The Whip and the Weekend

It was Human Capital that had flagged the irregularities in Twenty-One's data set. The smartphones that the girls wore on their arms were equipped with geo-locators that allowed Mistress Zero and the analysts on the 18th Floor to track their every move in the building. And every delivery was logged, tracking a girl's actual delivery time versus the delivery time that Human Capital had expected, based on a massive amount of data that included that girl's typical speed, other girls' typical speeds, how many floors a girl needed to ascend, how long the average wait for the service elevators might be, and so on. The girls themselves tried to game the numbers some; it didn't pay to arrive too soon, as deadlines would only be made shorter the next time. And, of course, it certainly didn't pay to arrive late, as they'd pick up a single demerit for anything less than a minute past deadline, and then an exponentially increasing number of demerits after that.

The smartphones also logged breaks and lunches, and bathroom breaks were required to be logged by an employee chaperoning a mailgirl's trip to the toilet. It wasn't uncommon for a mailgirl to ask a specific employee to babysit them in the bathroom on a regular basis. After all, the girls knew who was friendly and who wasn't, who'd treat them well and who'd treat them poorly, who'd grant them a modicum of privacy and who'd stare at them like a lech. And as much as they were here, there, and everywhere over the course of a day, they could be requested specifically by senior executives willing to spend a few chits to call Mailgirl Number Thirteen, or Mailgirl Number Twenty-One, and there was admittedly some opportunity for the mailgirl herself to volunteer to take standard mail up to a specific floor.

It also wasn't uncommon for a mailgirl to ask a male employee to play the part of chaperone. Some girls preferred it, as most men were more willing to defy the mailgirl regulation that required a granting employee watch the girl actively as she peed. Thirteen wasn't among these girls, however, as the opportunity of drawing a pervert who enjoyed watching her simply wasn't worth the risk.

But that first week in August, one of the analysts in Human Capital noticed an abnormally long pair of afternoon bathroom breaks in Twenty-One's data. They were both in IT, and they were both logged by the same male technician. When, on Friday, that very same technician in IT had logged the start of a bathroom break on Twenty-One's behalf, Human Capital received an alert, and they sent Mistress Zero to investigate.

Thirteen had since heard directly from Twenty-One how Mistress Zero had found her. She was in the handicapped stall of the men's room on the 6th Floor, door dutifully left open, and accompanied by a chaperone - all per regulation. However, she was clutching one of the handrails, with her face pressed up against the wall, as her chaperone stood behind her with his pants around his ankles and his dick buried deep inside of her. She hadn't been able to stop, even when she'd been found out, and she managed a few more quick thrusts against the tech before Mistress Zero grabbed her by the hair and pulled her screaming from the men's room. A few seconds more, Twenty-One had later opined, and she might have been able to hit her climax.

As arbitrary as it may have seemed, given the nude mailgirls parading through a place of work and masturbating on the second floor for all to see, USF had no tolerance for sexual relations between its employees and its mailgirls. It was what had drawn Thirteen and her advisor to USF in the first place, as Thirteen could conduct her anthropological research without fear of becoming of a full-on sex slave. The offending tech was fired on the spot, and his supervisor was terminated later that afternoon; per Human Capital, it was the supervisor's responsibility to supervise his employee. The following week, Employee Relations was called in, and three more techs were told to clean out their desks, as they had known what was happening but hadn't bothered to report it.

As there was literally no offense for which a mailgirl could be fired, Twenty-One was introduced to the whip. And the other girls were forced to watch. A joyous Friday afternoon in which half of them were off the next day, and most of them were headed over to the Imperial for drinks and their weekly Bitch Session, quickly went off the rails. Every crack of the whip drove home that, no matter how horny and turned on a mailgirl might become, there was a line that USF was not willing to let them cross.

It had been Twenty-One, as it turned out, who'd initiated congress with the technician, a rough-around-the-edges low level employee six years her junior. She'd lured him into the stall that first time, and suggested that he send a few interoffice envelopes over the next couple of days to bring her back. This confession irked Thirteen, as she herself had been called to the 6th Floor on one of the days, only to be greeted by a look of disappointment and what she now believed had been an empty interoffice envelope. The tech, certainly, hadn't resisted Twenty-One's advances, but the very fact that Twenty-One had been the aggressor left the rest of the girls breathing a sigh of relief; if had been the other way around, they all might have been concerned that the slide down the slippery slope had begun, and that any one of them could be next.

Not that that relief provided much comfort when all twenty-four girls were punished for Twenty-One's sins. Twenty-One had been the only girl to be lashed, sure. But Thirteen doubted that the whip alone was enough to keep the girls from acting on their arousal; she herself had been horny enough on more than one occasion that she might have willingly accepted the punishment in exchange for the pleasure. To keep Twenty-One in-line, and to keep any of the other girls from ever repeating Twenty-One's mistake, Mistress Zero kept every single one of the girls at the Plaza that night.

No drinks at the Imperial that particular Friday night. No Bitch Sessions. No weekend escape for the girls who'd suffered all week long.

But Friday, as it turned out, wasn't the end of it. Mistress Zero utilized half of the girls for Morning Shift on Saturday, and the other half in the afternoon, disregarding whom she'd actually scheduled for the duty back on Thursday afternoon. When not on call, the other girls were left on their knees, at their lockers. As they'd spent the large part of Friday evening. As they'd spend a large part of Saturday evening. As they'd spend the entire day on Saturday. The whole weekend long, the USF mailgirls weren't allowed to go home.

And, of course, there was more. They were blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed. During daylight hours, they were expected to be on their knees at their lockers, leashed to the floor. Friday evening. Saturday morning. Saturday evening. All day Sunday. Thirteen knelt, and knelt, and knelt. Her knees and legs grew sore. Her shoulders ached, with her arms handcuffed behind her. Her jaw was on fire - propped open by the ball gag - and her mouth painfully dry. They were given brief breaks, to eat and use the facilities, but they were forced to take turns, and to do so alone. The first girl unlocked the second girl's leash and her handcuffs, and removed the blindfold and gag. The second girl was then expected to re-secure the first, hurry through her few minutes of relative freedom, and then move on to the third for the cycle to repeat itself. They weren't allowed to shower, they weren't allowed to talk, and - excruciatingly for most of them - they weren't allowed to touch themselves. Thirteen counted the cycles of breaks to pass the time.

Thirteen knew from experience that a night curled up on the floor of the locker room, bound and secured, was not particularly conducive to sleep. But by Saturday night, she was so sore and exhausted that not even her frenzied, frantic arousal could keep her awake.

By the time Monday morning arrived, Thirteen's only priority was getting herself off, a priority that she shared with the others; the scene that morning on the shower block was the stuff of legend. She looked forward to her deliveries in a way that she never had before. She masturbated more that day than she ever had before or since. And even when she was finally allowed to return to her apartment that night, she found that she never really left the locker room. It was odd to wear clothes after being naked for eighty-some hours straight. It felt foreign to actually sit down. Even her bed seemed wrong, and it had taken a move to the carpeted floor of her bedroom for her to finally fall asleep.