# Spiritual successor to "Runaway". Multi-generational novel, contains typos, and severely dysfunctional relationships, including severe non-cons abuse/rape

In theory at least, this is still a work in progress. However, I've not worked on it for years, and it is unlikely to ever be completed unless I get a fair bit of interest. First half's mostly good, rest is total crap. Feedback on *what* to hack out and what to keep is strongly appreciated.

=Cruise Ship, Guangdong province, China=

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have now docked at the island and shall be taking on fresh water. Once again we would like to apologise for the recent water supply problems, and to reassure you that all of our arrival times remain unchanged. We will be underway again within the hour, and all restrictions on water use will be lifted."

Adam put down his book and rose from his first-class bunk, opening his porthole and looking through. The island, less than a mile across, was apparently the closest place the cruise ship could refill with water at short notice. The ship's launches, sizable boats in their own right, were already on their way to the docks, towing large buoyant containers in their wake.

In the sunset behind the anchor chain, the island looked bleak and unforgiving - some kind of research station, the announcer had said, but it looked more like a prison - concrete, barbed wire, fences.

A peremptory tap on his door called him from watching the progress of the launches. He steeled himself and put on a welcoming smile. "Come in!"

The door opened, and in swept the majestic but elderly figure of Beatrice (Not Beatty, NEVER Beatty!), perhaps twice his age. "Darling, I had hoped you would be ready by now! The ball won't be delayed just because a few porters are picking up supplies!" And in a few short minutes, she had bustled him into his tux, pausing only to stroke him fondly.

"You make a very good companion, dear, I feel so safe with you by my side, with your cane." She simpered at him, but he was not fooled: she was as shrewd a businesswoman as he had ever met. Still, the sword-cane he carried had been a good investment, as he had taken enough lessons in fencing to be able to convincingly trounce a bribed opponent in front of her. She had practically melted in her seat when he had sliced through the man's blood-pouch.

He kissed her forehead in response, and she glowed. "Yes, I think you may even be my favourite. Perhaps I shall speak to my lawyer when we get back..." She trailed off as if in thought, but he knew she was testing him, always testing.

So he shook his head. "Please, Beatrice, don't worry about business, my love: we're here to enjoy ourselves!" He held out his arm, he lifted the cane towards the door like a general signalling the charge, and they swept out.

Adam knew he was already her favourite, with her will made out to him and lying in her bedside safe. The only real danger was that she might live to change it. So he had suggested this cruise to her. Away from home, changing the will would be so much harder, and the excitement would be so much more stress on her heart.

They made their way to the promenade deck, where the ball was to be held. The band was just warming up, but Beatrice's friends and acquaintances were already there, so he did the job of the lithe young thing on the rich old dowager's arm, looking good, smiling, nodding as she flaunted him at her friends.

She handed him a tall glass of champagne, a blue diamond floating its way to the bottom as she passed it to him. "Drink up! You've a long night ahead of you, my dear!" She laughed dirtily, and he drank it up and laughed obediently, sharing the private joke with her for all to see.

A few hours of far too much groin-rubbing dance later, his feet were sore and he was having to try hard not to sag around the shoulders, but Beatrice seemed to still have as much energy as before. She was always filled with a sparrow's boundless energy, belying the rumours of heart troubles that had drawn him to her.

But eventually she placed her hand imperiously on Adam's arm. "Home, James!" He rose, finishing his champagne (how many refills? He should be more careful!), and they made their way majestically back to her cabin, the largest and most ostentatious on the ship.

Two servals lay curled on her vast bed, looking up and slinking off as she entered. The cruise-liner's "no pets" policy had been relaxed for her ladyship, and they had even gone so far as to offer to provide handlers. But she had refused - her servals were her babies, and she would care for them herself, she said.

She pulled some meat from the mini-fridge behind the bedroom's bar and tossed it to them before turning back to Adam, rubbing her hands down his chest. "How I love a man who knows how to maintain himself. Shall we put all this fine work to good use?"

She let her ball gown slide to the ground, revealing a negligee and a remarkably well-kept frame, given her years. She took her hands in his and fell back onto the bed.

He followed her down, thinking of England.

=====

Dover was three months behind them, giving them another month and a half of cruising before they were due to return. There they would be met by a veritable army of hangers-on and flunkies each after a slice of the childless heiress' pie.

If she survived those six weeks, then his best chance at being the only inheritor of her wealth would be long gone.

But no matter how athletically he played the old bird, she kept up with him - he was beginning to wonder who was playing whom. He had already been concerned enough to call home and have an investigator check up on her true health, but so far, no report had been forthcoming. Getting the health records of a woman wealthier than the queen could be no easy task.

=====

It was 3am before she bade him farewell with a kick to the rump, and he had crawled out of bed, getting dressed as the servals crawled back to flank their owner protectively as she lay to sleep.

He made his way through the corridors of dimmed lights, rubbing his neck. Beatrice liked to use her teeth - just another think to hold against her.

As he stepped through his door, he caught a glimpse of movement from below his bed. He froze, his hand halfway to the light-switch. The moonlight from the open porthole glowed at him like a baleful eye.

He flicked the light switch as the door swung shut behind him. Had a seagull got in? A monkey from the island? Was it really a prison island and some desperate murderous convict was lying in wait under his bunk? He remembered the sword-cane and flicked the catch, sliding the blade slowly free.

"I know you're under there! Come out slowly and I shan't harm you!" He felt his voice sounded forceful and commanding, but wasn't sure - perhaps that was the champagne still being effervescently overconfident in his veins.

He crouched slowly to look under the bed. A dark form was huddled at the farthest corner. Too small for a convict, wearing some kind of cloth. A child, a performing monkey, a dwarf? "Easy there, I won't hurt you." It just curled tighter, making no sound.

"Well, looks like you're more scared of me than I am of you. Bet you don't even speak English anyway. Here, I'll get you a bowl of something. Then you can sleep on the couch and I'll put in a word for you with the captain in the morning."

There was no answer, but he nonetheless went about doing as he'd said, securing the door, then the porthole, piling a plate with some cold meats and fruit from the fridge, picking at sliced of ham and pineapple as he did so. He slid the plate under the bed, but there was still no sound from the cowering figure.

"Fair enough, suit yourself. Sleep under there then, I'm too damn tired to care" He pulled a spare blanket out of the wardrobe, and dropped it by the bed with one of his pillows, stripped off his outer layers, and sank onto the mattress with a bone-weary sigh, to dream lustful dreams of partners no older than himself.

=====

He woke up to purring like thunder, slicing through his headache like a rusty saw. Some large cat's claws were rhythmically kneading his chest, and he could feel the weight of a head on his chest, wet mouth pressed against him. Damn, he had fallen asleep in Beatrice's bed, and her blasted servals were drooling on him!

He cracked one eye painfully open, then shut them before he could make out more than a glare of sunlight blasting through the porthole. He whimpered.

The kneading stopped, and the cat on him froze for a moment, then leapt off the bed in one lithe bound. A moment later he felt a slice of pineapple at his lips.

Moisture! Beatrice, the darling! He cracked his lips apart and allowed himself to be fed the pineapple, better than any fruit had ever tasted. In England, pineapples were all ripened while being shipped, but these were field-ripened, so that even the core was more juicy and tender than any British fruit. In his parched state, it was manna from heaven.

He found his voice again, and felt brave enough to try opening an eye again. "Beatrice, you are an angel."

It was not Beatrice standing angelically over him.

She (he assumed that was the right term, for it wore a tattered dress) stood on her hind legs perhaps three feet tall, covered in fine but matted fur, white dappled with grey. An expressively worried feline face, with catlike ears pricked and pointed at him. Behind her waved what he realised after a moment was a fluffy tail. Behind her, his own cabin.

The memory of the figure under his bed came back to him.

Sparkles glittered on her fur - salt? She had probably swum to the ship, climbed the anchor chain, and crept in through his porthole.

The cat-girl looked at him with a mixture of concern and nervousness. Her hand came up again, holding another slice of pineapple. Her hands were shorter and plumper than the average human ones. He let her feed it to him, as he tried to gather his strength.

Next came a slice of ham, by which time he was aware enough to realise - though not to care - that these rather dried offerings were from the plate he had given her the previous night. He saw her hands had pads, and just the suggestion of sheathed claws, but a thumb that did at least appear to be opposable.

The next slice of ham, he reached for with his own hands, and tore in half, eating the larger one himself and holding the other out to her. "C'mon, you'll like it."

Sharp teeth delicately took the meat from his hand, and with a quick head-toss, it was in her mouth, being chewed thoughtfully. She clearly liked it, because she bounced down to get another slice, which she handed to him but watched alertly, as if it was the act of getting it from his fingers that turned it into food.

So again he tore it, and fed her the smaller half, and in this manner the remaining few slices were quickly devoured. They tried the same trick with the pineapple, but she spat it out - obviously, his fingers could only do that magic-food-trick with ham.

Finally, groaning, he rolled slowly out of bed, and slowly rose to his feet, avoiding sudden movements so as not to resurrect his fading hangover.

The cat-girl scampered back from him, watching his movements cautiously, but he wasn't feeling up to moving too fast. He shambled blearily to the window and closed the curtains to cut down the glare, then made his way to the shower. She watched, fascinated, as he stepped into the warm water.

"What's up, kitty? You never seen a shower before?" He flicked the water at her, grinning, and she looked shocked, backing away. "Ah, silly thing." He closed his eyes and leant against the wall, letting the warm water flow over him, slowly massaging away his aches as he soaped himself down, feeling his muscles groan from yesterday's exertions.

She was cute and she had tended to him, and he was having a really hard time imagining her as dangerous, yet she was an unknown quantity. He could not afford to trust her, but if he could get her to trust him, then he would have a large advantage over her. And getting people's trust was his speciality. "I think I'm gonna keep you," he told her unsuspecting puzzlement. "At the very least you've got to be worth a few mil."

He turned the water cold, and drank some of it as it flowed over his face, for once feeling rather glad that even the cold water was too warm to give him his customary ice-cold end to his shower.

He turned the water warm again, and reduced the flow, looking to the cat. "C'mere. Your fur's covered in salt, and that'll do you no good if you lick it off. Come on, I won't hurt you." He unhooked the shower-head and held it low against the ground. "Come on, it's only a shower. Come and examine it. Face your fears, girl!"

Eventually she did, nervously reaching out to bat at the water. He made a big thing of getting splashed by her and splashed her back, and she splashed him in return. Another splash at her, and she grabbed the shower head, turning it on him as he leant back against the wall, laughing.

Soon she was holding the shower herself, seemingly understanding that the spray would clean the salt off her fur, and not seeming to care that her dress was being soaked. Not that it really deserved the name - it looked more like a tattered surgical gown, loosely tied with a length of rope.

He reached out and helped sluice her down - she jumped back, but seeing his intent, allowed it. He continued like that for a couple of minutes, stroking her as she sat in front of him, then slipped the dress off her shoulders with the same sluicing stroking motions, so that it fell to her waist. She didn't object, but stopped playing with the water, watching him.

He in his turn watched her - she had two small breast-mounds, which, if she were human, would make her older than she looked. Below them, peeking out from the fur, were two more vestigial nipples either side. Her ribs showed even through the fur - he felt sure she should look less anorexic than this.

He gestured for her to stand, and when she just looked at him, confused, he took her hand and pulled her upright. Her dress fell to the floor. He led her to step out of it, then lowered her hand so she sat again. He took the dress and started washing it, showing her how, soaping, sluicing and cleaning it.

At the same time, he watched her naked body from the corner of his eye. Other than her nervousness, she seemed not to be at all self-conscious. She squatted knees-apart on basically-human-form legs, though her feet were longer and tapered less.

Yes, definitely female, an evident pussy mound and slit. No pubes, just the same fur as elsewhere. She seemed a little relaxed by his focusing on the dress first, rather than her, which was good. He wondered at her age. He'd guess a human with those breasts, genitals, and malnutrition would be late-teens, but without knowing how large her species grew, he had no way to tell for sure.

He wrung the dress out and hung it to dry on the towel rack, then turned his attention back to the girl, showing her how to use the shampoo, how not to get it in her eyes, how to sluice it out if it got in.

He worked on soaping her back first, so she sat with her back to him. Then he moved methodically on to her shoulders, and her arms, thin as sticks, giving each part lengthy, careful grooming, until she was leaning back against him, purring contentedly.

He soaped the top of her head, careful to avoid getting it in her eyes, and scritched her behind the ears. Her purring grew louder, and her body more relaxed, until she was lying on her back with her head in his lap.

The purring didn't stop even as he soaped her neck, and rinsed it all clean. Only when he reached over and began to soap her breasts did it die out, and even then she didn't move, just let him carry on working. He washed them with the same care he had shown with other body parts, unable to stop himself becoming aroused under the weight of her head as he saw her nipples grow erect. He sluiced them off with his hands, the nipples popping up again as each finger passed over it, and her body tensing under his hands.

Once he passed onwards, and moved on to soaping her belly, the purring began again in earnest, so he spent some time there, trying to get his arousal under control. Eventually, he gently lifted her head off his lap and slid back, lowering her head onto a sponge and moving around to her feet. She watched him, suddenly tense, but he pretended not to notice and just started on her feet. These were more symmetrical than human feet, with pads on like her hands. They were more dog-bone-shaped, or hour-glass-shaped, than human feet, with a large heel and large toes.

He examined them with interest, bending the paw to get to the retractable claws, each a inch long, and cleaning every nook and cranny, before moving up to her ankles, and on all the way to her thighs.

She was taut like a bowstring, but he still pretended not to notice, just soaping her up and then rinsing off, avoiding touching her inviting pussy mound at all. Finally he sat back and reached up to turn the water off, stretching as if the job was done. His muscles creaked in protest.

He passed her the shampoo, pointed to her crotch, and stepped out of the shower - she was on her own. He watched her in the mirror as he dried, peed and brushed his teeth. She looked questioningly at the bottle but then did as he had shown her, squirting a little onto her paw, then applying it to her genitals. She rubbed... and slowed, evidently liking the novel, slippery sensation against herself. By the time he had rinsed out the last of the toothpaste, she was lying back, innocently unashamed, purring and rubbing the foaming shampoo into herself, her eyes closed, and showing no sign of moving soon.

Despite how intensely this sight aroused him, he just grinned, and went to find some breakfast.

He was already clothed, groomed and breakfasted before a much cleaner cat-girl stepped cautiously out of the bathroom.

"Yay. You're looking good, but we need to dry you off first, and then I'll show you how the dressing gowns work. Now this thing here, see? Towel. Tow-ul. Makes you dry."

"Tow-ul." Her voice caught him off-guard. It was as small and young as she looked, but with a background of purr-growl. The mix of innocence and sultriness made his pants tighten once more.

"So you can talk! Well done, little one!"

"Tow. Ul." She looked thoughtful, playing with the sounds in her mouth.

"Yup. Towel". He passed it to her, and showed her by example how to dry herself, naming each body part for her as she dried it, having her repeat it back to him, and finally reaching down the ship's "Her" dressing-gown from the back of the door and holding it out for her. "This is a dressing gown".

"Drressing gown".

"Oh good girl, you're so quick at this!" She had already figured out that "this is a" was not part of the sentences, and her pronunciation was mostly perfect first try, though with far more purr on the 'r's than would be allowed before 9pm on most channels. "Here, give me your arm. Arm! Well done! Put it through there... that's right, now the other one... oh good kitten! Now the belt, there, perfect.

She stood before him, hugging herself and beaming radiantly in the dressing gown.

"You want to keep that instead of the dress?" He offered her the drying dress.

"Drressing GOWN!" she cried, hugging it tighter around herself and backing away.

"I think I agree," he said, tossing the dress out the porthole. "though I've no idea how I'll explain all the cat hair you'll get on it."

She looked at him questioningly, not understanding the words.

"First things first, though. Gotta get you a way to hide from room service."

It took some time to explain, but she eventually understood that if someone knocked on the door, she had to hide in his trunk until they had gone. He emptied it out and lined it with pillows and blankets, so she had her own snug hiding place - she seemed to feel secure there.

They practised hiding several times, and once he was happy she had it right, he rewarded her with some more ham ("Ham! Hamhamham!") and ordered breakfast.

One of the nice things about first class service on cruise liners is that nobody questions you when you ask for strange selections of meats with your breakfast.

Although her favourite remained "hamhamham" from his fingers, they found that she liked most meats, cooked or raw. He wished that he could know what her nutritional requirements were, but he reckoned that with fruit-juice and milk as well, she should be pretty safe, at least until he could get a better opinion.

After breakfast, it was time for more language lessons. "I'm Adam."

"Adumdumdum!"

"...Good enough. What are YOU called?" he asked.

She shrugged, as if puzzled by the question. He pointed at her and raised his eyebrows, but she just followed his finger. "Brreast?"

"No, I mean, all of you! Like, Adam is all of me. No? You don't have a name? OK, you are called Cat. You, Cat. Me, Adam."

"You, Adumdumdum. Me, Cat."

"Oh well done! VERY well done! That was practically grammar! Here you go, Cat, have some ham!"

"Hamhamham!"

=====

Throughout the day he left the room several times, going about his routine - the gym, the pool, keeping his body in trim. It was one of the tools of his trade, after all. He made sure to check back as often as he could, though. He also took his tux to be cleaned of cat-hairs, though he was unsure whether they were from the servals or Cat.

Each time found her safely hidden in his trunk, even when he burst in without knocking, trying to surprise her.

"Cat!"

"AdumdumDUUM!" She leapt from the trunk like a jack-in-the-box, pouncing into his arms, wrapping her own around him, and nuzzling into his neck with a purr.

He stroked her soothing her fur gently. "One dum is enough: just Adam."

She shook her head and clutched him tighter, grimacing her distaste of the idea. "AdumdumDUUM!"

"Fair enough, you win." He scritched her behind the ears, and sat on the bed petting her for a time, watching the horizon fade into evening darkness through the porthole as he stroked the purring girl in his lap.

"Now Cat, I'll need to get ready soon and go entertain a lady. I'll be... eh, I'll be lots of hours." Each time he had left, he had given her an estimate of the number of hours, and she seemed to have grasped the concept quite well.

She put her paw on his chest, and looked up at him, eyes large in the gathering dark. "Big hours?" she pouted.

He nodded sadly. "Yes, dear, big hours. I'll be back probably the same time as last night." He didn't know how much she understood, yet, but tone of voice and body language was probably enough.

She clung to him tightly as he took a selection of meats from his bag to feed her, making her name each one before he would feed them to her - nay she got wrong, he would teasingly eat himself, with relish. She didn't get any wrong twice.

"You're a clever kitty", he told her. "You really are the cleverest kitty to walk the earth. Sea. Whatever. But I have to get ready now. Kiss goodbye?"

She looked surprised when he put his lips to hers, but she responded, instinctively it seemed, by licking his lips. He parted them, and licked back, feeling strange, dirty, as if he was abusing an animal, or a child. It was wrong, and liberating in that wrongness, the cat-breath taste of ham on her lips, the fuzzy brush of her lips, both exhilarating in their abusive, libertine-like perversion.

Her tongue rasped against his, then pulled away. He pursued it with his own, pressing into her mouth. She stiffened in his arms, her teeth scraping him, but he caught her tongue, pinning it to the roof of her mouth. Slowly she relaxed, parting her jaws in surrender, letting him in.

He released her tongue and explored her mouth - how very different from a human's, hot and alien! Much deeper, he could thrust deep into it, crushing her lips with his own, until his teeth touched her own, smaller and sharper, and still his tongue could not trace the base of her own. A small sound came from the back of her throat, a whimper, almost a mew. She lay still, unresisting, not like a cat but a trapped bird. He pulled back just a little, easing the pressure of his lips, and stroked her tongue softly with his own, encouraging it to move again. Through it, he could feel the well-defined ridges of her pallette, as he ran his tongue-tip along the ridge of her tongue.

It moved against him, and he moved with it, encouraging, teasing, until it chased him, a hesitant rasp. He responded, softly, and was rewarded with a slow, curling lick, twining together as the beginnings of a purr. He withdrew from it slowly, luring her, and felt the heat of her tongue passing slickly between his lips, and exploring his mouth with curiosity, licking its way slowly and thoroughly into every corner of his mouth, a slow, hot, alien ravishment that he welcomed with strokes of his own.

It was only when she shifted her body against him that he realised how long they'd been there, and how aroused he had become, by the strangeness of it, by her submission, by her invasion of his mouth.

He pulled away slowly. "Enough. More tonight I promise. Lots more kisses. I have to go."

=====

Beatrice was in one of her "Domme" moods, the ones he usually tried to anticipate and be out of town on a fishing trip, but this time, it seemed, he had nowhere to escape to, and to keep his position with her, he had to be her obedient, submissive servant.

"Wear this". She dropped a sexy maid's outfit at her feet, and he knelt before her, stripping and putting on the uniform, as she tapped him with the crop.

He finished tying the apron, and she slashed the crop across his face. "You took your own damn time! Faster next time! Get up!"

He got to his feet, wearing high heels, an apron, and a skirt with no back. She led him out into her suite's sitting area, where several of her society friends were gathered. "Serve the drinks, dear!"

He went to the drinks cabinet, aware of his naked back and the glow of the reddening crop-mark on his cheek. He crouched down to get the drinks out of it, but another lash of the crop across his face brought him to his feet again. "Don't squat! Be ladylike!" He tried again, bending at the waist, mooning everyone in the room. This seemed to satisfy her ladyship, and with a pat and squeeze of his rump, she went to mingle.

As he served the drinks, they conversed boredly amongst themselves of society gossip, but there was no rest for him once he was done. "Those box on the table - serve out guests from it."

They were wooden inlaid boxes. He opened the one on top: Cuban cigarillos and long ivory holders. He walked around the room, serving first Beatrice, then offering and lighting them for each of the assembled ladies in turn. They each feigned disinterest in him as they took hiss offerings, but by the time he had finished, his backside was still glowing from the stealthy slaps and pinches.

The second box was twice the size of the first, and his heart fell when he opened it. Inside were a number of crops, similar to the one his mistress carried, though just sufficiently less ornate to remind that the wielder lacked her status.

He passed these out, and each lady took one, but none were so gauche as to use them. He still endured a barrage of secret abuse as he made his way around the room, and returned the box to its place. As he expected, he was once again allowed no rest. Beatrice pulled out an unlabelled jar, and a leather chastity belt, with a butt plug and cock cage. "Now wear this. Ladies, feel free to encourage him if he is tardy - he has trouble dressing himself."

She handed him the harness and he examined it. The plug was dry, unlubricated. There was no way it would fit inside him, but he had to try. He squatted down in front of all the ladies, spread his butt-cheeks with his hands, and lowered his weight onto it as they looked on in barely-concealed glee. He couldn't get even the tip to slide inside him, the dry latex clinging to his skin.

After a few moments of shifting and humping in this unaccustomed position, his legs were cramping up, but he was no farther to getting the latex lump inside him. The ladies started tapping their crops in their hands menacingly, and it was only a matter of seconds before one stepped forward and lashed him across the back.

Then they all came, a flock of old ladies, slashing at his back viciously, holding nothing back. He curled up, trying to protect himself, but that just exposed his ass for their blows. "Please! I can't get it in! I need lube!"

Beatrice strode forward, passing him the jar in her hand. "Very well, use this. But stand up properly! I told you no squatting!"

To his relief the ladies stood back to watch, and he stumbled upright in the heels, the butt plug falling to the ground behind him. As he opened the jar, the strong smell of camphor and eucalyptus that rose from it told him immediately that it was not lube, but Vaporub. But he had no choice. He bent over, legs apart, spreading himself before his audience, and spreading a scoop of the salve across his anus. The salve was, he discovered, quite bearable, even cooling and soothing, so he took another scoop, this time pressing it inside himself with two fingers. Then the Vaporub reached the nerves in his skin, an unremitting blast of intense /freshness/ and he gasped, dropping the jar, and pitched forward onto his knees.

"Get up!" The women pounced again, lashing him, most of them whipping between his legs, and he leaped to his feet, screaming, sobbing at the pain and cupping his balls through the apron, somehow managing to keep his balance, so with a last slash across his buttocks, they backed off. He hobbled to the harness, lubed it up quickly, and bent once again, so all the women could see him push it into himself.

This time, the tip slid in easily, pressing the intense /fresh/ deeper into him. He whimpered, but kept the pressure, twisting, pulsing it deeper into himself, until it would go no more without some serious weight behind it.

He looked up to Beatrice. "Mistress? May I crouch? I need to get weight on it."

Beatrice smiled thinly. "Oh, is the poor little girl not strong enough to get past her own little ring piece? Well, let me look..." She circled around him, examining the problem, before an explosion of pain told him she had found some way to force it in. "There," she said sweetly. "Problem solved! Now do up the harness."

The harness fastened at the front, enclosing his cock and balls in a cock ring and a perspex cage, and would have been holding his genitals out for view, were they not hidden behind the apron. The straps were similar to a G-string, passing up between his buttocks to hold the butt plug, and fastening back to the waistband.

"Good," said Beatrice, hauling on the buckle at the back to tighten it, and attaching an elaborate lock. "Now ladies, please circulate, and feel free to use his lovely taut ashtrays all you like. You, continue to serve drinks and smokes to anyone who desires it. You must drink one yourself for every five you serve."

He looked at her in shock, but there was nothing he could do short of running screaming from the room. He soon realised, as he went around the room, that the chastity belt was there not just for his humiliation, but also for his protection, guarding the most delicate areas from having cigarillo stubs ground into them. Still, he was soon barely able to walk, some of the ladies having partly-smoked several of the things and ground them out unfinished on his backside.

He found that the alcohol was affecting his balance, ad every time he fell, the harridans would swoop, lashing at him with glee, any exposed flesh a target.

After two hours, Beatrice called him over to bend before her, and ground her own cigarette holder into his ass cheek. "Eat this, it will keep your strength up." The blue diamond was pressed into his upside-down mouth, granting not strength but the promise of more torment.

It was another hour of occasional burns and furious whippings before Beatrice finally called "Ladies, please continue to entertain yourselves here if you wish - my maid and I have some business to attend to. Maid, bring the jar, you will be needing it!" She swept from the room, Adam hobbling in her wake.

Again, in her bedroom, the servals were keeping their mistress' bed warm, and slunk off the bed as they entered.

Adam was praying that the worst was over, and she undid his apron and had him stand before her. She stroked the perspex cage. "Aww, poor little man. Never got aroused the whole time?"

He grimaced. "Mistress, the only pleasure I gain from submission is knowing it gives you pleasure. It's not a path I would choose for myself."

She cackled, slapping his welted shoulder. "I know! You're a natural Dom, a sadist, born for power. And that's why you're my favourite. Unlike everyone else, you loathe it, you hate the shame and the pain, but still you do it for me anyway. Nobody else is nearly as much fun to torment. Now, let's get you out of your confinement, and get some of this salve on you to ease any chafing." She removed the perspex cage, but his cock was still trapped in the cock-ring. At an imperative gesture from Beatrice, he slathered the Vaporub over himself.

He discovered that Vaporub on his penis was intense but arousing. With Viagra and the cock-ring, he was soon sporting an impressive erection and arousal was almost making everything he'd been through seem worthwhile.

She spread her legs. "Lick me."

He knelt with a pleased smile that he did not feel, and went to work, despite his drunkenness, applying years of experience to the job of getting her off as fast as possible, his arousal giving him urgency and focus. Even with the pain of her heels drumming his beaten back, it was only minutes before she gasped, clenched around him, and relaxed.

The maid skirt hit him in the face as he looked up. "Now get out. Don't stop to dress. Keep the harness on." She pulled the blanket over her, her servals already moving back onto the bed.

He fought the urge to pin her and fuck her there, or to choke the life out of her, or both, and instead looked around to where he had got dressed, inflamed cock swinging before him. He found his clothes were gone, along with the keycard for his room in the pocket. Defeated, he walked out into the passageway, clutching the skirt. Rather than endure the embarrassment of being found failing to remove the harness outside her room, he put the skirt on to cover his shame as best he could, pulled off the evil shoes, and hobbled to the stairs.

That bitch, he thought, in a fury fuelled by alcohol, arousal, and hatred. She knows. She knows I hate her, she's just playing me for the joy of it. His fury and frustrated arousal brought fantasises of pinning her down, raping her, killing her brutally, every imaginable sexual torture. [[I'm worried that what follows might be too graphically traumatic for the reader, and Adam may never be able to redeem himself in their eyes.]]

Outside his door, he frantically unhooked the glass cover over the light and pulled out a spare keycard for his room. She'd wanted to humiliate him by making him go to find someone on duty and beg to be let into his room, but he always tried to be prepared for getting caught with his trousers down. Relief was just seconds away, healing could wait.

He got in, closed the door, and sank to his knees, groaning and beginning to pump his aching cock.

"Adamdamdam!" He had forgotten about Cat, forgotten anything but his desperate conflicting needs to get to the safety of his room, jerk himself off to relief, cut himself out of the infuriating harness, shower himself clean, and kill Beatrice in as painful a way imaginable.

But Cat had heard his groan, and flew at him in a happy pounce, slamming his beaten back against the door.

"Gaaah! Get the fuck OFF!" He struck her to the ground, and she lashed out, long scratches in his arm, then rolled away. He grabbed for the bathrobe, catching the belt, and she fell to the ground, and before she could wriggle free, he was sitting on her, pinning her to the floor beneath it with one hand, and trying to stop the cabin from spinning with the other.

"Is everyone trying to hurt me tonight? I took you in, protected you, fed you, taught you, and now you're trying to hurt me? What the fuck is wrong with you, girl? Look at me. LOOK at me." He turned her to look at his face. "See this? I have been hit. I am hurting." He held up his arm, blood oozing slowly from the cuts. "You did this. You scratched me. I'm bleeding." She stopped struggling and looked up at him, wide-eyed, until a drop of blood dropped into her eye and she blinked it away.

He had thought he could grow no harder, but the feeling of dominating Cat was irresistible. Her body was between his legs, her face just inches away from the bulge in his maid's skirt that concealed his cock. Though he could only fantasise about getting back at Beatrice, he saw that there was at least one person he could dominate. Nobody even knew or cared she was there.

"I'm going to let you go now. Stay here. OK?" She nodded, and he got up and turned his back to her.

She screamed a little scream at the sight of the burns and welts, as he yanked the humiliating skirt off himself. He turned and stood over her, cock sticking out and weaving from side to side - the waves, or the drink? "You see why I was hurting? They hurt me, and you... you were very naughty and I need to punish you. No, that's not it. They hurt me, and now I need to hurt someone, and to fuck someone, and you're just here. Poor fucking you."

Her eyes looked up at him, sorry, guilty, frightened, vulnerable, surrendering... incredibly arousing. He held out his hand to her, and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet. "Good girl. Stand still." With a brush of his hands the dressing gown fell to the ground, but she did not resist, standing there naked, trembling a little in the tropical heat.

He pinched a nipple in his hand, eliciting a quiver, but she didn't look at him or move, just staring ahead emotionlessly. He took the other, and twisted them, harder and harder to get a reaction, until she yowled, grabbing his wrists. He let go. "I said stand still!" He shook her hands off and slapped her, rocking her, but she kept standing, tears in her eyes, still not looking at him.

He pulled the towelling belt from the dressing gown, doubling it over, knotting it. "spread your legs!" He whipped it at her back - she mewed, tail lashing with conflicting emotions, but she obeyed, even as he rained more blows down on her, across her back, her legs, her breasts. It wasn't until he slashed it between her legs that she again moved her arms to defend herself.

"Useless girl, can't you learn to stand still?" He pulled her wrists back behind her, tying them together with the towel, and bent to grab one of her ankles, lifting it up, above her head so that she tottered, barely able to keep her balance on one leg.

Then he resumed his beating, slapping her, hard, across the face, the wet tears against his palm a delicious splash of power.

His next blow hit her stomach, and she lost her balance, dangling mewling from her hand, as he slapped her again and again between the legs, turning her this way and that to avoid her free-kicking leg.

His arm soon grew tired and he threw her face-forward onto the bed and pinned her with one hand. Her tail fell to cover her beaten genitals, but he lifted it back up. "Keep your tail up, girl!" She obeyed, though it writhed with emotion. He spanked her ass, less meaty than a human's, tauter, more muscular, but still giving off a resounding crack as he hit it.

He kneed her legs apart, slapping between them again, then stopped, laughing. "You're wet! You're fucking dripping wet!"

He fumbled under her, exploring, tracing a finger along her pussy - it seemed like a human's, her clit a hard nub, and as he teased it, she mrowled, almost angrily, grinding herself down onto his hand. He slid the finger lower, inside her, sliding in easily, no hymen blocking his way. She humped down again, hotter around his finger than any human could be, her muscles contracting around him, as if trying to milk his finger, trying to cling to it inside her, but he pulled it out. She mewed, a sound of loss and need.

"You are a filthy dirty slutty kitty," he told her, kneeling behind her. "And as tight as you are, you're going to really hate this." But she seemed to disagree, knowing what was coming, but still pushing her ass up to give him as good access as she could, her tail no longer lashing but sticking right up and curling back over her.

And she was as tight as he had thought, but the Vaporub slathered on his cock helped her own moisture, and his head popped in easily, greeted by a loud caterwauling. "Oh God that is good" he told nobody. He tried to slide in slowly, but her hips were thrashing, humping against him.

Though she was so tight it must have been hurting her immensely, that only seemed to make her want to drive herself onto him harder, to bring him deeper inside herself.

He surrendered to lust, clinging to her and thrusting in, a knot of lust in his bowels driving him against her, into her, biting her clawing her, wild with pleasure.

But however wild he was, she was wilder, a living lightning-bolt writhing under him, moving with him, pressing her neck into his mouth as she wrapped her legs back around his hips and pulled him into her. Her bound hands clawed at him, holding him to her until he was slick with blood and her fur was matted, but he didn't care, pumping into her furiously, all his lust and frustration focused on this one moment.

Wailing as if she was dying, she came, clamping around him like a slick fist, her whole body tensing, holding him in her with strength he would not have guessed her skinny frame could possess. Then, slowly, shudderingly, she relaxed, her muscles spasming around him in a way no man could resist - and in an explosion of intensity, he came too.

But it was not enough. Viagra, butt-plug and cock-ring gave him no more respite than had the socialite harridans: the pleasure was intense, unbelievable, but the relief they had promised was just an empty sham.

He snarled, pulling out of her motionless form, rolling her onto her back, and then thrusting back into her, biting into her shoulder, pulling himself into her, grinding into her as hard as he could, bruisingly hard with each thrust, desperate for release.

Her body began to respond again, first to the pain, mewing and trying to buck him off, but within seconds the arousal came too, and she was bucking with him, her legs wrapped around him, biting his neck as he bit hers, drawing blood that reddened her chin.

He came again, caught almost unawares as the orgasm struck, wave after wave of pleasure wracking him until his legs were jelly. This time, he was granted release, and he relaxed onto her, exhausted. Once again, darkness came for him.

=====

He awoke to pain. His backside was a sharp, burning agony through him, his asshole ached from the butt-plug, his stomach and neck felt lacerated, the harness was digging into him painfully, a new hard-on felt choked by the cock-ring, the rest of his body throbbed in time to his head, but all of these just reached him as a merged cacophony of constant pain: most urgently, something was chewing on his arm.

He shook his arm, but the chewing continued, piercing through the haze of other pains with more intensity, so he cracked open his eyes to see what could be causing it. Cat was still pinned under him, and was biting him to try and get free.

"Uuugh, okay, okay, sorry Cat" he rolled off and she scrambled away to the far corner of the room, hissing and spitting, wrenching her still-tied arms against their bindings until she freed them. Her eyes were full of fear.

"Aww shit." Full recall of the night arrived. "Shit shit. Fuck." He grimaced and closed his eyes again, rubbing his face, and hoping for more clarity. It didn't come, so he rolled out of bed. Cat hissed at him, claws fully extended, a dangerous look in her eyes, so he left her to her corner and sat back on the bed, trying to prevent his pounding head from splitting open, and to take stock of the situation.

His first priority, he decided, was something cold to drink and clear his head. He stumbled to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of juice, tearing it open with his teeth and quaffing from it. The cold liquid helped his head feel a little clearer, and he looked down at the harness around him.

It was padlocked around him, but was at least made of leather: it could be cut off. He searched through the drawers until he found a knife sharp enough, and breathed in, pulling the tight leather away from himself. It dug in even more painfully, but at least he was able to get the blade under it, and start sawing. Moments later, with a crack, the leather waistband snapped, and he took in some deep breaths and rubbed the red line it had left around him.

"Fuck. Shit." He swore quietly, with pain and feeling. Not anger. More relief than anything else.

He dropped a hand towel and crouched over it, trying to shit out the butt-plug. As he crouched, the skin on his burned butt-cheeks stretched and brought fresh pain, but he endured. There was no avoiding it. He strained hard, then felt a rush of embarrassment - Cat was watching him carefully from across the room, no longer hissing, just wary.

But that was just another thing he could do nothing about. He strained again, tugging it from him, and with a spasm and a pained gasp, it popped from him, making a sucking sound. The harness hung between his legs, the swinging butt-plug covered in shit, blood, and mentholated salve. He hung his head, feeling filthy, tainted, couldn't look at Cat watching him.

His cock was an angry red, swollen, the metal cock-ring that the harness was swinging from sunk into the flesh and barely visible. Easing it off took two painful minutes, but finally he was freed. He sank gratefully to his knees, and threw the defeated chastity belt aside.

Where from here? He mentally catalogued his injuries. Nothing he could deal with any farther, at least without a doctor.

Which left Cat. He made himself look up at her: she was still watching him, guarded, carefully expressionless.

"I'm sorry, Cat. I'm... I'm bad. I'm broken. I'm shit." He just couldn't look at her. "I'm sorry." Unbidden, tears came to his eyes, and he wondered whether they were real. The hollowness in his chest, his grimace, his wet cheeks, they felt like an appeal to her pity. At a level below words, it struck him that he had nothing, he had buried himself in lies so deeply that he didn't know himself, and that he desperately wanted one person, just one person that he could be honest with. He tried to stop the tears, squeezing his eyes shut: he didn't want to manipulate her with them, but despite him, the tears just became sobs.

A soft clawless paw stroked his cheek, raised his chin. He opened his eyes and looked up into hers, big, sympathetic, caring. He sobbed and clung to her, and she stroked his head softly, soothingly, holding him to her chest, letting him sob out his inner demons against her until the storm was past, and there was just the holding.

Soft, furred lips blessed his forehead. He felt light, the pain across his body bearable, no longer weighing him down. The guilt had been by far the greater weight, and now he was forgiven.

He rose, and smiled down at her. She reached out her arms and he picked her up (so light!) and held her, stroking her softly.

This time, there was nothing alien about the kiss, nothing wrong or bad. There was acceptance and warmth, shared loneliness and need. Silent communication, lip to lip. He carried her to the bed and lay back on it, ignoring the shrill pains it brought him.

She sat astride him, haloed by a sunbeam. Softly her fingers traced the marks and bruises on his chest, down his belly, to stroke him into hardness.

He looked into her eyes, seeing the need, caressed her fur, smoothing it where it was matted with blood. His? Hers? Theirs, mingled.

Eyes still locked with his, she crouched above his hardness and slowly, achingly slowly, impaled herself upon it, like a medieval sacrifice to their need.

They moved together, slowly, smoothly, gently at first, then faster, wilder, until they came together, a ragged explosion of bite-scratch-cling.

And then they lay together, warmed by the sunbeam of dawn caressing them from the porthole.

It became a kind of routine. Each night, he would go to Beatrice, get drunk, and suffer her painful, sexually-frustrating torment and humiliation, each night worse than the last: she was clearly trying to break him. Then he'd come back to the cabin and take his frustrations and lusts out on Cat, delighting in the feeling of control and freedom she gave him, the absence of any fear of reprisal, rejection or desertion. And in the morning, he'd find her, huddled in the trunk or still pinned under him, and make it up to her. He would kiss her bruises better, and they would lie on the bed in the sunbeam from the porthole, and make slow, languid love together. Afterwards, she would lie on top of him, holding him inside her, and he would stroke her as she purred and kneaded him, the tip of her tongue peeking from her lips as her head rose and fell with his breathing.

For both of them, this was the only time of day they felt truly alive.

During the day, he would follow his normal life, checking in regularly to make sure she was happy, feeding her, helping her exercise, and teaching her the English that she soaked up like a sponge. Within a week he was no longer sure that some of her grammatical quirks were not deliberate cutenesses to appeal to him and make him pick her up, spin her around, kiss her for being adorable.

Her gaunt figure smoothed out to a slinky litheness, her hugs and lovemaking becoming more confident and forceful each day. When he looked at her, he felt the same ache in his heart that Achilles felt for Patroclus: she was so achingly lovely, too good for this world.

Mostly, he was learning about himself. He discovered that behind all his built up layers of lies and manipulation, deceit and the avarice, he was still the same person who had gone running as a child to his father with a fallen chick, sobbing and wanting to heal it. He decided that deep down, he actually liked himself. Cat had given him a sense of self-worth.

On the eighth day, as he lay with her in the sunbeam, the phone by his bed rang. Cat's purring stopped. Adam tensed, and reached out a hand. "Hello?" He feared his mistress' voice, feared she had intruded on the one time of day that he truly needed.

But the voice on the other end was crackly with distance. "Hi, it's Dick."

Adam relaxed a little. Dick, his private detective. "Hi Dick. What did you find out?"

"Well sir, while the document you described to me appears to be genuine, I'm afraid I can't confirm the rumours. The subject has never been admitted for any non-cosmetic medical procedure; she is not currently prescribed any medication; nor has she ever bought anything from any nearby pharmacies more serious than a cold remedy. Her last checkup showed her heart in extremely good condition for her age, and given her wealth, fitness regimen and diet, she could easily outlive us all. Ah, and that's not all, sir."

Adam suppressed a groan, and reached to stroke Cat's head, the touch giving him comfort. "Go on, then."

"It seems that she takes some pleasure in luring gentlemen in with her wealth and the likelihood of a rapid inheritance. I took the liberty of trying to track down some of her previous victims within the last fifteen years..." there was a rustling of papers. "Subject A, suicide by hanging. Subject B, suicide by overdose. Subject C, high security mental institution, is convinced that Beatrice is the devil and would speak no further to me. Subject D, death by alcohol overdose. Subject E, another suicide by hanging. Subject F, alcohol-related drowning. You would be Subject G, the eighth in fifteen years. I went back further, decades, and they're either missing or dead, mostly in alcohol-related accidents or suicides."

Adam sighed, rubbed his head. "So, nobody's noticed that she kills people? Surely someone who just gets through dead partners like that would be investigated?"

"It seems unlikely that she deliberately kills any of them - she just chews them up and spits them out. While she survives six out of seven of her recent paramours, only one of those - the drowning - died while attached to her. All the accidents and suicides appear legitimate, though signs of harsh S&M play are common to most. Most died within six months of her breaking them and discarding them. Maybe she had some killed, it does seem kind of weird that I couldn't find a one who was in a state to talk about her, but most tend to be unpleasant single males with no close family. Nobody cares if they die anyway."

That struck home. There, but for the grace of Cat... He knew what he was: a manipulative, gold-digging toy-boy. It was his chosen career. But if it weren't for Cat, nobody in the world would care if he died. He had never minded people's opinion of him, but Cat's mattered. And stroking her head, it gave him a warm glow that she needed him, too, and delighted as he did in their time together, without ever being judgemental. He wondered if, if he had not had her, he would already have been a broken man under Beatrice's ministrations. He decided he probably would.

Dick had nothing else to report, so they arranged payment and hung up.

"You know, Cat," he said as he replaced the handset into the cradle, "I think I actually love you."

She cocked her head, puzzled at the new word, waiting for some context to give it meaning.

He smiled, ruffled her fur, smoothed it again. "Never mind, dear. It's not important." He kissed the top of her head and relaxed, stroking her meditatively as her purring started again. "My Cat. Cat-at-at."

She smiled at him, stretching luxuriously, then kissed him. "Adamdamdam".

They made love again.

Afterwards, as they lay together, he scratched behind her ear. "Cat?"

She opened an eye.

"I've told you about Beatrice, and what happens every night. I've told you that she will die soon, and when she does, everything she has will be ours." When, he wondered, had he started thinking of everything in terms of "we" and "us" and "ours"? He liked it, this being-part-of-something.

Cat nodded, frowning at the mention of the hated Beatrice, the source of all their troubles.

"Well... I was wrong. That was a friend of mine, calling to tell me that she is not going to die after all. And if she doesn't die, I think she will kill me."

Cat's claws pricked his chest, her hand pinning him as if she could keep him there, stop him by force from being killed. "No! Kill her!"

Adam stroked her arm ruffling the fur, smoothing it again, searching for the words. "If I kill her, everyone will know I did it. They will come for me, and they will kill me, or lock me in a cage forever."

The mention of a cage brought a grimace on Cat's face. "Then I kill her!"

Guilt stabbed at Adam. "I made you say that. I manipulated you, again. I'm sorry." He looked for understanding in Cat's eyes, but saw only puzzlement. "I wanted you to kill her, I've wished for her dead for so long, but it's wrong of me to make you kill her. We should just walk away."

Cat looked out the porthole, back at him in puzzlement. "Get wet."

Adam couldn't help but laugh at her, pulling her to him, tickling, kissing. "Oh my silly, wonderful cat. I didn't mean walk off the boat. I'll just tell her: I am leaving you, I will not be your slave anymore, fuck off, stay away, don't call me, you are a mean, ugly, spiteful, bitter, shitty old hag, you aren't worth the trouble, and I hate you, goodbye." He grinned at the idea, imagining the shock and horror on Beatrice's face, almost tasting the victory. "I'll go and do that right now. And then... then I'll have you all day long, forever, and we shall dine on ham every day."

Cat was frowning thoughtfully. "No. Beatrice evil. You leave her, you die. You kill her, you die. I kill her."

He shook her head. "No. It's a lovely dream, but why would I let you risk yourself for it, to kill her for me?"

"Not for you. For me. I hate her. I kill her. She not kill you. She not hurt you. Never again. Please?" Her eyes were big, earnest, beseeching.

"No."

"Please. I love you."

The words pierced him like a knife, stabbing, twisting. "You don't even know what that means."

"It means..." She looked at her hand pressed onto his chest, right onto that tight knot of pain and loss and sorrow and fear and emptiness. "It means *this*." She tapped the knot, through his ribs: how did she know? "It means I hurt you, here." Her fingers moved to her own chest. "It means you hurt me, here." She rubbed between her breasts, at a deep bruise that he could see only in the tears brimming in her dark, liquid eyes.

And he had always been a sucker for big eyes.

=====

Beatrice smiled. She was looking good, not a day over fifty, she felt. Maybe forty-five, if she smiles, just a little... it didn't do to smile too much, promoted wrinkles.

There was a tap at the door and she put down the hairbrush. There was a porter outside with a trolley, a large beribbonned box and a sealed note. She took the note and opened it.

She read: I regret I am unable to attend tonight as pressing business has come up. I hope that in my absence, you enjoy this gift. She is young and innocent, but I am sure can be coerced to satisfy you better with one small hand than I ever could. Enjoy her innocence. She cries delightfully when in pain.

"Oh how darling. Pop it in my bedroom, would you? On the bed, there's a dear. And be careful - it sounds delicate!"

When the porter was gone, she locked the door behind him and went to her bedroom, to find the servals, curious, sniffing at it, purring and rubbing themselves against it. She pushed them back. She had not outlived dozens of avaricious suitors by being incautious, however. She pulled a sniffing device out of a cupboard, and pointed it at the box. Fans whirred, pulling air over sensors, and the light on top glowed a friendly green.

From inside the box came a quiet mewling sound, so she opened it with a stick. Nothing erupted, so she peered inside over the heads of the servals. There, tied up with a ribbon, was a little girl with a cat's face, naked apart from the ribbon, a collar, and fur that nearly matched her servals, and a tail wrapped around her. She mewed, looking up at Beatrice with large innocent eyes over her bound wrists.

Beatrice clapped her hands in excitement. "Amazing! Where in the hell did he find you? You're amazing." Her mind tried to guess how the girl was made, what she had cost. It couldn't have been made from a cat, but the tail moved, so it couldn't be a human either. Some kind of monkey, then. But the amount of black-market cosmetic surgery it would take to make a monkey into this saccharine child's-fantasy of a cat-person boggled the mind. Millions.

She had received houses, and cars, and pets, but never anything like this. If he wanted her attention, he had it.

Had she underestimated Adam? Despite his blatant loathing of being submissive, he had somehow managed not to be broken, no matter how awful she had been to him. Just last night he had serviced her and her friends as a toilet slave, and she'd topped it off by pouring the serval's leavings onto him... he would leave her each night, utterly beaten and dejected, and still he didn't quit, returning perfectly attired and sober each evening. She had even taken the ship's doctor to examine him and test him for drugs - nothing.

And now this.

The servals were acting very unusually, rubbing themselves against the box, growling, mewling, pouncing each other playfully, far from their normal overfed selves, more like the kittens of years gone by.

She tipped the box and the cat-child rolled out onto the bed, along with a small black box. She was beautifully bound and presented, her knees pulled up and spread to expose as much of her tenderest areas as possible.

She frowned, picking up the small box. It was heavy, but she opened it without fear. Whatever it was he was up to, it was too complex for some cheap bombing or gassing trick.

Inside, on a velvet pad, was a long thin stun-stick, and the note "If she resists, this 'dildo' should encourage her. Enjoy her coarse tongue.".

She smiled. Oh Adam, you think of everything.

A tag hung from the girl's collar: she examined it: it said Cat. "Well no shit, Sherlock." Something seemed familiar about the collar, but it took her a moment to realise what. It was crafted from the harness she has made Adam wear - the ring that the tag hung from was the cock-ring.

The male serval's head poked under her arm, sniffing at the girl's crotch. She mewed loudly, struggling to get away, and Beatrice pushed him off the bed. Unusually, he didn't slope off into a corner, but stood, alert, by the bed, trembling with eagerness to resume his investigation of the new toy.

She considered unwrapping her gift, but decided to exploit it still bound, at least for the time being. She stroked the fur. "So soft! Would you like to be a coat when I've finished with you?" The cat just stared, wide-eyed and scared, breath quick with fear. She laughed.

"Well, girl, you are an amazing piece of work. I am going to break you, but I will take my time - a gift like you was not meant to be destroyed in a day like a box of chocolates."

She picked up the handset beside her bed and dialled his room number.

When he picked up, she was gracious and cautious. "Thank you so much for the gift, dear. She is quite lovely."

"Well, she was an apology for allowing business to interfere with the pleasure of your company. I hope that she can satisfy you better than I could, in my absence."

"That's quite all right - business is business, after all. I wasn't even aware you were a businessman: what line of business is it?"

"Oh... international trade. It's a numbers game, really."

"That is about as syntactically empty a reply as you could give."

"Well, international trade is a pretty hard field to define."

He was playing with her! She changed the subject. "So, how did you manage to keep her hidden for so long?"

Was his laugh a little mocking? "It hasn't been that long, I only took her on board ten days ago."

That shocked her. They hadn't even docked since... ah. It all made sense now. The tainted water and the docking for a refill was fake! He had bribed someone, so that they would dock, and he could take delivery then. Which implied a Chinese surgeon - even then, though, the girl in front of her represented millions of dollars of development. And all to give her a girl to match her servals?

It seemed far-fetched, but it fitted the facts.

"Wherever did you find her?" She hater her voice for sounding shaken.

"Oh, I know a fellow in the business, he thought she would be a most entertaining project." She could hear his grin in his voice. He was enjoying this! She frowned, but suspected she would get nothing more out of him without torture. Maybe not even then. She had not managed to break him yet.

"Well, I have decided that she will help me with you, tomorrow. Just us three, together in private."

"That sounds as if it might be cosy."

"Very much so. See you then, my dear." she hung up.

He hadn't been playing with her. He had been fencing.

She remembered watching him fence. Not with those wimpy, bendy swords, but with his sword-cane. The blows had been too flurry-fast for her to understand them, but she remembered the way the fight had moved: his opponent had attacked in a flurry, leaving Adam looking hopelessly outclassed, almost fumbling, beaten back step by step, his face a mask of worry, apart from his eyes, alert and still.

She remembered it well: she had leaned forward, feeling the moment of his defeat to be just seconds away... and then as his opponent had prepared to finish him, Adam's mask of concern had evaporated, confidence and victory shone through, and his blade flashed in a blurring arc. His opponent was hurled back, an arc of blood flying like a red rainbow in the air as his sword span away, end over end. Adam had called after him, but he had run off to the infirmary. She saw him later, arm in a sling, but the man was broken: his tendons slashed through, he would never be able to fight competitively again.

She felt again the spray of blood across her face and shivered in remembered pleasure. But what if she were his next fencing victim?

She turned her attention back to the bound girl. "Tomorrow night, you will help me torture your poor papa, but tonight, I have you all to myself."

=====

The woman was finally asleep.

Her hand still held Cat's neck, so Cat waited, unmoving, until the breathing beside her was deep and even, snoring slightly, before daring to move.

She tugged herself free of the ribbons binding her wrists, then slowly eased the stun-stick out of herself, where the evil woman had left it once it had discharged, wincing at how tender she was and trying to still her shivering muscles. The memory of the wracking electricity that had gripped her body made her limbs tremble even an hour later.

But she would be brave, for her Adam. Muffling it in the blankets, she undid the battery cover from the stun-stick, and slipped out the slip of silvered paper that had protected half of the batteries from being used. She waited with baited breath until the red light went green, and it was ready to use again.

Moving slowly, trying to look natural, she shifted, stretched on the bed, raising the stun-stick up by the pillow. Her neck was still held in the woman's hand, and in her sleep, she squeezed her as she moved, but eventually it was in place.

She breathed in and out, deeply a couple of times. The Servals were awake, looking at her cautiously. Should she wait until they slept? She hesitated. Would waiting lose her the only chance she had?

She made her decision, pressed the stun-stick against the woman's neck and pressed the trigger. To her retributive glee, the tick-tick-tick of electricity brought an immediate spasm of the paralysed woman.

Cat grinned, freeing herself from the clutching hand, and straddled the woman's legs, kissing and licking her way up to the terrified woman's neck. There, she bit, softly at first, then harder, tearing into the flesh, crushing the windpipe.

An uncertain growl behind her - the servals, having often seen neck-biting in lovemaking, were unsure of her actions, but she didn't have long to act. She extended her claws, raking the woman's belly, gutting her in just three strokes. She reached inside and pulled out the offal, holding it out to the hackle-raised cats: they sniffed, out of habit, and smelled the blood, the tastiness of the still-living morsels being offered, and sank their teeth in.

Cat was surprised to find herself intensely aroused by the scene, and as the woman's legs kicked in her death throes beneath her, she reached her bloodied hand down to touch herself, even as she bit into the woman again, tearing at the tender flesh, feeling its sick slickness against her face, blood filling her mouth and washing away the filthy tastes the woman had left in her mouth earlier. She buried her head inside her victim, biting, clawing, descending for a time into unthinking feral savagery.

She pulled her head out, something slimy and delicious in her mouth, and curled herself up at the foot of the bed to eat it, purring with a deep satisfaction, throwing occasional scraps to her accomplices as they tore at their once-mistress.

In this sated, warm sharing of the spoils, lethargy crept upon her, sleep threatening to claimed her. The servals, true to their name, were treating her with servility: she had become the leader of their pride, and she felt safe, protected, and full.

She shook it off, knowing she had a task to accomplish. She wiped herself repeatedly on the blankets, cleaning off the dripping blood, careful not to leave any obviously humanoid marks.

She hit redial on the phone, and the other end picked up. "Hello?" It was Adam's voice. She purred into the mouthpiece, and heard him say "Very well, Beatrice. I'll send someone to pick it up." She had little time to lose.

She hung up and popped the stun-stick and her old bindings into her crate, then dragged it out into the main room, closed the bedroom door behind her. After arranging the box and its ribbons to her satisfaction by the cabin door, she climbed back inside it. It was designed so that, by pulling on one end of the ribbon, she could tighten it from inside, and hold it in place with a pin. Then hooks around the inside of the lid locked the top firmly in place to prevent curious delivery men from taking a peek.

Minutes later, there was a knock at the door. When it was left unanswered, the door opened, and the box was lifted onto a trolley and wheeled. As she felt the lurch of a moving elevator, she had to stifle a satisfied purr by nipping her tail. A short journey later, the crate was lifted off the cart again, and dropped to the floor. She smelled the delicious scents of Adam's room, but she waited a full ten minutes after she heard the door close before she got out of the box and checked herself carefully for anything that might drip, before very carefully making her way to the shower, and fanatically licking and washing herself clean for a very long time.

Adam had been very explicit about the things she needed to do in order to prevent any evidence to tie him to the killing, and preventing blood from being found in his apartment was topmost. He would not be returning for hours, instead remaining in the public areas, being the heart and soul of the party, in order to establish a solid alibi.

When she was finally done, she wrapped herself in the bathrobe and began to break the crate into small pieces, tossing each one into the ocean through the porthole, along with the stun-stick. The ribbon went last, landing in the ocean like a trickle of blood before being consumed by the white froth of the wake.

She curled purring and sleepy into the trunk, to await Adam's return.

=====

=Graveyard, Middle England=

The church bells solemnly tolled the hour across the graveyard as the pastor recited the eulogy. Adam played his part, quiet, grieving.

He walked away when the ceremony finished, quiet and thoughtful, and climbed into the waiting limousine.

The car started off smoothly, as soon as he had sat down. He looked over at the two unemotional grey men sitting across from him. He spoke to the first, in a conservative pinstripe and a thin briefcase, exuding an air of old paper. "How did everything go?"

The lawyer smiled, a thin gesture of professional courtesy, untainted by any emotion. "All her affairs were sorted out smoothly, and nobody seriously contested the will. Though three claimants did come forward, none were able to demonstrate any significant relation or claim. All her assets are now in your name. Legally, the process appears to be closed."

Adam soberly nodded his thanks. "Thank you. You've done well on this, I didn't expect it so smooth." He turned to the other man, in a much cheaper suit, the elbows slightly worn, and an air of dust rather than paper. "Could you arrange for payment and retainer to be paid?"

The accountant nodded, and made a note. "I have prepared a list of all major assets, categorised by type, along with asset's overall profit or upkeep cost per annum, how difficult it would be to liquidate, and other aspects that may be useful in establishing a management strategy."

They discussed investment strategies until they reached the manor, crossing the moat passing the well manicured lawns, bone white peacocks spreading their tails in an ostentatious show of wealth. Adam marked them with a gesture of his finger as another asset to be considered for stripping.

Finally, the men left, carried away again by the limo, and he could relax, and go inside to be with Cat.

Though they had heavily culled the hangers on and flunkies down to the bare minimum, they had kept a good number of the original house-staff. All remaining staff were given raises, and any problems they had from their previous employer were respected and addressed, building loyalty.

He had asked them all for their ideas on how Cat's privacy could be kept. Some had suggested repairing fences, better security systems, and other practical measures: these he implemented, this respect for their suggestions once again building loyalty.

Some had suggested swearing them all to secrecy, or signing confidentiality agreements: these, he had rejected, explaining he felt he could trust their experience and professionalism to help protect her privacy: if he could not, no amount of red tape would help him feel safer.

Loyalty assured, they had tightened into something approaching a family.

=====

A few months later, with great fanfare, a Chinese company, "Genomic Appliances", announced the a new product line of "Appliances(tm)", the next-gen Furby or Tamagotchi, but so far more advanced that it blew all competition out of the water.

They were, in fact, cats much like Cat.

And yet, not.

They had no claws or teeth, and sexually-capable genitals were an "option": all others were surgically reduced to be suitable for western children to play with. They seemed retarded, no more intelligent than a trained monkey, mostly incapable of learning speech.

Genomic Appliances' claim was that they were not animals, since their genome was created totally from scratch. A completely man-made device. Because of this, no country considered them covered by animal rights legislation.

They sold very heavily as sex toys, so much so that almost all those sold were female: males were labourers, much cheaper, used in factories. People also bought them as something like a pets-with-training-wheels: you could give them to kids who were unable to properly look after them, to train them to be able to look after a real animal.

Genomic Appliances promised other models in coming years - a rabbit and a dog version were "coming soon".

=====

=Animal Rescue Centre=

"You lockin' up again, Dan?" The grizzled old timer checked the donations box (empty as always, but hope springs eternal), and put his coat on.'

Dan, the young assistant, looked up from measuring out dog kibble with a rueful grin. "Yeah, dad won't be pickin' me up till gone ten, earliest. Once I'm done here, I'll just pet the cats til then."

The store owner tried not to look too knowing: he reckoned the youngster did a lot more than just pet the Appies, but he worked hard, the Appies seemed happy, and was always conscientious enough to leave no sign, so there was no cause to complain. He'd checked, by marking the level in the food bins, that Dan carried on and finished the feed even when unsupervised - he always did. "Okay then. Ah'm gonna be at th' fair tomorrow, you all right handling the vet when he comes?"

"Yeah, no problem - the Christmas pen, down the end there. Damn shame." Every Christmas there was a surge of unwanted pets handed in to the shelter; last Christmas, it seemed, almost everyone had been buying each other Appies. Any who had not been adopted after six months should, the rules said, be euthanized. It had been seven months now - the old man hated to see his animals killed. Since Dan had been arranging them, the culls had almost always been scheduled for fair days. Nobody mentioned it, but the old man was clearly grateful not to have to be there to deal with the disposal.

"Damn waste of life is what it is, son. A pet is fer life, not just fer Christmas! Damnation, we need funding..."

Dan replied before the tirade could get into full flow, with the ease of one who's "Shake lots of rich hands at the fair, then, Pops. Maybe you'll shake a little money out."

Dan waited until he was sure that the old-timer's rickety old car had managed to get away before he reached for the phone.

"Hey Eddie! S'me. Yeah, sorted - I booked the vet in for two of 'em, the rest are ready for ya now. Pops? Naw, even if he comes in for something he's forgot, he wouldn't check on 'em, couldn't bring himself to. Don't forget to tell the guys we're on for Saturday, seven o'clock. Cool, see you in a few!"

He pulled some cord out of his bag and went to the Appie cages.

=====

=A ranch=

Eddie gangled, skinny limbs always sticking out at angles like a drowned spider. At the moment he was gangling against the barn door, watching Dan's pickup crawl up and disgorge its contents, Dan and four other whooping and hollering young fratmen wielding already-opened bottles of beer.

"You're late!" he called, trying to look cross.

Dan came up, handing him a drink with a hearty shoulder-slap. "C'mon, it's only ten past seven. Cheer up, this'll be fun, and if it goes well, we can have a barbecue every month! Maybe even charge admission! Are the bitches ready?"

"Sure are!" Eddie grinned and moved to the barn doors, holding them ready.

Dan turned and spread his arms for silence from the crows, which eventually fell. "Gentlemen, you have all already sworn that what happens on the ranch, stays at the ranch. We're gathered here today to begin a most glorious tradition, and we will NOT have any bleeding heart liberals try to trample on that tradition, are we all agreed?"

Eddie swung the doors open, and the Appies from the rescue centre were revealed to the setting sun, bound wrist to wrist across the doorway.

Dan pointed an accusing finger to them. "These evil... *appliances* pervade our homes and leech funding from real animal care! It's time to fight back! It's your responsibility, your DUTY to make them pay in the most sickening way imaginable, as a warning to those to come. Do not hold back! Make them know that man is their master! Make them your sluts, your whores, your toilets, and they will soon be squirming, screaming and dying for your entertainment. Afterwards... Appie-steak barbecue!"

A slightly-drunken cheer rose, and he again waved it to silence. "Now gentlemen, we can't have these monsters clothed - strip them!"

The boys ran forward and started to tear the clothes off the cowering line of Appies, who screamed and tugged at their bindings, but couldn't get away. In seconds, they were naked.

Dan was finding he really enjoyed his role as ringmaster. "Wonderful. Now remember, never be afraid to hurt an Appie, the bruises don't show anyway!" There was laughter. "But now comes the time for you all to prove you're serious about having fun, and none of you are here from the SPCA or something! Every one of you, punch an Appie in the gut, like this!"

He crouched, and swung an uppercut at the crotch of the smallest, on the left, the blow lifting her into the air and dropping her screaming to her knees. "Oops, I hit a bit low!" There was more laughter, and the line of Appies started to struggle in panic. "Eddie, you try."

Eddie stepped forward and punched a calico hard, just under the ribs - the line of Appies jerked from the blow, and the Appie doubled over, jerking and dangling from its bonds.

One by one the others punched. Dan could see their inhibitions of each one drop as they did.

"Okay, first game!" he cried. The two on the right will fight to the death. Anyone wants to bet on the outcome, betting starts at ten dollars! And since we have no toilet facilities here in the barn, this little one on the left is the designated toilet for the session... so drink up!

=====

The backlash against Appies grew day by day. As factory slaves, they were accused of taking jobs; as sex slaves, of causing perversion. Religious extremists claimed they were the spawn of Satan; conservationists claimed they were pulling funding from caring for real animals, and producing them was a profligate waste of valuable resources.

The underground market for barbecues become commonplace. Once it was noticed that they had nutritional value, the surplus of males were being tinned and sold as "suitable for vegetarians". Again, conservationists were up in arms: the profligate waste in making this artificial meat was even higher than in making beef!

The bible of the mental health professional, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", added excessive affection for Appliances as a paraphilia. With religious backing, "Sex with an artificial life-form" quickly became illegal in most US states, and most of Europe soon followed.

It was only a matter of time before news of Cat leaked, a tabloid exposé splashing him across the front page, a telephoto picture of him kissing her on their veranda.

Genomic Appliances caught wind of it, and tried to sue him for theft of a prototype, but this was nothing compared to his worry of the lynching parties he saw on their news. Appies being burned like flags, swung from trees. One morning the groundsman told him three had been found, crucified on his gates.

In the end they had to flee the country, transferring all their assets before legal means could be found to freeze them. Then, in the dead of night, they fled in a small unlit plane.

They made their new home in Vietnam, finding it rife with corruption. But people with securely entrenched wealth were inviolable: even a clinical diagnosis for insanity was merely an "eccentricity".

They bought a small inconspicuous house and tried to disappear. And for three blissful, languid, loving months enjoying each other and the ocean in the tropical heat, it worked.

He came in one day from surfing, to find her sitting, curled and sobbing before the screen, a looping video of atrocities: Reverend Franks at the head of a mob wielding placards outside the "Genomic Appliances" factory, calling for the abominations to be stopped; religious fanatics of all colours pouring petrol on the Appies, burning them alive in pits of black smoke, flame, and bodies frantically clawing and scrambling over each other to escape, only to be pushed back into the flames with pitchforks; laughing frat boys carving off steaks at an Appie roast; Appies in pleasure parlours, Appies in shock collars working in factories, Appies in a luxury meat packing plant, butchering and canning their own kind. The headline slid past: "Appies: a necessary evil?"

He reached out and turned off the screen, kissing her softly, wrapping her in his arms and carrying her away from the desk, to the couch holding her and rocking her in his lap until the sobs came, her fists beating against him in anguish.

"There, there, love. There there. It's all right, they can't reach us here. We're safe. It's all right." He crooned reassuring nothings to her, but the sobs kept coming.

Eventually, she brought herself under control, gulping and sniffing, and looked up at him. "You don't understand."

He thought about it for a moment. "It's torture for you, isn't it, watching your brothers and sisters treated like that?"

She shook her head, not in denial, just shaking off the relevance of that pain. She held out a small fist, uncurled it. It held a small white stick. He took it from her gently. "What does two blue lines mean?" Her silence the way she clung to him, shivering, was answer enough. "It doesn't mean anything, this is for humans, it's a totally dif..." a paw to his lips silenced him.

"It's never done that before. Every month for the last four years it's been clear. And I missed my period. And I threw up this morning. My nipples feel... wrong." sobs hit her again and she clung to him.

He clung back, his mind racing blankly searching for answers. None came. "Isn't that a good thing? It's ours, right? I mean..." claws dug into him angrily for a moment, then she let go, kicking herself away from him, jumping to the other side of the couch.

"Are you crazy? Even if, IF I carry it to term, IF it's not some deformed monster that dies gasping its first breath, IF I can bear it without being ripped apart myself... I am past the prime of my life now, Adam. How long was I in the lab, and escaped, roaming the island? Two years, three? So I'm what, six? I am going to age and die before I even hit double figures. Will the child live any longer? Even if I could live long enough to see it grow up, how can I bring a child into a world like..." she waved a paw towards the office, her trembling arm betraying the deep horror in her eyes.

Remorse crushed his chest. "I'm sorry, Cat, I didn't think."

She sank to her knees. "I tried. I tried so hard, you know? I tried so hard for this. I don't want to leave you with nothing, I want this so badly but I'm just so scared..." Her beseeching eyes looked at him, begging for understanding. And this time, as he came to her, she found it in his kiss.

When she had stopped shivering she pulled back from him, her face grim and determined. "We will fight them. Arrange a televised interview with Franks... no, a live debate, so we get to put our case without interruption."

He shook his head. "They wouldn't even give us the time of day."

He tried to kiss her comfortingly, but she pushed him away. "No. Can you see the reverend passing up a chance to preach his message of hate for five solid, uninterrupted minutes on live TV? Can you see the networks passing it up? The today show saying no thank you, we don't want to show an exile Appie-loving billionaire pervert being given a verbal reaming by hugely popular raving religious figure, we want to show a segment on table tennis instead?"

"Maybe", he grimaced, acknowledging her point. "But you can't win, love. Not against the church. Not against the weight of belief and wealth and hatred. Hell, we'd be killed at the border."

"I'm not going to try arguing logically - that's what you'd do. I'm going to take all his religious bullshit and lies and ram them right back in his face. And we'll do it here. They'll come here for the chance to screw up over. We'll even build them a set. Yes, and we'll rehearse on it, again and again, with our own crew, set up our own ideal camera angles and lighting to grab people's hearts. Tell them they legally have to use local labour for production. Research every single anti-Appie slur ever mouthed and have a rebuttal ready for it."

"They'll tear us apart..."

"Are you saying you won't help me?"

=====

This will be a short debate, because I can't possibly disagree with anything that Reverend Franks just said in his sermon. He is completely right. I am an abomination. I am a monster created by devils. I do not believe that God in his infinite mercy could ever be responsible for something as vile as the atrocities that mankind must have performed to create me. I am not just sinful: I am a sin, probably the worst sin of man for two thousand years.

You are wondering how I can talk. I was one of the first prototypes, different from my brothers and sisters you can buy in the shops. My fingers are longer, more like your human hands. See, I have the same number of joints in each one as you do. This is because in the factories where my people are made, the last joint of each finger and toe is sliced off when each child is born. "Declawing". Allowing us to breed is forbidden in the Genomic Appliances license as copyright theft, so genitals are removed. That's "DRM" in the literature. And toxins are injected into the brain of the newborn Appliances, retarding them for life.

The literature speaks of "failure rates". A failure is a baby Appie who, perhaps because their brain was not retarded enough, is not marketable. Failures were once incinerated. Now they are sent, live, to factories to be canned by their brothers wearing shock collars.

It's critically important for Genomic Appliances that they can demonstrate that we were not made from animals, or humans, since then we would be subject to their rights laws.

Genomic Appliances tells us that the genes that make me up were built from scratch, from the raw components. They have filed a raft of patents to show this.

And yet nobody else in the world has yet managed to build even a single genome, let alone a cell or an entire living, breathing, talking, crying organism. Nobody has even managed to modify an existing nonhuman animal to speak or cry. Nobody has even been able to recreate those fabled "vats" we're meant to be made. I challenge anyone to find a single one of GA's sixty core patents which has been reproduced in any peer-reviewed experiment, anywhere in the world.

Those of you who bought one of us. You bought a brainless fuzzy android to help around the home. You bought a next-gen Furby or Tamagotchi, like it says in all the ads. A bit like a pet, only you can give them to kids who can't look after 'em, and not feel guilty when the kid screws up. "It's not like they're *real* animals, after all."

But I tell you, we are real. You bought an artificially retarded animal who needs your care. Your money paid for this animal slave-child to be mutilated at birth. It will age at an accelerated rate and die, childless, before a human would even reach puberty.

The Bible, if I understand it right, tells me that when God brought down the water of the heavens and flooded the Earth, men stopped living for several centuries, and for their sins, their allotted span was slashed to perhaps a tenth: three score years and ten.

And it happened again. In a factory on a Chinese island, Man thought to twist God's finest work, to sin by perverting God's creation and calling it his own... and most Appies live for perhaps seven years. A tenth of a human. That's barely enough time to learn how to read the bible, let alone understand it!

I cannot tell Reverend Franks that he is wrong to do what he does to us, because I do not know. I am six years old. I don't know anything. He has lived longer than ten of me.

But I see the minds of my sisters ruined by poison so that they can never say a prayer. I see them being burned alive as abominations, never having a chance to learn of God's love.

And I think about Jesus, and how he was God, and if he wanted he could have cleaned the taint of the diseased and violent and stupid people off the planet as easy as blinking dust from his eye. And I think how instead he healed their bodies, and taught the them how to untaint their hearts.

And I read those passages in the Bible, and I think of my tainted and stupid brothers and sisters, and I think of the taint in the hearts of our abusers, seductively excused with "they are just appliances". I pray that God can forgive them, and I wish Jesus would please come back, just for a little while, and maybe he could save all their hearts.

Adam tells me I have more money than most small countries. Before I die I think I should build missions to heal and teach my sisters. But I don't even know if that's what Jesus would want me to do. I don't know if there are any missionaries who would think is worth saving. I don't know if we even have souls. I don't know if we can be healed. I do know that even though I was never mutilated, I still feel broken, inside. I need advice. I'm only six. I won't ever know as much as a human.

But I ask you, what is a human? People tell me if two animals can breed, they're the same species.

But, here's the strange thing. I am pregnant.

My baby growing inside me is naturally conceived, and at least half human. And I am so very, very scared for her.

I don't know if this means I'm human. I don't know if this means I have a soul. I leave that to older, wiser people, like the Reverend, who have studied these things.

But whether I have a soul or not, I can pray. And since he hears everything, God can hear me, and I dare to hope that maybe, if he is feeling kind, he might answer prayers even from a thing without a soul.

Every day I pray, morning, noon and night, I pray every second for the life of my child, my baby daughter. The doctors tell me they think she is developing too fast, they think she may be deformed, but they don't know for sure, they've never seen an Appie pregnant before.

Each day I pray to God that I am strong enough to carry her to term. I pray that she's not some deformed monster who dies when gasping her first breath, or at least... if she is, I pray that if she has a soul, God forgives that soul for my pride in trying to have her live.

They tell me it may kill me. For my daughter, I am willing to give my life. What mother wouldn't? I don't pray not to die, but I do pray to see my daughter's face before I go.

But even if I live, I will not last to see her grow up. And so I pray for the world that she will be born into, for I will likely age and die before she reaches one year old. I can't be there to protect her.

I beg everyone listening to pray for the souls of my brothers and sisters, and for the souls of our abusers, for they know not what they do; and pray for our future generations, that the deliberate mutilations of our babies can stop.

And if you possibly can, I beg you all please, to pray for my baby daughter.

I pray to Almighty God that anyone hearing this can decide for themselves with a clear heart. Amen.

=====

They watched the rushes with bated breath.

Franks had preached up a storm of fire and brimstone, sweat coursing down his brow, and the lighting and camerawork had lent him presence reminiscent of Hitler at the Nuremberg rally, the podium a pulpit from which to deliver a fiery rhetorical tirade, shot from below in a stark light.

When it was Adam's turn, he had just said "I will let Cat speak for herself" and she had walked up to the podium, a wide shot showing her small and vulnerable in a cornflower blue dress. She had peeked out from behind the podium for a moment, frowning, she had climbed on top, to laughter.

When she started, speaking without notes, as if from the heart, the laughter died. Slow camera pans and zooms, soft focus, gentle lighting and a back-lit spot to make her fur a halo, worked together until the end, a medium shot of her knelt on the podium, her head humbly bowed and her crucifix pendant held reverently in her paw, the NBC peacock logo behind her, like an angel's wings, just off-centre enough to make it look coincidental.

In the questions afterwards, Franks ranted about filthy fornicators, about arrogant, presumptuous insolence of thinking she might give birth to a creature with a soul. In extreme closeup, a vein in the side of his head accentuated the lack of control shown by his trembling, spittle-flecked lips.

She was shown, cross-legged on a chair, big eyes liquid with fear, One hand clinging to Adam's, the other protectively on her belly in the face of the verbal onslaught. Cat and Adam, for their part, just responded to questions calmly and humbly.

They had claimed the moral high ground.

The transcript of her speech became a chain email, a blog-storm. They made a website for it, asked for donations for Appie clinics, and the money poured in. They tripled each dollar donated and turned it into clinics.

Two weeks later, Franks had renounced his views, declaring that he was funding the first Franks Missionary School for Appies, and asking the TV audience to fund him for a chain more across the globe.

In that short time, the year's most frequent Google search had already become "The Appie Prayer".

=====

Adam had helped Cat design her speech as a manipulative exploitation of Christian beliefs, but as the months past and she spoke online with all the people it had touched, he found that she was believing it herself, holding the crucifix she wore and truly praying. Not for herself, but for the well-being of Appies across the world.

Though he usually portrayed himself as a strong believer if it suited him, he truly felt strongly agnostic, and anti-Christian. They discussed it, and as her belief brought her an inner strength and happiness, he accepted it.

She came to him in the den, gravid and glowing with love and happiness. As her child had grown within herself, and her breasts had swelled, she had become more at ease and confident with herself, blooming into radiant motherhood, her belly an breasts swelling to startling proportions against her tiny form.

He held out his arms and she folded herself into them, curling into his lap and nuzzling his neck. He gave her a soft squeeze. "What's up, kitten?"

She wiggled in his lap, whining and looking up at him with sultry eyes. "I'm horny!"

He frowned, concerned. "Shouldn't we be careful? The doctor said that you should avoid overexertion."

"He also said that sex was fine until the waters break, and that being horny as hell is normal." Her hands were sliding between them, tugging at his belt. "We've been over this anyway, you just want me to beg for it!"

"Maybe..." he grinned down at her beautiful face, feeling himself hardening at the lust and need for him in her eyes.

"Fine!" She sank between his knees, kissed his fly. "Please..." Big, liquid, imploring eyes looked up at him. "Please, I need you inside me. I'm desperately horny, the pressure from our daughter growing inside me is driving me crazy with lust. I need cock. I need *your* cock. In me. Now."

Her words were arousing, but it was the expression that got to him the most - so lustful, so naughty, and so obviously desiring him. She covered the growing bulge with kisses before slowly unzipping it, freeing it and covering it with kisses and rough-tongues licks in its turn. Once she had lapped it into hardness, she took it into her mouth, looking up at him with a wanton smile.

She moved her head forward, proud of her ability to take him all, proud of the way her teeth did not touch him. At first, she suckled on him, licking her raspy tongue into his foreskin, sending near-unbearable stabs of sensation through him - then she pushed forward, deep-throating, gaping her mouth to take him as deeply as she could, and looking up as him all the while.

Adam smiled at her, stroking her, his arousal rising as she gagged around him slightly, but just seemed to be spurred on to try harder by it.

The hot mouth around him seemed determined to bring him off, but as soon as he neared that point, his eyes losing focus, the evil sex-kitten pulled her head back, letting him stand proud and free, his peak receding as she knelt astride his lap.

He reached up to cup her breasts, colostrously pendulous over him as she lowered herself onto him. He stroked them softly, not wanting to hurt her, so fragile, so precious.

The soft touch of no-longer-alien paws guided him inside her, so familiar they seemed a part of him. Their daughter's weight pressed her down upon him, pulled her hot tightness around him, sealed them intimately together.

She covered his fondling hands with her own, holding him to her as she slowly began to rock back and forth in his lap, tossing her head wantonly.

Pinned in place, frustrated a little by the lack of control, he blew her a kiss, and as it flew through the air she caught it with a snap of her jaws, showing her teeth in a feral grin. She gazed into his eyes and lasciviously licked her lips, speeding up the pace of her thrusts and sending delightful spasms through him as he was shifted inside her.

She frowned at his gentle touch, and dug her hands into his own with a low growl, crushing his fingers to dig into her breasts, her claws sinking into his fingers and her breasts, to show him how she wanted to be held. "Damn it, Adam! Stop treating me like a fucking china doll. I am horny as hell, and I want you to fuck me properly!" Drops of her first milk seeped over his fingers.

A brief moment of guilt at how right she was about how he'd been treating her was quickly swamped by desire as her need for him bore through to his hindbrain. A flash of anger at her effrontery, at her dominant position, was all the extra motivation he needed to pull his hands from hers with a snarl and pull her down on to the couch, firm hands supporting her as she fell to the cushions. Her "Yes!" was drowned in a kiss, as he thrust into her with loving savagery, digging his fingers into her shoulders in a harsh caress.

She twisted her head, bit his neck, and he responded by thrusting harder, arched over her swollen belly, pinning her and driving into her with tender ferocity, weeks of hidden frustration and misdirected caution brushed away in a duet of joyous, loving lust.

Long familiarity matched their rhythms perfectly, and their pent emotions came quickly to a head. They came together, clinging to each other, their love and the new life nestled between them, the most valuable treasures in the world.

He had pulled her back into his lap on the couch, to hold her wrapped protectively in his arms, in the warm gentle afterglow of pregnant sex. He was suckling her breasts clean, and feeling his juices ooze slowly back out of her around his fading hardness, when the maid came running in, without even a knock on the door.

She stopped for a moment, startled by their lewd naked embrace. "I'm so sorry, sir, ma'am, but you need to watch this." She swept the TV remote from the side table, and jabbed frantically at the buttons until the screen lit.

It was the news, the reporter uncharacteristically silent. An aerial view of a fire, shot from a high-flying plane. Smoke curled up in tendrils, flame glowed through the haze. From the side of the picture, a jet of flame played across the pit of fire.

The news ticker along the bottom of the screen sprang into life. "Human rights granted to engineered humans in the US, EU, Australia, Middle East and Africa."

The image panned, zoomed in. There were other jets of fire coming from flamethrowers, dozens of them, trained on the burning. The ticker changed. "Genomic Appliances sales crash worldwide."

It zoomed in further, to the centre of the pit, darker, cooler, the flames hadn't reached there yet. In the shimmering heat and drifting smoke, the darkness seemed to be moving. "All six GA factories in China have begun destroying stock"

Zoomed in further, and kept going. The darkness *was* moving. Bodies, hundreds of them, were clustered together, trying to escape the flame and heat, scrambling over each other, clawing at each other, scrambling away from the flame, mouths open in silent screams. "Tens of thousands killed."

Adam felt Cat curl into a ball on his lap, whimpering, her breathing ragged. He held her, searching for something to say, and finding nothing, unable to tear his eyes away from the broadcast.

Five Appie children filled the screen, smoke rising from their fur as they scrambled frantically to the centre of the fire pit faces contorting with pain and the effort to breathe. The youngest fell, and was trampled by the others, but they were not saved. The screen was filled with billowing yellow as a flamethrower jet played over them. "US President in talks with China: possibility of war"

Cat's voice was breathless, small. "It's starting..."

Adam looked from the screen at her. "You mean you knew this would happen?"

"NO!" Her claws dug into his leg. "It's STARTING!"

Adam felt a sudden rush of liquid over his lap, and Cat cried out, releasing his leg and curling tighter into a ball, arms wrapped around herself, moaning.

Realisation dawned and he cursed himself inwardly for his slowness. He turned to the maid. "Fetch the midwife, now!" She was already on her way to the door.

Cat seemed to be relaxing in his arms again, tension leeching out of her, as she regained control of her breathing. He stroked her. "There, there, my love, I'm here. I'll be right here all the time."

With an effort, pushing his arms away from her, she rose from his lap, and turned, her small face looking down at him. "Adam, think about the numbers. There were tens of thousands of Appies burning there. It takes four months from conception to birth. The kits are sold after a year. That means there are thousands of non-retarded, fully sentient women just like me, carrying thousands of babies just like our daughter. And they will all be dead before out daughter is born, unless we do something, today, now, immediately. I don't want you here with me. I want you saving them."

He reached for her, but she batted him away, claws extended just far enough for him to know she meant it. "Go on. Pick up that damn phone, and save them! I'm leaving, because I know you'll just fuss over me if I stay. Don't you dare follow me while there's even one more life that can be saved."

=====

It had taken him more than two hours, and pulling all the strings he knew, before finally, he heard a voice on the other end of the telephone say "This is Gao Chao. Why do you call? You have won. Have you called to gloat?"

"Actually, no." Adam tried to stifle the frustration that had risen in the last two hours of time-wasting stupidity. "I called about the disposal of your stock."

"It is perfectly humane." Gao sounded defensive. "We are just following the fine example set by you Americans for Appliance disposal."

Adam frowned at the barb, the reminder of the pit-burnings by religious fanatics. He took a deep breath to control himself: now would not be the time to allow annoyance to destroy negotiations. He picked his words carefully. "My wife and I would really rather that you did NOT dispose of them, and I was calling to ask if there was any way I could convince you not to."

"No. There is not." The satisfaction in Gao's voice was a dangerous warning. "And if this causes you and your stolen Appliance some personal pain, then that at least gives me some small revenge for the devastation you have visited upon us. You have destroyed our entire industry, and all these deaths are on your head. We no longer have a market: even if I wished to pander to your bleeding heart's whims, there is no possible way I could fund the upkeep of even the remaining Appliances, let alone sell any new ones. You have destroyed the lives of thousands of my workers, who will now return penniless to their hungry families. These people are my responsibility, and their families, and the communities that have built around them: not the animals you filthily fetishize." Gao sounded like he was practically frothing at the mouth.

It felt like he was rapidly losing control of the conversation, it was going in the wrong direction completely, and steering it back seemed impossible. Instead, he opted for attack, shock tactics. "Sir, the way I see it, you have two choices. The first choice is that you kill all your stock, you and all your employees lose everything, and your mismanagement will be held responsible, not just by the people who you have allowed to become destitute, but also by your government, who will desperately be looking for a scapegoat to avoid a war with the US. You and your subordinates *will* be found guilty of genocide, and your families shamed for generations."

There was a silence for a moment. "You dare... you DARE to threaten me like this?" The anger was gone, at least. Replaced by horror at the picture he had given.

"No threat. I would have nothing to do with it, you would do it all yourself. Think of it this way, Mr Gao. You have a son. Imagine what the other children will say to him at school. Imagine what his life will be like when he grows up. Imagine him looking you in the eye and asking you if what the people are saying is really true. Imagine his face at your trial, your funeral."

"Well, thank you, Sir, for showing me how you have doomed my family." The anger was still there, under the surface, but over it there was a wounded martyrdom, an effort at noble suffering. "You claimed that you were not here to gloat, but you seem to be doing a find job of it. But there is nothing I can do to change it. The government has told me that I have until the end of the week to remove all possible wrongdoing, and dismantle the company - and that means all stock must be destroyed. I simply cannot stop it." This time, there was no satisfaction in Gao's voice - just fatalistic acceptance.

That, he could work with! "I'm sorry, Mr Gao, I had assumed you already realised how bad things were - your reputation is one of strong business sense, so I am confident you could already see the writing on the wall. But you are right, I didn't call to throw that in your face, I called to offer you another option. You could sell your company to me, and be hailed as the man who averted war with America, who retained the jobs of all his staff, who created a new source of income for his country, and who's family became incredibly wealthy when he sold the company. You would be hailed as the man who, in the face of his government's insistence that he destroy the evidence of wrongdoing, still managed to save thousands of lives in a way that had his country come out smelling of roses. Once the company is mine, any further wrongdoing becomes my fault and your hands are clean. So what's it to be? Demon? Or hero?"

"What's in it for you? How will you turn a profit?" A trace of hope!

"I don't intend to profit, Mr Gao." Adam sternly suppressed the joy bubbling inside, the dance of wits was nearly won! But he could still lose it with the wrong tone, so he spoke gravel-voiced and serious. "I intend to lose a very large amount of money. But my wife is giving birth to my daughter, right now, as we speak. And I really rather want to be able to look our daughter in the eye when she grows up."

"How can you say that you will save everyone's jobs?" Gao's voice was wily now, as he slipped into his negotiating persona. "The stock has been reduced so much you would need only one factory, and that at a fraction of normal production."

"I told you, I expect to lose money hand over fist on this deal. Five year contracts guaranteed, no pay cuts, no layoffs other than yourself and any staff you wish to take with you when you retire. No part they had in the massacres will be held against them - officially at least, they do not know they were killing humans."

"You don't have the money."

"I can assure you, I do. The question is, how much do you want for the company? At the moment, the stock is worthless, and the assets come to perhaps a hundred million dollars, three quarter of a billion yuan. Would that be satisfactory?"

Another long silence, then Gao's voice, calm and collected, but still suspicious "So what do you want me to do?" He hadn't even haggled. The battle was won.

"To begin with, I want you to send a message to all your factories... *our* factories..."

=====

=Genomic Appliances Factory 1, Guangdong province, China= [[Interested in whether the person in charge of the massacre comes across as human and caring, and whether the massacre still comes across as utterly horrific. This is one of those "meant to work as a standalone story" passages.]]

Hui stood at the end of the trench, a ten-foot-deep, new-dug gash of fresh earth, twenty feet wide and a thousand long, lined on each side with mounds of the dug earth, and five hundred metal barrels. By the road behind him, the engine of one of the big diggers ticked quietly to itself as it cooled in the morning mist, its job done for now. For a moment at least, there was silence, time to think. He heard a crow caw in the copse nearby.

He hated what was to come. But as the director of their factory, he needed to be here, needed to show that he was not asking the men to do anything he would not do himself.

He checked the fuel tanks for the tripod mounted flamethrower in front of him, and sighed. Beside him, Jiang, his childhood friend and second in command, was loading and cocking his rifle, and the scene was repeated all down one side of the trench, atop temporary ramparts of the soft earth.

The trench system, the engineers told him, should work better than the square pit. The flamethrower jets could reach every spot, and crowds could not form.

A thousand feet away, at the far end of the trench, the first cattle trucks were already being emptied, the confused Appliances being herded down the ramp into the trench. A thousand per truck, two trucks at a time, and a line of ten trucks either side of the ramp. He nodded to himself, satisfied that his men were working efficiently. They would take a minute each to empty, and men along either side of the trench were pushing the felines along towards him, to keep the flow going.

The leading edge of the crowd arrived, milling confused below him. As the other riflemen had, Jiang knelt and took up a careful position in case any tried to climb out, but they did not seem to be inclined to. Instead, they huddled together, quiet and cowering, in the trench.

The silence was gone, though, the sound of hundreds and hundreds of felines replacing it. Quiet cries and wails came from the crowd.

There was a pregnant female just below him, holding a juvenile of perhaps six months. He watched them. It couldn't be her own, but still, she was comforting it. It clung to her as she soothed it, stroked its fur. It reminded him of his wife. She would be having their second, soon. She would be at home, perhaps holding their son in just that way. How would they get by, now the factory was closing?

It had been hard to look Jiang in the face this morning. Jiang's wife was due soon too, his first. The way his face glowed when he spoke of it used to fill Hui with pleasure, but now... now when he thought of it, his face would cloud with worry. None of them knew where they would find work once all the stock was destroyed.

Shaking the thoughts from his head, he looked up, seeing a change at the far end of the trench. In just fifteen minutes, twenty thousand Appliances had filled the trench, packed tightly, a fluffy carpet laid out before him. The last trucks pulled away and were replaced by the blades of bulldozers to block the ramp.

He sighed heavily, and looked at Jiang. The other's smile gave him strength, though it had no pleasure behind it: it was just a smile for reassurance. "It's time."

With a click of the starter, a small blue flame whoofed into life at the end of his weapon. He raised his arm. All along the trench, the men manning the flamethrowers raised theirs in acknowledgement.

He dropped the arm, a slicing motion, and on either side of the trench, men kicked the barrels into the trench, then scrambled back up the ramparts of packed earth, raising squeals of protest as the cats leapt away from the stinking, sticky waterfall that splashed down on them. They piled to the centre of the trench to get away from it.

He pressed the trigger, a tongue of flame lashing out, a fireball leaping up where it touched the liquid at the sides of the trench, sucking away the air.

All along the trench, the flamethrowers played over the crowd. Screams rose in a black cloud, with a terrible stench of burning hair, and the crowd below him surged in a frenzy of agony and terror.

He tried to be methodical, playing the flame into the middle of the trench, leaving the edges for the split fuel. This was the worst of it, but at least it would be over in a minute or two.

Beside him, Jiang was methodically shooting at anything that managed to scramble over the other bodies to the edge, a steady crack, crack of the rifle.

Then there was a pause in his shots, the sound of a clip being replaced, and one of them managed to make it up, to stand at the edge, flesh burning, blinded, still holding the child in her arms, cowered over it to shield it as best she could, but even so, its fur was all burned away, its face a mask of agony.

Hui looked at Jiang. He was looking at her, visibly shaken, fumbling, the clip not going into the gun. "Jiang!"

The cry roused Jiang, and he looked down at his weapon again, raising it, firing. The bullet hit the child in the back, and tore through him, ripping open the mother's belly behind him. Another shot, and she, too, lay dead.

Sickened, Hui turned back to his work, emptying the fuel tanks over the flames, touching the flame to any area that was not burning, any area that still moved.

There was a squeal of tyres on the road behind him as a car pulled up. He stopped firing and turned, seeing a man scramble out and raise a megaphone to his mouth.

"CEASE FIRE! The company is under new management. By order of the new Director, and of the government, the true human ancestry of all Appliances is now acknowledged. The claim that they were created from scratch is false. All appliances are to be treated with the utmost care, as you would members of your own family. Do not harm them further, and provide any wounded survivors the best possible medical care."

The man leapt back into the car, and waved the driver to drive along the trench as he leant out of the window, repeating his message.

Hui turned slowly back to look at the trench. Twenty thousand small black forms, children really, smoked and burned in the stinking smoke. He looked at the disemboweled mother and child before him, red showing through the cracks in the blackened skin. Something moved in the bloodied mess between her and the child she had tried so hard to protect: her baby, suffocating.

How could he face his wife after this? How could he even face himself?

Beside him, the rifle cracked one last time, and Jiang fell down beside him.

=====

Adam was breathless when he arrived at the maternity suite. Not from the run, it was just a hundred yard dash, for what was the point of being stupidly rich if you couldn't get the best treatment in-house?

But breathless, anyway, in fear and excitement. He took a moment to compose himself, and stepped inside.

The midwife and her assistant were there, to his relief looking attentive but unworried, and Cat was crouched at the head of the bed, her legs apart. She looked up at him as he entered, eyes searching his face for news. She looked exhausted and haggard.

"Success, love." He good her hand, stroking the soft fur. "We own the company, signed and sealed. Our new employees are running to stop the killing, and I'll fly to china in a day or two to make sure they're being treated right."

Cat shook her head. "We'll go together."

"That's probably not a good idea," Adam tried to explain. "I mean, the baby..."

Claws sank into his hand as her whole body spasmed. "Don't fucking argue, just say yes damn you!"

"Agh! Yes! OK!"

It was a long minute before he could extricate his hand, and by that time the baby's head was free. For a moment there was a feeling of incredible weirdness: this alien looking thing was part of him? But looking down at the vulnerable, wet-furred child, with its closed eyes and tiny features, he felt his heart swelling with protective love. This was his daughter.

He had never wanted a child, until he had met Cat. And now he realised it was the most important thing in his life so far.

=====

=Genomic Appliances Factory 1, Guangdong province, China= [[Everything after this point is utter, unadulterated crap. :(]]

Hui watched the helicopter land on the rooftop helipad, the heat shimmering off the concrete.

The new Director stepped out, frowning seriously. Probably not a good sign. He turned back and took a cane from a female Appliance, then reached a bandaged hand to help her down. She carried a tiny bundle in her arms. As she stepped down, she smiled up and kissed him softly, and his frown disappeared, but Hui noticed the Appliance's smile fade as she looked around herself, across the small island, and her hands tightened around the baby she held. She held tightly to the director's arm as he raised his cane in a wave to the waiting Hui, and walked towards him.

The Appliance, Hui realised, must be the prototype he had heard about. "Cat", the one that the Director allegedly stolen. Well, they all belonged to him now. Hui watched the bundle that she carried, very conscious of the similar bundle held in his own left arm, but resisted the urge to look down at it, to draw attention to it. They could hardly fail to see it, and there would be questions... but he would deal with them when they came.

As they approached, he stepped forwards and extended his other hand, the one with the black armband. "Welcome to factory one, Director," he said, over the slowing whine of the helicopter.

Adam took the hand and shook it, seemed to be amused as Hui hesitated a moment before offering his hand to the female. She took it, shook it confidently, a soft hand, but with firm muscles behind it. "Thank you for meeting us. I am Cat, and this is Adam. May I call you Hui?"

Hui blinked, flustered, and glanced down at the bundle in his arms for a moment before remembering himself. But just the brief glance lent him confidence, stability. "Of course. If you would follow me, I have a full report in my office."

He led them into the quiet air conditioned cool of the large building, and into his large office, lined with books on biology, genomics, animal husbandry and other topics. He saw them glance at the titles, and away again: they could not, he suspected, read the Chinese.

He waved them into comfortable leather chairs, and took one for himself, passing them each a folder from his desk. Adam flipped through his, but Cat put hers in her lap. "I'm afraid I still have a hard time with reading, Hui - could you summarise for me?"

Hui shifted the bundle in his lap, and poured them tea to gather his thoughts. "Well... it looks like the majority of factories destroyed the breeding stock first, as they posed a higher financial burden, due to the requirement for better nutrition and accommodation. Only this factory, and factory three in Shanghai province, have any remaining. There were initially about one million retail-quality Appliances, a quarter million breeding females, and fifty thousand breeding males. This has been reduced..." his voice cracked, and he swallowed, blinking, frowning at his own failure to control himself. "Ah, reduced to fifty thousand retail-quality, five thousand breeding females, and two thousand breeding males."

Adam looked shocked. "But that's less than..." his voice trailed off, the numbers too big to work with.

"Five percent of the retail stock; two point three of the breeding stock. We were very..." Hui grimaced, giving the child in his lap a gentle squeeze. "Very *efficient*. We had been culling for five days before you intervened. This would have been the last day."

Adam nodded, expressionless, absorbing the numbers. "What about research towards the other forms? Rabbit and dog? Do any of those survive?"

"This factory is also the main research facility, so I feel confident in saying that no research into new forms has yet been carried out. None of the research records were yet destroyed in the cull, so if you wish to begin such research, we would be able to: the entire research wing is largely untouched."

"Seal it" Cat's voice was harsh, her hackles raised at some memory. "Seal the whole wing, but make sure everything is preserved. Some day, they will want to know where they came from."

Hui looked to Adam for confirmation, getting it with a nod and a wave of the hand to put the matter aside: there were more important issues to discuss. "What measures are being taken for accommodation of the remaining stock?"

"I was informed that while all retail stock were to be treated as retarded humans, and given sufficient treatment, your main interest was the breeding pairs, who should be treated as mature, intelligent but uneducated human children." He took a breath. This was the risky part: would they be annoyed at his presumption? "In your folders, I have a proposal to use this factory as the base for the breeding stock, as we have the largest capacity, and can then focus the education effort in one place; and to distribute the remaining stock between the other factories so that they can receive care." He looked at them, trying to keep his face expressionless.

"That sounds reasonable." Adam flipped through the folder looking for the plan, and finding it, smiled. "It looks good, an efficient setup. What are the approximate costs per annum?"

"For the approximately ten years of their lifetime, the care costs for the fifty thousand would be approximately one thousand dollars each per year." Hui stuck his chin out aggressively, expecting to be challenged.

Adam was checking that against the tables in the folder. "So, fifty thousand Appies, times ten years, times a thousand dollars: five hundred million dollars. Half a billion." He sipped the tea, frowning, and Hui followed suit, his mouth suddenly dry with the scale of the operation, even in its decimated form.

Cat spoke up. "To be honest, since they are really a dead end and are mostly unaware of how good or bad their life is, I don't care too much about the retarded retail stock. I'm more concerned about the breeders. If we can sell off, or at least adopt off the retail stock, that will reduce the costs and save money for the remainder."

Hui felt quite startled at her pronouncement. "Well... surely you want them to also be treated as humans?"

"Are they human?" She looked at him piercingly. "Perhaps they once had that potential, but they lost it. They have subhuman intelligence. I suspect we'll be taking in a huge number of abandoned Appies from people having moral qualms about what they bought. We may even have to refund them, depending on local laws. So even if we give some of them away free, that's a large amount of money we'd save in not having to look after them. And there is still a market, however small, for Appies. There always will be a black market, I'm sure, and I'd rather that we controlled it, not some criminal organisation."

"But... they are humans! There is a moral responsibility!"

"No," she denied. "They are toys made from human flesh. My priority is the ones who are conscious. The others, we can give away, sell, or rent, and I do not care if their life is pleasant. If it means that we get a good price on fruit for the conscious ones, then I do not care if we have to send the director of the fruit company a couple of retail ones with their vaginas stretched around pineapples: they are assets, stock, nothing more. And they are a drain on us if we have to maintain them."

Hui turned to Adam, appealing. "Sir, surely you don't condone treating these people as chattel? They are disabled, they need care!"

"I wouldn't say that we must not spend money on them, and I think it would be kind and nice, if we can afford it. It depends how much the breeding stock will cost to maintain."

Hui was glad he had memorised the figures. "Seven thousand breeding stock, which will soon raise considerably, as at least three thousand are currently carrying children. With education and health care, likely five thousand dollars each." He sipped his tea again, nervously. "Another half billion for the first decade."

Adam winced, then shrugged. "It's doable."

Hui fought to prevent the relief and surprise reaching his face. He had been expecting to be haggled with, expecting to be told his plans were insanely expensive. Expecting to be told he would have to sell the ones needing the most help. He took a breath, to compose himself. A mewling squawk came from the bundle in his arms, making him jump. He pulled a bottle from his pocket and poked it into the folds of the blanket. It quietened instantly, but it was too late: the bundle in Cat's arms woke at the noise, and mewled too.

She looked curiously at Hui as she lifted her daughter to her breast. "Is it normal for the director of a hospital to carry a baby around, Hui?"

Hui glanced at Adam, a little taken aback by her forwardness, but Adam just raised an eyebrow. He looked down, flushing slightly. "This is one of the only survivors of the last cull I led. Her name is Karma." He fought to block the memories from his mind, the terror, the frantic bloody clawing in an effort to save at least one life from the ashes of his sin. He had done it. That was what mattered.

=====

The Factories were renamed to Sanctuaries, and they moved to Sanctuary One, the high walls and barbed fences torn down and replaced by trees and hedges: the factory grounds sprouted in new buildings, with living quarters, schools, a hospital, shops, a sports centre, a cinema, all filled with humans and Appies mixing and enjoying the facilities of the new town together. The other half the island was left as an adventurous "wilderness" for exploring, and for people to spend quiet stolen moments together.

One evening two months later, after enjoying the Princess Bride far too much in the cinema, the two families were enjoying a double-date of a barbecue on a small private on a beach on the wilderness side of the island: Hui's wife held their own son, not yet able to crawl, while Karma played with Leonie, the daughter of Adam and Cat.

"Most of the older breed stock," Hui was saying, "once we'd explained all the options to them, have wanted sterilisation, wanted never to give birth again. Of the three thousand who were pregnant, nearly a third wanted to abort. But we still now have a thousand new children to cater for, another thousand on the way, and at the end of it, a thousand mothers still able to breed again some day, in their own time."

Cat threw a stick into the trees and the two girl-kits scampered after it. "So, from the abortions, we've actually got fewer than we budgeted for?"

"Yup." Hui looked pleased with himself and kissed his wife. "Plus, a group of them are campaigning to get jobs - they don't like being beholden to you, and want to be self-supporting. Though I think a lot of that is thinking for the future: if they can become self-supporting now, the foundation will still have money for their children."

Adam laughed, moving to the fire to check the foil packages in the flames. "If only regular humans were so forward-looking. Here we are, the Island filled with the laughter and tears of young life... and they're all worrying about their pension schemes."

Cat snuggled his leg distractingly, looking at the foil-wrapped fish and whining "Are they ready yet?"

Adam stuck his tongue out and poked a fork into the cooking fish to test it. "Yep - but give 'em another minute to cool. Patience, wench. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

She kissed the inside of his thigh, teasing. "You are wonderful."

"Thank you," he quoted. "I've tried hard to become so."

She swooned melodramatically away from him, concealing a grin. "I admit it, you are better than I am."

"Then why," he asked, pointing the fork at her, "are you smiling?"

"Because I know something you don't know." She batted her eyelashes at him innocently.

"And what is that?"

"I... stole one of the fish!" she crowed, rolling away from him. "Ow damn! Hot hot hot!"

They laughed and threw cushions at her, and called the girls to eat. "Leonie, don't run around with worms dangling out your mouth like that, that's disgusting! Nobody wants to see that. If you're going to play with worms, at least eat them properly!"

"Yaay, fishfishfish!"

They squeezed lemons over the moist fish, and talked of the new laws they were crafting. The Chinese government, well aware of what it owed the new "Appie Foundation", had allowed them to essentially set their own minimalist laws within the bounds of the Sanctuaries. Almost all prohibitive laws had been discarded, and mostly only the rights remained.

"I think," Adam ventured, "everyone agrees that age-related laws should still apply to normal humans: it's just a ton simpler, and we have centuries of use to back us up. But for Appies... we can hardly deny all the experiences of life to someone who will likely age and die within a decade."

"Well," suggested Cat "is there a medical test we could do to check that they are mature enough for sex and alcohol and killing each other with heavy machinery?"

They looked to Hui, the party's resident medical expert, but he just shrugged. "Well, we always had a set rule of thirty months before breeding, but a medical check would probably be better, if we could find one that was fair. We picked the 30 month rule mostly by trial and error. It's two and a half years, probably about when they start becoming independent and thinking for themselves anyway. I don't like the idea of giving someone that age adult responsibilities, but ageing-wise, they'd be in their late teens at the earliest by then."

Hui's wife spoke up. "What does the age of consent mean?" She blushed, embarrassed. "I mean, I know what it permits - but what happens to those who do what it forbids?

"I think the idea is for common sense and judgement be used. Jury trial by their peers can result in unpopular people being singled out and picked on, but it also seems fairest, and also socially 'best' - if someone is unpopular, they may be more harshly punished than normal, but then, a punishment for being a pariah isn't a bad idea anyway: people who can't work within the society really aren't needed - they just damage it."

Hui's wife shook her head. "I meant, I'm worried that we should not criminalise two children for playing together. Or, if you decide that it's just playing, and is not illegal, then what about someone who has just reached maturity, for playing with someone who is just under it? You could have the case where two children play together freely, then one has a birthday, and suddenly they may no longer touch."

Cat spoke up, playing with the swordcane. "If two people below our age of consent play together, that's just 'experimentation', and not a sin. It's more protecting the very young, who are emotionally unprepared for it, against the predations of older people, particularly normal humans, but also our own kind."

"We could have some kind of psychological or scholarship test to check that they were ready to take responsibility for their own actions. Let them take it whenever the felt they wanted the extra rights and responsibilities. Then if they pass, give them a "consent card", permitting them access to the more dangerous activities and foods, but at the same time placing responsibility for their own well-being into their own paws."

But then you come back to the problem of an old Appie who has never taken the test, molesting a young child: how do you differentiate between that and two young children 'experimenting'? You need to draw a firm line, and say 'thou shalt not touch anyone below this age, or risk the wrath of your peers'."

What about a sliding scale, then? 'Over thirty months, or fewer than six months apart, and you're OK'?

"That could work for sex. But what do we do about alcohol, smoking, guns, military service, cars, heavy machinery, and so on?"

For the time being, we don't have any of those in the Sanctuaries, and we could safely forbid most of them. Though I can predict that alcohol and tobacco will get here eventually. Should we age-restrict drugs and carcinogens at all? If we just give everyone free cigarettes, they still won't die of cancer before they die of old age, will they?

They argued on into the evening, until the stars came out, then made love as their children slept.

=====

"It won't be long now, Adam. I think maybe even tonight."

"Oh, my Cat-a-tat..." Adam knew what she was talking about, and didn't have a reply. Leukaemia was claiming her. For two years they had fought it, but the last battle was lost. She leaned heavily on the cane, undressing for bed.

He helped her by hindering, softly kissing each part she uncovered, and they lay down in bed together, holding each other. He looked at the ceiling, fighting the tears, swallowing hard.

"I'm sorry, Adam. If I could live longer than you, I would... no, maybe I wouldn't. I am very selfish, I always have been, and I would far rather not suffer the pain of losing you. So think of it as doing me a favour, letting me die first."

"That..." He gave up, letting the tears flow over his face, sniffing and trying to swallow a stinging knot of sorrow. "That doesn't help at all, you know." His voice was husky with emotion, but he didn't try to control it.

"I guess not, poor love." She laughed bitterly. "Love, make me a promise?"

"I can try."

"If I die in my sleep, please don't call anyone. Let me lie here with you, until you're sure I'm gone. I'm ready to go. I'm not scared of what's to come. I'm not even scared I won't see you again, though I know you don't believe that. But I can't believe that any God could be cruel enough to keep us separate and still call it paradise. I'm not scared of death, love. Not of dying in your arms. But the idea of being woken with doctors and bright lights... of dying slowly as people I don't know cluster around me in a room that smells of the lab I was born in... that's the only terror left for me now. Please promise me you won't let it happen."

"I promise."

They lay together in the darkness, holding each other, until she fell asleep.

And as easy as that, she stiffened, relaxed, and left him. He felt a wet warmth soak his leg, but he didn't move, just lay there, holding her and letting the tears come.

=====

Leonie bounced up to her friend on the way to class. "Karma! I got my Consent card!" She waved it gleefully.

"Yay!" Karma hugged her. "Now we can go out and get fit chased together!"

"Fit chased?" Leonie looked puzzled.

"Shit faced!"

"Oooh... you free tonight?"

"Sure!"

They arrived at the classroom, hugging friends and exchanging gossip as they took their seats. As probably the most famous Appies in the Sanctuary, if not the world, they were used to being the centre of attention, and took it in their stride.

Their first class today was psychology, taught by Mr Miller, who the girls variously considered "so sexy" or "very creepy". The first task of the day was a computer-based questionnaire. "All your answers are anonymised and confidential, so only you will know how you answered. The questions you are asked will be determined by the answers you gave to earlier questions" Mr Miller explained.

Leonie began.

"Rank the following items in order of how much they interest you: Shopping Sports Partying Sex TV Computers"

She grinned and dragged "sex" to the top. To her surprise the next question was not displayed, and instead it showed the prompt: "Please swipe a Consent card or click cancel to only ask non-adult topics." She swiped her new card, noticing Karma doing the same beside her. They shared a grin: this might get interesting!

And indeed it did, though the "adult" questions were interspersed with others, mostly about sports, her second choice. It started off asking simple questions, like whether she had a boyfriend (no), whether she was still a virgin (yes), whether she masturbated (yes), and slowly became more intimate and detailed - presenting her with erotic passages and asking her to choose which she found the most erotic, or which actions she would most enjoy performing, or having to have performed upon herself. For many of them, she had to click for definitions - she had never realised that people did such things!

She pondered to herself that most of these things must be human inventions. With such a long life, the simple pleasurable idea of sex could become boring, perhaps even a humdrum, everyday activity like walking to school. So, they hunted down novelty in every form. It was the same for sport, she had found - but in doing so, they had come up with a lot of fun sports, and it looked like a lot of the sex stuff was going to be fun too!

At the end of the class, each girl was given a printout with a list of ratings, listing various jobs they might enjoy most ("a dancer! Ha!"), foods they might like to try, features they might most like to look for in a partner and in friends (though nothing unexpected or adult, there), and a whole bunch of other psychological profile stuff.

At break after the class, they went to their normal corner of the playground, the best spot, with the high perches in the sun from which they could see everyone else, without being too easily seen, which was where they normally "held court".

"So," Karma asked, "who else got the fun 'adult' questions?"

"Adult questions?" most seemed puzzled - but two paws went shyly up.

"Yay!", cried Leonie. "We weren't the only ones then!"

Others had put "sex" high, but had not applied for Consent cards, so could not see the adult questions: they were, of course, very curious about what they had missed.

"Nope!" said Karma, refusing to be drawn. "We can't tell you, until you have your own Consent cards. Only us four are mature enough to deal with such sexy naughtiness. The computer didn't show you the questions, so obviously you're not allowed to know them - we could get in trouble if we told you!"

For a while they enjoyed lording it over the other girls with their superiority - until they sensed, with the impeccable social skills so many girls are born with, that the curiosity had reached a peak and was soon to become annoyance and frustration.

"Well..." Leonie shared a glance with Karma, a silent agreement that now was the right time to start talking. "...there was this *one* question." The other girls leaned closer, eager to hear, hanging on her words completely. "It asked you which of your bodily fluids you have tasted... which ones have you all tried?"

Some of the other girls realised this was a test of their daring, their adult experience, and called out the naughtiest they had tried.

"What did you put, Leonie?" asked one of the two others with Consent cards.

"All of them, of course," Leonie grinned, and Karma nodded in agreement. Given their position, as the children of the people who ran the Sanctuary, nothing that Leonie or Karma did would ever be considered "wrong" by the others. They were the trendsetters, the arbiters of good taste. The only thing they could do wrong was not to do enough, and so they had one unspoken rule: do not allow themselves to be one-upped by others.

"Even your milk?" It was phrased breathless and admiring, but it was a challenge, from a small kit near the back: Nicky, one of the ones conceived after the creation of sanctuary, with real parents. She was the smallest in the group: few of the new generation were brave enough to mix with the glut of artificially-conceived children.

Despite the challenge, Leonie was well able to handle herself in this social fencing, particularly from one so young. She laughed, almost affectionately at the little one. "Of course not, silly. I haven't been pregnant yet, so I can't lactate. But everyone remembers the taste of their mother's milk, don't they?"

Stung, little Nicky snapped back "Karma doesn't!"

Everyone's eyes turned to the little one, and her own went wide, realising the magnitude of her faux pas. It would be a long time before she would be welcome in the court again. She hung her head. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean..." The other girls were looking away from her, as if not wanting to be associated with her, even a little, but nobody said anything.

It was Karma who spoke. "Not my biological mother's, no, though I remember the taste of my real mothers'. And in my nightmares, at night, I can taste my biological mother's blood again, as my father tore her corpse open to save me... it tasted of burnt fur and ash, agony and terror."

The little one trembled. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." The little one was properly cowed and humbled, and so would be allowed to stay, though at the very bottom of the court's pecking-order.

There were a few seconds awkward silence, but then, with perfect timing, the class bell rang, and they began to file back into class.

=====

"Was that true?" Leonie was staying over at Karma's house, and they were snuggled together in bed. "About your nightmares?"

Karma's shoulder gave an unconcerned shrug, but Leonie could feel the faint tensing, a little flick of her ears.

They had spent their lives together, they knew each other's every emotion. A couple of times, they had fallen out, and those times had been truly vicious, the school splitting into two factions, the followers of the "half cast monster" against those of the "undeserving orphan adopted by a genocidal murderer". But such heated childish infighting was more than a year behind them, and their friendship had been forged and tempered in those fires, quenched in the icy restraint of social dominance.

Leonie stroked the shoulder. "Bad?" The shoulder dropped, and Karma's head nestled vulnerably under Leonie's chin. She stroked her friend, kissing her crown, silently giving her the space to reply, or not, as she wanted.

"I was stupid to tell them. I've never told anyone. I hope they don't use it against me." Karma paused, and when she continued, her voice was small. "But, yes. Bad. Sometimes, anyway. I'm inside her, and I try to claw my way out, but my claws are too soft and my fingers too weak, and I can't breathe and my mouth and nose are full of her blood, I think it's blood but I can't see it, and I can feel her still burning around me, her flesh is sizzling and spitting and I can taste the burning, and her blood is lumpy and burnt and clotted as she drowns me with it." Her hackles were raised, and she was shivering like the little girl had been in the playground. "And then I wake up, and I can't move, and I can only just breath just enough to stay conscious, and even though I tell myself it's just a stupid nightmare, I can feel her, just outside my sight, I can feel her there and she's come for me, and I try to move my head and I can't, I can't move any of myself even a hair's breadth. And I fight it and fight it until I can finally take a breath and turn my head and then it's just my room again and she's gone."

Leonie held her, stroking her until her fur flattened again and she relaxed. "How come you never told me? I've never known you to have nightmares."

"Because it's stupid!" Karma was cross, but not with Leonie. She seemed to be cross with herself for her weakness. "And because I hate thinking of it. And mostly because I never get it when you're here. Never. Not once."

"Yay." Leonie kissed her again. "I'll be your dream catcher anytime you want." She held her friend, enjoying the weight of her head on her chest, the soft stroke of her fingers gently grooming.

"What did you answer for question thirty five?" The question was muffled against her.

"Which one was that?" Leonie didn't comment the abrupt change of subject: if Karma wanted to talk more about it, perhaps she would.

"Well," Karma sounded a little embarrassed. "It asked you to pick whether you would rather make love to a relative, a close friend, and acquaintance, or a stranger."

"I put them in that order, actually." Leonie grinned at Karma's embarrassment. It was cute. It made her a little sexy. Okay, maybe sexiER.

"Really? But... I mean, Adam?" It wasn't distaste in Karma's voice - just surprise, and a little thoughtfulness.

"Why not?" She couldn't help sounding a little defensive. After all... it was her Adam! "He's sexy. And I know he wants me. But he feels it's wrong, and he punishes himself for it, takes himself away on work and stuff. You know what I think? I think, somewhere, he's got a retarded Appie, and I bet you he dresses it like me and everything, and takes out his frustrations on that."

Karma giggled, a beautiful sound that jiggled their bodies together. "Poor guy. But yeah, I can totally see him doing that."

She took the leap. "I consider you more a sister than a close friend, though, Karma."

Karma tensed, just a little. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"I hope so. It means that I think that taking that test has left you feeling horny all day, and you want to try out some of the stuff with me. And it means that the reason I think that, is because I've been the same way."

"Ah." Karma was quiet for a moment. "So... what was your answer to question sixty nine?"

Leonie smiled, feeling herself relaxing from a tense fear she had not noticed she had been holding. "If I remember correctly, it was... yes, please!"

When Karma looked at her questioningly, Leonie raised a paw and pushed her head down from her chest, encouragingly, until she turned, and her legs straddled Karma's face. She looked up, and gulped. Yes, Karma was beautiful, yes they both wanted this, yes she had dreamt of this for a long time... but the reality still loomed scarily over her. What if this changed their friendship forever?

A hot breath playing over her own mound brought her out of her fear. She took a deep, steadying breath and blew back, a finger of air drawing a circle around Karma's mound, ruffling the fur, making it stand on end. Then the finger moved over it, along its length, probing lightly at the lips, swollen with arousal.

It was replaced by a real finger, and Leonie realised it was her own. She was touching Karma in the way she had always dreamt of... and Karma was touching her the same way, parting her, exploring her.

They copied each other's motions, first one taking the lead, and then the other, each worrying they might be doing too much too fast, each reassured when the other took it a little further.

Leonie could wait no longer, she had to know what Karma tasted like. Raising her head she lapped a long, slow swipe along her friend's lips, making her give a little cry. A moment later she echoed it as a rough wetness explored between her own legs.

And then she giggled, she couldn't help herself, it was all just so silly. And the answering giggle told her it was all alright, and relaxed, tickling her friend's sides. They rolled together lewdly on the bed, laughing and tickling.

"I love you, you know, Karma? You're the best sister I could ever have."

You're the only sister I'd ever want. But I bet my tongue's longer than yours."

"What? OH!" She probed back, competing to see who could probe deepest, and rubbing her chin against Karma's clit. Despite the tongue exploring inside her, she felt completely at ease, happier than she had since her mother died, totally accepted.

They never did decide who had the longest tongue, but when Karma came, yowling and clenching around Leonie's tongue, they decided that Leonie had probably won on points.

=====

Mr Miller looked at the questionnaire results and nearly crowed with joy. His employers would be ecstatic to hear this. The two most famous Appie girls were such slutty sadists he would be able to make them do anything he wanted! They would be eating out of his hand, before he packed them up and sent them off.

He thought back to his days as a researcher, before the labs had been closed and they had provided retraining for all their employees. He had been poached from another bioscience company by Genomic Appliances, wanting to use his experience in the two fields of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning to iron out some of the bugs.

Even back then, he had not believed the nonsense about the Appie genome being built from scratch - the laboratories he had been working in had simply not been that advanced. He hadn't minded, though - it was the chance of a lifetime to excel in his field, while at the same time revelling in his fetishes. But then the Appies had got their independence (how on earth had the company not seen that one coming, and planned for it?), and he was no longer needed in his line of work.

But teachers for the new Appie kids were desperately needed, two thousand of the little bastards from that first year, and his speciality had put him in the perfect position to apply.

So now he got to play with the heads of the eternal children he had helped create.

But it was not without its costs. When he had worked in the lab, he had fallen in a perverse kind of lustful love with one of his subjects, and he had got into the practice of staying late to spend time with her, subjecting her to abusive experiments, manipulating her mind - he had loved her pliant mind so very much, so receptive, so plastic, so eager to learn whatever you had fed it.

He had been deeply upset when she had died, and had decided to secretly begin research into resolving the premature telomere shortening that had led to the accelerated ageing the Appies all experienced. But the research was becoming more and more expensive. He had contacts in the other sanctuaries, so he had no shortage of retarded subjects to experiment on, but he needed more funding.

And these girls were each worth millions on the black market.

The black market had grown up around Appies, the retarded ones still being sold, mostly as sex toys, though the owners rarely showed them in public any more - of if they did, they posed them as "adoptees", and claimed they were doing their bit to help clear the mar of sin humanity bore for creating them. But really, the majority of Appies in private homes were being regularly abused.

Some people, however, wanted more.

Abusing a retarded animal was not nearly as exhilarating for them as dominating a sentient one. They wanted "breeder Appies", intelligent ones. He had sold a few of them, helping them arrange their "transfers" to work on other sanctuaries, and then having them disappear at the other end.

The wonderful thing about Appies was that, by and large, all the survivors of the holocaust were autonomous - they had no significant family, other than their immediate offspring. So if some disappeared when moving from a place that had records of them to a place that didn't even know it was meant to be expecting them, nobody ever chased them up. Entire family units had disappeared that way, with his guidance, and had been sold to dealers and traders, eventually ending up as incestuous centrepieces in some rich sadist's dungeon.

These two girls, though, they were special. People who loathed the Appies, who really wanted to hurt their founders, would pay handsomely for the pleasure of torturing them, and perhaps sending pieces of them back to their parents.

Truth be told, even though he lusted after them, he found himself often hating Appies as a species as well. They had taken his job, his career, had turned him from a rising star in the scientific cutting edge, to a teacher of essentially kindergarten level children.

He loathed and loved his situation. He took a sick joy out of messing with their heads, and at the same time despaired that there was nothing for him to be stretched by, nothing to use his real trade for, nothing for him to get the international acclaim that he felt he deserved. But if his research paid off, he felt, then he would get the acclaim he so richly deserved.

In the meantime, fucking with the heads of little girls was a fun distraction. And on the occasions where he helped some of them disappear, he got to fuck with much more than that.

He laid his plans carefully, and waited until the next lab session. When he decided the time was right, the power to the screens of all four girls who had received the adult questions went out for a moment, and when they came back on, all their work for that class was gone.

"Well," he ruled, "you were all by the power switch, and there's no way for me to tell which one of you pressed it - so you must all remain after class and redo your work."

They complained bitterly, made up urgent appointments that they had to go to, but he was adamant, and they had to comply.

Once all the other students had been gone for five minutes, he turned off their screens again.

"Mr Miller!" Karma cried. "It happened again! We weren't anywhere near the switches! The screens are faulty."

"No, I'm afraid not." he replied calmly. "The screens are working perfectly, I turned them off. Again. You do not need to continue working, that was just a ruse. You are here for the advanced class. Anyone who does not wish to remain for the advanced class can go home and never find out what you would have learned here. Anyone who wants to remain, remove your clothes and fold them on the desk."

The girls looked at each other. Karma and Leonie could not back out if the others stayed: their one unspoken rule forbade that. The others did not want to lose their standing with Karma and Leonie to be jeopardised, so they could not leave. Mr Miller may be creepy, but they were together, it should be safe... still, they all hesitated.

Mr Miller moved to the door. "I will be locking the door for your privacy in thirty seconds. Anyone who is still here, and yet still clothed, after that time, will be tied up and used as a test subject for this class."

Thirty seconds, since none had been willing to chicken out, they were all standing naked, and the key clicked in the lock.

"Brave girls, I'm impressed. Last year, none of the girls stayed." This was nonsense - he had never done this before, but this would plant the seed that if it had happened last year, it must be perfectly normal.

"Now, before we continue, I must warn you - the existence of this advanced class must never be revealed to anyone without a Consent card. Anyone who does so faces large penalties, and exile from the Sanctuary. Do you all understand?" More nonsense, but it would quell any wondering why they had never heard it even rumoured.

They nodded their understanding, and he continued.

"The first thing we will learn is that most adult activities are ways of reinforcing social hierarchies. I a sure that two such well known girls as yourselves are well aware of the importance of the social hierarchy in our everyday interactions." He raised a brow at Karma and Leonie, waited until they nodded. "You two," he addressed the others, "are lower on the social scale than these ladies, am I correct?" The girls, nervous, looked at their social superiors, shrugged, nodded. "I thought so." He smiled, thinly. "In that case, you shall be the "submissives" for these classes, and these two shall be the "Dommes".

"Now, it's important that you develop and understand your own body language in these classes, so I shall set up a camera. We shall be referring to the footage in future classes, as reference material. Please move over to the wall there." He directed them to the back of the classroom, a blank wall with no distinguishing features, so that if he ever sold the tape, people would be unable to pin the location to the classroom.

Good, now pair off, one sub and one Dom. Doms, you are responsible for your slaves at all times - that is what adulthood is all about - responsibility.

Today we will be learning the basic anatomy. Leonie, you take your slave and place her on her back on the desk. Karma, have yours hold Karma's slave so that we can all examine her properly. You will change places afterwards and repeat the exercise again with their positions reversed.

Now the questionnaire that you were given was also somewhat of a tutorial - it was designed to make you research and look up the various terms, consider them, and understand them. How many of you played with yourselves last night, while considering some of the acts you were asked about?

The slaves nodded, embarrassed, and Karma and Leonie looked at each other, grinning, remembering their play of the last night. They nodded too.

"Good." Mr Miller pulled out the stick he used for pointing at the board. "Now, these parts here are called the labia, or the outer lips..."

=====

That weekend they told everyone that they were going for a camp in the wilderness (for they were adults now, and could roam as they liked, stay out all night - the freedom was exhilarating, intoxicating!), but instead they went to a storm-drain cover by the old factory, where Mr Miller was waiting for them impatiently, in a borrowed van.

"OK, go in through that storm drain..." they looked at him puzzled, but he waited until they had opened the cover then laughed. "Just kidding. Hop in the van." He backed it up and they jumped in the back.

"Today, we'll be going to the old labs, but I'm really not allowed to let anyone in there, so we need to make sure we can't be tracked. Did you all turn off your phones, like I said?"

There was a chorus of "Yes sir" and then one "Oh wait, shit..."

"Turn it off now, then," he commanded. "And take the battery out, everyone, just in case."

The rattle of plastic behind him let him know they were complying. Once they were done, he pulled away, taking a route to avoid any surveillance cameras.

It was a short drive to the labs. When he arrived, he backed the van up to the doors, climbed out, pulled out a bundle of keys, and unlocked a door, waving them in, following them and locking it behind them. "Follow the passage along, ladies."

The door opened into the basement of the building, passing past long-idle heating furnaces, half-open doors leading to mysterious rooms full of pipes and valves, large machines in thick green paint, rusting a little, blistering and peeling with age. The infrastructure on which the whole building had once run.

"Through the door to the left, and up the stairs, six flights." They scampered ahead but found the door locked - they had to wait impatiently, giggling an laughing together in excitement at the secrecy, for Mr Miller to arrive, breathless, with his jangling ring of keys.

Again they all passed through the door, and it was locked behind them. "Third door on the right, ladies."

This one was unlocked, so they bounded in, to find themselves in something between a laboratory and a surgery. In the middle of the room there were half a dozen chairs with all sorts of attachments on them, facing a large blackboard on the far wall. Around all the other walls of the lab were worktops and cupboards with warnings and health-and-safety notes, racks of shining empty test tubes, curious pieces of glassware linked together by lengths of rubber tubing, and mysterious machines with helpful bilingual Chinese and English labels like "centrifuge", "shotgun sequencer" and "coffee". By the door, which Mr Miller once again followed the through, but didn't lock this time, was a large bookcase filled thick tomes on biology and chemistry, and out of date medical journals in various languages.

"Good - now girls, today, you will be watching a video on how to pleasure yourselves and others. If you all remove your clothes and take a seat, I'll adjust the stirrups to fit your legs." He did the slave girls first, fixing their feet into stirrups, strapping them down. "Is that comfortable? Good. You can reach the knob to adjust it, any time you feel uncomfortable, or just press this stud to undo it." He demonstrated, re-fastened the strap, and moved to Leonie and Karma, strapping them in too.

"Now girls, if you can all reach above your heads and grasp the bar above your heads, that's good." He walked behind them, and there was a click as he cuffed Karma. Before she had realised what was going on, he had moved and cuffed Leonie too. Then Karma cried out, but he already had the third girl grasped by the wrists, and with a struggle had her cuffed. The fourth girl frantically tried to gree herself, but found that the stud that had opened her leg-cuffs so easily for Mr Miller would not release them for her. She wrenched herself violently in her seat, managing to free one leg even as Mr Miller made a grab for her wrist. She slashed at him, making hi dodge back, and managed to flee her other leg, leaping off her chair and sprinting into the corridor. Mr Miller did not seem too concerned, and followed her out the door, pulling what looked like a rifle from a cupboard as he went. In the doorway, he cocked the gun and aimed it into the hall, and after a moment, pulled the trigger. There was a puff of gas, and he smiled, satisfied, reloading the gun and putting it away.

Then he walked back out into the corridor and returned seconds later carrying the limp body of the fourth girl. "Don't worry, she is perfectly unharmed." He pulled a dart out of her breast. "Though, she will need a rude awakening, or she will be asleep for ten minutes or so."

"Why are you doing this to us?" Leonie cried, though she feared she already knew the answer.

"Well, my dear, the most obvious answer is that I rather abhor Appies, I find you incredibly annoying. But you are also extremely fun to dominate, and torment. It's the reason you were put on this earth if you ask me. So that's what I shall be doing - torturing these two, and requiring you two to help. I will film you, and if you are not good, if you do not obey me completely, the video will go out on the internet and you will be blamed for the torture of these girls. Eventually, I shall send them out to buyers who enjoy tormenting Appies even more than I do, and they will probably end up pregnant with rape-children, or dead. You, if you were obedient, will be released, and I will keep the video as blackmail against the time when I need something from the two most powerful Appies in the world. Or, if you are not good, I will sell you, too, to the highest bidders, the people who want to torture you publicly, and in doing so, torment your parents.

"You wouldn't dare!"

Are you really that naive?" There was no answer. "I didn't think so." He uncuffed each of Leonie's hands long enough to place a glove on it, then cuff the glove in place. He held her hands through the gloves. "Extend your claws."

She stabbed her claws out, hoping to dig them through the gloves and into him - but instead, they seemed to trigger some protective system in the gloves, and she found herself screaming as her hands were racked with powerful shocks.

"Good. I am sure you won't forget that lesson." He locked similar glove-like boots onto her feet and a collar around her neck, attached a chain to the collar, then freed her from her chair. "Be aware that the only key to any of your cuffs lies outside your reach" he said placing it on a work surface. "So do not expect that attacking me will gain you your freedom."

Leonie watched him cautiously, but he just smiled, and set up a camera out of the reach of her chain. "Now, Leonie, I want you to wake up your slave in as unpleasant and painful and depraved a way as possible. To do so, you may use any of the fun toys you will find in the drawers that you can reach."

She went from drawer to drawer. On was filled with dildos of all shapes and sizes. Another with various types of whips, neatly arranged. Another had knives, and one had an assortment of instruments, for most of which she could not decide whether they were designed as torture devices or medical implements.

She found herself breathing more quickly, feeling hotter, becoming aroused at the ideas that came to her as she looked at these toys. And there were so many more drawers and cupboards, containing a veritable feast of fun toys - dressing up outfits, strange arrangements of tubes, a cupboard full of jars and vials of interesting lubes and salves, another of bowls and basins... anything she could have wished for. In the end, though, she decided to be simple but brutal.

She took up a selection of insertable toys, the largest of which was a soft leather dildo, with rounded metal studs. She also took a squirty bottle of lube, and walked to the sleeping girl. She held the dildo beside the girl's exposed mound, spreading the pussy lips to get a better look - it was clearly far too large to fit inside her comfortably, but, she felt, with a little force and a lot of lube, it would eventually go in UNcomfortably. Probably extremely uncomfortably... she looked at Mr Miller. "Sir, could Karma see this, too? I think she would enjoy it."

Mr Miller picked up the sleeping girl, and tied her on top of Karma, head downwards in the chair, but facing the same way as Karma, so that Karma had a perfect view of the ass and pussy resting on her chest. "All yours, my dear," he said, and stepped back.

Leonie slipped a spreader-gag into the girl's mouth, then stood between Karma's spread legs, breathing heavily with lust, looking in Karma's eyes and seeing it reflected there. She showed Karma the dildo and was rewarded with a gasp and a wicked grin. With that encouragement, she pushed the lube bottle to the sleeping girl's ass, and squeezed, hard, putting a good couple of large mouthfuls into her pussy. The girl barely stirred. She squirted another dollop inside the girl's ass, making sure the camera could see well what she was doing. Then she pushed it the spout into the girl's pee-hole, and squirted a load in there too - this time, the unconscious girl stirred a little, groggily.

She lubed up the dildo, and put the lube to one side - it was time for the main event! She reached over the girl's bound body, straddling her head. The head of the dildo pressed against the slickly lubricated lips. "Ready, Karma?" A nod.

She pulled the dildo towards herself, into the body of the girl. She girl gasped, her eyes flying open, sucking in air, as the tapered head began to enter her, stretching her rapidly and painfully, until her soft ping flesh was stretched taut and white around it - and still not even the tapering head was inside her. Leonie began to twist it to work it deeper inside her, pulling on it, wiggling it back and forth, jerking it, gaining ground with each yank, but then losing a little when the girl bucked under her. She tried to scream, and Leonie clamped her pussy against the girl's gagged mouth, grinding the head back into Karma's crotch. Leonie hauled back with her body, determined to get it inside, and with a slow inevitability, the girl's tiny putty finally spread enough to take the head and it sank inside her.

Then she began twisting in earnest, working the studded shaft inside the girl, the studs twisting into her soft pink flesh, stretched to tight around the large shaft. She looked deeply into Karma's eyes as she ground the dildo ever deeper into the girl's writhing body, screams escaping around her own pussy from the head bucking and shaking between their two pussies. She pressed her hand onto the mound as she twisted. "Wow, Karma... I can feel the studs moving through her flesh."

Karma's eyes were round in wonder. "Wow. Hit it." Leonie's face must have shown her lack of understanding because she explained. "Punch it, so there are bruises inside her where the studs are!"

Leonie gladly obliged, punching the pussy mound, feeling the studs with her knuckles as the terrified girl wrenched herself about between them. Her teeth were scraping against Leonie's pussy, but, spread too wide to bite, she just found the feeling of them rubbing against her erotic, and ground herself harder against the mouth.

She punched again, making the body jerk again, and bringing a delighted laugh from Karma as the body was slammed into her chest. She took up another dildo, an anal probe made of a tapering series of cold metal balls, linked together tightly enough that they only flexed a little. It was thinner than the other dildo, but longer. The first ball was the size of a pea, so the first few slid inside easily, but as they grew, so did the resistance the girl's body gave.

The seventh, the size of a ping pong ball, was the last she could fit in, and she pulled herself away from the sobbing girl, turning to Mr Miller. She was satisfied with her work and glowing with arousal. "I think she's awake now, Sir."

=====

"Karma wasn't at school either?" Adam was concerned. "When did you last see her?

Hui frowned "Friday night. They said they were going into the wilderness. I've not been able to phone her since."

"Same here. I thought she might have forgotten to charge it, but I guess that means they turned them off deliberately."

He turned to his desk, logged into the administrative system, and searched for their daughters' phones. A map of the island was displayed, with two pins, one at each of their houses. The pins were greyed out, with a timestamp showing the last time they had been seen: last Friday. "Looks like they turned them off before leaving home, at about the same time." He checked the call records. "They called each other just beforehand... a couple of other friends just before that, and other than that, no calls to or from anyone that week".

Between them, they checked other sources - computer logs, emails, Consent card use and so on, but it seemed that the girls had disappeared completely at that moment on Friday night. Adam sat back in his chair. "Nothing. That just leaves surveillance cameras, then a search party. We'll need the police for those." The Sanctuary's police force was private, and well-motivated. He looked at Hui, who nodded, so he placed the call.

Within seconds, the lift pinged, and one of the police guards from the building's foyer stepped in and saluted. "At ease, sergeant," Adam ordered. "We have two missing persons, both Consent-formed. Karma and Leonie, last known locations at their respective homes, Friday, five thirty-seven pm, when Leonie called Karma and they turned off their phones. They gave their destination as the Wilderness, and did not turn up to school. There is no evidence on their machines that I can find of their plans." He turned to Hui. "Did I miss anything?"

Hui shook his head and passed his keyboard to the policeman, gesturing to his screen. "The school called me fifteen minutes ago, so I checked with Adam. This is everything we've checked so far."

The policeman checked it over, logged into the police systems, and started making notes, contacting colleagues, and calling up various other sources of information that might have something. In one window, a busy mesh network of contacts built up around icons for the two girls - friends, teachers, tradespeople they had been recorded having transactions with, people they had phoned, emailled, messaged, visited the webpages of, relatives, and so on.

Beside them, two other icons appeared. "The two other girls that Leonie called just before she disappeared were also absent today, and their mothers confirm they have not been seen since Friday, when they said they were going camping in the Wilderness with Leonie and Karma - all other absentees from today have been accounted for."

Soon the camera footage started coming in, authorised by his superiors. The girls had all met up at the end of Karma's street, looking happy and excited, carrying camping gear. They had walked east, towards the east beach, past the old parts of the factory, but it was there the footage ended. "We don't have any cameras on the factory or the beach itself," the policeman said, "so this is about as far as we can go without asking for witnesses. We'll have people review footage of all the accesses to that area to see if they left, but I would be willing to bet that they walked north up the costal path to the Wilderness from there, and there are no cameras anywhere along that length."

Adam cursed, and resolved to have the police covertly install cameras throughout the wilderness areas, privacy be damned. "You checked the other girls' phones, right?"

The policeman looked embarrassed. "Er, yeah, I was just about to." He ran the checks again, and from the four icons in the centre of the window, more links spread out, contacts shared by all four girls highlighted, and others becoming dimmer.

"Bingo!" The policeman cried. "I mean, uh, lessee, they both turned their phones off at the same time, but this one turned it back on when she arrived at shop, checked her balance, and used it to pay for a chocolate bar. She left it on, but the signal was lost again near the factory... came back after a couple of hours, and went north to the Wilderness. It's still on. I've dispatched a unit, they should get there in about three minutes."

They waited impatiently, and it was not until five minutes later when they heard the voice of the policemen on the scene. "We've got a camp site, one tent, a small campfire, it's out, not smoking." A shoulder camera panned the site. "Approaching the tent now. Girls, are you in there? Hello?" The policeman's hand came into shot, tapping on the tent. There was no answer, so the tent flap was pushed aside. "Tent seems to be empty, I see four sleeping rolls, packed, and four bags, also packed. Looked like they either just arrived, or were on their way out. The fire is..." the policeman went to the fire pit. "It's cold, and looks like it was burning less than ten minutes - there's not a lot of ash."

Dogs were brought in, but the only track they found was the one leading to the East beach. A forensics team arrived, and began to comb the area. They were unable to find any trace of the girls other than their bags and the tent itself. It seemed that they had arrived, set up camp, and disappeared.

"The ground's too hard for footprints," reported one of the forensic team. "It's possible they came here, set up, and went back to East beach. The packs have been sent back to the lab for fibre analysis, and a teams is combing the area, looking for them, or anyone who might have seen them."

In the police station now, Adam sighed, reached for a coffee mug, and found it empty. An assistant hurried forward to refill it. "Have there been any other similar disappearances in the past?"

The police chief shook his head. "With such a closed in island community, we almost never get any. We've had deaths, sure, even a few murders, but the bodies turn up. This, though, looks like they were planning it. Planning to disappear. Do either of you know any reason why your daughters might want to disappear? Any trouble at home?"

The standard questions continued for some time, but there were no leads to be had there.

"Our working hypothesis now", said one of the investigators, "is that they left the campsite by the same route they entered. The only other ways out are through the trees - which are spread out too far to jump between, and anyway bear no marks of climbing - and some kind of flying vehicle, none of which were detected in radar anywhere near that time. The path back to the beach is being combed. The most likely destination, though, seems to be the storm drains that start near the factory - we believe they also took that route on the way out, as that would explain why the one working phone was cut off for a couple of hours between the factory and the beach. So we have a forensics team in the storm drain now, trying to establish what they might have been doing in the storm drain for those two hours. That gap may well be the key to the investigation."

"Have the dogs found anything?"

"Nothing, no. We tracked the girls from your house to the storm drain cover outside the factory, and from the tent to the storm drain outlet on the beach, but within the storm drain itself, we have been unable to find any trail. They did find slight scrapes at the outlet, as if a boat had been tied there, but no prints or fibres."

"Is it possible that the storm drain is a red herring? That the tracks from the outlet were made by a different person than the girls, that he arrived at the outlet by boat, docked there, turned on the phone, carried the bags to the camp site, set up the tent, and departed? And that the girls did in fact disappear at the storm drain entrance?"

"Possible sir, the dogs were told to track from the bags, so if someone else had carried them they could have been tracked. But that would require a huge level of organisation - it seems more sensible to assume that the girls entered the storm drain, floated down to the entrance on a boat or raft, set up camp, then returned to the boat again. We have samples of the craft's paint, and are searching all the known boats for a match. It's quite an unusual paint for a boat - red, and not a marine paint, so likely to have been a cheap patch job."

The search continued, but the girls were gone.

=====

The first slave girl had been bought already - he had sent her off with the video of her savage awakening, and the dildos still inside her, locked in place by a chastity belt. A gift for one of his backers.

The other three he had moved to a packing crate in a dark corner of the docks, hidden amongst a few hundred others.

They would spend each day bound and gagged, preferably in some form of torture. In the evening he would allow them some exercise.

Mr Miller came in one night. "Leonie, you will be going back to your father soon. Karma will be staying here with me, to ensure you do everything you are told. Don't worry, she won't get too lonely, she has her slave for company."

He stroked her limbs, splayed by the ropes, so erotically and painfully for his pleasure. "Now here's what I want you to do. Listen carefully, because I will be asking questions afterwards, and you do not want to get them wrong. First, you will identify the man who abducted you as this man." He showed her a picture. "I will let you study this picture, and others, tonight. You will say that he promised all four of you adventure, and that you took him up on it. You went to the storm drain where I met you, and inside he was waiting, in a small boat. You floated to the bottom of the storm drain by the east beach, and he got out, and took your things away. He returned to you, and brought you here by boat." He knocked his gloved hand on the old rowboat leaning against the wall. She was bound within it, with her arms and legs akimbo, and the blade of one of the oars wedged painfully between her legs.

"He tortured and sold the other three: you are the only one left. If anyone asks you for any more information than I have given you here, you will start sobbing, or you will go silent and curl into a ball, as if you are unable to think or speak of it. When they give you a therapist, tell them that you do not trust them, and would only trust me to analyse you. Do you understand?"

He waited for her to nod. "Good. There is one more part that I will explain to you. After this, I will remove your gag, and you will repeat the story back to me in your own words. I will punish mistakes painfully, but if you do well, I will let you and Karma lay with her slave together, one last time, and I will leave you bound tonight where you and Karma can touch each other, and say goodbye properly."

=====

Mr Miller was ushered into the police interview room and looked around. Perfect, Hui and Adam were both there, sat together in a corner, ostensibly paying attention to a computer screen and not the interview.

He took the seat offered him by the policeman escorting him, and faced across the desk to the interviewer.

"Good afternoon, Mr Miller, thank you for coming here so promptly. We would like to ask you some questions about the four missing girls from your class."

Mr Miller nodded. "Yes, I expected so. As their psychology teacher, I do have access to the psychological profiles of the girls, but they were very normal indeed. I brought them for you, here." He passed a disk to the interviewer, saw the two fathers look up out of the corner of his eye. "They appear to be perfectly normal kids, no obvious signs of depression, maybe a slight adventurous streak but nothing extreme."

The investigators were interviewing all contacts that all four girls had in common, and he had expected to be called before he had. But there were other people to interview, who fitted their profile better.

He sat and answered questions for an hour or so, the exact same bland featureless standardised investigative questions he had prepared for.

"Thank you for your time, Mr Miller." The policeman looked more interested in getting to the next subject than in any of the answers he had been given.

"Glad to help," Mr Miller replied. "Though, for a small consideration, there is a lot more I could be doing to actively assist the investigation."

The policeman scowled, and again the heads in Mr Miller's peripheral vision rose and looked at him. "If you are withholding any information, that would be illegal and could get you into a lot of trouble."

"Yes, it would," he agreed. "But I have no information, other than that I have the most advanced psychological profiling system on the island, and the most detailed profiles of the girls. I'm sure you have a network of contacts laid out, but without psych profiling them all you could never spot them."

"And you would only do that in return for money?" The policeman looked at him as if he was something disgusting dragged in on his shoe.

Mr Miller laughed easily. "Money? Not at all. But I see no reason to help any parents who think so little of their children that, even when they know their children are going to die young, and even when they are crazily rich, do not expend any effort on trying to cure that illness. Before I was a teacher, I was doing research into the problem of Appie telomere degradation. I would like the laboratories to be reopened so that the research can continue, and the stupid, arrogant waste of Appie life can be put to an end." He was speaking directly to the fathers now, glowering at them with a righteous anger.

"If am to help you," he continued, in a more level tone, "the labs will need to be unsealed anyway: the majority of my psych profiling tools and research are still sealed away there, under lock and key."

"You should be careful," Hui rumbled. "You may become the prime suspect with such blackmail."

"So?" he shot back. "If it means that in the end my research extends the life of even one Appie, I'm willing to be the suspect for anything you like."

"I tell you what." It was Adam. "If your work ends up helping, you will get your funding. If not, you get paid for your expenses and time spent, and nothing else."

"Don't pay *me*," Mr Miller replied. "I'll give you the details of an organisation that is researching the telomere problem even without all the critical information you are hiding from them. I already donate my time and expertise to them: if I am working on this for you, then they lose my services. Donating my fee will help cover for that."

And so it was agreed. He ran the facts and figures, and the data came out, carefully massaged: if they had been put up to it, it would have been my a labourer in the shipping industry, most likely not too bright, most likely involved in heavy smuggling. He would not be selling them en masse, for they were too high profile. He would most likely be selling them carefully, so it was likely that at least some of the girls were still on the island, most likely in the shipping yard where they could easily be transported - the shipping yard, or on board a ship.

=====

The labourer lay in the interrogation room, handcuffed to a metal bed. They had not believed him when he had denied any knowledge, when he had said that he was on watch at the time, he had the logbook to prove it. The girl had picked him out of a lineup, had claimed to be totally sure, had hissed at him through the glass.

The semen that had been oozing out of her ravaged ass when she was found was his. Her fur was soaked in his urine. The rod with which she had so savagely been beaten had his fingerprints all over it.

And now they were interrogating him, trying to find where three other girls had gone. There were the police and they were bad enough, he still had the bruises from their attentions. But there were three civilians - a fellow countryman and two westerners - who were the scariest.

They seemed to be directing the tortures that the police used. These were not proper government police, but the small and dedicated private army that had built around the Sanctuary.

He recognised Hui, and Adam. Adam's eyes, when he met them, bore nothing but pure, vicious hatred for him. Hui's held anger, fear, even begging. But it was the third. His eyes, at least when the others were not looking, held amusement, malice, and self-satisfaction. He was the most dangerous, and the instructions he gave seemed to result in the most spiteful and upsetting torments.

"Please," he begged the man. "What have I done to you that you treat me like this?"

"It's not what you did to me, it's what you did to those four little girls." The others were in the room, so the man was not showing his malice.

"I told you, please believe me, I never touched them!"

The man raised an eyebrow scornfully, as if seeing a move in a card game that he had completely predicted. "Then explain how the girl we found came to be soaked in your urine?"

"I told you, the toilets in my block were broken, they left me a bucket. Someone my bucket!"

"And the rod, with your fingerprints?"

"The rod was in the bucket! How any times do I have to answer these questions?"

"We checked your story: the cleaners and the building janitor both say the toilet has not been out of order for over a year. There was no bucket. And the rod came from the frame of your own bed, under the mattress, near a stash of money. More money than you should have had from your job. You are lying to us, and you know you get punished when you lie to us." Mr Miller hit a key and watched impassively as the man writhed in agony against the metal bedstead.

"Now. Tell us who you sold the girls to."

=====

Adam was true to his word. The telomere research was legal, above ground, funded. He signed the last form and sat back, satisfied.

They had found the man. He had confessed fairly quickly thanks to Mr Miller's understanding of how the psyche breaks. The confession had really just been a formality, though: they had then established that he knew nothing about where the girls had gone, he was just a middleman. He would meet them late at night in the shadows by the cargo containers, they would hand him money, he would hand them the girls.

They would keep following that lead, but for the time being, there was nothing more that could be done.

He had his Leonie. It was a shame about Karma, and the other girls, but that was life. He was happy. Leonie was safe.

She woke and wiggled in his lap, purring. He stroked her softly. "Did your session with Mr Miller go well today, my little dab?"

She nodded. "Daddyyy?"

"Yes, love?" He ruffled her head. She wanted something, but that was OK. He was feeling indulgent, relaxed, and mellow.

Her voice was small, worried. "Am I a bad girl?"

"What? No! Did Mr Miller tell you that?" He scowled at the idea.

"No, but... there's stuff I didn't tell him."

"Like what?" His stomach suddenly felt hollow. What had happened to her that she had not confided even to her therapist?

"Am I bad?" she repeated.

"No." He hastened to reassure her, trying to show her that he earnestly believed what he was saying. "I can honestly tell you that nothing you did in that shipping container made you a bad girl. You are my angel, and anything you have done is fine by me. I will always love you, no matter what."

"Daddy..." Her voice sank to a whisper. "I... liked it."

"Oh, my poor love." He held her tight, kissed her. "It's all right. Mr Miller told me about this. It's called Stockholm syndrome. You start to like your situation, you begin to relate to the person who is keeping you incarcerated. It's normal, love. It will fade with time."

"No. It wasn't like that. I mean, yeah, I spoke to Mr Miller about Stockholm syndrome, and he explained it, and I'm sure that's not what I had. I hated that guy, and I hated what he did to me..." She moved her hand protectively between her legs, clamping her skirt in place. "Well, most of it. But some of it, I kinda liked, and I imagined... I imagined bad stuff."

He rocked her gently. "There, there. The bad stuff's gone now."

She shook her head. "No, you don't understand. I didn't think it was bad. It was what I've always prayed for. But I know that it was bad... well, naughty to imagine. I imagined... well, I imagined it was you. And that made even the bad bits feel really good."

"Oh, love." He didn't know what else to say, just held her, stroking, rocking.

"Daddy... it's okay." He noticed that her hand between her legs was moving slightly. "I'm not broken inside. I was like this even before he got me. The memories don't hurt anymore. Being held doesn't hurt."

"I'm glad." He was.

"But, maybe I want it to hurt." She was rubbing herself openly now, and he didn't know how to react. "I've wanted you spanking me and holding me down and fucking me and biting me and loving me ever since I can remember. I know you want it too."

He froze. Did she know? How could she? "I don't, I wouldn't dream of it. You were right, Leonie, it is wrong, but Mr Miller can help..."

"I know you have a little retard Appie girl on the mainland. I know you call her Leonie when you rape her."

He looked at her, his mind a blank of horror. "Oh God. How did you find out? I'm so sorry. Leonie, love, I would never..."

"I didn't know. I just guessed. But thank you for confirming it. I don't feel so scared now I know you really do want me. I'm sorry you can't rape me daddy. I have my consent card and I'm giving you my consent. I'm begging you to love me like you loved mom." She looked up at him with her mother's insistent lustful eyes. "She wasn't much older than me the first time, was she?"

She squirmed and slipped off his lap, down between his knees, hiking her dress up to play with herself directly. Come-to-bed eyes looked up at him, her mouth ajar and panting as she fumbled with his belt. "Please Daddy. I want you. I want your cock inside me, I want your seed pushing out that filthy man's dirt, I want to taste you and orgasm around you and melt in your arms and know that I will never, ever again have to worry that I might die before I make love to you."

Adam pushed himself up out of the chair and stood, dizzy. He stepped away, trembling, seeing her through a haze of lust, a kneeling supplicant before him. "Before I met your mother, I would have fucked you ragged for that little speech. Fucked you until we both bled raw. And maybe in a few months, if you still feel the same way, we can talk about it. Please understand, if there's any chance it might just be what happened talking, I love you way too much to take advantage of you. I can't. I'm... I feel like a real shit walking away."

"Daddy!"

He turned, walked stiffly to the door. "I need to know you really mean it, and that I won't lose you because of it. I'd be a shit if I stayed. I'm sorry."

He had reached the door, grasping the door handle like a drowning man. He wrenched it open, stepped though, ignoring her cries, and closed it behind him. He walked away down the passage, stepped through a door at random, and closed it, too, behind him, leaning against it. An empty office.

Only then did he let himself sink to his knees, and cry silent tears.

=====

"Daddy?" Her voice was small. "Are you in there? I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I need to talk to you. For real this time. I won't try that again, not unless you ask me to first. But I need to talk to you." She had decided - she was going to tell him everything. All about Mr Miller, about everything that had happened. No more lies. "I need to talk to you, and please, now, I really *really* need a hug. I... I need to know you don't hate me."

There was a sound of someone moving against the door, standing up. Wet sniffling. The door opened and she was in his arms, loved and safe again.

For a long time, she just held him. She had forgotten how good it felt when she was sad for her dad to just hold her and make it all better. His strong arms would keep all the bad things away.

Eventually, once all her tension had seeped out, replaced by a warm soft purr, he kissed the top of her head. "Poor kitten. I'm sorry I walked out. You look as bad as I feel." He kissed up the tears soaked into her fur. "What did you want to talk about, love?"

She looked up at him. His eyes were as warm as the arms wrapped around her. If she told him what she'd done, what she'd agreed to do, she might lose him forever. "Nothing, Dad." She kissed his chest. "It's all better now." She closed her eyes and snuggled tighter against him.

=====

She couldn't breathe. She mustn't panic. He would let her breathe soon. Inside her, panic rose, but she forced it down, concentrating on controlling her throat, on not choking, on keeping her tongue moving so he had no excuse to choke her.

He wasn't paying attention! He was watching the damn video! He would forget about her, would keep her held there, she would choke, she.... His hand at the back of her neck adjusted itself, digging into her scruff, telling her to submit, and she forced herself to accept it. If Mr Miller wanted her to fall unconscious around his cock, then she would just trust him to revive her. With that abdication of responsibility, she gained a small measure of calm.

Above her, she heard her father's voice, tinny and distant. "I'd be a shit if I stayed. I'm sorry," and the sound of a door closing. Mr Miller laughed and sat back, and she felt a warm rush of gratitude that he was paying her attention now. He still didn't release her to breathe, even though she could see him looking at her pleading eyes.

His hand kneaded the back of her neck, feline trigger nerves demanding her submission even as her lungs demanded rebellion. Spots danced before her eyes and she heard his voice. "And even after the little speech you gave him, he still walked away? Poor unloved kitten, you're going to have to try harder than that."

She wanted to cry out, to tell him no, it's not like that, he loves me, he does, he has arms... but the spots multiplied into blackness before her eyes, and his arms weren't there.

And then she was on the hard floor of Mr Miller's office, in the dust under his desk, and she was choking on mucus, coughing it up. She fought the blackness away, tried to remember what and where... ah yes. She had blacked out, and lay at his feet. So it wasn't mucus choking her, it must be his seed, he must have used her and dropped her here.

She caught her breath, swallowed his gift gratefully, and looked up at him. He was leant forward, fully dressed, typing something at the desk above her. He couldn't see her, didn't look under the desk or even acknowledge her with a kick.

A hollow announced itself in her chest, where the warm joy of his attention should be, and ached its way into her breastbone. She crawled forward to kiss his legs softly, knowing better than to mewl for attention when he was working.

Soft worshipful kisses, on his ankle, up his calf to the knee, across to the other knee, and back down again to press her lips against the hard bone of his ankle. Still he ignored her.

A beating was better than being ignored. She mewled softly and was rewarded with a sharp slap. She didn't try to avoid it: despite herself, she even leant into the blow, welcoming his hand on her face.

"Girl, don't be needy." He pushed himself away from the desk, a strong hand grabbing the bruised back of her neck, dragging her out, throwing her on an armchair. "I was going to allow you to play with your friend, but as it is, you have to stay in this chair until your session is over." He turned the chair to face a cupboard across the room, and opened it.

Inside, gagged, bound and hanging from the coat hanger rail, the fur of her face streaked with tears, was Karma.

Alow moan rose from the back of Leonie's throat. Her body tensed with the need to go to her friend, to stroke her, to make her better, to hold her and be held.

And in Karma's tearful eyes, the same feelings were reflected back at her.

Mr Miller had turned back to his work at his desk, seeming uninterested in her as a sex object now that he had his release.

Behind his back, Leonie reached out her arms, imploringly to Karma, who's eyes were yearningly locked to her own. She mimed a hug, and was rewarded by a small smile around the gag.

She sat up in the chair, perking up as an idea came to her. She mimed the hug again, but this time continued it, her arms wrapping around herself, wrapping around her, pressing against her small breasts, hands clinging to her shoulders. She turned so that Karma could see her fingers digging in as if with desperation, then relaxing a little, kneading, rubbing, caressing her neck, shoulders, arms.

Her hands began to explore her, stroking her hair, sweeping it lovingly away for her face, caressing the line of her brow, brushing lightly over her eyes, which closed submissively before them, tracing to her mouth... she licked them, suckled them, but they skittered away as she nipped at them.

Karma was watching intently, unblinking, straining her head forwards as if willing Leonie's hands to be her own.

One of the hands slipped back to her neck, rubbing and massaging, melting her resistance. The other stroked down to her chest, cupping her small breasts, flicking the nipples into arousal with a clawed fingertip, pushing a purr out of her lungs to tremble at the bottom of her throat.

A tiny whimper from across the room, not loud enough to raise the angry attentions of a working bioengineer, but enough, more than enough, to convey an ocean of longing and desire.

The hand slipped lower, stroking her belly, tickling, making her wiggle from side to side, lower and lower, then hovering, claws stroking through her fur just above the heat.

Karma seemed to be holding her breath, hanging there, her own body completely forgotten.

The hand on her neck pulled her head back, making her gasp, cutting her purr short, and the claws of the other dug in, below her navel, demanding and insistent. Submissively, she parted her legs for it, presenting herself to Karma's gaze and the attentions of the hand.

The claws slid lower, a threatening caress that she could not see, for her throat was as exposed as her lust. Sharp needles splayed her, presented her for all to see, but only Karma was watching, only Karma saw the twin droplets of blood that beaded out from her lips.

The claws receded, and it was fingertips that touched her now, the lightest touch of rough pads on her most sensitive spot making her suck in a ragged breath. One entered her, almost tenderly, just a little, and retreated. Again, a little deeper, as he head was released and the other hand raked its way down her body to join its brother, making her body writhe in pleasure-pain.

The finger assaulting her began to plunge into her more furiously, was joined by another, and then a third, a gang-rape of digits. She bucked upwards out of the chair, grinding her clit against the rough pad of the palm that ravished her.

He other hand had slipped beneath her as she lifted herself off the chair - now it clawed its way, spider-like, across her buttock, leaving a red polka-dot trail of bloodied fur in its wake.

It reached her tail, and with a gasp she was being taken there too, painfully.

It was the pain that did it, that made the wave arrive and lift her up. She rode the hands at the crest of it, swamped with sensations, rocked one way by a wave of pain, buffetted the other by a flood of pleasure.

After it receded, she licked the hands clean, and kissed them, humbly thankful. She looked into Karma's eyes and mouthed the words. "Thank you. Thank you, I love you."

A chair scraped, and in a blur of peripheral motion, a hand that was not her own clasped itself around her throat. Mr Miller's face filled her vision.

"Did you enjoy yourself, dear?" His voice was ominously sweet. She nodded, and he smiled thinly. "Oh, I am glad. But you realise, you have only worsened her torture. Because she is forbidden from having any release until your father does. Your session time is over, so you had better go now, and seduce him, don't you think?"

He rose and closed the cupboard again. Leonie leaned against the closed doors, whimpered softly through them. "I'm sorry, Karma."

=====

"Mister Miller!" The eager intern ran up, a folder clutched in his hands. "I think I found something."

From the boy's flushed face and trembling anxiousness, it seemed it was something he felt was important - which likely meant he had jut discovered to tie his own shoelaces, thought Mr Miller. Still, have to keep the staff happy. "Oh? Whatcha found?"

The intern took that as an invitation to open the folder and pass him some papers. "The top one's the most important, Sir."

Mr Miller glanced at it - a long email by someone who didn't know what a paragraph break was, or a comma from the looks of it. "Perhaps you could summarise for me?"

"We, you know we're always thought the accelerated ageing was a side effect of the genetic engineering, and we were looking at ways that the telomere shortening could have need accelerated?" He glanced at Mr Miller to see he was being understood, but forged ahead. "Well, I didn't trust that, Sir - the ageing was wrong. Too regular. So I asked for access to the any early research files which had been marked as high level business confidential. And they gave the to me, Sir, it's all meant to be public domain now under the Sanctuary Charter nowadays anyway, so I trawled through it..."

The intern took a breath, getting to the point at last. "It wasn't accidental, sir, it's deliberate." Now the reason for his wide-eyed excitement was clear. "Planned obsolescence, sir. Right here." The boy reached over, pointed to the term in the middle of the email.

=====

From: Gao Chao To: Marketing_Management_L@GenomicAppliances.co.ch Subject: Revenue Streams.

We have recently been investigating funding options for more concentrated revenue streams for the Appliances. The first revenue stream considered was the provision of automobile industry style "parts". However the bioethics and marketing team established that this would have a negative effect on customer loyalty. While parts are a reasonable revenue stream to recoup maintenance costs for obsolete breeding stock we do want to discourage users from having medical procedures performed on their Appliances. It is preferable instead that they treat their Appliances as being as disposable as any other household appliance. It is likely that a black market of secondhand parts will arise despite this so a campaign directed at medical engineers to use only branded parts would be judicious and will maximise our profit on parts. Nontheless, parts will never be a significant revenue stream as the automobile industry. Other branded products (eg clothing/toys/sports goods) will also not be significantly profitable until the GA brand gains market recognition. Despite this these products should be provided and even subsidised from the date of the first advertising launch in order to create that brand presence. Advertising for other companies or allowing rebranding and OEM would weaken our own brand. At the moment we are the only company in the world with such a product and this is a tactical and marketing edge that we should retain for as long as possible. The only other major method to increase revenue is planned obsolescence. This will have multiple advantages. Faster development means less time in the factory, lower overheads and construction costs. Smaller size means lower shipping, housing, and feeding costs. Reducing the lifetime to approximately a decade would mean they would last about as long as any other home appliance. This would reinforce the notion that they are disposable home appliances like any other white goods, while at the same time allowing fashion trends and improved models to create a consistent purchase cycle. In this light I have verbally instructed the core developers to work on including these traits with the basic breeder package.

-- Gao Chao

=====

"Morning Dad. Sex today?"

She had asked him that every morning since their first conversation. His answer was always the same: he grinned and shook his head. "Maybe another day." And he turned back to reading the sheaf of papers that held the day's news, moving them into two groups - printable, and confidential.

She nodded and helped herself to breakfast, conscious of the way her nightdress moved over her skin, and her father's eyes, not-watching her as she moved around the kitchen, jumping lithely up onto the worktop to get the cereal, and down again, nightdress parachuting up, and bounding to get the milk.

Eventually she sat at the table, cross legged on a cushion, and tucked into her breakfast.

"So what's in the news?" She nodded to the sheaf of papers.

He smiled at her - he always seemed to like it when she took an interest in his work. "Good news. There's been a breakthrough in the telomere project. They've found that the telomeres were deliberately and artificially shortened." He passed her one of the papers, noticing that he took it from the much smaller left hand pile - that was usually his "no-publish" pile. She read it carefully, wanting to show her interest.

And it was interesting. The email made her eyes glaze over, but the analysis later explained it. She looked up at him, worried. "This isn't good. This is going to mean trouble."

He nodded approvingly. "Why's that?"

She wasn't sure if he were testing her or if he really wanted an pie angle on the problem, but either way she didn't want to disappoint him. She thought carefully before replying. "Well, none of us are going to live past ten. We're used to that idea. But if suddenly we can have children that live to human length, and develop at a human rate, then they will still be children, maybe even babies, when their parents die. No parent would want that for their children. But no parent would want a short life, either."

Adam nodded. "But we already knew that when we began funding the research - we knew that if a cure was found, it would likely have those effects. And if they find a way to have the rapid development and still have the slow ageing, or a way to have only incremental increased in development time over generations, that would be acceptable to most people. So why is it bad news that the foreshortening is deliberate?"

"Well... it's good news, since it means that there are likely to be records, somewhere, of how it was done, which should give the researchers a whole lot more to work with. But politically, it's huge. The settlement, where the whole wealth of what was GA and is now the Sanctuary is used to support us and our descendants, takes the shortening into account, but only as an accidental side-effect of the manipulation. People will want more blood for this. They'll want this..." She looked at the page again. "They'll want this Gao Chao's head on a pike. His one memo murder all of us at ten years old. His memo stole our childhoods. But isn't he the guy who owned the company before? He's big now, untouchable, the government loves him, and we're just an embarrassment that they would like to forget. If you go up against him, you'll turn the Chinese government against us and we're only here by their good grace. If you don't go up against him, then it'll be political suicide inside the sanctuary."

Adam nodded. "So what path would you take?" He seemed genuinely curious.

"Well, I'd sit on it. Release it slowly in drips. First that the original researchers knew about the problem, but didn't address it because it was low priority and worked in their favour. That's reasonable and won't cause a huge splash. The smaller the splash when you do make it public, the better." She placed the sheet deliberately back on the "Don't publish" pile.

Adam nodded, clearly pleased with her. "Anything else?"

"Well," she pondered, "what dirt do we have on Gao Chao, and what does he have on us?"

He motioned to his screen, which she took as an invitation to leap from her chair into his lap, and curl up there to study the screen. He already has Gao's file open. "Womaniser. He's got himself a bit of a harem, but only the legal two kids. Doesn't take excessive bribes or alcohol. He has a few sex-capable Appies, but that's normal for a politician who needs to entertain guests. Nonsmoker, known associates look like all the right people. There's not much that you could use to lever him into any concessions."

Adam nodded again, and wrapped her in his strong arms. "Very true. Clever girl." He kissed her head softly. "All I can think is to have people try to dig something up on him, and hope we have something big before we need to go up against him."

She reached her hand out to stroke him, then stopped it midair, and took it back, pouting. "I can't even touch you normally anymore - that hurts. Daddy, can we talk about it? I don't like to interrupt your work, but breakfast is one of the few times that we can be together to talk properly."

He knew that "it" wasn't the telomere research, but nodded, took her hesitant hand in his own and kissed it. "We'll have to talk about it eventually, might as well start now. You go first."

"Well... I was asked a question in school before all this happened - which would I prefer to have sex with: a stranger, acquaintance, close friend, or a relative. And I knew even then that it was you that I wanted. I picked 'relative'." She squeezed his hand, pulled it to her and hugged it. "I love having these arms around me, it's the only time I feel completely safe. It's not because of what happened, and I was stupid to try to use that as a weapon to try to force you to agree. What happened is only relevant because it made it clearer to me that I had to get what I wanted while I can. Um. Your turn I guess." She buried her face in his shoulder.

"Hrm. For my part... yes I love you, and yes, I've lusted after you, and I still do." His voice was strained, the confession taking effort to force out. "Since, well, a lot earlier than I felt comfortable admitting even to myself. I guess I still don't feel comfortable admitting it. How long have you felt like this?"

"Felt that you were the most wonderful, solid, protective thing in my world? Ever since I can remember, and I remember a long ways back. But sex? That didn't come until I knew what sex was, and what you and Mom were doing together, and knowing that I wanted to be a part of that too. I wish she was still alive. I bet she would love a threesome." She smiled at him, not dirtily, just sharing the thought fondly. "Why are you scared to tell me that? Do you think I would think it is bad? That I might reject you?"

"I don't know. Yes, I suppose fear of rejection is a part of it. That, plus, well... you are my daughter." He smiled, a little lopsided with irony. "However I look at it, loving you is a very wrong thing. It's abuse. You love me and trust you to protect you, and lusting after you and wanting to, well, wanting to do the dirty with you is just an abomination of the love that is meant to be between us." His face was serious, thoughtful, almost pained, as if he were unused to looking at his own emotions in such detail, and it took a fair effort.

"Daddy, I love you. I really do. And I'm the only half-caste Appie in the whole world. Whoever I have sex with, it'll be an abomination. And I have already had abominative sex. So given that, I might as well have the abomination that makes me happy, right?"

Adam looked pained. "I didn't protect you well from that 'abominative sex', did I?"

She smacked him softly. "Silly thing. I had abominative lesbian sex with Karma before we were kidnapped, and also while we were being held together, and it felt heavenly and I loved how making her feel good was even better than being made to feel good."

She looked up at him to see how he took that. He didn't see surprised, but did seem to like the idea, smiling and letting her continue. So she did. "And the other girls we kidnapped, he allowed me to rape them before he sent them off, and that was vicious and sick and evil and I loved it so much, it was the most fun thing I have ever done. I feel kinda guilty, but they were going to be used up anyway, and if I hadn't, then he might have done it to me, so..." she trailed off, focusing on nothing, wondering if what she had done to the first girl had really been excusable. But a kiss on her nose told her that Adam had already excused her, before he had even heard details.

So she plunged on. "And then... you know, when I said I enjoyed it, I meant it. I didn't enjoy the beating so much." She felt her fur prickle and fluff at the memory. Mr Miller hadn't needed to be so violent! "But when I imagined it was you holding the rod, punishing me for being a bad, dirty girl, it made it bearable. But the sex, okay it was rough, but I really enjoyed the sex, except I wished so hard that it was you inside me." She waited for him to respond.

He didn't though, at least, not for some time. He held her, and rested his head on hers, and seemed to be thinking, so she left him to it and just enjoyed the warmth. After a couple of moments, his voice came. Not so much talking to her, and speaking his thoughts aloud. "We've lost more than a quarter of your life already, by pussyfooting around each other like this. We both want it. But at the same time, it feels wrong to me. Before I met your mother, I was an unutterable bastard. All I thought about was making it big by screwing people over. Now, I am trying to live my life so that, on balance, when I take in all the bad things and the good things that I've done, I feel that I can myself, that I am worthwhile. Lusting after my daughter is a bad thing. Denying her something she wants so badly, is also a bad thing."

Eventually, he seemed to reach a decision. "I think you will be unhurt if we make love to each other. Unhurt inside at least, where it really matters, in here." He tapper her chest. "And I think that you will be very deeply hurt if I reject you. Am I right?"

She nodded, smiling, and lifted her lips for a kiss, and he returned it gladly, their lips meeting and parting, and their reservations falling away, now their decision was made.

He lifted her and carried her into the bedroom, where they explored the alien familiarity of each other's bodies and made long, slow love until the maid knocked to tell them it was lunchtime.

The maid's businesslike smile had an edge of twinkle that told them more than anything else that they had made the right decision.

=====

It was several days later.

"Do I taste different to him?"

"Oh yeah, totally, you eat lots of fruit and that comes through in the flavour, I can taste them - you had pineapple this morning! It makes you so sweet, so yummy. And it's not just your cream, it affects everything. Your sweat is sweeter and fruitier." She looked embarrassed "Your.. when I lick you and you're still wet from peeing, the drops taste nicer, too. Everything does. But Mr Miller tastes bitter and..." Her hand flew to her mouth and he looked at him with horror struck eyes.

"Go on." He had gone very still, very quiet, and his penis was shrinking faster in her hand than if he had just come. "Tell me about Mr Miller. All about him."

"I can't." She curled up on the blankets. "Please, I can't. Don't make me."

His voice was still ominously quiet and calm. "Would you prefer for me to send the police to drag him here, and torture the truth out of him?"

And so, in a torrent of words, it all came out. The test, the fake adult classes, the fake running away, the fake abduction, her torture of the little one, her rape and the fake evidence planted on and in her...

"But there's more..." and she found she could not speak. The words would not come out. She could not tell him of her ultimate betrayal, but she had to, she had to tell him of the danger to him, if he moved against Mr Miller.

She rolled off the bed, stalked to the fitted wardrobe, and pushed the false top, taking out the recorder and the pinhole camera that had been concealed behind it. Her eyes blinding themselves with tears, she brought it to him, set it on the blankets before him, and knelt crying by the bed. "I'm sorry, oh God I'm so sorry. I love you, I really do, I'm sorry, I didn't have a choice. Sorry."

"How long?" The calm in his voice cracked with pain and she felt is cut her to the quick.

"Since... since the first time we spoke about it. It was recording in your office. He beat me, choked me unconscious for failing, he tortured Karma in front of me each session until I got you to fuck me on camera... but that wasn't why I did it, I swear, everything I said was true, he couldn't make it hurt nearly as much as you saying no. I love you and want you, it wasn't a lie. I was grateful to him, I thought of him as being the one who brought us together." Great sobs wracked her body. "I.... I love you." She couldn't speak any more past the sobs, curling up at the pain of her own betrayal.

The blankets shifted as he sat up. "So you love me." Was that bitterness in his voice towards her, or the situation? Most likely her. "But he told you to betray me: in return you would get me to lay with and play with. Otherwise, he would torture you and Karma. Correct?" She nodded, but didn't look up, couldn't look at his face. "Do you know what he plans to do with the footage of us together? If he wanted to, he could destroy us. If Gao Chao got hold of it, we would stand no chance. We would be finished. I would have to resign, surrender total control of the Sanctuary to the Appies, and lose everything. Then the Sanctuary would be left to fight for itself."

She curled into a tighter ball, cut deeply and guiltily by the realisation of the danger she had exposed him to. "As far as I could tell, he just wants to use it to force you to keep funding the telomere research."

"So if I have him arrested, he'll use it. Unless I just have him disappear."

She forced herself to look up. "Look... Dad, he's the best you have. You can't move against him, not until he finishes that research. We need him more than you need revenge on him. And you can get just as much evidence against him, with cameras in his office during my next session."

"You mean he's still abusing you?" She cursed inwardly: he was doing the stupid protective thing. He sounded so angry. "You mean it hasn't stopped now that you have brought him the video footage that he demanded? What does he do?"

"Well..." She drew the word out, smiling sexily, trying to sell the idea that she was not being abused, that it was her choice. "Last time, I didn't have any new video for him. Well, I did, but I told him I wouldn't give it to him unless he released Karma. So he spanked me, all over, with a long ruler, until it broke over me. Then he held me by the neck like this..." she leant onto the bed and took his hand, placed it at the back of her neck. "Just like that, yes, only harder, no, even harder, ungh, yes, like that, so hard I nearly melted." Her voice slipped from high to low and back as she trembled under her father's hand, sinking against the bed, the grip sending signals straight to her groin.

"And then?" His voice, it held so much concern, and yet so much authority. Mr Miller could force her to do the things he demanded, but there was no way she could resist Adam's voice, it had total power over her, and she loved him for it. If only he would use it, like Mr Miller did.

"And then he pushed me between his legs, and fucked my face until I blacked out. He likes doing that. I like it too." She wiggled in his grip, pinned to the bed, melting against it, wanting to show him how well she could do it, but unable to move. His cock was just a couple of feet away, delicious but out of reach. She could push him away, but it felt so good to lie here, powerless under him. Instead, she kept talking, watching his softness grow and harden at her words. Submission felt so good, and the control it gave her over him, the power to give him pleasure, was the best part.

"I love the feel of him between my jaws, pushing them apart, making me gag, making me fight for breath. I love the feeling of blacking out under his power, having to trust him completely. I love waking up with my throat clogged with his come. It makes me feel like... like I'm his. And I like that."

He was fully erect now, and she whimpered with desire at the gently curving beauty of it. "Please, Daddy! Can I be yours?"

His hand just squeezed her neck a little harder instead, and she closed her eyes in blissful submission. His voice washed over her. "You're a strange one. You enjoy abusing another girl, perhaps to the point of permanently damaging her, and yet you like to be abused by men, you like to be completely subjugated. I wonder if that says something about me, as a father. Have I damaged you? Did I do something wrong? Is it a bad thing that you are like this?"

"If you gave me to a real therapist who tried to fix me, I honestly would claw their eyes out. And eat them. I really wanted to do that to those first two you sent me to, before you agreed to give me to Mr Miller. They were such arrogant, know-it-all ass-fucks. I *like* being who and what I am. I will not be someone different. But yes, with other Appies I'm different. Well... with Karma it's a bit equal. Sometimes I top, sometimes I bottom, mostly we're just... comfortable, you know?" She opened her eyes, looking to see if he really did understand.

He nodded, so she continued. "With most Appies, I am their fucking queen, I completely rule them, they are there to do what I say, and they do, and they feel good to be doing it because they are serving me, and that makes them better than the people who don't get to do it. Yes, I rule only by their common consent, but I do rule, and I care for my underlings. Because they are submissive sluts who want to be ruled by anyone in authority who will look after them." She realised her claws had come out, sunk into the bedsheets, and her hackles had raised despite the submissive demand of the hand at her neck.

She took a breath. "But then," she continued, "there are humans. You live forever, or close enough. You are bigger and stronger and wiser than I will ever be, and I love that about you. I stand by a human and suddenly I am a little girl again, instead of a queen." She relaxed again at the thought. "And I want to have your love and approval, and to make myself useful to you, and to be told what to do, and make you happy, and make you want me and give me attention and protection and love and safety. It's a different kind of control, but in a way it's still control."

"So what should I do about Mr Miller? As you so rightly point out, he has power over me. He has the videos you gave him, and he is our best researcher, with years more experience in the field than anyone else, but I do not like that he is untouchable. I want him in my pocket. You know him best - what would get his total obedience and loyalty?"

They plotted together.

=====

Mr Miller arrived home from work and put his heavy gym bag down in front of the couch in the lounge, unzipping it to allow Karma to breathe more easily, and removing her gag. He stretched luxuriously, feeling her envious eyes watching him: she had been bound for hours now. But she could wait a little longer.

He was feeling quite satiated. Leonie had left his office limping slightly, a butt plug stretching her wide and her belly filled with his seed, so he had no immediate need for Karma to help him relieve the stresses of the day.

Instead, he kicked off his shoes, casually aiming them at her but missing, then removed his jacket and tie and hung them up. He took the case containing Leonie's latest disk from the inside pocket.

He looked at the case, and smiled in satisfaction. "I've got so much on that bastard now, I could be running this island if I wanted," he told Karma. She just looked back at him out of the bag with obedient eyes, prepared for any commands he might give.

He took the disk to the bookshelf and slid out a thick annotated copy of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams". It rattled hollowly with the sound of disc cases as he lifted it down. But when he opened it to add the new disk to the collection, he stared in horror.

Inside the cover, written in large, red letters, there was a message.

SEE ME. - ADAM

He flipped open some of the cases, but they were all empty.

He still had one disk! The one she had given him today! Unless... he went to the player, inserted it.

>Media Read Error... retrying.

Shit! He had looked at the disk in his desk machine, and it had been fine? Had they somehow corrupted it in transit? Had this machine been tampered with to be unable to read? Had his office machine been tampered with so that it would show the "right" thing when given a corrupted disk?

He ran to his desk, opened up a secure transfer session to his online copies.

There was only one file. "SeeMe.txt". He opened it, and saw the message again.

>SEE ME. - ADAM

Shit. What about the backups! He logged into the administrative area, hit restore.

>No files found.

How? Even with his password, he had no access to delete the backups! He clicked the tech-support link.

The site's logo had changed. There were new words on it. "A wholly owned subsidiary of Sanctuary, Inc."

How had they known? They must have put key loggers on all his keyboards. How long? How much did they know?

He pulled out his phone and was halfway through dialling before he realised they were probably bugging that, too. He threw it on the couch, and grabbed Karma's gag back up, pushing it roughly into her mouth, shoving her startled head back into the bag and zipping it up again. He slipped the new disk into a pocket of the bag on the off-chance it still held something usable, grabbed his jacket, and set off out the door, stuffing his tie into his pocket as he went.

He avoided cameras where he could, but it didn't make him feel safe. Did they know he knew yet? He had looked at his files, he had to assume they did. He couldn't look like he was running, but he had to hide what evidence he could. Not that it would help, he had seen that the Sanctuary police didn't care for morality or law if they were protecting the Sanctuary. He made his way to the gym, a sufficiently innocuous destination that, he hoped, they would not feel the need to move on him.

He rushed up to the receptionist, forcing himself to smile, greet her, exchange the necessary pleasantries.

In the deserted changing room, as he opened his locker, he stopped, his hand on the door. WHY was he not yet in a cell being tortured? Why surveillance and "see me," instead of jackboots at his office door? It must, he realised, mean that he still held some of the cards. Why? His research? Or something else? Did he still have something on Adam?

He shoved the heavy bag in his locker, eliciting a pained grunt. "Shut up," he told the locker, as he locked it and pocketed the key.

On the way out, the receptionist called to him. "Mr Miller? A message came for you from Town Hall. They say that your meeting with the Director is booked in for today, at his residence on the hill, at your earliest convenience. Would you like me to call you a rickshaw?"

What could he do now? "Um, thank you, but I can walk, it's not far, and it's a fine day." He needed to get a message out to his backers, and fast. "Say, has Oscar been in recently?"

"No, sir, he's not been in since..." she tapped at keys. "Not for three days."

"Thank you", he said, and left, the urge to run powerful. But he shouldn't, mustn't run. And where could he run to anyway? They knew where he was, they were tracking him. They had found Oscar. Spending all his time at the Gym as the central contact was Oscar's *job*, he wouldn't disappear for three days without reason.

And three days ago was the last time they had spoken.

If he couldn't run, and he couldn't hide, what could he do? There was only one thing he could do. He still held some of the cards. It would have been nice to have known what they were, but it was not to be helped.

He took a deep breath, straightened his back, put his shoulders back, and put on a confident smile. He pulled the tie out of his pocket and put it on, as his feet turned towards the houses on the hill.

=====

A maid answered the door, in an immaculate crisp white apron. She gave him a look even blacker than her dress. "You're late. The director is expecting you."

He didn't respond for fear of allowing his confident exterior to slip, so just followed her through, up the stairs. He had been to the house before, and knew that these were not the offices normally used for meetings - they were downstairs. These were the private rooms. They passed Leonie's bedroom door and arrived at the master chambers.

Outside the doors, she addressed him without even turning to him. "Wait here." She swept through the door and closed it in her wake.

He stood, waiting, as the seconds ticked by. What would he have to face behind the doors? It didn't matter. He was confident, in charge. He took a deep breath.

More seconds slipped by, oily with menace.

It was a psychological trick, and he would not be taken in by it. He was

She opened the doors and waved him in. There was a wet stain of red on the hem of her apron, that he was sure was not there before. Nervously, he stepped through, and heard the maid pulled the twin doors closed behind him.

To his left a fire blazed in the hearth, making him realise how hot he was in jacket and tie. Walking had been foolish.

He stood, taking in the surroundings. A high backed armchair faced the fire. A man's hand was resting on one arm, toying with the head of a cane.

On the far side of the room, a curtain separated the sleeping area from the reception. From behind it, there wet, sticky sounds. Not rhythmic like sex. For some reason, they made his stomach tighten.

There was a metallic smell in the air, like blood. Maybe it was blood. He remembered the stain on the apron. Just psychological tricks to unnerve him. He was not fooled by such pettiness. Why were his palms wet with sweat then? Just the exertion of walking up the hill. He should hae taken the offer of a rickshaws. He wiped them on his jacket.

The man in the chair spoke. "Don't stand on ceremony, Miller. Take a seat, do."

He had moved to obey before he realised, and consciously slowed his pace from an ingratiating scurry to a confident walk. He took the other seat by the fire, noticing that the fire irons were lying on the hearth, with their ends in the blaze. A nice touch for intimidation, but he wouldn't let it get to him. He smiled across at Adam. Confidence, that was the ticket.

Adam nodded to him, and tipped his head to call to the curtain. "We have a guest."

Leonie came from behind the curtain, eyes downcast wearing only a maid's apron, and a leather collar. Her claws were out, and her arms red wet and matted to the elbow. The apron was besplattered with red, as if she were dressed as a surgeon rather than a maid.

The curtain twitched again, and to his horror, Karma stepped out to stand beside her.

His confident smile had fled but he fought to at least keep his face impassive, as he looked at her. She was dressed the same as Leonie, and with just a little less red on her hands. But her fur still bore the lines of the ropes he had bound her with.

They walked up to him, leaving red footprints in the pristine, expensive carpet, and stood side by side before him, eyes downcast. "Good afternoon, Mister Miller!" they chorused, curtsying prettily. But then they turned their back to him, kneeling before Adam. The message could not be clearer: they were Adam's, not his.

Confidence. Must sound confident. Do not let them shake you. "Nice maids you have there."

Adam nodded, accepting the compliment. "Pour him a drink, would you?"

The girls rose as one, taking up the glass from the side table by his hand, and going to the curtain, drawing it aside rather than slipping past it.

Suspended behind it was Oscar.

What was left of Oscar.

There were chairs either side of him with red footprints on. Leonie leapt onto one, so she could reach higher.

He was naked. His face and genitals, they had left untouched. Everything else was red, claw gouges covering every inch. Blood seeped down his body, dropped off his feet, his genitals.

As if through a haze of pain, Oscar looked around, his eyes resting on Mr Miller for a moment and then moving on. Mr Miller's skin prickled. There was nothing on those eyes, no recognition, barely any consciousness. He was broken far more thoroughly than he had managed with the shipyard labourer. As the girls poked him, he led out a wet sigh of despair around a gag in his mouth.

He recognised it. It was the gag he had put on Karma.

Karma reached up with her claws and sliced through the rubber band that held it in place, gouging deep into his cheek as she did so. He didn't even cry out as the gag fell away.

Leonie held the glass under the man's genitals to catch the dripping blood, and Karma raked his torso, sluicing blood down until the glass was filled to the brim. Then the turned and danced prettily back to Mr Miller, placing the dripping glass on the table by his hand.

"Good girl," Adam said. "We're done with him now, so you can both play for a while. Try to keep it quiet, we grownups have... business to discuss."

Leonie bounced back to the curtain and drew it shut, and the last thing the saw was Karma grinning and biting into the man's arm.

Adam tapped a nail on his own glass, filled with a clear red wine, and waited expectantly. "Do drink up. It's full of antioxidants, you know."

"Thank you, but I really am not feeling particularly thirsty."

"Drink."

"You aren't really in a position to make me do anything. If the girls"

"Very well." Adam pulled a bell pull beside the fireplace, and the door opened even before he had released it. It was the maid, her apron once again crisp and white. "Yes, sir?" If she noticed the red footprints, and the filled glass in its little pool of blood, she made no comment.

"Mr Miller is having trouble with his drink. If I were to ask you to help him, what would you do?"

The maid looked as if she were considering the question thoughtfully. "Well, if the girls were unable to persuade him, I would offer to fetch a couple of those nice policemen from downstairs. I'm sure they would find some way of helping him."

Mr Miller was incredulous. Anger exploded from him. "You can't support this! The man is a monster! He has his own brainwashed daughter tearing my friend apart behind that curtain! He rapes her every night! I have the video!"

"Sir, I would not use those terms. The little lady glows with happiness of a morning. I do believe he treats her most lovingly and gently. Unlike some." The blackness of her expression was explained. How much did the maid know? Enough, it was clear, for she looked pointedly at the irons in the fire.

Adam nodded to her. "Thank you. Please have the men stand by in case I need them: I shall ring again if so. But I am sure that Mr Miller will drink happily now, in the knowledge that he is amongst friends."

The maid curtsied and left, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft, heavy thump.

"Well?"

He picked the glass up, and looked at it. It was a slippery kind of sticky, and warm in his hand. Not hot, but a nasty in between temperature that spoke of death. It had already begun to clot. He remembered drinks he had shared with Oscar in the bar at the gym, as they watched the women exercise.

"You're welcome to be theatrical if you wish, throw the glass in the fire or something. There is plenty more where that came from, and plenty more glasses. But you would only be making more cleaning work for the maid. I doubt she would take that kindly."

He raised it to his lips, and a scream penetrated through the curtain as the girls found some torture so vile that it roused Oscar from his daze.

Adam scowled. "I said quiet!" The scream was silenced immediately, replaced by a wet bubbling, gasping sound that faded to a rattle.

It tasted of blood, of course, of the metal salty smell that filled the room. Clotted lumps (or small slippery chunks of clawed-off flesh? *Don't think!*) slipped down his throat. There was a bitterness, of too much alcohol, too many late nights and junk food, too many bodybuilding drugs. Perhaps too many diseased whores. Oscar was that kind of man. Had been that kind of man. He fought with his gag reflex. Don't think. Drink.

He had drained it.

"A mere sip would have sufficed, but I'm sure Oscar would appreciate your enjoying him to the full. I simply wanted to make the point very clear, that you live here, as the unfortunate Oscar did, under my tolerance. If I wish for you never to have existed, it will be so. If I wish for your backers to be served as food to my daughters, boned and filleted, it will be so. Oscar was so very helpful with so many details."

"Point made. So why am I alive? You need me for something."

"No, actually I don't. Your research is useful but not critical. Even if you quit now, and deleted all your data, there would be no major loss to the Sanctuary. All the data you have is backed up, and for what we pay you, I could buy a buildingful of Chinese geneticists. Your main use to the girls is amusement and petty revenge. But for me, well, there is something more. We are alike, you and I, but not alike. Over the years, I have found that morality increasingly gets in my way. You, however, appear to be almost completely immoral, and that trait is quite valuable in itself."

Mr Miller stayed silent, choosing it as the safest option.

"You will, we suspect, remain loyal if you are permitted your domain to rule, your slaves to dominate. You don't seem to have big ambitions, other than to protect yourself. If you did, you would not be here." He snapped his fingers. "Girls!"

The girls came scampering in, faces and arms drenched in blood. Leonie was chewing something that seemed to be still moving, but she quickly swallowed it.

"Fetch the gift for our guest."

The girls went back through the curtain and returned carrying the gym bag that Karma had been stowed in. They dropped it at his feet, for a greater height then seemed necessary and a muffled cry came from within it.

The note was a photocopy of a scrap of paper, written on in a childish hand. He read it cautiously: some kind of demand?

/Dear Mom and Dad. Sanctuary is boring and all the girls here hate me. You saw me coming home from school crying and you never helped, you just told me to be stronger. You never wanted me, you were just too embarrassed to abort me when they congratulated you for "making the next generation". I was going to leave once I had my consent card, but I met a Chinaman at the docs who said he can take me to the mainland without needing to wait for one. By the time you read this I will be gone. Do not look for me. - Nicky./

Over the bottom of the photocopy, another note had been scrawled, in a more familiar hand. "Please enjoy this gift. Thank you forever for bringing my father to me. - Leonie."

Leonie waited until he had finished reading it, then unzipped the bag. an adorable kitten girl of perhaps eighteen months was bound and gagged inside, her eyes staring and terrified. The girls lifted her out and put her on his lap.

Mr Miller looked at Adam, who was sitting and watching, smugly. "These two girls, and every single other person in Sanctuary, including yourself, are mine. But that little one, she's yours. Leonie picked her out: apparently she was offensive to Karma, and she wanted to get her back for that, as a gift to Karma. Work with me, and you may get other gifts. But if you ever try to take that is mine again, ever try to screw me over, then it will be your blood in the glass."

=====

"When I was a child, I thought eyes were hard, like marbles, and I thought, 'when I grow up, I will kill people with beautiful eyes, pop their eyes out, and collect them in a jar.' The first time I dissected an eye, I was very disappointed to find I was wrong. And then I found out about plastination..."

Gao Chao indicated his collection. In pride of place were two pale green eyes, the left one with a dark smudge streaking down from it. But there were many others, perhaps a hundred pairs all told.

The pregnant woman that he was talking to looked at them, and him, with tears of fear in her pretty, but unspectacular eyes. She said nothing, for he'd had her tongue removed. Like all his inferiors, women, he felt, should be seen and not heard.

"Do not worry, I do not want your eyes for my collection. You will serve me in other ways." He snapped his fingers and her two escorts led her away. Her child would be carefully butchered inside her, and would provide him with the final eyes for the "developing eye" display, once for each prenatal week. She herself would provide an interesting arrangement in the garden tomorrow. He smiled in anticipation as he went to bed.

The next morning, he took his seat in the darkness of predawn, and broke his fast with a simple meal of rice, looking over his carefully tended zen garden at the band of light as it brightened.

As he ate, one of his helpers came up to him, carrying a glass embalming jar. Inside two tiny eyes floated, as yet unseparated from their lids and optic nerve. He examined them carefully: they were very fine specimens. "Very good. Place them in front of her, where she can see." He pointed to the mother, who was tied upside down on a crucifix, an air tube passing into her, between her legs.

The assistants did as he said, then turned their attentions to the woman. With a balloon of pressurised air inside her all night, she had swelled even larger than she had been yesterday, and springy bamboo had widened her entrance enough that she could have given birth without problem, now.

They threaded stout, springy bamboo hoops in through the neck of the balloon so that she would retain her inner shape, then popped it inside her, pulling out the fragments of rubber. She was now a human basket. One of the assistants wove the bamboo at the "neck" of the basket so that it would stay open, while the other went to a cage, gently lifting out small leathery white sacs and placing them into a basket, which he carried to the woman. Each one was placed inside her, until she was full with hundreds of the eggs. Then the assistants bowed, and left.

Gao waited, watched. Enjoying the peace and tranquillity. The eggs would hatch today, and the heat of her body would drive them out of her. It was an experiment he had long wanted to try, and he was happy to wait for the results. The woman was still, despite her baby's eyes in front of her. She would know what they were, she just lacked the strength to complain.

The dawn chorus started as a few scattered chirps, but was soon a full orchestral accompaniment to the dawn's swelling radiance.

The woman began to whimper. The eggs were moving inside her. The ones she touched were clawing at their leathery shells, trying to dig their way out. Some would continue, clawing into her. But most would be clawing away from the heat, not into it.

The first fingernail of the sun slid over the horizon, bathing the scene in radiant gold.

The woman's whimpers turned to moans, and then to screams. He frowned. Where were his snakes? Had the stupid woman bled so much inside that the snakes had drowned? He shrugged away his irritation. If the snakes were drowned, then he would watch her bleed to death, which would be interesting in itself, he supposed, though it would be considerably less entertaining.

The last edge of the sun cleared the horizon, but he did not see: he had tipped his parasol to block out the light and beauty of it, so that he could better see the anguish of the woman.

She writhed weakly in her bonds, her cries a pleasing complement to the dawn chorus. And then, wonder of wonders, something dark slithered out of her, writhing down her body onto the ground. She screamed and writhed in earnest then, and another appeared, and then another. In seconds, there was a fountain of them flowing over her, and in her screaming she had managed to tear one of her legs free, was flailing wildly.

Gao Chao clapped his hands in delight. It was better even than he had imagined! So worth the wait. He would have to do this again, with friends to see too.

He watched her suffering and sobs until it had been five minutes since the last snake had left her. Then he rang a small brass bell, and the assistants came to clear up the woman, hunt down the snakes, and bring him the day's paperwork.

=====

Karma had returned to her father, professing no knowledge of the ordeal. She and Hui agreed that since Mr Miller had done such a sterling job of helping Leonie "recover", he should be her therapist as well. Instead, he continued as her rapist, though in the knowledge that his office was now recorded, and that his actions with her only served to seal his loyalty to Adam.

For her part, Karma was deeply in love with him, and had become dependent on him. When she was away from him, she yearned for his painful caresses. She used the brand to get a little balance in the relationship; but she didn't want or need much. She felt deeply envious of the time that Nicky got to spend with him, and Mr Miller delighted in seeing the sadistic tortures she thought up to inflict on his new toy.

Leonie and Karma also loved each other, very deeply, and spent as much time together as they could, each night in Adam's bed or each other's.

Adam began to liquidate their assets as much as he could. There was little he could do to liquidate the factories, but as much as possible, he quietly moved assets out of China, away from the storm he knew would brew.

And eventually, the storm did break, earlier than he had hoped, and in a less controlled way. The intern who had found the email leaked it to the internet, and it exploded into the blogosphere without allowing him any time to put any positive or ameliorating spin on it.

Soon there were placard-carrying crowds outside both the town hall and his offices on the hill, clamouring for Gao Chao's trial or execution for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and so forth. Worse, he was being blamed for keeping it under wraps, for not revealing the email as soon as it was made known to him.

He had given an interview about it, but without making any solid promises to move against Gao Chao, it just ended up making him look worse.

He had refused further interviews on the topic, and called Mr Miller and Hui to his chambers for a council of war.

"It's become an international issue now," Mr Miller was saying. "Most of the big news channels have taken it up, running it as a leader. They have footage of the protest riot at factory three, where they attacked the factory security.

Adam nodded. "And footage of the protests here too, no obvious reporters or camera men since I stopped giving out press passes to the island, but pretty much any sailor that walks past could have a concealed camera in his hat, these days."

"It's causing trouble with the Chinese government too," Hui said. "They want us to resolve the issue internally, and fast. They have blockaded various shipments that we were meant to receive this week, trying to force us to crush the protests."

We don't have the same leeway that the Chinese government does for taking overt action against our citizens, though," Adam replied. "There were some protests in Beijing, and they came down on them hard, water-cannon and rubber bullets, but we can't use those tactics. It would be like herding cats with a water pistol."

"So instead, we're now seen as a negative political influence. What are our options here?"

"Well, I've been expecting this to blow up in our face for quite some time now. Those assets we have in china are mostly liquidated and most of our wealth is now located offshore: the Chinese government should be unable to prevent us from accessing it.

"What about the factories, and sanctuary itself? In the worst case scenario I could see them commandeering the factories, punishing the employees for their involvement in the 'conspiracy'."

"The factories have little resale value. At the moment the employees are just a pure drain on our resources, and all the employees there are guaranteed employment for years yet: I wouldn't mind losing them if it came to that, it would save us money. Rather than close them, I've just been trying to minimise the deficit from them, by refactoring them into real factories, giving the employees creative control over what they wanted to create and sell, and funding pretty much any enterprise they wanted to start. There have been some smart ideas, and Factory two is even making a small profit in the last month, mostly because of a retarded-Appie brothel that we don't technically support or fund."

"What can we do to stop the situation from escalating?"

"Well the way I see it, there's not a lot that we can do other than stand down, or somehow get Gao Chao punished for his crimes. And I can't see us touching him, he's not a nice man to go up against."

"He's not a nice man, no. He has some freaky pastimes - most of which are public knowledge at least on some level. But despite the fact that he collects the eyes of unborn children, enjoys sadistic orgies, and was directly responsible for the use of humans to create Appies, their subsequent massacre, and the early deaths of the remainder, he doesn't have anything crippling that we can pin on him, either. He's an embarrassment to the Chinese government, but not enough of one for them to do anything about. He has powerful friends.

"We must find me some way of dealing with him. If possible, a public destruction of everything he stands for would be ideal."

"So, what can we do?"

"Not a hell of a lot, that I can see. About the only thing I could see the Chinese government move against Gao Chao for would be some power play or attempted coup, and he's just not that stupid. I can't see that we can tackle him on those grounds. Like you said in your interview, all the protesting is only going to damage Sanctuary and make it a target for the Chinese government. But I can't see any way of stopping it escalating."

There also seem to be agitators, people planted by the Chinese government, in the factories, trying to make it worse It's possible that they have been looking for a reason to move against us for some time, and they see this as their chance.

"So..." Hui's face was bleak "Do we even have a viable exit strategy?"

"Well, I have been in contact with the US and UK governments. As I remain a UK citizen, as does Mr miller, they may be able to interfere on our behalf, but you and the Appies would be doomed. Other than that they do not seem inclined to take any action, though they are running a joint naval operation with a few hundred miles south of here, in international waters."

"What about other countries?"

"Vietnam had a good relationship with us before, and has extended its hand in welcome to us if we wish to move back there. They apparently see strong economic and political advantages to being host to the Appies: we're seen as the underdogs, and everyone loves us. Having trade embargoes on a country which is dealing with a sin that is partly your own country's fault, is bad politics. I have begun negotiations for a chunk of land there."

Hui's phone chimed in his pocket. He glanced at the screen. "Ah... we may have a more serious problem. Turn on channel fifteen."

The news showed a scene of devastation, a bomb blast in Beijing. The streets that had only recently been shown in newscasts as having protesters in were now shown, from the same camera angle, torn apart and mutilated.

Hui translated. "They are saying that the bomb was the work of terrorists, the ringleaders of the previous protests and riots, and that it detonated prematurely. The ringleaders were fortunately the only victims. Those small slips of foil you see them holding were part of the bomb."

The foil slips bore legends in Chinese and English. The English ones read "Appie Power", "Revenge for Sanctuary" and "Death to Gao Chao".

"They are blaming Sanctuary for backing the protests, and possibly even funding their activities. What do you think?"

"There's no way people will swallow that. Do they think their people are idiots?"

"Actually, yes. I think we can safely guarantee that nobody will pick up on any of the flaws in that report. Even if we point them out, that will put us on a defensive, conspiracy-theory footing, and the Chinese media will not report it anyway. But they've done it now: they've made themselves an excuse to go after us if they want, and the US will not step in, not with its own War on Terror in full swing, and no US citizens involved."

"Hoo boy. I didn't expect it to get this low, this fast. How fast can we evacuate everyone to Vietnam?"

"Not fast enough. We most likely have enough small boats to get everyone off the island, but in the open sea, I don't know how long they would last. For the main move, I've hired a cruise liner, under the British flag, but it shouldn't be here for at least another three days. Other than that, there's not a lot we can do."

"At least the Appies will be behind you now, if you give another interview. They should at least agree to evacuate when you tell them to. You can't get a stronger 'I told you so' than this."

"Yup. I can't see them really protesting after this, now they can see for themselves the beehive they have kicked up. But it's too little, too late. The Chinese military now has its excuse to move against us and eradicate the destabilising embarrassment that we have always been to them."

Adam pulled out his own phone, hit the speed-dial for the Town Hall. "Hello, it's Adam. Arrange a press conference for one hour's time. Subject is the recent terrorist attack on Beijing. Use the large hall. Press passes not required, anyone may attend, so long as they have any recording equipment, including a pen and paper. Scan for weapons and explosives. Have the police do security sweeps around the area. Have customs double all security checks on incoming shipments for weapons and explosives. Erm... if we have a high terrorist alert mechanism, put it in place, with the highest threat level. If we don't, think one up. I want signs up outside the Town Hall, warning that we are at a code red terrorism threat."

With the security precautions, it was two hours before the hall had filled.

Adam took the podium. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have sad news to impart. It looks like we are being blamed for the terrorist attack in Beijing. The attack, or rather, alleged accident, was in the exact same street as earlier protests and riots, so that people know it was the same place. The exact same camera angle just happens to be perfect to frame the shot. Only the ringleaders hurt. And they leave a pleasant firework-esque confetti that states their aims clearly and bilingually, and the confetti survives the explosion to be blown to the four winds. All the work of an 'Appie Power' organisation that has sprung up overnight so could not possibly have gained explosives and terrorist contacts in that short a time anyway."

There were rumbles of dissent in the room, but he was surprised at the fact there was so little. People were waiting to hear what he had to say. He looked out over the faces. Most were Appies, but there was a sizable contingent of humans. He suppressed a laugh at seeing two sailors near the front pointing their caps at him. Hui had clearly been right on the money.

"I feared this would happen. As I said in an earlier interview, we are not a powerful enough group to demand the punishment of Gao Chao, whether he deserves it or no. But we are an embarrassing enough group that the Chinese government is glad for any activity that permits it to move against us.

"If the bomb was the result of pro-Appie terrorist action, all I can say is: you idiots. You complete, total, blithering idiots. You have handed the Chinese government exactly the weapon they needed to destroy us, and because of your actions, the Appie race will be lucky if it survives."

The room was silent, apart from the ferocious rattle of keyboards and rustle of paper being written on.

"I beg you all not to react, not to rise to any baiting that is offered, and not to continue the campaigning and protesting against Gao Chao. If anyone tries to get you involved in any terrorist or paramilitary action, refuse. We will not be forced into a war. Like any fight, a war takes two sides. And we do not want any part of this."

"Instead, those of you who are Chinese nationals and wish to return to your families on the mainland may do so on full pay."

"For everyone else, the newly re-registered MS Sanctuary is making its way here under full steam and will arrive in three days. I recommend that everyone embark, and leave the island, for your own safety. We have been offered a new home in Vietnam; or we may simply remain on the ship, which has sufficient berths for every one on this island; or we may return back here once the situation has stabilised. But if we make it onto that ship, in international waters, we are safe, guaranteed protection by the UK navy."

"For those of you who are ready to leave today, we have a few small fast ships that can start ferrying you to either the mainland or the MS sanctuary, immediately, so that you get first choice of cabins, and immediate and full protection for your families. There are no priority passengers for these ferry's: it's entirely first come, first served." "All our helicopters are already being used to ferry hospital patients, and will continue to do so. Priority is in order of admittance to the hospital, so don't all go injuring yourselves to get out now: you will just overload the system, and won't."

"I cannot promise safety for anyone who stays here. All I can do is promise to protect against looters, while there are still police here. Anyone caught looking will be forced to remain here, in the prison cells, until we return. Now - any questions?"

=====

"Greetings from Town Hall. I have been informed that all those who have chosen to leave have now departed. The Chinese army has just taken control of all the mainland factories, and we are informed that their policy for the alleged terrorist headquarters is scorched earth. It appears that they do not intend to leave any surviving Appies in China, so it would be very wise for those of you who chose to remain on the island to leave now. I am leaving now, myself. The remaining helicopters are standing by to take anyone else who can get to the hospital in time, but I have informed the pilots that they may leave whenever they wish, and that they must leave if it looks like the island is about to come under attack. After they have gone, there are only the boats. It is likely that the island is due to be carpet bombed or firebombed. For all we know the Chinese air force has already launched. Please: it is my duty to care for you, and it hurts, badly that some of you have chosen to stay here where I cannot defend you." "My next transmission will be from the MS Sanctuary."

=====

Adam had stayed behind, not feeling right to leave before those under his care. But there was nothing more he could do for them, so he walked out onto the concrete where the helicopters waited and climbed inside the small two-seater he had reserved for himself. Anything larger felt selfish.

"All ready to go, sir?" The pilot reached for his headset and began his checks.

"Yep, whenever you are." He donned his own headset.

He sat back, listening to the pilot complete his checks and speaking to the other pilots over the radio. Air traffic controllers had either all left the island, or were spending the time with their families, so the pilots had to organise things as best they could. They seemed to be well organised though.

The engine roared into life and the blades began to spin up. He looked out of the window at the other helicopters. It looked like two more families were boarding another, larger one on the far side of the concourse. One of the coast guard choppers. He was glad. He had been begging the remaining people to leave for two days now, and he had not expected the last message to convince any more. He saw a father lifting a girl up to her mother, and was glad.

He felt his stomach lurch down a little as the pilot lifted the helicopter smoothly off the concrete and into the air.

As they rose, he looked out over the island, and thought back to the first time he had seen it, out of the porthole of the cruise ship. So much had changed in so few years. He wasn't a weasel grubbing at the shirt tails of power any more. He was the one wearing the tails. And a large part of him wished he could turn back the clock to those days of innocent worries, when the wrong decision could kill thousands of people, and his days were not taken up with the simple hunt for wealth, rather than "conflict resolution procedures". It seemed strange and unfair that in general the fairest and most equitable middle ground he could find would end up with both sides hating him equally.

The helicopter tipped forwards a little, and they moved off, over the buildings and streets he had walked so many times. He winced. There was a child down there, in a swing. A parent watched it from a lawn chair. How could they be so irresponsible? Had he judged wrong, to allow them the choice? But herding cats was a difficult matter. Force them all onto the boat and they would all have spread to the four winds, to meet abuse at every corner.

And it was always possible that the rumours about an air strike were false.

Or not. "Hey pilot!" he called. "To the north, uh, about seven o'clock! Is that what I think it is?"

The pilot looked behind, and swore, keying to the emergency channel. "All grounded choppers, this is Sanctuary One, there are contrails incoming to the north, about fifty, coming fast. Dust off now. Repeating..." As he spoke he pitched the chopper forward to give the blades more bite, and opened up the throttle. He allowed the chopper to drop sharply to gain speed, then flew low over the ocean, as Adam looked back.

The large coast guard helicopter had only just lifted, when its blades shattered and it tumbled from the sky. It hit the ground with a fireball that heralded the arrival of the first wave of bombers, covering the hospital in flame, destroying any hope Adam had of seeing any other helicopters escape. A dozen pilots, all good brave men, all dead because he had not thought to have a spotter always in the air, looking for planes coming in under the radar. His fault. His lack of foresight.

The bombing continued as the island receded, and he thought of the girl in the swing. Even if that girl's parents had managed to get her into their basement, they would all be dying now as the oxygen was burned out of the air. He swallowed, his mouth dry.

"Have we enough fuel to make it to the ship at this speed?" he asked the pilot.

The pilot shrugged. "Sir, the recommended cruise speed of the Fennec is about two forty knots, and we could fly for about four hours at that. Top speed is a hundred fifty five knots." He tapped a display which was about ten knots higher than that. "Normally, range is about three hundred fifty miles, but at this speed I don't know. We have to get about a hundred miles, we're burning fuel about three times as fast as normal, so we're fine so long as the ship is still there when we arrive."

The thought had not occurred to Adam. What if the ship had been attacked as well? Sure, he had ordered that it stay a hundred miles out to sea, so that it would be comfortably far from the Chinese mainland and comfortably close to the US and UK navies. But still...

"Isn't the ground effect helping with fuel?"

"Not unless we hover, Sir, and even then only within one blade's length from the sea."

The pilot didn't seem perturbed, either by their narrow escape or by the possibility of running out of fuel, so he left him to it, looking back as best he could at the smoking pyre that had once been the Sanctuary.

Some twenty minutes later, the pilot pointed to the sea. Below them, there were small boats - the last stragglers to leave the docks of the Sanctuary.

Seeing them helped Adam's feelings of guilt somewhat. He had provided for some to escape, at least.

The pilot swore, and pointed behind them. There was a small fireball over one of the boats they had passed. Adam hunted for what could have attacked it. Then he saw them, three fighter planes flying low, strafing the boats as they went. They did not seem to notice the helicopter, or did not think it a worthwhile target when there were so many fat, slow boats to fire upon.

Adam felt despair. He had failed his people. They were his to protect, and now they were being massacred again, and he was helpless this time, there was no magical telephone call he could make that would fix the problem.

He hoped that Leonie was having better luck with her mission.

=====

Mister Chao sat in the garden, enjoying the last of the sunrise. He had decided that he would reenact the Marquis de Sade's hundreds of elaborate torments depicted in his book 'the Lusts of the Libertines', so he had taken a particularly evil looking man to play the part of all the Libertines, and had begun at the first item.

Sadly, the first few items involved mediocre acts of forced starvation, so he was still on the first item, which he had nailed to the tree in a calligraphic translation: "This libertine likes to sodomise beggar-women who've starved for several days. He also likes to lock them up in his dungeon until they die of hunger; he watches closely as they suffer, wanking himself noon till night, but never discharges until the day they perish."

His Libertine was still busily sodomising the woman, who, though hungry, did not look at all as if she was starving yet.

Gao Chao did not mind. He was a patient man.

The act complete, the woman was tidied back off to his dungeon, and the Libertine went to rest until noon.

His seneschal approached. "Master, there is a guest here from the Genomic Appliances Island Factory, bringing with him an Appliance as a gift."

Gao Chao sighed despondently. There was little point in listening to any deputations from that depraved island, but on the other hand the gift might be entertaining, and it wouldn't hurt anything. The one big problem with a position in politics he thought, was that it was an endless stream of dealing with delegates and people who wanted you to sort out their problems. Figuring which one to decide in favour of was far more complex than merely finding which one offered the larger bribe. There were endless negotiations, and he had to take into consideration the political clout of any backers... he would almost have preferred to be the director of a large company again. At least there you didn't need to suck up to so many vile people.

"Check him carefully for any weapons". He waved his hand for them to be brought in and the seneschal left, ushering in the man and two porters carrying a mature female Appie bound naked and hanging from a stick. Two guards preceded him at either side.

"I regret I do not have very much time, so make it quick," he told the visitor.

"So sorry to interrupt you, Sir," said the visitor. "I was your lead genetic researcher back in the heyday of Genomic Appliances."

Gao Chui nodded silently, recognising the man who was talking, now: Mr Miller. "I have come to crave your shelter from the ravages of the Sanctuary, who are likely to be rather interested in re-acquiring my services." Mr Miller seemed nervous.

Gao Chui wondered at the cause. He was either a poor liar, was unused to being in the presence of greatness, or genuinely was fearful for his life. "Why do they want you? And why should I help you?"

"Well," pondered Miller as if the questions had only just occurred to him "they may be interested in all their research data on ageing, which has all gone missing, including the backups, and is in the trunk of my car. They may be interested in recruiting the man who knows more about Appie genetics than anyone else alive. Their Assistant Director, though, has a more personal interest, since I rather brutally raped his daughter, Karma and left her with the recording of the act stuffed inside her. Though again, there is a copy for you in my car." He turned to point to the bound Appie. "But the Director himself will probably want to recover his walking cane, as well as his daughter, Leonie, who is tied to it. A daughter who is, I hasten to add, the only Appie hybrid in the world, and has quite the most beautiful eyes."

Leonie looked up at the mention of her name and her pained golden cat's eyes were indeed quite beautiful. The only hybrid eyes in the world were quite a coup.

"Is she what he claims?" he asked his seneschal.

"I shall establish it shortly." The seneschal stepped outside, gave orders. A servant came running up, took a photograph, and ran out again. Eventually, he nodded, and spoke in Chinese. "With as much certainty as the biometric system can give us, yes, she is. Her markings are also visually identical. She does appear to be the same Appie girl that the new Director has had with him on various trips."

Gao Chao nodded and turned back to Mr Miller. "Her identity seems confirmed. But still, I must be sure that you are not here as an assassin or a spy for the Sanctuary. Rape her. Keep her alive: she may be useful as a pawn in the game until the Sanctuary is destroyed. But rape her."

"Here? Now?" Was the hesitation due to a spy being caught out, or merely social mores at performing in front of an audience?

"Now, yes. But not here: over by the cherry tree would be more pleasing. If you need anything to help you, you have but to ask." The porters moved to stand by the tree, and guards closed in a little, to hurry him.

"Hrm." Mr Miller would not be rushed. "Perhaps some rope, some lubricant, a whip... no, I can make do."

He went to the bound feline. Her hands and ankles were tied behind her and she dangled painfully from them, bowed back tightly and tied to her father's walking cane. She whimpered as he looker her over. "Put her down, untie her, but hold her wrists. It would be a poor show if she escaped", he told the porters. The seneschal called out a translation of his orders and the porters hurried to obey.

They were more cautious of her claws than they needed to be - all four sets were hidden inside stout leather gloves, with a metal plate outside them: these 'Appiecuffs' had become the standard way for police to restrain them in the Sanctuary. Despite their caution, though, they soon had her held in place.

He twirled his finger for the porters to rotate her so that her back was facing the audience, which they accomplished with some awkwardness, trying to remain respectfully facing Gao Chui. Then he picked up the cane. "I apologise, sir, that I find it unpleasant to fuck someone unless they have been properly tenderised."

"This cane was your father's, was it not?" When the cat did not respond immediately, he pulled her tail back and up, and lashed her buttocks viciously, bringing a scream.

"Yes! It's Adam's!" But another blow struck, making her scream again.

"*Was* Adam's. Now belongs, as do you, to Gao Chui here. Your mother used it for support when her legs grew weak. It was in her hand when she died. You held it when you learned to walk. Isn't it *fitting*," He emphasised that word with another stroke, "that this stick, which has been such a constant force in your life, should be here with you, near the end of it? And isn't it *ironic*..." this time he brought it up between her legs, the blow lifting her feet fully off the ground as she screamed; "...that what once brought you such reassurance, now brings you such pain?"

She was sobbing incoherently, so he took that as his cue, lifting her by her tail and raping her brutally. When he was done, he inserted the cane's head inside her.

Cao Chao applauded. "A nice performance. Very well, you have my protection for the time being." He motioned for the seneschal to come and assist and spoke in Chinese. "Take this gentleman and accommodate him in the east wing. Consider him staff with lowest-level access for the time being. He gets no wage, just bed and board. Report to me if he does anything unusual."

=====

Gao Chui looked at Leonie, bound and hanging from the cane, which was hooked onto two large nails embedded in her cell wall. Nipple clamps with painful weights stretched her nipples painfully.

"You thought your little plan would escape me. Well, it has not. I may have to flee the country because of your meddling, but at least this time I can have the pleasure of revenge upon your family. I only regret that I cannot take the time to fully repay you and your family for ruining me twice."

He set up a video camera on a tripod, and set it recording the scene. "But if your father somehow managed to escape the firebombing of Sanctuary, then at least this video should reach him."

He stepped up to her, lifting her down to the hard cell bed, and raping her, without even bothering to untie her. The nipple clamps jerked and wrenched at her, and her screams brought his vengeful lust quickly to a head.

As he lay over her, feeling her wracking sobs tear through her body, he smiled. Revenge was the sweetest feeling in the world. He closed his eyes and savoured the feeling of pleasure it gave.

Then he was falling, and the cold stone floor hit his ear. He opened his eyes, and saw himself, still lying on top of her. What was this? An out of body experience? The sex had not been THAT good!

But the girl was pushing him up, and he saw that his body was strangely headless. It was only when he saw a thin, straight sword in her hand that he understood. And then, as she began to butcher his body, the darkness came.

=====

THE END



====ToDo:====



This remains a work in progress. These are things I'd like to do to it, if I ever had the time and inclination.

After about section 17, everything becomes shit - characters are two dimensional, and the story totally loses steam and energy and plot, and descends into pure porn. Fix that. Especially because it's interminably BORING porn, interspersed with even more boring chat.

As for Gao, There is no real reason for Adam to send those two off on the mission, no real reason for her to think she could sword him, no reason for the guards not to notice it's a sword-cane...

Mr Miller needs to plant some evidence that Gao is planning a military coup. Without this, military wouldn't be called off, and assassination is pointless. = Implicating Gao in the coup must require them to go to his place to do it, and provide a reason that the Chinese military would be called back in time because of it.

Few places I just put dialog as "blah" "blah" - add in who's speaking, what they're up to, etc.

A scene with Cat really leaning on the cane to show her ageing.

More small details of the cane throughout, if it's to be the last-seen thing.

Morally and legally, there are gonna be problems, particularly in the west - all the Appies are "underage". People who have been having sex with retarded underage humans are gonna be looking at a lot of trouble, going to hate themselves, going to be hated. Detailing this, and its fallout, would be nice, but it would pull attention away from China where all the action is.

UK navy on scene with cruise liner

Ch govt backed down.

Leonie pregnant, doesn't know who the father is, doesn't mind.

End on a boat, Leonie-Karma marriage at sea holding sword-cane.

Cats show neotenous behaviour around humans, but not each other - show this more, and build on it. Show more feline body language.

Check all scenes for tail use - include more, and change any scenes that would be wrong with a tail.

Consider giving Mr Miller a first name, Adam a surname, and Gao a title

Consider renaming everyone.

Think up a better name than "Appliances/Appies".

Arousing images, consider including: one girl holds another's legs spread for man; wet clothes; catheters; nipple clamps

DSM-IV couldn't update that fast

Mention that retardation is because of the "trough": intelligent appies are too creepy.

Cat's cute repeating of words - make more of it later.

Completely delete pointless characters: Dick, Hui's wife and kid, Nicky.

Any other comments people have.