Karin was used to a high level of hyperfocus, but by the time she was back at work, it was clear to her that this was something else. Something special. She settled down, headphones in place, to sweeping the stage, which Karin always did the same way.

There was really only one way to sweep a stage, if you didn’t want to have to do some of it again on the way out. Karin had done this now so many times that it was, for her, an entirely automatic process. It didn’t require her mind; it was vaguely restful, in fact, certainly more so than an outsider might expect given the amount of space to be covered and the weight of the broom.

Her friends occasionally and jokingly admired Karin’s upper arm development. It all came from her work; her biceps and her shoulders had a lot more definition than those of any of her friends, even though Liv and Julia had two weekly ‘dates’ at an expensive local gym, where both paid for the attentions of a personal trainer who “is going to be the star of one of those Diet Coke ads one day.”

What they didn’t realise, Karin thought, was how monotonous the tasks that created the muscles were. It had been frustrating, at first; then when she had the knowledge to make it easy, it had become boring, and then it had become an opportunity to let her mind wander and think of other things, or just to glaze over into a meditative state.

That was why Karin had first turned to podcasts; there had been the nagging feeling that just zoning out for most of a shift wasn’t the way to do this, that she was squandering her precious time.

Add in a little hyperfocus and it meant she kept up to date with so much media - just so long as the media was audio-only.

Throughout her sweeping she got further into the podcast, and the more she listened, the less the plot seemed to advance. This wasn’t uncommon among drama podcasts, but it usually led to Karin’s attention waning fairly rapidly. That… wasn’t happening here.

The more the episodes instead examined the way the characters thought about things, the more fascinated she was. Those who’d had deals with the Voice had wants and needs that were very clear, very easy to understand, and they operated in purely logical ways once you understood these motivations; Hyacinth had wanted security, especially against her own worries, and she wanted to be happier in life. That’s what the Voice had given her, and it made total sense that she would obey the Voice for that.

The Voice was wonderful in any case; it seemed to have been the catalyst too for Hyacinth and Margaret to discover what they truly wanted. Karin could certainly understand the appeal of that; knowing what she wanted was sometimes simple and sometimes very hard. For some time she’d believed that to be a part of her being on the spectrum, but by this time she’d had enough conversations on the strange nature of desire to know that this happened, at least to some extent, to almost everybody.

Sorting through dozens of cables to put them back in their storeboxes, Karin found herself smiling simply because the Voice was present in the show and talking. Those confident tones no longer felt sinister; they were reassuring, steadying, and if they were also the part of the show Karin most often lost track of, that was just down to the beautiful soundscape…

…wasn’t it?

It seemed a curious gap in her hyperfocus, whenever she thought about it. She was paying attention to almost all of the show, but when the Voice was on, she just enjoyed how it sounded, and seemed to drift…

*

“…and I just can’t actually keep track of what he’s saying,” Karin confessed, her cheeks burning. She braced herself instinctively against criticism from Liv, which she was sure must soon be coming, but instead the blonde simply nodded briskly.

“No, absolutely,” Liv said. “I have the same thing. When an episode’s finished sometimes I think, was he actually saying words? Or was he just running through speech exercises and it just sounds so good? But I only think that after episodes. I think I must notice what he’s saying while he’s saying it. Just that it goes away afterwards.”

Osana chuckled. “I have the same problem with some people in real life,” she said, and the other two smiled politely. Liv laughed appreciatively.

Osana was just close enough to fluent that her friends, in particular, had stopped noticing her occasional troubles with English unless they happened to be much clearer than usual.

“I also have some issues following what he says,” Osana went on. “I remember some words, but they are the words I do not fully understand.” She looked at the other two over the rim of her coffee cup, saying with her eyes alone that she found this significant. “I understand the sentences, of course, from context. But I am missing, ah - detail?”

“Nuance,” Liv suggested. Osana nodded thoughtfully.

“Nuance, then,” she said. “I may miss details. What, for example, is ‘docile’?”

Liv and Karin looked at each other. Both wanted to explain, but both were suddenly uncertain how; and for both of them, suddenly the question ran through their heads: When had that word been uttered?

They didn’t remember anyone using it, and they were fairly sure they should do.

“When did someone say that?” Karin asked nervously.

“Oh, the Voice says it,” Osana told them. “Quite often. I picture him smiling whenever he does.” She shivered slightly in her seat. “It is a good feeling.”

Karin was sure Osana was telling the truth - certainly sure that it was a good feeling; any time the Voice was talking was a good time - but she still couldn’t remember it being said.

It wouldn’t be the Voice describing himself, of course. That would make no sense at all.

So he had to be talking to one of the others, whichever of whom he thought was more…

“Easily led,” Karin said slowly. “It means easily led. Accepting.”

Liv nodded, half-smiling to herself. “Placid,” she added. Karin smiled at her, and Liv smiled back, but neither of them were really looking at the other; instead they were staring unfixedly into nothingness…

*

Liv didn’t say anything to the others, but there was a feeling of unsettledness about her as she headed home from their coffee, or rather, there was a vague sense that she should, under these circumstances, be feeling very, very unsettled. She had no particularly good argument for why she didn’t.

Liv knew very well that her memory wasn’t the perfect thing she’d fondly imagined it to be when still a younger woman. She’d been in her mid-twenties or so before she’d finally accepted, under the weight of available evidence, that she couldn’t remember things word for word without concentrated revision.

All the same, missing words out entirely felt like a much bigger slip, especially a word that had then given her such a reaction when it was said again.

She also wasn’t at all sure what to think of her reaction. Docility was hardly something that featured in her idea of who she was, let alone who she wanted to be. Docility was the opposite of career advancement; to Liv, docility was the opposite of success. It was a trait of people who not only sauntered through life without success, but also - and a cardinal sin to compound the cardinal sin of failure - people who also weren’t at all interesting.

Karin wasn’t successful, by Liv’s lights - although over the years she had come to accept that Karin’s life was the life Karin wanted, even if Liv couldn’t understand why - but she was certainly interesting. She was friendly, and always ready to help when an opportunity was presented, and the way she came alive when something she was excited about came up was delightful.

Liv would say something similar about all of her friends in the irregular cocktails group. Minnie was playing by the same rules as Liv, she thought, but her sense of humour prevented her from pushing as hard; she was the only one of Liv’s friends who Liv believed wouldn’t call herself successful if asked.

Osana had always been somewhat on the fringe of their shared friendships, purely because of a language barrier that right up until that afternoon Liv would have thought that only Osana thought existed. But she didn’t recognise some of the words from It Comes at a Price.

There was no good excuse, Liv thought - she was ruthlessly honest with herself, when she saw an opportunity to be - for her not having accepted Osana’s protestations as true; all the same, she hadn’t, and now she’d been blindsided by it, and by what it said about her.

She should have pulled Karin to one side when the group broke up, she thought; then she could have asked her if she’d noticed the words Osana had struggled with being used. But it would have looked like excluding Osana, and Liv didn’t want to do that. Osana was a friend, and Live had high standards for her behaviour toward her friends.

(And besides, it would have been admitting to someone else that she was uneasy.)

She pottered around her apartment for a while after she got home, half-doing various things, but it was no good; she knew she was just putting something off, and when you know you’re just putting something off, it’s really hard to stay distracted.

She poured herself a large glass of dry white wine and went into her living room, where her favourite cream white armchair awaited. She set the wineglass down on a coffee table beside it and was about to sit down when she paused. She stood by her chair for almost a minute, waging a silent battle with herself, very glad there was nobody there to watch.

At length she scowled, frustrated with herself, and stalked - there was no other word for it - into her bedroom, where she stood in front of her wardrobe, looking herself in the full-length mirror and, with her lips thin with disapproval, stripped off her smart blouse, set aside her expensive slacks, and after a few moments, unsnapped her bra and stepped out of her panties, depositing them both in the chic laundry bin she kept in the corner of her room.

She took from the closet a lacy, semi-transparent teddy. She’d had it for years - it was actually a lot more restrictive around her bosom than she remembered, and the hemline felt higher than it had once been, which she took to be due to a bigger rear end than she’d once had - but worn it only a handful of times.

Liv would have strenuously denied she was asexual. The way she saw it, she had more than enough sex drive. What she didn’t have was any interest in getting someone else in to tend to her body, which she already knew better than they ever would. There really was no substitute for firsthand experience, after all.

Certainly she’d never bothered inviting a man, or even a woman, over to her apartment. Nine times out of ten, even the good ones would view an invitation like that as meaning more than it did. On the rare occasions she gave someone else a chance to scratch her itch, she used hotels. It avoided any risk of unwanted repetitions.

Today, though, wearing the teddy seemed as much a part of listening back to those previous episodes of the podcast as the glass of white wine. They were the other parts of what Liv knew would be an exceptional, sensual experience, and she wanted her other senses to enjoy it as much as her ears.

On the way out of her bedroom she stopped at the bedside table and opened the bottom drawer. The topmost held jewellery, TV remotes, and batteries; the middle drawer held toys. The bottom drawer held things she thought she might be embarrassed to explain if she was ever challenged to.

One of these was a small square of soft blue cotton which was wrapped around a bottle of expensive mens’ cologne. Liv unwrapped the bottle, then spritzed the square lightly.

Liv seldom took anyone as a lover, but three or encounters ago, one man in the field of her women had used a cologne that Liv hadn’t been able to get out of her head. For her it exuded the better aspects of maleness, the more attractive features of masculinity. After they’d parted ways, she’d tracked down his scent, and for very special occasions, she would apply a little to this cotton square, so she could keep the scent with her.

It occurred to her only as she was walking back to her living room that this wasn’t the best preparation to pay focused attention to the Voice’s words, but by that stage she felt committed.

If Liv had known that her boss already had a similar ritual for preparing to listen to the new episode, she would probably have felt unsettled. All the same…

She settled herself back into her armchair, picked up her wine glass, and spoke. “Alexa, play It Comes at a Price episode seven.” Which was the episode, apparently, where the Voice first said ‘docile’, and in which Osana had first felt thrown out of her easy listening by it.

She took a sip of wine, crossed, uncrossed, and recrossed her legs, enjoying the feeling of silk against her bare skin as she did so, and listened…

*

Karin wasn’t as caught up in her thoughts about Osana’s confusion as Liv had been. It startled her that she could have missed the word, but Karin was used to key details slipping if she wasn’t hyperfocused - or if her hyperfocus was currently directed elsewhere. And it certainly baffled her that she’d reacted so strongly to the word when Osana repeated it.

But by the time she got home her mind was on to other things. Thinking about the podcast had led quickly to thinking about Lola, and thinking about Lola had led to wondering why it was she’d seen less of her lately. So while listening to another episode on the way back, Karin had googled her old acquaintance, and it was very clear that there were fewer jobs being taken.

Not none, but Lola had scaled her work back significantly. Press photos suggested she looked just as she always had, so it couldn’t be the notoriously shallow Broadway casting director curse.

There was no gossip online suggesting that Lola had been unofficially blacklisted. If it came to that, too, Karin would have expected to hear about any blacklisting almost as soon as it leaked online, and well before it properly took effect.

The gossip channels in the New York theatre were deep, efficient, and all-encompassing. Karin could tell you the scandals of obscure backstage personnel from venues she’d never even visited, let alone worked for. So could her opposite numbers at those venues tell her the latest shocking news from Karin’s own employer.

The code simply insisted that these stories never reach the public - which didn’t mean they never did, of course; merely that when someone let the information slip, they did so under the assurance of anonymity, and with a goal in mind.

No, the only way to completely fall out of New York City’s theatre gossip was to simply stop being a presence in the field. The city was jealous in that way; you could strike it big elsewhere and you would still not be spoken of, and if you gradually stopped taking work, nobody would remark on it until you were forgotten.

Which, Karin wondered, had Lola done? The answer was found on Twitter, which made for the one time a year that Karin found that platform worthwhile. Lola was still posting the occasional selfie, and enough background landmarks were recognisable to confirm she was still in town.

Lola was definitely still hanging around the city. Which meant one of its mid-tier theatrical successes, having landed a role on a podcast, had turned away from the traditional theatre.

Did podcasting pay enough to justify that? Split among multiple voice cast?

Karin had heard various podcasters discuss their revenue streams. A quick search turned up very little merchandise, and there were almost no ads in It Comes at a Price (which, on reflection, Karin found ironic). Karin couldn’t see where else the money could be coming from.

In fact, from what understanding she had, it seemed like Lola would probably not be making above union rate for this whole thing, and at only an hour a week, that definitely wasn’t enough money to change her priorities.

It didn’t make a lot of sense.

Karin made herself dinner - rice noodles, cooked to just the right firmness, and fried tofu in a satay sauce - and ate it, conjuring up reasons Lola might have receded from the stage (while still performing, even) and rejecting them, one by one, after weighing them against the person she knew.

She hated calling people. Yet she had to know. The two facts sat heavy in her head, inextricably opposed to each other, deeply frustrating, until finally the balance tipped.

She opened her messenger app and hit the call button beside Lola’s photo. Sitting at her kitchen table, she held her breath, not sure if she wanted Lola to answer or for the call to ring out. Now she was committed, the balance of her decision was rapidly swinging back in the other direction…

“Hello?”

“Lola? It’s Karin. I don’t know if you remember me?”

“I never forget a face,” Lola said warmly. Of course, Karin reminded herself, Lola was an actress; this might not be true. But almost immediately, Lola said “Your flying was the only flying I trusted at the Lyric. Goodness, that must have been - what? Five years?”

Eight, Karin thought, but actors never liked it when you told them things were further in the past than they thought. “I think so,” she said diplomatically. It was good to know, too, that Lola really did remember her, and fondly at that.

“Five years. How are you, darling?”

“Good!” Karin’s response was instinctive, but she knew from experience that it often came off as too assertive. As she always did, she took a measured breath and went on, “really good, thanks. I, ah, I wanted to call because I’ve just run across your work in another form,” and she paused to acknowledge Lola’s surprised, delighted laugh.

“Karin,” she said warmly, “you don’t mean to tell me you’ve been listening to podcasts?”

Karin was surprised to hear Lola so dismissive of the form. Sure, some actors turned out to despise certain jobs but accept them anyway, but Lola hadn’t seemed that way. Did she dislike It Comes at a Price?

An idea unfolded in her head, built on nothing but hunches and assessments, and yet it seemed so clear and so plausible she found herself half-believing it; that perhaps Lola acted less elsewhere because the contract for this podcast gave its producers control over where she could work; that a distaste for the work and for the form it was part of had arisen from frustration; and that Lola was certainly a skilled enough actress to hide that disdain in her performance.

And yet her laugh seemed happy.

Karin’s head was spinning in bewilderment. It felt as if any explanation fell apart against some other aspect of the puzzle.

“Yes?” she ventured uncertainly.

“Oh, that’s marvelous!” Lola chuckled. “Have you got far? What do you think? Do you have any theories?”

That was too many questions, especially with Karin already feeling she was on uncertain ground conversationally. Despite the delight in her friend’s voice, she was regretting making the call.

She was debating what answer to give when she heard, dimly, another voice in the background of Lola’s call. It was too faint to be properly made out and yet, instantly, some part of Karin sat up and paid more attention.

Lola’s voice became quieter as she replied. Karin pictured her sitting there, her head turned away from the phone. Still clear, just quiet. “Welcome home, Master,” she said, and Karin felt a strange prickling across her scalp, especially where her head joined her neck. Sudden fright, but fright tinged with an eager interest; Halloween fright, not true fear.

She should hang up. She should absolutely hang up.

Her thumb never even went near the button.

“Oh, she’s a friend,” Lola told whoever the other person was. “Actually she’s been listening.”

“Has she?” the man with her asked, and Karin, recognising the voice, bit her lip, suddenly excited and nervous. That was the Voice. In real life. And somehow, their charisma was even clearer outside the podcast.

Or was that just because she knew the Voice was speaking live?

“Yes, Master.”

“For how long?”

“She hadn’t told me yet, Master.”

“Put her on speaker,” he said, and as Lola was acknowledging his order he cut across her with “What’s her name?”

“Karin, Master,” Lola’s voice came back to full volubility.

Karin thought again that she should end the call, but then the Voice was speaking directly to her, and he was clear. “Hello, Karin,” he said. “Do you know my voice?”

Her lips shaped a ‘Yes’ but no answer came out. After a few moments of silence, the Voice chuckled. “Are you listening, Karin?”

This time her instinctive answer had a little sound behind it - not much, barely a squeak, but enough that she heard Lola giggle as well as the Voice’s amusement. “I take it you do know my voice,” said the Voice.

Karin cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said, this time audibly.

“Have you been listening long?”

“Not really…” Her voice caught as she made what felt to her like a shameful admission. The Voice just sounded more amused.

“Then I have to assume you’ve been listening a lot.”

He didn’t make it a question, but she still found herself admitting “Yes,” carried along by something in his tone. By the confidence, the swagger, the self-assurance.

The Voice conducted himself like everyone else was part of a joke he was telling to amuse himself, and for Karin, at least, it seemed impossible not to be pulled along by it.

“Karin,” he said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and you won’t think you know what it even means. But if part of you knows, you’ll answer.” That part wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an instruction. The Voice was telling her how the world worked.

“Are you ready to drop deep and accept?”

He was right. It meant nothing to her. But she found herself saying “Yes,” and she had no idea why.

“That’s great. Are you on your own?”

“Yes,” she said again. It seemed easier to agree every time she did so.

“Have you met her?” the Voice asked, and Lola answered “Yes, Master,” just as Karin answered “Yes.” She realised it hadn’t been her he was speaking to and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“Is she attractive?”

Karin flushed deeper. She willed herself to end the call. But her finger didn’t so much as twitch. She realised she was holding her breath in anticipation.

“You’d enjoy her, Master,” Lola said cheerfully. “All soft flesh and smooth curves.”

Karin’s thighs squeezed together at the idea of the Voice ‘enjoying’ her. It was like a switch had been flipped and all of this was suddenly very real to her. Then Lola dropped another bombshell. “And she’s local.”

The Voice laughed again. “Finally.”

“I’m sorry I’m not enough to be all you need in New York, Master,” Lola said, and Karin marvelled at the lack of bitterness in her tone. Instead there was a coy amusement that made it sound like flirting.

“Well, having women everywhere is the point, isn’t it?” he asked. “Karin, is Lola’s description fair?”

“I guess?” It was a lot more poetic than Karin would usually go with, and she would like to be a little less soft and slightly flatter in places, but certainly her lovers had always been drawn to the swell of her hips or the fall of her breasts.

“Drop deep and accept, Karin,” the Voice said, and Karin’s vision swam.

It was like she was outside herself, watching. The Voice was still audible, but dimly, and she couldn’t make out his words, but nor could she make out the words she was saying in response. Language didn’t make sense. Only the Voice made sense.

She seemed to see more than sense herself switching her phone to speaker and activating the camera. It went down on the kitchen table, balanced against the pepperpot to keep her in frame.

As soon as the camera feed was on, her perspective seemed to shift and she saw her face, a vacant stare changing her expression into that of a stranger, as if she were watching through the camera herself. She was dizzy and disoriented but above all and to her deep surprise she was delighted.

Her movements seemed sluggish as she watched herself tug her T-shirt over her head, but once it was clear of her hair her grip seemed to fail entirely, the garment falling to the floor from nerveless fingers.

Her hands were already on to their next job, and as she watched herself, Karin realised she must look like this sometimes working backstage, when she had broken a task down into its constituent parts, and was simply moving through them piece by piece. Behind her back went her hands and Karin thought she could feel the release of tension as the bra unhooked, but that was ridiculous; she was watching through a screen.

A moment later she realised she wasn’t watching through a screen but was, instead, removing her bra, arms crossing her chest as she brought the straps forward off her arms. Her bra, too, slipped from fingers suddenly uninterested in holding it.

The Voice wanted her to play with her tits. She knew that, even if the words that told her that had gone into her head without being understood. She was past the embarrassment of going topless now, past the stumbling block where she might have resisted, and she once again occupied her own head; it was like the Voice had set her mind aside from her body until the opening was gone.

“Show me your pleasure,” the Voice was saying. “Show me your submission.” She had a handful now of each breast, her body somehow sensitized beyond its usual capacity; the slightest tightening of her grip sent fireworks of pleasure through her mind.

“Show me you want my offer,” the Voice told her, and she worked harder to prove it. She wasn’t doing what would bring her the most pleasure, she realised; she was doing what would put on the best show for the Voice. The moment she realised, the moment she accepted that this was also the right way to go about things.

The Voice would ensure she had pleasure enough. In return, all she had to do was follow direction like the docile slut she was.

It never even occurred to Karin to question that self-description, or even to wonder why she seemed to hear that thought in the Voice rather than her own.

“Show me your tits,” the Voice instructed, and her thumbs and forefingers closed around her nipples, her other fingers opening up wide to show off more of her titflesh. She tugged and lifted, bringing her tits up to display them better to the camera.

It was the first thing she’d done entirely heedless of her own pleasure, entirely for the Voice’s pleasure, and it felt better than anything else she’d done. The moan she let out was loud enough that if she were any closer to her right mind, she would have feared her neighbours would hear.

“Very good, Karin,” the Voice said with a purr. “Do you know what you are?”

“I am bound by agreement,” Karin said, though it came out as a helpless, needy mumble. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back into her head. She tugged on her nipples again and, the agreement sealed, was finally able to cum, her cries of ecstasy the last thing she heard before she dropped so deep she lost awareness completely.