Day 1

Thanks to the incompetence of a captain who probably should have been shot by his oversight officer weeks ago, I've been captured by the Affini. The good news is, they don't seem to know who or what I am. This gives me the advantage.

First order of business: establish a psychological baseline. The enemy will undoubtedly employ various techniques designed to break the will and collect intel. This can be countered by maintaining a mental record of events, a self-narrative, to prevent gaslighting and other such tactics. This is essential for maintaining stability in captivity. So, baseline.

I am Lieutenant Wolfgang Locke, OCNI agent, currently serving undercover in a supporting role to Commander Donovan Killick as an enlisted spacer aboard TCNS Without Mercy, a heavy missile-boat cruiser. It was my role to monitor the lower ranks for any signs of defeatist sentiment, or (following our first few encounters with the enemy) any sign that psychological warfare tactics employed by the Affini were gaining any purchase on the minds of susceptible crew members. (I don't particularly enjoy the task of pretending to be "one of the boys," or really the work of interacting with others at all, but it's necessary for the mission, and according to testing I have high aptitudes for rapidly adopting mannerisms to infiltrate close-knit groups. If it allows me to serve the purposes of the OCNI, I don't suppose I can complain.)

Without Mercy engaged the Affini as part of the 21st Fleet (Corvus Sector) over Pi Sagittarii A-VII. As my cover identity was stationed in the gunnery support bay, I wasn't privy to the details of the battle; however, roughly two hours and sixteen minutes after general quarters was sounded, the ship experienced an impact event that, in retrospect, was very likely likely the ship being speared by one of the enemy's tentacles. In the subsequent attempt to repel boarders, I was able to secure a gas mask and resist. However, I was ultimately I was taken prisoner after one of the aliens struck me with some kind of needle, probably loaded with a highly potent tranquilizer.

I woke up in what turned out to be some kind of hospital room, heavily drugged. This was my first contact with the enemy in a non-combat situation, allowing me to observe their movement and general physical makeup more closely. The Affini appear to not have an endoskeleton, or at least, not a permanent one, but rather construct them in situ and support themselves through, I suspect, hydrostatic pressure. This allows them to rapidly reconfigure their bodies, something that will need to be accounted for in anti-boarding actions in the future. Slug-throwers and shock batons did very little to deter them. Cutting tools, especially powered ones, may be more effective.

I've been informed that, because I was captured in a combat situation and used force to resist, I'm scheduled for "domestication." No, be specific, agent. OCNI interrogation resistance techniques require specificity. The exact language used was, "Don't worry, little petal, once you're domesticated all of these worries and all that stress will be gone!"

The drugs they'd given me were still wearing off, so my memory of that period of time is a bit suspect, but those words, and the cheerful condescension that came with them, I remember very clearly.

I'm now in a habitat belonging to an Affini named Ginnala Koriannon, Fourth Bloom. It is an absolute disaster of a space, with various papers and tools and unidentifiable things strewn everywhere — apparently, according to her, these are art supplies. She's an artist.

These aliens have an artist on a combat vessel. Stars, how are we having so much trouble fighting these things off?

Specificity. The space isn't just a disaster: it's a disaster with a central area that looks like some kind of luxury living space, complete with a sofa, table, viewscreen, and kitchen. There are used palettes, easels with half-finished paintings of alien landscapes, wall hangings with animated diagrams of something with far too many legs dancing in circles — and all of it is twice the size it should be, all scaled to fit the enormous plant woman keeping me prisoner.

This central area branches off into several smaller rooms, though I use the term loosely, since they're all built to the same gigantic scale. There is a studio, nearly the size of the common area, and somehow even messier, with even more half-finished works of absolutely horrid art, sculpture, and more. The floor in there is almost invisible under a layer of discarded tools, papers, and what I very much hope is spilled paint. Apart from that, she has a "lab" that I'm not allowed in (whatever an artist needs a lab for, I have no earthly idea), an absurdly luxurious bathroom tiled in at least five different styles that all manage to clash with one another, and a surprisingly normal looking bedroom that is nevertheless bigger than my entire assigned bunk section on Without Mercy. The bed is just as outsized as the one in the hospital room — you could fit half a dozen people on it and no one would feel cramped.

I should fix an image of Ginnala herself in my mind as well. I estimate her height to be about three and a half meters, and she is roughly humanoid in shape. She mostly seems to be composed of a dark green foliage, highly disheveled despite being compressed into a parody of a feminine shape by constricting vines. Thick sprays of pink and white flowers erupt from her head in a mockery of tousled hair. She has legs, but covers them in a hanging curtain of vines that interweave to create something like a very long and swishy skirt. Her face is like a segmented wooden mask composed of many segments, which allows her animate them into reasonable approximations of Terran expressions, and while it mostly seems to match proportionally (at least, enough for pareidolia to fill in the gaps), she has a third eye in the center of her forehead that ensures I'll never forget she's an alien.

"This is your new home, flower, so explore, investigate, find yourself!" she told me, and the strangest thing is, she sounded almost indulgent and excited about the prospect of keeping me prisoner here.

Well, it won't be for long. Once these drugs wear off, I'm out of here. The first duty of a captured officer is escape.

Day 3

Well, that didn't work.

My initial investigation of the habitat found that the front door was sealed, and the annoying cutesy-voiced AI refused to open it for me. I was unable to locate any other means of egress — the windows all show impossible views of space, considering this entire ship rotates to create artificial gravity (I estimate 0.8g or so; I haven't had the opportunity to test this for a more accurate result), so I'm confident they're all actually extremely high-fidelity vidscreens. I spent the intervening couple of days as the drugs wore off feigning acceptance while searching for an appropriate tool with which to effect an escape, which I found in the alien's "studio." I don't know how she feeds herself or affords a place like this, because I can't imagine anyone buying the hideous shit in there, but at least I found a power tool of some kind lying around. I think it may be some kind of chisel, but it served perfectly fine as a drill to get into the wall of the habitat and cross a few wires to short out the door's control circuits.

Unfortunately, I only got about a hundred meters away before the plant chased me down. The device was less useful as a weapon than I'd hoped, and did very little damage to the thing's vines before she immobilized me — by which I mean, drugged me into a stupor. When I woke up, I had handcuffs on. Not proper handcuffs that keep your wrists locked together, but thin ribbon-like things that, nevertheless, resist all attempts to tamper with them by numbing the limbs entirely — and if that doesn't work, they can even induce unconsciousness. This poses a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

The plant, Ginnala, acted very aggrieved at my escape attempt, as if I'd done it specifically to spite her, but ultimately hasn't changed anything else about her routine. Every day she wakes up, cooks breakfast for me (having sampled it, I don't believe it's drugged — they could drug me anytime they want, anyway, and having calories is better than not), goes to work on whatever artist bullshit has captured her imagination for the day, breaks to make lunch, goes back to "work" (usually changing subjects and mediums entirely), and comes back to make dinner. I have yet to see her consume anything except water, so all this cooking seems to be entirely for my benefit. In fits and starts she either aggressively "cuddles" me and/or attempts to engage me in what she calls "very necessary human enrichment," which is to say she tries to make me solve puzzles, join her in her waste-of-time art, and so on. She has, unfortunately, also insisted on bathing me. Not telling me to bathe — actively bathing me against my will. Like the Affini who boarded Without Mercy, she's ferociously strong, much stronger than me, and though I resisted it ultimately didn't so much as slow her down. While she was at it, she also forcibly brushed my teeth. Then, she gave me a hideous set of extremely brightly colored clothes to wear. Humiliating, yes, but that's part of their interrogation protocol too, no doubt. Break the will with humiliation, open the door to escape with superficial kindnesses. Knowing that, it's far less effective.

To be honest, it feels like she's treating me as a pet more than a captive. It's clearly some kind of interrogation technique, but I have no idea how it's meant to operate. It's not like positive reinforcement interrogation, where you get the subject to identify with you — no self-respecting Terran would be drawn in by this nonsense. Having made it clear I have no interest in her attempts at "enrichment," she's declared me a "solitary and withdrawn type" and "very inspirational," which has if nothing else given me time to myself to continue to figure out a way out of this place. I have some ideas for how to beat the handcuffs. Will test them shortly.

Day 5

Fuck.

Alright, while cutting off circulation to my hands using improvised tourniquets did prevent the handcuffs from knocking me out, it also set off some kind of integrated alarm system. I had half a dozen plants on me in minutes, which wasn't nearly enough to saw through even one of the handcuffs with a palette knife. They were all very worried, and now I have a collar of the same substance as the handcuffs around my neck. Good luck trying to tourniquet that, I imagine they're thinking.

They clearly have advanced biological tech. If I can get these handcuffs back to the Accord, they might be able to reverse engineer them, maybe synthesize antidotes to the Affini's knockout gas. That would be extremely valuable to the war effort. I have to get out of here first, though. I'm rapidly running out of actionable ideas, but all the chemicals and weird pigments lying around the studio have given me one that I think will work.

Day 8

I am now in possession of several rudimentary pipe bombs, and I'm sure Ginnala hasn't noticed anything untoward — she's so disorganized I could probably stack them in the middle of the common room and she wouldn't notice. Even if she did notice, I could probably convince her that it's some kind of obscure Terran mode of art.

The logic here is simple. I've noticed that, more than anything, the Affini are hyper-protective of their captives, to a degree that renders them easily vulnerable to emotional manipulation. One bomb will be used to breach the habitat and effect an escape. The others will be used both to fend off Affini pursuit and to, in extremis, threaten self-harm. This is a bluff, but one they won't call. Using this, I'll make my way to the ship's hangar, commandeer a jump-capable vessel (Without Mercy, if she's still spaceworthy), and make my escape. If I can, I'll liberate other Terrans along the way — the more of us that get out, the likelier it is that I make it away.

The enemy has had some success in keeping me captive thus far, but I am a highly trained operative, a human machine designed to perform my tasks efficiently and without fail. I will escape.

The operation begins tonight at 1700.

Day ?

When I wake up, I can't move. I can't move. I can't move.

I'm lying on something soft, possibly the bed in my bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. A quick inventory of my body reveals no obvious injuries or pains, and I can definitely feel my entire body, so I haven't suffered some kind of spinal trauma — I just can't move. I try to make myself blink, but nothing happens — eventually, my eyelids move in a slow blink of their own accord. With effort, I can shift my gaze, but it's a slow thing. I'm breathing on my own, at least, and I can feel my heartbeat, slow and steady. I lay there for a long moment, terrified, trying to figure out what had happened, and that's when Ginnala begins to speak.

"You, my petal, have been very, very naughty," she says. I swing my gaze around and finally find her at the foot of the bed, all three and a half meters of her, wispy antennae probing the air, all three of her eyes staring right back at me. "Explosives, petal? Explosives?" She sighs, crosses her arms, and shakes her head — she had always had weirdly human expressions, but it stands out all the more now that I can't react. All I can do is watch, observe, take note, and remember.

"I suppose this is what happens when you trust your pet to find their own enrichment," she adds, leaning down and lifting me up off the bed effortlessly. There's that square-cube law for you — I must mass less than an eighth of what she does. Ginnala presses me up against her chest, my face mashing into her foliage as I feel her vines coil around my limbs. I try to resist, but my body refuses to listen. "I'm sorry, sweetie. That won't be a problem anymore, I promise. I'm going to be taking very direct care of you from now on, and I'm going to be getting you a connivent to help keep you company. You clearly aren't as solitary as I thought you were!"

What the fuck have you done to me?! I scream in my own head. And what the fuck is a connivent?! Strange that, agitated though I am, my heart keeps on steadily beating, my chest rises and falls slowly, as if I'm totally relaxed.

And, strangely enough, she somehow notices, raising one fake eyebrow. "Agitated, are we? Well, don't you worry, flower, we'll get you up and moving again soon, but for now you're going to be staying just the way you are. You clearly need a little time to decompress from all the awful things your fellow terrans did to you, and the haustoric implant needs to grow in a little more, but once it does, I think I'll show you why I'm considered one of the best bioaugmentation engineers on the ship. How exactly... well, I'll just have wait for inspiration to strike." She must be able to read my confusion somehow, because she smiles in what she clearly thinks is a tender fashion and continues, stroking my head with one hand as she does so. "The haustoric implant is a little bit of very important biotech. You have one implanted in your spine now, and it's done laying down its roots. It has a little piece my core inside, isn't that sweet? Eventually, it'll replace your entire peripheral nervous system, and help regulate your moods and thoughts as well as your endocrine balance. You're going to feel better than you ever have before, so don't fret, little one."

Mind control. That was how they did it. It wasn't just drugs they used to turn captives into pliant slaves, it was actual, literal mind control implants. And now I have one of those things inside me.

No. Don't panic. Do not panic. Just because they put something in my spine doesn't mean they can control me. Mind over matter. They may have locked down my body but they made a big mistake when they left my mind wide awake. OCNI anti-interrogation training will get me through this, and when she lets me move again, I'll be ready.

Specificity. Details. Remember everything. Track everything. Don't let the implant lie to you.

Day ?+1

I don't remember much else that happened yesterday. Ginnala took me into her lab — I suppose she finds it safe enough for me now that I can't move. It was a totally different space, every surface clean and everything neatly arranged, and absolutely filled with strange devices that seemed half-grown in place. It was so orderly I began to wonder if I was hallucinating from the drugs she put me on. Apart from what were clearly viewscreens, I couldn't identify anything in there. She laid me down on her desk and then...

Come on, Locke. Remember. What happened next? There was something about her eyes, and her voice...

No. I still can't crack it. Void take the fucking plant, I have no idea what happened after that at all. I just woke up this morning, and a new layer of hell began almost immediately. Ginnala came in only moments after I regained consciousness, cooed over me, and spent at least fifteen minutes petting me. Then, she carried me out to the kitchen and cooked breakfast for me: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, all cut up into tiny pieces and fed to me bit by bit, my jaw working on its own under the direction of a few taps and gentle massages from Ginnala's vines. I had no control over any of it: my body simply responded like a machine following instructions fed into it. Once she was finished feeding me, she took me to the bathroom.

"Now, isn't this better than struggling?" she said as she bathed me — and this time, I couldn't resist. She washed every inch of my body, and now that I couldn't fight back she was being incredibly gentle with me. She used some kind of soap that left my skin tingling and hypersensitive, to the point that– Fuck. This is humiliating, but specificity. Whatever's in that soap, it's clearly some kind of aphrodisiac, because I ended up extremely turned on. The feeling lingered even after the bath, and her toweling me off was like a kind of erotic torture.

"So much nicer, so much comfier~" It was her refrain throughout the process of dressing me, not in the same hideously overbright clothes she'd forced on me but a dress, an actual I-swear-I'm-not-making-this-up dress, a light pink thing almost the exact same color as Ginnala's flower-hair. She even added stockings, which, drugged as I was, nearly knocked me unconscious, and bright red heels that she took a great deal of time enthusiastically showing off to me. She followed that with a chestnut-brown wig. I can feel the weight of the hair on my shoulders and my back.

The drugs are the real thin end of the wedge, I'm realizing. I've got to keep my mind clear and focused. If anything begins to break down my resistance, it's going to be these drugs. Apart from the soap she she used on me, I'm on something called "Class-M xenodrugs," and that's what's keeping me not-quite-paralyzed. I can't move voluntarily, but I can hold whatever pose Ginnala fixes me in. Somehow, she can even leave me standing and I maintain balance. Apparently I've gone from pet to doll in her mind.

But that's the thing: despite all she's done, she hasn't cracked me yet. The enemy's biochemistry technology may be highly advanced, but I have either overestimated or greatly underestimated Ginnala's abilities as an interrogator, because while this is embarrassing, frustrating, humiliating, it's ultimately endurable.

Or at least, it was endurable, when it was just her seeing it. Just a moment ago, the hab AI announced that someone was at the door. Ginnala walked away for a moment, leaving me on the sofa in the common room. I heard conversation, but couldn't make out any words. When she came back, she picked me up and set me down on the floor, straightening out my legs and leaving me in a standing position.

"Oh wow. She really can't move?" There's a human standing in front of me, staring right into my eyes in the most uncomfortable manner imagine. She's heavyset, but it's evident she has a strong build underneath it, with a brown mop of hair cut to chin length and either naturally dark skin or a very deep tan. I estimate her to be a couple of inches shorter than me, not counting my heels. Her eyes are a murky brown, and she looks totally at ease despite being in the clutches of the enemy. She wears clothes that imply rough work, perhaps some sort of low-end trade labor. She definitely talks like a colonial. The Cygnus accent is very noticeable.

"Not a bit," Ginnala says, leaning down and smiling at me. "But we can pose her and play with her however we like. Just remember, Ella, be nice to her, she's had some very hard experiences and this time as a doll is to help her get used to the way things are now, and to give the Class-G cocktail she's on time to work." More xenodrugs she's mentioned having me on, but apart from "they'll make your body feel better," I have no idea what that means.

"Okay, Mistress," Ella says easily, leaning into the alien.

A fellow Terran seeing me this way makes it ten times more humiliating than the alien doing it to me. I want to throttle the fucking plant, but all I can do is stand there placidly. This Ella is clearly a traitor — when she turns away for a moment to give Ginnala a tentative kiss, her short-cut hair reveals no sign of a recent surgery on the back of her neck. I'd heard about the tendency in OCNI briefings, but I never thought I'd see it for myself: Terrans willingly giving themselves up to the Affini. Cowards, communists, and perverts, the lot, and now I was sharing a habitat with one.

"I love her outfit," Ella says, looking back at me. "Did you design that?"

"I did," Ginnala says proudly. "And I have lots of other ideas for her — but you're welcome to add to the pile. Inspiration is inspiration, no matter where it comes from!"

"Oooh, really?" Ella says, clapping her hands excitedly.

"And not just clothing, either," Ginnala adds. "Let your imagination run wild, petal, because anything you can think of, I'm sure we can do it to her! She's such a perfect canvas, isn't she?"

"Mmhmm! Oh gosh, oh stars!" The traitor practically jumps up and down with glee at the idea of being able to participate in my humiliation for a moment before she steps forward and takes my hand. I'm still feeling whatever those bath drugs were, and her touch is an electric jolt of warmth that runs up my arm and sends my mind reeling. "Hi, I'm Ella! I'm gonna be your connivent! Oh, shoot, I just realized," she adds, turning back to Ginnala. "What's her name?"

"Ah, well, that's a sticking point," Ginnala says, tapping her chin in thought and gazing off into the distance. "She needs a new one, obviously, but I'm still lacking that flowering of inspiration. That and, well, I don't know much about terran names, so I'm not sure what's appropriate." I watch her gaze slowly shift back down at Ella. "Buuuuut, I do love a good collaboration. Maybe this can be our first!"

Ella's eyes light up. "I get to pick her name?! Oh gosh, oh gosh!" She laughs and squeezes my hand — another burst of impossible pleasure. "Well...she's clearly a real classy lady," she continues as I struggle to get my bearings, "so she needs a classy name! Hmmm..." By the time I'm finally able to concern myself with things like my surroundings, she's staring right into my eyes. I can see the little golden flecks in her irises, the subtle contractions and dilations of her pupils. Then, she leans back, a wide grin on her face. "I've got it!"

"Oooh! Ooh!" Ginnala leans down next to Ella, a long and thick vine caressing her — she shudders, but not in disgust. "Tell me!"

Ella bites her lip. "Look at her, Mistress. She's such an Imogen!"

Stars. They're both out of their fucking minds.

Day 31 (Day ?+4)

Good news: I know how long I've been here again.

Bad news: I know this because I gleaned it from conversation between Ginnala and one of her flaky alien plant friends. She dragged me along (carried me, obviously, since I still can't move), all done up in the girliest shit imaginable, wig styled courtesy Ella who was tagging along at the end of a vine connected to her collar. The other Affini's habitat was laid out in a similar fashion to Ginnala's, but was much cleaner. At least half of the visit consisted entirely of showing me and Ella off — me, by handing me off to be cuddled by a thorny-looking thing named Fulgida, Ella by having her show off a portfolio of things she's been drawing. Turns out the little traitor is an artist too. No wonder she wound up with Ginnala. Apparently, she's also into an ancient Terran craft called "clockwork," which she demonstrated with a little toy fish she'd made: she set it down on the table, wound it up with a little key, and it did a little dance.

Fulgida managed not to stick me with a single one of her myriad barbs when she was holding me. Small favors, I suppose. "She's so cute," the cactus-thing purred, two of its arms holding on to me while a third stroked my head through my wig. "But I know you, you're nowhere near finished. You have ideas about this girl, don't you?"

Ginnala just laughed. "Oh, a few, but I'm giving Ella a chance to think on it as well, come up with some ideas of her own. She's so creative!"

"Ahhhh. The only thing better than inspiration is collaboration!" Fulgida agreed, giving me a squeeze. She wouldn't set me down for at least an hour, and when she did, Ginnala immediately snapped me and Ella up and pressed us together in her lap. Ella basically spooned in with me, happy as can be. I, of course, merely endured it.

I lose track of things there. I know the party went on, and I know Ginnala and Fulgida said their goodbyes around dusk (such as it is on this weird cylinder-ship), and Ginnala carried me home. I know all of that, but I don't precisely remember it. Time has a way of playing tricks on me now. Whether that's the drugs or the implant or both, I can't be certain, but I've found myself tuning out, especially when left on my own, though that isn't something that happens often — usually either Ginnala or Ella is tormenting me, if not the both of them. Sometimes, though, they both get drawn into their art, and I'm left to passively watch, and when that or something like it happens I just sort of stop thinking after a while. Stars, maybe it's just my own brain trying to keep me from snapping under the weight of being unable to move.

There's something else going on, though, I know it. Ginnala and Ella are careful not to talk about it around me, but I see them whispering to one another and casting glances at me with big, big grins on their faces. Fucking traitor. If I could move...

...shit. Tuned out again. Where was I? Was I talking about my body? Because it's changing slowly. I should make a clear note of that. It's so slow I hadn't noticed until now, but between glimpses of myself in the mirror and the casual touches that both Ella and Ginnala are so fond of, I've noticed a few things. My arms are definitely slimmer, but that could just me from being knocked out for weeks on end post-surgery. My skin, though — why would my skin be so soft and sensitive? Maybe that's drugs, too. The Class-Gs, maybe. I know the thing in my neck is secreting them, since that's where the Class-M comes from.

They're talking more. Oh stars, what are they going to do to me next?

Day ??

Oh no. It happened again. I'm waking up in a slowly ebbing haze of drugs, and I can feel that I've been out for a while. What's worse, something different in my body. I don't know what — without being able to move, I can't feel it out, but something is different about my back, I can tell. I feel the now-familiar whisper-fine tickle of Ginnala's antennae on my body as my eyes flutter open. "Oh, here she comes, Ella!" I hear her say. "Are you ready?"

"Never been more ready!" she said, cackling excitedly. Stars, I hate her.

With inhuman precision, Ginnala levers me up, first to a sitting position, then to a standing position. There's a moment of dizziness, but it passes as she sets me down on the floor next to Ella — Ella, in her paint-spattered apron, jumping up and down with excitement like she does every time something humiliating happens to me. Fucking traitor.

"Alright, watch carefully, flower," Ginnala says, kneeling down next to her. She reaches inside her own body (stars, I hate when they do that, it's so disturbing) and pulls out something that looks impossibly small and delicate in her hands, but which would be the size of a dinner plate in mine. It's some kind of polished metal tool, two flat discs of gold with a delicate filigree and a single cylindrical shaft projecting out from between them. It's almost like a key of some kind, but to what? "I'll do it this time, but in the future you'll get to as well, okay?"

"Okay, Mistress!" She bites her lip and watches, not even daring to blink as the alien reaches around my back. What the hell is she going to do back there? It's the last thought I have before it happens.

I feel something cold against the small of my back for just a moment as the key touches skin. Then, it finds what it's looking for, a kind of notch or opening or something in the middle of my fucking back. It slides inside and I gasp involuntarily as I'm penetrated. It's the first sound I've made in weeks, and it sounds breathy and feeble, but I'm not thinking about that — I'm thinking about the sudden jolt of electric, tingling pleasure I'm feeling radiating up and down my spine and arcing to every nerve I have.

And then she begins to turn the key, and it gets worse. I hear a click-click-click-click-click from inside me, rattling up my back and into my ears from within. I feel something turning inside me, a tension growing and growing and growing, and with it the charge of pleasure grows in kind. I gasp again and again in fits and starts, my vocal cords finally engaging as I let out a barely audible staccato moan. The voice that comes out of me is not my voice. I feel like I'm just about to hit my climax when it stops and just leaves me hanging there.

And then Ginnala lets go of the key, and it immediately begins to slowly turn back the the other way. The tension inside me begins to unwind, and I feel something strange rush through me, starting from the key and reaching down into my limbs.

And suddenly, just like that, I can move. Not well, not smoothly. Maybe it's because of how long I've been inactive, but all my movements have a jerky, mechanical quality to them, like I'm pushing too hard and having to stop myself short. I lift my hands and look down at them, delicate and perfectly manicured, the skin soft and smooth like I've never worked a day in my life. I take a step, and somehow don't tumble ass over teakettle to the floor despite the heels they've stuck me in. I can move again. I look down at the scanty black dress with a white apron — oh stars, they've got me in a fucking maid outfit?! Still, the elation at actually being able to move overrides any worries for a few perfectly-on-tempo heartbeats.

"Ohmystars ohmystars ohmystars she's perfect!" Ella cries, laughing and hugging Ginnala. "Thank you thank you thank you thank you!"

"It was a lovely idea, flower, and one I never would have had if I hadn't learned about clockwork toys from you!" the alien says, stroking Ella with a pleased look on her face. "Now, Imogen?"

The elation is beginning to fade now. After all this bullshit, I'm ready to give this plant a piece of my mind. What? What the fuck do you want, weed?

"Mistress?" The voice that comes out of me is high, delicate, and extremely feminine. It is, again, not my voice, and that is not what I tried to say.

"Oh, very good girl!" she immediately says, reaching out and petting my hair. Huh. That didn't feel like the wig feels when she pets it. I reach up and touch my hair — it's shorter than the wig, but it's almost still down to my shoulders, and when I tug on it, I feel my scalp protest.

What the fuck have you done to me? How long was I out? But all that comes out of my mouth is a confused "Mistress?" It's like my mouth is moving on its own. I can will myself to talk, but not control what comes out. My heart is still steady on beat, thump thump thump, in perfect time with the soft, slow click, click, click.

She leans in close, and I can feel her presence vibrating inside me. "Everbloom, but you're adorable, Imogen, you know that?" I say nothing — I'm not going to feed into their humiliation techniques — but her probing antennae almost immediately go stiff, and she adds, "Imogen, when Mistress speaks to you, you answer. Is that understood?"

Something wells up from inside, an irrepressible urge to say something, anything. "Yes, Mistress!" I answer cheerfully.

"Good girl," she repeats, giving my hair another gentle stroke.

"Can I try, Mistress?" Ella says, glomming onto me. Wait, something's wrong — she was shorter than me when she first showed up, but now she's looking right into my eyes, and I'm wearing heels. "What's your name, sweetie?" she coos.

"Answer her, pet," Ginnala says when I try to remain silent.

"Hi, I'm Imogen!" Hearing myself say that is almost the most mortifying thing about this, but then Ella lets her hand rest on my key, and I can feel it. It sends shivers up and down my body as the slow unspooling of tension inside me slows and grows unreliable, my body jerking helplessly. I try to push her away but I can't — it's as if some invisible object has interspersed itself between us. The traitor holds on tight.

"Don't you worry, I'm going to take such good care of you!" Ella says happily. "You're so perfect! You're the best toy a girl could hope for!"

Day 54 (Day ??+3)

The first day was all fun and games for them, cooing over me and laughing, winding me up every time I wound down; the second was taken up entirely by Ginnala running "diagnostics" on me in her lab, a process that left me fading in and out of consciousness for most of the day. Whenever I was up, I was still only half-aware — she was talking to me, but I don't remember any of her words, only her eyes and the sounds she made beneath her speech. I have no idea what she did to me while I was under, but I don't feel any different.

I've learned a few things about this wound-up state, gleaned from conversation and experience. Apparently, the key is connected to some kind of biomechanical organ in my back which, when stimulated, releases a counteragent to the Class-M that keeps me frozen. My movement is still mechanical and awkward because of some kind of "neurokinesthetic modifications" Ginnala made. The feeling and sound of clockwork is purely for aesthetic purposes, as well as "enrichment." Fucking enrichment. Fucking weed.

Still, when I'm wound up, I can move. Depending on how much they wind me up, I can get anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple hours of movement, but I haven't figured out yet how much time one turn of the key equates to. It's honestly pretty hard to follow what they're giving me — the arousal it causes is extremely distracting. I've tried to reach around to wind the key by myself, but it's placed perfectly to keep me from getting a grip on it. Either that, or Ginnala's programmed my body to be unable to.

And there is programming, I know that. I've been testing the limits of my activity ever since I waas unable to push Ella off of me, but so far all I've determined is that I don't seem to be able to intentionally break anything or hurt anyone. My body just seizes up whenever to try — I can't even drop a plate.

I've also been exploring my lexicon, which is very, very limited. So far, I've managed to make myself say the following words: "Mistress," "Hi," "Yes," "Imogen Koriannon, First Floret" (and variations thereupon), "Please," and "Thank you." There may be more, but I haven't managed to figure out what combination of words and emotional state inside my head equates to what words I actually say. There may not be a correlation.

Being able to move means I can explore Ginnala's habitat again, and also gave me the opportunity to finally look at myself in the mirror and see what the weed's done to me in detail. I don't look anything like I used to. The muscle mass has all been replaced with the beginnings of soft curves, my hair is down to my shoulders (and soft, why is it so soft?!), and while I can almost recognize a shadow of my former self in my face, I never had eyes this big or lips this full. Fuck. I look really, really hot.

I mean. If I saw a woman who looked like this, she'd be hot. Fuck. I shouldn't look in the mirror, it confuses me. Don't do the enemy's work for them, Locke.

Anyway. Apart from the sheer joy of being able to move (something I shouldn't be able to do, considering I've been immobile for almost two months at this point, but who fucking knows what else the weed did to me), I can finally start doing something about how filthy this habitat is. It was useful for trying to find tools and other means of escape early on, yes, but having to stare at it for days upon days upon days got old fast. I may be trapped here, and the weed and her traitor friend may be able to rewrite and program my body according to their whims, but I can still exercise some degree of control over my environment. Exercise whatever degree of control you can — that's how you maintain your sense of self, how you fight back against psychological breakdown during interrogation.

So I spent most of my wound-up time today picking up junk, and either organizing it or decompiling it — that doesn't seem to count as breaking things, at least things I pick up off of the floor or from where they're not supposed to be. Ginnala and Ella seemed to think it was hilarious, because they never stopped giggling and whispering to each other, but they don't realize that this is how I'm fighting back against them. I managed to make a not-insignificant dent in the mess, at least in the studio they were working in. No longer was navigating it an ordeal of picking one's way through, looking for clear spaces to put one's feet. There was still a lot to do, though, and then there was the entire rest of the habitat besides.

I could get it done in a few days, probably. Assuming they wind me up enough.

Day 65

The vanity is handmade, not compiled. Well, the wood was compiled, and the mirror itself, but Ella was the one who cut it all into the appropriate shapes, joined it all up, sealed and painted it a soft pale-pink, and mounted the mirror and a ring of soft natural-lighting LEDs in it. It looks professionally-made. I knew she was good with little intricate machines, like the little wind-up toys that clearly inspired what I've become, but I didn't know she was a carpenter on top of it.

She made the stool I'm sitting on, too, just for fun. I can feel the brush against my scalp as she works it through my hair, untangling and smoothing it out. She was the one who carried me in here, not Ginnala — she swept me up in a perfect wedding carry, and off we went. I don't know if it's because she's stronger than I gave her credit for, or if I've just lost that much weight from slimming down and losing height, but she did it without much effort.

Every so often, she'll adjust my posture, tilt my head, move me around with a casual ease. It doesn't feel weird to me anymore. After two-plus weeks of this — longer, I suppose, but I wasn't awake for most of it — I've gotten used to it. I don't know if that's a sign that the interrogation technique is finally starting to work on me, or if I've become inured to it. Her touch is strong, but gentle and precise. She almost never needs to make a readjustment once she's moved me. Makes sense, for someone who works with such delicate things for fun.

The entire time Ella's working on my hair, I'm staring at myself in the mirror. The Class-Gs — that's definitely what's changing me, I know that now — are really doing their job. It's getting to the point where I can't see a single trace of the man I used to be, and what's weirder, I don't feel upset in the slightest about it. It's like that first time I looked in the mirror and just marveled at how hot I was, and I've only gotten hotter since.

Fuck. I look really good. I shouldn't, but I do.

And Ella, despite being the sort of woman who doesn't put a lot of effort into her own appearance, definitely knows her way around personal grooming and makeup, because she does an incredible job on me. Her touch is subtle, almost invisible contouring and barely noticeable dustings of blush and eyeliner, but it somehow has an incredible impact. She calls me her "pretty little canvas," and I always feel a weird shiver whenever she does. And then there's the way she cares for my hair — it's just long enough to braid, now, and Ella loves to braid my hair. I'll be honest, I sort of like the feeling of it. It's meditative in a way that just being still isn't.

I find myself almost enjoying these moments we share and I can't understand why. Ella's a traitor, a degenerate who abandoned her own species to live as the pet of an alien invader — I should be livid every second she's around. I used to be! What's changed? Has Ginnala been toying with my brain? Or is Ella the good cop to Ginnala's bad... well, not bad, but flaky and condescending cop? Shit. Maybe their techniques are starting to bear fruit.

"You know," Ella says, stroking my hair lovingly, "I always wonder what you're thinking when I'm doing this." She catches my eyes in the mirror and smiles. She leans down, wrapping her arms around my neck and shoulders like a big, warm cloak, and plants the gentlest of kisses on the crown of my head. "I feel so lucky to be here with you."

I feel a tug at my heartstrings as she says it. Shit. She's good at this. She sounds genuine, more genuine than I ever managed to sound in the field. Maybe she is genuine, at least as far as she thinks — she has an implant, too. She got it put in while Ginnala was putting in my clockwork. Maybe she's just a sockpuppet for Ginnala, but frankly, I don't think Ginnala could act human if she tried. Ella's barely changed from before she had hers put in, and what little did change could easily be put down to being able to just ply her artistic trades as she likes instead of having to deal with things like wartime rationing or the employment market. Why give someone who volunteered a mind control implant anyway? And then, once you have, why not mind control her?

It didn't make sense. Nothing the Affini did made sense. What did they benefit from this? Me, it's obvious: they want a source of intel. But Ella doesn't know anything, she's just a random artist from a random colony world somewhere in Cygnus, and if they're not using her as a catspaw against me, then...why is she here?'

I don't understand it. I just don't understand it. If she's really just this nice, why is she here, and why is she helping Ginnala do this to me?

Day 79

Another day, another excruciating "party" with some of Ginnala's flaky art friends. This is the second one this week already, and every time it's "Oh, look at how precious Imogen is," and "I love what you've done with her nootropic cascade array!" Every time, I get picked up and handled, and by handled I mean groped, by a bunch of giant flirty plants. They always manage to get my breasts (can these please be done growing yet? They're plenty big already!), no matter how they grab me. They're doing it on purpose, I know, probably for "enrichment purposes." It's always fucking enrichment with them.

This time, at least, they managed to talk about something of actual intelligence value: fleet maneuvers. I try to ignore the pawing at me and pay attention, hoping that I can pick up something useful that I can relay back to Terra when I escape, but I swear Ginnala told them all the spots that would make me squirm if I could fucking move, because they will not leave me alone for a second. I'm getting nothing done, getting worked up without any relief, and it's so frustrating I could cry. I don't cry — that's something I don't have control over, apparently, but I feel like I could at any moment. How the fuck have I become so useless?

Thank the stars for Ella's short attention span. She begs the key from Ginnala, and Fulgida sets me down on the floor (she still hasn't stuck me once, somehow) for her to wind me up. Click-click-click-click-click. They all pause to appreciate the show — they love the noises I make whenever I'm wound up. It's so humiliating, but I can't hold it in. When I can finally move, she takes me by the wrist and leads me off into the studio — which, I'm happy to report, I have managed to keep in good order for several days now, despite Ginnala and Ella discovering the works of an ancient Terran artist named Jackson Pollock and deciding to experiment with high-energy kinetic painting — which is to say, splattering paint literally everywhere. I'm keeping up with the mess, but only just. Still, it's satisfying to be able to walk in there and see it in good condition.

"Whew. They can be a lot sometimes, huh?" Ella says, turning to face me. "I thought you could use a break."

"Yes," I say. It comes out with just a touch of good-natured exasperation, which is, if not how I feel, at least close. A moment later, after a glance around the immaculate studio, I add, "Ella?" One more word for the lexicon. I don't know when Ginnala added it, but I found it five days ago.

"Yeah? What's up, Imogen?" She giggles, knowing that there's no way for me to meaningfully respond to such an open-ended question — at least not with words. She's unprepared for the hug I give her. I can be quick when I want to be, even if my movement is less than fluid. Surprise only holds her for a moment, and she hugs me back, pressing me up against her with her big, strong arms. Stars, the way my boobs fit right under hers...

"Thank you," I say, and I mean it. If I had to sit through the entire get-together as a doll, I might have finally cracked. But no: Lieutenant Wolfgang Locke is still in this fight, and she owes it all to Ella. And if Ella did betray the Accord, that's not her fault. Even if she didn't have an implant when she defected, the Affini surely made her do it. I've gotten sucked into Ginnala's hypnotic aura more than once — it's only OCNI training that lets me shake it off so easily, and she doesn't have the benefit of that. When I make my escape, I'm taking Ella with me, and we'll have the best deprogramming experts in the Accord to help her.

"Of course," she said, resting her chin on top of my head. "Always. We might both belong to Mistress, but you're definitely my toy too."

I'm not anyone's toy, I want to say, but all that comes out is another, "Thank you."

Day 96

"What are we doing today, Mistress?" It's a canned phrase, all or nothing, but at least it's a question, and I can ask it. One of the little additions Ginnala's made to my lexicon over time.

"Today, my little toy," Ginnala says, stroking my hair, "I think we'll do a little figure painting. And guess who gets to be our model?"

Oh, I know where this is going. "Imogen?"

"Very good!" she said, laughing, and I really, really wish her praise didn't feel as good as it did. Every time she does it, I feel it like the turn of my key. The only thing worse is when she — "Good toy!" she adds, and I go absolutely still for a moment as the joy explodes in my head like a hammerblow. I don't know how or when she conditioned this response into me, but it's been happening for two weeks now, and every time I can feel myself getting weaker. "Now, go ahead and get undressed, then come and meet me and Ella in the studio!"

"Yes, Mistress!" I chirp, turning on my heel and marching off to the bedroom. I really can't stop myself from following direct orders anymore. It's like my body goes entirely on autopilot, and before I know it I'm standing in front of a full length mirror, mechanically unbuttoning the back of my dress and letting it slip around my key as it falls to the floor. Today isn't a maid day — I'm far enough ahead of the mess that Ella decided to put me in a pink floral print dress this morning. My bra and panties follow, and then I'm carefully picking them all up and placing them in the hamper to be decompiled later. Only then do I let myself really look at my body.

Stars, I look fucking incredible. My breasts finally got to a decent size, my hair is long enough that Ella has started doing it up it into twin braids that rest on my collarbone so it doesn't get caught up in my key, and my hips have really come in. I can see my key protruding from my back when I turn to check out my ass, and my eyes fix on it with a sense of excitement. I can see it turning, feel it turning, animating me click by click. Fuck. I know none of this is me, but I can't stop feeling this way. I can't stop feeling good about how I look, about the alien shit in my back that's turned me into a living wind-up toy. I'm just like all of Ella's little figures, all arranged in a semicircle on my vanity. If Ella could, she'd put me there too, all lined up with the others. I shouldn't feel excited at that thought either, but I can't help myself.

I have to fight back. I have to remind myself of who I am. I'm Lieutenant Wolfgang Locke, an OCNI agent. I'm a captive here. I have to escape, somehow. I have to save Ella.

But that happens later. Right now, I have to go pose. I'm all wound up, I can actually move, and Ginnala's making me sit still anyway. I'm going to have to sit there and feel my key winding down the whole time, knowing that when it does I'll just be an immobile doll again.

Fuck. I really wish she hadn't made me feel turned on by that.

Day 124

"Now speak your mind, Imogen." When Mistress says it, holding me in her lap as we sit in her common room, I feel something click in my head. Not the physical click-click-click of my key as it turns in my back, but more like a picture suddenly snapping into focus. I don't understand what's just happened.

"Mistress?" I say. It's a good fallback, and I use it often. Say that, and let her explain what she means.

"Use your words, toy," she says. Stars, there it is again. I love it when she calls me that. "Go on, I'll wait."

"Use...my...words?" For a moment, I feel my heart tick-ticking along with the turning of my key, and I realize what Mistress has just done. "I can... say anything?"

"Anything your sweet little heart desires," Mistress says, grinning and running one of her big fingers down one of my braids, giving my chest a single gentle tap when she reaches the end.

She's unlocked me. She's unlocked me. I can say anything. I can say anything. All the things I've been forced to keep bottled up for the last four months, I can say to her face now. I can tell her how controlling she is, how miserable she's made me, how she's ruined my body but she'll never break my spirit. I'm not sure what I want to say first, it's been so long and there's so much. I can't decide what to say, so in the end I simply give in to the first impulse that rises above all the rest. I find myself hugging her and saying "I love you, Mistress."

Wait, what?

No. No. No, no, no. That's not what I meant to say!

"Oh, my precious little toy, I love you too!" she says, scooping me up into her arms and hugging me tightly. Stars, she's so big and powerful and my head swims as she calls me her toy again, I love being her toy, no, no, that's wrong, that's wrong! "Is there anything else you'd like to say?"

Here's my chance. I have to correct this. I have to say what I mean to say. "I love Ella!"

...well, that's not wrong, but–

"Awww! I love you too, Imogen!" Ella's on the floor, hopping up and down excitedly at Mistress' feet. With nothing more than an outstretched arm, she begs for Mistress to pull her up to the sofa with a single, powerful vine. It's amazing to watch the two of them, the way they've developed an entire nonverbal language they use to communicate with one another. They're amazing, and beautiful, and I love them.

Ella. I love Ella. Mistress is my captor and I have to find a way to escape. I know she means well but it's the duty of every officer, when captured, to escape.

They're starting to get to me, I think as Ella hugs me and gives me a kiss. I have to remember who I am. I'm Lieutenant Imogen Locke, OCNI toy, and I'm a prisoner here. I have to escape. I have to save Ella. And Mistress too, if she wants to come, I guess. Ella would be sad if she didn't.

Day 129

I don't understand it. I just don't understand it.

When Mistress removed my behavioral inhibitions and my lexical block, I should have gone back to normal. I should have been able to start working on one of the literally dozens of plans I spent the last four months making. I can escape now. I have the chance. Mistress doesn't even lock the front door anymore!

But here I am, in my maid outfit, picking up after Ella and Mistress's latest obsession. This time, it's charcoal, and there's dust and little fragments of their charcoal sticks everywhere, and I'm sweeping it up carefully with a little broom and dustpan, doing my best to keep it from blowing up onto my stockings. I have to keep the hab clean for them — it lets them spend less time trying to find things and more time on the art they love, and I love them, and I want them to be happy, and helping facilitate the thing they love is how I help them be happy, and doing it all makes me happy.

I love them so much and I can't stop myself from loving them. I know I shouldn't, and whenever I'm wound down and just a doll I have these bursts of anger, of despair, of resentment, but the minute Mistress or Ella turns my key, it's like all that just gets put aside, because there's so much I have to do, so much I want to do. Mistress and Ella let me do my own hair now, and I'm getting really good at braiding. There's something so fulfilling about the repeated mechanical motion of it, and my hands are so dextrous when it comes to repetitive motions that once my hair is brushed out, it only takes me about thirty seconds to put both braids back in. Yesterday, I did that for almost an hour, putting them in and taking them out over and over and over. It felt so nice to just be a machine for braiding.

But then my key winds down, and I'm just a doll again, and sooner or later it all comes back. It's so frustrating! I didn't notice this happening before because of the behavioral inhibitions and lexical block, but now that they're gone there's no denying it. Mistress is winning this psychological battle. Sooner or later, I'm going to break. I'm going to be her pliant little toy for real. Stars, I hope it happens soon.

Wait. No, no, no. I don't want that. I don't want that at all! Ugh! When I'm wound up it's so easy to start thinking like that! Focus. Focus on what you're doing, Imogen, and keep it together. Right now, I'm decompiling the dustpan (and the charcoal dust inside it). Another mission accomplished, well done. I can't help but smile. I turn and walk back to the studio, where Ella and Mistress are hard at work on their art. There's probably something else I can do to help, right?

"Sure," Ella says, grinning and hopping down off her stool when I ask. "I can think of one thing." And then she's on me, and her dusty, charcoal stained hands are sliding up under my skirt. For a moment, all I can think is how dirty my stockings and my petticoat are going to look, but then her hands are on my ass, slipping into my panties and squeezing as she pulls me into her. The noise I make is so soft, sounds so helpless. It sounds like me, and I love it. I fall into her, into her hands on my body, into her lips on mine, into her dusty, warm scent. I love her so much, and I love it when she plays with me. "Good toy," she whispers in my ear, and it feels so amazing I swear I could come on the spot if Mistress would just give me permission. I make such an embarrassing noise. Time slips away as she has her way with me. Then, before I know what's happening, it's over, and she's breaking the kiss.

"Oops," she says, giggling as one hand hangs on my key, slowing its turn in a maddeningly erotic way. "I think I got you a little dirty."

"Should I clean myself up?" It's always the first thing that comes to my mind when something is dirty, now. Clean it up. Clean myself up.

"Yeah, why not?" Ella says. There's a devious glimmer in her eye when she winks at me. She has something in mind to tease me with. She's so hot when she does this. Fuck. I love her.

"Okay!" I say agreeably. "Back soon!" Soon I'm in the bedroom, shedding my working clothes, and I was right — Ella got charcoal dust all over everything. I lean down slowly, methodically, to gather up my skirt, my stockings, my blouse, my petticoat, one by one, bundling them against my chest. Then, I slowly, slowly, lever myself back up to a standing position. I turn my head, inch by inch, to look at myself in the mirror, side on.

Oh. There, on my ass, is a big handprint in charcoal dust. It's where Ella was holding on to me. And that's when I realize that I was so distracted, I didn't feel it happen.

I wound down.

I'm stuck like this, naked, holding my work clothes against my chest in a bundle, and staring at the visible evidence of my pinnate's hands on my ass. She did this on purpose, and stars, I'm so turned on by it. She knows me so well. She knew I would love this. I'm going to probably get mad again really soon, but right now I'm just going to exult in this feeling. I love her so much.

Day 135

It was the dress that broke me.

See, until now, I thought this was all some kind of bizarre psychological torture, some alien interrogation technique. Sure, they never asked me any questions, never tried to extract intel, but why else would Mistress go to all this trouble over me? Why would she go to the ridiculous lengths of suborning Ella to use as a catspaw against me? I didn't understand the logic in it.

But then, as I was sitting there, dolled out and staring into nothingness, Ella came out of the studio with a flat white box in her arms. "Guess what I have for you~" she said, grinning as she sat down on the floor next to me.

I didn't say anything, of course. I wasn't wound up, so I was just a doll. As I came back to awareness I felt a surge of frustration, of despair, the bad thoughts that came when I didn't have work to distract me. I felt trapped, useless, absolutely without a hope in the world of escape. I was angry, and I thought some horrible things I don't want to think about at Ella. I'm so glad she couldn't hear any of it.

No, she just opened up the box and showed the dress inside to me. It was new, freshly compiled, and it was absolutely gorgeous, a pale cerulean blue shot through with indigo and palest pink, like Mistress's flowers. "I know, I know, I just designed a new dress for you last week, but I got inspired, you know?" She laughed and even in the mood I was in, it lifted me just a little, and I actually looked at the dress.

I've spent enough time over the last few months that I've gotten to know Ella's style pretty well. She experiments a lot, but she has certain motifs she likes to come back to, and I recognize them in the design of the dress. The pink was for Mistress, obviously. Ella loves that color and loves to work a little bit of it into everything she does as a kind of signature-by-proxy. And the pattern the indigo made against the cerulean, that's another of her little maker's marks. And right in the middle of everything, right over where my heart will rest when she inevitably puts the dress on me, they came together around a little swatch of pearl white.

That's how she likes to represent me.

"You love it, I can tell," she added, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "I've got a pair of matching shoes to go with it, let me go get them. Here, hold this." She reached out and, one at a time, levered my arms up into a carrying position, palms open and upraised. Then, she draped the dress across them carefully, gave me another kiss, and scampered off, leaving me to process what had just happened.

The material the dress was made out of was so soft, so silky against my hands, but as much as I couldn't wait to feel it against my skin, that wasn't what was running through my mind as I sat there, outwardly placid but inwardly melting down.

I had finally worked it out. I finally understood the logic. It was never an interrogation. They never wanted intel out of me. They didn't care what I knew, it didn't matter to them. Nothing we did mattered. We were getting closer and closer to Terra every day, I knew from listening to Mistress talk to her friends — excitedly, always excitedly, about all the little xenos who needed them — and there was nothing the Accord could do to stop them.

We fought, we raged, we did everything in our power to kill or be killed, and it didn't matter.

I fought, I raged, I thought every awful thing I could think of about Ella and Mistress. I tried to hurt Mistress with a sculpting tool. I tried to blow her up with a pipe bomb! I did so many awful, awful, awful things even before I met them. I hurt so many people. I was OCNI. I was a machine made for hurting people. I was scum.

And it didn't matter. They loved me anyway. They loved me even though I didn't deserve it. They gave me this amazing body, this incredible home, their loving company, and a purpose that makes me feel so good about about myself. They shared their art and their passion with me — stars, half of the art they made was either of me or about me.

The dress was so light, so airy, so beautiful, so soft. I was beautiful and soft, and so, so still. I had never known a serenity like this before Mistress made me her doll, before she and Ella made me their toy. The serenity of lovingly tidying up for them, the serenity of stillness and thoughtlessness. Even now, that thoughtlessness was creeping up again, but I still had room to think. I had room to feel the dress in my arms, and room to feel the love in my heart.

I loved Ella, and I loved Mistress, and I wanted to be the best maid, the best doll, the best toy I could possibly be for them. And the best part was, they'd already made me that way. I was so, so grateful that they'd helped me do it before I even knew I wanted it for myself. Now that I knew what I wanted, it was so easy to let go of the resentment, the despair, the anger. Those were things I didn't need anymore.

My mind was slowing, like a lazy river. Ella would be back eventually, I knew. Until then, I would wait, with love in my heart and without a single thought in my head to disturb it. There's no patience like the patience of a doll.

Day 365

I am the luckiest toy in whole universe.

I think that every day when I wake up, cuddled up in Ella's arms, the both of us tangled up in Mistress's vines. Every day, that slow doll's awareness sneaks up on me like the sky changing colors at sunrise, and every day I feel warm and wanted and loved.

But today, that feeling is even more special. One year, one whole year of being Mistress's toy, and less than a month away from a year as Ella's. I almost can't believe it's been that long, but it has — I've been careful to keep track. A good toy, and especially a toy who moonlights as a maid, needs to be aware of her surroundings. Details are very important! Details like how Mistress likes her water treated or how Ella likes her tea, or where they tend to lose art tools, or what noises they especially like me to make when they play with me. All of that goes into making sure that I'm the best toy I can be.

And oh, the noises I'm going to make later. Mistress and Ella haven't wound me up for three whole days. They know today's my anniversary. Stars, I love them. They take such good care of me when I'm just a doll. Every single day, they bathe me, feed me, brush out and braid my hair (it's so long now!), make sure to move me every so often without being too obvious about it. Ella and Mistress love me so much, and I feel so loved. I know they're planning something amazing for today. I don't know what they're planning, because they're so good at hiding their plans from me when they want to surprise me, but I'll be shocked if I don't practically scream the first time they turn my key today. I didn't know a doll could be so pent up, but here I am, fixating on how good it'll feel when the key slides in and penetrates me, when it catches with my mechanisms, when it turns, click-click-click-click-click, winding me up, oh stars.

I don't know how I'm going to stay standing when I finally get motor control back. If either of them calls me a "good toy" I will need Mistress to catch me. What if they don't wind me up today? What if they just keep teasing me with my key, maybe even put it in but never actually turn it? It's almost too delicious to think about.

It's so funny —— a year ago, I had to pretend to be a person. I had all kinds of miserable, awful jobs and duties and requirements just to live foisted off on me, I had to move around all day every day doing things I hated and that made people hurt, and I had to pretend to like it, and I had to pretend not to be pretending, and I had to pretend to like being the way I was. I got so good at it I even fooled myself.

Thank the stars Mistress found me and fixed me. Thank the stars Ella came along to help her decide what I should be. Now, I can just be me. Who am I?

Hi, I'm Imogen.

I'm the luckiest toy in the whole universe.