The Devil they Made

POV: Octavia & Amita

The helicopter had barely cleared the pad when the pilot passed two chilled bottles over his shoulder—seconds after they buckled in, straps still biting across their collarbones. The labels were too new, the caps too clean; habit made the motion automatic: twist, sip. Metallic sweetness bloomed; a prickle moved under tongue and gums, a slow chemical hush.

“Pleasure to see my favorite sexy chocolate sisters again,” the pilot said, laughter dry as ledger dust.

Both women reacted at once. “What did you just—” Octavia snapped, reaching for the intercom. “Who are—” Amita started, the bottle slipping, cold water spattering her coat. Words broke mid‑syllable. Limbs went heavy; pupils drowned; the rotor’s thrum tunneled as if the air were thickening. The **** finished its clean, invisible work, and the world switched off.

They woke to light that hurt, air that tasted of cold steel and paper dust, and the thin electric itch of adhesive pads against skin. IV catheters were taped into the crooks of their elbows, lines rising to a clear, unlabeled bag on a rolling stand; the slow drip counted seconds they could not hold. Industrial chairs. Practical restraints. A screen across from them ran live footage—wreckage in snow, flares, yellow tape. A lower third declared two presumed dead; archival photos framed Octavia and Amita in red as if the television itself were sealing a file. The chyron flickered, then corrected itself: now three presumed dead. They were not dead. They were officially dead.

A figure separated from the shadow as if the dark had decided to stand up. Footsteps measured the floor.

“Hello, ladies.”

They recognized the voice before the face—recognition arriving like the click of a safety. For a heartbeat Octavia wondered how she hadn’t recognized it sooner—the cadence, the clipped warmth turned cold. Octavia asked, “Hendrik?”

He tilted his head as if trying on an old coat. “That name is a lifetime ago. Hendrik was once. Now it’s Garrett Hale.” The smile was private, unkind. “Soon enough, for you, simply Master. Or perhaps you won’t be speaking at all. We’ll see.”

His thumb grazed a metal toggle; the shock he gave them was brief and precise, a bright bite through muscle and bone. He sat, turned a chair backward, and made time sit with him.

Questions formed anyway; he allowed them shape and punished the interruption. “What… what happened…?” Octavia croaked. “Is it—Hendrik? Is the past catching up with us?” Amita gasped. “Why… why are you doing this—is it because of Wilhelm and Elli?” He pressed the toggle down and held it. Current tore through both women—jaws clamped, backs arched, fingers splayed; ozone bit their nostrils, white sparks strobed behind their eyelids. Panic rose like bile. When he released, breath came in shreds. He stood and slapped each of them once, knuckles white, aim perfect. Enforcement, not rage—and somehow that was worse.

“Don’t say her name,” he said softly. “That right is gone.”

He did not offer justification; he gave history, first‑person, each sentence landing like a stamp, temper burning under flatness.

“Why, you ask? Seriously—is it not obvious? After decades of what you did—the people you destroyed—did you think no one would ever raise his head and demand ****? Or that no one would be shaped by your punishments into rebellion? I grew up inside the laws you wrote—laws that grind men like me and plate women like you in gold. I begged boards while you signed condemnations like autographs. Then —Wilhelm—saw me. Not with charity. With precision. He lifted me. His daughter was luminous. I loved her—too young, too rough, yes. Maybe later there might have been a chance if you hadn’t needed a story to feed the machine.”

“You called it justice. It was appetite. You made an execution look like ethics. You framed Wilhelm; he died for your optics. Elli lost everything that keeps a life running—reputation, work, a future. She fell, and the city stepped over her like a puddle. I tried to hold her; there were only nets with holes—you cut the holes.” He let the silence hang, then laughed without joy. “And you have the audacity to ask why?”

His thumb slammed the toggle and held; the box screamed and current hammered them—backs arched, teeth rattled, vision pixelated—until he lifted it. “Good,” he said, breath steady. “We still have a little time before the penultimate act upstairs begins. I’ll tell you a little story.”

He let the first silence do its work and then made the next one worse.

“After your coup—the quiet coup you and your allies dressed up as reform—came Wilhelm’s arrest. Then his ****. And Elli… vanished. She lost everything in days: income, reputation, a future that had been steady enough to stand on. I was helpless, and before you could remove me from your spotless new org chart, I did the only useful thing left: I salvaged what could be salvaged. Wilhelm’s research. His notebooks. Draft protocols. Margins that mattered.”

He laced his fingers, voice flattening. “Then I took the jobs I could get. While you built your pretty new world, I made myself better. I took work no one else would touch. I worked for people who valued results and didn’t perform virtue audits on methods.” His eyes slid to Amita. “Oh—and Amita? Greetings from Jorge ‘the Spider’ Vargas.”

Amita’s eyes went wide.

“Yes,” he said, almost amused. “The hit on me is canceled. He owes me.”

Amita drew breath to speak. He flicked the toggle and held. The current bucked them in their chairs; when he lifted his thumb, he added, almost polite, “Please. I’m telling a story.”

“I learned to make my skills reliable. Then I came back to Calvessia and saw what you’d done to my kind. Should I be surprised? Two thugs out of the gutter, kept small by design, used the new regime to climb—and you used it for advantage.” His mouth twitched. “And yes, before you ask, I know your sealed records. You hid them well—power is an excellent solvent. Anjila and Simone both stared when I told them how you spent your youth.”

He shook his head once. “But I digress.”

“I moved on. Learned. Honed what he gave me until it cut. Years later I followed the rot: a slum address, a toe tag marked overdose—finally, a trace of Elli—but too late; a baby in the next room, and a stuffed animal with a name stitched in blocky letters.”

He let the pause grow teeth. “Lexi.”

Octavia’s breath hitched hard enough to hurt; heat drained from her face, leaving paper‑pale skin. The name landed like a hammer on porcelain—she saw the girl’s smile, the concentric rings of consequence, the way a single syllable rearranges a life. A hairline crack sounded.

He watched the fracture and smiled without warmth. “Poetic, isn’t it?”

Shock broke them into bargaining. Octavia found her voice first: “We can fix this,” she said, raw. “Let us go and we’ll back‑stop you—publicly, politically. You’ll have cover.” Amita spoke over her, already supplying levers and names: “I can move votes. Money. Boards. You want a seat—we’ll give you the table. Everything. Just—”

He listened like an auditor and cut their hope with facts. “By the time I reached the stairs,” he said, lifting his phone so they could read the timestamp, “Simone was named Interim Dean. You are officially gone.” He looked to Octavia. “Your shares and controlling interests pass to her on ****. The instruments are already executed.”

He turned to Amita. “Your equity. Your company. Assigned to Anjila under the contingencies you signed. She will soon sign everything to her future wife. Calendar entries exist. The proposal is scheduled.”

For one brittle second both women thought there might still be a seam to pry.

“There isn’t,” he added, almost kind. “Ishani altered the very documents you commissioned. She adjusted them in my favor. Easier than you think—Amita, you were setting the knife for Octavia anyway.”

Octavia’s jaw locked; Amita flinched. He thumbed the box—a hard pulse—and both bodies seized. When the current eased, silence settled in a new shape: the silence of people who finally recognize the outline of loss.

“What do you want—now?” Octavia asked.

He grinned, eyes cold. “Good question.”

“What I intend?” He smiled, almost bored. “Why not—who would you tell? Perhaps I’ll even make you my most loyal members.”

They stared at him, question marks made of bone.

“An organization,” he said. “Ladies, an organization of mine—of like‑minded men. From the shadows we will undo what you and your allies have done. You didn’t fail because you were opposed; you failed because you never finished the job. You will not return to your seats and fight back. We will build a new order under our feet—so that what happened to Wilhelm, to Elli, to so many others, does not happen again.”

“It isn’t founded yet,” he added, as if naming a firm. “But it will be. Not tomorrow—soon. When my base is in place and the city stops performing grief. The Brotherhood. Men like me—men with abilities like mine, with ideas like mine—will gather with intent.”

Octavia laughed once, a ragged, disbelieving sound. “You can’t brainwash hundreds of millions—you’re insane.”

He didn’t blink. “That’s precisely what the Brotherhood of White Calvesians will stand for. Not all at once—and not with parlor‑trick hypnosis. Believe me, I have talents in mind—men with the technologies and the knowledge to implement. We’ll seed agents, turn institutions from the inside, and, step by step, take education, the economy, politics, security—one takeover after another.”

He wasn’t bragging; he was reading from a plan already costed and calendared. Beside Octavia, Amita’s silence held the quick, professional terror of someone who recognizes infrastructure when she hears it.

“Until then,” he said, voice narrowing, “we start small.” He swapped the IV bag for a fresh one and snapped a Y‑connector into the line; an amber solution began its slow descent. He adjusted the drip. A metronome app began to tick; a pen clicked to mark the beat. “Attention first. Then permission.” He laid a thin black ruler across a blank sheet and Octavia’s eyes found the edge before he told them to. “Breathe in”.

Heat crept along the electrodes. He feathered the toggle in time with the ticking: on each click a sting; on nine a mercy; on ten a longer bite that made both women flinch. Relief learned his name.

“Please—wait. We can still—” Octavia tried.

“Talk to us, Garrett—Hendrik—” Amita **** out.

He dipped his head as if indulging a child and held the switch down. The current locked wrists, pried jaws, erased everything but the beat. When he let go, both were panting.

“Last calibration,” he said. He slid on gloves, opened the new clamp, and seated a second catheter with a steady thumb. “This carries the trainer.”

He set a small speaker on the table, tapped his phone, and a clean recording of his own voice filled the room—low, patient, the same cadence as the metronome. The track braided instructions with neutral hiss; the clicks marked compliance like rungs.

“In ten minutes,” he said, checking his watch, “you should be fully inside. The metronome, the ****, the shocks—you’ll walk yourselves down.” He smiled. “Then we begin shaping your new identities. Let’s see what we make. I do take requests.”

Fractionation worked like a soft saw: release, return; loosen, tighten; shock, soothe. Across from her, Amita watched her own compliance arrive like mail. He barely looked up, only adjusted the rate and clicked the pen. The beat started living under their skin.

He paused, listening toward the ceiling. A door slammed; voices tangled. Amara broke clean from the knot: “Get away from me! Mom—look at me! don’t you touch her! Ishani, behind me—now! Where is my grandmother?!” The sound ran along ducts like wire.

He smiled without humor. “The penultimate act,” he said, nudging the metronome up one notch. “Ten minutes—then it’s over for you, or really just beginning, depending on how you look at it.” He slipped his phone into his pocket, straightened, and moved toward the door. “Walk yourselves down.”

The latch clicked. His steps receded.

Octavia tried to hold onto numbers—primes, case citations, board votes; Amita chased breath counts and stock tickers—anything off the track. The recording braided his voice with the tick, tick, tick: “Breathe in. Good. Acknowledge.” The amber drip fed slow heat; the electrodes kissed on the click and bit on the tenth. Muscles learned the rhythm first; then the jaw; then the eyes.

They fought. They shaped the word no behind dry tongues, clenched teeth, shook their heads. “Acknowledge,” said the voice, and the metronome gave them a place to fall. “I…,” Octavia managed. “No,” Amita rasped. The next pulse blurred the edges; the next mercy felt like reward.

“Down one,” the voice said, and both sets of shoulders dropped without consent. “Good. Again.” Resistance thinned. The pen clicks became landmarks. The line on the paper was a shoreline.

They did not stop fighting. They only kept losing—by inches, on schedule.

Reader’s Choice — Epilogue Paths for Octavia & Amita

How should Octavia and Amita emerge from what begins here? Your choice will be honored in the epilogue.

Awake Inside the Mask — They remain fully conscious yet reduced to silent fetish rubber dolls: heads shaved,fat Lips, Fake Tits, hypersensitive, still aware of everything and able to do nothing.

Emptied — Identities erased and will stripped; compliant dolls with no echo of who they were.

Rewritten — New names, faces, and papers; recast as public activists for the Brotherhood’s cause, devotion re‑wired to serve its patriarchs and agenda.

Double Agents — They reappear as themselves after a staged survival, return to their domains, and secretly advance Garrett’s design from within—wholly obedient to the Brotherhood’s architects.

https://strawpoll.com/bVg8Ba8OByY

Author’s Note

I hope the reveal landed—especially the threads tying Garrett and Lexi’s past. Two more chapters to go. I’ll be traveling for the next four weeks, so releases will be sparse; the plan is to draft the epilogue on the road and maybe drop a chapter here and there. Thanks for reading—and for your votes.