The Lead

Without warning, the panel on their cabin swung open into pitch blackness, and a high-powered torch shone right into Alice's face. The beam lingered there for a few seconds before flipping to the other girl.

"Oh, Deco!" a voice cried from the blackness, "Oh thank Haven I've found you! Gobbers was sending you to Improvements, you silly girl!" In the reflected light of the torch, Alice could faintly see that the rescuer was a voluptuous red-haired woman in a black leather catsuit.

The two ungagged women exchanged gleeful greetings, and once everyone was caught up Alice realized that this was a carefully orchestrated rescue. The girl's free lover had stopped the train to get her out, and they could now run away together. She almost cheered, but the dingus at her throat gave her pause.

"But if we run, Master will track us down! He'll be notified by the Ministry when I don't show up for punishment! Oh lover, we'll both be finished!"

The rescuer had undone the girl's monoglove and unhooked her from the lead, moving more quickly now.

"Don't worry, pet. I've thought the whole thing through. I made sure that you wouldn't be in a carriage alone, and you were fortunate enough to ride with a Freewomb! We're nearly there..."

Alice took a moment to understand what the plan was, even after it had been mostly implemented. The rescuer had swapped the leads on Deco and Alice's harnesses so quickly that Alice didn't pay attention to what had happened, at first. While the rescuer fussed at the slave's collar with an off-world lock-picking device, Alice suddenly worked out where she was now headed.

Alice bucked and kicked, screaming into her gag not caring if she vomited or choked on it. She tugged at the chain holding her hands in front of her, trying to pull them off or reach the clip where the wrong lead was attached. She fought as the rescuer buckled the slave's collar around her throat and locked it in back.

Alice saw stars. She saw pink. She saw red. She saw her future and the amount of raw dread and regret made her stomach feel heavier than the train she rode.

The rescuer gave her newly-freed slave lover a passionate kiss and closed the panel on the two of them. The train rumbled on, lights filled the compartment once again, and Alice glared daggers at her fellow traveller. She gnawed on the gag, willing every piece of metal and leather around her to crumble to dust and blow away.

Deco, meanwhile, seemed utterly unsympathetic. She was feeling her bare throat with one hand and her bare crotch with the other, eyes smiling at some vision ten miles in the distance. She did not even seem to realize that Alice was still in the train.

At Alice's stop, the panel opened and Deco stood on the toes of her mary-janes and was led out, drawn to Alice's apartment block where her rescuer would be waiting. Alice stood and tried to pull herself home, to keep her own life, but the hatch of the train began to close and it pushed her back in. She rode on in despair, her eyes no longer seeing.

At last the train stopped for her. The lead popped up into the ceiling and she was dragged out by her harness. Alice tried to stay limp, but the design of the lead tracks was such that she only bore the pressure on her breasts and ribs, and it was simply less painful to keep tottering on her stiff ballet toes.

Alice walked down the gleaming surgical steel corridor of the inpatients' wing of the Ministry of Improvements. She stopped struggling, stopped trying to fight the future. Her hands stopped tugging, her eyes stopped blinking, and her tongue started suckling on the gag once more. She was just one more girl in a slave's collar, queueing up to have her body permanently altered.

One foot in front of the other, Alice allowed herself to be led on, obediently marching forward to endure someone else's punishment for the rest of her life.