Content Warnings: BDSM Fantasy, non-consensual, M/f, maledom, F/f, lesdom, handcuff bondage, bondage slavery, legalized slavery, kidnapping, public bondage, ballgag, offscreen F/m, mentions of femdom

When stability returned it rapidly became clear that in some ways society had not only stagnated, but regressed. 

“What are you doing!? Get off me, you can’t—I didn’t do anything!”

Roy ignored the woman’s protests. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before. Escapees, bail-jumpers, and debtors like Amber Connelly here were all the same. Just another package to be picked up and delivered to the depot.

Hell of a package though, Roy had to admit that. Most of the Catcher’s pickups were closer to middle-age, old enough to rack up plenty of debt. They were, for the most part, average people. Amber hadn’t even reached the middle of her twenties before owing at least as much as the usual target.

The twenty-two year old blonde was pretty fit. If Roy hadn’t seen Amber’s information he would think she did modeling work. She was wearing a tight yellow top with short sleeves that just barely reached the top of her cutoff jeans, and stylish looking sneakers. Her bright hair had curls and cascaded down past her shoulders, though it was getting pretty messed up in her struggles. Roy didn’t know what her new owner planned to do with her, but he guessed whoever it was would be able to pay off her debt by selling her at a nice auction house.

She claimed to be meeting friends when she stepped out of her apartment and Roy approached her.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied to her, barely aware of his words. If she didn’t want to be property, she shouldn’t have let herself get into so much debt. It wasn’t like it was hard. Roy wasn’t exactly living large, but he didn’t owe anyone any real money. He wrestled her into a pair of handcuffs. One of them was already around her left wrist, and the other was just… about…

The metallic click of the cuff sliding home was loud even above her struggles and protests.

“Asshole!”

People were watching. Not everyone. A decent chunk of the people walking in the background shot a single glance in Roy and his new prisoner’s direction and then went on their way. It was the middle of the day and people had places to be. But some of those people were genuinely watching. A few were staring. Some of them had collars on. Sympathy for their new peer?

Roy couldn’t blame them. Catches like this were rare enough in a safe-ish residential building like this. But he doubted this kind of thing was unheard of. Maybe it was unusual for it to happen on a nice day like this, with sunlight streaming in through the skylight, but what Roy was doing was above board and perfectly legal. He’d been sure to get permission from the building’s owners beforehand. All he had to do was transmit the relevant information proving that Amber Connelly was living here under an assumed name.

“I swear, when I get out of this I am going to sue you all the way to hell!” Amber couldn’t do much more to fight at this point. Her hands were cuffed and Roy (who easily weighed a hundred pounds more than her) had a good grip on her arm. “WILL SOMEBODY HELP ME?! I DON’T HAVE DEBT AND I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! THIS MANIAC IS KIDNAUUUGGGHHHH!”

Amber’s words were cut off by the ballgag Roy pulled into her mouth. Her head was wrenched back into his shoulder as he made sure it went in as deep beyond her teeth as it would go before buckling it tight behind her head. It got all caught up in her hair, messing it up even more.

“Sorry about this disturbance, folks!” Roy called out. “She’s lying! I have all the info and your building let me in with no trouble!”

“HMMMPHGH?!”

She twisted around and honestly looked bewildered to hear that. Roy found himself chuckling as he stuck a loose-ish, temporary collar around her neck and started pulling her along in the direction of his car. The collar seemed to be the breaking point. As soon as it locked on, she started struggling again. Resisting with all her might at every step Roy made her take. Roy let her go on like that for a bit without loosening his grip on her arm. This wasn’t his first Catch.

It looked like Roy didn’t need to bother explaining anyway. Nobody seemed in a hurry to do anything. There were a couple more watchers now. An older couple, a gaggle of teenagers, and the odd slave or two on errands for their owner. For most of them the show was over and it was time to get back to their business.

Roy had seen things like this happen himself. It was how he’d gotten into the business in the first place, when some asshole at his factory job got grabbed in the middle of a shift. He hadn’t stepped in for Hank. Why would he? It wasn’t that hard to avoid falling into debt.

Amber’s struggles did get weaker–maybe from tiring herself out, maybe from noticing that no one was helping her–as they made their way to the entrance square, the large space at the main parking lot of the building with stores and fast food joints lining the sides. Roy once read that residential buildings like this used to be called “Malls” before the start of the Crisis. Apparently they were filled with stores instead of apartments. Interesting concept.

It would certainly explain the size of the parking lot. There always seemed to be way more spaces than there were apartments at these things. Pulling Amber out to his run down, but well-maintained old hatchback seemed to take Roy almost as long as getting her outside in the first place. It was all the way over at the edge, near the entrance and next to the grass boulevard.

“Alright Miss Connelly,” Roy said as he popped the trunk. He turned her around, grabbing both of her shoulders to look at her face to face. “This is where you calm down. I get it, okay? You’re not happy about this. But you’re not the first person to default on a debt, and you won’t be the last. There’s a whole system for this. Plenty of people live with it, and so will you. Understand?”

Amber replied with a violent, hate-filled glare in those big brown eyes. Most of her face was bright red. She was shaking, spittle traveling down her chin from all the yelling she had tried to do on the way over.

“Mm nnmm nph nnph CNNNMMMM! NPH'PH PHNRN! PHNRN FNRRNPH!”

And then she tried to kick him in the balls.

Roy dodged, obviously. He’d been expecting it. The speech almost never worked. Amber tried to pull herself away, but without a sudden explosion of pain between his legs, Roy didn’t even come close to losing his grip.

“Bad idea,” Roy said. He wasn’t really angry, but he knew as well as any Catcher that you couldn't let a package get away with stuff like that.

Before she knew what was happening, Roy shoved Amber down into his trunk. The car was high enough to bend her over the edge, her butt sticking out into the air while he held the upper half of her body flat against the felt floor of his old car.

Perfect position for a spanking.

“NN!” She cried out through her gag as the first few spanks landed. “NN, PHPHNP! PHPHNP NPH MNN NPHPHHNMM!"

It all washed over the Catcher. He tried to avoid doing things like this when he first started out, but he’d come around after talking to other people in the business. Packages usually gave in after a few light punishments, and when Roy thought about it he realized that a light over-the-clothes spanking was much kinder than the tools their actual owners would probably use. New slaves had to learn that their bodies stopped being theirs the instant they defaulted on their debts, jumped their bail, ran away, or whatever their story was.

Idly, Roy wondered what his slave’s story would be. He’d been saving up to attend a real auction for years now. Once he got a pay day for Amber he’d only be two or three jobs away from being able to afford it. Then? Well, his apartment would be a lot more clean, for starters. He probably wouldn’t get many serious punishment tools though. Roy wasn’t much of a sadist. He wanted to have fun in other ways.

Once again, people were watching. Not as many this time, but Roy could see people leaving and heading to their cars. A few people looked over from the stores on the other side of the boulevard, but once again, nobody came to–

“Excuse me! Excuse me! What do you think you’re doing?

Roy landed one more spank before turning around to find a middle-aged lady and her slave marching up to him. The lady had mocha colored skin and wore comfy looking designer clothes. She was fairly short, just a little bit rotund, and had a curtain of black-dyed bangs brushing her sunglasses and a low ponytail. Judging by the way she was glaring at him, Roy got a feeling that she habitually spoke to managers. There was a coffee mug in one hand.

In her other hand was a leash, and at the end of that leash was an even shorter, pale and busty redhead. Her collar was a tall, stiff posture device. There was no gag. She was wearing a miniskirt and a shirt that hid everything but left nothing to the imagination. On her feet were a pair of wedge heels that were high enough to look sexy but low enough to not cause her too much discomfort when out walking for a while.

Roy held up one placating hand while using the other to keep Amber down. “Don’t worry ma’am, I’m on my way. I just needed to deliver some discipline, I’ll be gone in a minute.”

She huffed and brandished her coffee  at him. “Well next time you don’t have to make such a scene. I don’t make a spectacle out of punishing my slut. Do I slut?” She gave the leash a hard tug, drawing a yelp and a quick “No Mistress!” from the redhead.

Roy somehow kept himself from rolling his eyes or pointing out that she was doing a good job of making a spectacle out of the slave without a spanking. Before he could muster up an actual reply, she got a good look inside his trunk.

“Wait a second, is that Tori!?”

“Mrph. Mmnnmph?” Amber’s muffled voice was weaker, but showed clear recognition. Roy inwardly swore. This was not the time for this kind of thing.

“That is Tori! What do you think you’re doing with her?”

Roy sighed. “Her real name is Amber Connelly, ma’am. She’s been living here under a fake name, hiding from some big debts she defaulted on last week.”

“That’s ridiculous! She’s no criminal. Her name is Tori, and she’s my neighbor! She took care of my dogs when I was on vacation last month!”

“Mmph, mnphphmn phn hmr!”

Roy didn’t have the energy to deal with this. “If you think my information is wrong, you can give the depot a call. I’m bringing her to the one on Mince street.”

She sneered at him. “Oh, I won’t just call, I’ll be coming with you. You stay right here, I will follow you in my car and if you try to lose me I will be contacting the authorities. Don’t you worry, Tori, I’ll have this taken care of by the end of the day.”

Then she turned on her heel and started marching back to her car.

“You can come if you want to, ma’am,” Roy called out to her. “But you’re wasting your time. I have all the information,” he pulled the mini-tablet all licensed Catchers were issued out of his pocket to show her. “I’m telling you, she is lying!”

The woman didn’t even turn around. Sighing, Roy looked back at his prisoner. She looked back with  still hateful, but now also hopeful eyes. The promise of an attempt to help had calmed her down.

Well, no sense in wasting the opportunity to bind her up more while she was calm.

“Hold still,“ he ordered and pulled or another set of cuffs for her ankles. They came with a length of chain Roy would connect to the pair on her wrists to hogtie her. When he was finished he shut the trunk in her and went to get the car started, just in time for the older woman to drive  up in her car.

“She’ll find out the truth when we  get to the depot,” Roy said under his breath.

*

One Day Later

“She wasn’t lying.”

Roy blinked. His mouth opened, but nothing came out right away. His thoughts were racing. He had to have misheard. “Are you serious?”

Olive huffed, her annoyance coming across loud and clear over the phone. Roy’s lawyer was not a patient woman. “She wasn’t lying, Roy. They took her prints and her DNA at the depot. Then they looked at her teeth and retinas to be absolutely sure. Nothing matched. That was not Amber Connelly. Her name is Tori Farris. She’s a mid-level model.”

Huh. Roy had thought she looked like she could do modeling work.

But how the hell had this happened? He’d triple checked the picture and the address. Building security let him in! This was… this did not make any sense.

“Am I in trouble?”

Catching paid good money, but only sporadically. The payout he got from his last Catch was almost out. His day job and the occasional PI work he did for Olive probably wouldn’t cover it if Amber–if Tori Farris decided to sue him. There was a very real possibility that Roy was about to become her debtor, and then her slave if he couldn’t pay her back in time. Or Olive’s, if her legal fees were more than he could pay.

Tori’s hateful glare flashed through Roy’s mind, followed by the glimpses he’d caught of the slaves Olive sometimes brought to her office. Always naked, always in a cock cage.

Neither possibility appealed to him. Olive was a harsh enough boss when he worked for her, Roy didn’t want to be her property. And with a friend like that lady–Mrs. Mendez, he’d learned at the depot–Roy doubted Tori would be a much better owner even if she didn’t hate his guts.

“Probably not,” Olive answered. Roy sighed in relief. “Right now it looks like the information was already bad when you got it. You used the address and picture you were given, and it wasn’t your fault it was wrong. Someone might ask you to testify, but you should be in the clear.”

“Even though I, uh, spanked her?”

“As far as you were aware, she was the debt-holder’s property. She might try to sue you, but no lawyer worth the name would bother taking it up for her, and any judge worth the name would throw it out. If she’s going to sue anyone, it’ll be the people who supplied your agency with the bad intel.”

Roy frowned. “How did any of this happen?”

He’d been given faulty info in the past, but only when all they had to go on was a questionable tip or grainy footage. To be given not only the wrong picture, but the wrong address too? The real Amber Connelly was supposed to be good with computers, had she hacked the system? Paid someone to hack the system?

Olive snorted. “The authorities are looking into it and cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. But if you ask me, you’ll probably hear about it on the news within the week.”

“That’s… well that’s something.”

“Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other clients to speak to. Good day.”

The call ended.

Roy sighed. That was Olive. Straight to the point and not a second longer.

After a debacle like this, it would probably be a month or two before another job was sent Roy’s way. The agency would want to make absolutely sure they weren’t working on bad intel anymore.

Slumping into his favorite chair, Roy took a look at his bank account. He’d been saving up to attend an auction himself, bits of his paydays over the last five years. He was almost there. So close, but still not enough.

One day he’d own a slave of his own instead of just catching them for other people.