Two cold steel bars closed around Natasha's breasts, squeezing hard as Degan turned the screws. Her face was red and her throat rippling as she screamed.

'Aggghhhhh!!'

The stone walls and heavy door absorbed her cries; she was his, and his alone, and all the sounds of her punishment belonged to him. In the thirty square feet of space in which he had kept Natasha for six long months, he had made himself a fortress of isolation.

Keeping the screws in place Degan switched to the electrode remote. The pulse fired up inside her pussy and she began to twitch, held back by the brace of the vice.

'Ahhh! Ahhhh! AHHHH!'

Her slender legs, pale from having not seen the sun in so long, kicked against the ankle shackles while her suspended arms yanked hard and pointlessly on the restraints. Her ankles and wrists were sore and scarred. He had not moved her position for seven days.

Degan pushed the pulse setting to maximum for a few seconds before cutting it short, just as her voice failed her and her head slumped forward, hips bucking, legs still twitching.

He took a seat on the bench and watched her tremble in the restraints. It had been a while since she had said anything, and it had been even longer since she had tried to convince him to let her return to her cage. Degan did not miss it. Her constant griping had been a distraction, and on more than one occasion he had considered giving in to her. He had even let her sleep unrestrained once, but made the mistake of leaving his tools in the room. When he returned the next night she stuck a scalpel into his thigh that had still not fully healed. Lesson learned the hard way.

BZZT. BZZT.

Degan pulled out his TabPhone and read the message.

Natasha jerked a little. Her chains clinked and her back arched as she groaned.

'You're not done yet, bitch.'

Degan got up and locked the cell door behind him.

His footsteps echoed back and forth along the damp, dark hallway. His walk back to the upper world of reality was slow. Mentally he punished himself. It was humiliating to know, beyond all doubt, that Wilkes still knew his every move. Cameras on him or not the bastard had a mind more agile than his, and knew him far too well.

The caging halls burst upon him while his mind was still in deep space. Even living among them, Degan could not help but be struck by the sheer size of their fledgling compound; cages upon cages, three high on the wall and spanning stypefying distances into the horizon. The noise was constant, like a stadium packed to the rafters. High-pitched voices rang out with moans, wails and chatter between cages. Most of the women sat facing their doors, naked legs pulled up to their chests and arms folded around their ankles, turning heads left and right to converse with their neighbours.

As Degan passed by each row and column an audible hush followed him. The girls would dart their eyes in his direction and then cast them downward in fear. Their chatting ended abruptly and those sobbing - always the newest captures - would stifle their pitiable moans and look away. The mesh of metal that separated him from them must have looked all of a sudden like a defensive grid, and they became glad of their imprisonment.

'Morning, Sir!'

Dylan, trussed up in the new uniform design, moved from cage to cage refilling the water decanters. A few girls leapt forward and lapped at the metallic spouts that fed into their cages as he passed.

'Hard work never looked so easy.' He smirked at Degan.

Degan nodded him off, not quite ready to smile yet. His eyes had fallen on the vacant cage at the end of the row, and the woman in the little cell next door looked so much like Natasha...

'Degan!'

He spun around, heart thudding as if he had been caught in some heinous act. Wilkes was pumping boot into concrete floor toward him, followed by a throng of wide-eyed men. Wilkes had his meeting-for-business suit tailored and slung, loose at the edges. For all the time the man spent watching his creation, he could spend a little time watching himself.

'Morning.' Degan forced a lip-tight smile at the visitors and waved his hand awkwardly. None of them responded or even looked his way, transfixed by the sight of the compound interior. Degan creased his brow, trying to read their expression; it was somewhere between delirious enthusiasm and terrified guilt.

'Our first customers,' Wilkes intoned under his breath when he caught up with Degan, 'no complaints so far.'

'A man who complains about this is not a man who deserves it.' Degan sighed and patted his chest pockets. Wilkes shook his head.

'You've started again.'

Fuck you, Nostradamus, thought Degan.

'Maybe, what does it matter?'

Wilkes shrugged back at him. The colour of the hall seemed to turn even greyer with each passing second of their encounter. Degan knew it was he who was sucking the energy out of the room, and he didn't like it.

'Anyways,' Degan chucked another wave at the horny visitors, 'I'm sure they'll pay whatever you charge.'

'Not just that. Some of them have offered triple price just to be at the front of the queue.'

'Front of the...' Degan let out a whistle and a genuinely amused snicker, 'well, I guess they only have a thousand to one ratio in their favour, they need all the advantages they can get. Where are you taking these fuckboys?'

'Archibald had the boys put up a temporary facility on the North-East wing, sixty-two private rooms. You didn't hear the noise?'

He wants to know where I've been, thought Degan, you know damn well where I've been, but you still want to hear me say it.

'I'm gonna...'

'Sure. Give me a shout if you want to talk.'

Stop being so fucking nice to me!

'Yeah. Yeah, well, see ya.'

Degan put as much distance as he could between Wilkes, the stag party, and himself. He left the caging concourse and headed up to his quarters. The thought of locking himself away again was better than spending any more time with Wilkes, or in the company of men who... well, if he was honest, he had no legitimate reason to dislike them, but it was what it was. He needed peace, he needed solitude. He needed to stop thinking what Wilkes would say about all this.

'Morning, Sir!' said a guard whose name he did not know. He only grunted in reply.

Wilkes, the one who knew everything. He saw it all, planned it all. Even this, Degan's own dream, had become Wilkes' invention alone. He acted like an Emperor, handing down titles and gratitude when he saw fit. Even his mistakes only demonstrated his humanity, and that made Degan sick.

Millie Slate wasn't there, he remembered with relish, you were sure she would be, but she wasn't.

Degan stopped dead in the hallway. Another guard greeted him. This time he didn't even grunt. A few seconds later he spun around and almost ran back the way he had come.

You think you're the only one who remembers everything?

He raced back into the caging concourse, almost knocking over an eager young man browsing cages, skirting past a huge football player laughing with a girl on each shoulder. He jumped up the steps three at a time, bursting onto the fourth level and skidding to a halt. He came across Herd XG1 and ran his head along the line of confused and worried female faces until he came across hers.

She was propped up with her back to the cage door, stretching her long legs out at an angle. Her thin fingers were laced through the mesh and gripping it tightly.

'Ruth!' Degan barked.

She jolted out of her relaxed position and flipped herself over onto all fours, brilliant green eyes locked with his like a deer on a country road.

'Yes, Sir?'

He dug out his barely-used keycard and swiped it against her cage. The door swung free on command and he grabbed her wrists, dragging her out of the cage and over his shoulder.

'North-East wing... North-East...'

Six minutes later he was carrying Ruth along a narrow glassy corridor. Her tits bounced against his back and her legs hung suspended over his torso. She made no sound or protest as he bounded through into the new build, a plush and colourful layout that resembled a new office block with narrow numerically marked doorways leading off each section.

Degan made for door number thirty-one and threw Ruth through the door, watching her land in a heap and scramble into a kneeling position. He checked left and right for any prying eyes and slammed the door behind himself.

'Two guns!' He yelled at her. She broke protocol and lifted her head, confused and frightened.

'Sorry, Sir?'

'There were two guns when we found you! Shotgun and handgun! Edgecliff was killed with a handgun at point-blank range, which means you got into her face without her firing a single shot!'

Her face crumpled. He could see the little connections firing, desperately looking for a way out.

'Y-yes, yes Sir...'

Degan let out a yell of irritation and spun his head left and right, checking out the built-in cabinets. Whips, clamps, electrodes, knives, bats, paddles... nothing new for Ruth. Nothing that would get her to talk.

His eyes fell on a cast-iron rod and an electric stove.

'No...' She shook her head slowly, holding up her hands, 'please, Sir, no, no, NO!'

He had her head pinned to the floor as he heated the rod. The iron turned orange and then white-hot in a matter of minutes. He held her down with one hand gripping both wrists and shoved a knee into her back to control her struggling hips. Her vaglock stuck out, a bulb of metal buried in her pussy with a long chain dangling off the dial. Her asshole was bare and open...

'NO! NO PLEASE SIR! PLEASE, I'LL... I'LL TELL YOU!'

Degan held the smoking rod inches from her puckered asshole.

'TALK!' He yelled back at her. She gulped through sobs, fighting for breath, skin trembling with fear.

'She... she was there! Millie Slate! She killed Edgecliff and made me promise not to talk! PLEASE, Sir, please I'll do anything, I'll do anything!'

Degan tossed the rod into a cauldron of cool water and let Ruth go. She scrambled onto her back and burst into tears, and in the same moment he felt shame at what he had almost done, a powerful sense of victory overwhelmed him.

'So... she got away from us.'

'Y-yes -hic- yes, Sir. I am so, so sorry. I am so sorry.'

'Don't be, Ruth. The truth has set you free.'

She lifted her head in amazement.

'Well, no, not that kind of free, but metaphorically... it doesn't matter. Did she say where she went? Do you know what she's planning to do?'

Ruth shook her head. 'She didn't say Sir, she just ran. I swear that's the truth Sir, I will never lie again!'

'I believe you,' said Degan, and he did, 'but you will not tell anyone else, and you especially will not tell Wilkes, is that understood?'

She looked like she didn't understand the why, but with the iron rod still making a haze of smoke in the ceiling, she certainly understood the what. She would say nothing, he was sure of it.

For once, Degan would know, and Wilkes would not.