I parked my car at the same spot as before, still the only vehicle. I assumed Dr. Fara lived in the tower, as must Alya. A naga couldn’t slither around in public in my universe, after all. They didn’t exist.

I couldn’t believe I came back. After the chaos, the danger, the breach of my boundaries, I should’ve reported Dr. Fara to the authorities, but I didn’t want to.

Part of me couldn’t believe my luck at landing such a terrifyingly exciting job. I squashed that part of me as far as I could. A job was still a job, and in this economic system that meant under duress.

The wind ruffled my skirt as I approached the tower. When I pressed the speaker call button Alya squealed through the other end.

“C____! You actually came back! Oh, I’m so excited to work with you, it’s no fun all alone as Emma’s only assistant, oh this is going to be so much fun!”

I inhaled sharply. The deep, throaty voice she ended that sentence with sounded like climbing into bed with someone.

“I’ll send the elevator down and I can get started on orienting you.”

There was that bedroom voice again. I wondered if it was too late to back out. I wondered if I would take that choice if I had it.

I stepped onto the elevator. The weight of my body flung up against me and I yelped as I fell through the floor. As steel disappeared above me my sense of direction whirled, and I felt like I tumbled outside my body. My body’s balance screamed about falling until I flumped onto a padded seat, cold lights overhead.

I hissed and groaned over my sore back and butt. When I opened my eyes I saw a computer on a desk surrounded by boxes.

“What? What? Huh? What?” I looked at the elevator walls floating above me. They disappeared, leaving the bright ceiling of the spotless office. Dr. Fara stood next to the computer.

“No time for orientation,” she said, “I have work for you.” She gestured to the computer. “Get this edited in two hours. I have an important meeting I need it done by.”

“What?” I stared at her. “I don’t—what’s it about? What am I doing? I haven’t even signed the employment papers yet.”

“Sure you have.” Dr. Fara smiled and held up a contract with my signature. “Or you wiiiill, anyway. I picked these up from later today.”

“But that’s not”—me, I wanted to say, that would be future me, I couldn’t even be sure it was a real future me.

“As for what it’s about,” said Fara, “you saw it yesterday, I don’t need to explain it.”

I peered at the ocean of words flooding the computer screen. It did read like the papers she threw at me yesterday, but I glanced at the document info—

“It’s fifty pages!”

“Then you’d beeeetter get started.”

I scrolled through the text. After three pages my head felt like soggy ice cream.

“In what way specifically do you need me to edit this?” I asked. “I don’t recognize half of these words.”

“You shouldn’t,” Fara said. “I made up half the jargon. I don’t even know what I meant by most of it.” She waved at the computer. “Just make it sound good, that’s all that matters. I’ll pick up the slack when I have the meeting”

I flopped back in the seat and stared at the ceiling. Somehow this felt more daunting than everything that happened my first visit.

After a stretch to relieve my sore back I skimmed the document. At least it was easy to see where I could touch up the grammar. I extrapolated the jargon’s meaning from what words I did recognize and made it read clearer.

Suddenly it didn’t feel daunting at all. This was the type of work I wanted to do.

For the threats, it seemed like she intended to use her research and inventions to bully funding from high-level entities like governments and multinational corporations.

I figured I could punch it up to really sell her dire ultimatum. Pairing these designs with these threats flows much better. Not only is that more readable it could scare someone half to death now, these demands could be organized better, move them here, tighten this, more descriptive—

“C____! There you are!” Alya slithered around the boxes to the desk. I waved to her but kept my focus on the computer. “Emma got you working already, huh? Take a break and let’s get oriented, hmm?”

“Not now,” I said. “Fara wants me to get this edited quickly. Say, do you know what a Teleported Slimulator is?”

“No idea,” Alya said. “Come on, you can take a break.” She leaned close and whispered, “I know this place like the back of my tail, I know all the cozy little corners Emma will never find us in.”

Something sparked in my head from her bedroom voice, but the ocean of words I edited doused it like a waterfall.

“No, I want to get this done,” I said. “This is really intricate and I have a lot to consider. I think Dr. Fara said orientation could be later.”

“Aw, c’mon.” Alya’s supple body slithered onto the chair and pressed against mine. She curled soft fingers around my chin. “Oh,” she purred, “I know just how to persuade you to take a break—”

Alya squeaked. I glanced up to see her fall through a portal into Dr. Fara’s office.

“Alya, my dear,” Dr. Fara said, “I have some very important work for you away from my new”—the portal closed. I shrugged and returned to editing.

I spiraled into a world of Dr. Fara’s threatening madness.

My world became words on the screen, words I changed, words I refined, words I conveyed the world in.

Time lost meaning.

Halfway through refining Dr. Fara’s horrific details on what her Miniature Photonculus Humididrive could do were she not provided with five hundred thousand dollars worth of carbonado, Dr. Fara shoved her body against me into the chair, slender but with the force of a mountain. She grabbed the computer mouse and pecked the keyboard with her other hand.

“Time’s up, the meeting’s in a few minutes and I gotta send this to the president.”

Part of my brain freaked out that the pretty lady who kissed me unfathomably a few days ago now practically sat on me, soft as moonlight under her smooth lab coat as star-silky hair twisted around me, but most of my brain freaked out that I wasn’t done editing the document yet!

“Wait!” I said. “Just give me another minute, I got on a real track of–”

“No time!” Dr. Fara sent the file in an email. She dragged me away, as inexorable as a black hole, to a dim room where Alya stood. “You stand here. The optics of two minions bordering me will look muuuuch better than just the one.”

She ran throughout the room, propping flickering machines for her backdrop before a camera. An electronic screen covered the wall behind the camera, blank besides a corner square showing her camera’s view.

Alya waved and winked to me. I smiled and returned a slight wave, but my breaths felt heavy. I stood tense as if the walls closed in.

I hadn’t finished the editing. I had so much more to do. I doubted it was satisfactory.

Maybe Dr. Fara wouldn’t actually look at it. Maybe I wouldn’t have to worry.

Nothing to do but let her do her thing.

Fara stood in the center and clapped to us.

“Okay, give me attentive, but not too attentive, looook like you fear looking at me too long. Respect, of course, and a little bit of mindless drone, but the camera really loves the feeeear, look like I’ll turn your head into a flower pot if you mess this up for me.” She spun to the camera but circled back around. “Oh, by the way, I’ll turn your heads into flower pots if you mess this up for me.”

I swallowed. I really hoped my edits wouldn’t be a significant part.

Video appeared on the main screen of a man in an office. Balding, a dusting of facial hair, milquetoast, a generic aging man I’d expect to see in any management position. The office looked cramped. He’d have to slide around his desk just to reach his seat. Certainly not upper management.

“Ah!” Dr. Fara said, “Mr. . . . Not-President.” All her bubbling bravado deflated. “You are not the president. Where is the president? I specifically requested an aaaaudience with the president! I made it veeeery clear,” she shouted, voice taking the tinge of nails across a chalkboard, “that I would turn eeeevery puppy on this continent inside-out if I didn’t geeeet an audience with the president!”

The man on the video call groaned and rubbed his forehead. He looked like a man who’d reached a dead end in his life.

“Listen. Fara.”

“Dr. Fara!”

“Dr. Fara.” He glared into the camera, the hint of a man determined not to resign his life to a frustrated dead end. “We’ve asked you to stop contacting us. I’ve lost count of how many times—I mean, at first we had a good laugh at your nonsense–”

“You fools should not be laaaaughing!” Fara shrieked, arms twitching around her. “You shooould be cowering! Hasn’t my quantum scrambler drained the miiiinds of your students?”

The man gave a gruff laugh, which garnered a fiercer glare from Fara.

“Sorry, but you can’t take credit for something we’ve been doing with the budget. Now look, I don’t know who you really are, but we don’t have time for this, this—this, what was it, that diffusion timer whatsit?”

“My diffusive time accelerator!” Fara grinned, hand twisted into claws. “Yes, unless my demaaaands are met, the components of your very atooooms shall age faster than your bodies!”

“I don’t understand it, and I don’t think it makes a lick of sense,” the man said. “I mean, what did you send us this time, a gun that turns skin into dough?”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea,” Fara muttered with a glance aside. The man scrolled his computer, presumably looking at the email Fara sent.

“I mean, you got this, this, this—” His brow furrowed. He leaned closer to his monitor. Based on his muttering he read the part about destroying all of Earth’s satellites.

I raised my eyebrows as the man turned pale as a ghost. He looked at the camera.

“Can you do that?” he choked out. Dr. Fara cackled.

“I’m in control of them alreeeeady, you fool!”

“What, all of them?” He looked like he’d aged ten years and fell off the dead end of his life.

“Oh, I may have spaaaared a few.” She looked away with a smile then grinned to the camera. “The resultant pollination will ruin the habitat with such little diversity.” Her grin tensed into a scowl. “Unless. my demands. are meeeet.”

The man inhaled as if oxygen drained from his office. His demeanor changed like one who’d learned the juvenile delinquent pestering him was child of the brutal dictator who held life and death in their hands.

“You have to understand, Doctor, I’m a low level here, please, give me a minute, I’ll send this higher up, let them have a look at it, and we’ll get your demands met, I’m sure when they look at it they’ll agree, we don’t want any trouble, alright? Please, just a moment, I promise, no funny business, I just need someone more important to see this.”

“You have fifty-seven seconds,” Dr. Fara said.

The man nodded. His video feed ceased. I glanced at Alya, whose scrunched quizzical face looked like she’d been asked a question spoken through random words. Maybe the meeting wasn’t going the way she was used to. Dr. Fara looked pleased with herself.

When the video feed returned my jaw dropped. This was someone I recognized, in an office I recognized. This wasn’t president of some small company. This was The President, leader of my entire country.

His ashen face looked like he’d been told a nuclear warhead was on its way to strike the country.

“Dr. Emma Fara,” he said. “You’re looking nice today.”

“Cut the pleasantries, I waaaant my money and diamonds.”

“Of—Of course.” The President nodded. “We are prepared to wire you one hundred million dollars today.”

Dr. Fara’s smile fell. My body itched with panic—she was displeased. I glanced at Alya. Her mouth hung open.

“Your other requests—the rare minerals, the electronics, the Komodo dragons and year’s supply of dragon fruit, we will provide, but it will take time to organize. I hope you understand.” His face grew stony. “We draw the line at weapons-grade plutonium. Do what you will”—he seemed to choke for a second, as if still considering his options. I found myself hoping he would—somehow a happy Fara with plutonium seemed less scary than a simply unhappy Fara. “It cannot be more dangerous than that.”

Dr. Fara’s mouth flapped as if she’d lost her words, like she wasn’t sure where she was. With a shake of her body she rallied, hand up with a grinning cackle.

“You fooools believe I shall be satisfied with this lukewarm response? Pah! If I shan’t have the Plutoooonium, I demand an equal amount of”—she twirled her hand—“moon rocks, yes! That would be sufficient enough to stave off my wrath!” She sneered at the President. “For noooow, anyway.”

The President released his breath.

“Moon rocks, then. We can provide that, provided you stage no attacks.”

“Hmm, yes, this pleeeeases Dr. Fara.” She stroked her chin and grinned. “I belieeeeve my wrath is sufficiently staved. I look forward to doing business with you again, thoooough. Goodbyyyye.”

She ended the call and grew still as stone. I sighed and deflated. Alya looked at me with pursed lips and shrugged.

“I’m sorry!” I broke the silence, hands tight against my chest. “If I’d had just a bit more time, I swear I could’ve tightened the details enough to get you that Plutonium, I just—”

Dr. Fara pointed at me without turning. I couldn’t see a sliver of her face past all that quivering hair.

“C____, come see me in my office. Immediately. Aloooone. Alya, go move all those boxes in the front to storage. Noooow.”

Dr. Fara left. I could hear her shaky breaths. This muted response must have been searing rage. My stomach churned. My brain wanted to rip itself out and flee. From what I saw Dr. Fara do and threaten, a mere firing seemed the least of my worries.

As I stepped to follow, Alya grabbed my shoulder.

“What the hex was that?” she whispered. “Every other meeting she got laughed out of the room, now they’re playing ball?”

I blinked.

“What?”

“C____!” Dr. Fara shouted. “Now!” I jumped and hurried after her, leaving Alya to watch like a lost dog.

I followed Dr. Fara from her office into a cramped side room where electronic equipment covered a few tables. Against one wall stood padded tubes the size of lockers, empty besides one stuffed with electronic scrap and another full of what looked like jelly. The room held a scent I could only imagine as a sugary-sweet sulfuric cake.

“O-Okay,” I said, “I’m—I’m sure I can do better n-next time with more preparation, please—please just give me another chance—”

Dr. Fara gripped my head and slammed me into a kiss.

My vision went dark with her starry hair. I barely realized what happened. All my panicked nerves exploded into overdrive as she squeezed her lips over mine. With one hand she grasped my face like molding clay, and with the other she pulled my hair as if to rip me asunder. I backed away to escape but she held tight and shoved me into an empty tube. My straining nose burned with the acrid scent and a struggle to breathe.

Her kiss didn’t hold the cool void feel of last time—from my perspective, anyway. This had a warm feel, an eager feel, a spicy taste trying to occupy the entirety of my senses. Last time felt calculated. As she stroked her hand along my throat and down my back, and as she pressed against my hips and chest with her lithe body in her tight lab coat, she felt eager, needy, carnal.

Last time the kiss felt like she was trying to control my emotions. This time it felt like her emotions controlled her.

I couldn’t break free from her grasp. My struggle stalled as creamy tendrils wrapped around my head and bound my arms. Fara’s hair felt like a silk shawl with unraveling fabric twisting around me.

My head felt stuffy, the pressure from her warm embrace and guttural moans tightening around my brain. I stopped struggling, though whether because I realized it was pointless or because I was enjoying it I can’t say.

Or maybe I just won’t say.

My body was flush with Fara’s passion. If I could’ve moved my arms I would probably have held her in them, squeezed her back and held her closer by her smooth butt, which even now pressed against my thighs as what I assumed to be her legs wrapped around me, though they curled more like tentacles.

It was difficult to think about anything but Fara’s star-supple lips, her luscious tongue sliding around mine like a tentacle, her soft hair curled around me like a blanket.

She thrust her hand from my throat to smack a button outside the tube. With a hiss, a padded cover encased the tube, squeezing Dr. Fara even tighter against me as the confined space pressed us closer. I believed I felt her every bone, her every muscle flexing against my soft body. I don’t think I’d have been able to move even if Dr. Fara hadn’t bound me. She seemed to slither her body like fluid to grope my shoulders, chest, thighs, anywhere she wanted, regardless of the fact we had less space than under a bed.

My head hurt. I wasn’t sure I was breathing. Somehow that seemed okay.

Dr. Fara released the kiss and I gasped like I’d sank underwater.

I wailed when she pressed in for another kiss. This quick peck left me with some air after, but her grip on me only tightened. My lungs burned like my tongue and brain.

“That was amaaaazing,” Dr. Fara murmured into my ear, so low I felt my blood buzz. “Gourd, how I loooove watching people cower in terror before me.” She tapped my nose and grinned as if about to play with a doll by pulling it to pieces. “And you helped make that possible.”

“I—I don’t”—understand, I wanted to say, but Dr. Fara squeezed my mouth, which made my brain buzz almost as hard as her kiss. She grimaced.

“I haaaate to admit it, but every time I’ve had one of those meetings those fools”—her fingers dug into my face—“laughed me away.” I tried to stomp out the part of my head that wanted her fingers to dig deeper. “They didn’t understand the power I hold, the destruction I can wrought.” She grinned, eyes bright as stars, and she squeezed me like clay, my lips puckered and cheeks round. “You finally made it clear to them who they were dealing with. You worked more editing magic than I ever imaaaagined.” She squeezed me tighter and tighter, grin growing more manic. “And seeing them cower—in feeeear—just—makes—me—soooo—”

With a moan she smooched me again. I felt cool goo rise around me, squeezed in our tight tube confines, but I couldn’t move to see if Fara started filling the tube with sticky goo or if I was melting under her grip. I felt like her kiss filled me with goo, my thoughts sticky with her passion. She popped out of the kiss.

“I look foooorward,” she said, “to a fruitful relaaaationship.”

“A working relationship,” I gurgled, one eye twitched shut, “or—” Tendrils squirmed into my mouth, forcing it open.

My mouth filled with writhing tentacles, cold and numbing as ice, gooey as syrup, binding my tongue, exploring and stroking my mouth. My throat chilled, my stomach icy. My vision blurred in and out, and my mind teetered to collapse.

“Thaaaat,” Dr. Fara said, her grin as wild as an erupting volcano, “is up to meeee to decide. I am in control here.”