Chapter 10: Freedom

29 September 2025

Sarah’s return to consciousness was shockingly sudden. One moment, she was in the lift with the rain-soaked stranger. The next, she was drowning in a sea of artificial light.

The blinding whiteness was overwhelming, especially because of the various assaults on her other senses.

Sarah tried to sit up, but her limbs felt like they had been replaced with lead. Her wrists were strapped to her sides, tied to the armrests of the ergonomic chair. She also couldn’t turn her head - something was binding her head and neck in place.

Next, she processed that she was similarly prohibited from speaking. Some sort of gag was intruding in her mouth. She tried to scream, but all that came out was a muffled keening.

Her sensation of helplessness sparked another attempt at struggling, and resulted in the same futility. Her legs were bound together at her ankles, and some sort of strap prevented Sarah from even lifting her bum an inch off the seat. She was well and truly trapped.

Defeated, she collapsed into her bindings. And without the adrenaline to fuel her panicked struggles, she realised that it was deeply quiet in her mind.

There was a liquid pressure on her thoughts. She reached for the idea of calling a friend for… then she felt calm. Maybe Scotland Yard was already… and she heard an entity hushing the silly notion.

Sarah was confused. Why is my own voice telling me…

She was quiet again. And she felt good.

***

Time meant nothing in the room. There were no windows. No clocks. No periodic chimes to mark the hours.

The room itself was institutional and bland. In Sarah’s field of vision, there was matte-textured cabinetry and polished chrome fittings. The only movement she could see was her own, displayed on a digital monitor mounted against the far wall.

Sarah saw she was dressed in what seemed like a hospital gown. She could see the restraints at her wrists and her waist and her ankles. And when she focused, she could make out her eyes. They were glowing. Rather than the faded brown she was familiar with, her eyes emitted an amber glow.

The last feature of the room was the single door. It was behind her, so she couldn’t see it directly. Only in the monitor.

To a muralist who lived for the depth of vivid colours and textured shadows, this room was a prison.

***

Sarah had nodded off again, but she was startled awake by the soft click of the door latch. She felt the pressure change as the door opened inward, followed by the slight whoosh from the well-oiled hinges.

Two figures entered, and then moved into Sarah’s field of vision.

One wore a white lab coat with “Jenny” embroidered over her left breast, a pale blue silk blouse, and navy blue trousers. Her dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun which sharpened her features. She cradled a tablet in the crook of her left arm, and occasionally looked down and tapped or swiped the screen.

Beside her stood another woman. Sarah recognised her face, but her features were dramatically different now. The woman had her blonde hair pulled into a topknot. She was wearing a stylish corporate suit which accentuated the lines and curves of the woman’s body. This woman’s posture was stiff, and her emerald eyes were fixed on Sarah with a look that was part fascination and part practised indifference.

“Hello, Sarah. I’m sorry that I had to deceive you, but soon you’ll understand that it’s better this way.”

Sarah wanted to shout, and spit, and ask a dozen questions, but the ballgag prevented anything intelligible from coming out. She had already learned that thrashing about wouldn’t help either.

The other woman - the Jenny woman - addressed her next.

“I’m afraid that we’ve had to resort to rather primitive methods for working on you, Sarah. It’s rather embarrassing, but I don’t have the resources yet for a proper lab for long-term **** and conditioning. So until I am certain that you aren’t going to do something foolish like trying to run, or scream, I’ll have to keep you penned up like this.”

Sarah’s eyes opened wide with terror. This woman had admitted to **** her. Yet she said it with less passion than discussing Arsenal’s last fixture.

“For what it’s worth, Sarah, you’ll probably be ready to comply by this time tomorrow, if I can use Rebecca as any kind of benchmark. With her, I already had an established relationship, so perhaps she was predisposed to trusting me. Or maybe the virus just knows another of its own. I’m hoping you’ll be able to provide data about that. Tell me - are you feeling a vibration from being close to us?”

Sarah’s brows furrowed as she silently processed what lab coat Jenny had just said. Tomorrow? Virus? Vibration?

“Here, let’s try a little experiment,” the dark-haired woman said. “Close your eyes, and take a breath. I promise I won’t do anything to you if you just follow my instructions.”

She didn’t know why, but Sarah complied. She didn’t have much other choice, since fighting back hadn’t gotten her anywhere other than sore wrists, and… what the bloody fuck was that?

Sarah’s eyes ripped open, and she saw that Jenny was standing a metre closer to her. That was the only thing which had changed, and yet she felt it like a wave of energy had washed across her skin. The goose pimples were still standing on both of her arms.

“Fascinating,” Jenny stated while she made notes on her tablet. “Rebecca, be a dear.”

Behind Sarah, there was the slightest sound as the blonde took a step forward. Sarah saw it on the monitor and at the same time she experienced the closer proximity. Her chest was rising and falling quickly, as she coped with the strangeness of feeling the two women through the air.

“So we haven’t been imagining it,” Rebecca chuckled.

Jenny smiled. The smile was discomfiting to Sarah. It reminded her too much of the expression of her cat after he dropped a dead bird at the foot of her bed.

***

With Rebecca and Jenny both remaining in the room, Sarah showed a remarkable drop in anxiety. Her heart rate and breathing had slowed to resting levels, and she didn’t try to jerk against the restraints.

Jenny directed Rebecca out of the room after some time, to go and get some takeaway. Before the door had even closed, Sarah’s vitals changed, and she exhibited signs of mild distress. Her pupils dilated, her breathing accelerated, and she tried to lean towards Jenny like a flower turns towards the sun.

Jenny reached down and stroked Sarah’s cheek. The physical contact seemed to soothe Sarah. She gently pitched her head into Jenny’s palm, and nuzzled against her fingers.

“Does that make you feel better, Subject 05?” Jenny asked. The question combined tenderness in her tone with the dehumanising nomenclature. Despite that, Sarah nodded, and closed her eyes.

“Subject 05, if I promise to stay close to you, will you behave yourself?”

Again, Sarah nodded.

Jenny carefully unlatched the ballgag, and took it from Sarah’s mouth. For the first time Sarah could remember since awakening in the room, she could breathe normally. She swallowed, and moved her jaw around to loosen the muscles. But she also kept her promise, and Jenny kept hers too. She stood close to Sarah, and softly ran her hand through Sarah’s wild hair.

“Thank you for being a good girl, Sarah. That will make this so much easier for both of us.”

Sarah closed her eyes and appreciated the kindness. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

Jenny smiled again, and this time it seemed a little less startling to Sarah. No matter how fucked up this situation was, Sarah couldn’t find it in herself to react the way she intellectually knew she should.

“Sarah, I’m going to grab that chair” – she pointed to a swivel chair in the corner – “and bring it back next to you. You will keep behaving, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. I promise.”

With that commitment, Jenny turned and took the few strides to retrieve the chair. The sound of the ball bearings in the wheels roared like thunder in Sarah’s ears after the silence of before.

Jenny settled into the chair at Sarah’s side, and placed her hand on Sarah’s thigh.

“Jenny?”

“Yes, Sarah?”

"What is this? Where am I? What did you do to me?”

Jenny gestured with a sweep of her arm around the room. “This is your new home for the time being. We’re still in London, and I’m going to keep the rest of the details for now. And what I did to you… you’ve been infected with a virus. Just like me, and just like Rebecca. The virus is something you’ve never heard about before, but it isn’t going to worry you a bit.”

“What… what does it do? Are we going to die from it?”

“Oh heavens no. I wouldn’t do that to myself, much less to you. No, this virus will make you better. You’ll be able to be the woman you were meant to be.”

Sarah was confused by the answer. “Who am I supposed to be?”

“Why, you’re supposed to be a subject for Master, of course.”

Master?!? Are you out of your fucking mind? What kind of mental bitch are you?

Those were Sarah’s thoughts, but she didn’t utter any of them. She wanted to. She really wanted to.

But the pathway between her brain and her mouth was as impassable as Tower Bridge while a ship transited down the Thames.

“I can see in your eyes that you tried to resist your calling, Subject 05. The Master wouldn’t be happy about that, so the virus didn’t let you. That’s the kind way that it teaches you how to behave.”

***

Jenny excitedly prepared Sarah for her experience with the colour treatments. She had modified the sequences to vary the order of the colour flashes, and the lengths, and the intensities of the emissions. She had been treating the details from the package as canon. Now she would see what happened when she wrote her own versions of the story.

For the first test, she used the same order, with quicker transitions.

“The Master requires you to be quietened,” the scientist said with a smile. She tapped the tablet again, and turned it towards Sarah. Numbers were counting down, from 5 to 1. Then it suddenly flared a bright red light. Sarah seized and could not move or even blink. The light transitioned to yellow, and Sarah felt like a million needles were tingling across the surface of her skin. Then finally, it changed to green, and there was only bliss, followed by nothingness.

"Sarah is quiet," the scientist said softly. "You are Subject 05.”

“Yes,” the woman agreed blandly, as the glow in her eyes dimmed. “I am Subject 05.”

Next, Jenny dialled up the red more intensely and frequently. When the ruby light flared, Sarah’s body tensed up. And when the light turned off, so did Sarah. Five cycles of that left her slumped and listless.

“Are you ready to serve Master, Subject 05?”

She smiled wanly, and **** herself to nod. “Serve Master.”

“Are you happy to give up your past life for Master?”

“Noooooo… please.”

Jenny was disappointed, but not surprised. Rebecca resisted her conversion to the best of her ability too. And in the end, she failed, because she was destined to fail. Jenny had no doubt that she would figure out how to tear apart Sarah’s resistance as well, before she stitched her back together into a much more pleasing fabric.

The experiment in amber, as Jenny thought of it, yielded fascinating results. As Jenny had learned from her petri dish, the yellow colour opened up the sequence of the virus. Once it was open, the host could be trained with verbal messages. Jenny discovered that, by adjusting the amber frequency slightly, she could induce an extended trance state. Sarah remained in something resembling hypnosis, and she was quite receptive to being programmed.

Jenny paused her active role in the experiment, while leaving Sarah staring at the yellow-lit screen. She rushed back to her lab, and grabbed the VR goggles from her workbench.

Sarah was still floating in her amber-induced trance when Jenny returned. She turned on the feed into the goggles, so Sarah would see what was being projected onto the monitor. She slid the goggles over Sarah’s head, and fitted them in place. There was no change in Sarah’s posture or expression.

“Sarah, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Jenny, I can hear you,” she responded in a breathy voice.

“You will not resist.”

“I will not resist.”

“You will listen to me and obey.”

“I will listen to you and obey.”

“You have surrendered your freedom.”

“I have… I have surrendered my freedom.”

Good, Jenny thought to herself. Only a slight hesitation.

“You will submit for Master.”

“I will submit for Master.”

“You do not want to be free.”

“I… no… I want to be free. Please.”

Jenny was so tempted to trigger the red colour, to punish the resistance. How dare this bitch say no to the Master? But she held back. She would save negative reinforcement for another day, if more persuasive methods could not be made to work first.

“Sarah, dear, you do not want to be free. I can assure you of that.”

Sarah’s expression changed. “I… I don’t want to be free?”

“That’s right, Sarah. You do not want to be free. This will be so much better than what you wrongly believe is freedom.”

“Ummm… okay… I don’t want to be free.”

With that, Jenny blasted Sarah with the green colour. Sarah’s eyes stared at the monitor as her nerves pulsed with endless arousal.

And the smile on Sarah’s face was… satisfied.

***

Despite the makeshift nature of Jenny’s auxiliary lab, she was making exceptional progress with Sarah. After roughly sixteen hours of continuous programming, the woman no longer questioned most of Jenny’s teachings. She was behaving much like a trained pet. She would sit, and stay, and perform on command.

But Jenny was still unable to sink the deeper levels of conditioning into Sarah’s being. She struggled to figure out what made Sarah so much harder to break than Rebecca. Sarah certainly wasn’t any smarter than Rebecca. She didn’t have unusual physiological characteristics or blood chemistry.

The one thing which kept coming up over and over again was Sarah’s yearning for freedom. She had accepted that she had to obey. She had accepted that she needed Master. She even saw Jenny as an authority figure, who she was responding to for virtually every little prompt. But freedom was a stumbling block.

“Why not ask her?” Rebecca suggested, as the two of them sipped their teas in the canteen on their break.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, rather than telling her to surrender her freedom, ask her what freedom means to her. That way, you have a more specific target for when you dismantle whatever it is you are trying to take away from her.”

“Fuck me, why didn’t I think of that?” Jenny commented.

Rebecca took another sip while she enjoyed being right. “You always were a bit of a tosser, weren’t you?”

Jenny quietly accepted the jab, finished her tea, and made her way back to the secluded room where she had kept Sarah isolated for the past 25 hours. Upon entering, and without warning, Jenny triggered the amber screen on the monitor. Sarah shivered as the yellow colour washed over her, unable to look away or resist the opening effect on her.

Jenny knew better than to look at the monitor, since she would be affected as well. She kept her eyes focused on her subject.

“Sarah, what does freedom mean to you?”

Sarah’s head bobbed slightly as her thoughts tried to reach outside the isolation of the room. She had been prohibited from thinking in such ways since she had been awakened here however long ago it was. The act of thinking about freedom was disconcerting.

“It’s okay, Sarah. I give you permission. I want you to answer my question. What does freedom mean to you?”

A slight smile curled the edge of Sarah’s lips. “My painting. My art. My neighbourhood. My life.”

“Why do you value those things so much, Subject 05?”

The other name prompted other behaviours for Sarah. After being allowed to think about outside, she was afraid to return to being a subject.

“Answer me, Subject 05. Why do you value those things?”

“I… I love being able to make something lasting. I love connecting to my world. I don’t want to lose those things.”

Jenny hoped she was making progress, so she continued the dialogue.

“Are you losing those things, Subject 05?”

She shook her head momentarily, but then nodded.

“Yes, ma’am. I can’t see them as well as before. I miss them. Please don’t take them away from me.”

An idea formed for the scientist.

“Sarah, what if I told you that you could have all of those things, but still serve the Master? Would that make you happy?”

The slight smile from before turned into a radiant grin of bright teeth and joy.

“Yes, ma’am. That would make me very happy.”