In succeeding days, life fell into a routine. Megan grew more sure that there was no way to escape the room, and less sure that she wanted to.

Megan could tell when the days started and ended. The room lights dimmed slightly at some point. After a night's sleep for Megan and Janica, the lights brightened again. They were never entirely off.

Each day, during the bright hours, four or five men would come into the room, separately. Megan wondered if they were on some sort of schedule, since the intervals between seemed more or less uniform. Each time it happened, Megan and Janica, in behavior far beyond their control, each desperately begged the man, without words, to use her body, to fill one of her holes. The one chosen would be ecstatic; the other crushed. The strange phenomenon of facelessness continued. Megan could never remember any of their physical features -- and she'd tried her best to look closely at them when they entered -- nor could she ever tell if she'd seen any of them before. More surprising, she couldn't afterward recognize or describe any of the penises that filled her, despite her fervent concentration on them, or whether she'd seen any of them before. She supposed it must be part of her conditioning.

In between, they were alone with each other, and spent a significant portion of it helplessly drawn, by their conditioning, their imprinting, into sexual activities much more varied than Megan's previous experiences had ever been.

Megan wondered why they allowed her to spend so much private time with Janica, unobserved, until it occurred to her there might be any number of cameras hidden in the walls. All that was required was a tiny hole to let light through, all but unnoticeable from more than a few inches away -- and some or all of them might be in the parts of the room Megan couldn't reach. She supposed images of her and Janica's sexual activities would have some entertainment value. Megan herself wasn't a voyeur, but she knew most men were.

And of course, it wasn't really a matter of watching sex. It was rendering women powerless and humiliated. Megan certainly felt that fully.

Each day began with one of them awakening first and kissing or licking the other awake for their first lovemaking of the day. The bed had no sheets to cover them, so they slept simply lying atop it. The room was warm enough that that was no problem, especially as they shared body warmth -- they always slept holding each other.

On the side of the room that was accessible, there was the bed, a bathtub, and beyond the tub a shower and a portable toilet, the last of these identical to the one Megan had used in the room previous to this one. While Megan and Janica were finishing their first-thing sex, the tub would begin filling with water -- suggesting to Megan that they were indeed being watched -- and they would afterward bathe together, each cleaning the other with a soapy sponge, with a lot of giggling, and intimate touching that often, again, led to sex.

There were two vertical metal columns, each with small holes at various heights, between the bed and bathtub. During the day's first bath, a high-powered spray of water would emerge from the holes, directed at the bed, to hose off the surface of the bed, and clean it of perspiration and sexual fluids. Directional microwaves would then evaporate the water, which would be conducted upward through the ceiling air conditioning vents as steam. The air in the rest of the room didn't warm significantly -- it was a triumph of thermal engineering -- and Megan and Janica could return afterward to a clean bed. After the bath, they could rinse off the soap in the shower, drying themselves in front of a warm air blower.

Whenever necessary, they made use of the toilet. Even when one of them was on the toilet, their need for each other gripped them: While Janica was sitting on it, Megan usually knelt in front of her, between her legs, and laid her head in Janica's lap, arms around Janica's waist, while Janica stroked her hair, and their roles were reversed when Megan was on the toilet. It was just one more oddity to Megan, for whom peeing and, even more so, bowel movements had always been extremely private things. Not that there was anywhere in the room where privacy was possible, but the normal Megan would have left anyone alone during that process.

There were small doors in the wall beside the bed, which would whisper open a few times each day, and a bowl of chopped meat with, probably, some fruits and vegetables mixed in, and a bottle of milk would slide through on the floor. Janica and Megan would both eat from the bowl, in the style of dogs, as Megan recalled Sissy eating in Jason's kitchen. For the first meal, Megan had tried to pick up the meat in her fingers, but her hand froze before it reached the bowl, as she was overcome with that same pain and artificial shame that signaled when some behavior was not allowed and made it impossible for her to do it. Janica, Megan could tell, experienced the same block. So both of them took turns putting their mouths down to the bowl and licking up the food. They were able to pick up the milk bottle, which dispensed milk through that same type of oversized nipple Megan had used before -- but each of them could only offer the milk to the other, not drink it herself. Megan liked doing it that way anyway, so it didn't matter. She adored holding the bottle and watching Janica sucking from the nipple. After the meal, the bowl and bottle would be retracted back through the opening in the wall.

In the half of the room that Megan and Janica were unable to enter, there was nothing at all, other than the room's door.

Aside from bathing (after each encounter with a man), eating, and eliminating wastes, Megan and Janica spent all of each day, from waking until falling asleep, holding, stroking, and petting each other, not necessarily in such an intense way as to lead to orgasm -- though that happened often -- but just to be touching each other.

Megan, deep within herself, continually struggled with the horror of what she was being forced to do. A lifetime of self-control had been ripped away from her, all of her concepts of decency were assaulted, and she was prevented from talking, from sharing the burden, with the one person she loved above all others and who could understand what she was going through. There was one thing she wanted to tell Janica more than anything else: that inside she was still the same Megan, that she was still Janica's little sister, no matter how much uncharacteristic and perverse behavior the men had grafted onto her defenseless mind. She knew Janica would understand that without being told, because they had done the same thing to her, but it was important, crucial, to say it somehow. It would be a way of defying their tormenters, of reestablishing the relationship that they both wanted back, even if they were both powerless to negate what had been done to them. And she couldn't do it.

Their second full night together was, like their first, interrupted twice by one of them, first Megan and later Janica, awakening and, feeling the other beside her, being helplessly compelled by conditioning to initiate another episode of sex that, as it always seemed to, far exceeded anything Megan was accustomed to in intensity. The next morning, after having sex once more on waking, the tub began filling -- they were getting used to that -- and Megan and Janica held hands over the few steps to the tub.

Megan's butt was still slightly sore from her last male visitor the day before, who had used her anus. No one had ever played with Megan's butt before, but she found she loved having a penis fill her rectum completely, that same relief from her emptiness as with her other holes. Megan had her orgasm, as intense as the first, long before the man did -- she seemed consistently to climax well before the man, which defied everything she had been told about sex with men.

As she and Janica shared the bath, Megan thought of a way to get her message to Janica. Sitting behind Janica in the tub, washing her back with the sponge, Megan decided that nothing more elaborate than a simple "I love you" was needed: she was sure Janica would understand that it wasn't meant in a romantic, sexual way, but instead that Megan loved her in the same way she always had, as a sister.

It would have to be done in gestures, with spoken and written words denied to both of them. Megan laid it out in her mind -- she would get Janica's attention, point to herself, tap her fist against her heart, and then point to Janica.

Megan got as far as tapping Janica on the shoulder, but as she tried to begin the "I love you," her will seemed to freeze up, and she once again felt the pain and shame that was always so effective in stopping undesired behavior. The shame sapped her determination, undermining her ability to fight against it. She couldn't do it.

Come on, she said furiously to herself, even that is forbidden?

With Janica already twisted around to look at her, Megan felt she had to do something. She made the thumbs-up gesture.

Janica looked straight into Megan's eyes, gave her a small smile, and a brief, tiny nod, and returned the gesture. Megan smiled back. I think that did it, Megan decided. And I think I'll have to be satisfied.

She wasn't, entirely. The gesture, over the years, had had so many slightly-different meanings in different contexts that it was hard to say for certain exactly how Janica had interpreted it this time. But her response suggested that the idea had come across.

I wonder why we can still do that gesture, Megan asked herself. She supposed it might be that, after so many years, the gesture had become such a deep part of their relationship that it was purely reflexive, and beyond the reach of the blocks that Mens -- Megan figured all of this must be his handiwork -- had installed in both of their minds. And it might be that the very vagueness of the actual literal meaning of the gesture -- far more cloudy than the gestures of "I love you" Megan had tried and failed to make -- was another of the reasons it couldn't be blocked. In any case, it was nice to know that the real Megan and the real Janica, buried deep underneath the crap the men had piled on top of them, could still speak to each other.

As if to make up for the lapse in its control of Megan, the ever-present tingling in her crotch intensified. Megan knew what was coming, and was not only powerless to stop it, she was unable to want to stop it, much as she wished she could want that. The excitement, the need, built quickly.

Megan dropped the sponge in the water. Her left arm still around Janica's waist, she let her hand slide up to Janica's left breast and cupped it in her palm. Letting her thumb brush lightly back and forth across the nipple, as she had already learned Janica liked, she brought her right hand around and down between Janica's legs, using her fingers below the waterline to rub Janica's sex. Janica responded immediately, breathing hard in moaning sighs, and now Megan began licking Janica lightly behind her right ear.

Janica spun around suddenly, wrapping her legs around Megan, right leg over Megan's left, left leg underneath Megan's right, and pulled Megan against her, grinding her mound against Megan's, while pulling Megan's head forward and plunging her tongue deep into Megan's mouth.

Megan had no further rational thoughts for a time.

They were both always sad after one of the visiting men departed, the rejected one more so than the chosen one, and they comforted each other in the only way their conditioning allowed them. Making love after a man had rejected one of them, plunging that one into an abyss of sorrow, was, for Megan, the one time she could give in to her sexual need for Janica without guilt. Holding each other as one of them cried, the other stroking her gently to soothe away the weeping, seemed, for once, good, and right. It was something they both needed for survival. Megan always knew, each time, that within minutes their sexual desire would spiral out of control once more, but it almost, almost seemed worth it.

Between visits by the men, Megan wished they would stay away, even though she was excited beyond measure as soon as one entered the room. She had two conflicting reasons for her wish, reflecting the two Megans, one on the surface, one buried underneath. The buried-underneath Megan simply wanted to stop being used and abused as a sex object. The one on the surface wanted more time to spend making love with Janica. When she and Janica were alone, Megan, the surface Megan, the Megan created by men in the lab, wished they could somehow knot their tongues together so they could kiss as long as they wanted, never having to eat, never having to sleep.

It seemed to Megan as though any body part that for a time had been neglected became the next center of attention. She wondered if that might be part of the conditioning too, and it added to her suspicion that the main purpose of the entire exercise was for her and Janica to put on a show for unseen witnesses. A few days ago Megan had looked at Janica's breasts and suddenly felt she wanted nothing more than to feel them filling her mouth, and she and Janica had spent at least an hour taking turns sucking each other's breasts. The next day it was feet and toes: lying side by side facing opposite ways, each had sucked the other's toes, Megan sometimes sucking only Janica's big toe, sometimes stretching her mouth to accommodate all of the toes at once, taking them as far into her mouth as she could, and that had gone on for perhaps an hour as well. Still sucking, each of them had at last begun meanwhile using her right hand to play with the other's sex, and that had led to orgasm very shortly, each one's cries still muffled by toes. Another day Megan had become utterly fascinated with Janica's butt. She demonstrated the hands-and-knees position on the bed that she wanted Janica to adopt, then spent a considerable time slowly, sensuously licking Janica's buttocks, listening to Janica's moans and sudden gasps of pleasure, and her squeaks and giggles when Megan ran her tongue up her crack past her anus. Janica, of course, had eagerly returned the favor after her orgasm. The next night they had slept the entire night each with her head between the other's thighs, face pressed into the other's crotch, and in the morning licked each other to a climax.

As the days progressed, something in Megan continued telling her this was wrong, that she should be objecting to the hijacking of her mind, and making plans to escape back to Earth with Janica. But she found she couldn't quite remember why that was important. Lying still with Janica in bed, their arms around each other, breasts pressed together, legs entangled, looking into each other's eyes between kisses, Megan wished this time spent with Janica could go on forever.