Arrive at the locker room without incident

Despite my dirty, disheveled state, I did my best to avoid drawing too much attention to myself. It was surreal, seeing all my female colleagues. They were... different. Not people, as I had previously known them to be. The weirdest thing about that was that it felt almost normal. Of course they wouldn't be people. No woman was a person anymore; we were all just things. I didn't dwell on it much, as a drinking fountain demanded my full attention. I gulped water down, feeling the cold liquid run down my chin as I drank my fill. I knew I should pace myself after two days without, but I didn't care.

At the approaching clack, clack, clack sound of high heels on the polished tile floor, however, I snapped out of it and hid myself in a tiny alcove behind a plant. A pair of women wearing identical uniforms and bright white chokers walked by without so much as glancing at me. They were chatting quietly about something I couldn't hear, but I couldn't help notice that their clothing was so tight and revealing it wouldn't look out of place on stage at a strip club. My own outfit was comparatively modest, and made me stand out like a sore thumb.

A few women wore no skirt at all. It was still a long walk to the locker rooms... maybe I'd have better luck if I tried harder to blend in. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I stripped off my skirt and left it behind the potted fern. My blouse was all wrong, but if I used a hair tie to bunch up the back it looked tight enough to maybe fit the new dress code.

The air felt cool on my bare thighs as I quick-walked down the hall. It felt wrong, to be so exposed in such a well-lit public place but I didn't have time to feel embarrassed. My mind raced, gathering as much information as I could. There were some variations in overall dress, but every single woman wore a white choker and very tall heels. That was important. Rounding a corner to the small break area near my destination, I gasped at the sight of Trudy from accounting being fucked against the vending machine.

She was bent forward, hands and cheek pressed up against the side of the heavy box, while some man I didn't recognize drove his hips into her at a leisurely pace. Trudy's eyes were lidded with pleasure, her face flushed with arousal. Shocking at it was to just happen upon such a scene, I saw no indication that she was being **** against her will. It was just a casual fuck in the break room. Totally normal, I guessed, dismayed.

Blushing, I hurried past the couple and into the locker room just beyond. Inside, I felt like I'd crossed into relative safety. There were three other women inside, and none of them wore the white choker. Two were completely naked, in fact, having just stepped out of the showers, and one was wrapped in a towel, blow-drying her hair. I didn't recognize any of them.

Quickly, I picked a locker and stripped down to my skin, eager to wash off the memory of the last two days. None of the girls paid me any attention as I slipped by them to a shower stall on the end.

The hot water was heaven and I allowed myself a few minutes to just enjoy the temporary empty comfort of the small warm space. I was almost able to forget about everything else going on, except that the conversation of the other girls showering made it to my ears.

"Yeah, I didn't think I'd ever get his smell off of me."

"Could be worse. Did you year what happened to Whitney? Her boss keeps her chained under his desk, now."

"And the company allows it?? That doesn't sound right."

"I guess he pulled some strings and got management to give her to him. She's not even company property. She's his personal property. No choker. He said he's going to have her branded so there's no mistake who she belongs to."

"Good lord. These men are animals."

"At least we're not outside. That shit is scary. Better to be company property than a stray, I say."

The illusion of my shower being a warm, safe place was shattered. But I did learn something important. The choker everyone was wearing marked them as company property, it seemed. That made sense. Based on what I knew about the corporate office, they would have a whole book on rules governing how company property was to be used by employees. That would perfectly explain why everything seemed so... orderly.

I wondered briefly about the profit motive. My first thoughts went to human trafficking, thinking that so many girls would be a valuable inventory for a company to sell off, but then I realized that the market was saturated. Every single woman in the world was already a product, so who would you sell to? In the end, I decided it was just labor. We were already trained to do our jobs, so why not keep us working?

I sighed and shut off my shower, letting the water drip down my body for a while as I thought about what to do next. I didn't like the idea of being "company property," especially willingly. But if I could get my hands on one of those white chokers, I could blend right in and probably move freely about the building. I could get to my desk, find my keys and phone... Maybe I could even get all the way home! But the other girls had said that "outside" is worse than being here. After what I'd seen when the TRAP first happened, I was prepared to believe it.