Rachel sucked in her breath, her heart suddenly pounding, as she heard a noise from the direction of the drawbridge. Seconds later, a rectangle of light outlined the bridge, widening as the bridge began its creaking descent.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit! ran like a chant through Rachel's mind. She began whimpering helplessly. She felt sure she was about to be raped, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut against a sudden blinding light, as the room's lights were turned on after hours of darkness. She tried to keep them closed, steeling herself against pain soon to come, but an opposing impulse won out, a need to see and judge what was happening and what was about to.

Opening her eyes, gradually wider as they became accustomed to the lighting, she saw a guard walking across the bridge, the image turned sideways with her head down on the roof of her cell. The guard was followed, unexpectedly, by two women, naked, chained, and shackled as were all of the prisoners Rachel had seen other than Alina, each pushing what looked like an upright oil drum on wheels.

The guard stopped momentarily, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw Rachel, and then he chuckled, his mouth turning up into a smile. It wasn't the kind of smile that suggested to Rachel that she herself was going to find anything amusing.

The guard muttered to himself in a language Rachel now knew to be Russian, then turned and said something to the unsmiling women, gesturing them forward into the room. They came, pulling the oil drums with them.

While one of the girls walked past Rachel with her drum, to the wall at the end of the aisle between the rows of cells, the other busied herself uncoiling what looked to Rachel like a garden hose, which had hung from a hook on the rim of her drum. All of the work either girl was doing was made awkward by the cuffs and chains, which Rachel decided must restrain the prisoners at almost all times -- she had thought the women would at least be freed for work, but she saw that was not the case. Nothing these women were doing required separating their hands or lifting them above their waist. Rachel supposed their restraints might be eased when it became really necessary. Or, as Rachel had seen last night, when it was part of a "game."

The first of the women shuffled behind Rachel, her chains clinking, and Rachel's self-consciousness and embarrassment shot off the scale, as she helplessly displayed herself, bent over and showing the most private of all her parts to the eyes of a woman she had never met. The woman showed little interest in the view. The guard, however, standing at the entrance to the aisle, seemed very interested indeed. His initial surprise seemed to have spent itself, and Rachel supposed that the guard understood that Rachel had been left here for the entertainment of anyone who happened by. His arms folded across his chest, he looked Rachel up and down, nodding slightly, the smile never leaving his face.

Rachel had to lift her head to turn away from his gaze, and now saw that the woman who had walked behind her was kneeling in front of one of the cells at the end. Each cell's floor was about three inches higher than the floor of the aisle, and Rachel now saw that there was something like a drawer underneath each cell -- the woman had just pulled one of them out, and did the same at the adjacent cell.

Each drawer contained -- of course, thought Rachel, I should have realized -- a wide, shallow bowl, lined with pine straw, accounting for the aroma Rachel had detected the night before from the "toilet hole" in her cell. One by one, the woman began emptying the contents of each bowl into her oil drum: by the smells drifting towards Rachel, the straw was soaked in urine and, in some cases, feces.

The guard suddenly said something sharply, and Rachel, her heart pounding, turned her head to look back at him. She saw that he was pointing towards the floor behind Rachel. Oh, no, thought Rachel, my urine puddle. She tried to shrink into herself. Is he going to punish me for that? she asked herself plaintively.

As the guard finished speaking, both women, to Rachel's astonishment, knelt on the floor behind Rachel. Rachel lost sight of them, but heard slurping sounds.

Oh my God! thought Rachel. He's making them suck up the puddle of piss like human vacuum cleaners!

I have to remember all this, she told herself, every event, every little detail. Not like I'd forget seeing prisoners ordered to drink urine from the floor, but I have to remember to tell all these things. There are so many violations of basic human rights here. I have to tell every one of them to the State Department, to make them see how urgent the problem is. They just can't take a not-our-business attitude. They have to be so appalled that they can't help but act. They have to free all of these women from this nightmare!

Both women now returned to what they had been doing. Rachel could see, to her left, the one who had been emptying the toilet bowls underneath the cells, kneeling once more to pull out another drawer, as she half-consciously rubbed her lips against her shoulder, in alternation with licking them, obviously to try to eliminate the taste rather than to prolong it. The woman arrived at the cell next to Rachel's, and she stopped and looked at the guard: Rachel's foot was in the way of the drawer. Irritably, the guard said something and gestured to her. The woman, biting her lip, looked Rachel in the eye with an apologetic expression, knelt down and took hold of Rachel's ankle, lifting it upward, the padlock holding it sliding upward along the cell bar, so she could slide the drawer out underneath it. Rachel, as appalled as she was that this unknown woman was not only seeing her naked but now touching her, also had a strong sense of being an object, a mere piece of furniture in the room to be moved around at will.

The woman had no trouble sliding out the drawer under Rachel's own cell -- her feet weren't blocking that one -- then repeated the process of lifting up Rachel's foot, the other one, for the next cell.

The second woman went to the far wall to attach the hose to a faucet projecting out of the wall, then started collecting the trays and brought them, one by one, to the head of the aisle between cells. She returned to the faucet and turned the water on, taking the hose and directing the stream at the floor between cells, the spaces under the cells, and within the cells themselves.

Rachel felt a few droplets before the stream reached her, and flinched, at first taking them to be hot, before she realized the stinging was from cold instead. The source for the water was almost surely snowmelt which, though it probably had warmed a little in a holding tank before use, felt freezing to Rachel. Rachel screamed when the woman, after looking questioningly at the guard and hearing his verbal reply, directed the stream straight at Rachel.

Rachel squealed and tried desperately to get away, despite having spent fruitless hours trying to free herself. She couldn't breathe, it was so cold, so cold! The woman sprayed her legs, her buttocks, her back, her head, moving the stream several times up and down Rachel's body -- unnecessarily, obviously at the command of the guard, since she hadn't been spraying the roofs of any of the other cells. Finally, to Rachel's intense relief, the woman moved along and finished cleaning the remaining cells, leaving Rachel to shiver violently, gradually getting her breath back. Her teeth chattering, Rachel flexed all her muscles over and over, not to escape now, but simply to generate some body heat.

As the woman went back to the faucet to turn off the water, disconnect the hose and start recoiling it, Rachel felt a glimmer of hope that the guard and girls, nearly finished, would leave soon. The woman replaced the hose on the hook on the drum. The water, Rachel saw, was gradually flowing towards a drain in the floor underneath the faucet.

The guard spoke again, startling Rachel -- she would have thought the women knew what they were supposed to be doing. One woman was in Rachel's field of vision at that moment, and gave the guard a pained look and a miniscule, probably unconscious shake of her head. Rachel heard the other squeak in surprise, perhaps protest.

But they both knew better than to defy the guard. Rachel groaned as both women knelt behind her, knowing she wasn't going to like what was coming.

Rachel jerked as each put a hand on her thigh first, an instant before she felt their tongues, each tentative at first, then, with resignation, more fully in contact, on her buttocks, each woman taking one of them. Rachel could tell it was their tongues, by the cool feeling each left trailing behind as they licked.

To Rachel, the sensation was of a series of electrical shocks that went on and on, shooting outward from the soft, wet touches, the shocks going down her legs and up her back. The sensations made her legs weak, and set her in motion again in renewed attempts to get away. She could feel her face reddening -- two women, women!, licking her in such an intimate way. She realized she was about to pee again, and it was almost beyond her power to stop it, but she fought for control, not wanting the women forced to lick it up from the floor again.

She felt suddenly sure that, if she remained a prisoner here long enough, at some point she would be on the giving end of such treatment, not just the receiving end. She remembered those two women from the night before. Rachel would find herself forced to kiss another woman, or even... She groaned, pushing the disgusting image out of her mind.

The guard spoke again, sharply but with a laugh in his voice, and the women, to Rachel's relief, backed away. The relief turned instantly to terror when the guard himself came to stand behind her, and Rachel heard the clear sound of a zipper being pulled down.

No! No! Rachel, unintelligibly against the gag and in the wrong language anyway, pleaded with him to go away, to leave her alone, please don't, please don't!

She stiffened when something wider than a finger probed between her buttocks. She tried desperately to clench them together, but could feel his hands easily separate them, and felt the something-wider-than-a-finger explore more deeply in the valley between. No! she screamed, not there, not there!

With a sharp thrust, he was in, and Rachel felt a pain in a place she'd never imagined being touched by another person. He backed away and thrust again, and established a rhythm of pushing in and pulling out, the muscles of her rectum trying hard to expel him but not able to.

It was all so foreign to how Rachel had thought the world worked. She thought of herself as a person of power, a competent woman who could find her way through the complexity of the twenty-first century world and establish her own place in it. No part of that conception of herself visualized a man using her rectum for his own physical pleasure, with Rachel absolutely unable to do anything about it.

After an interval of forever or about one minute -- Rachel perceived it both ways -- the guard grunted and gave one last hard push, his hips pressed tight against her buttocks, then with a sigh, withdrew at last. Rachel felt her anus, perversely, trying to hold him, not letting go, until he finally came out with an audible pop, leaving a slimy feeling behind, the slime leaking slowly out of her.

Rachel, crying, barely noticed the women finishing the task they had come for, one of them replacing the pine straw in the bowls with a fresh supply from the second of the two oil drums, the other putting them back in the drawers and closing the drawers up, again lifting Rachel's feet, one after the other, for the cells on either side. The women, and the guard, walked away at last. Rachel, through her tears, took a last look at the guard's face. I have to remember later, she told herself. I have to tell people. He has to pay. Maybe I'll be released tonight, before anyone else rapes me. Maybe he'll be the only one. But I have to make him, at least, pay for what he did to me.

A minute later, after the guard pulled down the light switch, the drawbridge was raised and closed, plunging Rachel once more into total darkness, alone. She wished she could somehow push what had just happened out of her mind, but her butt still burned and ached. In a sense, the violation was still happening. She didn't feel cold anymore. But she continued shivering.

Yelena paused with her hand on the doorknob, taking a deep breath. She felt sick to her stomach, knowing she was going to have to sink deeper into the pit during this session. She'd put it off as long as she could, but General Karozki had spoken over the intercom to her room, insisting that she continue with the operation.

She'd spent twenty minutes staring at Marya on the monitor in her room. Marya was struggling fitfully, occasionally, and lying motionless for long stretches in between, sniffling and frequently bursting into tears. Yelena's heart broke with each sob from her daughter.

Now, at the door to Marya's room, Yelena summoned Bad Mother once more. She felt a slight tingling beginning, from her latest pill. It had only been four hours since her first one, and she remembered the doctor telling her to wait for six. But she didn't know how long this session would last, and she didn't want to run out of artificial sexual energy in the middle of it.

Squeezing her eyes shut one more time, to build up her determination to continue, Yelena opened the door.

Entering, she saw Marya convulse, not expecting her, fearing her return. My daughter is terrified of me, she thought, her spirits hitting bottom. Well, that's what they want, isn't it?

Marya strained against the restraints still holding her in a taut X. Her voice shaking, she said, "Mom, let me go. Please? You know this isn't right. You're..." She paused, obviously considering how to talk to her mother without dangerously offending her. "Mom, I won't tell anybody. I know you'll do the right thing. You need help. You know that, don't you?"

Yelena withdrew under Bad Mother again. Bad Mother smiled for her. "This is the right thing. The only right thing. You'll see that, dear. Actually, I did come to let you go, but only if you promise to stay and listen. When you hear what I made you for, you'll understand."

Marya's face brightened, hearing only one thing in what her mother had said. "You'll let me go?"

Yelena smiled again. "Of course, dear. I don't want you like this. I only held you here so you'd wait and listen to me. You won't run away now, will you?"

Marya shook her head vehemently. "I won't run."

Yelena walked over to the bed and patted Marya's leg. "I knew you'd understand." With the key she was holding, she reached down to unlock the padlock securing Marya's right foot to the chain, then the left.

Marya drew her legs together, and tried to look as encouraging as she could. "You won't be sorry, Mom. I promise."

Yelena released Marya's right wrist, and then her left. Last of all, the lock securing the chain to her metal collar. The collar, as well as the handcuffs and ankle shackles, remained, but no longer attached to anything.

Watching Yelena carefully, Marya sat up, rubbed her wrists on either side of the cuffs, and drew her legs towards her, stretching in various directions to relieve the kinks in her muscles. Without any visible warning, she suddenly sprang from the bed and bolted for the door, as Yelena had been sure she would.

Yelena stood, not hurriedly, and curled the fingers of her left hand inward. When Marya stopped at the door, frantically grasping the knob, Yelena used her middle finger to press the red button in the middle of her palm.

Marya stiffened instantly, emitting a squeal, then began falling. Yelena had made sure she was close enough to catch Marya before her head hit the floor. Yelena eased her daughter to the floor, laying her gently on her back. Then she went to the bureau at the side of the room, pulling out two padlocks.

As Marya lay with her eyes staring at her mother, her mouth twitching as if she wanted to speak but couldn't, Yelena pulled Marya's hands behind her back and locked her wristcuffs together, then did the same with the cuffs at her ankles. She put her arms under Marya's armpits and pulled her, Marya's feet dragging along the floor, to the couch at far end of the room, grunting with the effort of lifting Marya up onto the cushion into a sitting position.

Yelena had been assured she had about two minutes, but a little sooner than that, Marya began twitching, her muscles starting to work again. I'll have to remember that, thought Yelena. In the future, if I have to paralyze Marya again, I'll need to work quickly. Or be ready to shock her again. The collar should be good for four more jolts before needing recharging. That shouldn't be a problem, Yelena told herself.

Yelena sat on the couch to Marya's right, turned towards her. She slid her left leg in behind Marya's back against the couch's back cushion, behind Marya's joined hands, and put her right leg in front of Marya's stomach. She crossed her ankles next to Marya's hip, completing the leg lock. Wrapping her left arm around Marya's neck, her elbow resting on Marya's far shoulder, Yelena put her forearm across Marya's chest above her breasts, and cupped her left hand over Marya's right breast -- gently, so Marya's nipple wouldn't depress the button activating the collar accidentally. With her right hand, she reached underneath her own thigh and let her palm rest on Marya's mound. She kissed Marya's right shoulder and neck softly, making soft aroused noises at the back of her throat.

Marya worked her jaw and slowly recovered control of the muscles of her mouth. "M-Mom? Stop. Please. I don't want this. This isn't... I'm your daughter! This isn't right."

Yelena licked and kissed the skin where Marya's shoulder and neck met. "It feels so right. I've waited so long. You don't know how right this is."

"Mom, please!" Marya squirmed and wriggled, trying to get away, but with her hands trapped behind her and with Yelena's arms and legs wrapped so firmly around her, she had no leverage. "You know..."

Yelena shook her head, her lips brushing Marya's shoulder. "Don't ask me to let you go again. You're here now. I made you for this."

Marya twisted her upper body suddenly, and Yelena tightened her armhold across Marya's chest. Marya straightened abruptly at the waist, using all her strength to try to throw her mother off her, but Yelena only tightened her legs around Marya's waist. Yelena opened her mouth wider, making small circles at the base of Marya's neck with her tongue.

Yelena felt a sudden intense need in her crotch. The drug, she sighed inwardly, the damned drug. I know I have to have it. I know it's helping me do what I have to do for Marya. But it's making me need release so badly!

Tightening her legs further, she started grinding her mound against Marya's hip, bouncing it against the point of Marya's hip rhythmically, a low, continuous moan starting in her throat. She pushed her chest hard against Marya's arm, letting Marya's shoulder sink into the valley between her breasts, while burrowing her right hand further into Marya's crotch. She squeezed Marya's breast with the fingers of her left hand. I hate them, Yelena thought, I hate them, I hate them making me do this, I hate their drug making me want this. But it feels so good, so good, so good...

At least the damned pills work, she thought. Yelena was practically squirting between her legs, leaving a slick wet trail on Marya's hip. She was sure Marya could feel it. I wish, Yelena thought, the drug could somehow make me only seem sexually aroused without actually being aroused by my own daughter.

Yelena knew she had taken too much of the drug too soon, but she was afraid of the consequences of not having enough. She was becoming consumed with the desire to feel every inch of Marya's soft skin, feel Marya's lips against her own. Feel Marya's tongue inside her, licking that place between her legs where Yelena's whole consciousness seemed centered now, to somehow feel all of Marya inside her.

This isn't the time for this! she shouted at herself. I have talking I have to do now, explaining, telling Marya what I expect her to do. But it felt too good to stop. Yelena moaned helplessly, grinding harder against Marya's hip, wanting more of Marya, all of her, wanting the wonderful feeling to last forever...

Marya startled Yelena with a piercing scream, followed by shouts of "Help!! Help me!!" Yelena was able to grasp and hold a temporary control over herself. Breathing hard herself, Yelena waited until Marya paused for breath, then said softly, "There is nobody outside who doesn't work for me, dear. They know better than to interrupt us." Between her legs the tingling still built in intensity, begging for the release of orgasm, but she knew talking right now was more important than satisfaction. She forced herself to wait.

Shakily, Marya said, "Work for Daddy, you mean? They'll tell him about this."

Yelena smiled and shook her head. "No, they work for me. I've planned this for a really long time. Since before you were born. It's what I made you for."

"Mom -- You keep saying that. About how you 'made me for this.' What does that mean?"

"Darling..." Yelena paused, as if deciding what she wanted to say, though she'd been ready for Marya's question. "Would you like to hear a story? About me?"

Marya squirmed again, looked at the door for help to arrive, and seemed to realize escape or rescue were both hopeless. "If I listen, will you let me go?"

"My sweet, if you do listen, really listen, I think you'll understand. You'll know why you're here. You'll know the meaning of your life. Everybody wishes they could know what their life means. In a few minutes you will. You won't want to leave."

Marya's looked wide-eyed at her mother, as if wondering how much more crazy she could get. She seemed to resign herself to listening. There was nothing else she could do. "Go ahead."

Yelena was silent for a time, as if putting her thoughts in order. Just as Marya was about to prompt her, she began speaking. "When I was your age, I was working in Paris. Some work on the stage, a few movies..."

Relieved, Yelena found that launching into the script for her character had a calming effect on her. The intense physical need was, for the moment, pushed to the background.

"Mom, I know all that."

Yelena made a quiet "Shhhh" sound. Marya opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally said, "Mom, I won't talk, I'll just listen, if you'll take your hand out from between my legs. Please?"

Yelena smiled. "I'm just keeping that part of you warm for my mouth later." Yelena could not let Marya bargain with her, or in any way let Marya feel she had any control over the situation. As Marya gasped and rolled her eyes, Yelena leaned forward and let her tongue, once again, make soft circles at the base of Marya's neck, then looked up and spoke again.

"Anyway, I had a lot of men. You probably didn't know that part." Yelena frowned thoughtfully. "That's probably not the right way to say it. It makes it sound like it was all my idea. But it was really just part of the job. Getting jobs, getting little items in gossip columns so everybody knew who you were. My agent told me I needed to do that. Oh, I slept with him too." Yelena sighed.

Actually Yelena had not been nearly as sexually active, nor experienced, as she was making it sound. It was just all part of the script she had worked out. She went on, "Something so, so big was missing. I don't mean love. But... I saw that the men were never really seeing me. I was just... holes, that they could put their thing in. I was something that felt good to them. There was nothing, nothing at all, that connected me with them. And I got so I hated it, hated doing it, but I had to. My agent said so, anyway, and I believed him.

"Then one day, I had this... idea. It was just a thought that came into my head, that the best sex, the best feeling you could ever have, was if you could somehow make love with yourself." Yelena chuckled as she saw the "come on, everybody does that" expression on Marya's face. "No, I don't mean masturbation." Yelena laughed again as Marya's expression returned to disgust, that she could be hearing such talk from her mother. "That's not it at all. I mean really be with yourself, like being with another person. Feeling a whole separate body from your own, but it's you. It's a second you, a part of you. As if the image you see in a mirror could come out of the mirror and you could touch it, hold it, make love with it."

This was the idea that had come to Yelena yesterday, when she had begun making notes, planning how to accomplish the seduction of her unwilling daughter. It was designed to suggest that there was method in Yelena's madness, and it would give Marya a role she could play within that madness so that Marya would know exactly what Yelena expected of her. "That was what I was missing. I didn't want to give my body to someone I couldn't relate to. I wanted a connection. And who could I possibly be more connected with than myself? I'm sorry, I've never had to try to put it into words before. The words really aren't quite getting to the real idea I have inside of me, of what I want. But..." Yelena smiled again. "I don't really need the words, with you. You know what I mean. You are me. I knew, back then, that I had a 'me' I could love inside me. All I had to do was make a baby, and the baby would grow up to be me."

Marya's eyes flew open wide. Yelena could see Marya suddenly understood exactly the nature of Yelena's delusion. "Mom, no! I am not you. I'm not the mirror you, I'm not part of you. I'm a separate person! I'm your daughter. You... you put me into this fantasy of yours, you think I'm part of it, but I'm not!"

Yelena laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Hélène, my darling..." She heard Marya's gasp. Marya knew that Yelena had used the name Hélène professionally in France, the name "Hélène" being the French version of her given name. Calling Marya by that name signaled to Marya that her mother had rejected the protest she'd just made, and was indeed imagining Marya as herself. Yelena decided it was time to jump ahead to what she had intended as a later part of the script. "You are Hélène, and I'm going to call you that. And I am Hélène. I want to hear you call me that."

Marya shook her head violently. "Mom, I'm Marya! I'm your daughter. I... am... not... you!" She looked furious, frustrated. She squirmed once again, struggling to free herself from her mother's grasp, but Yelena tightened her arms and legs around her again.

Yelena sighed. "I thought this might happen. You've been outside my body too long. You've started imagining you're really Marya. Darling, we just called you that. I had to keep any hint of all this from your father. Your true identity wasn't for anyone to know but me. But you've always been Hélène. And I've always been Hélène."

Yelena, with her fingers still between Marya's legs, lifted her thumb and used it to stroke the prickly stubble of Marya's pubic hair. As if the thought had suddenly occurred to her, Yelena said, "I want you to let your bush grow out, untrimmed. I used to have it that way when I was your age, so you'll be just like I was. Of course, you can still shave your legs. I'll do that for you! I'd love doing that. But you've got to have a bush, like I did. And I'll let mine grow out again so we match." There, thought Yelena, at least I've accomplished that much. Yelena was aware that men these days had a preference for shaved women. Anything Yelena could do to make the men here just a little less ardent for both herself and for Marya, to make their erections just a little smaller, would be a tiny victory. And it fit in so well with the cover story Yelena was spinning for Marya, that they wouldn't be able to find a way to make Yelena change her mind without ruining the story.

Marya groaned, and made another desperate attempt to get loose. When she gave up once more, she said, "Well, Daddy is going to flip out when I tell him what you're doing. You can't think you can just keep doing this."

"Your father thinks we're dead. We won't be going back, or seeing him again. We live here now."

Marya stared at her mother for at least thirty seconds, and finally said in a tiny voice, "What?"

Yelena nodded. "I told you I planned this a long time. I have men loyal to me here, and they will keep us safe and protected. In the rest of the world, everyone thinks we died in a helicopter crash." She beamed at Marya. "Hélène, we're going to spend the rest of our lives here."

Marya grunted and jerked, trying more strenuously than on any previous attempt to get away from her mother. Yelena held on, saying, "Shhh. Shhh. Hélène, dear, remember what happened when you tried to leave before?"

Marya's efforts subsided, and she blinked. "Was that... something you did? HOW?? It was so confusing. It was like everything exploded, and it hurt so bad, and I was on the floor. I thought the door was electrified or something."

Not wanting to release any of her grips to use her hand, Yelena leaned in and kissed the metal collar. "It's this collar you're wearing. That's where the electricity is coming from." She briefly held up the palm of her left hand just long enough to show Marya the button. "I just press this."

Marya goggled at her, and said, "I don't believe you." She tried to wriggle free yet again.

Yelena held on, and squeezed her eyes shut. I wish I didn't have to do this, she told herself. Letting go of Marya's breast, she curled her middle finger inward and pressed the button.

Marya convulsed, made the same squeal as before, and sank motionless back into the cushion. Her face happened to be turned towards Yelena, her eyes wide, her jaw slack.

Yelena counted, and when she got to a hundred ten Marya began stirring weakly, coughing. She shook her head to clear it, and winced. After drawing a couple of deep breaths, she focused on her mother, and whispered, "Mom, please don't do that again. That really hurt!"

Yelena rubbed her head against Marya's shoulder. "I won't have to, if you sit still and listen. And I want you to start calling me Hélène. That's our name."

Marya looked as if she were going to protest again, but finally said softly, "Okay... Hélène."

Yelena gave Marya's shoulder a soft, quick kiss, and picked up the script where she had left it. "Anyway, I did make you, Hélène. I made you to be me. You came out of me so tiny, and I knew you would start as a baby, but I knew all I had to do was wait, and you'd be fully me after you grew up." Yelena frowned. "I was a little afraid of what would happen in all the years of calling you Marya, pretending you weren't me, and I see I was right. You did get some ideas about having a separate life to live. But that's all over now, Hélène!" She gave Marya her most glowing smile.

"M-mom... I mean Hélène... please..." Marya winced, as if expecting a punishment from the collar for addressing Yelena as "Mom." "Don't get mad at this, it's just a fact. I'm not gay. I don't feel anything for women, any attraction. For me it has to be a man..." She stopped abruptly as Yelena laughed unexpectedly.

"Oh, Hélène, no." Yelena shook her head. "This isn't about wanting a man, or a woman. I don't want any other person but me!" She shook her head again, sighing this time. "You have so much you have to unlearn. You really don't understand yet, that you are me, and I am you. Over the years you got all those silly ideas about being Marya in your head. It's my fault. I treated you as if you were your own person. But... Well, I had to. I know your father would never have understood. I did think, when you were born, I should take you to a special place and raise you, so I could tell you all about who you are. But I knew your father would never let me. And I couldn't leave him. I needed him. His connections."

Marya's face was a study in concentration, a desperate need to understand, so that she could find the flaw in the world her mother had constructed and blow it apart. "Connections. You mean... Well, what do you mean?"

"Well, remember I told you, we're surrounded here by men who work for me. I knew I would need such men, to arrange for this hideaway, to arrange for protecting us in it, to arrange for the story of the helicopter crash... all that kind of thing. That's why I needed your father in the first place. Well, not him specifically. A high-ranking military man. A man surrounded by people who understood the value and rewards of loyalty -- of being loyal. People of competence and intelligence." She laughed. "I didn't even know how highly ranked your father would become. Though I did see something about him. I had a feeling about him, that way." Yelena smiled at her own foresight. "Anyway, I worked out ways to inspire that kind of loyalty. Loyalty to me. But I needed all the right kind of men to choose from. That's where your father came in. He has so many of the right kind of men around him." She sighed again. "And so I couldn't leave him. And he knew you existed, of course, so I couldn't hide you from him, before everything was ready."

She pressed her chest against Marya's shoulder and tightened her legs around her, in a full-body hug. "And now everything is in place! We can be together always!"

The briefly renewed pressure of Yelena's crotch against Marya's hip reawakened the drug-induced need in Yelena. She had had it under control, with all her concentration needed to make sure she didn't wreck the script with a blown line, but now it seemed to explode within her. She began rocking her hips, rubbing her sex against Marya's hip. She lifted her right hand, as Marya had long ago requested, away from Marya's crotch, and used it gently under Marya's chin to turn her face towards Yelena's. Yelena opened her mouth and covered Marya's lips with her own, pushing her tongue in deep into Marya's mouth, using the crook of her left arm against the back of Marya's head to force it harder against her own. She eased the pressure quickly and withdrew her tongue, suspecting the girl might be in the mood to bite, if she had enough time, and Yelena started using her tongue instead to kiss and lick the side of Marya's face. All the while moaning with need, as her hips continued rocking on their own -- she couldn't have stopped them if she'd wanted to.

Marya started to protest, but stopped herself before speaking a word, no doubt concerned about the collar.

Yelena suddenly withdrew her legs from around Marya's waist and pushed her over, onto her back on the sofa cushion, following her downward to lay atop her, both arms around Marya, finding she could surround Marya more completely now than when the girl had been chained spread-eagle on the bed. Yelena tightened her arms, flattening her breasts against Marya's, and forced her right leg in between Marya's thighs, bringing her own thigh up against Marya's crotch. Moaning steadily louder, faster, more breathily. She started moving her hand towards her own crotch, to stroke herself to bring herself closer to orgasm, but a feeling of not wanting the excitement to end, of wanting to rub against Marya and feel the electricity coursing between her own legs and all through her body forever, stopped her from trying to end it. She chanced another deep, open-mouthed kiss, panting now, chanting, "Hélène! Hélène! I want to make love to you! I never want to stop. Say it back to me! Call me Hélène! Say it!"

Her breath coming in bursts timed with the thrusting of Yelena's thigh in her crotch and Yelena's body undulating atop her own, Marya said, "Hélène... Make love..."

"Tell me not to stop!"

"Don't... stop... Hélène... Make love..." Marya started crying suddenly. "Mom, stop, please stop..."

The dam holding back the flood of orgasm crumbled at last, and Yelena cried out, her entire body pulsating, her arms tightening around Marya so that it seemed plain the girl couldn't breathe. The flood, the flood, the flow.... the trickle.

Yelena seemed to float back to Earth like a feather -- and then crash.

It took all the training of her acting profession to keep her face neutral while the horror washed through her.

I've just sexually assaulted my daughter, Yelena thought. Again. With her begging me not to. The second time in what will be a long series.

And I'm not at the goal I've been ordered to reach, Yelena told herself -- the point at which Marya's resistance, her will, collapses completely, and she collaborates with me in an intense sexual relationship. I don't even know how to reach the goal. I only know I have to try. I will keep trying. Anything to avoid that other fate for her. The endless pain and torture.

And she can never know what I'm saving her from.

Yelena rolled to the side, off her daughter and onto the cushion, pinning her still-bound daughter in the corner of the cushion and the back of the couch. Marya was crying softly, with little sound, just a periodic shoulder twitch with sniffling. Yelena pressed against her, her arms holding Marya firmly but gently, her thigh still against Marya's crotch. She rested her cheek on Marya's. "Shhhh. It's okay, Hélène. You can unlearn being Marya. We'll be fine." Gradually Marya's breathing evened out, slowing apparently in sleep. Yelena breathed a sigh of relief, but remained alert.

She cursed the drug again, necessary though it was. She saw how devious it was. Yelena could accept the idea that there were people more powerful than herself. It was simply the way the world was. She had been caught in a trap beyond her ability to escape, a trap that forced her to rape her own daughter, that being by far the lesser of two horrors. But the drug made her want to do it. During the abuse of her daughter she had been elevated to a level of excitement she had never known. Humping Marya had been, while she was doing it, a thing she wanted more than anything in the world, and she had wished never to stop. It destroyed her excuse that "they are forcing me to do this." She wanted, needed to do it. And they had not forced Yelena to take the drug. She had asked for the help in "seeming" aroused. She had asked to want to rape Marya.

Tears streamed from Yelena's eyes. She felt unforgivably soiled, evil.

She wiped the tears away and sought out Bad Mother. Bad Mother could take over. And take the blame.