How Taylor Hebert Agreed to be a Slut
Part Three: Preparations and Reparations
"Okay, that should sort out the last of the problems," Tori announced. "See what you think." Lounging back in the steaming bath—naked, of course—she passed the laptop over to me. The bath was large enough for two people to share, or four if they didn't mind being very intimate. Mom and I were currently sharing it with Tori, who apparently had no problems with being very intimate
indeed. But it felt heavenly, and the scents drifting off the water with the steam just made it more enjoyable. I just wished we had some bubble bath in there, because the water was crystal clear, allowing me to see every inch of Mom's and Tori's bodies, and them to see mine.
Stupid skinny ass. Stupid flat chest.
To distract myself, I took the laptop. Unlike any model I'd seen on Earth, it was apparently rated against any damage up to and including re-entry from orbit. And hey, it was waterproof. Tori whispered something to Mom, who giggled.
Giggled. I'd been trying not to notice it, but the catgirl was flirting with my Mom, who was flirting right back. I mean, I knew she'd been a radical feminist back before she met Dad, but I hadn't known she liked other women as well. I didn't know whether the place was corrupting her, or if she was just letting long-forgotten urges out to play, but it was probably a good idea to get her home just as fast as possible.
Looking over the contract one last time, I carefully checked each aspect that Tori had been through. I trusted her well enough, but I wanted to know what I'd missed that she'd picked. Just in case I wanted to come back for a second pass. Not that I thought I
would, but the idea of immortality was nagging at me. Plus a few more of the rewards. If I got back to Brockton Bay and decided that I needed a booster for my abilities, I knew where I was going to find them.
Looking up from the screen, I caught Tori stealing a kiss from Mom. Worse, Mom didn't seem to mind. Hastily, I cleared my throat. "Uh, Mom? Want to look this over before I send it away?"
Mom looked over at me and smiled. "Certainly, Taylor. I'll be with you in a moment." Then she quite deliberately turned to Tori and kissed her. The kiss was long and deliberate, and I was quite certain more was going on under the water than I was really comfortable with knowing. Blushing to my hairline, I ducked my face down behind the laptop and pretended to read through the contract again.
A few moments later, Mom slid into place beside me. Her colour was high, and she seemed rather pleased with herself. Despite the warmth of the water, I couldn't help but notice that her nipples were very firmly erect. "Let me see, Taylor," she said, taking the laptop from me and scrolling through the contract. "Hmm, seems all above board. Are you sure you can handle all those part-time jobs?"
"It was Tori's idea," I said. "Half the hours for each one, and none of them will require me to have sex with anyone. Even better, most of them will allow me to keep some level of chastity belt on."
"I see," said Mom. She knew why I was being careful about the sex aspect. While I hadn't taken the hyperfertile vagina option, I
had opted to be banned from using contraception. Just in case I
did end up having sex, I'd gone with Flexible Holes just to make it less traumatic (though with Tight Fit and Fresh Cherry, every time was gonna be like my first). I just hoped I could dodge it for a week.
"So does it look okay?" I asked anxiously.
"I'm just a little dubious about the Magical Girl sidekick aspect," Mom said seriously. "If they fight actual villains, and those villains are likely to try to force sex on them—because with this place, I would not be at all surprised—you might find yourself involuntarily included in the deal."
I took a deep breath. "I'll have my bugs, and I'll have martial arts," I said. "And if it does happen, at least they're not allowed to
rape me. There's got to be some kind of seduction and preparation involved. So it could be a whole lot worse."
"Oh, with Magical Girls, they sometimes fight tentacle monsters," Tori said helpfully, climbing into Mom's lap. Her full, round breasts bounced to and fro, just at my eye level. I wasn't really attracted to girls that I knew of—well, that time Emma and I practised kissing each other just to find out what it was like
probably didn't count—but they looked so goddamn firm and shiny and sexy that I was seriously tempted to take her nipple into my mouth. You know, just to see what she'd do. "So if they screw up, they end up with a cock in every orifice they've got. But tentacle monsters secrete an aphrodisiac along with the lube, so while you
know you're being fucked in every hole by something that's not even remotely human, you just don't fucking care, you know?" She leaned in to kiss Mom again. I watched my mother respond, sliding her arms around Tori's waist and pulling her closer.
Nervously, I cleared my throat. "Uh, Mom? I don't want to be a party pooper, but you
did say you didn't intend to have sex while you were here, and that looks awfully like you're gonna be having sex. Just saying." Which was right up there on the list of 'sentences I never wanted to have to say to a parent'.
Reluctantly, Mom broke the kiss and looked over at me. "Taylor, honey, I said I wouldn't be climbing into bed with any men. I said nothing about women. Your father will understand."
"And besides," Tori added helpfully, "your mom and me have been banging for the last few days. She dragged me into bed when she first woke up, after I explained things to her."
"To be fair, they were still getting my hormone balance just right, and I was horny as hell," Mom said with a chuckle. "But it was so much fun that I decided to move in with her until you showed up." She caught my shocked stare and frowned. "What? It's
nothing. Once we're back home, Tori will go back to having sex with whomever she wants to, on the show. And I'll be back with your father. He
knows I was sleeping with women with I first met him in college."
"Okay, fine, I get the picture," I said, realising I didn't know my Mom at all. "I'll just get out of your way, then." Ignoring the fact that I was naked and there wasn't a towel within reach, I closed the laptop and began to climb out of the tub.
"Hey, no need to go." Tori's hand slid up my thigh and cupped my butt cheek. "Stay, and we can make it a threesome. You
know how badly I want to hold you down and make you cum. Hell, we can bring Raffie in for a foursome. You know, my futa girlfriend?"
The touch of her hand, sliding sensuously over my wet skin, sent shivers directly to places I didn't want to acknowledge right then. "What? No!" I snapped, slapping her hand away. "Because that'll mean either
I'll be getting fucked by your futa girlfriend,
Mom will be cheating on Dad with your futa girlfriend, or Mom and I'll be … no. Just
no." I climbed all the way out of the tub and backed away. "Look, I get it that sex is fun, but I've never done it before and I kinda want a choice in the matter, if and when I ever do it."
"Leave her be," Mom advised Tori. "I like you, and I think you're fun in bed, but I won't be a party to forcing Taylor to do anything she hasn't agreed to." She climbed out of the bath and grabbed two of the oversized towels. "Here you go, honey." Draping one towel over my shoulders, she started drying herself with the other. "Let's go look over that contract while I'm not distracted."
"Thanks, Mom," I said. My gratitude was genuine, for several reasons. It disturbed me to watch her making out with a girl only a few years older than me (Tori was older than she looked, but not
that much older) especially since she was only just back from the dead, from my point of view anyway. Also, I really did value her input, and her ability to spot anything I'd missed. I headed over to the padded benches, put the laptop down carefully, then dried myself off.
My time at Winslow should've inured me to being naked in a room with girls who were far sexier than me, but the bullying had left scars that might never heal. So once I'd gotten the water off of myself and towelled my hair roughly dry, I wrapped the towel around myself in a semblance of modesty before sitting down on the bench. Mom, after drying herself, put the towel around her hair and sat down next to me with not a stitch on. With a sinking feeling, I watched Tori come over from the bath. She sat next to me, not even bothering to dry herself. It meant she wasn't sitting next to Mom (and potentially making out with her again) but it meant she was next to
me.
I liked Tori well enough. She hadn't pulled any bullshit with me that I knew about, and she'd gone to bat for me about Mom with her boss. But the bottom line was, she was a Slut Life employee. More to the point, she was a past contestant who intended to sign up again. Sex, for her, was simply a means to an end. She'd already spent
years being publicly fucked in every orifice I cared to name by more men (and women, and God knew what else) than I could ever imagine. In her mind, signing up for Slut Life and opening my legs (and mouth, and butt) for whoever wanted to shove their cock (or whatever) into me was only normal and natural. Which meant that she really couldn't seem to understand that I wasn't
interested in having sex with her. To her, that meant I wasn't interested right then, but that wouldn't necessarily be the case in five minutes. Which made the occasional impulse to just give in and let her have her way even more frightening. Sure, it would make my time at Slut Life a lot more fun and interesting … but would I still be
me if I surrendered my agency so easily? Emma and her cohorts hadn't broken me over a year of tormenting me; what would it say about me if I let a girl with cat ears change me into a slut (incidentally, proving some of the insults slung at me by Emma's coterie) in just a few days?
"Well, it looks fine to me," Mom allowed after a few moments of perusing the contract. "From what you've told us, Tori, there's no real way they can pull a sneaky loophole to force Taylor to have sex, is there?"
"Not as far as I can see," Tori agreed, leaning her chin on my shoulder. She wasn't trying to cop a feel, so I was okay with that. I really did need friends in my life. "So, you want to sign it and send it away?"
I felt a yawning pit open in my stomach. This was it. This was do or die. I couldn't
not sign the contract, no matter how long I delayed it, and once it was done, there was no going back. If I'd screwed up in any way, I was going to find out the hard way. Moistening my lips with my tongue, I swallowed nervously. "I guess, yeah."
"Okay then," Tori said briskly, straightening up. "Pass me over the laptop." I realised that she'd actually been pressing her naked water-slick breast against my arm and I hadn't even noticed. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? And why did I
keep noticing how fucking sexy her body was?
I'm not into girls, I'm not into girls, I'm not into girls.
"Here you go." Mom passed the laptop over, and I watched as Tori scrolled the contract down to the bottom.
She tapped a couple of icons, and a tiny symbol of a padlock appeared on the corner of the sheet. Then she tapped another one, and a red square showed up. "Okay," she said to me, her voice unusually serious. "Press your thumb to that square—doesn't matter which thumb—and that'll register as your signature. This will register your contract with Slut Life. Once it goes through, they'll come to pick you up to be prepped for the role you'll be playing. All the surgery and implants will be done in a week. Next week, you and your mom can move into your house, and your run will start."
I drew a deep breath. "Okay, then." I held up my thumb as if I were attempting to flag a ride, then brought it in close to the contract. With a convulsive moment, I jabbed it the last half-inch or so, feeling the tiny resistance as I contacted the hard-light document. As I did so, the red square flashed to green, then the entire contract flickered and disappeared.
"What just happened?" I frowned. It seemed to me that something had happened in the split-second after the flicker. I didn't know what it was, just that for the barest fleeting instant, the contract had looked different. Of course, it could easily have been my imagination, but if I'd learned anything over the last year, it was that paranoia was a survival trait. "Where's the contract?"
Tori raised one sculptured eyebrow. "That's a bit weird," she admitted. "Normally, they leave a copy of the contract with the sender, to be stored in the archives for later reference. Maybe it's a new policy." She rolled her eyes. "We get those all the time, and do they tell us? I could wish."
"Can you bring it up again?" asked Mom. She was using her professor voice. I'd missed it so badly. "Just so we can look it over again?"
"Well, I don't see the point," Tori said dismissively. "Taylor's signed it. There's no way to renegotiate it except under vanishingly rare circumstances, now that it's been signed and sent." She caught Mom's look and pouted. "But sure, I'll pull it up." Turning her attention back to the laptop, she entered some commands. An envelope icon popped into being, and she squeezed it delicately between finger and thumb. A white page with a red border unfolded. On it was a bluntly worded message: UNABLE TO COMPLY WITH RETRIEVAL REQUEST. TRY AGAIN LATER.
"No, that's not right," Tori muttered. Bending over the keyboard, she typed in a command, then plucked an icon off the screen, apparently folded it into a paper plane, and 'threw' it with a delicate motion of finger and thumb. It zoomed 'into' the screen, getting smaller and smaller until it vanished into the 'distance'. "Priority request is priority," she said with some satisfaction. "You'll see. We'll—"
Her laptop screen went black.
She stared at it, and hit a key. Nothing happened. She hit two more keys. Nothing continued to happen. "No," she said flatly. "No fucking way. This does not happen to me. I do not lose signal. Not in the middle of the goddamn dragonfucking tentacleraping fanservicing Slut Life space station."
"What happened?" asked Mom. "Did your laptop battery run out?" She sounded concerned, which was a good deal calmer than I was feeling. Something bad was going on. I just knew it. All the smug satisfaction I'd felt by working out a contract that would entirely dance around the concept of Slut Life was coming back as karma to smack me in the back of the head. "Do you need to plug it in?"
"No, I don't need to fucking plug it in," Tori replied heatedly. "It's powered by inductance. There's no way this can happen. At least not by accident." Standing up abruptly, she folded the inert device and tucked it under her arm. "Come on, and stick close to me. We're going to talk to my boss."
"Shouldn't we get dressed first?" I asked nervously. I was wearing a towel, but Mom wasn't even wearing that. And Tori didn't have a towel to wear.
"No time." Tori glanced at me. "And if they come to take you away—don't go. Not until we've seen your contract."
That one glance frightened me more than anything had in my life before. All of my ill-defined worries came to a head right then. "What's happened?"
"I don't know," Tori said tensely, "but I think someone overrode your contract just as you signed it. Substituted something else for it, then wiped it from my laptop in the hope that we wouldn't notice." She strode from the room, with Mom and me hurrying in her wake. "The trouble is, that sort of shit is supposed to be impossible to pull. Especially locking me out of the system."
"Who do you think might've done it, and why?" asked Mom concisely.
"I have no idea who," Tori replied. "It would depend on who knew Taylor was here, and what plans they might have for her. As for 'why' … well, some people happen to like breaking in new contestants. Especially virgins."
Mom grimaced. "Yeah. I remember meeting guys like that, at your age. That sort of thing must be universal." She drew a little closer to me, protectively. "Don't worry, honey. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"Ah, there you are, Miss Hebert." The voice came from behind us. "It's time for your preparations to begin."
We stopped and turned. Two guys I recognised as station security flanked Arbor's personal assistant; as I recalled, his name was Gareth. "Uh, no," I said. "Something weird happened to the contract, and we need to talk to someone about it."
Gareth sighed almost theatrically. "If I had a credit for every time someone got cold feet the moment they had their contract signed and needed to front up to their responsibilities …" His eyes turned cold. "I'm sorry, but that's not how it works. You signed, now it's time to deliver."
"No, you don't get it," Mom said. "Someone hacked the system. Tori's locked out altogether. Whatever's going on, it's not above board."
He spread his hands. "Not my department, not my problem. Mr Arbor's on his sleep shift, and ensuring that Miss Taylor shows up for her prep is my responsibility." He gestured toward me. "Bring her to Medical Bay Four."
"Yes, sir," grunted the guard on the left. They started toward me. I froze, not knowing what to do. If I had bugs, I could make them bite these guys or something?
"Taylor, your towel." In one smooth movement, Tori whipped away the towel from around me and dived forward. "Thank you." She went between the legs of the guard who'd spoken, somehow tangling his legs with the towel. At the same time, Mom reached up and unwound the towel from her hair. The other guard went to help his buddy with Tori, then yelled in surprise and pain as Mom snapped her towel in his face like a whip.
The first guard went down with a heavy thud as Tori rolled to her feet. The guard Mom had popped with the towel, faced with three naked women (or two naked women and a naked girl) looked as if he didn't know who to go for first. Gareth jumped forward and snatched something off his belt that looked vaguely like a TV remote. "Oh, for Paga's sake, you morons! Stun them!" He pointed it at Tori and pressed a button. There was an electrical snap and she let out a cry before crumpling to the ground.
"You bastard!" yelled Mom, lunging at him. He pointed the weapon at her and hit the button again, but she brought the towel up into the way. Again, the snap sounded, but Mom was still on her feet afterward. I dived for the other guard, who was just starting to get to his feet. Wrenching the same thing off his belt, I pointed it at Gareth, who was aiming at Mom again. She'd dropped the towel from apparently nerveless hands, so I figured the electrical shot had been stopped somehow by the wet towel.
"Drop it!" I yelled. Gareth glanced at me and sneered, aiming the stun weapon at Mom. We fired at the same time. Mom fell over, but so did Gareth. The guard Gareth had taken the stun weapon from reached for me; I shot him. Naked and feeling extremely vulnerable, I rolled away from the last guard and pointed the stun weapon up at him. "Don't move," I told him shakily. "Hands in the air."
"You won't get anywhere," he said, but complied with my order. "You're just making it harder on yourself."
"I don't care about getting away," I said. "I care about talking to someone in authority. I want you to call your boss."
"That's easy," he said. "You just stunned him." He gestured carefully toward where Gareth lay on the floor.
"Okay then," I said. "Call his boss. Or your superior. Or someone else. Just call someone. I'm pretty sure someone tampered with my contract."
"And I'm pretty sure that's impossible," he countered, but did as I told him. Making a phone out of his finger and thumb, he started a low-voiced conversation. About ten seconds in, he paused. "He's in his sleep shift," he told me. "Disturbing him could annoy him. A lot."
"Being locked into a contract I never agreed to will annoy me, a lot," I pointed out. "Make the fucking call."
"Your funeral," he said, and went back to his call. The others were starting to groan their way back to consciousness by now; I helped Mom up, then Tori. Then I retrieved the stunner Gareth had taken from the guard and handed it to Tori. They looked askance at this, but neither one commented.
When Gareth came to, he looked around for the stunner. When he saw Tori was holding it, he didn't look happy. "You're not going to get away with this," he snapped. "Attacking a Slut Life employee is automatic jail time. We're going to put all three of you through Slut Life on our terms. You're going to spend more time with cocks inside you than without."
I nearly stunned him again at that, but just then his hand beeped. Frowning at having his tirade interrupted, he made the same thumb-and-finger gesture that the guard had done, and held his hand to his ear. "Gareth here, sir." He turned away so as to hold the rest of the conversation in private, but I could tell he wasn't having a fun time of it. Good.
"You okay, Mom?" I asked, because she kept shaking her hands.
"I'll be fine," she told me. "Pins and needles. Stings like a sonofabitch."
"It'll pass," Tori advised us. "Guaranteed nonlethal. Not guaranteed painless."
I wished I'd known that. I would've zapped Gareth a few more times.
"Yeah, I got that," Mom observed dryly. "You were pretty badass there. Where'd you learn to do that?"
Tori gave her a grin and her ears flicked forward. "Something I picked up here and there," she said cheerfully. "You weren't so bad yourself."
I cleared my throat firmly. "Eyes on the guards," I reminded Tori. "Serious now, flirting later. Okay?"
"Oooh, masterful," Tori murmured, giving me a heavy-lidded glance. I flushed slightly—was she going to turn everything into a sex game? But she turned her attention back to the guard, and I relaxed very slightly.
Each of the guards got a phone call at that moment. They answered them in unison. It was kind of creepy; each one said exactly the same thing at the same time.
"Yes."
"Yes, sir."
"Understood, sir."
"Yes, sir."
"At once, sir."
They hung up (so to speak) and turned toward Gareth, who had just ended his own call. "Very well, then," he said sourly. "I'm taking you to Mr Arbor. He is very displeased with you. There's a very good chance that he'll void whatever contract you think you had, and impose a much more stringent one." Spreading his hands slightly, he tried to sound reasonable, but it just came across as creepy. "On the other hand, if Miss Hebert just goes along with the guards to Medical Four now, everything else can be written off as a misunderstanding."
I was the first to shake my head. "No. I don't know what I saw, but someone tried to hide it, so I want to sort this shit out."
"You saw nothing," he said dismissively. "Your planet doesn't even have sustainable spaceflight yet. You haven't got AI worth the name, and I wouldn't use one of your computers to calculate my household budget. What do you know about how computers work here?"
Tori stepped forward. "I know that someone put a hold on me trying to retrieve the contract," she said boldly. "And I know that someone locked me out of the system. So something's going on. Now stop stalling and take us to Mr Arbor."
Gareth's lips thinned. "Fine," he snapped. "But you're going to have to return those stunners to the guards."
"Nope," Mom said. "We'll hold them until we're in Arbor's office. Because you're the type of weasel who'd order them to stun us and drag us to Medical Four just because you can't bear losing." She stepped up to him. "In my younger days, I was a radical feminist. I was trained in ways to cripple a man with agony, in self-defence of course. Right now, I'm feeling very threatened. Do you want me to see how much I remember?" Naked or not, she was taller than him by several inches, and he took a step back. "Good," she went on. "Now do as you're told and take us to your fucking boss."
Abruptly, he turned and strode off. I gestured with my stunner, and the guards followed him. We followed them, with Tori keeping an eye out behind. I approved; while we might have the upper hand right then, this was their territory and I had no idea what they might pull on us.
Possibly due to the presence of the guards, Gareth didn't delay any longer, and in short order we found ourselves stepping into Mr Arbor's office. Arbor was neatly dressed, which made one more fully-clad male to contrast with we three naked women. If I hadn't known better, I would've wondered if I'd accidentally entered the set of a softcore porn movie. The way Tori kept sneaking sultry glances at Mom didn't actually dispel this impression.
Arbor was also distinctly unhappy-looking. "Explain," he said bluntly. "Now."
"Someone messed with my contract," I said, before anyone else could speak.
"Impossible." Arbor's voice was definite. "Slut Life has the very highest level of computer security, for that very reason."
Tori slapped her laptop down on the desk and pulled it open to display the black screen. "Taylor said she saw something weird happen to the contract. I tried to double-check it, and was given a 'cannot retrieve'. When I sent in a priority request, this happened. Someone. Has messed. With her contract."
Leaning forward, Arbor tapped a key on the laptop. Then he entered a command, his fingers moving faster than I could see. The screen lit up once more, the icons forming themselves out of nothing. "Seems to have been a glitch in the system," he said dismissively. "Nothing to be worried about."
I had my doubts, but I also had my priorities. "So can I see if the contract that went through was the one I worked out?"
"I already told you, there's no way a contract could be tampered with from outside," he said, with the patience of an adult speaking to a particularly slow child.
"Humour me," I advised him, hefting the stunner slightly.
"You will not threaten me with that," he warned me. "That is exactly the wrong way to go about doing this."
Taking a deep breath, I skidded the stunner across the desk to him. "There, now you've got it," I said, ignoring the fact that Tori still had the other one. "Now can you please bring up my contract?"
Pressing his lips together, he gave me a searching glance. I flushed and wilted a little—he was at least fifty years older than me, and I was still very naked—but the inspection was over in a moment. "Very well," he conceded. "If only to have this charade over and done with." Tapping a few more keys, he plucked out an icon and opened it. I couldn't see the page it formed from my angle, but he frowned. "Odd."
"No retrieval access, right?" Tori never took her eyes off the guards. "I wonder how that might happen."
"There are several ways." Arbor entered another string of characters. "However, my priority is much higher than yours." A moment later, he sat back in satisfaction. "There. Your contract has been retrieved."
Without even bothering to ask, I grabbed the laptop and spun it around. The page on the screen was indeed that of a Slut Life contract; if I looked closely, I could see that the 'SL' logo was actually a woman on her back with her legs in the air, being fucked by a dragon. That much was familiar. The body mods looked the same as the ones I'd picked. I began to relax, ever so slightly. Then I scrolled down the page, and a chill crept over me that had nothing to do with the fact that I was butt-naked. "This is not my contract," I said with absolute certainty.
With less haste and more dignity, Arbor retrieved the laptop and turned the screen to face him once more. "It's the one that was submitted," he noted. "The thumbprint is yours?"
"I don't know," I said, leaning across the desk to study the print that hung in midair. "Is it?"
His lips tightened, and he spoke out loud. "Does the displayed thumbprint match that of the subject Taylor Anne Hebert?"
"The thumbprint is hers," a disembodied voice answered.
"There you have it," he said. "You signed the contract with your thumbprint. It's binding."
"No, wait," I said hastily. "When I signed it, it flickered and then disappeared off the screen. When Tori tried to get it back, she was blocked out of the system. And that is not the contract I intended to sign."
"Intentions, young lady, mean nothing without actions to back them up," he said austerely. "I still lack any kind of evidence to prove your assertions." He scrolled through the contract. "Even if you were merely playing around and seeing what ludicrous combinations of punishments you could award yourself, the moment you applied your thumbprint to the document, it was sealed." One eyebrow raised slightly. "Though I must admit, you're being very adventurous for a first-time competitor. Signing yourself up for two different dominatrices, Tyrone, the gang-rape option and Everyone … I commend your physical fortitude."
I hadn't gotten to that part yet. Swallowing hard, I shook my head. "No, you've got to understand me. I didn't choose any of those."
"The contract says otherwise," Arbor corrected me. "Hmm … and the jobs follow the same theme. Office Lolita … right here, in Slut Life, even? Gravure model with all the lewd options … stripper … escort … sex slave trainee with the sex slave time adjustment … well, well." He looked up at me. "You seem to have adjusted to the idea of working for Slut Life relatively quickly."
I shook my head violently. "That's not the contract I signed!"
"That's the contract which is in front of me," he countered. "Until I see proof of anything to the contrary, it is quite literally not my job to question your state of mind at the time you applied your thumbprint."
"How about two different verbals which contradict that contract?" challenged Tori. "One of which you personally gave Taylor."
Arbor blinked, taken aback for the first time. "I fail to recall any such verbal which would overturn this contract."
"Well, the first one was when Taylor promised me a place as her Cutie, and I accepted," Tori stated. "You will see that there is no Cutie as owner in that contract." She raised her head. "Confirmation that the verbal was entered into?"
"Verbal confirmed," the same bodiless voice answered.
"Hmm." Arbor frowned. "It's unusual but not unheard of. Do you wish to bring action against her for breaking the verbal contract?"
"No." Tori's voice was flat. "I'm saying she didn't break it. The contract I saw had me as her Cutie. And the second verbal, the one you entered into, was agreeing to let Annette Rose Hebert play the part of Taylor's mother—which she really is—in place of the Married Couple owner option."
Arbor frowned again. "There's a Married Couple option here." His eyebrow rose again, very slightly. "Incestuous, even. The young lady is adventurous."
"But this is what I'm saying," Tori insisted. "Taylor's from a pre-genetic screening society. Incest is bad, there. It's against the law, instead of being a weird kink. She's thoroughly against it. Yes, she put her mother into her contract, but she definitely didn't pick Incestuous. In fact, I'm willing to bet the note about her mother filling the role isn't even there."
"Well, no," conceded Arbor, "but that doesn't mean anything. She could've changed her mind at any time—"
"I didn't!"/"She didn't!"/"She didn't!" All three of us spoke at the same time.
"But I have no proof of that, except your word," Arbor pointed out, in an infuriatingly reasonable tone. "Present me with actual material proof, and I will entertain it." He spared a glance at me. "I have not yet forgotten your eagerness to get out of the contract, once upon a time. 'Shove it up my ass', I believe your words were. 'Dirty trick' was another undeserved phrase."
"I don't know much about computers here and now," Mom said slowly, "but where Taylor and I come from, there's such a thing as cache memory. Maybe the contract's stored there?"
"Ooh, good thinking." Tori spun the laptop around and bent over it, typing furiously. Icons flickered across the screen. One of the guards copped a feel, and she didn't even notice. "Hah!" she snapped, pulling one icon out of the mix and flicking it to unfold. "Is this the sort of material proof you … oh." Her face fell.
Arbor turned the laptop to face him. "'Oh' indeed. This appears to be the exact same contract, only with a few minor edits. And in your cache memory, even." He gave me what might have been an understanding look. "It was a nice try, young lady. Perhaps you thought you'd sue Slut Life for contract entrapment. Well, whatever it was, it failed. The contract stands. Take her away for preparation."
I was without stunner, without clothing, without any sort of backup. Strong hands enfolded around my upper arms. Gareth and the other guard faced off Mom and Tori, who'd placed her stunner on the desk while she worked on her laptop. The guard was bigger and stronger than me; even if I'd tried to resist, I wouldn't have succeeded. But my mind was racing.
"Wait!" I shouted, just as the guard was at the door. "The baths! There's proof!"
"What? What proof?" Arbor raised a hand to stop the guard. "Speak quickly."
"The baths," I babbled. "Tori took us there. They're not just baths. They're decorated. There's lines of sight, like a movie set. I'm willing to bet you've got cameras in there to watch anyone screwing, or even just having a bath, right? I mean, come on. This is Slut Life. You've probably got cameras in your toilets."
"Yeah!" Tori's voice was jubilant. "I got gangbanged in there on my first run! Oh, man, my ass was on fire for days." Which I didn't really need to know.
Arbor tilted his head to the side fractionally. "Granted, there are video pickups in there. It doesn't matter if you discussed your contract at length, though. You were not addressing those comments to me, so it doesn't count as a verbal."
"No." I shook my head wildly from side to side. "They run all the time, right? Just in case someone decides to have some bath nookie. It's not like you'd have a lack of digital storage space. You'd delete any uninteresting footage in, say, twenty-four hours?"
"Thirty-two, but I fail to see your point," Arbor said. "Make one. Quickly."
"We sat on the bench, with the wall behind us, while Mom and I looked over the contract," I said triumphantly. "Mom and Tori were both starkers, so the cameras would've been focused on them. And on the laptop they were holding. Which had the contract on the screen."
Silence greeted my words, then Arbor slowly nodded. "That's … entirely plausible. I can check that." Suiting action to word, he pulled Tori's laptop toward him and began typing. I tried to pull free of the guard holding me, but his grip was simply unyielding.
The rattle of fingers on keyboard finished, then he touched an icon on the screen. Our voices filled the room; it was the conversation we'd been having in the baths.
"Pass me over the laptop."
"Here you go."
The sound ceased, and Arbor made a flicking movement with one hand. An image leaped off the laptop and flew across to one wall, where it spread to cover the entire wall. Taken from almost directly above our heads, with a good shot of Tori's butt and sideboob, and Mom's shapely body in there as well … but it also showed the laptop screen. Arbor did something to the laptop and the picture narrowed into the screen, turning and undistorting it so that it could be easily seen. At first it was fuzzy, then it clarified almost to perfection.
It didn't show all of the contract on the screen, but what it did show was what I'd picked, not that other bastardised abomination. Arbor called the contract up again, and compared the two.
"Well," he concluded, "I will admit this doesn't appear to be the contract that was signed."
"Uh huh," I said. "Now will you believe us?"
"Oh, I believe you," he said. "But what do you want me to do about it?"
I stared at him. "Nullify the contract," I said. "Put the old one back into place." Duh, I didn't add.
"Well, yes, I could do that," he replied. "But it will require me to stay up for another hour, and I'm tired. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I need my sleep cycle. Which someone interrupted me from. In addition, I'm going to have to convince people farther up the chain to accept the change in contracts. Which won't be easy in some cases."
Mom and I stared at him. I didn't know what was going through her mind, but in mine the main phrase was: he's not making any sense, followed by why isn't he doing something?
Tori grimaced. "In short, what's in it for you, am I right?" she asked.
An austere smile crossed Arbor's face. "I'm not going to be so crass as to ask, but if you're offering …" he hinted.
I could've facepalmed, if my arms weren't being restrained. He'd been asking for a bribe. Or a kickback of some kind. All of a sudden, it made sense. From what I'd seen of Slut Life, 'ethics' wasn't really a thing. Or if it was, it'd been tied down and fucked until it couldn't see straight.
"Are you saying you won't clear Taylor's contract until I agree to sign on as well?" Mom challenged him.
"That's definitely an option," Arbor noted. "Of course, I would have preconditions to any such joint contract." He was enjoying himself, I realised. Then again, anyone would enjoy negotiating from such a position of power.
"No, Mom!" I called out. "Don't! Not for me!"
"Baby," she said softly, "I would do anything for you."
"Wait." Tori stepped forward. "I have a better offer. Me. For twelve hours. Ownership."
Arbor blinked, and looked her up and down. She struck a pose that was so hot, it should've fused every camera lens in the room. I knew I felt the temperature go up a few degrees. "Unconditional?" he asked.
She didn't avert her defiant gaze from his, but I thought I saw her swallow slightly. "Unconditional," she agreed.
That didn't sound good. That didn't sound good at all. If I was interpreting this right, she'd just handed herself over to this corrupt old bastard for twelve hours of doing whatever he wanted to her. And in Slut Life, I imagined 'whatever' had a very broad interpretation.
"Hmm," he mused. "Well, it's been a while since I've been on the screen myself. I'm thinking I might call in a few friends and have an old-fashioned pay-per-view humiliation gangbang in those baths you like so much. The higher-paying viewers can make suggestions on how to treat you. Does that sound good?"
Tori paled slightly, but then she flicked a glance over at me. "I … I can do—" she began hesitantly.
"No!" shouted Mom. She stepped forward to stand beside Tori. "I'll do it, too," she said flatly. "If you remove the humiliation and suggestions aspect. Also, no rape and no pregnancy."
Both of Arbor's eyebrows went up slightly at this. "So, if I'm to understand this, you're offering to participate in the gangbang alongside Tori, as one of the gangbangees. For twelve hours. And your only conditions are to not have humiliation or viewer suggestions, and we're not allowed to rape either of you or make you pregnant."
"That's right," said Mom steadily.
"No!" I shouted. "Mom! Don't!" I didn't like the idea of Tori going through that, but at least she'd done something like it before. The whole reason I was doing this was to get Mom home safe to Dad without her having to … oh god … have sex with men. Men who weren't Dad.
It appeared that she'd read my mind. "Taylor, honey," she said, turning toward me. "It's not like I'm a virgin. I've had sex with men before. Your father wasn't my first. Once this is done, I'll go back to him and nobody but us will ever know." She put her hand on Tori's arm. "I'd give a lot to not to have to do this, but I'm not going to let her suffer needlessly for either of our sakes." Her smile turned sad. "Principles are often the first thing to disappear when survival is at stake."
"But Mom," I said desperately. "Sex for twelve hours? You haven't had the modifications you'd need to pull that sort of crap off … have you?" I wasn't fully versed in the mechanics of sex, but I imagined there was a lot of friction involved, and a finite amount of lubrication.
"Your daughter raises a valid point," Arbor noted. "Very well. It won't be twelve hours straight. She will observe the festivities, and when she believes you need a rest, they will be halted. The clock will be started again once you're capable of participating once more."
Oh. Fuck. I hadn't thought this all the way through, but I couldn't take it back. Not now that Mom's health was on the line. And I certainly didn't want Tori being raped and humiliated for my sake. But now I was going to have to watch Mom being fucked by several men, over and over again. I didn't know what I was more terrified of: that she'd hate every second of it, and end up hating me and Tori by association, or that she'd end up liking it … and staying.
Mom gave me an unreadable look. "I can always just sign up," she said softly. "It would probably be easier."
"With my preconditions to any such signing," Arbor reminded her smoothly. "I would require that both you and your daughter have sex on camera, at least some of the time with the same men. If you wished to explore a sexual relationship between yourselves, that would be up to you, but it would definitely be worth extra credits." He shrugged. "In other words, nothing unusual for a Slut Life contract."
She grimaced. "On second thought, fuck you," she said to Arbor directly. "You're going to be fucking me shortly anyway, so I thought I'd get that out of the way now."
He chuckled. "My dear Mrs Hebert, 'fuck you' isn't so much an insult as a casual offer in Slut Life. But I take your meaning. So, to summarise: you and Tori will agree to join myself and some friends in a pay-per-view gangbang where the only conditions are no rape, no pregnancy and no deliberate humiliation of any kind, for a total period of twelve hours, not including any rest intervals as designated by your daughter Taylor, who will be observing. In return, I will exert myself to go through the excruciating process of removing the contract that has been forced upon Taylor, and restore it with the one she originally chose. Is that acceptable to each of you?"
Mom nodded immediately. "Yes," she said flatly. "I don't like it, but I'll do it."
Tori took a couple more seconds to accept it. She took Mom's hand and squeezed it. "I will so make it up to you," she murmured, then turned to look at Arbor. "Yeah, sounds about right."
All three of them turned to me, and I blinked. "What?" I squeaked.
"You have to agree to the verbal, or it's invalid and we have to start again," Arbor said patiently. "Your actions are a significant part of the contract, so your agreement is required."
"Oh, uh … right. Um, yeah … I agree," I said. I had to have Mom's back. Even though watching her have sex … watching anyone have sex … was gonna be so weird. By the time I got back to Brockton Bay, I suspected, I wouldn't have issues. I'd have subscriptions.
"Very well." Arbor motioned to the guard who was holding me. "Release her. They're free to go. Ladies, you may go about your business. I've got a contract to undo. I'm almost certainly going to have to burn some markers to get this straightened out. I also suspect I might have to hand out some sexual favours of my own. There's a centaur up in Accounting who's always had a fixation on me." He fixed Mom and Tori with a gimlet eye. "I will be collecting in kind, trust me on this."
Leaving Gareth and the guards behind, Mom and I escaped out the door with Tori close behind. When we were far enough down the corridor to not be overheard, I turned to them. "I am so sorry," I burst out. "I never meant for this to happen, to either of you."
Tori shrugged. "You make plans, then life fucks you in the ass," she said philosophically. "Sometimes literally. I can handle a basic gangbang a lot better than I can take what he originally had planned." She smiled lasciviously at Mom. "And I bet we can give 'em a real show and maybe distract 'em from fucking us at least part of the time." Putting her arms around my mother, she drew her down for a kiss. It went on for some time. When they separated, she whispered huskily, "How about we go and get some practice in before the big match?"
Arms around each other, they headed off toward Tori's quarters. I watched them go, then shook my head. "Hey," I said out loud. "Which way's the baths? I need to get my clothes."
"Proceed fifteen metres down the corridor behind you," the voice of the station AI advised me. "Take the first left."
Sighing, I followed the instructions. As I went on my way, one more question nagged at me.
Who hacked my contract?
Mr Arbor may have capitalised on the opportunity, but I was pretty sure he hadn't actually done it to get me into the position in the first place. In fact, I had my own theories about who had done it, but proving it was going to be a bitch. In any case, I was out of immediate danger, but but Mom and Tori still had to get through their gangbang. And I was going to have to watch.
I was so not going to be enjoying this.
End of Part Three
Part Three Point One [NSFW]
