Lost

I felt the MMU on my arm vibrate indicating that I was back on duty and available as I wandered aimlessly through the ninth floor in a daze, barely able to process what had just happened in Barbara's office. I was required to go kneel on the closest Mailgirls mat until I was called out but at that moment I couldn't bear the thought of having people staring at me so I headed for the stairs instead. It was the only place in the complex where a mailgirl could have any semblance of privacy.

I entered the stairwell and walked down several flights until all of the feelings of hurt, anger, and betrayal churning inside of me flooded to the surface and could no longer be contained. I sat down on a stair in between the sixth and seventh floor and began sobbing uncontrollably.

It wasn't Hiromoto's cynical double-crossing or Barbara's manipulations that hurt the most; they were scorpions, after all, and it was my own damn fault for allowing myself to get in range of their venomous tails. It wasn't even Mariko's apparent betrayal, although that had shocked me. No, it was a deep disappointment in my own actions and decisions that left me feeling so angry and hurt. I'd made so many mistakes over the past two years that I didn't know if I could even trust myself anymore.

I'm the author of my own misfortune, I told myself. I'm the one who signed that terrible contract without really reading or understanding it. I'm the one who allowed Barbara to systematically strip me of my clothes, my identity, my belongings, and my freedom. I'm the one who opened myself up to being sued or arrested by divulging proprietary information to a foreign company. If I was trapped then it was in a prison of my own construction. Barbara had supplied the blueprints and materials but I'd built it myself, brick by brick.

I felt so lost and alone now, untethered from the real world where even something as simple as picking out an outfit to wear or making plans for my free time had become completely foreign to me. The crazy part is that I'd been ready to voluntarily surrender all of my freedom to Barbara until her actions had snapped me out of whatever spell she had me under. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that I really was a submissive, at least to some degree, but there had to be limits to it, didn't there? And now there were none. Barbara owned me. I was going to be her naked slave for as long as she wanted.

My crying jag was interrupted by a vibration on my arm as my MMU alerted me to a pickup order on the fifth floor of the tower. I thought briefly about ignoring it, the demerits be damned, but I couldn't. I was so conditioned to reacting immediately to every tug of this electronic leash that it was nearly impossible for me to resist it now. Blubbering about my situation wasn't going to change anything anyway so I wiped my eyes, got back on my feet and went to work.

My delivery pickup on the fifth floor took me to the second floor of the south wing. From there I was summoned to the next floor down which led me across the central courtyard to the fourth floor of the north wing. After two years as a mailgirl my body thrived on movement and getting back to this routine helped me regain my equilibrium. My mind went on autopilot - focused only on my next delivery, my next deadline, the fastest route to my next destination - allowing me to temporarily block out the mess I'd gotten myself into.

The familiar feelings of arousal also returned as they always did, even after two years of this. I was always conscious that I was a naked woman in a sea of clothed "norms" and this never failed to turn me on. I'd discovered that I was every bit as much an exhibitionist as I was a submissive.

At one point I passed Kelly going in the opposite direction on a set of stairs in the south wing. She glanced up at me as she climbed then lowered her eyes in shame as we passed without speaking.

I suppose I should have been mad at her for stealing that VR headset which left me so vulnerable, but I wasn't. She was as trapped as I was now and we were both going need each other over the coming months to get through this. And it's not as if I was an innocent lamb in this mess either. Would Hiromoto have found out about the VR project in the first place if I hadn't told Mariko about it? There was no way of knowing but it didn't really matter. I was as guilty as Kelly in its theft.

My shift was scheduled to end at six p.m. but a mailgirl never knows for sure when it really ends. The company can always add additional unpaid overtime hours based on accumulated demerits so a mailgirl has to keep working until the status message on her MMU updates to OFF DUTY. Only then is she allowed to retrieve her clothes from security, have the metal collar unlocked and removed, and be allowed to leave the building. Whenever one of DDE's games or movies was in "crunch time" to meet a release deadline that always meant long hours for us mailgirls. Things were relatively quiet at DDE right now though so I got the OFF DUTY message right at six o'clock. I had no clothes to retrieve and my collar was permanently attached but at least that meant I could get the hell out of here.

I headed immediately for the Mailgirls locker room hoping to find Anna there. Since Barbara didn't allow me to have any possessions, including a key to the condo, that meant I sometimes had a long wait for Anna to escort me home if she was assigned overtime while I wasn't.

Thankfully I found Anna in the showers next to Diana who had survived her "walk of shame" and the first day of training. Kelly was also there washing the funk off after a day of running the mail in the nude. She looked as shell-shocked by the events of the day as I felt.

I hung my MMU and its strap up on my wall hook and headed straight into the shower area toward Kelly. "You and me need to talk," I said to her.

Kelly looked at me guiltily. "Yeah, I think we do," she said. "Where?"

"Hooligans," I replied. It was an Irish pub where Kelly and I used to meet every Friday night when we first started working the tower together as DDE's only mailgirls. Kelly, with her auburn hair and mischievous smile, was of Irish descent and loved bitching about Barbara over a pint of Guinness during those sessions. That seemed so long ago now and a much simpler time.

"They're not going to let you in naked," she said. "Probably not anyway."

"I'll borrow some clothes from Anna." As far as I was concerned I was still operating under my original contract which didn't expire until midnight on Friday so there was nothing to prevent me from dressing away from work.

Anna had been listening in to our conversation and spoke up now. "Nine, I have not given you permission to..."

"We're not playing that stupid game anymore, Anna," I snapped at her. "And call me Danica from now on."

A look of surprise and then relief washed over her face. "Oh thank god, Danica," she said. "I'm so sick of it!"

"I think you should come, too," I said to her. "You need to know what's going on."

"Okay," Anna nodded.

"Can I come?" Diana asked. My first inclination was to tell her no. This was going to be a conversation between Kelly, Anna, and me that would involve private information and I'd only just met her. But as I looked at the beautiful actress I felt like we'd made an immediate connection today. For whatever reason I instinctively liked and trusted her.

"Sure. Why not?" I replied. "You might as well find out exactly what you've gotten yourself into. You're not in Kansas anymore, Ellie Bixby."