Power Of Attorney

Barrow sighed. "We lost a good banker today," he said reluctantly, as if rolling her into the mailgirl program had not been by choice. "Not as good as she thinks she is, though. Your friend Wagner is going to have to pick up a lot of slack."

Drew Wagner was not her friend. He was nearly every bit as responsible for that afternoon's incident with the cheerleading outfit that Kim was; maybe even more so, given that it had likely been him who'd begun circulating the photos around to other Pepperdine alums and caught the attention of the university. She wished he'd been stripped and collared alongside Kim.

"As for you..." Barrow began, sighing audibly.

Whatever USF threw at her, Thirteen knew she could take. She'd grown strong that summer.

"I had no choice, sir," Thirteen still explained, her protest coming off more desperate and whiney than she'd intended. Maybe she hadn't entirely learned to keep her mouth shut.

Barrow shrugged. He didn't care. He likely knew about the whole incident, either from Kim or from Drew or from the others. He likely knew she'd been given no choice, and that Kim had put her in an impossible position. And yet, he had still let Mistress Rei spank her for demerits she hadn't exactly earned.

"As for you," he began again, and took a step away from her, towards the window, "bear in mind that you'll still have to answer for this. There are a couple of trustees who are demanding their pound of flesh, and I'm not sure your replacement out there is going to be enough."

He paused. "But, we'll get to that. I want you to understand that what Doctor Schang and I called you here for today was worked out a few weeks ago. And that a fortuitous happenstance landed in our laps just this morning, before any of this came to light."

Thirteen was confused.

"You were out of uniform. And the...er...lollipop absolutely crossed a line we're not willing to cross here at Plaza. But, honestly, I could care less about the photos - I only wish they hadn't been stamped with the school's name all over them." He reached the other naked girl, the one still hooded, and rested his hand atop her head. "But you've done good work with us here this summer. Maybe a few too many demerits? The research and insights that you've come across, that Doctor Schang had shared with us, are going to be instrumental as we expand the mailgirls program to our regional offices."

Thirteen had known Gillian was sharing her notes with Barrow, though wasn't entirely sure to what extent. The expansion of USF's mailgirl program was news to her, however, but perhaps not surprising; the mailgirls phenomenon seemed to be gaining traction and mainstream recognition nationally.

"So we've worked out an arrangement for you to stay with us."

"They'll fuck you," Twelve had warned her that morning. "Some sort of threat. Some sort of bullshit penalty. Some sort of legal maneuvering we're too fucking dumb to see coming."

Thirteen simply shook her head. "No, no, no."

"We're experimenting a bit across the river, at our back office in Jersey City," Barrow barreled on, ignoring her. "And as important as it is - as I think we can all agree that it is - to draw from the local talent there, I thought it might be helpful for a more experienced mailgirl to help kick off the program, and help set an example. So to speak."

"No, no, no," Thirteen repeated. She hadn't gotten up off her knees, but her arms were no longer behind her back. Her head was spinning. "You can't do this!"

"Excuse me?"

Instinctively, Thirteen corrected herself. "You can't do this, sir." She regretted the "sir" the moment it left her lips.

"I have a contract," Thirteen continued. "I have a contract. For three months."

"We've amended it," Barrow explained.

"You can't just amend a contract!"

"We can. We have Power of Attorney."

"No, you don't. You don't!"

It came crashing down all at once: Gillian. Thirteen had refused to sign over Power of Attorney to USF, almost causing the entire arrangement to fall apart. USF didn't want her at the Plaza without that concession, and Thirteen hadn't been willing cede it - for exactly this reason. She'd read of too many accounts of a girl's contract being extended or amended, too many instances of a girl being rendered powerless as her company rolled right over any residual rights she thought she might have. And so Thirteen and USF had reached a compromise - Thirteen would sign over her Power of Attorney, but only to Gillian and the Anthropology Department back in Connecticut.

"Gillian? Gillian, what did you do?" Thirteen cried in the direction of the speaker phone.

There was no apology. Only an explanation. "The company offered to fund our research for the next two years." It was "our" research, even though it was Thirteen being sacrificed to the cause. "And I think this is an opportunity for you."

"No!" Thirteen shrieked. "No! Fuck you, no!"

She'd crossed a line, and was rewarded for punishment at the hands of Mistress Rei once more. The smaller of the two mistresses took hold of hair and dragged her to the ground. She was back on all fours, prostrate on the floor of Will Barrow's office once more.

Thirteen's chest heaved, and she worked to regain her composure.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. Again, more out of instinct after a summer of complete submissiveness. When Mistress Rei didn't immediately release her hair, Thirteen corrected herself. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

Gillian laughed on the far end of the phone. Clearly uncomfortable, she offered, "We don't have to start with the 'ma'am's and madams."

Thirteen took a deep breath, and offered bitterly, "A mailgirl is not allowed to refer to her betters by name."

"Okay," Gillian answered, sensing the resentment in Thirteen's voice. "Doctor Schang, then."

"Yes, Doctor Schang."

"Your studies are on hold," Gillian explained. "But you can pick them up again when your contract has been fulfilled. And the University has agreed to waive all of your current student debt. Your final year here, too, is entirely covered."

Gracious of them, Thirteen thought sarcastically to herself. Aloud, it was just, "Yes, Doctor Schang."

Thirteen's terse responses were clearly affecting Gillian. But, what had she been expecting? She tried to reason with the girl, "Sarah. Sarah, honey. You're twenty-six years old. You have your whole life ahead of you. You'll still be twenty-eight when your contract is through, and you're going to finish your PhD at twenty-nine. There's already a paper here; it'll be a book by the time you're done, and you'll have places like Yale chasing after you. Sarah, you're going to be fine."

"Mailgirl Number Thirteen," the naked blonde corrected. "It's Thirteen."

Gillian hesitated. She spoke the name aloud, "Thirteen."

"For now," Mistress Rei announced. Her own part in this tragic comedy suddenly made sense. The little Japanese woman was to be the new mistress in USF's back office. She'd likely been plucked herself, like Mistress Zero, from the life of a mailgirl somewhere overseas.

"For now, mistress," Thirteen spat. Whatever number they planned for her to wear in Jersey City, she was still Thirteen for now. Kim Kinney may have taken her collar and her number, but it was still Number Thirteen that had been scrawled time and time again on her naked hip, still Number Thirteen that was prominently displayed now.

"And if I refuse, Doctor Schang?" She looked behind her, was granted permission from Mistress Rei, and rose back to her knees. It was an entirely moot and pointless question. She'd been shown the carrot; the stick was likely to be awful.

She wasn't disappointed. Barrow fielded the question, at least initially. "You'd be in violation of your contract, and the contract we signed with your department."

Gillian, over the phone, went on. "Which would lead to your removal from my graduate program. And invalidate the credits you've earned at the University."

She'd be back to square one, Thirteen realized bitterly. She either gave up the next two years of her life, or she'd effectively wasted her last four.

There was more, of course. Gillian continued, "All debt the university is owed is due immediately, and you'll be required to refund the full amount you spent this summer out of our grant."

Neither was possible, of course. She'd flitted away more of the research grant on food and clothes than she'd ever thought possible, and her student loan debt was astronomical. Even Chapter 7 wasn't an out - USF's mailgirl contract, the one that Gillian had apparently signed on her behalf, included a special proviso that closed off bankruptcy as an escape for debt owed to the company. If she walked away now, not only would everything she'd worked for have been for naught, but she'd also be sunk down a pit of debt so deep she might never escape.

Still, what if she went back to the Bay Area? What if she waited tables? That could be a life, couldn't it? That could be her life. Hell, even the life of a stripper or a topless dancer might be better than this one; she was now certainly well qualified, and even those options would have allowed her some amount of agency that the life of a mailgirl did not.

And yet...

And yet, hadn't a part of her worried about missing this life? She'd been afraid to admit it to herself, but it had been there for the past few weeks. Lurking, but omnipresent. Just out of reach. That little voice at the back of her head, the one she tried so desperately to keep at bay. She'd miss this life. It wasn't rational. It wasn't evolved. It wasn't anything that she could have imagined she'd ever feel. But the irrational, un-evolved, animal part of her brain wasn't ready to become Sarah Scott again just yet.

In captivity, she'd found release. Thirteen had come alive over the course of the last three months. She was more sexually realized than she'd ever been in twenty-six years. She'd cum harder, more often, and more intensely as a mailgirl than she ever had as a student. As submissive as she was expected to be, as subservient and subjugated and mistreated as she was, she felt more confident in who she was today than she had been in May. As embarrassed and as humiliated as she was on a daily basis, she was arguably more self-assured, with a better body image, than she had been before coming to New York. She had purpose and direction, and a freedom from the concerns of the outside world; she'd found a zen-like calm in focusing on the task at hand - her only job, her sole purpose, was to deliver the mail. That summer had been a vacation from herself, a vacation from her real life, and there'd been an undeniable feeling of longing and loss as she'd thought about returning to New Haven.

"My apartment, Doctor Schang?" she asked.

"I will reach out to Residential Life," Gillian answered, referring to the graduate housing Thirteen called her home back in Connecticut.

Thirteen shook her head, despite the fact that her advisor couldn't see. "My apartment in New York, Doctor Schang?"

Barrow fielded the question. "We're trying something new in our Jersey City office." His tone had shifted slightly. This was no longer an argument with a protesting mailgirl. This was merely hammering out the details. "We have a dormitory for our girls laid out in the basement of the building, just off the employee cafeteria."

Thirteen didn't need to see the dormitory to know that a one-way mirror likely separated the dormitory from the cafeteria; the mailgirls would find no privacy, no escape, no cause to believe they were anything more than animals in a zoo. Her twelve-hour shifts would become twenty-four hour shifts, her opportunity to escape USF at the end of the day would be taken away, her chances of ever getting dressed again over the next two years were slim. Barrow more or less confirmed this, even as he offered some allowances that he believed to be a silver lining.

"We're taking into account your research," he explained. "You'll be allowed your 'bitch sessions' once a week, on Saturday nights, in one of the employee lounges on-site. And I recognize we might have gone too far here at the Plaza, and so fraternization within the mailgirls will be allowed. So long as you're off-duty."

"And Sundays..." Gillian added.

"And Sundays," Barrow nodded, and continued on, "will belong to Doctor Schang. That's one for you alone, obviously, but you'll have a cubicle available to you in the Human Capital offices there, to continue your work."

Her research had been incorporated into USF's vision of the mailgirls program of the future, and had amounted to little more than a once-weekly break, at work, and a recognition that lesbian sex was a need-to-have. And she'd be expected to continue chronicling her life for the woman who'd sold her out - no, sold her off - for the next two years.

The fight, though, had gone out of her. "My things, sir?" she asked meekly.

Barrow smiled. "We picked them up from your apartment today. Thank you for packing."

She'd packed for New Haven, not for New Jersey.

When Thirteen hesitated in her response, Barrow sensed a question. "Call me presumptuous," he said. The implication was that Thirteen had never really had a choice in any of this. She'd be going to USF's back office in Jersey City, even if it had meant going kicking and screaming. Instead, resigned to her fate, Thirteen now accepted obediently.

But something tickled the back of her mind. She only had one set of keys, and - last she'd checked - they were still in her purse in the locker room. How had they gotten into her apartment?

Barrow smiled again, when asked. His reaction was terrifying. He answered, "Your sister was kind enough to let us in."

What? Thirteen didn't understand. Sophie was on the other side of the continent, back in Westwood. Who...?

A wave of nausea overtook her, and she fought the urge to vomit. The realization hit her even before Barrow removed Sophie's hood.

There was a reason that the naked girl by the window seemed so familiar - even undressed, even from behind. Sophie didn't even need to turn around for Thirteen to know it was her.