Prologue

 

The images swirl around almost sickeningly in this corner of the entrance area, a new and equally solid-seeming tableau presenting itself with every movement of my head.

A woman, hardly more than a girl, with incredibly long and glossy hair, her immaculately proportioned face distorted by the way her hair has been knotted around two posts either side of her head. I think she is being penetrated by an unnaturally thick cock or dildo, but when I crane my neck to see, she is gone.

To be replaced by another woman, built like a classical statue and in a somewhat similar pose, one arm raised with a hand behind her neck, showing the slick and fleshy lips of a vagina in her armpit.

A blink and she has become a pair of girls, their innocent eyes a shocking contrast to the method of their connection - frozen in mid-thrust with a lewd curve to the submissive's back. Except the angelic figure stimulating her companion in this way has no strap to hold her dildo on, as if the shaft were a part of her. A closer look and they vanish.

There is the red of blood and the eye is caught by a woman of maturer aspect, the difference in age emphasised by her harrowed expression. A whip is on the point of contact with her back, the hand holding it disappearing into the indistinctness at the edge of the image. The small amount of her rear that can be seen is cut beyond repair and streaks and trails lead down her perfect legs to a pool of blood at her feet.

The next figure is stylishly blurred and, though naked, has its limbs coyly arranged so that I can't see whether it's male or female. It is slender and other-worldly, feminine in outline but with no more than the suggestion of breasts, obviously adult but with the unformed beauty of a child. Again, to try to see more is to lose it all.

In an unmoving shower of droplets a mermaid appears, her laughing face about to plunge beneath rippling water, the flukes of her tail arced above her head, one rosy-tipped white breast showing through a swelling wave.

Three or four static displays flicker past too fast to distinguish their features, to be replaced by an antique leather-bound book that doesn't move when I lean towards it. My hand brushes through the cover, finding it as insubstantial as any of the ghosts that preceded it, but the flick of my fingers opens it at the first page, revealing girlishly round handwriting on worn lined paper. I look closer again, my fingers closing on nothing at my instinctive effort to bring the large volume nearer . . . are they blood spots? And what is this old-fashioned stuff doing in the glitzy advertising for the place, so self-consciously modern in its abandoned pleasures?

There is a discreet cough behind me. I turn, keeping the intriguing book within the edge of my vision, to see a man so perfectly average in every respect that I knew I'd never remember how he looked. I do recall marvelling at my host's wisdom in selecting unnoticeable flunkies.

"I'm sorry, sir." he says in a voice as low and unmemorable as you'd expect. "Mr Brookes is unavoidably detained. Is there anything I can offer to occupy you in your wait? I'm afraid Mr Brookes wishes to accompany you on the tour himself, but I can oblige with anything short of that."

I wave a hand to one side. "Can you tell me about this book? It seems out of place. Is it something I should know about?"

"Better than tell you, sir, I can get you a printout, a facsimile edition." he replied. "It may well provide you with useful background. From the early days, when this was little more than a high-class hotel, our founder required his people to record how they felt, and we've built up quite a volume of memoirs for those customers who like such things. As you know, we were in the forefront of revolutionary changes back then, and I believe Mr Brookes feels they are even of historical interest."

I nod. "Definitely something I should see, then."

The man bows. "I will fetch you a copy."

 

 

In those ghastly moments hanging from a frame, fastened by rings that seem permanently part of me, blood steadily trickling down the perfect skin of my back, I realised that my new beauty was doing me no good at all. The stunning looks that I'd been so pleased with were not impressing this callous man at all. It was literally hammered home to me how much I was paying for my change.

I came to in a cubic cell fractionally bigger than my height in each direction. Instead of floating on air I was resting on a synthetic mattress arrangement barely thirty millimetres thick, and my arm had gone to sleep. Luckily it only took a shake and the tingles flowed through it to make it normal again. There was no mirror, and my worried checking showed nothing different about my body to the day before, so I sat back on the only yielding surface, hugged my legs to my body and contemplated the bare walls and my situation.

I didn't have long before Mr Brookes arrived. One whole wall shifted aside to let him in, then closed to become as featureless as before. For the first time I wondered where the light was coming from, with every surface white and smooth.

"Welcome to Eden." he said. "The side the visitors never see."

He regarded me thoughtfully, his finger resting on his lower lip. I looked back as blankly as I could, trying to appear as though I wasn't hiding my private parts.

"There's something about you, you know, something unusual. Westman was right when he called me to see you. 'Come and have a look at this one in person.' he said, and so I did, which I haven't done for years." He paused and cocked his head. "It's very easy, and cheaper, to pick up a down-and-out illegal and modify them economically. You're an experiment, a designer slave to titillate my more jaded clients. Poor old Westman was certainly smitten and he's seen most of the beauty of the world pass through his office. He gave away some of his most unique work for a few hours with you, which is remarkable for him, so there's something . . ."

"What has he done?" I asked as casually as I could.

He looked pleased in a selfish kind of way. "Not obvious, is it? It's normally expensive, that kind of subtlety. To save me explaining twice, I'll leave it until I present you to my head of staff and go through the features with him. He'll be here in a minute."

I dared one more question. "What are you going to do with me?"

He frowned. "Normally I wouldn't answer that question. You have no right to ask. But as you're a special case and new besides, I'll say that your first few days will be as a personal servant to the man you're about to meet, just to show you what is expected. Everything after that depends on what he thinks of you. Let me tell you a few rules. From now, you don't speak unless you're told to. When you're told to do something, you do it instantly, with no questioning. At this point, everybody is senior to you, so you don't need to worry whom to obey. The only exception is if you think you may be permanently damaged - in that case you may ask to speak to me. Be warned, though, if I think you were unjustified you will be punished. How you eat and sleep depends on whom you're with at the time. We make sure that you're kept in good condition, but we are under no obligation to keep you comfortable, so if a client's demands mean you have no time for either then we don't interfere. This room here is your base, and on the rare occasions you're not required for anything else this is where you'll be."

At this point the wall slid aside again to reveal a man built like a wardrobe, if that conveys anything. He wasn't that tall, but he was nearly rectangular from shoulders to feet, packed out with muscle and a rich brown all over.

Mr Brookes turned to him at once. "Ah, Smith. Are you ready to begin?"

"When you are, sir." was the rough-voiced reply, with a deferential incline of the blocky head.

His boss smiled in a genial way. "Over to you, then."

I followed them to a room kitted out a bit like a gymnasium, with equipment all round the walls and what looked like a climbing frame in the middle. Mr Brookes sat on a padded bench in one corner while the new man, Smith, rummaged in a chest. I didn't know what to do with myself so I stayed near the door with my hands subtly covering my naked pussy.

Smith brought out some metallic strips. "As this one is special, sir, I thought perhaps we might revert to one of the old silver band sets instead of the coloured ones. As long as she's the only one with them it won't cause any confusion."

"Good idea." Mr Brookes nodded. "It won't hurt to let the patrons see there's something different about her. It'll justify the extra charges."

I was disconcerted to find that Smith ignored me as a person. He wanted me to stand in a clear space near the middle of the room, but he didn't tell me so, just took me by the arm and put me there. I saw no sense in resisting. He took my right hand and, before I could react, there was a silver cuff on my wrist. Then, while I was looking at that, he did the same to the other. They were so thin I couldn't see an edge to them and formed themselves so exactly to my skin that I couldn't see how they did it. They bulged when I flexed a muscle and contracted when I relaxed. And each had a solid ring sticking out of the inner side. While he was doing the same to my ankles, I tried to find a catch that would let me take them off if I ever needed to, but the moment they touched ends on my body they seemed to become perfectly smooth, without a join. They made me nervous, to be honest, so when he approached my neck with one I backed away. At which he slapped my face - without changing expression at all - and deftly fixed it before I recovered.

"There, she's confirmed as your property, sir." he said, turning his back on me. "Is there anything I should know about this one, or shall I start the training at once?"

Mr Brookes got casually to his feet and wandered over. "She does have one or two, er, distinctive features. Unique, you might say. If you fix her in the number one position I'd be interested to investigate and of course you need to know anyway."

Smith pushed me over to the frame and fastened the rings on my wrists to the top of an open rectangle and my ankles to the bottom, so that I was stretched in a vertical star shape. Maybe I should have resisted, but there was a restrained violence to him that told me not to try. I hung my head, horribly conscious that I was completely open and on show.

"Let's try the most trivial of the modifications first. Could you hold her head still for a moment?"

My head was forcibly raised to face Mr Brookes, iron hands clamping over my ears from behind. He raised an eyebrow at me, which was the first acknowledgement I'd had since his earlier talk. He laid one finger on my lower lip.

"See what you think of her reaction to this," he said over my shoulder. Then he started gently and rhythmically stroking my lip, side to side, side to side. I wondered whatever he was doing but, powerless, had to let him continue. He was staring intently at me when I began to feel a tingling where he touched, spreading and deepening until I couldn't help twitching, at which he smiled. Still the stroking went on while my mouth opened and my chest became tight, my breath shortened until I was panting and the twinge got so agonising that I had to try to twist away, however hopeless. Finally, my body broke out of my control rather than my captors. My mouth snapped shut and I shuddered all over. My lips clamped on the torturing finger, at which he pulled away.

The next I knew, I was hanging from my wristlets with both men regarding me.

"So she orgasms when you fondle her mouth." Smith said. "I'll grant you it's unusual, sir, but it's not of much interest to the clients, surely? I hope some of her tricks are better than that."

"Actually, I was rather taken with that," said Mr Brookes, his head on one side. "But I think you'll like two of the other features better, if I know you. Have you still got that really fine little whip?"

"Yes, sir." He stepped away, then hesitated. "You know I've banned it, though? The slaves were out of action too long. Most of the clients don't like their companions marked that severely, unless by themselves."

Mr Brookes waved him on. "We'll make an exception in this case. You'll see why."

I was terrified by this exchange. I knew I could do nothing about it, whatever they wanted to do to me, so I tried desperately not to react when Smith's footsteps approached from behind, punctuated by an occasional whistle as he swung something through the air. I set my jaw, determined to give these men no satisfaction.

I swear Mr Brookes could tell what I was thinking. He nodded to Smith. "One good hard stroke somewhere on the back, please."

I thought the few seconds waiting was agony and it was, compared to the hit, at first. A shrieking whistle, a tap on the back and . . . nothing. Then, fully two seconds later, I discovered what agony was. Someone was holding a red-hot knife from rib-cage to shoulder and grinding it in position so that the pain speared through me, rising until my vision greyed out and I sagged from my wrists. I screwed up my eyes and gritted my teeth not to scream or cry. I could feel a warm stickiness creep down my back, so I knew my flawless skin had been broken seriously.

Mr Brookes moved out of my sight. "Now watch." he said.