Alyssa opened her eyes.

At first it seemed like it could all have been a bad dream. She could barely see anything, and her body was numb. Maybe she had passed out drunk on the floor of her apartment again.

As her eyes adjusted she saw the crosshatch of metal bars three inches in front of her face. She felt the biting cold on her tender skin, naked and exposed. She felt the cold metallic floor beneath her aching body and the throbbing pain in her crotch where they had put that horrible thing... it hurt so badly. It hurt her inside. She pulled herself up on two thin, trembling arms.

Her head bumped into the top of the cage. She put her right hand out to one side and found she couldn't extend it all the way, even with her left shoulder pushed hard up against the left side. It made a tiss noise when she touched the mesh. She had to bend her knees to lie down. It was so dark, and so cold. She wanted to die, to forget that it had ever happened and pretend that she had died back in Nate's bed, when things had been so good.

She cried for a long time, she didn't even know how long. Eventually she ran out of tears and pulled herself up again, managing to twist herself into a sitting position. Through the tough metal door to her cage she could see the shining floor of a concourse, railing beyond that and... that was it. She was on the floor, the lowest row.

Alyssa brushed the tears from her eyes as she looked to her left. She gasped; the cages seemed to go on forever, so much so that eventually the number of cage walls compiled so that all she could see was blackness, and in between each slide of mesh was another naked female. She looked to her right and it was the same. God, how could they have so many? When would the police come? How could they be getting away with this?

Tss, Tsss.

The girl in the cage next to hers, immediately on her left, tapped her cage wall. She waved at Alyssa with a feeble little smile and turned herself to sit facing her.

'Hi.' She said quietly.

'Hey.' Alyssa said through a hiccough and sob.

They didn't say anything more for a few minutes. The girl kept opening and closing her mouth, looking for something to say, but nothing came out. It was comforting to know she was at least trying.

'I'm Katie.' She said finally.

'Alyssa.'

Katie had auburn hair, fair skin and a few freckles. Unlike Alyssa she wasn't trying to hide her body; her soft round breasts hung openly, and she sat with her legs crossed so that her womanhood was fully visible, Vaglock and all.

She spotted Alyssa looking at it and nodded slowly, cocking her mouth.

'Yeeeep. It stops hurting after a while, don't worry. It stings a bit when they take it out to use you, and when it goes back in it throbs for like, hours. But like, mostly you just forget its there. Just don't sit on it.'

Alyssa felt sick. 'Use... use you?'

'Yeah.' Katie shrugged. She turned her head and lapped at the spout of the water bottle on the door of her cage. Alyssa thought the girl must have gone mad.

'What... how do we get out of here?'

'We don't.' Katie lay back against the rear of the cage and crossed her fingers. 'But I get that you aren't there yet, you know. Took me a while, too.'

'A while?' Alyssa's head was swimming. She was sure this was all a nightmare. 'How... how long could you possible have been here?!'

'Will you two shut it?'

From behind came a third female voice, this one belonging to the girl in the cage to Alyssa's right. Her ebony skin caught the light in a subtle way as she sat upright and scowled at the pair of them. Alyssa noticed that she, too, didn't seem to care about privacy. Her fingers were laced through the square gaps between the bars, her tits on full display along with every inch of her exotic body.

'Sorry Kyra.' Katie smirked and went on with scratching her fingernails against the floor of her cage. Alyssa saw a few white-marked shapes in there; a duck, what looked like a rabbit and a vaguely phallic symbol.

'Can never get to sleep when there's a new girl.' Kyra snorted and sat up, drinking from the spout in the same way Katie had. Alyssa wondered if she had gone mad, to have dreamt up something like this in the first place.

Footsteps, heavy ones, came echoing down the concourse in front of their row. All the women nearby instantly retreated into the backs of their cages as a pair of heavy duty boots paced past; Alyssa could not see anything above the man's knees. Once he had gone, breathing resumed. Katie pulled herself back to face Alyssa.

'To answer your question,' her eyes floated upwards and to the right and she began counting on her fingers, '...eight, nine, so yeah, nine months. I think.'

'Nine...' Alyssa was sure she was going to faint. She could not imagine anything worse. She wouldn't need to imagine, it was happening to her! I have to get out of here!

'Yeah,' Katie went on casually, 'you kind of, I dunno, get used to it. Like I was so fucked up when I came here, I cried for like three days. But then you just learn how to deal, you know. Its not like this is a death camp or anything, they just keep us pretty locked up. I mean, if I had a choice like I'd totally walk out of here. Like, I'd really love that. But this is it now.'

Alyssa's breath grew more rapid with every word Katie said. She clutched the sides of the cage for support. 'What do you mean? What do you mean this is it? We're captives, we need to tell someone! If the world found out about this...!'

'The world kinda knows.' Kyra said with sultry sarcasm. 'Everyone kinda knows. Girls like you who protest, who stir shit up, they get thrown in here. So nobody protests. They got the white house, the congress, they got the police and the army. Who the hell's gonna stop 'em? You?'

'So... so you're saying this is... this is just how we live now?'

Krya shrugged. Katie hummed to herself as she carried on scratching shapes. Alyssa's mind exploded in a fit of panic and fury and she threw herself at the cage door.

'Woah, woah!'

Katie rushed up to the near corner and waggled her fingers through at Alyssa, who had already drawn back to throw her shoulder against the door hinges once more.

'Just calm down!'

'You better get her away from there.' said Kyra.

'NO!' Alyssa shouted through sobs, smashing into the small door again, 'NO, I WILL NOT STAY HERE!'

She threw herself against the door one more time, only this time she didn't connect with it. She fell right through the hole and onto the floor, seeing only a flash of railing and the endless cages on the other side of the wing. Then she felt a strong hand grab her head and shove it to the floor, followed by three blinding lashes of pain across her back. She screamed and writhed as the whip struck her, and then she was back in the cage with a firm shove that sent her sprawling up against the back. When she turned around the cage was locked again and the boots were walking away.

Alyssa felt her mind fading, and then all was black.

When she woke up she was face-down on the cage floor. There was a ringing in her ears. She could hear someone talking. They sounded far away, but were rapidly drawing closer.

'...alright, its alright, you're okay! Hey, Alyssa, can you hear me?'

The ringing stopped. She got up quickly, head swimming. The cage around her was swirling, making a pattern like a thatched basket.

'She's not dead.'

Kyra was leaning toward the wall of her cage, looking down at Alyssa with mild curiosity.

'You alright?'

Alyssa's back felt like it had been cut to pieces. She touched a nursing hand to the skin, bringing her fingers up to her eyes expecting to see blood. There was none.

'Yeah,' Katie nodded, 'they're good at that. They don't break the skin unless they want to.'

'You got lucky,' said Kyra, folding her arms beneath her big round dark tits, 'that was just a warning. You do that again, you'll be in the punishment rooms. So, you know, don't do that again.'