MAIN Sara on lockdown Julie in cuffs

Day 76

Sara hadn't seen Olivia since she left Ashley's house. Monica now gave the morning wake-up routine and had told Sara that she was no longer allowed to leave the second floor. There were four staircases leading from the first to the second floor Sara checked them all and found that they all now had guards monitoring them. When she asked about Olivia she was simply told that she was also being punished. On top of all that there were always two or three Masters in the hall outside Sara's room who 'guarded' her if she left it.

Being locked up had its privileges. Sara was served three hot and tasty meals a day, although she had no say in what they were. Monica was now her personal lackey. All Sara would have to do was have one of the women in the hall fetch her and Monica would get Sara anything she wanted. Sara had asked Monica to bring over the rest of her things from her old room and the last of Sara's things had just arrived, even her painting supplies. Sara also now had three grocery bags of eucalyptus menthol cough drops, likely every lozenge in town.

Sara wanted to make the most of her imprisonment and invited one of her monitors in to interview her. The girl was a former classmate of Sara's named Cassie. Sara hadn't known Cassie as a human well. Just that she was smart and hard-working. She didn't have many friends but that was more because she was so focused on school work not because she was in any way unpleasant. This Cassie seemed like little more than a robot. She answered all of Sara's questions quickly and simply with no elaboration. It felt like Cassie was a computer that had been hijacked by a virus and had had a bot installed to run her. When Sara asked Cassie to 'act' as if she was at home with her parents she snapped into a completely different personality. Sara supposed that it was a good approximation of old Cassie. She found it very disturbing to see this transformation, Cassie went from automaton to human with frightening ease.

Sara then asked the next guard in and found that she was much the same. Another former classmate, another robot that lived to serve the collective and spread the Hive. Sara tried to make sense of this, many of the other Masters she had interviewed seemed more human. Sara realized that she had been choosing people to interview more on how interesting they seemed than in any systematic way.

So Sara began work on a census. Monica was summoned and she had all of the Masters that were living in the house counted. Thirty women and four men was the final tally for the mansion. Sara then asked Monica to gather up a team to go out and interview every Master starting with Crissy and Ashley to try and track down every new Master that they had spawned. It was almost midnight before Sara had a final count, although she knew it was incomplete.

Thirty-four were living in the mansion, and all but Sara seemed loyal to Jennifer. Another thirty-nine lived with their old families but spent as much time as they could at the mansion, serving Jennifer. Nine including Crissy and Ashley rarely went to the mansion and seemed to be in Crissy's faction. Candy, Cindy, and perhaps one or two more were watching Julie. And between eleven and fifteen others were in town, they didn't seem too interested in following Crissy or Jennifer and some even seemed to want to be left alone. It was hard to track them down and there may have been a few unauthorized conversions going on there.

There had been well over one hundred Masters in the mansion the night Sara was taken, Sara estimated about one hundred and forty. So that left the other uncertainty. The ones that had attended the graduation party but were no longer in town had gone to assist Barbara. Besides Barbara, her supervisor and Jo no one was certain who at the hospital had been made host. But considering the number of Masters Barbara had sent before graduation there had to be at least a dozen more. Add that to the ones that went to the hospital nest after graduation and the twelve days of spawning... Barbara could easily have over two hundred Masters running around by now. The thought gave Sara shivers.

Day 77

Julie was getting EXTREMELY bored. She had read the entire Harry Potter series which her grandmother had given her but she had never read before. She watched a TV show that had looked interesting but never had time for, all seven seasons. She had become a big fan of Amazon and had ordered a variety of exercise implements. From dumbbells to some sort of giant elastic band thing that seemed completely useless. With these things, she had started exercising more, a lot more. But now she sat at the table in her kitchen and just stared out of the window at the trees behind the cottage.

The cottage itself was three rooms. A decent-sized kitchen/dining area, a no-frills bathroom with a tiny shower, and... the rest of the cottage. The area from when you walked in through the front door was a living room and bedroom for the two. The back wall had two doors, one to each of the other two rooms. It was small and simple but then so was the village as a whole. If the place had one drawback it was that the front door was the only door in and out.

Julie understood why Jake had gotten a job and she loved the lug for it. But after a month of running for her life, no her soul, sitting didn't suit her. Julie hopped in her car and drove around the village, what there was of it. Besides the diner, a **** store, and a little grocery store there was a sort of main street with about a dozen small businesses. A gas station, bank, lawyer's office, bakery, and an ice cream shop among them. Nothing that interested Julie so she decided to drive out of town. There were three main routes out of the village and she drove along each for about thirty minutes just to familiarize herself with potential escape routes.

By the time she got back to the cottage, Jake was home. He said," Hey babe, I was worried for a second, where did you go?"

Julie replied, "I was bored and just drove around for a while. Checking out the village."

"Well that's a short trip," Jake chuckled.

Julie sighed, "I'm just feeling cooped up and bored."

Jake said, "Well you could always go online and kill time or try learning something new, a language maybe?"

Julie didn't seem very excited by that and didn't respond.

Jake walked over to the dresser and opened the drawer with his stuff. He took out a pair of handcuffs and handed them to Julie. Then he held out his hands and said, "Put them on me."

Julie laughed and said, "Are you finally going to show me that famous handcuff trick?" as she slapped them onto Jake's wrists.

As Julie took a step back Jake twisted his arms so quickly Julie couldn't quite see what happened and one of Jake's hands was free. He reached into the dresser and retrieved the key and undid the cuff on his other wrist.

Julie just stood there and stared, "Ok, that was pretty neat. How did you do that?"

Jake smiled, "You have to do a few things just right for it to work. And to do it just right you need to practice, practice a lot. I'll show you the steps later. But for now, let's watch a movie." Jake set the cuffs and key on top of the dresser and walked to the beat-up little couch. He turned on the TV and began searching for a particular movie, Terminator 2.

Two and a half hours later Jake and Julie were sitting on the couch as the credits rolled. Jake said, "You see she knew that there was a fight ahead and that she had to be ready. Ready for anything, so if you don't want to learn a language maybe you can train yourself for... whatever you think is going to happen next. At the very least you can learn how to get out of a pair of handcuffs." Jake then smiled and gave Julie a nice hug and a kiss on the forehead before heading off to bed.

DAY 80

Now that Sara had a census of the Masters she had access to in town. The only one from the hospital was Jo who went between town and the hospital. She made a random list of the ninety-three Masters in town, and Jo, and began interviewing them in order. She skipped the names she had already interviewed but tried not to add them to her mental impression of the hive until she got to them on the list. She was now interviewing number fifteen.

Sara asked, "So do you remember being converted?" She had to be extra careful in her interview to act as if she was being controlled by her Master.

"Yes it was glorious, I only wish Olivia had tripped me sooner," said Veronica in a flat tone.

"Tripped you?" Sara followed up.

"Yes we were at cheer practice and Olivia tripped me and I twisted my ankle. My old self assumed that it was an accident. But after Nurse Lynn fitted my pussy with its Master I was wise enough to see how clever Olivia had been." Veronica said, she smiled broadly as she got to the part about Nurse Lynn putting a Master in her.

"So you are a cheerleader. Why don't you live in the mansion?" Sara asked.

"I live with my family. My mother, older sister, and younger sister are all prime specimens. My father is on disability, if his conversion fails he will not be missed. Once the moratorium is lifted my family will be a valuable asset for conversion. I am watching them as we wait to once again spread the Hive." Veronica said. Again the only emotion seemed to be a bit of eagerness at the idea of converting her family. Sara was troubled by Veronica's inhumanity and didn't want to go on but knew she had to learn all she could.

"Who in your family will be converted first?" Sara said casually.

Veronica's eyes lit up, "We, the collective, have no set plan but I have thought about it extensively." Veronica leaned forward now and her breathing seemed to quicken. "I hope to be given a second Master so that I can convert both of my sisters. They are both very attractive and fit. They will never suspect anything is wrong and it will be delightful to see the look of betrayal in their eyes. They see old Veronica as their best and most trusted friend. Taking them will be delicious." Veronica seemed close to orgasm just from describing her plan. She was fidgeting in her chair now, and the fire in her eyes almost had a palpable heat. Her Master was only a little different from most but in the worst possible way.

"Do you serve Crissy or Ashley or Jennifer?" Sara asked, knowing in advance what Veronica's answer would be.

Veronica said passionately, "I serve the collective, I serve the Hive, to perfect all humanity."

Sara closed her notepad before Veronica had even begun speaking, "Very well, you may see yourself out." she said in a monotone even though she felt like crying.

Once alone Sara looked at the list of fifteen. Only three had given a slightly different answer to that last question. She had asked it trying to figure out who was loyal to which faction and had been surprised by the answer the first few times. Olivia was number eleven on her list. Sara had not seen Olivia in days now and wondered if she would ever get to ask her that question, the answer might be interesting. But already it was becoming clear to Sara that these women, many of them her former classmates could not be reasoned with. They had to be stopped, perhaps even killed.

Sara looked at her list of names, she had underlined number sixteen three times. She decided to wait a bit on that one, she needed time to think before that particular interview. Sara also needed to put together a standard list of questions to try to carefully probe for weaknesses. This had gone from a quest to learn about the Hive to one determined to destroy it.

Candy walked into her father's study, he was there alone, reading.

Candy stood before him and said, "Dad, I've been talking to Jake and he said that he and Julie are feeling a bit lonely down there. He said that it would be nice if I stayed with them for a while."

Her dad looked up at her over his reading glasses, and said, "I talked to Jake just a few days ago and he seemed fine. He told me about that cottage they are renting and it sounds like it would be a little too close for comfort for the three of you. Besides you know what they say, two's company, three is a crowd. Let those two have their privacy."

"But dad," Candy was prepared for this, "Jake told me that things between him and Julie are a little tense and he thought that with me being there things might calm down. Besides I have some money saved up and can rent my own place or whatever."

Her father frowned, "Sometimes young couples get that way, I'd think the honeymoon would have lasted a little longer though." He set the book he had been reading down and took off his glasses. "I think I let my phone in the kitchen, get it for me and I'll call Jake."

Candy had her cellphone in hand and held it out for him, "Here, you can use mine."

He looked up at her and took the phone, it was basically the same as his and he quickly dialed Jake. As he scanned through the list of contacts he thought that it was odd that a teenage girl would have so few numbers on her phone.

One of Candy's helpers had informed her the moment that Jake began his thirty-minute lunch break. As a result, he was just taking the first bite into his sandwich as he sat in a booth at the diner. When he looked at his phone and saw that Candy was calling his body tensed and he answered calmly, "Yes."

"Hey Jake it's dad," said his father. "I was just talking to Candy and she says things aren't going all that well. That maybe she should go down there and spend some time with you and Julie."

Jake slowly said, "Well Julie has been pretty bored lately. I'm not sure if she would want to hang out with Candy but it probably wouldn't hurt."

Candy watched her father frown as he said, "Are you sure Jake? Couples have rough patches and just need a little time to work through things."

"She would have to rent her own place and if Julie doesn't want her around then Candy can still do other things. It's pretty nice down here. It's ok with me if she comes down. " Jake said.

Jake's father began to say something else but was interrupted as Candy said loudly, "Just tell dad it's ok, I miss you brother."

Jake heard that and said, "It's ok... I miss her too."

Candy watched her father's frown deepen. "Well fine but you know..." He now looked up at Candy sternly, "She can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. So if she gives you any trouble kick her out. Got it?"

"Sure dad," was Jake's simple reply. He chuckled and hung up to relax again and get back to his sandwich.

"See I told you," Candy said triumphantly.

"Let me give you some extra cash, so you don't mooch off of them." Her father said getting up and walking to a bookshelf. He handed her a plain, boring looking old book.

Candy looked it over and said, "What's this?"

Her dad said, "About two thousand dollars."

Candy opened it expecting it to be hollowed out. Instead, she found twenty-dollar bills stuck in between each page. "Well, that's nifty." She said walking out of the study with the book in hand.

In her room, she grabbed her bags. She had already packed and was ready to go. She opened the $1200 designer handbag she was bringing with her. Her mom had been suspicious the first time she saw it but Candy insisted that it was a cheap knockoff, of course, it wasn't. She opened it and made sure that the Platinum American Express card was in it. The same man that had given her the handbag had also given her the card. It was in the name of his eight-year-old daughter. He might cut her off if she didn't let him fuck her for a month or charge too much on it. But he was pretty easy going so she figured that even in the worst case she could get away with not seeing him for two months before he cut her off.

Bags packed and in the car Candy set off for the village Jake and Julie were staying in. She had made the trip a few times in the past week. So she knew the fifty miles of state roads pretty well by now. She had no need for a place to stay and knew exactly in whose bed she would sleep tonight. She had already made a few new friends in the village and looked forward to making many more.