Unofficial blame for POHO’s dismantling, was placed on a radical group who were convinced that the organization would eventually drive a new worldwide financial collapse. ‘Unofficial’ was typed on investigative reports, as the search for the leaders ended quickly. The world was revolving in financial complacency, and many breathed a sigh of relief that Vanessa and her Preservation of Humanity Organization’s disruptive antics had ended.
Daria and her friends had been taken to an office by a taxi that had picked them up a block away from the POHO headquarters. Lilly had escorted the wide-eyed girls, and had paid the driver in advance. One thing the OTRs knew very well was the cost of the ride from the corner to SHCI’s block of buildings. Their last demonstration in front of the Training Compound had been two weeks ago.
Lilly never looked back after the door to the cab closed on the frightened girls. None of them had ever been in an automobile, nor outside the walls of headquarters before. By the time the car stopped in front of the Commodity Investment Law Firm, the girls were trembling. They had spent a terrifying ten-minute drive in a mobile cage, locked inside with a bastard. The driver had to open their door, and he tried to gently coax them out. It was not the first time he had delivered frightened young women who were contracted by parents who preferred the money over further obligation to them. His own daughter walked through the glass doors three years ago.
Louise looked towards the sidewalk at the three plainly dressed girls. A vulture from Jordan and Compton was angling towards the frozen women, and she quickly hustled to greet them. Louise stared the man down and said, “I’ll take them, and I’ll be sure Mason is aware of how you tried to help.” Color drained from the vulture’s face. He knew that if Mason relayed his foolish move back to the commodity firm, he would be fired.
Daria and Lizzie had to grip Annie’s hand when the bastard had appeared on the pavement, sneaking closer with what they were positive was the obvious intention of using his evil spear on them. The girls were silent, and slightly calmed at the more normal situation of a woman in charge, and they listened to the woman drive the bastard back.
“I’m Louise, and I’ll show you to the contract office.” The girls followed her into the building, and Louise noted that they almost appeared to be in shock as they studied the normal lobby of an opulent legal high rise. She watched them try to grip the wall in the elevator, and the blonde closed her eyes. When they reached the second floor, she led them to a sofa where they sat nervously in the reception area of the Commodity Investment Law Firm, clutching the envelopes holding their signed contracts in their shaking hands.
Louise whispered, “Noreen, I think they belong to some kind of religious cult, or something. They haven’t said a word, and I don’t think they’ve ever even been in an elevator before. You might want to warn Phillip.” Louise started to leave and she turned. “Oh yeah. J and C tried to scoop them.”
“Mason’s going to be pissed. That’s the third time this month,” Noreen replied.
Daria was the last to be led into Phillip’s imposing office, no last name, not even on his mahogany and brass nameplate. Her two friends had not come out of this office, and Daria glanced at a door off to the side. Phillip held out his hand and she passed him the contract to bind her sale.
Her mother had typed a separate agreement that she was to be trained specifically for a Greek household. The sheet said that Greece had been their ancestors’ homeland and that she wanted her daughter to have the opportunity to go there. Vanessa told Daria that the chances were good she would land in an easy situation. Actually, Vanessa needed the proof of what she had suspected… that these separate agreements were not upheld. With the low sale price of a commodity with auburn hair, Vanessa decided after eighteen years there was nothing else she could use her daughter for.
Daria’s green eyes widened when the bastard scanned her paperwork, and with no hidden, deceptively mysterious method, he took the last page of directive to Greece and fed it through the shredder beside his desk.
Right on mom, you crazy OTR. Essentially, Daria’s work for POHO had ended with the abrupt cessation of any possibility that the specific directives were honored. Vanessa had wanted to know when the specifics were derailed, and she had no idea that there was absolutely no pretense from the very beginning that they would be followed. With the subject of Greece off the table, Daria was merely to spend one year in training and one as a slave, listening for incriminating information.
From his years of being raised by the strict Minister, Phillip recognized the signs of little social interaction with the ‘sinners’ of the modern world. Like the other two, this one was shaking with uncertainty, and he wondered why such obviously committed religious fanatics had sold their daughters in the first place. He had already passed the information on to Eddie that the girls’ training would have to begin slowly or they would risk mental breakdown. If they had not been so pretty, with a pure innocence that was a huge bonus in commodity value, he would have passed them back to the vulture as too time-consuming to train. He sure as hell did not need another legal mess started by a religious group for discrimination, though. “Why did your mother wait so long to contract you?” Phillip asked. The girls were usually contracted the minute they turned eighteen for the extra money. This one, like one of her friends, was two months shy of nineteen.
Naturally, Daria could not explain that the last infiltrator’s birthday was October 19th, so she replied with her carefully coached answer. Her voice quivered with fear at seeing a bastard in charge, and she wished that Louise had stayed with them. She wondered if poor little Annie had managed to keep from crying when she sat in this chair. “Mom was trying to figure out a way to keep me. For a while, I think she was going to contract herself, but she knew that the price for an AG48 would not be enough to help me for long.”
Phillip sat back and looked at her suspiciously. “So, a mother that considered offering herself to save her daughter, just wakes up one day and signs her over?”
Daria was frightened that the bastard would see through their ploy. The OTRs said that they only thought about their evil spears, but the girls had researched Mason Sanford enough to know that he, at least, was shrewdly intelligent. “There isn’t much work available that pays women any more… not with a one-time fee for a slave.” Daria could not look at the man any more, so her eyes dropped down at her lap. The bra, panties and shoes were beginning to feel too confining, and she wanted to go back to the freedom and safety of the attic.
“And you, you’re all right with this decision?” Phillip waited for her answer to decide on her placement in the Training Compound. Although he knew that she would have to begin at a slower pace, baulkers had a separate initiation to go through until they came around to the appropriate mindset to concentrate on level training.
Daria had a problem with this answer. She was supposed to say that it was fine because she was going to a nice home in Greece. The OTRs had not told her what to do if the sheet was destroyed before she was taken to training. Phillip knew that she had seen him shred that portion of the agreement… and it was then that Daria went off the map of her prescribed role, and she decided to adopt the psyche of a girl who was easily distracted and a little dense. Not dense enough so that she could not be trained… just dense enough so that people were less guarded with the information they would pass on in front of her. She decided that this would be all right with the OTRs.
Daria had no idea that Phillip had already formed a partial conclusion as to her ignorance from the short time he had spent with her friends. Thank god Noreen had warned him, because Phillip would have thought the way that they were dressed was an attempt to defraud the firm for more money by a pretext of innocence. The other two girls were compliant enough… if not a little odd.
“I’m fine with it, I guess. Mom told me I was going to Greece, and she brought me to the library to see pictures of it. It looks nice,” she said nervously. “The countryside is pretty. Do you think you could
put down that I like horses?” Daria loved the short videos and pictures she had seen of the magnificent animals.
Phillip was speechless, and he glanced at the shredder. She had to have seen him… it was something he enjoyed doing to give them their first jolt of the reality of their situation. He looked back at the girl, and saw she was staring at the picture on the wall of the foxhunt. Okay… not the sharpest tack in the drawer. At least her friends had the sense to be nervous. “So… as long as your going to an estate in the Greek countryside with horses, you’re all right with your commitment?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ll miss mom and all, but maybe she’ll come visit me when I write to her where I am,” Daria answered softly. Concentrating on being dumb was helping to distract her from the frightening situation of being in a closed office… with a bastard. Added to that, Daria was no longer able to follow the script she had rehearsed with the OTRs for the past two months. Unlike Annie and Lizzie who quickly made decisions, Daria was much more methodical and took time to sort through things. Her answers appeared to be stalled and slow.
What a total ditz. She has no idea what she’s been obligated to. “If she was so insistent that you go to Greece, she’ll probably use the money to set herself up over there to wait for you.” Phillip picked up the phone and hit a button for a line to an inside office. “I have an AG18IQ80.” Phillip smiled as the man on the other end began laughing.
“IQ80? Adding new commodity call letters, Phillip?” Eddie chuckled.
“It is what it is.”
“Trainable?”
“Like a puppy.”
“I’ll send Damon over. He passed the redhead to Rodrigo,” Eddie informed him. “We’re keeping them with the head trainers until they determine they have adjusted well enough to be filtered into the mainstream.”
Phillip hung up the phone, and shook his head as the girl returned to looking around his office. Daria gave him a nervous smile after deciding that, at least for now, he was going to keep his evil spear away from her. “You have some really nice things,” she said politely.
“Well, thank you.” Phillip decided to put a hold on ten thousand dollars of the twenty he had paid for the girl. Her mother had not been forthcoming when she had listed the girl’s education at high school with no known disabilities. Two minutes with the girl in court would convince a judge of breach of contract.
Damon walked through the side door, smirking. “An AG18IQ80?”
Daria’s eyes widened in true shock, and she stared at the new bastard. He was tall, with tanned muscles across a wide tight chest… and he had arms as big around as her thighs. There was a long black ponytail swishing down his back that matched his trimmed mustache and beard. Holy crap! Daria tried to hide her nerves, but she knew there would be no way to fight him off if he attacked.
The OTRs had whisked over a quick comment about sex training… whether it was because they did not want to dwell on it… or else they were ignorant after abstaining for so long. The girls also dismissed the subject after the OTRs obviously decided that it was unimportant to their mission. Still, the daughters had been saturated with rhetoric of the bastards’ evil spears and how they used them to control women.
Daria stared at the half naked bastard, wishing he were covered and not reeking of what she imagined to be sexual intent. His shiny black pants looked uncomfortably tight, and they reminded her once more of her own new restrictive garments. She looked nervously towards the door and then back at Phillip, and she whispered, “He’s a big bastard.”
Phillip’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
Daria licked her lips and rubbed her palms on her thighs. “Him… he’s so… so big.”
Damon’s eyes narrowed. The other two girls had not said much of anything, and for this girl to make such a statement was bewildering. Somehow, he did not think she realized she had insulted him. He had passed on the other two girls because they seemed bland and uninteresting. Something about this one was intriguing, and he decided that she might be fun for a change. “Come on. Let’s get you outfitted.”
Daria just stared at him. She doubted that her legs would hold her. “Daria, you need to go with the trainer, now.” Phillip decided to check on the background of the three young women.
Daria wanted to shrink into the chair, but she managed to rise and she held out her hand in automatic response of her practiced routine. It took a moment for Phillip to realize that, like the other two, she wanted to shake his hand… and thank him for taking her freedom away. “It was good to meet you, Phillip. Maybe I’ll see you again before they send me to Greece.”
Damon clenched his jaw and looked at Phillip with disbelief. “AG18IQ50, perhaps?”
Phillip watched Daria turn towards Damon and the passageway, and he considered his court defense for defending the firm against the half fee for the girl. For some reason, his mind flashed onto the long ago hearings with POHO and Vanessa, and he scowled as he filled out the check for the girl to ‘Victoria Kappas’.
Daria walked over to Damon and looked up at him. She was terrified of the bastard, but she tried to comply with his order. “If I get to choose what I’m outfitted in, green goes best with my eyes.” She walked through the door in front of him, nervously smiling at the laughter of the men behind her. As she had seen very few men in person, and they had always been caged, her initial assessment was that they were rather emotionless… not quite on the level her mother had been. For the most part, Daria found it was irritating not to be able to tell the bastards what she was really thinking.
Daria found herself in a dark cement hallway sloping downward rather steeply. Still trying to behave compliantly… the OTRs told them they were to gain the trainers’ confidence to gather information… Daria said, “This is kind of creepy. I bet we’re almost under the street.”
For no particular reason, Damon decided to answer her. He still wanted to figure out the most interesting way to train her… interesting for him, of course. “It leads to the Training Compound next door.”
“Oh.” Daria asked, “Is your office as nice as Phillip’s?”
Damon thought of his ‘office’. It was a cement training room with five steel cages and various instruments of bondage and torture. “You might not find it quite as comfortable, but I like it.”
“Am I going to have a roommate? I always study better with someone else to help me a little. Mom says I sometimes get distracted,” Daria admitted, in sync with her new role. She actually did wonder if she would be in the same room with Lizzie and Annie. It would make things a whole lot easier.
“You’ll be sharing a room with four other girls, but you each have your separate areas.” Damon could not wait for the girl to see her cage. He was enjoying not ‘lying’ to her, but their shared camaraderie would be coming to an end soon… in a couple of minutes, in fact.
Daria was calming again, because it seemed that even this big man was not going to attack her. She was already questioning her years of instruction that bastards were insatiable beasts with no restraint. She listened to the unfamiliar sound of the clacking of her leather flats on the cement. “HELLO,” she called loudly, and Damon took a misstep at the unusually loud outburst from the quiet girl, and he wondered who she had heard in the passageway. “Shoot, I thought there might be an echo.” Daria had never been off headquarters’ grounds in her eighteen years, but she had read about the caverns in the mountains and this tunnel reminded her of the pictures. The description of echoes had fascinated her, and she was disappointed that it did not work.
IQ30? Most of the girls he led back to the compound were at least a little nervous of him. This young woman was turning the opposite direction, and instead of building fear she seemed to becoming calmer around him. Damon was slightly worried he could snap her mind if he worked her too fast.
The closer they got to the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, the more queasy Daria’s stomach felt. It was difficult to maintain her agreeable façade and she hoped that wh
oever this bastard handed her off to did not have to stoop like he did to get through the doorway at the end of the underground trail. This big guy was sort of handsome though, but he made her feel weird inside.
She followed the trainer down a lit cement hallway that she found mildly claustrophobic. They wound down another passageway, and as they passed a door, Daria heard a girl scream. She stopped in her tracks, mostly because her knees were buckling from the agony in the wail. When the trainer turned to look at her, she asked, “Shouldn’t you go see what’s wrong with her?”
“Come on.” Damon continued down the hall, listening to the girl’s footsteps as she followed him.
Daria began to realize just how little her mother had told her about her new situation. Oh, she knew that she was supposed to memorize finances, locations and names… she knew everything she was supposed to remember to pass on to them. What she did not know was what was going to be happening to her while she was exposed to the information.
Damon led her into a small sparse room with metal lockers on the wall and a desk with an odd machine and computer. He tapped in some information, and the strange machine spat out some metal bands. Daria picked one up to read it while Damon opened lockers. “US18AG1427? Where’s my IQ number?” Daria wondered if it was a secret code for separating the commodities.
Damon squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m still determining that.”
“Shouldn’t it say ‘Daria’, so that people know who I am?” Lilly wanted to know if it was true that they stripped away the slave’s identity.
Damon stood with five leather straps. “The number tells them who you are now.”
Daria whispered, “Oh.” She was beginning to feel scared, and she sealed her lips to keep from blurting out something that would get her into trouble. She watched in silence as Damon slid the ID bands into the pockets of the collar and cuffs. The reality of the situation was becoming frightening, and once again she wished that she were back in the attic.
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