Kayley Goes Shopping Ch. 02

Entering the kitchen again, she found the techs already hard at work collaring and processing. Being collared as she entered was the young man who had hoped to make time with her earlier in the evening. Now, he sat on the floor barefoot, shorts completely off, with a dopey grin on his face as he relished the feel of another young man's mouth on his cock, head working like a piston as his own collar was already being read. It amused her because, while it definitely wasn't what he had in mind as the apex of his evening, he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself.

Everybody needs love, right?

"Yes!"

The exclamation brought her attention to the female half of the makeout couple who was now completely nude, with the male half of the couple also nude, flat on his back, and mindlessly letting her bounce. The beats still thrumming in his ears, subsuming every thought beyond how good his cock felt at just this moment.

"Yes!", she heard again.

"That's weird," the tech noted.

Kayley peeked over his shoulder and he took that as his cue to explain without being asked. "She's just into the fucking and pretty out of it, so I was tweaking the modulations to check her resistance, hit between point-six-three and point six-seven and..."

"Yes!"

She examined the woman's glazed, stupidly happy expression, comparing it to the data she was getting to confirm that she wasn't in there to the degree necessary to maybe be playing with them. People had natural defenses to some induction techniques, that's why there were so many to begin with. Kayley turned the tablets sound settings off, stepped back, making sure to stay behind her so that there was no way she might be able to know that the button was pressed and Kayley pressed it again.

"Yes!"

Kayley smiled and tapped the button three more times in succession to get the same response. She knew she had a rare prize. The tech seemed to be at a loss. "Induction synesthesia," she said. Most of the techniques used were now completely effective, but that was only after years of trial and error, and in part, thanks to rare finds like this one. Her mother had only managed to find less than a dozen like this one out of thousands of subjects and decades of work, and it was from most of them, the greatest leaps were made. She would be most pleased.

"For most people these frequencies just create feelings that dull the higher processes, but her brain processes the frequencies as language. What we use machines to force a mind to do to create a state where the subject sees what we want them to as their own thoughts, she essentially does naturally. She's going to make induction and programming even more precise and efficient."

Kayley closed in on her slowly, bending down. "You are very special, my dear, and, when we get back, my mommy and I are going to spend months mapping the living shit out of your brain before we even think about doing anything else with you. Doesn't that sound like fun?" Her digit stabbed at the tablet rapidly.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

She marked this one for the facility and handed the tablet back. "Keep her completely happy. That's the least such a prize deserves."

"Yes, ma'am."

With that, she continued her tour of the home, taking her time in doing so. Once she came back down, Glenn found her, "We're wrapping up here. In a few minutes we'll be able to start taking them out in staggered groups. Sweepers are already upstairs making sure everything is as clean as it needs to be."

"Excellent." She took the tablet he handed her and she scanned it, reading more quickly than any non-enhanced person could. She bet she could give that pale-faced android from that TV show a run for his money. The collars, in various colors and styles, shouldn't arouse much suspicion, the tuned pulses would take place of the music would produce docility and a desire to comply until they could be programmed more deeply while the ones destined for nothing at all were being positioned comfortably to sleep until morning. "Any problems?"

"All nice and straightforward, which is good because I don't like problems." With a grimace he put his hat back on and grabbed the jacket from the back of the chair. "God, I feel like an idiot."

Lyssa's hand touched her back and a moment later she felt a peck on her cheek and even that held the promise of more. She tilted her head in a show of sympathy with a hint of mockery. "Poor baby." She lost the mockery after that. "You really do look cute."

He put his arms through quickly a gave it a snap across his broad chest. "Tease. Don't say that unless you mean it."

Their back and forth had always been flirty and teasing. He accepted her at once when she took her position of authority at the facility and within their operations. Some had balked at first, but kept their tongues in check because none of them, as irritated as they may have been at taking orders from a woman younger and with less practical experience than them, they lacked the courage to take their problems with it to her mother. She didn't truly care what they thought, as their purpose was to follow orders and contribute according to their gifts, but she'd like to think that she had earned her position since.

Glenn had none of that annoyance to offer her, "I've watched your mother run this place for twenty years. She knows what she's doing, and you've got everything you need for the job because, if there's one thing your mom isn't, it's sloppy." She had a special affection for him and a few others that had offered friendship, performed competently, and whose loyalty was beyond question because of who they were and how they behaved, not because the ability to disobey was programmed out of them. And Glenn had always been among them.

"What makes you think I don't?"

He laughed. "Because I'm not a college guy anymore."

"So? Attraction isn't just about that and you should know that by now. Otherwise, all we'd ever take or make are blondes no less than six feet tall and nothing smaller than a double 'D.' Bodies are to be enjoyed, I like you, and, unlike my mom, I think there's value in, shall we say, old school incentives for loyalty. You have a birthday in a few months, so, come see me on your birthday."

She enjoyed watching the humor mix with confusion, trying to decide whether or not she was still playing with him, "Seriously?"

She was indeed and her voice carried a sultry lilt even as it carried no nonsense."Come see me on your birthday. My gifts are memorable."

"Well...hell." The almost perpetual gruffness disappeared as an extra spring found its way into his step as he headed back upstairs.. He'd always liked that girl, even if she was a little crazy.

"I'm sure you're going to open yourself up to a sexual harassment suit."

"If he doesn't feel suitably sexually harassed after I'm done, he should sue.

"Slut."

"Shut up, Lyssa, or I'll make you sit in the corner on your knees and watch."

She snorted derisively. "You're slipping, baby. Punishments should entail things the punished wouldn't find appealing.

"It's the simple things I forget." Kayley stepped out into the night air, the breeze still there from earlier in the day, enough to keep the bugs away and just cold enough to have a crisp bite that felt good on the skin. There seemed to be no end to the little things to enjoy in life. Another was driving around in her lovely little sports car. It was royal purple, customized from bumper to bumper and the epitome of sleek. She walked casually around the front and to the right. "Continuing in the vein of not punishments, you get to drive."

"Aw, you really do love me." Lyssa had her own adorable and powerful custom job, but she liked driving Kayley's because she didn't let anyone else drive it. She sank into the supple, luxurious, glossy, black leather seat and slid her index finger into the reader to the right of the wheel. There was a second's pause before the sensor under her finger beeped and lit in a neon green as the dash lights came on and the engine came to life. Even at idle it rumbled like a dragon's chest.

"Where to, baby?"

"Truck number three, if you please."

She shifted into gear and the dragon purred.

* * *

Constance stared into the harsh white light above her because there wasn't much else to do, as she had largely cried it out, still feeling the remnants of the tears drying on her face. The night was a blur. She remembered pieces of the party, She remembered the good drinks and the music and then things got cloudy. The alcohol seemed to have hit her hard. Things got warm and dreamy and hazy. She realized quickly that someone must have drugged her. Shit like that happened at parties and, as appalling and terrifying as it would be, in a way it would have been at least understandable if she'd come to with her ankles over the shoulders of some total stranger.

But that wasn't this.

Instead, she woke to white light that stung her eyes and doctors and nurses in white coats who came, looked her over and touched her as they pleased. While it felt like an examination it also felt much creepier for the mechanical, completely impersonal nature of it. She was a slab of meat on the table that couldn't move and that no one would talk to. She was still in her party dress, but that wasn't much comfort since her panties were missing.

She'd tried to speak to them; tried to tell them her name, though no one had bothered to ask. They talked to one another in numbers and jargon that sounded medical and technical that they seemed to understand just fine. She'd asked where she was and they didn't answer. She asked more loudly and they still didn't answer. When she finally practically bellowed, "Will somebody please tell me where the fuck I am?! Where am I? Where am I!?" a woman responded, but not to her.

"Why are we letting her talk?" a woman, this one with deep, rich voice that suggested she could moonlight as a lounge singer asked.

"Because that was the order and neither one of us is high enough up on the chain to know why", another woman said.

"The order was that she be conscious and capable of speech, not that she be allowed to annoy the piss out of me."

Five angry steps and the lounge singer appeared, her skin a dark cocoa, her eyes an almost black brown. She put her fingers close to Constance's face. "Three button presses, honey. Three button presses and you're not talking anymore. You think you're freaked out now, you try thirty seconds of trying to say something when you know you know how, but nothing comes out."

"Right now, it's pretty much up to me if that happens. No one here is going to talk to you or answer any questions. No one is going to help you and the only ones that can hear your shrieking bouncing off the walls is us, and, like I said, no one is going to help you. If you want to talk to yourself to hear your own voice so maybe you can pass the time while you wait. I'm okay with that, but if you start shouting again, you get the three buttons. Got it?"

Now that she got attention, she was going to get answers, "Where the fuck am I? Where the fuck is this? If you don't let me out of here right now you're all going to go to jail for kidnapping.."

The woman angrily pulled an armature with a terminal attached that was in turn attached to the metal slab she was laying on. "One."

"...and rape because I sure as fuck had panties on when I went out tonight."

"Two."

"So unless you wanna all die in jail, you..."

"Three."

"Rrrrrrrrrrr." The word vanished in her throat when the feeling appeared. It was the feeling you get when you turn your neck in just the right way and there's an almost painless pinch followed by a momentary numbness, except this numbness started from a ball pressed against the base of her skull that she'd mistook as part of some sort of odd headrest when she awake. The numbness penetrated her skull and when she opened her mouth to speak it spiked to the point where she couldn't manage the last push to make words.

The lounge singer seemed indifferent to the confusion and fear in the expression she saw. "Three buttons."

So Constance was left there as the time crawled by. She was more afraid than before by miles of course, but oddly, she found the numbness more comforting than her own voice would have been. Indeed, she tried to speak occasionally just so the numbing sensation in her skull would notch up. She thought maybe she'd do it and the numbness would consume her and that's how she'd wake up.

When that didn't happen, she did the only things she could do which were wait and listen. They mentioned nothing to suggest where she was or anything that might help her, though she did realize there was someone else behind her that they were doing things to. She didn't get to be conscious though and Constance kept wondering if the fact that she was was good for her or bad for her.

Eventually the answer came when the gray door in front of her slid back and from blackness behind her emerged Kayley Samuels from the afternoon and a redhead she didn't recognize. Red disappeared behind her and the lounge singer appeared from the other side, moving quickly to hand Kayley a tablet. "Ma'am."

"Thank you," She departed quickly while Kayley tapped and scrolled and tapped and scrolled. It was strange for Constance because she still looked like the perfect party girl in that dress and makeup, but she stood like she belonged there. When she finished, her eyes drew upward from the tablet with glare though the corner of her mouth turned upward. "You were being annoying. It says so right here." She turned the tablet to face her and spread her fingers outward to enlarge a section without having to look. "Nullified voice with vocal suppression tone because subject was being annoying via the screaming of profanity and threats against personnel."

"I can totally imagine that. I mean, I haven't known you all that long and annoying is one of the nicer things I'd call you." Constance followed her to the terminal. "Can we agree that I can just shut you up whenever I choose?"

Constance thought about it, not that there was much to debate. She nodded.

"Can we also agree that screaming wouldn't help you anyway? No one out there can hear you from in here, and, even if someone could, we just go back to the previous question and answer."

That was also probably true enough. Another nod.

"So, if I let you talk, you're going to behave in a civilized fashion?"

She despised being dictated to by anyone and she despised the loss of control, but she figured there was no other way to find out what was going on or to get out of it. She nodded.

Kayley pressed a button, said, "beep" with the beep and, just like that, the tone bouncing against her skull stopped. "There we go," she announced as she pressed a few more buttons.

She was startled for a moment as the table she was on angled upward, giving her a better view of things. "Where." She stopped herself when it came out as a shout, as she was trying to make herself heard over the lingering thrum in her skull. More quietly this time, "Where am I?"

"Inside a truck somewhere in town. See, I can tell you that because it only matters to you if you could get out of here. You can't, so, so what?"

Constance was a little more confident in her own voice now. "What happened?"

Her tone was casual. "I wanted you here, so here you are."

"So who the fuck are you, really, and why the fuck am I here?"

"I told you that my name is Kayley Samuels, and I promise that we'll get to that."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me? You expect me to believe that you own all this?"

Kayley quickly corrected with a wag of her finger. "I never implied that all this was mine, Constance. It's not. Actually, it belongs to my mom, though I actively and enthusiastically contribute. Unlike some in your little demographic sliver, I don't park my ass on my parent's laurels."

That was it, Constance, saw. Now there was something to work with and she now spoke as though she knew how this would unfold. "Then let's have your mother talk to my father and we can sort this out."

Her brow knotted sharply before she laughed heartily and Constance noticed chuckles coming from around her. "Oh, yes, Constance, this is a ransom situation and I have you in a truck on the outskirts of the city surrounded by tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment that is the result of decades of painstaking research, all of it meant to keep you here. You know, as opposed to simply chaining you to a chair in a warehouse somewhere."

"For a smart girl, that was a pretty stupid idea, but if you want to play 'schoolyard,' her voice then mimicked a petulant child, "my mommy could buy and sell your daddy." Her tone slipped back to normal, "That's not really the point here."

Before Constance could ask what the point was, Kayley approached her, tablet in hand once again. "Indeed, you do have a lovely mind. See, it's right here." She showed Constance a glowing, almost infinite lattice of neurons, clusters of which glowed with various colors. "This is the point. I'm going to take your mind and rewire it a bit; not too much though, not like some of your friends or some of the other people at the party. There are special plans for you as much as for them."

"You're crazy," she breathed, her skin beginning to crawl as she tried to will her limbs to move once again only to have the effort be as futile as when she first arrived.

"If I were crazy, you'd probably be in some trouble, but I know what I'm doing so you'll be fine."

She tried again to move and the fear and frustration caused her voice to break, "But why are you doing it at all? What the fuck did I ever do to you? I don't even know you."

"Well, partly because it's what we do. It's what actually pays for this. Well, this and all of the other incredibly interesting research we do. People pay us to change minds and bodies and so we change them."

"If you mean to ask me why I'm doing it to you, the answer is simple." Kayley began, sweeping a lock of hair away from Constance's forehead. "I don't like you and I don't like people like you. You're a bitch, Constance. That's not so bad in and of itself because, hey, I'm a bitch, too, as witnessed by the fact that you're here because I felt like bringing you here."

"But it also illustrates our differences. I'm a bitch with purpose. I break a few hundred laws here and there and I quite enjoy moving the goalposts of morality around, but there's always a greater purpose. Sometimes it's the search for discovery. Sometimes it's simply the otherwise banal reasoning that they were mean to me first, payback's a bitch, too, and I have time to properly devote to it."

"But I don't just pick someone to fuck with just to get off on them trying to win my affection and see how long I can manipulate them and see how hard they try. That's just ego and mine isn't so weak that that's what I have to do to feel like I matter. What did you ever do to me? Nothing at all. What did Amanda ever do to you?"

"Amanda?" She could hardly believe her ears. "I'm here because of Amanda?" She was almost stunned by the absurdity. "The only thing I ever did to that girl is try to help her out. Sooner or later she'd have gotten the message that the world isn't lining up to be your friend just because you're fake nice."

Kaylee shrugged and began to orbit her, heels tapping the floor with a snap. "If that was all it was, then you blow off the country bumpkin. She feels bad and learns her lesson. But you played with her feelings for no grand purpose other than furious ego masturbation. You got off on seeing how far you could go and how much pain can I inflict before she finally doesn't come back and how many scars can I leave before she's done? And how many times have you done it before? You're a bitch without purpose."