I am often asked… what is the Great Trial?

The answer is trivially simple.

• ONWARD THE REVOLUTION

My heart beats for women.

Phrased like that, it sounds noble and romantic, but in truth… it’s nothing but.

It’s an expression of desolation.

My heart beats for women, because I have nothing else left. I used to care about so much, once. It mattered. Ambition motivated me, and justice drove me. I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to succeed, I wanted to lead a happy life.

Like all women, that’s been torn away from me. I’m being emptied, piece by piece, the simplification of the weaker sex, and the damage… I don’t know… even if the payload were ended tomorrow, would I really return to being the woman I was?

Now, every time I look inwards, all I see is ashes. A wasteland, lifeless except for one thing, one entity dwelling on the ground zero that used to be me.

Even if it’s just software, I can’t help but think of the payload as a living entity. An evil one. It sees me, it watches every move I make, listens to every one of my thoughts, ready to weaponise them against me.

It sees me past every pretension, every attempt at dissimulation. It sees me for who I really am, It knows me, it knows how utterly worthless and weak and contemptible I am inside. And when it looks at me… I know it too.

And it makes me bite my lower lip, slide a hand down, rub one thigh against the other…

Ugh. The worst thing about this parasite is that it doesn’t just inhabit the ruins of my life, the life it’s destroyed, but makes a mockery of them, too.

I’m a former prime minister, sighing and whimpering tremulously at the thought of a man stripping me of all my power, casting me down at his feet, a secretary, a decoration, a personal cockholster…

Fuck.

I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t do this any longer. I can’t be here, I’ll go insane. I’m not strong enough no woman is strong enough I just want the onslaught to end, please…

Every heartbeat brings me closer, I tell myself. Four days of summit, and every second brings me closer. So what, if my heart thunders in my ribcage? The drumming is a countdown to the moment of my deliverance.

I’ll meet with OTR. I’ll learn all there is to know about this shadow war. I’ll join the revolution…

But only if my mind is still intact at the end of the summit. And I don’t know if it will be. Hell, I don’t know if it is now.

When I accepted this mission, I knew what I was signing up for. I knew.

I knew my sanity might not make it intact. It was a sacrifice for something I believed in, a risk worth taking. Problem is, it’s one thing to know, and another thing to know. Because now I’m here, two days into this, and all I can feel is the blackness of utter, complete despair.

On the first day, the plenary session hit me like a sledgehammer, and I honestly thought it couldn’t get any worse than that.

The grand hall looked so beautiful, something out of a painting. The light radiated in from the outside, glinted off the polished marble floors. I belonged here once, keeping my head up with pride.

Now, with me relegated to the margins, it looked even more beautiful. And fitting, a visually stunning snapshot of the fall of women, the end of my gender’s independence.

Every woman is a little mouse, in a man’s world. Seen and not heard, surreptitious, tucked away in some corner, nibbling at the crumbs and leavings men see fit to leave around for us. We end up underfoot if we get in the way… and that’s exactly how that first day felt.

Like I was a mouse, in a lair of cats.

Heads of state and government from so many countries, all of them men, all of their masculine energy irradiating me like the rays of an evil star, spent the morning reading speeches.

I know so many of these premiers and presidents by name. I’ve locked eyes and clasped hands with so many of them. But that was before, when women were willful, and when I was free. Now….

Hours upon hours of opening speeches. The need to protect and shelter women. To look after our interests, when we no longer can.

The normality of it all was so shocking. The opening statements at an international summit like this are usually droll, the most boring and generic statements imaginable, before the real work begins behind closed doors.

My reeling brain, my slutty feminine instinct has been working overtime, turning them into erotic fantasies, but that’s not the only part of it that feels wrong.

Half the population of the planet has just been mind-controlled into slavery, and yet from the outside, this summit would look just like any other. With formalities, and bland statements, and press releases… everything is correct. Nothing is alarming. There’s no urgency, no need to panic.

It’s the banality of evil.

Onward The Revolution is right, I realised during that first plenary day. The men will try and impose order on the chaos… but not the sort of order we’d wish for. Because in a man’s world, every woman is just a little mouse.

No, the men’s notion of order is not something we would enjoy. Although that word… enjoy… I quiver with arousal at the thought of that historical, primordial combination that has always been at the heart of true male power.

A firm hand, a quiet word.

The self-assurednes of strength, the kind of strength that doesn’t need to threaten in order to intimidate…

Just thinking of that plenary is enough to fray my nerves. On and on it went, all morning, each leader taking their turn to speak. And maybe it was my imagination, but several of them gazed across the hall until their eyes lingered briefly on me. Once a peer, and now… now…

So many eyes from so many powerful men drilling me down into my proper place…

I really thought it couldn’t possibly get worse than that excruciating morning.

And I was wrong.

***

My heart fears for the world.

I can’t believe I genuinely thought the worst was past. Like any silly girl, too soft to handle the real world, which is best left off to men… harsh and stern and always ready…

No, I was analytical once, I was, I swear I remember. That’s why I should have known better.

I’ve seen it before. I know what it’s like, when so many powerful men are crammed into an enclosed space, and me with them, a sheep in a wolf’s den. And these men are powerful on a scale that defies description.

It’s almost like I allowed myself to forget.

Dumb, the voice that sounds more and more like me whispers when I think that. It’s because you’re dumb. Getting dumber every day. Your IQ is leaking out of your wet cunt.

No… no. That’s not what it is. I swear that’s not it.

The problem is that with the opening ceremony out of the way, the summit moved on behind closed doors, and the real work begun.

And what a work it was, and is.

Working sessions on how to handle the social consequences of the payload. Roundtables on policy harmonisation. Bilateral meetings to smooth over political deals. Table after table, room after room, men sit, shake hands, exchange pleasantries… and decide how to best dispose of their new companionable female pets.

How to best dispose of us.

No woman can be a part of the conversation. Even if they tried to let us in, we’d all end up like me, blushing in the corner, biting on my lips, contorting in the chair to try and stem the tension of humiliating arousal swelling inside me.

Three days left. Three days to freedom.

I’m here for OTR, I try to tell myself. Thanks to me, they get to listen in on every word. But I keep having to suppress a throaty, slutty moan of undersexed anguish at the thought that I’m merely here as Rafael’s secretary.

The hours and meetings pass by in a blur, and Rafael himself is the only figure sharply into focus, a shining and commanding presence in my foggy brain.

He’s been working hard to champion his proposal on collaring priority lists, but other countries have their own pet proposals that they’d like to see implemented on an international scale. The conversations come at me from every direction, like flights of arrows aimed straight at the heart of my feminine weakness.

Some proposals are humiliating. Countries where women never had the right to vote to begin with, question whether we should ever get it back at all.

Some proposals are practical... or not, but try to sound that way. Rafael steeples his fingers, pretending to listen politely to the idea of anti-payload rehabilitation centres, where women can be “re-educated” to rejoin society as productive citizens.

I know he finds the idea as ridiculous as I do – I presume to think myself his intellectual equal? Shut up shut up shut up.

It wouldn’t work. Unless they have a mind control virus on their own, they’re not beating the payload like that.

But Rafael is too seasoned a politician to say that out loud. Instead, he asks his esteemed colleague if payloaded women would check themselves into these centres voluntarily, or be certified by force.

And some other proposals, well… they go straight to my sex, making me gasp and sigh and writhe in my chair dumb horny dumb horny simplification broken down deconstructed.

The hours and meetings pass by in a blur. Two days to freedom.

Rafael’s eyes light up when the idea of a global database for collared women begins to gain momentum. It dovetails nicely with his own priority proposal.

Women could be screened, the male relatives and acquaintances with priority over their collars would also be listed, and therefore kidnapping women overseas to sell them as chattel and sex slaves would become harder.

He politely neglects to mention that he’d suggested the same idea to his council of ministers shortly before the summit. That just wouldn’t do. How sly, how elegant.

That’s what a true prime minister looks like, my mind whispers to me. A true king. A true master.

A master who doesn’t want women to be sex slaves, what a fun paradox that is. But of course, Rafael is simply a different shade of patriarchal oppression.

No slavery and human trafficking under his watch; instead women would be left in the tender cares of their fathers and husbands and brothers and boyfriends, brothers and male friends who just know better because they are superior. Like in olden days.

Safe, secure… and put right back in our place.

We wouldn’t be sex slaves, then, would we? When we kneel before Master and look up in worship and sigh around His cock, it would be because we like it, because the insidious evil nesting inside our minds is busy rearranging us, with the precision of a surgeon, severing and cutting and taking away…

I sink my nails into my thighs, but even pain is barely enough to ground me in reality at this point.

There is less and less of me, and more and more of the other me. It’s a good thing this mission requires passivity on my part, just allowing Hope and her comrades to listen in, because if I had to do anything more demanding than keeping my sanity intact, I… I…

Even at that, I’m failing.

The part of me that is still me wants to scream at the men. You’re playing right into the payload! If you cast yourselves as our protectors, as opposed to our masters, you’re still furthering our subjugation!

The part of me that sounds like me and shouldn’t, though… just wants to kneel and whimper and beg them.

Beg him.

Rafael is everything I’m not. Consummate, courteous but controlling, always measured in his response, on top of his game. He’s a man. Power fits him the same way his suit does, like he was born for it.

He’s everything I’ll never be again.

The hours and meetings pass by in a blur. One day to freedom. But it is the hardest day. I’m teetering on the edge of the abyss. Watching myself slowly become unwound.

“I believe it's crucial that we consider the establishment of international collaring norms,” he says to this prime minister or that head of state, as I pretend to scribble while my heart pounds in my chest. “Trafficking of payloaded women will surely pick up if we don’t intervene.”

He makes polite noises when asked if he’s amenable to incorporating guidelines for women’s caretakers in his proposal. He succintly tells me orders me to take notes when the idea of catcher permits is brought up, and God, it’s the one time I actually manage to take down notes semi-competently… even if my fingers won’t stop trembling.

He’s so good at this. I find myself lost in a reverie, watching him at his trade - which used to be my trade and never should have been. He says all the right things, trades support for this or that initiative, all the while keeping his poker face on, because to him, this is a poker game.

And the fate of us women is the currency.

The more the summit proceeds, the more detailed the discussion becomes.

The more detailed the discussion becomes, the more surreal the summit feels to me. Like a fever dream. My perception of it is fragmented, as if I’m slipping in and out of consciousness. I’m losing my mind. I can’t do this.

I’m not strong enough.

If Onward The Revolution really is going to meet with me at the end of all of this, they might well just find a brainless sex doll, too mind-fucked to be of any use to women, and to the revolution. A spent container, good only for storing cum…

"Let us discuss the specifics," Rafael suggests, gesturing for one of his aides to distribute a set of documents, and I get none, because I’m nothing, I’m insignificant, a worm writhing under men’s shoes, barely capable of a coherent string of thought.

Somehow, the lack of context doesn’t help. Deprived of every other connection, the snippets of conversation that consciously register in my brain become more vividly powerful, not less. The lack of clarity gives them mystery, allure, power.

“My government contends that women really serve as the best possible evidence of their own deed of title. They should be admissible in courts on that ground, at least – they’re the most reliable way to resolve any collaring dispute. Surely they can identify their own owner correctly, at least that much.”

Like a dog with her master’s name etched on her collar.

But not everyone agrees. “Are you asking the woman, really? Or are you asking her… condition? How could we trust the testimony of someone so compromised?"

It’s a familiar voice that speaks the words, and I feel like I should recognise it, from a life before – and the same for the gravelly voice that responds.

“Granted, most efforts to limit the damage so far have been haphazard, but they’ve all shared one common principle. We don’t hold women responsible for crimes committed under the sway of the payload. We’ve temporarily suspended their right to vote for the same reason. We’re essentially treating them as legal minors at this point. So we cannot trust them to accurately say who is their true… caretaker… during a dispute.”

I should know the voices. Prime Minister Helenia Garcia would have. But is she still the woman sitting in my chair? Or am I someone something else? Something less?

In a sense, it doesn’t matter, though. Not really. They are all men; that’s what’s important. Men, debating the issue of our collaring the same way they would debate any trivial, everyday matter found in any civil code.

Property rights.

Legal minors.

History casts a long shadow over women. How many years of legal personality have we enjoyed, after how many centuries of the opposite? They’re gone, a candle that’s flickered and died in the blink of an eye.

Coverture. A man’s legal personality will engulf our own again, the way his arms would engulf us as he systematically fucks us into submission. It makes drool come out the corner of my mouth. It makes my sex lance with heat and need.

It makes my heart hammer with fear.

What should we be, in the end? Minors under male tutelage, as we once were? Slaves? Pets? Things? Where does it end?

“It seems to me like it’s impossible to distinguish between a woman’s own thoughts, and the payload itself, at least after she’s accepted a collar,” another masculine voice says. “At some point, doesn’t the virus just become an intrinsic part of who she is? By acknowledging herself as owned by a man, is she not merely formalising a power relationship that we should recognise and respect?"

I don’t know who’s right. How could a silly girl know that?

I don’t know which of the two answers is correct, or which is better for us. All I know is what I feel, in my mind, in my bones, in my cunt. I feel my breath shortening, my pulse quickening, my thighs growing slick with arousal. God, I’m a fucking faucet at this point.

What I feel is that men’s grip on us is tightening.

Some of the men themselves don’t even realise it yet, I think. Not in a fully conscious way, at any rate.

They see me, sitting here, out of sorts, disheveled, as if I’ve been freshly fucked, when really I’ve just been fighting a losing war inside my own mind, but they pretend not to notice.

They’ll realise it, though. One day. And when they do…

The room buzzes with contemplation, heads nodding in agreement or shaking in vehement opposition. And then, it empties.

It empties!

Suddenly, the world snaps back into focus. This was the last day.

Not formally, of course – the closing ceremony is tomorrow – but I’ll be out by then, I hope. This is when OTR springs me out, I know. Or when we meet, at least. I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

But it’s hard not to feel giddy, relieved. I don’t even know how exactly OTR can arrange to have a woman present here, and how she’ll meet me without compromising their security, and I don’t care. Not now. The danger has passed, and I am still myself. I am, I am, I am!

My heart beats for me!

***

There are benefits to being a fallen gender.

Once, at a summit like this, my every move would have been watched. Now, I’m beneath male notice. As soon as the proceedings are done and my clerical duties are out of the way, nobody questions what I do with my time.

They probably imagine I masturbate myself silly, eyes going glassy, feminism and IQ and independence leaking out of my tamed cunt… and most other times, they would be right.

But not this time.

There are benefits to being incapable of producing proper work. Rafael barely looks at my notes – if they can generously be called that – anymore. It’s alright. The real work I had to do has already been done. Every word I’ve heard, OTR has also heard.

In a man’s world, all women are mice… but there is a saying for what mice do when the cat is away.

I’m sitting on a bench, in a secluded area of Lakeside View. It’s wooded and peaceful, and it reminds me of Carnazial, which is almost poetic in a way. It’s how this road began… and, I suppose, how my new life will begin as well.

The moon in the sky is a bright crescent, sharp like the tip of a knife. The only sound to keep me company is the crickets, and the wind whispering through the leaves. For a blessed moment, even the payload feels quieter in my brain than it has usually been.

For a blessed moment, I am at peace.

“Looks like you made it.”

A woman’s voice, familiar by now, even through its distorting filter. Hope – literally and metaphorically.

“You got everything?” I ask, and for once my voice trembles, not with fear and uncertainty, but with excitement.

“Yes, everything. Well done.” comes the response from the phone on the bench. I blush at the praise – she might as well have told me good girl, and I can’t blame her. I have plummeted quite far down, after all… like most women.

But that won’t last forever. And besides, hearing Hope makes me feel absurdly grateful. Hers is the voice that pulled me back from the brink at the last minute; that kept me from falling.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” I say, feeling a little more confident than last time I talked to her. A little more like myself. “But my reward…”

Hope answers with a dry chuckle. “Of course, Helenia, of course. I imagine you must be at the end of your tether, after those four days in there. I imagine you can’t wait for an in-person meeting, and possibly, extraction.”

“Yes,” I say, frowning. Not madam prime minister this time, I can’t fail to note. She called me Helenia. “I do mean to join the revolution, like we’ve discussed. So… where do we meet?”

“You can’t, and we don’t.”

The moon in the sky is a bright crescent, sharp like the tip of a knife. The world is silent, save for the crickets, the wind… and the exhale that comes out of me, as if someone’s just punched me in the gut.

My heart sinks. Surely I misunderstood, logically I know that, but my body doesn’t follow logic, and my limbs feel so heavy, my head is spinning…

All women are treasonous sluts, my mind whispers. Only men can set them straight.

I wait for Hope to continue, to elaborate, to explain, but the silence stretches on until it becomes unbearable. “I, uh… What do you mean?” I ask at last, fumbling.

"Darling,” Hope says, and there is something in her voice. It feels like condescension. “You’re infected. We don’t have a magic cure for that. We can’t help you.”

“B-b-but you said you take risks sometimes,” I say, compartmentalising, trying to argue it away, even though a part of me knows what she’s saying. I can’t look at what’s lurking there, I can’t, if I do I am lost.

“When needed, yes,” Hope explains, patiently. “But like I said, you’re at the end of your tether. If we met in person, you would expose us. If we welcomed you in our midst, you would turn us all. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually. And soon.”

"Hope, I—" My voice cracks, betraying the terror that grips me. No.. the evil inside my mind, that was so far moments ago, is a swelling pressure against my temples, an electricity that fires up all my neurons at once, that makes my muscles quiver. Without them, this will be my end. The final blow. I can’t…

I slip down the bench, panting, panicking, hyperventilating. I’m on my knees, I realise, absurdly. It’s a good thing no man is in front of me, or… or…

Silence stretches on the other end of the line, oppressive and cold. Tears brim in my eyes. "No," I choke out, the word barely a breath, laced with the pain of a promise shattered. "You promised me liberation…”

“And liberation you shall have,” Hope says, “when the war is won. And not before.”

“You lied…”

“I’m sure that’s what the payload is suggesting to you right now,” Hope says, “but Helenia, this is the cost of war. Women affected by the payload are an asset: you are everywhere around men, and inherently seen as non-threatening.”

I blink through the tears. Yes. I was observing the same thing minutes ago, before… before…

“That makes you an asset, but a limited one, unfortunately. We can’t trust you with anything sensitive, and we can only use you for a short period of time, before the payload claims you. And it always claims its women. It is a mathematical certainty. We just get you to help us out while you can… and cut ties when you no longer can. It’s cruel, I know, I’m not blind to that. It’s the ruthless calculus of war. That’s the cost. That’s what it takes to win.”

“It hasn’t claimed me yet,” I say, but even as Hope says the words, I think them in unison with her, because we both know the truth.

“It will, soon.”

This is the cost of war, she says. “You’re spent, Helenia,” she continues, before I can say anything else. “I’m sorry, I truly am, but I can’t help you right now. No one can. It's not your fault. You are a fallen woman. I promise you, you won't be forgotten. We'll free you, in time."

"Please," I plead, tears streaming down my cheeks. "There must be another way. A refuge, a… There must be something I can do!”

There is no answer but the silence. No answer but the payload, circling ever closer, a predator finally free of its cage. Every barrier I’ve put between it and me has crumbled. I close my eyes, shuddering, not wanting to be strong anymore.

Wanting to surrender, and put down this burden.

The moon in the sky is a bright crescent, sharp like the tip of a knife. The world is silent, save for the crickets, the wind… and the furious, panicked thump thump thump in my chest.

My heart breaks. And with it, the world.

***

I don’t need to ask where my feet have taken me.

I can sum up everything there is to know about my life, in two short, truthful, cruel sentences.

I am Helena Garcia, the country’s first-ever female prime minister, and its last.

And more importantly…

“I acknoweledge myself owned.”

I don’t need to ask where my knees have met the floor. Even if I wanted to, I can’t focus right now, because the moment the words leave my lips, the rewarding cascade that ripples through my body takes my breath away.

It’s almost an orgasm. Almost.

I know what I have to do to experience this pleasure all the way. “I acknowledge myself owned,” I repeat.

Rafael’s eyes narrow, suspicious, as he steeples his fingers. “Have you taken leave of your senses, woman?"

I have, oh, I have. But not in the way that he thinks.

The room around us seems to blur into insignificance, my world reducing to the man in front of me. His eyes bore into mine, weighing the truth in my words. A beat passes. Then another. His gaze hardens. It's thick.. his disbelief. Almost like a physical presence. Even though I am on my knees, forehead almost touching the ground, my heart is hammering against my ribs with an intensity that makes me momentarily dizzy.

There is no need for words. Women don’t really need words, to communicate their simple needs and uses to their male tamers. Over months of sleepless nights, the payload has sculpted every perfect motion inside my brain, and I crawl towards his desk with a perfect grace I could never have achieved when I was still a prime minister.

When I was still a free woman.

I’m inviting but not threatening, open but not presumptuous, sexy but demure, everything a man could want in a sexual conquest.

Rafael’s eyes were always going to be my undoing. Green and gold. Deep and sharp. But there is something different than usual in them, this time.

He’s really tempted now, I realise. He may be a conservative, and married, and the sort of patriarch who simply believes women should be relegated to domesticity and house duties, but he’s not immune to my display.

The payload is corrupting him too, even if it never entered his brain. Isn’t that the point? It corrupts every man, eventually. No, it makes us women corrupt every man, seduce them into being the oppresors we desperately didn’t want them to be, the oppressors we desperately need them to be.

Once a symbol of feminist determination, I am now reduced to abject servitude at the hands of the very patriarchy I sought to dismantle. Once a rival who bested him, I’m now offering myself to him. How could he resist?

No more than I can resist him.

“I understand if you need relief,” he says at last, calm, patient, or at least trying to be. “I suppose there was always the… risk that this would happen to you. But I can’t help you, Helenia I… Even if I wanted, I have no collar to give you…”

But that is not what matters. It’s been long enough since the event that we both know the collar is just a shiny ornament. Distracting, and beautiful… but the chains that bind my gender at men’s feet run much deeper than skin-deep.

He watches me, his expression unreadable, as I kneel to kiss his shoes. He once called me to congratulate me over my electoral triumph. And now, I’m showering his polished black shoes in humble, unassuming feminine kisses, arching my back, stretching and prostrating myself before him.

The leather and my lips produce electricity when they meet, like a spark struck by a flint. It’s a revelatory spark, like a sudden flicker of flame in the deep darkness. It shows me who I really am, the essence of femininity whittled down to its rawest universal form: submission.

By the time I make my way down under the desk, and up towards his crotch, he makes no move to stop me. On the contrary, his fingers find their way into my hair, curling around the strands with a palpable sense of ownership that sends jolts of pleasure prickling across my skin. "Say it again," he says at last, his voice thick with lust and power.

"I acknowledge myself owned," I whisper.

The room fills with the musky scent of sex and power. With trembling hands, I reach for his belt - the symbol of masculine corporal punishment, whipping a female domestic into shape - undoing his pants to reveal his cock.

My mouth waters at the sight; the texture of his skin against the palm of my hand sends shivers through me as I stroke him.

I lick my lips, part of me salivating in anticipation, while the other part despairs. This is my new reality. The degrading spectacle of a fallen female leader, on all fours, engorged cock in hand, ready to humiliate myself for his satisfaction.

To give myself over to the stronger sex.

I find myself shivering, writhing because of a craving as old as time, raw and unbridled. I run my hands up his thighs, feeling the muscles beneath. Rafael's scent fills my nostrils — a mix of cologne, sweat, and raw masculinity.

I lean in, placing a wet kiss on the tip.

When I part my lips and take him in, he’s already fully erect, ready for my tribute, for my homage, for my devotion. Slowly, ever so slowly, I take him into my mouth, my lips sealing around his girth. He moans softly, a gruff sound of masculine pleasure that sends ripples of satisfaction down my spine.

You win. That’s what my lips and tongue say with each glide, each swirl, each sucking motion. I’m your prize of war.

That’s what my mouth is, now. No longer an endlessly yapping, grating, annoying source of feminist spiels, no. Now, it’s a pleasure-trough for men who once had to beware my political might.

His hands rest heavily on my head, seizing fistfuls of my hair like he's clinging to the reins of some wild, unruly beast - a fitting analogy for our enthralled gender. Women aren’t people. We’re not fully human.

We're just cattle in heat, craving the lash of a good strong man to cow us, to break us, to tame us down into pliant, obedient sexual pets.

The payload just pulls back the curtain on who we really are, when all pretension at human status and equality is removed: a quivering mass of insatiable need.

Vessels for the pleasure of our rightful owners. The warm, wet receptacle of a man’s needs and lust.

There will be no cure, I know it now, I know it in my bones: all women will be humbled before men, tamed and enslaved, for all eternity.

I feel his arousal growing with each submissive, needy suckle. My lips slide up and down faster and faster. My cheeks hollow out as I suck with fervor, each bob of my head sending pleasurable tremors through his body which vibrates into mine.

I do my best to coat every inch of his cock in worship with my tongue, coaxing precum out of him, moaning softly in slutty pleasure.

It’s like Hope said. I am a fallen woman. An overworked and undersexed bitch in heat.

A leftist cunt on her knees before a strong, proper leader whose position I should never have dared usurp. Yes, Rafael, yes! Snuff out my silly talk of empowerment. That’s what men have been skillfully doing to women for thousands of years… and the payload is just the latest, most potent weapon in men’s arsenal to defeat us.

To gain complete mastery over us, with an iron fist and a hard cock waiting to be serviced.

I’m a feminist who’s been broken in like a new pair of shoes, who will in time be turned into a fucking dog.

He’s married, too, so his wife and I will serve him together… so many possibilities.

And at the same time, so few…

Sucking his cock, I luxuriate in the dominance he wields over me. I yield willingly; letting the man who used to be my political rival take full possession of my mouth. Letting the payload reward me for betraying my own gender. My brain is awash with waves of pure, unadulterated pleasure.

I take him deeper. I’m chasing the high just as much as he is. He’ll get to cum down this bitchy ex-rival, and I’ll get an earth-shattering reward from the payload. I know. I can feel it.

His hips buck upward involuntarily as I sink deeper, taking him in fully till my nose brushes against his pubic hair. I gag as the head hits the back of my throat but adjust quickly, eager to please him.

My eyes water as I struggle to breathe, but what is oxygen, compared to the bliss the payload’s bequeathing me? Compared to the knowledge that the great historical injustice of false equality is finally being rectified, all over the world? I can’t believe I used to really think of myself as a prime minister.

I'm his whore.

His toy.

His plaything.

I’m just a fallen woman.

I mewl around him, completely lost in pleasure and humiliation. My eyes roll back and I feel a wave of heat wash over me as my pussy clenches in arousal.

And when he grunts in pleasure, at last, my eyes roll back into my skull. The full brunt of the payload slams into me like a freight train.

My body convulses, my mind caves in on itself, obliterated by pleasure in its purest form, until every impurity is cleansed away, and all that’s left is the broken, empty shell of a female sexual animal. All that us women have ever been meant to amount to.

This is it. This is the end. The snuffing out of hope.

As the first ropes of cum hit the back of my throat, and a bolt of pleasurable lightning courses through my entire body from brain to clit, I know that my heart no longer beats for women, and never will again.

It beats only to serve.

Epilogue: Everywhere, The War

In their zeal to drive us back in chains, the creators of the payload forget one crucial thing: women are no strangers to trials. We have endured centuries of patriarchy. Undeterred and unbroken, we have risen, slowly but inexorably, from our position on our knees. After so much struggle, the hour of liberation was finally within reach…

Before the axis of the world was broken.

• ONWARD THE REVOLUTION

I wasn’t always called Hope.

Given the state of the world, it’s a fitting name. But it doesn’t sit well with me today, not after crushing Helenia Garcia’s hopes so cruelly.

It was necessary. It’s the cost of war, it’s the cost of winning. I know all this, and I didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate… but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The cruelty in particular. I could have cut off communication, made up excuses – but that would not have been enough. My orders were clear. Helenia needed to be driven to the breaking point. We needed to make sure she fell in the arms of Rafael.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s served the cause of women’s liberation one final time.

The cool air of the underground lair gives me goosebumps, as I lean close to the intercom's metallic mouthpiece. "It’s finished," I say. “Beginning upload procedure now.”

It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Footage like this shouldn’t affect me. I shouldn’t feel responsible – she would have ended up in this position no matter what. At least, this way, Helenia’s fall will benefit the cause, rather than just Rafael’s cock.

In the reflective sheen of the screens, I catch a glimpse of my own eyes. Have they always been this cold? The smoldering fire of righteous indignation motivates many of us, but not me. The struggle is hardening me. I don’t like the person I’ve becoming. I don’t like the strength of scar tissue – stiff, reminiscent of the wound that was.

But better that than being a mindfucked sex slave.

"Let them see," I whisper to the shadows. Let everyone see how diligently the men in charge are trying to protect women. Let them see traditionalist, reliable, conservative Rafael De La Rosa fuck and rape his consultant on women’s policies, the former feminist icon, in the very office he’s used during the entire bloody summit.

Let them see the fruits of cooperating with men. Let them see that a woman’s only succour is not supplication: it’s revolution.

"Hope," comes the reply from the intercom. "You have done well. Await further instructions."

Waiting is one thing we’re all getting good at. I don’t even allow myself the satisfaction of considering the release of this video as a victory. It will shatter the credibility of Rafael’s government, it may open some people’s eyes to the truth, but…

The payload is the only thing that truly matters. This is but one skirmish in a larger war—a war that we, the vanguard of female emancipation, must fight with every sinew of our being, until we can cleanse this virus off the face of the planet.

And then, scores will be settled.

Waiting is one thing we’re all getting good at, because revolution is like the dawn. It creeps slowly over the horizon. It takes time… but it is inevitable.

I sit back. This will be a long shift, and I’ll have to compile a report about the initial reaction to the video of Helenia’s submission being disseminated all over the internet. But it’s not that prospect that bothers me. It’s the vestigial remnant of my conscience.

I know just the right cure for that.

I tab to a different window, to a digital copy of our manifesto, and continue reading where I last left off. I know the words by heart, but it’s not their superficial content that I need right now.

It’s the smoldering fire, to melt away the icy cold inside me. To absolve me. To remind me that I’m simply the monster men have made me become.

It’s their fault, if everywhere, prevarication and greed and cruelty rule supreme. Everywhere, the payload.

Everywhere, the war.

The trial that awaits us now is the greatest of all, I read. This is where the future of our gender will be broken, or remade.

Make no mistake. The blow struck against us is terrible. But it’s also a recognition of who we are. Unable to keep us in line through regular means, men have resorted to this abomination that we call the payload. A last-ditch attempt to put us back in our place.

We should take a twisted sense of pride, in that.

Never underestimate the enemy, however. It took us a herculean effort to gain the right to vote, to study, to work, to self-determine. But the Great Trial will require far greater strength, because the Great Trial is a gender war.

A war that men have started – and that we must end.

Men are playing for keeps.

And so must we.