End of Women: Part Two

Enemy Sighted

A cascade of ice water bucketed down on Ruth as she slept. She jerked awake, screaming, and bumped stupidly into the roof of her cage. 

'Wake up. Boss wants to see you.'

Ruth rubbed her eyes with shivering hands, just about making out the blurry outline of Nate standing outside the cage door. As her vision cleared she saw him swipe a keycard along the doorpad and swing the door open, picking up her vaglock chain and giving it a tug. She winced at the sharp pang in her crotch and struggled to the front of the cage. Nate kept on tugging, impatient to get moving.

'Let's not keep the Boss waiting,' he urged her as she jumped down a full cage-height to the cold floor below, her small feet touching the ground with a slap. 

Nate turned his back to her, vaglock chain in hand, and tugged her in his wake. She folded her hands behind her back and followed him, catching the eye of Mindy, the girl who lived in the cage beside her, all full of trepidation at the sight of Nate.

Ruth bowed her head. After all the torture Wilkes had inflicted on her, it seemed crazy that she could still be afraid of anything, and yet she was afraid of Nate. Word of what happened to the escapees had reached every woman's ear in the compound by now. Half of them did not know who Nate was to begin with, just another recruit, another pair of boots to the girls on the bottom rows, a kevlar-clad chest to the girls in the middle and a sweet-looking, cute face to the girls on the top. 

None of it had really shocked Ruth. Torture, mass killing, double-crossing, it was all textbook Bluenorth. It was only when she heard that Nate was once Alyssa's boyfriend that she had felt real fear towards the man. He represented an absolute change, a total deviation from the world Ruth had once known. She had to smile as she remembered writing once that heterosexual relationships were only another semblance of patriarchy. The irony was not lost on her; she would kill to return to a world like that.

'Don't slack!' Nate snapped at her, giving her a sharp tug on the short chain. 

She gasped from the pain, surprised how bad it still felt. Wilkes had tested a new drug on her, some kind of serum that stops the nerves from becoming too numbed and prevents women from passing out. It was working; only a week ago she would barely have felt Nate's punishing yanks on the metal bulb buried in her womanhood.

Ruth kept herself as close to Nate as possible as they passed out of the caging area and into the plushly-carpeted, wood-panelled hallways that looked less like a high-security compound and more like a regal office block. Ruth knew her way but followed Nate all the same. As much as she feared him, she could not help but be curious; what had they said to make a sweet, kind boy like that become such a monster?

The door to the men's common room was open. Ruth peered inside and saw a group of guys playing videogames while a couple of others played pool. In the corner, hanging in a medieval gibbet, were two women, covered in whipmarks. Another girl was knelt inside a tiny dog-cage sucking a guard's cock between the bars, the sounds of her sucking echoing in time with the bleep of the videogame and the knock of pool-cue-on-ball. What crime those girls must have committed to pull common-room duty, Ruth could not imagine.

Ruth's legs moaned a little, relieved to be out of the cage and able to stretch. She look long, deliberate strides to pull on the muscles. Nate gave her a sudden yank into Wilkes' office area. The 'Boss' himself was, for once, not seated behind his grand desk, but out on the balcony with his feet up, enjoying a glass of wine and a cigar. 

'Thanks, Nate.' He said, turning his thin face around to see Ruth. 'Put her in the carry-cage.'

Nate looked at Ruth for a few seconds, eyebrows raised and mouth a straight horizontal line.