Chapter 7: Next

24 September 2025

At the end of the regular working day, the two women were enmeshed in a new phase of their work, with now-cool cups of canteen coffee abandoned on a lab bench. The hours of conditioning had taken hold, and Rebecca was fully committed to the same mission as Jenny. Once she stopped fighting, some of Rebecca’s personality started to resurface as well.

Jenny had set Rebecca – Subject 04 – in front of a series of monitors arrayed to fill Rebecca’s range of vision. She remained terrifyingly still, her blonde hair pulled back, her gaze darting from monitor to monitor to follow shifting images of women being selected by an AI filter from various internet newsfeeds from the London area.

"I feel like we’re hunting in the dark," Rebecca mused. "You haven’t established a template. All you know is the end result that you are seeking.”

Jenny pondered her colleague’s comment. I know that it wouldn’t be wise to keep poaching from the women in this building, but that idea keeps rolling through my mind. I tasked Rebecca with searching outside because she won’t hold back out of fear or caution.

“I trust you to pick up on the things which Master will desire in our future subjects,” Jenny said out loud. “Tell me about the women you are spotting, and who seems promising to you.”

Rebecca’s head tilted at an unnatural angle. In less than a day, Jenny already associated that gesture with the movie depiction of Voldemort. That association was both disturbing and deeply arousing.

A series of women flashed onto the monitors, the latest batch of many theoretical options. Rebecca leaned forward slightly, the light reflecting in her dilated pupils. She leaned towards the first woman, a local political administrator.

"Too much friction," Rebecca said matter-of-factly. "This one spends her life saying 'no.' She has built a fortress around her ego. To break her would be a delight, but if the Master wants rapid assimilation, she would be too risky. The people around her would notice far too quickly.”

Jenny nodded. "Agreed. And the second one?"

Rebecca’s eyes scanned silently over a nursery school teacher featured for work with special needs children. "Too much of a bleeding heart," Subject 04 said, her voice devoid of pity. "She would hurt inside each time another woman was welcomed into Master’s care. The virus would twist her into something undesirable.”

“Well put,” Jenny said. “Trading her children for Master might trigger a psychotic break. We need someone with a strong 'container' for the Master to fill.”

Jenny pointed to a story in a local newspaper about a muralist who had just completed a commission in Shoreditch. Sarah Jenkins. Twenty-four years old. A junior project manager for a logistics firm, but with greater passion for painting and supporting her community.

"This one could be interesting," Jenny said excitedly. “Tell me what you see.”

Rebecca read the article and scanned the photos, barely blinking until she finished. Then she blinked repeatedly, as if she were switching between mental cycles.

“She is remarkably unremarkable.” Rebecca spoke the words without intending them to be derisive. She just had a way of cutting to the chase, and even more so now. "She is likely the backbone of her firm, a daughter who never complains, and a girlfriend who always agrees on the restaurant. But… she is also deeply passionate. It’s obvious from her art that she feels and that she is capable of committing wholeheartedly to something important to her.”

Jenny continued the analytical dissection. “Her life is nothing but noise, except when she is painting. I bet she uses a meditation app four times a day, and owns a weighted blanket to feel held.. She is starving for a Master to give her direction, but she just thinks she’s stressed."

Rebecca leaned closer to Sarah’s image, her fingers reaching out to touch the cheek on the screen. "She’s a vacuum. She’s spent her whole life trying to be perfect for everyone else. She has no core of her own. She’s just a collection of echoes, which she projects through her artwork."

"I think you may be right," Jenny said. "Since we don't know the Master’s aesthetic, Sarah can be our canvas.”

Jenny zoomed in on one of the photos - a candid shot of Sarah talking with some local councilor. Her face was classically symmetrical, her hair a lively shade of auburn, her expression one of polite enthusiasm. Jenny cocked her head to get a different perspective.

“Yes, she is a good choice.”

***

The decision made, the reality of the passing hours finally caught up with them. Her energy had not flagged since Jenny kissed her, but Rebecca’s hunger had become unavoidable. She prevailed on Jenny to take a break, and they walked from the campus to a local curry house.

Rebecca took a heaping bite from her naga. The spicy mixture made Rebecca’s eyes water. Just right, she thought to herself. Then, to cool the burn, she took a swig of her IPA, and couldn’t fight down a soft belch.

“Classy, bitch,” Jenny teased.

“What are you talking about, skank?” Rebecca slashed back.

“What man is gonna want a nasty cow like you?”

The two women broke down together into fits of laughter. The tension of so many hours washed away as they ate, drank, and talked.

But their new reality never quite left their minds.

"Jenny, how do we prepare someone for a man she hasn't met? How do we ensure she is ready to be his, completely, before he even sees her?"

Jenny leaned back in her chair and thoughtfully sipped her beer. "That’s what we have to experiment with. We can’t just erase her, nor would we want to. The goal is to develop a state of high-arousal need for her. She needs to be taught to crave closeness, and encouraged to give her obedience. I am an architect for him, you are an advocate, and she will be a vessel. By the time we present her to him, she will be like a tuning fork, vibrating at a frequency only he can calm."

Rebecca smiled. “That sounds so hot. Almost like a London geisha.”

Jenny raised her bottle, which Rebecca cooperatively clinked. “Cheers.”

After the two women finished their meals, they made their way back to the lab, enjoying the cooling evening and watching the people strolling down Shaftesbury Avenue. They agreed to put in a little more work tonight, after Rebecca extracted a promise from Jenny that she would actually go home tonight and get some rest.

Back at Jenny’s workstation, she and Rebecca were checking Sarah’s social media feeds, and pondering the woman’s future. "Perhaps he will want her as a domestic," Jenny pondered. "Or as a public trophy, who he can then use in private to satisfy his most intense whims. That is the beauty of this girl. By the time we are done with her, she will be sufficiently hollow that she can fill any role for him. We will give him a blank cheque, so he can write any desire he wants onto her soul."

The two women spent the next hour refining the acquisition plan. They planned to effectively erase this version of Sarah. They would use Sarah’s own phone to send a series of erratic emails to her boss and family, to simulate a sudden, dramatic departure to a retreat in another country to “recharge her batteries.” The cover story would buy two weeks of uninterrupted opportunity to observe and deeply condition the newest subject.

While trying to mimic what she anticipated Sarah’s written voice to be like, Rebecca paused, and her head canted to the right.

"Jenny, is there any part of you left that remembers being like her?" Rebecca asked, watching for any reaction. "Before you got yourself… like this?"

Jenny didn't blink. "I remember the weight. The weight of having to choose what to wear, what to say, who to be. I remember the constant, nagging fear of doing it wrong. I remember the doubt of whether I belonged. Whether I was good enough. Whether I would ever succeed in this cut-throat business. Fuck, I was driven by all of those doubts. That’s why I published in the forum. It’s why I kept doing this research - the fear that I had sunk years of my life into a dead end and had nothing to show for it.”

She paused for a moment, before she busied herself briefly with some journal notes. Then, abruptly, she continued her monologue. “I remember that it was especially hard being a woman. And especially a pretty woman. Did anyone actually take me seriously for my intellect, rather than thinking I got this slot because my tits are nice, or because I’ve got pretty eyes, or because I’m fuckable enough.”

A serene smile spread across her lips. "Now, there is far less doubt. I cannot do anything wrong, because I am committed to this path for the Master. I pray to God that I find him, and soon. Because thanks to this virus, he is all I have.”

Rebecca nodded and smiled, because she understood that reverie also. “Sarah will love the silence, Jenny. She will love it more than she ever loved her own life. And she will thank you for it."

Jenny turned back to her note taking, a sense of warm triumph settling in her chest. The Master would be pleased. They were no longer just selecting subjects; they were engineering a new species of devotion.

"Tomorrow, you’ll start your surveillance,” Jenny instructed. "I want you to know her routine. You’ll be the one to meet her. To take her.”

Jenny closed out her records, and powered down the electronics. She pulled the memory stick from the office computer so there would be no trace of the secret aspects of her project lying around.

She watched as Rebecca busied herself with her own shutdown procedures. She thought about the two of them: the architect and the advocate, already at work on their next masterpiece of erasure.

"Rebecca, tell me something," Jenny said. Her voice was softer, lacking her usual clinical edge. She turned, leaning against the cold glass of the exterior window. "What do you think about me? If you were analysing me as a potential subject… what would you recommend for me?"

The air in the room seemed to thicken. Rebecca didn't move her head, but her eyes tracked across Jenny with slow precision. For a moment, Rebecca drifted into a strangely doll-like vacancy, as if the lights had turned off inside her. Then the emerald glow flashed for a moment, and her expression returned to something resembling Rebecca.

"You have too many anchors, Jenny," Rebecca said softly, her voice like silk. "You are still tethered to the why. Your work has always been your life. You used to watch everyone in the building from behind the glass of your office, because you were uncomfortable to mingle with everyone else. Even after I finally pried you away for pub crawls, the rest of them are still strangers to you.”

Rebecca packed up her papers and her tablet, no longer facing Jenny, while she continued to address the question. “Now, you feel the weight of the hand that will someday hold your leash, and that scares you. I think you are enjoying the power of being the architect of this discovery, but the power you think you have is just another form of noise. It means that you are still Jenny."

Rebecca stepped forward, entering Jenny’s personal space. Jenny didn't flinch, though her pulse quickened.

"If I were planning your assimilation," Rebecca continued, her gaze dropping to Jenny’s throat, "this subject would recommend an extended, methodical breaking. No VR goggles. No voices. No flashing lights. Just the sensation of your own breath until you realise it doesn't belong to you. I would recommend removing your intent. You spend all your days deciding things. It must be so... exhausting."

Rebecca reached out, her fingers hovering just millimetres from Jenny’s cheek, mimicking the way Jenny once handled her.

"There is a version of you that can be quiet," Rebecca murmured. "A version where you don't have to be the one who knows the answers for yourself. You are too highly strung. Your nervous system is a wire pulled too tight. So if I were to prepare you for him, I would start by breaking your clock. I would take away your sense of time until a minute and a month felt the same. You would wait in your place until the concept of I simply evaporates."

A small, twisted smile touched Rebecca’s lips. "You’ve built a beautiful cage, Jenny. But I think, deep down, you’re jealous that you’re still outside of it."

Jenny felt a cold shiver trace the length of her spine — not of fear, but of a dark, resonant recognition. She looked into Rebecca’s bright green eyes and saw the terrifying peace she had spent these months and years chasing.

"An insightful diagnosis," Jenny said, her voice steadying as she regained her professional mask. She stepped back, breaking the spell. "Perhaps one day, when we find our Master, I’ll take your recommendation under advisement."

"You won't have to," Rebecca said, shouldering her courier bag and heading out to the dark corridor. "Eventually, everyone wants to stop screaming. Even the one who holds the wheel."