By the end of the first week, Robin was starting to feel less exhausted.

Lessons were gruelling, whether that was an intense mental load from the computerised lessons, the weight of scrutiny in creative and social lessons, or the sheer work involved in calisthenics. They were clearly designed to be tough. But that challenge, the fact it was constant (and after the first week, it was clear that even the creative electives were designed to be just as challenging as the rest) meant that she was acclimatising to it.

Everyone seemed to be, although certainly that was to greater or lesser degrees. Eva and Robin had started becoming close friends, not because they had much in common in their backgrounds, but simply because they were taking every challenge in front of them roughly as seriously as one another. Angie and Karen had also paired up in much the same way; they didn’t seem to be developing their stamina quite as fast as Robin (at least in her opinion - by now, Robin was very clear that Headmistress Gunderman and her team weren’t evaluating things exactly as she did) but they were still working hard.

“It’s weird,” she said to Mai, an upperclasswoman originally from Japan who had struck up a close acquaintance with her. “There were always kids at school who you could tell didn’t care. But everyone works hard here, even the ones who don’t get as much out of it.

Mai smiled politely, which Robin had learned always meant that she was about to be provided with a startling insight that seemed to come from a perspective she’d never considered. “At school,” she said, “not everyone is motivated. Even at college, you’ll see plenty of people who don’t care. What we always forget is that these people change the atmosphere around them. They accept failure, and so the environment becomes one in which failure is acceptable.

“Here, we are all striving toward a goal. We all understand its value. The environment here is one of willingness to work. And willingness to put in the work, to do one’s duty, is more valuable than a drive to succeed.” She paused for a moment after saying that, then nodded decisively.

Robin was silent, thinking it through. The talk of duty resonated with her. The idea that she should be willing to put in all the effort needed, no matter what, that also seemed important. Sometimes, pleasing others came not from achievement but through the visible effort.

She looked at Angie and Karen again thoughtfully, with all that in mind, and nodded slowly. “I think I understand that.”

“Good.” In conversations like this, Mai’s English was impeccable, her accent more British than American, though she’d mentioned it had been learned here. Robin had also heard Mai speaking in a register much more heavily informed by her Japanese upbringing, her word choice simpler with it, while in conversation with others.

Robin hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask about it. It didn’t seem to be a joke, but it was consistent, so something was going on. Robin suspected the answer would make her uncomfortable.

Going into the second week, Headmistress Gunderman rapped her knuckles on the door just after the latest memory class had ended, while they were all still collecting their wits afterwards. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said. “Some students have been marked out with standout performances, the staff tell me. I’d like to to speak to each of you today. So the following ladies, please present yourselves to my receptionist immediately you’ve finished your lunch.”

She lifted a notepad to read from. “Elizabeth Grange, Cassidy Pilton. Nadine Benjamin. Robin Kilner. Wendy Nicholls.” Her eyes lifted from the notepad, she looked across the assembled, and she smiled. “I look forward to our discussions.”

WIth that, she left. Robin looked around for the others mentioned, meeting Cassidy’s eye. As soon as Cassidy realised Robin was looking at her, she flashed a warm, welcoming smile that reminded Robin of how automatic that response seemed to the upperclasswomen (even though the smiles seemed too genuine to be an automatic response).

She was surprised to realise that she was smiling too.

*

Desdemona Gunderman was an imposing woman when walking the halls of the School. Once her receptionist told Robin to go in - she was the third to finish lunch and arrive, and therefore third to be admitted for a private conversation, though as she hadn’t seen either of the others leave, she’d only known it would be private as the door opened and she saw the headmistress alone - she discovered a very different side to her.

Just seeing her behind the desk, while she retained her authority, somehow changed the atmosphere. The smile, almost conspiratorial, on her lips added to the overall effect.

“Robin,” she said. “Obviously you’ve been doing well. Congratulations, first of all.”

“Thank you.” There were two chairs on the carpet in front of the desk. Directly between them was a circular shag pile rug, about a yard in diameter. Robin had found herself standing on it; Headmistress Gunderman hadn’t directed her to sit, so she hadn’t felt it would be polite. She wondered now if she should, but didn’t want to presume. Being assertive wasn’t the role of a Northrop girl.

It didn’t occur to Robin to wonder why she knew that, where the thought had come from, or why she’d agree with it.

“Now, obviously we want to encourage you and the other high achievers,” Headmistress Gunderman continued. “We also want you to set an example for the others in your class. But the two intents can conflict.”

“Ma’am?”

“An example needs to be on at all times. It can be hard to sustain, and it’s extra pressure. We’ve noticed in the past that this led to high achievers stumbling, and it could be hard for them to recover. The last thing we want you to do is become disillusioned with the process.”

Robin nodded, not because she fully understood but because it seemed to be expected of her, and in any case she felt it would please the Headmistress.

“So we looked for a way to do this differently,” Gunderman went on. “I’m going to ask you for your patience in the next five minutes.”

“Of course,” Robin answered. She couldn’t remember when her curiosity had been higher.

“That’s excellent,” the headmistress said. “I was sure I could count on you to understand your duty.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Robin bowed her head for a moment.

“Through that door, then.” Headmistress Gunderman indicated another door, not the one she’d come in from.

Robin was good at spatial orientation, and she often liked to build mental maps of buildings as she explored them. The way this wing of the building had been designed, beyond this should be the gymnasium, but the gym didn’t have any doors on the relevant wall. Which meant a small little space, and one which was well enough camouflaged that you could easily not realise there was a space there unless you were looking for it.

These older buildings, she thought, really were all full of surprises.

She stepped through the door and saw in front of her a gurney mounted on wheels, empty, and a figure on the far side of it. The figure was tall enough that she assumed it was male, but as it was dressed in hospital scrubs and a mask over most of the face, she couldn’t say for sure.

Robin blinked in confusion and turned back toward the Headmistress, uncertain about all this, but that meant she was turning further away from the man stood behind her in the same narrow space.

A hand came around over her shoulder and clamped cloth tightly against her face. Shocked, she opened her mouth and took a deep breath to scream, and evidently that was the wrong choice to make, because she inhaled a deep chemical smell. Almost immediately her knees gave out and she pitched forward; she was halfway conscious still as she was efficiently loaded the rest of the way onto the gurney, but lost her awareness of the world around her by the time the gurney was moving in its turn.

*

Unbeknownst to Robin, the gurney did not have far to travel; about five feet beyond where she’d seen they went through a weighted swing door, where her gurney was lined up next to two others. One of them bore Nadine Benjamin; Cassidy Pilton, who had occupied the first, was by now resting face-down on a sterile table.

The two men who had drugged and moved Robin grabbed one of the two empty gurneys waiting on the other side of the door, then moved back into the space. Meanwhile, techs had lifted up the hair covering Cassidy’s neck.

With a small trimmer they shaved a tiny patch of her hair in a small square after using their fingers to establish the point where the spine connected to the skull. With this done, another moved into place. They carried a device that looked more like a shock baton than anything else and which hummed cheerfully away.

Linking up the square tip of the device within the shaved square of bare skin, they thumbed a switch on the grip and watched a series of telltales light up red and then, one by one, light up green as the device ran its checks and compensated accordingly. Once the last of them had lit up green, the tech pushed a button an inch or so away from the switch, before throwing the switch back.

The chip was accordingly embedded into place just below the base of Cassidy’s skull, where it was now engaged in testing filament connections into the central nervous system. There was a certain amount of unconscious resistance to the stimuli it used for testing, but the threshold of what Cassidy would accept and what she might fight had been adjusted over the previous week, and as such her psyche did not fully reject it.

Cassidy was then transferred from the table to a chair waiting nearby at the hands of the two burliest technicians, who moved back to select Nadine.

All unknowing, Robin awaited her own turn.

*

Robin was jolted from what must have been a deep reverie - deep enough that she’d lost track of her surroundings and what she was doing, really a full fledged daydream - by the ringing of silver being rapped against crystal.

With a shock, she realised she already couldn’t remember any of the details of her daydream.

She was sat upright, holding a crystal champagne flute of her own, part of a loose semi-circle of chairs in which all five top achievers sat, directly in front of Desdemona Gunderman’s desk. The headmistress herself was standing beside her chair, having just tapped her fountain pen against her own flute.

“Well,” she said, smiling. “You are all to be congratulated, obviously. But more importantly, we want you to set an example to the others in your class.”

For a fleeting moment Robin wondered where she’d heard that before. The question, as well as the half-memory that inspired it, promptly slipped through her fingers, and she had a sense of something discordant, as if the wrong note had been played in the middle of a song. There was no such song, nor any melody, but the feeling persisted. Robin found herself not liking that feeling.

“We don’t want this to push you too far,” Gunderman continued. “Being asked to serve as an example can be hard to sustain, and it’s extra pressure.” She looked around the group as a whole, meeting the eyes of each student in turn.

*

“Hit it.”

“Roger.”

*

Robin almost jumped in her seat. Something about the eye contact, she decided; it must be that eye contact because there was nothing else for it to be. But the headmistress’ smile, her approval…

It had to be that which had felt so good. Nothing else had changed but that look.

She was talking about pressure, and about pushing them, but Robin felt on top of the world. A Northrop girl wasn’t going to shirk her duty just because it was hard.

“We expect you to give us your best,” the headmistress continued. “But we know it will take practice to sustain. So I am going to ask each of you, in turn, to give me a pledge, so that I know you understand the expectations of your duty.”

Robin nodded gently. Knowing what was expected of her would make it easier to please.

The same strange tingling pleasure she had felt before surged through her.

“We want you to present a united front,” Gunderman said. “We do not want you to break ranks. This is not a time to take a stand on principle.”

A chill ran down Robin’s spine. She shivered. Taking a stand felt more daunting, just as pushing herself to maintain her standards felt more desirable.

The headmistress turned first to Elizabeth Grange. “As you received the most nominations from staff,” she said, “I should like to begin with you. Rise.”

Elizabeth stood as she was instructed. Desdemona pointed mutely to a small, circular rug at the centre of the semicircle of chairs. Without further instruction, Elizabeth took up position on the circle.

“Repeat after me. I, Elizabeth Grange…”

“I, Elizabeth Grange,” said Elizabeth.

“Do solemnly commit.”

“Do solemnly commit.”

“To uphold Northrop values in the face of provocation.”

“To uphold Northrop values in the face of provocation.”

“To serve as a pleasing example of duty.”

“To serve as a pleasing example of duty.”

The delicious tingle was back in Robin. She was smiling broadly just watching this, knowing the headmistress having chosen them all for this was a mark that her own work deserved it.

“To help others to refrain from questioning.”

“To help others to refrain from questioning.”

It must be some trick the headmistress had in her delivery, because the tingle was gone and the shuddering chill was back at the idea of the class questioning when they should fulfil their duty instead.

“Very good,” Gunderman said, then turned to Cassidy. Realising her pledge was complete, Elizabeth stepped back to where she had been seated and took up position beside it, standing waiting hesitantly.

All five of the students sat through four repetitions of the pledge and actively took part in a fifth. And every time, they each felt those same raptures, that same chill.

Afterwards, Robin would shudder slightly any time the teachers said anything she wanted to question. She never actually raised those questions, feeling too uncomfortable to do so. On the other hand, she volunteered whenever a teacher needed an assistant, and never failed to meet the eyes of those around her and smile while she did so.

At no point did she associate these developing tendencies with that meeting in Headmistress Gunderman’s office.

*

The classes, Robin had decided, were fun. Deportment, which turned out to mean ‘the way someone walks’, had a preferred outcome; the head should remain completely straight and level while they moved, with the body held correctly to achieve this.

Robin and the others spent a lot of time in early deportment classes walking carefully with a book balanced precariously on their heads. Their steps were slow and measured, their hands down by their sides, and they would often smile at the faintly frozen expressions of others walking.

She hadn’t expected it to be a bonding exercise for the class, but it was. Their teacher, Madame Meredith, could balance an egg on her head and walk at almost parade march pace without it dislodging, gesturing and carrying on a conversation as she did so; this was obviously intended as the upper pinnacle of achievement, and Robin mentally marked it as a target for herself, since she was setting such a good example.

All the same, she was more fascinated by the difference between one of her class walking and the sophomores and upperclasswomen; the head remained perfectly still and stable, but most of them had developed a slow, slinky roll of their hips, a sashay. Madame Meredith did not teach this, and Robin wondered privately if there was another teacher they hadn’t yet met who would cover this theory.

“Do you ever worry about the upperclasswomen?” she was asked one night by Angie.

Robin had her doubts about Angie, though she reminded herself frequently that the evidence of the returning students was that everyone at Northrop could achieve. Angie, on the other hand, simply didn’t seem to have the right attitude.

Quite why she’d latched onto Robin as strongly as she had in recent weeks wasn’t entirely clear. Privately, Robin suspected Angie was hoping if she was seen with one of the leading students often enough, her instructors would come to think of her as another.

Robin wanted to make an impact, though, and helping Angie to see sense would certainly go down to her credit, and so she sucked down the discomfort and icy shudder that she felt every time Angie ridiculed one of Northrop’s many teachings which, once she’d heard them, had seemed like she should always have known and understood that life worked that way.

So when Angie asked, she answered “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.” Angie always said that when Robin didn’t immediately agree. After a few moments of silence she went on, “They just seem, you know, kinda sexual.”

Again that shiver of discomfort down Robin’s spine. “I don’t think so,” she said. “What makes you think that?”

“The way they walk, mostly,” Angie said. “And the way they smile. I don’t know, exactly. Just a vibe.”

“What kind of vibe?”

“Like…” Angie seemed to be taking her time finding the words, and Robin, who hadn’t really had any reason to consider the upperclasswomen as sexual beings, let alone overtly so, realised that whatever was bothering her, it was really bothering her.

“They don’t seem sexy at all,” Robin said. “I mean, feminine empowerment gives confidence, and confidence is sexy. But I don’t think they’re trying to be.”

“That’s the thing,” Angie said, and there was a sudden extra intensity in her voice. “It’s not that they’re trying to be sexy. I think they’re trying not to be.”

For the first time, Robin looked up from the notes she’d been making. “You’re not making any sense.”

“No, listen, right,” Angie said. “My aunt Ellie, the family scandal? We thought she was a receptionist for a dentist for years, then one of us booked with her boss and mentioned her. Turned out she hadn’t ever worked there.

“We kinda dug into it. Anyway, turned out she’d actually been working as an escort the whole time, just lied to us because she was embarrassed. She’d spent years being slutty dressed up as respectable.”

Robin, suddenly aware that her mouth had been gaping wider and wider open with astonishment throughout this recitation, closed her mouth and swallowed to give herself some time to think. “That’s what you think of when you look at our school?”

“Not everyone,” Angie said. “Pretty much all the upperclasswomen. Some of the sophomores.” She shrugged. “It just seems weird.”

“It seems disrespectful,” Robin retorted, feeling the same shudder down her spine. She closed her notebook firmly and stood up. “Do excuse me,” she said with icy politeness before she swept out.

The chill went away when she had passed a certain distance away.

*

“Possible situation, sir.”

“What?”

“It’s the same pair we’ve mentioned a couple of times. They had another conversation.”

“We have audio, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me playback.”

“Roger.”

There was a silent moment before the recording began to play.

“Do you ever worry about the upperclasswomen?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. They just seem, you know, kinda sexual.”

“I don’t think so. What makes you think that?”

“The way they walk, mostly, and the way they smile. I don’t know, exactly. Just a vibe.”

“What kind of vibe?”

“Like…”

“They don’t seem sexy at all. I mean, feminine empowerment gives confidence, and confidence is sexy. But I don’t think they’re trying to be.”

“That’s the thing. It’s not that they’re trying to be sexy. I think they’re trying not to be.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“No, listen, right. My aunt Ellie, the family scandal? We thought she was a receptionist for a dentist for years, then one of us booked with her boss and mentioned her. Turned out she hadn’t ever worked there.

“We kinda dug into it. Anyway, turned out she’d actually been working as an escort the whole time, just lied to us because she was embarrassed. She’d spent years being slutty dressed up as respectable.”

“That’s what you think of when you look at our school?”

“Not everyone. Pretty much all the upperclasswomen. Some of the sophomores. It just seems weird.”

“It seems disrespectful. Do excuse me,”

And again, the conversation abruptly fell into silence.

“Hm. That’s the end of the recording?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has Thornhill got her chip yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Remind me, is she the only one?”

“No, sir. Three chipless. About standard for this point in the semester.”

“They’re a little too independent-minded for my liking right now. We have visitors tomorrow. Headmistress, have the freshman class relocated out of visual for the duration.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course.”

“What do we do about Thornhill, sir?”

“Nothing, yet. We make this a test of Kliner.”

“Sir?”

“Either we’re right about Kliner, and she should be in the lead program, or Thornhill’s instincts are, and she’s a problem. I want to know.”

“Roger.”

*

Robin spent the rest of the evening walking the grounds, trying to clear her head. By the time she made her way back to her dorm, the usual idle chatter was instead a buzz of activity. She did what she always did when confused at Northrop; she sought out Eva.

“Headmistress Gunderman came by,” Eva was saying, and Robin was surprised how disappointed she felt to have missed an appearance. “Tomorrow apparently we’re all going out to the lake for a lesson in garden etiquette.”

“Oh.” That hadn’t been on the timetable. Robin was surprised, but smiled. After all, it was the headmistress’ decision; who was she to stand against it? “That should be fun.”

Eva smiled lopsidedly. “I didn’t expect you to be so good at etiquette.”

“Nor did I,” Robin said. It was a reflexive answer, born of honesty and openness, and it came out before she could evaluate whether or not it was an appropriate comment from one setting an example; on reflection she decided that probably it was, and she relaxed. “I’ve worked at it, I suppose. But…” She considered.

“The rules usually seem perfectly sensible once I’ve learned them. Don’t you think so?”

Eva blinked slowly. “I think… perhaps? I’m not sure. I already knew several of them, of course, but a lot of them have always struck me as meaning that women listen but do not talk.”

Robin, who had ceased to find this an unreasonable idea, nodded.

“Now, though, even the worst of those…” Eva snorted with amusement, an unladylike habit Robin was very pleased to finally be beating in herself. “I find myself smiling when I think of them. It has to be something in the way we’re taught.”

Robin was quiet for a few moments. What did her friend mean, the worst of those? She felt as if she must have agreed, in the time before coming to the Northrop Finishing School. They had been at the school itself for just under three months. But all the same, she felt as if she had spent a lifetime knowing better than to doubt the wisdom of traditional etiquette.

Eva’s confusion wasn’t an affront in the same way that Angie’s attitude had become, though. Was this just a consequence of the three women’s different speeds of learning?

*

The freshers started making their way up to the boating lake and the lakehouse bright and early the next morning, before they even had breakfast. As a consequence, when the first limousine passed the gates and began to roll up the gravel driveway, none of them were there to see it and speculate, as they all surely would have done otherwise.

The sophomores, for their part, spent much of the morning - at least that part of their mornings not filled with lessons - watching the vehicles arrive, comparing notes on who and what they’d each seen, and speculating on why so many men were visiting.

The overall mood among the sophomores was an amused excitement to see upwards of a dozen eligible men on the premises. One of them, a movie star just transitioning from action hero roles to producer credits and the occasional serious piece, was immediately recognised. While the others could not be identified, the sophomores immediately assumed that the others must be equally rich, equally important.

Headmistress Gunderman came out personally to welcome each one and usher them indoors, and the sophomores speculated.

“I always knew she was a man-eater,” one said, and the others all giggled in response.

Meanwhile, inside the main hall, the men gathered. While she was in the room, Gunderman flitted from one to another, making polite conversation and flattering egos. She did not bother to check whether or not they had everything they needed.

She didn’t need to; in the main hall were twenty-four of the upperclasswomen. Headmistress Gunderman remembered reading through their dossiers the night before and selecting the assortment to be on display, though in fact the selections had been made by another and dictated to her.

They were all dressed in silk gowns, strapless, backless, and slit high up the thighs, and they all wore high heels. Yet they moved with perfect posture, they listened to the men waiting with their whole attention, and their long, delicate fingers came to wrest on the arms of the seated men with caring precision or their decolletages brushed the ears of those same men as they took up position to stoop and ask them, quietly, whether there was anything Northrop Finishing School could provide which would make their day even a little brighter than it already was.

To the upperclasswomen, the fame of one of these men was no additional inducement, because they needed none.

When all of the men expected had arrived, Headmistress Gunderman called her students to order. They lined up, a few paces apart from one another and several paces away from the line of chairs the men occupied.

At a gesture, the upperclasswomen began to promenade in front of them, walking in front of each man, one at a time. They made two circuits. On the second, Gunderman said their names aloud as they began the route, so that the watching men had a useful identifier; with twenty-four women in front of them, ‘the blonde’ would not have been a useful enough description.

After the second complete circuit, the headmistress held up one hand wordlessly, palm toward them, and they filed obediently to a stop. After that, they turned to face the waiting men.

“Go on, girls,” Gunderman said.

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused. All of them had picked out one or two of the men for special attention, and they each made eye contact with those they were focusing on. They smiled warmly, to show that they considered what they were about to do perfectly acceptable, and then, not quite in unison, they all reached for the hidden fastening of their gowns.

They quickly undid the fastenings and let their gowns slide to the floor. It had been cleaned the night before, to a professional standard, but as they had been given the signal to disrobe, they would have done so in any case.

Beneath the gowns they wore a variety of different undergarments, but each had been selected to titillate. They posed, still making eye contact with their targets, before sweeping their gaze down the line of seated men.

Headmistress Gunderman smiled again. “Gentlemen,” she said, “You have all had a chance to inspect the merchandise. Are you ready to bid, or do you have questions about their performance?”

Five of the men seated there simply waited. These men had all shopped at Northrop before. Four had married Northrop girls; one, an oil baron, had married four simultaneously and would be marrying a fifth. Two of the others were now looking for a personal assistant for their wife, who therefore would plausibly always be on their property.

One had become a widower, much to his own surprise, three years ago. His wife had reacted swiftly when their son had wandered into the road, but not quite swiftly enough. She had died a heroine, and he had been surprised to find how deeply he had grieved.

He had not felt ready to reach out to Northrop to replace her for some time, and when he was ready, his publicist had advised leaving it a year longer. Now he was here, and wondering whether the skilled technicians at the academy had the talent needed to make him fall in love again.

The fifth of the silent group was not there on his own account. Unlike Chris Waterford, the film star, the fifth’s clients were very sensitive to the risk that one day the finishing school’s secret might be discovered. They understood the value of a go-between who in turn understood their tastes.

It was Waterford himself who raised a hand. “You, uh-” He broke off, aware that he’d been about to ask one of the women directly, and realising that perhaps that wasn’t the correct etiquette for the situation. “They’re, you know, fully trained?”

Most of the other men hid their smiles, though one smirked openly. Another was simply grateful that someone else had been the one to ask.

“They certainly are,” Gunderman replied. “But I imagine you would rather not simply take my word for it.” She flashed a smile. “Would you like to select a demonstration model?”

Chris Waterford swept an experienced eye along the line. “Cara Kendall,” he said, after a moment. He was a famous actor and, for the blockbuster style he’d made his money in, a gifted one. But nobody in that room believed he hadn’t already known which name he would give.

“Cara,” the headmistress said, “fetch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cara said. She was tall, and blonde, with wide hips and broad shoulders, and a figure caught somewhere between sporty and soft. Her brown eyes shone with a warmth.

“Casting couch, huh?” the agent asked Waterford, who smirked and shrugged. In the meantime, Miss Kendall had walked over to Waterford’s chair. She settled to one knee beside it, and reached underneath to draw out a small chest.

She opened this carefully and extracted a large rubber dildo, before moving to settle herself in front of him. Then she waited, looking directly up at him and smiling.

“You may begin, Cara,” Gunderman told her. She sounded not bored but disinterested, the way someone who knew exactly what would happen might be.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cara said, and then, looking up at Waterford, she smiled and winked. “Yes, sir.”

She took the dildo into her mouth, letting its entire length slide down her throat immediately. It was clear she was prepared to take a cock at a moment’s notice, and it was also clear that any gag reflex she might have had, she no longer suffered from.

What stood out to each of the men there about her performance (although they would not think about it until later, by its very nature) was that watching her fellate a fake cock in near-silence, surrounded by other brainwashed women, a headmistress-turned-auctioneer, and several other men had not been awkward; somehow her warmth and eagerness to please had made it a strangely intimate experience.