it means she’s destined for eventual heartbreak.

  As Jeri gets Oleg into his chair, Danni walks in. “There you are,” she says. “I have news.”

  Oleg looks up at the tall woman. “Yes?”

  “We found your family,” Danni says. “They emigrated to Germany. They want to talk with you.”

  “When?” Oleg asks.

  “Tomorrow, their time,” Danni says.

  “Wow! Congratutions!” Jeri says, totally reading the room wrong.

  Oleg looks downcast. “They left home. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Danni says. “You’d have to ask them that.”

  “Aren’t you happy, Oleg?” Jeri asks. “Your family’s safe, and they want to talk to you, even after everything you’ve gone through!”

  “We have all been driven or taken from home,” Oleg says. “Happy? No. I am not.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1257)

  Amélie sits on the couch, across the table from Vera. She’s looking at a dossier… on herself. Or rather, on Pierre Bernard, the person she used to be before her father sold her into sexual svery and her mind and body were both irreparably altered. “I barely remember any of this person…” she says softly. “I didn’t even remember his name…”

  As she looks over the record, tiny bits and pieces fsh into her mind. She was from Quebec. She was extremely intelligent, a prodigy when it came to computers… but she was also the type to take and do exactly what she wanted. If Joy’s former self was the good kind of technological genius, Amélie’s former self was the other side of the coin, the bad kind. “I… I stole credit cards…” she says. “I… my father, he…”

  She fshes back. Her father was screaming at her. Apparently, she had stolen the card info of a prominent member of Parliament, who was also, unknown to all, a member of the sex svery cabal. You fucked up, you worthless boy! she recalled him screaming at her, albeit in French. You ruined us all!

  To get the Parliament member off of his back, he sold young, rebellious Pierre to him, and he in turn gave Pierre to Levin for the desired alterations he felt the young man deserved.

  And Levin broke him, and created her…

  Amélie drops the dossier and breaks, crying loudly. She fucked herself over with her own actions. “This… this is my fault… all my fault…”

  Vera shakes her head and puts a hand on Amélie’s shoulder. “No, it isn’t. You’re the victim here. You did nothing wrong.”

  Amélie shakes her head rapidly. “I stole from the wrong man! I… I brought his fire down on my family… he b-bought me… gave me to Monsieur Levin… I got everything I deserved for my wrongs!” she cries. “I deserve this fate…” She continues to sob. “This is my penance…”

  Vera shakes her head again. “That doesn’t mean you deserved what you’ve endured since then,” she says. “You’ve been abused repeatedly, you’ve had your body and mind vioted, and quite frankly, the person who did these things no longer functionally exists.”

  “But I’m still here…” Amélie says in horror. “I am no longer him, but I exist because of him. And yet I am still him.”

  “Hon, please, calm down…” Vera says, trying to get the other girl to stop freaking out over everything.

  Amélie shakes her head. “Non. I do not wish to change back. I am a living punishment. I cannot end it. I must suffer. It is why I exist.”

  Vera sighs softly. She fucked up. Amélie wasn’t ready to face her past yet. All it did was cause her to doomspiral and lose so much progress.

  --={@~~~@}=--

  (1552)

  As Morgan returns to the basements, she spots Amélie scrubbing at a surface in the mess hall. “Whoa. I think it’s clean already.”

  Amélie ignores her and simply continues to clean in a nearly robotic fashion. She’s back in one of the more fetish-style maid costumes like she was wearing at Levin’s pce, instead of one of the more sensible dresses she’s been given to wear since she’s been here.

  Morgan walks closer. “Amélie? Are you okay?”

  “Laissez-moi travailler, s'il vous p?t, madame,” Amélie says in a ft tone. Please leave me to work, ma’am.

  “No, Amélie,” Morgan says as she walks over. “That’s the programming talking.”

  “Ma programmation est tout ce que je suis,” Amélie replies. My programming is all I am.

  “Amélie, snap out of it!” Morgan says in a harsh, stern tone. “I don’t know what’s happened, but you are far better than this!”

  “Non. Je suis une personne horrible. Je mérite ma punition,” Amélie says softly. No. I am a horrible person. I deserve my punishment.

  Morgan looks down and shakes her head. “Nothing you may have done can excuse this,” she says in a quiet voice, nearly a whisper. “You don’t deserve to feel forced to debase yourself like this.”

  “Because of my own actions, I was sold,” Amélie says in reply, in English. “I stole from the wrong person and it cost me everything. My old self was destroyed, yet lives on in me. I am a living monument to his hubris and a representation of a punishment he is both able and unable to experience, forever. You have tried, but ultimately, I can never be anything else. It is engraved in my soul, etched into my bones.”

  “That doesn’t mean the new you has to be a punishment,” Morgan says. “My old self did terrible things also. I can’t remember them, but I know they happened. I could see myself like you. A living punishment. A monument to his folly.” She walks over and holds Amélie tightly. “But ultimately, despite everything, I am a new person, just like you. We may have been born from the sins of our previous selves, but we are not bound to pay for them. They may have departed this world guilty, but we are innocent. And it was not you who cast yourself into this hell. It was that bastard of a father of yours… no. Not even. That was his father. And he’s gone now. Which leaves that man ultimately unconnected to you.”

  “...I do not deserve the mercy you are trying to give to me,” Amélie says as she starts to cry.

  “You’re getting it anyway. Now quit beating yourself up, chère,” Morgan says in a firm, but loving tone, almost like that of a parent. “Come with me.” She turns to leave the mess hall with Amélie, only to be stopped at the door. “Mistress?”

  “Morgan, we have a problem,” Danni says. “Come with me.”

  As the three women walk down the hallway, Danni looks concerned. It takes a lot to make her show an emotion like concern.

  “What happened, Miss Danni?” Amélie asks.

  “Our worst nightmare,” Danni says as she turns the corner toward the infirmary. “We’ve lost one of our own, inside our own base.”

  As the three enter the infirmary, a shocking scene is dispyed in front of them, as if frozen in time.

  The woman who had kidnapped Morgan in New Engnd is ying dead in the hospital bed. She’s smiling. A pillow lies haphazardly nearby, most likely used to suffocate her.

  In one of the doorways lies another body, this one covered with a cloth sheet.

  Danni walks over. She kneels down and moves her hand toward the sheet. “Amélie, you might want to look away…”

  Amélie turns around, holding her head against Morgan’s chest.

  “Who was it?” Morgan asks.

  The sheet is lifted.

  It’s Zon. After the raid that resulted in the rescue of both Morgan and Roberta, she had transferred to the branch of the PMC group that worked out of Kelly’s compound. It was ultimately a very short transfer. A wound from a small-caliber bullet is present in the middle of her forehead.

  “...What happened?” Morgan asks.

  “We don’t know,” Danni says as she covers the woman’s face back up. “The cameras were down throughout the entire compound. Whoever did this likely hacked the system to cover up killing the woman we brought in, and as they were trying to leave, Zon probably happened upon them. She paid the ultimate price…”

  Morgan clenches her fist. “I want Amélie helping to figure out who did this. I don’t care how long it takes. I owe her… she didn’t deserve this.”

  “Right now, I can’t trust anyone else in the company,” Danni says. “Not even Hansen. Are you sure Amélie can do this?”

  Amélie looks back at Danni. “...I can…”

  Danni nods. “Right now, consider yourself drafted,” she says to Amélie. “You report to Morgan, myself, and Miss Kelly only. Morgan only just got back to the compound, and she can confirm your whereabouts. And as for Miss Kelly, if she wanted the woman in the bed killed, she wouldn’t have had to resort to cloak and dagger bullshit to do it. Any of us would have done it openly had she ordered it.” She looks to Morgan. “I’m bringing in bodies from other branches of the company. The same thing applies to them. They only report to us.”

  “We don’t just have a leaker, then,” Morgan says.

  “No,” Danni says. “We have a traitor.”

  --={@~~~@}=--

  to be continued in book 2: symphony of strife