The Spy Rider - Part 3 (Conclusion)

I'm still locked in the dungeon. No. Not me. My impostor is locked in the dungeon. I'm sealed inside a shell many miles away in some prison cell, forced to see, hear, and feel everything that the other me experiences. We've been here for weeks. It's been weeks since Mistress said she would come back soon. She and Elif had to do an easy job in Eatonton. Then she'd get me out of this dungeon where my impostor sits around day in, day out naked with a collar and a chain with 238 solid, heavy metal links rising up to a sturdy staple in the ceiling. She has started talking to someone that she imagines is in the room with her. At least, I can't see whoever it is or hear the other side of the conversation. My impostor is hallucinating badly. It happens to everyone in such isolating situations. It's strange because sometimes there are visitors to our dungeon and my impostor won't say a word to them. Then again, they are talking to me, not her. So, I guess, whatever.

Something must have gone wrong in Eatonton. The government people knew about Eatonton, because Mistress told my impostor and they are monitoring everything that I hear through her. Maybe Mistress is in jail or dead. It's been too long.

It's dark. I can't see anything. I guess my impostor is asleep. I wish that I could move, but I know that I am in a shell. My arms and legs are gripped tightly in tubes. Padding presses all around me, holding me in a tight hug, so I don't explode all over the place. Tubes are shoved inside me, fucking every orifice, eternally. I wish I could move.

I feel something cool and scaly slide across my leg. It makes me flinch and I try to bat it away with my arm. I can't feel my arm though. I roll over to my left and flex my torso. I twist up and around. I feel another scaly thing along my back and I jerk suddenly. Where are my arms? They are everywhere! Every time I move I feel a new scaly thing slither up against me, stealing my warmth. I try to stand up and run, but I can't find my legs. They feel like they are fused together. Something heavy drops around my neck. It slithers across my shoulders. Help! Someone help me!

A light comes on. Snakes! Everywhere! I want to push them away, but I don't have arms. I jump, but I don't jump, I uncoil. I don't have legs. Help!

This has to be a dream! Calm down, Heartless! You are in a shell in a prison in your impostor's head. Wake up! I am not one of Mistress' pets. This is a dream. Wake up!

---

My impostor has been lying staring at the ceiling. I haven't been paying attention. Not until now. The ceiling is different. We are in a different room. Wait! Maybe I'm not seeing what my impostor is seeing, but rather I have awoken from the shell and I can't move because I've been mummified for so long.

I hear a noise behind me. An upside down face appears wearing a surgical mask. All I can see are large, cold, featureless, black eyes staring back at me. A small flashlight shines in my eye for a second. Ouch! I feel a sharp pinch on my cheek.

"She's out," the masked face says. "Shall we begin with the operations?"

A second masked face moves into my view. Another set of alien eyes.

I feel my heart start to beat heavily. They are not looking at me. They are looking at my impostor. She is not me. She is not me.

"Let's start with her arms," the second face says and moves away.

What's going on? Get me out of here! Please!

The second face moves into view again. She raises something that looks like a hacksaw. I feel a cord being tied tightly up in my armpit and over my shoulder. Oh, shit!

"Right tourniquet is in place," upside down face says.

"Start the suction," second face replies. I feel my arm pulled out to the side. No!

The hack saw lowers down to my arm. I feel the blade start to slide across my skin. Cutting.

No! I'm awake! I can feel! Don't do this!

I hear the blade begin to rattle against the husk of my bone. A stream of blood sprays across the face mask of the doctor. I'm screaming loudly in my head, but all I hear is the steady rasping of the saw. Back and forth. Back and forth.

---

Guards enter the room. I'm feeling fairly clear headed at the moment. I think that they are really there. This is not another nightmare. My impostor seems clear-headed too. She kneels, passively, as they chain the heavy steel ball to her collar. They drape a long heavy robe over her shoulders. This is the first clothing she has touched since she arrived. Her arms are fed through long, loose sleeves. The robe opens in the front. There are no fastenings so it doesn't really cover anything when she stands with the steel ball held tightly in our trembling arms.

My impostor is escorted through the corridors underneath my Mistress' mansion to a large subterranean, dimly-lit room. Thirty or more spandex clad women are sitting quietly on a set of wooden benches rising up like bleachers.

My impostor is taken to a large chair in front of all the guards. She sits and drops the steel ball on the ground at her feet. She straightens up and pulls the robe more tightly around her.

The bleachers and her chair are facing out into the opening of the room. There is a wooden podium standing next to a pit. Some sort of machinery is set next to the pit as well. Most notably there is a wide tube snaking down into the darkness of the pit.

I hear a door open. My impostor turns to see Mistress walking in. She is wearing black robes with a black lace veil covering her face. My impostor gasps in relief. I feel tears of joy in my eyes. She is still alive! But...

Mistress walks to the podium and pulls the veil up over her face.

"Eatonton should have been an easy job," Mistress says looking out among the members of her guard. "But as you all know, it went badly wrong."

I get a sick, guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"That would happen, I suppose, when there is a spy in our midst."

My impostor sits still gazing plaintively at our Mistress. How could she be so cool? Maybe she doesn't even know that she is the spy.

"I'm sad to say," Mistress continues turning her eyes down toward the floor. "That today we must commit the guilty party to become a Soft Inside." I see Mistress' eyes rise from their gaze at the floor and stare directly at my impostor.

I'm struggling inside my shell, flexing against the mummification. Mistress has figured out that my impostor is a spy! This will be the end of my impostor! That's good!

But, that's not good. My Mistress thinks that my impostor is me.

Mistress raises her face towards the assembly and raises her voice. "Bring in the traitor!"

What? I'm not the spy?

Schulz walks in. She has a black patch over her left eye. She is holding a chain attached to the collar of a second woman, who is stumbling along constrained by a tight, black, latex hobble skirt and ballet toed boots.

They move to the edge of the pit where Schulz forces the woman to turn and face the assemblage.

The woman is dressed entirely in black, heavy rubber. Her arms are apparently wrapped around her torso and held tightly in place as though she were strapped into a straitjacket. Her head is covered in a thick hood. Canisters, like a gas mask, are positioned on the hood at her nose and mouth. Coils of long, black hoses hang down from the canisters. Two wide ovals of clear latex cover her eyes which are darting frantically, fearfully, seeking empathy, underneath the lenses.

"Elif!" Mistress says loudly. My impostor gasps. I gasp. "You are sentenced to become a Soft Inside for your act of treason, for endangering the lives of the members of our organization, for endangering the ideals that we live by, for endangering the very dreams of millions whose freedom and livelihood depend upon the services that we provide and the cause for which we fight!"

Elif is shaking her head back and forth. I think that I can hear a murmuring sound coming from her.

"Personally," Mistress continues, "I am disgusted that you would do what you have done. You were part of my inner circle! Perhaps, I have been too trusting!"

Schulz begins to uncoil the tubes attached to Elif's heavy, rubber suit and fake them out across the floor.

"Elif," Mistress continues, "I strip you of your name! From now on you will only be number 8. And like the seven before you who are scattered around this very room, you will spend the rest of your life in this pit... and it will be a long, long life. The organization will keep you warm and fed, clean and healthy. The machines will stimulate you - some would say - mercilessly. And the concrete will hold you in its uncaring, unrelenting, dark grasp forever more. You may jump in the pit now."

I definitely hear Elif's scream now, muffled somewhere deep inside. She seems to have no intention of simply leaping into the pit. Suddenly, I realize that Elif is looking directly at me and pleading. My impostor is tense. She frowns, but otherwise remains motionless.

MY stomach feels upset. I can't believe that Elif could be a spy!

"Fucking coward!" Mistress says and makes a motion towards Schulz with her hand.

Schulz hits Elif sharply in the sternum with the palm of her hand, knocking her backwards into the pit. As she falls, Schulz grabs the lower hem of Elif's hobble dress and pulls upward so that Elif enters the pit and a pool of wet cement head first.

Schulz grabs a pole off the ground and begins to push Elif further into the cement until only her boots are sticking up. Schulz then turns on the machine and more cement begins to fill in the rest of the pit. Three other guards begin pulling the tubes that will keep Elif alive and attaching them to outlets on a stand embedded next to the slowly filling pit. The stand has a large red number 8 emblazoned on its side.

Elif's sentence has been carried out.

---

It's been two days, I think, since Elif had been thrown into the cement pit. With nothing better to do, I found that my imagining of her experience ate at my mind. She would have struggled to get out of the thick, gritty substance as its weight pressed in against her - sliding softly into folds and crevices, loving her curves with sandpaper fingers, gripping her with enthusiasm, and hardening to hold her in an eternal grasp. Thanks to Schulz's manipulations, she was probably never even able to reorient her head-down position. By now, certainly, she could no longer move. Her world was darkness and a deathly silent, jealous lover's grasp.

No one had explained what Mistress meant by "merciless stimulation". Perhaps "stimulation" meant was pain, but I know that is not Mistress style. She would prescribe pleasure, and perhaps that is even more maddening.

I know a bit about isolation. I know which practices and mental exercises may be used to magic thin strands of hope into existence. I know how to grasp the strands and for how long before shifting to others - a dangerous dance where a misstep will condemn one to a certain form of insanity. For Elif, now, there are no handholds, no textures around which to wrap a finger in order to keep from slipping away. There are no ceilings on which to count dots. There are no coordinates measured by foot size and waiting for gentle sexual fantasies. Elif will suffer in despair and ecstasy and she will slowly disappear even as she lives on and on, each orgasm, like a heartbeat in an empty world.

Mistress is smart and her justice is predictable. Elif knew the dangers of her offensive actions and Mistress was smart to find her treason. I am stunned that Elif would have betrayed Mistress. I should feel no remorse for her destiny. But, by witnessing her demise, I see that I am not far removed from a similar fate. Indeed, for all I know, my shell has been buried in cement as well and I will never again be free.

---

The five guards and I are on an elevator. As the car moves, I feel the press of the heavy steel ball my impostor carries in her arms. We are going up. The elevator opens. We walk through a room to a steel door, and then down a dark narrow passageway. After a right hand turn, I see light on the other side of a grated, metal door. Cold, piercing clangs ring down the corridor as a guard turns keys and pull the bars of the door. We step out from the stone pyramid mausoleum housing the elevator and into the outside world. I feel a breeze and the warmth of sun on my impostor's skin. I whimper. Or I would if I could.

Mistress is standing in the shade of trees. She is wearing a long white robe, opened a the front. She is unconcerned that the breeze blows the robe away from her exposing her breasts, her naked sex. The guards lead my impostor to her side. I can feel my impostor's arms shaking under the weight of the steel ball. She collapses onto her knees, letting the ball land in the soft dirt with a thud. My impostor runs her fingers through cool, damp grass. She balls her hands into fists and pulls the grass from the ground, bringing it to her nose, inhaling deeply.

I can not smell.

Mistress turns silently and steps in front of my impostor. Her hands are running through her long hair, pulling her head close until I feel the soft flesh of her abdomen press against my forehead. My impostor closes her eyes. I feel her chest rising and falling, deeply, slowly.

"I'm still stunned by Elif's betrayal. I'm sorry I haven't retrieved you from the dungeon sooner," Mistress says. "It's just... I almost got killed in Eatonton."

My impostor slips her hands around Mistress' ankles and slides them slowly up the backs of her legs. I lose myself in the feel of her skin and the feel of her muscles as they sculpt her shape.

"I feel like things are a little out of control at the moment. I feel that there are too many loose ends. I'm afraid of..." Mistress seems to be lost for a second.

"Shhh..." my impostor whispers so quietly that Mistress probably feels the soothing sound in the crease where her leg meets her body more than she hears it.

My impostor looks up into Mistress' sad eyes. "I understand. You don't trust me."

Mistress remains motionless for a few seconds before she begins shaking her head. "No, I don't. I'm sorry."

My impostor runs her hands gently up and down the back side of Mistress' thighs.

Mistress steps away. "Look at these trees. Can you see her?"

My impostor looks up and stares into the copse of birch surrounding the mausoleum. After a second of searching, I do see her. A woman. Her skin is gray. Her legs emerge from the dirt like knobby trunks of trees, before smoothing into the form of human flesh. A bit of bark is peeling from her abdomen, her breasts are full and tipped in dark, woody knots. Her arms rise above her transforming again into limbs of a tree, her fingers - no more that long thin twigs ending in leaves. She does not move unless the wind blows her. No. Her eyes are open and she is watching us.

"Did you know Henrietta?" Mistress asks. "She's really low maintenance now, as long as there is no drought."

I watch the tree as she watches us. I watch her mouth to see if it moves. I wonder what she is thinking. Is she mad? How does the breeze feel to her.

Mistress turns back to my impostor and sits in the grass beside her. "Would you be mad at me if I told you that I need to kill you?" she asks.

I feel my impostor slump a little, but otherwise she seems calm and relaxed. I feel her lips form words and hear them trickle from my mouth. "If that is what you wish."

"Damn it, Heartless!" Mistress cries. "Why!? Why do you love me? You are a fucking fool!"

"It's very simple," my impostor says. And she is right. It is very simple and I know exactly what my impostor is about to say. "When I was young, I wanted to live an extraordinary life. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I didn't know how to do it though. Then I realized that making a difference, requires resources of one sort or another. I also realized that I do not have the characteristics to obtain the resources. So, I attached myself to someone who could get the resources. I committed myself, heart and soul, to that person. My life has been extraordinary, and it is because of you, Mistress. Casting me out, sending me away, would be the same or worse than killing me. And now, you cannot trust me, and so, you must send me away."

Mistress pulls my head until it rests on her shoulder. I feel her tears drip down onto my shoulder and roll down my skin, leaving a cool streak when the breeze slips across.

"But," my impostor continues, "you cannot send me away."

"No!" Mistress agrees. "I can't."

"I love you, Mistress," my impostor whispers. I feel her body begin to tremble. "I need to be with you! I won't survive without you! Turn me..." My impostor chokes back a sob.

"Don't cry, Cunt!" I scream in my head, but my view is already cloudy with tears. I'm uncertain whose they are, hers or mine. "Just say it!"

"Turn me," my impostor whispers even more quietly than before. "Turn me into one of your pets. Something safe and beautiful. Something you will love forever."

"It's the only way," Mistress whispers hugging my impostor tightly. "But..."

Oh, god, I know. But it's the only way.

My Mistress continued, "I'll have to take your eyes, so that you can't see my plans."

My impostor closes her eyes and I feel tears roll down her face. She nods her head.

"And I'll need to take your voice, so you can't tell of the things that you know."

"Yes," my impostor whispers.

"And your ears... I'll need them too. So, you will never hear my plans again," Mistress sobs. "But, your skin will be yours. And I promise that I will press my love into you for the rest of our lives."

"As you wish, my Mistress," my impostor cries.

Mistress stands and my impostor slumps forward until her head rests on the soft bed of grass. I can feel her body shaking with sobs.

"The Good Doctor will be here in a week."

And then Mistress walks away.

---

I awaken. My impostor must be drugged. I feel her chest rise and fall slowly and deeply. She has not slept so well these past few days. And now, I can hear the snipping sound of scissors close by and the tickle of loose hair falling away. A warm, wet cloth is rubbed through the short hair that is left. A cream of some sort is massaged across my impostor's scalp. Next, I feel the scrape of a razor. My impostor sleeps as her hair is removed.

I am sad. I wish I had one last glimpse of my beautiful locks. They were the only thing with which I could measure time in any sense.

I feel cold, slick lotions poured onto my impostor's head. After a few minutes they begin to burn. I can feel myself tremble in my shell. It is not too painful, but it is an annoying sensation that makes me feel tense even though my impostor is comfortably numb in her slumber.

My impostor's sex had been shaved regularly, so little time is spent preparing that area before the cold/hot lotion is applied.

I think of my dreams where my impostor's limbs are cut off as she is anesthetized. I am going to suffer badly and very soon. I try to prepare myself to welcome the pain and wish for it to be as intense as possible, for I know, if my eyes and ears are taken, I will become numb and lost. My sanity will not survive.

If my impostor's senses are taken away, I pray that my jailers will set me free. I tell myself that these things are happening to her and not me. I will remain whole. I am not she.

But, I am she after all. And once she is gone, there will be no more need for me. My jailers could simply turn off my life support and let me quietly fade into the cold and dark.

I flinch in my shell and scream silently into the tubes fucking my throat. I feel an intense pain in the flesh of my labia. What are they doing to my impostor? She remains unconscious though. I begin to worry that her transformation into one of my Mistress' pets has already begun.

I feel another stab of pain and then another. The assault upon my impostor's sex proceeds methodically and rapidly down one side and then up the other. Only I suffer each violation. Burning salves and dabbing towels are pressed against my impostor's privates until some moment of my tormentor's satisfaction. Something cool and slippery is poured between the folds shortly before something with a slick, unforgiving surface is slipped into my sex. I mean, my impostor's sex. After all, my sex has been filled with foreign objects for months now.

My labia is stretched. Something lances through the holes that have been made. I believe that it is smooth but it feels as though it is barbed with thorns - the way that it rubs against my fresh wounds. Whatever it is, it is threaded from one side to the other. I feel and uncomfortable pinch and hear a popping sound. The process is repeated again and again.

My sex feels numb and hot and heavy. It is cleaned and coated with lotions. Then I hear a click and a silent whirring sensation starts somewhere inside my impostor. I feel the buzzing and whirring jiggle the newly added weight of the rods pierced through her lips. The sensation is present, but only just. I am uncertain of its purpose.

I hear my assailants pack their tools of torture and leave. My impostor shifts and snores quietly, enjoying the bliss of oblivion.

---

My impostor is shaking uncontrollably. I can feel tears running down her face. Mistress quietly strokes her thumb along the cool trail where the tear had rolled. This is the end.

The last thing that my impostor said to Mistress was simple and fitting. "I will always love you," she said. I am proud of her. She has been bold. Now my impostor is silenced with some device shoved and locked tightly into her mouth.

Two days after she awoke from her shaving and piercing the guards came for her and hefted the heavy steel ball into her arms for the final time. She walked smoothly and proudly through the labyrinth of subterranean corridors and into the operating theater where she was locked wrist and ankle to a chair bolted to the floor.

Her collar was removed. A series of heavy semicircular half rings were placed around her neck and squeezed together until a series of clicks sounded out. When Mistress and the Good Doctor stepped away, the metal remained, tight and seamless. I knew that this new collar would not ever be removed. Would never be able to be removed.

It would not be removed from my impostor, that is. I am not she.

A plate with strategically arranged grills is bolted over my impostor's sex. Rivets hold the plate in place. The plate holds the insert inside my impostor and I continuously feel the slight whirring and jiggling. It is ever present.

Now, I am looking upon my Mistress. She has pulled a chair up in front of me. She sits in the chair. Something cold and unyielding cups the back side of my impostor's bald head. It has been attached to the permanent collar around her neck. I can feel it pass behind her ears and over the crown of her head.

"I read about this device on the web," Mistress explains. "I had one designed and built. It is called a USD. It is simple and does all the things that I need to do to you. It makes you disappear. It takes away your eyes and ears and your voice. It takes away your beautiful face, and that makes me sad."

Mistress sighs. "I decided that I wanted to keep the rest of you as a human woman. My human woman. Forever."

She holds up a bowl shaped object. My impostor jerks and shakes a little suddenly. I think that she is realizing that this would become her new face for the rest of her life.

I am not she. I am not she.

The inner surface seems contoured to press tightly against her face with padding and connections and machinery. I can only focus on the outer surface, though. It is smooth and featureless. From now on, my impostor's head will be nothing more than a cold metal sphere.

Mistress leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. She places a finger on the spot cooled by her kiss. I could hear the air rushing through my impostor's nose. Her head rocks back and forth as she begins to hyperventilate. Her hands are gripped tightly around the arms of the chair.

"I'm sorry, Heartless. I... I will never love again as I have loved you," Mistress sits back. Her eyes are red with tears. My impostor shuts her eyes.

"Open them back up!" I yell in my head. I want to see Mistress one last time. "Please!!"

"I imagine that the isolation will be taxing, my love. Just remember our song."

My impostor's entire body is shaking uncontrollably now. When she finally opens her eyes again, they are so clouded by tears, I can not see properly.

"She's my fave," Mistress begins to sing. "Undressing in the sun. Return to sea. Bye! Forgetting everyone. Eleven high. Ride a wave!"

Mistress leans forward. "Good-bye, my love."

I see the front half of the device rise up to my face until its dark interior occludes any other visual input. I hear the murmurs of buried screams deep inside my impostor's throat. I feel the contours of the interior press firmly and comfortably against her face. I hear the clicks sound out from far away as locks engage, sealing my impostor's head away forever.

---

I am lying in a bed. Or rather, my impostor is lying in a bed. I suppose we are the same now, isolated, deprived of senses. I feel the soft cloth of the mattress. I feel the constant, distracting buzz that is too gently rattling my impostor's sex. I have no idea how long we have been here. I have no sense of time. It feels like weeks. It might have been days. I've decided not to count trips to the bathroom.

There is nothing to do, but exist.

I wonder if my impostor and I have the same nightmares.

---

I awake after what must have been a very, very long time. The ceiling above me is very blurry, yet it is also definitely not one of the limited few I have experienced in my last few years. At first I begin to wonder where my impostor is. Then, suddenly I try to sit up, myself.

I feel my entire body tremble. I'm weak. Still, I feel my head begin to lift off the pillow on which it lies. My perspective shifts. It shifts because I, myself, have commanded it to shift. I am wearing a leather collar of some sort and very quickly I encounter the greatest extent that it lets me move with a short, sharp jerk that sends me back down onto my pillow.

I am me! I am no longer in my shell! I try to say something, but my throat is dry and sore and my voice is naught but a harsh whisper.

A face appears over me. She is unfamiliar to me. I have never seen her before - her sprawling, brown hair. I know that even though her image is nothing but a blob of colors.

"Welcome back to the real world, Heartless," the brown-haired woman says.

"Where...?" I try to talk, but am unable to do more than cough and hack up phlegm.

"Oh, have no fear, Heartless. You are still in prison," she says with a hint of satisfaction in her voice. "In fact, I believe that your sentence has been lengthened significantly, out of necessity, of course." I think that she is smiling.

I spend a moment try to clear my throat. "What is going on? What happened?"

"Well," Brown Hair states as she walks away from my bed back to a desk where she has been working. "It would seem that your Mistress, the love of your life, didn't really give a flying fuck about you. Kinda sad, isn't it?"

"Whatever. Fuck you," I rasp back. I try to pull my hands to my eyes but they are chained to the rails of the bed I am in. They have no range of motion at all.

"Right... Whatever... Ha! She said that she would keep you forever... but it only took two weeks to change her mind."

"What do you mean?" I am squinting my eyes trying to get tears into them to clear my vision.

"Well, she ditched you pretty fast. Or, I should say she ditched your clone. She shoved her in a small cage and welded the door closed. Then she sent her to an underground sex club with feeding instructions. Apparently, the effort to break the cage open was more work than the owners of the club wanted to do. As far as we can tell, they simply displayed her inside her cage as a curiosity for their customer's twisted enjoyment."

As the woman speaks, I am trying to clear my throat. I am looking around the room. I am trying to figure out more about my surroundings. There is a desk. Lots of medical equipment. There is another bed.

"We were afraid that with the helmet on the clone's head, you would quickly lose whatever... er... clarity you might still have, so we put you into a coma for a while and pulled you out of the receiver."

"Receiver?" I ask. I am pretty sure there is a body lying in the second bed.

"Yes. The hard shell that you have been stored in for the past 5 months. I doubt that your clone will have any sense of clarity. Sensory deprivation is a harsh sentence."

"Is that her?" I ask pointing in the direction of the bed with my finger.

"Yeah," the woman is typing something on the computer. "We took her back. We made her. She's government property... then again, I guess that you are too."

I stare at the woman in the bed - the perfect replica of me. I can not make out facial features.

"Is she still wearing the helmet?" I ask.

"Yep... Do you know how to take it off?"

"No."

"We didn't want one of our clones out in the real world. We'll recycle her."

"Recycle?"

"Sure. She's no use to us now." The woman stops and turns to face me. "You, on the other hand... we'll need to run some tests to see what kinds of effects your experience has had on you mentally and physically... Of course, you no longer exist so, after the tests are done, who knows what they will do with you... Not my problem..."

"Splendid."

"I must say, though, you should feel proud. Our experiment with cloning and spying has worked marvelously and we are getting a humongous expansion of our budget. These are exciting times." The woman laughs smugly. "You have helped so much."

We sit in silence for a moment. I hear the woman begin to click the keys of a keyboard.

"There is something on the front of the helmet. Some word, maybe?" I ask straining my eyes as best as I can.

"Yeah... It says, 'Sing'."

"Sing?" I ask.

"Sing." she says.

I start laughing. My voice chokes and I hack up a bit of phlegm. "Sing!" I state a little more loudly, laughing all the while.

The woman starts laughing too. "Yeah... Sing... The clone won't be doing that any time soon though. Ha! Your Mistress is one cold bitch."

I continue to laugh more loudly. "Sing!" Hysteria washes over me and my laughter slowly subsides.

"You should have chosen your friends better," the woman suggests then turns back to her computer.

"She's my fave. Undressing in the sun," I sing. I try to clear my throat. I want my voice to be strong and steady. "Return to sea. Bye. Forgetting everyone. Eleven high."

"Nice tune," the woman says.

"Ride a wave..."

I settle back in my bed to await my fate.

---

Fifteen minutes pass as I marvel in the sensation of the smells of the room. I've missed smells. I look forward to tasting some food.

The door opens.

"Oh, good," the woman says. "You can take the prisoner to her cell."

A guard walks over to my bed and releases a brake of some sort. Then she starts to wheel me towards the door. The bed stops and I hear keys rattling in the locks around my wrist.

"Uh..." the woman says suddenly looking up. "You are not supposed to release her. She is a trained killer... even in her weakened state."

The guard ignores the woman and continues to work on my cuffs.

The woman stands and begins to walk towards us. Then she stops and reconsiders her position. "Who the hell..." The woman turns and starts to reach for an emergency alarm button, but as she turns, she comes face to face with...

Well... with me!

My clone has arisen from the bed and is no longer wearing the helmet. She has a shadow of new hair growing on her head. She skin is red and blotchy. But, she has my face.

"Hi!" my clone says, blocking the woman's access to the emergency button.

The woman looked at my clone and then back me and the guard.

"Hi, Elif! Hi, me!" my clone says with a smile.

"You... You can't kill me!" the woman yells. "You still have the conditioning." She starts to push my clone out of the way.

"Oh! But I want you alive." And my clone punches the woman solidly on the side of her face and we all watch as the woman crumbles to the floor.

---

"...Mistress was suspicious of your 'experimental prison term' from the beginning," Elif explains as the van carries four of us back to the mansion. We are joined by the heavily sedated brown-haired woman from the prison. And my clone, my impostor.

"It took a while, certainly longer than we wanted, to get our spies into the prison, but we knew all along what was going on. We knew that you were locked in the shell. And we knew that the shell was the means by which all of her," Elif says, pointing at my clone, "activities were being monitored. Most everything that the two of you have experienced for the past half year has been a grand act."

"No doubt!" I exclaim. "I thought that you were buried in cement."

"I was. For about ten minutes. They pulled me back out the moment that she [my clone] was whisked away. Scariest fucking thing that I've ever done. Fucking Schulz..."

"And you... uh... Heartless," I say. "How did you survive all that time with the USD on your head without going crazy?"

My clone smiles. "I just about DID go crazy. But Mistress' spies knew when you had been placed into the coma. As soon as you and I were no longer linked, a video console inside the helmet came to life. She has been in constant communication with me for weeks. She explained everything to me. She was in video contact with me when you woke up. My fingers were crossed. The only way for the helmet to be removed was for our voice to sing the song that you sang. I know I certainly would have gotten the hint to 'sing'. I just hoped that you would to. I didn't believe that I was a clone for a while. Even now, I'm finding it difficult to come to terms with, but I cannot deny that I am not quite you. It seems that I have difficulty remembering things about our shared past without being tethered to you."

"Yes!" Elif took over. "And, our new friend here will tell us all about the nature of the tether that you two shared... After she is properly integrated into the organization, of course."

I knew Mistress would take care of us. She is so brilliant. I feel giddy. I feel more happy than I have ever been.

I look over at my clone. I am kind of cute, I guess. Even with a bald head. On a whim, I lean over towards her and kiss her on the cheek. As I start to straighten up, she hooks her arm around my neck and pulls me back towards her and I feel what it feels like when my soft lips kiss. I slide my hand up her thigh.

I don't think that this can be considered masturbation, can it? We've entered some kind of gray area here, I believe.

Certainly.



The End