Fiona Interrupted · Part 1 (1/2)
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Bzzzt.
The vibration startled Fiona, deep in concentration drawing a mental map of connections between several disparate events. Glancing up at her message list, just below the clock, she saw:
Nat
Emergency meeting called, will update when finished
Fiona glanced at the clock. 11:48. An emergency meeting just before lunch? Unheard of. Some General must have gotten a boil or something. Fiona tried to shake her head, laughed to herself a bit, then focused back on the map in her head, the one forming on her screen. As she worked with the mind mapping application, correcting the visual map to match the one in her mind, it struck her: this project had far too few connections.
Adding a note to the map, with a pink background to remind her this was an unfinished thought…
Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
Closing her eyes and bearing down, she silenced the alarm by squeezing the toy inside her. Her front side, so it was Nat calling. She clicked into her phone app, which automatically brought up the text-to-speech part when she was in frame.
“Hi hon, how’s it going?” Nat was trying to sound normal, calm, but there was an edge in her voice. Fiona squirmed, typed out “I’ve spotted something, need to work through it.” She heard the artificial voice, so much like her own, yet not inflected, repeat the words to Nat.
“Good, good, try to keep your concentration up. I may have to work late tonight, so I’m going to have Ben drop by after work to make sure you’re OK.”
Again, Fiona heard a… worried, hurried, maybe concerned undertone in her voice. She was speaking too fast, the long vowels clipped. “OK, it’s always nice to see Ben.”
“I gave him our emergency code, so it won’t unlock you. He wanted to see your frame. I’ll call you when I know how long this will take.”
Another Bzzzt signified Nat had ended the call. Turning her attention back to her mind map, Fiona noticed her clock application disappeared from its corner of her screen. Noting this, she went back to her map, adding a note to her investigation stack to look over the last month of data for similar projects with a lack of connections.
For now, she focused on comparing this project with similar ones, ferreting out which connections were missing. She had grown accustomed to a recognizable form taking place in the research connections of similar projects. After finishing her map of this project, she searched her recent work list for projects of a similar nature, those involving computer guidance and designed to survive a shutdown of global satellite navigation systems: the US GPS, European Galileo, Russian GLONASS, and Chinese BeiDou.
Opening each project, she found the connection map she had made for the project, and bent some of the connection nodes around the central topic to fit the shape of the map she had created today. Tossing each of these maps into a single large workspace and further rotating and reordering the maps, she saw two things at once:
Most of the projects had very similar forms of outside contacts, research incorporated, and sources cited from outside the primary researchers organizations. All this was completely proper and expected, what wasn’t expected is the missing parts. The project Fiona had been analyzing this morning, as well as two others, stood out because several branches of their interconnection trees appeared truncated, as if they had been pruned, compared to similar projects.
Fiona scribbled some notes into her research stack, both on repeating this for her other recent investigations and on where to look next in this exploration.
Bzzzzzzz.
Her rear buzzer. Fiona popped up her home status display, alarmed to find all but the front door camera disabled from view. The front door camera showed Ben entering a code on the finger panel, odd since his fingerprint was one of the few Natalie and Fiona kept in the system. The door lock spun, Fiona got another Bzzzzz, and Ben stepped through the front door.
She watched Ben scan the room on the interior camera display, then she startled and Ben jumped as Natalie’s voice filled Fiona’s head and the house. “Ben authenticate.”
On the camera Ben spun, looking for the source of the voice, and said loudly “four twelve ninety-two.”
Fiona’s front door camera feed went dark. Natalie’s disembodied voice said “I’ve enabled her hearing when you’re in the room with her. Clear the house and report in.”
Fiona’s inside cameras came to life, one by one, as Ben swept the house, looking for intruders and carrying a small electromagnetic sensor in one hand, a map in the other. She watched him work through the living room, their bedroom, the spare room that served as Natalie’s home office and guest room, both bathrooms, then the kitching and dining room. Finally he arrived back at the door of her office. He keyed the keypad, the bolt retracted, Fiona got another Bzzzz, Ben stepped into the room. The door lock clicked, Fiona got a Bzzzt in the front.
Ben said in a whispered tone “holy fuck.”
Natalie’s voice came to them both, a hint of laughter in it. “What was that?”
Ben cleared his voice. “All clear, redeploy for containment outside.”
Fiona tried to interrupt Natalie, but her keyboard did not respond.
“Deployed. You’ll stay with her?”
Fiona still hadn’t seen Ben, but could sense him standing there, staring. “They’ll have to drag me out of here dead.”
Fiona received another Bzzzt in the front. Natalie’s voice filled her head. “Fiona can speak after a fashion now. She can bring the notes for what you need to do up on her back screen when she needs you. Help yourself to whatever is in the fridge. Ben, feel free to explore, but Fiona will know that her interlocks are on. I’ll check in as soon as we know more.” Fiona disconnected the call with another Bzzzt.
Fiona groaned, deep in her throat. Little sound escaped the mask, but enough to alert Ben, who approached her from her right side. “My god, can you move at all in that?”
Fioan’s simulated voice came from the speakers in the room “Not much, other than to breathe and swallow.” Ben looked up and around, at the screen, then at Fiona. “Is that a synthesizer? Are you gagged?”
Fiona nodded, her ponytail at the back of her head virtually the only part that moved.
Ben walked around her, parts of the frame glowing in the light from her screen. Four posts of rigid stainless steel tubing, arcing over her head and crossing in the middle. The posts disappeared into the wooden floor with no apparent supports, he guessed they were bolted to the floor joists under.
Her chin rested on a strict, high metal posture collar, gleaming in the dim light. It rose from just below her collarbone in front to her chin, which was kept just below horizontal, and extended all the way around her neck and up the back of her head, where her ponytail was fed through a loop in the rear support. Her head was virtually immobilized, locked into staring at the large screen in front of her. Chains from front and back on the frame met at the sides of the collar, keeping her rigidly erect and unable to move more than a few millimeters in any direction.
Her arms hung at her sides, slightly out, loops around the elbows attached to short arms that connected to the most severe metal corset he had ever witnessed. He’d known Natalie and Fiona for several years now, and had seen Fiona corseted, but this was breathtaking, both literally and figuratively. Looking closer, he was startled to realize she was wearing a latex catsuit and a latex corset under the severe metal corset that kept her rigidly upright. Again, chains from the front and back of the frame attached to the elbow supports in the corset, keeping her rigidly positioned.
Below the corset, she straddled a curved narrow band of stainless steel that cupped and covered her crotch, rising to the top of her buttocks in the back. This was supported on another sturdy stainless steel shaft rising from the floor. Her hands, arms free to move below the elbow, were held at her sides, covered in large padded latex covered mittens.
Ballet boots kept her en pointe, cuffs at the thighs, below the knees, and at the ankles all chained to the support post for the crupper. The chains attached to rings around the post, which would tinkle as she moved what little she could.
Ben noticed Fiona’s eyes riveted on him as he stared at her bathed in the bluish light cast by the large flat screen. “I had no idea.”
Fiona’s artificial voice came from the speakers surrounding them “Nobody does, you’re the first to ever see this.”
Ben hovered closer, looking at her eyes above the face mask “Can you see OK?”
Fiona laughed, a quiet murmuring outside the mask, her synthetic voice said “Yes, RK surgery, I’m still nearsighted but don’t need glasses to work anymore.”
Ben’s gaze drifted down, where he noticed how prominent her nipples were under the latex. He touched her right nipple, just barely grazing it, watched as she flinched and jerked. Pulling his hand back, he yelled “Did I hurt you?”
Fiona’s synthesized voice, not able to express emotion, came out as calm as ever. “It’s just a TENS stimulator, you didn’t hurt me.”
Ben shook his head, took a step back, and looked her over. “I’m trying to not be judgy.”
“Then don’t. What is going on?”
Ben looked down at his feet. Fiona’s voice displayed none of the urgency she felt “Don’t give me any crap about clearances, just tell me why you’re here.”
Ben looked at her, his emotions at conflict with his professionalism. He knew that Natalie was playing him, sending him here, especially under these circumstances. He also knew that part of why he was here is that Natalie trusted him to look out for Fiona in a way she trusted nobody else on the planet. He didn’t want to lose his job over this, he certainly didn’t want to go to jail, but she had a right to know.
He was standing far enough to the side Fiona couldn’t see this playing out on his face. She felt his tension, figured it had to do with the situation, and waited. She had learned patience the hard way, and was now an expert at letting people come around to what they were always going to do.
“Utkin landed in Seattle this morning, on a flight from Tokyo.”
Held in place by the frame, Ben could see very little of Fiona’s reaction. Her biometric sensors picked up her immediate flight response, interpreting it as physical stimulation, and corrected her response. First the TENS unit in her anus started, ramping up in intensity, followed by her vagina, her breasts, and then both sides of her neck. As they crescendoed, the vibrators in her anus and vagina began a low warbling, the TENS units now slowly backing off.
Fiona rocked and recovered, calming her breathing. She flexed her arms slowly, fighting the restriction of the tight, heavy PVC suit. She was sweating inside the suit now, as the devices backed off she felt clammy. She managed to get her focus back on her screen, get the speech app in focus, and replied “Are you here to protect me, or to prevent me from being taken again?”
Ben recoiled as if she had shot him. Moving back into her view, at the side of the screen, he looked straight at her and said “You know I would never do that.”
Fiona’s eyes moved back to the screen. “I know you are a patriot first.” She stared back at him, her eyes large over the breathing mask.
Ben’s face crumpled. “I am in love with you first, a patriot second.”
Fiona laughed. From outside the mask, it sounded like muffled woofs, a tear rolled down Fiona’s cheek and she reached to wipe it away without thinking, her plastic-encased hand nowhere near capable of reaching her cheek. Ben stepped forward and wiped it away with a rough thumb, then kissed her eye, one of the few exposed parts of skin anywhere. He stepped behind her and tried to hug her, but there was no part of her that was accessible and wouldn’t cause her pain.
Fiona remained rigid, but it was impossible to tell if it was her, or just the frame. Fiona’s voice said, it’s intonation flat as always “Natalie knows, doesn’t she?”
Ben said near her ear, not knowing if that is where she heard the sound from, “Yes, it’s why she sent me.”
“Where is Utkin?”
“I’m not briefed on the details. I got a personal call from Nat to come guard you, the team outside was given a verbal OK from a request by the FBI. We’re here to protect and contain. We’ll know when Natalie calls.”
Fiona’s attention turned to her screen. Pages of details flashed in front of her. “Did we close down all the safe houses the Marks left behind?”
“Can you talk to Natalie?”
Ben saw her ponytail nod again, and said, “We kept the one on Pearcy Island untouched. There are cameras on it, from across the road, but we didn’t enter.”
Pearcy Island safehouse not ever breached. Agency has video.
An eternity passed, the tension in the room mounting.
Fiona, already fatigued from her day in the frame, needed to eat. “Did Nat leave instructions on how to feed me?” Ben moved back into view. “God! Yes! I’m so sorry. It’s on the screen at your back here. Let’s see…” He moved back behind here, touched the item that said “feeding,” then shook his head at the instructions.
Fiona Interrupted · Part 1 (1/2)
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