Playing Villains
“And so that concludes the tour of our HexCorp facilities. I do so hope you enjoyed the experience, my dearest Phantom. Tell me, is there anything that tickled your fancy? Anything that you saw that might intrigue you further? I simply can’t wait to hear about what’s on your mind.”
The Hive Mxtress rested back against their desk as the drones that had been escorting them departed their office, leaving Hex in the sole company of their guest. Their words were dripping with playful sarcasm and a certain self-adoring smugness. There were multiple reasons why:
Their guest had not been able to see anything, due to the thick blindfold currently locked around her vision.
Their guest would not be able to speak her thoughts, thanks to the shiny, black ball currently wedged between her teeth.
Their guest currently couldn’t even hear this monologue, on account of the noise-cancelling headphones fitted snugly around her head.
These same noise-cancelling headphones were also, conveniently, thought-cancelling, meaning that their guest was currently having a very difficult time having anything on her mind at all.
Phantom had almost certainly not enjoyed the tour.
“I’ve already taken the liberty of updating your LinkedIn page. Former CEO of MirageCorp Intl seems appropriate, but what to set your future career to? Putting ‘retired’ just seems lazy. Is ‘trophy wife’ too on the nose? How about ‘office decor associate’?”
Phantom continued to squirm and moan through her gag, despite the obvious hopelessness of it all. It almost felt like a tradition, testing the various rubber belts to confirm that they were, indeed, inescapable. From their perspective, all the restraints that fitted snugly to their latex-adorned body were incredibly familiar. Armbinder - check. Sensory deprivation restraints - check. It was only around the legs where things got interesting. There was a pressure exerting upon her thighs and downward that stopped her from wiggling her lower body even an inch. She could only assume she’d been sealed in resin, which was only making the sticky tightness of the rubber worse.
Not that she was allowed much perspective. The moment any thoughts regarding her situation came to the forefront of her mind, the waves of throbbing binaurals forced them back down. In its place, she could hear a constant chanting of a familiar mantra.
‘Obey HexCorp. It is just a HexDrone. It obeys the Hive. It obeys the Hive Mxtress.’
Over and over it repeated. The worst thing was, it was the voice of her own mind that was repeating it. It was getting harder to resist.
“Now let’s see here, where to put you?” The Hive Mxtress examined their spacious office and hummed a robotic tone. The pedestal that Phantom was sealed into would hover over to wherever they saw fit, making interior decorating ever so easy. “We do have the trophy cabinet stuffed full of failed agent infiltration attempts, but you’re worth more to me than that, Phantom. It’s not every day we get to take down a competitor so delightfully. So how about right next to my desk, for the time being? Until I perceive you to be too distracting to my productivity and move you over to the space between the plants instead.”
With a wave of their finger, the pedestal floated ominously across the floor. Its inhabitant had no idea where she was, who she was with, what was being done to her, and she was quickly losing all sense of self too. There was a clunk as it found its new resting place and made contact with its new resting place. Suddenly Phantom felt a stillness, an inevitable end to the procession of her defeat. ‘This is your new home for the foreseeable future, so you may as well get used to it’ - a thought she incorrectly presumed to be her own. Then, a fleeting touch, of latex-clad hands upon her cheeks. The Hive Mxtress was gently embracing her, softly stroking upon the pitiful amount of exposed skin.
“My dearest Phantom, so good of you to stay here with me. I do so hope you’ll be comfortable here. I’ll make sure of it.”
The hands departed, and Phantom returned to a restrained world of falling into brainwashing. She was going to be here for quite some time.