Three Sisters Ch. 03

Part three of a ten-part story about three sisters and their experiences being graded for sale as slaves. Note that this story contains references to BDSM and not-completely-consensual sexual submission. While the overall story does include themes and depictions of incest or incestual desire, this particular chapter does not, but be aware of that before getting invested in the story. All characters are at least 18 years of age.

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Someone I Know

Angie and Magda wandered through the cavernous building, more like a shopping mall than a slave market, while they waited. They saw the main auction area, with the block and posts with leash rings; the bidder's pre-sale inspection area; the steel grading tables, mounted on platforms for easy public viewing; a series of whipping posts for paid slave punishments; the branding racks (Angie stared at them for a long moment, then swallowed nervously and moved on); a wall of flat screen monitors displaying information on upcoming sales, final sales from the previous day with totals, and live video feeds from the holding pens, the inspection area and grading tables; a shopping concourse with vendors selling anything slave related (Magda made Angie take a photo of her holding up a t-shirt that read "Someone I Know Got Stripped & Shipped at HCI Houston"); advertising kiosks explaining the various services offered; and, incongruously, a cafe.

The sisters settled in to a booth with their coffee drinks and watched the growing numbers of people milling around the market.

Angie had never had a chance to really observe a market's customers. It was a strange mix of louts, gawkers, business people, college kids (mostly frat boys), and tourists. Probably only a small number were actual here to buy, but whom? Looks could be deceiving: for all she knew one of those slobs could be an eccentric millionaire looking for a house pet.

She looked around the café at the other patrons; one couple at a nearby table caught her eye. Trim, attractive, middle aged, well-to-do, upper middle class Latin Americans: both dressed casually, the clean-shaven man in a button-down shirt, dark jeans, and monk-strap shoes, the woman in a peasant blouse, jeans and expensive-looking sandals with turquoise accents (Angie confirmed that her purse was in the four-figure range), her shoulder-length hair in a popular style, her toenails pedicured. While each scrolled through their phones, Angie wondered what they were doing here? Not accompanying anyone, that wouldn't take both of them, and besides it was very unusual for a father to accompany a daughter if the mother was present. Tourists? Too well dressed. Are they buyers? Not if they're actually from Latin America, no country south of the Rio Grande had recognized slavery, much less legalized it. Are they Mexican-American? Spanish? Or Mexicans with a second home in Texas? That made sense, keeping a secluded foreign house stocked with slaves for their orgies; Angie almost laughed out loud at the thought.

But seriously, she wondered, what would it be like being bought by those two? What would they do with you? For sure lots of time on your knees in front of the husband, but what about the wife? Was she along to give final approval on her competition, or was she an interested party? Would you have to spend double the time on your knees, servicing the wife too? Maybe the wife would use a crop on my bottom while I blew the husband, correcting any mistakes, or take me over her knee when I didn't lick her the way she wanted it done. Maybe she's jealous and angry and owns one of those strap-on dildos I've seen in porn videos...

Okay Angelica, she said to herself, gotta stop that thinking right there — it won't do to daydream while you're supposed to be watching out for your little sister. Especially when your idle musings went from a generic "you" to a specific "me." Time for a distraction.

"Why did you lie to Alina about your grading?" Angie asked.

"What do you mean?" Magda shot back.

"I mean that we both know your grade had nothing to do with an overnight delay or your glasses — I mean c'mon, I'm surprised even Alina fell for that one — or anything else like that. Did you just not want to tell her what really happened?"

Magda traced a finger around the rim of her cup. "I didn't want to scare her, she was nervous enough already—"

"Bull. What was the real reason?"

Magda stared into the cup, swirled her remaining coffee, and remained silent.

"We both know you got docked a grade because you escaped from the pens, put a guard in the hospital, almost cost Cesar his job, and damn near got yourself sold as a penal slave?" Angie continued, looking steadily at Magda; "Right?"

"What do you want me to say? That I didn't want Lina to know how her big bad sister panicked at the thought of spending the night in a cell? Or that she got whipped in public as punishment? Or that papa called in every favor he had to get her out of slavery and it caused him so much stress that he had a heart attack and DIED?"

Magda's voice had grown into a near-shout; a pair of young guys taking a selfie in front of some old-timey wooden display stocks looked over at them, startled. Magda slumped back into her seat, her jaw set and her face red.

Angie lowered her head, trying to make eye contact with her sister. "What I want is for you to tell the truth. Don't be embarrassed, don't sugarcoat it, but most of all don't ever lie to family, no matter how much it hurts." Magda glared at her briefly, then looked away.

"Maybe the truth is that I didn't want to explain how bad I'd screwed up my life, and Mom's and hers too."

Angie reached out and put her hand on Magda's and squeezed it. "She'd be okay, and she'd love you all the same, just like I do."

Magda took her hand and squeezed it, still not able to meet Angie's gaze.

Angie's phone let out a "ding", and Magda's vibrated; Angie read the text message out loud: "URGENT: Please return to the Grading desk as soon as possible. Your presence is required due to a problem."

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The Rules Are Clear

Angie ran up to the Grading desk with Magda close behind, spotted Joanna and waved to her. Joanna hurried over and said "Your sister will be okay, but we had a problem. Would you please come into the back so we can discuss it privately?"

The three women moved through the automatic doors into a very large, earth-tone-colored room with well-padded benches placed at intervals leading up to a set of double doors, which Angie realized led out to the grading tables. Each bench was numbered, with several steel eye bolts screwed into the edges. At different points around the periphery of the room were hairdressing and makeup stations, sinks and pedicure chairs, photography backdrops, and something that reminded Angie of a table at a dog groomer. A couple of benches had naked women secured to them by leashes, and they were all staring at one of the benches closest to the front: surrounded by people in HCI uniforms, at least some of whom had a big Red Cross on their jackets, some sort of commotion was going on there.

Joanna led them to the group, which parted for her. In the middle, lying on the bench, was Alina; she was pale and barely breathing. Her handcuffs had been removed, and the medic (Angie assumed he was some sort of medic) was preparing a dose of smelling salts. He paused, turned to Angie and Magda and said "She's unconscious. When the grader came to get her for her grading, she stood up, fainted, fell backwards and hit her head on the bench. These things are padded pretty well so I don't think she's seriously injured, but she's passed out still and I need to wake her up so I can check her out more thoroughly." He turned back to Alina, cracked a plastic ampule and waved it under Alina's nose. Alina's eyelids fluttered and opened, she tried to sit up but fell back again. The medic looked at another man with a Red Cross jacket and said "Let's get her back to the dispensary and run a scan on her." He unhooked her leash and dropped it on the floor, and the two men gently lifted her on to a nearby wheeled stretcher and rolled her through a pair of swinging doors in the back.

Joanna turned to Angie. "I'm so sorry this happened. I have no idea what went wrong — she hadn't even left the prep room yet! This is Brandon," she gestured to a tall, blond, almost ridiculously handsome young man wearing an HCI polo shirt and a slaver's whip at his belt, "He is her grader of record, recently licensed and promoted and we're all very proud of him," Brandon grinned, then self-consciously converted it into a serious expression, "and he can give you details."

Brandon offered his hand first to Angie, then to Magda, saying "Nice to meet you" to each of them. "You're her sisters?" he asked.

"Yes," said Angie. "We're accompanying her. What happened?"

"Pretty much what it looked like. I came to get Alina, er, 0078 to begin her grading, I introduced myself, showed her my license, went over some information, told her where we were going and what would happen next, unhooked her leash from the bench and told her to stand. She did for a few seconds, then her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fainted dead away. I immediately got her up off the floor and onto the bench, called the medics and my supervisor - Joanna - and you saw the rest." Brandon spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"What happens next?" asked Angie.

"The rules are clear," Joanna replied, "if Alina possesses a neurological condition that makes her faint during stressful situations, that could present problems during training, not to mention slave service if it ever came to that. We would have to note it on her evaluation, which would almost certainly cost her a full grade."

Angie and Magda looked at each other, mouths agape; Angie recovered first. "Is there anything we can do? Halt the grading? Hire a lawyer? Pay a fee—"

"I'm very sorry, but there's nothing straightforward to remove the condition from her record, I'm afraid" said Joanna. "If we stop the grading for anything short of a hospital admission, she automatically gets the lowest grade, Utility." She grimaced. "I wish there was something we could do, I really do."

Brandon spoke up: "There might be a way..."

The three women turned to look at him.

"Go on...?" said Angie.

"Grading is ultimately a numbers game, right? All the objective stuff determined by the grader, like sexual arousal and knowing slave positions, they count, but what counts the most is the subjective stuff, the number and dollar amount of the bids. A number of high valuations at inspection and bids at auction can overcome a low objective score, or a medical condition in the evaluation."

Joanna nodded; "It's true that almost no one actually reads the evaluation notes after grading anyway, all they really care about is the final score."

"Right now she stands at Select, which at HCI is the default starting grade for casual clients. If I can complete her grading, I feel pretty certain that she would get enough points to be at least Choice. If we could then find a way to boost her bids during inspection, and put her through a mock auction, as attractive and fit and naturally submissive as she is, she might get enough to boost her to Prime-, or even Prime. Before this happened, I would have bet on her being a lock for Prime."

"Grading doesn't include an auction, mock or otherwise" Angie said. "How much would that cost, and how do we know that you won't try to sell her for real?"

"Actually," said Joanna, "a mock auction is included as part of the Premier package, so it wouldn't cost anything extra. And now that she's devoxed, we can't ethically sell her without the express consent of her agent, in this case one of you."

"Okay so far, but how can we be sure that she would get enough high bids?"

"I can think of one thing" Joanna said, "we put off her grading and auction until later this morning when there will be a larger crowd. Larger crowd means more bidders, and more bidders equals more and higher bids."

"I can think of something else" said Brandon as he picked up a data pad, tapped on it briefly, and turned it toward Angie and Magda. "Auctioning related slaves together always brings in a minimum of 30% higher bid amounts than auctioning each of them separately, and a minimum of 50% higher on actual bids; in my experience the percentages are always higher than that. And as you can see on this chart," he said, pointing at the data pad screen, "sister combinations do better than even mother-daughter ones." Brandon tapped on the screen some more. "If Alina gets enough points just in the initial grading to make Choice, any level of Choice never mind a Choice+, and then gets 50% more bids and 30% higher totals in the later stage, she's almost guaranteed a Prime grade." He turned the pad back around and showed his calculations.

"You're suggesting that we get graded and auctioned along with Alina?" Angie said, sputtering the words. She looked at Magda, who still hadn't shut her mouth after the first bit of bad news, then back at Joanna and Brandon. "Absolutely not. Who would hold our claim tickets? How do we know you wouldn't just sell all three of us? And we have no guarantee it would work anyway. No, forget it."

Joanna had her own data pad out. "The Premier package includes a paired grading as an included option - we often sell these to mothers and daughters, it's very popular because it gives them both shots at higher scores. But for a moment, let me be perfectly blunt with you: we're not suggesting you both get graded along with Alina, but rather just one of you" she said, looking steadily at Angie. "Angie, you bear a strong resemblance to your sister; your hair is even the same length. You could almost be her twin. Magda does not look like either of you, and the bidders would be less interested in a set of sisters who did not have at least some resemblance. You yourself are a Prime-," she pulled up Angie's record from the earlier chip-reading demo, "and you could probably bump that to a straight Prime. And with you going through the grading along with her, Alina is certain to be more calm and less likely to pass out again."

Angie could feel the blood draining from her face, and she felt slightly light-headed. She sat down on the bench, and Magda sat down next to her. "Could we have a minute?" Magda asked. Joanna nodded and returned to the front desk, Brandon through the swinging doors toward the dispensary.

They sat in silence for a moment. "Well?" Magda said, "What do you think?"

"I think I can't think of an alternative" Angie replied.

"Yeah. I kinda feel like I should be insulted, and I'd love to try and raise my rating, but what the lady said makes sense. A matched pair would raise a lot of interest. I really think that if you do this, it will save Alina's grade, and you'll get a full Prime for sure. It's pretty clear that they do enough volume here so there's no way you'll wind up staying the night like I did. You've been through this before so nothing would be a surprise to you, and to Alina you'd be 'Big Sister To The Rescue' like you always are, and she'd feel a lot less scared. And besides, no one here knows us, so what have you got to lose? This is a reputable place so I can't imagine they'll pull something underhanded, and anyway I'll make sure that both of you come out the other end as free women. After all," she said, smiling, "I can be pretty intimidating when I'm not handcuffed."

Angie snorted a laugh in spite of herself. Everything Magda said was true, but there was something else too. She had tried hard all morning to focus on what was going on, but her thoughts kept drifting back to her own grading, and the brief fling she had as a young slave girl with Cesar; being back in a slave market was bringing those memories back in vivid detail, and spawning new thoughts.

Angie took a deep breath and sighed. "Okay, let's do this thing before I change my mind" she said.

Magda threw her arms around Angie. "You're the best, y'know."