http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?t=79318 Part 1
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?t=80503 Part 2
Here it is, finally--part 3 of Room 101. The story does build with each part, so I recommend gong back and looking at the first two. At any rate, this is the last installment of this one, so please leave feedback!
KI
Room 101
part 3
by
Kid Indy
Phan Cong Son woke up on a cot in a small room. Unthinkingly rubbing her sore arms (they had been suspended over her head for several minutes), she looked around. She was still wearing that awful pink bikini, but her hands and legs were free. She swung them down and put her soles on the cold tile floor. Her cot was the only object in a small room, perhaps two and a half meters by three, and one door, with one small window, was the only way in or out. She looked through the glass to see a narrow hallway and one guard, his back turned at the moment, patrolling it.
Son knelt down below the window and began to think quickly. She couldn't have been down long, and she remembered now the urgency of her situation. General Williams would be on the ground in Guatemala within twenty-four hours, and she needed to get out of this place and start on the hack. This place... Son suddenly realized that she had no idea where the Ilium complex lay; she had been on a helicopter, blindfolded. No matter. She stood up and looked out the window, at the guard who was now turned her way. She knocked on the glass, and a short, young, awkward-looking white man (boy, really) approached.
"I really need to go to the bathroom!"
"The other guard will be back soon, and then we can--"
"Please! I need to go! Just do me one favor. I've been unconscious! I feel like I'm dying!"
"Well, I--"
"Well nothing! Let me go to the bathroom!"
The kid was plainly out of his league. "Well, I guess I can do something... Look, just stand back from the door, okay?" She did. He fumbled his taser out of his belt and, holding it with one hand, swiped a card through an electronic lock with the other.
As he turned the heavy handle, Son pounced, leaping through the air and giving the door a flying shove with her right foot. The metal edge caught the guard squarely in the face, driving him backwards into the hallway's wall and knocking the heavy plastic stun gun out of his hand. Son quickly retrieved it and fired one dart, then another into his torso. He wasn't much bigger than her, so she quickly sat him up, took his jacket off, and used his handcuffs to bind his still-twitching hands behind him. Moving as quickly as she could, she took his pants and boots and hat, making herself an unconvincing but at least clothed imitation of an Ilium guard. After she had locked him in her cell, she used his magnetic card to let herself out of the cell block.
The building in which she was held was a small one, and she found her way to daylight with no problem. She heard a train's whistle, and she knew that it was most likely heading back to Chicago. A gate, which she hoped her card would open, was only a hundred or so meters from the detention building, and she walked in too-big boots (she imagined she must have looked something like the gangly kid) towards freedom. Nobody stopped her, and her card worked, and she was out of the complex. She ran down a moderate bank towards the train, jumped as best as the boots would let her, and stowed away on the back of a CSX heading for Chicago.
Son's apartment was only a few blocks from the train depot, but by the time she got there, her feet ached from the boots. She retrieved her spare key from under the welcome mat five doors down, two floors below (no sense in hiding things like that in front of one's own door) and got into her apartment. She was exhausted and sore, but there was no time for rest at the moment. She knew that she had to get onto the Internet and make contact with the Front. She changed out of that awful pink bikini and the stolen uniform and back into clothes that made her feel like herself. As she put her white cotton socks on, she remembered Xiang's touch and shuddered a little before setting her mind back to her mission.
She pulled her spare computer out of her personal safe. The enemy had her other computer, but she knew better than to store any sensitive information there, so all they had was a relatively expensive piece of civilian hardware. She plugged in her virtuport and began to compose a quick message to the Front's general. She sent that off and retrieved a spare copy of the Front's transmission to her. She made mental notes as she decoded: "Operatives at Green 42.775 ten kilometers from American base. Awaiting signal to proceed with rocket strikes. Need locations of ordnance and officers and communication points." This was going to be a standard op--let the Front dictate the shape of the battlefield, blind the opposition, and paint-by-Internet targets for missiles and snipers. Only this time, Son knew, General Williams would be one of those officers, and the Front would be killing a popular American military/media figure.
As the operation's start time approached, Son stretched and meditated, getting her mind ready to take control of her computer. She sat in a lotus position as she plugged her computer into her Virtuport. Son began her hack of the U.S. Army's communications satellite.
When Son entered virtual space, her body told her she was floating in an undefined, gravity-less darkness, free from all restraints. As she needed them, "screens" and "holograms" would appear in her proximity, and she could manipulate them by sending signals to her imaginary hands. Her body was still humming just a little from the Xiang treatment, though she hated to admit it, but the edge was making her decisions more intuitive and more precise, given the speed at which she worked. She pulled up three-dimensional schematics of the Army's security software and dipped into them with the dexterity of a safe cracker. Each layer of security fell on the first or second try, and before long, she was in control of every computer on the Guatemala-54 base. Turning to the Front's display at her left hand, she transmitted schematics of the base and locations of all the soldiers' transceiver signals to the general's computer. She saw the mission countdown reach T minus thirty seconds, and she prepared to transmit her trademark bikini picture. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
As she executed the command to kill the base's communications gear, a surge of energy seized her midsection, and her knees squeezed together as a blazing sphere of pleasure started between her legs and took her breath away as it swelled, pulling a gasp from between her lips as it enveloped her body. The Front display disappeared, then Base 54's, then the satellite link's, and directly in front of her appeared a sight that drew from her a scream.
"You know where Guatemala?"
Xiang, or at least a computer graphic based on photographs of Xiang, was now the only entity occupying Son's virtual space. She tried to conjure up viruses and system shutdown codes, but nothing appeared to use as a weapon. The Xiang-graphic laughed.
"Do you really think you're back in Chicago, Miss Phan? We're in a virtual space designed by Ilium. We used the intel that we gathered tracking you, plus your own expectations, plus a link to your laptop, to create this lovely virtual reality that you've just experienced."
"Where am I now?"
"In another part. And subvocally, you've given Ilium's combat programmers enough information to lead your precious Front right into a crushing ambush. Your cause is going to die, Miss Phan, and you've provided the lethal injection. I don't think we'll be needing this program any more."
Son sucked air as she woke up, still strapped to Xiang's chair. She still had the pink bikini on, and Xiang was still plugged into the torture computer. Looking around, she silently cursed her carelessness.
"You see, Miss Phan, I intentionally overloaded your senses on that last interrogation. Pleasure is a convention, really, a matter of balance. No human body, given those stimuli with that intensity, could possibly keep a straight line of thinking going. When you thought you fell unconscious, you simply entered the world we created, and since your foot felt so good, you didn't notice the jump. We knew you lived close to a train depot, so we created the train. We knew that you had a spare computer, so we waited for your memory to tell us what it looked like. You thought hours were passing, but in our world, your eight hours took only ten minutes."
Son could barely fight back the tears. She had indeed betrayed the Front, and there was nothing she could do to set things right. Not even thinking about what she might do, she strained against her bonds. Unable to find words for her own state, she hissed through clenched teeth, "I hope they find you and tear you to pieces!"
"Not likely after today, Miss Phan." He reached into his tool compartment at the base of the chair. "After the Americans get done with this counter-strike, they'll be regrouping for at least a year. They won't be able to take on the Americans or Ilium for some time, and they probably won't have the resources to do much but hunt you. But that's hardly the cheerful girl, is it? Why, you've just rid the world of a dangerous terrorist group! You should be just tickled about that!" With that awful pun he produced another feather, this one striped green and black, its spine so stiff that it didn't bend as he waved it at her foot.
"NO! I've already done what you wanted! Leave me alone!"
"You're never alone, Miss Phan. And you need to laugh more." Xiang twirled the feather between his finger and thumb, and when the tickle-drill made contact with the middle of Son's right sole, she didn't stand a chance of resisting; she could tell that he had her nerves turned up. She shrieked and squirmed, throwing her head back, her tears stopping immediately and her giggles filling the air. The feather continued to twirl, drifting down to the edge of her heel, then to her instep, from the ball of her foot across the bases of the toes and down the side. She gasped and released giggles, gasped and released giggles.
Her toes reflexively separated, and the feather was a lethal weapon when it slid between them. She let out a scream of pleasure and laughter every time he managed to slide it in, and after the feather departed, he would twirl it again, dancing the feather's tip across her soles and bringing giggling bubbles out of her liquid body. Then he would find another breach between toes, sawing away at the soft skin, making her scream again. He tickled and tickled and tickled, every sensation magnified by the computer system, every stroke of the quill even more torture to Son's poor foot. Every cell in her right foot was a ticklish explosive, and he was lighting every square centimeter up with his cruel feather.
He released, pulling the feather back. That he had only tickled one foot was not lost on her.
"Now, Miss Phan, let's send our boys on the front a little gift. In just a few hours, the Front will begin moving in on the American base. As I remember, one of your favorite little tricks was to put a bikini picture of yourself in the Americans' computer screens. What do you say to giving a bit of that to the Front?" Son could see a robotic arm extending from the base of the chair, and a camera lens now looked at her.
Son had recovered a bit of martyr's defiance over the course of his speech. "I can hardly help that, you freak. Go ahead and take my picture, American pig."
"American? Oh, Miss Phan. You really are naive. Do you know the story of Ilium?"
Son was curious, despite her hatred for the man and his feather. "Homer, right?"
"Homer indeed. And do you remember how Ilium fell?"
Son did not feel like a history lesson, but at least it wasn't tickling. "Trojan horse, right?"
"Yes! The Trojan horse. You see, this company is like a kind of Trojan horse, if you can imagine America as Troy."
"Then who's Agamemnon?"
"Why Miss Phan, you've done some reading! Kudos! Agamemnon, my beauty, is China. They've sent forth the Ilium corporation to acquire military secrets from America, not by stealth, but by asking them for them. Not surprisingly, the Americans have been willing to ally with anything that looks capitalist."
"What do you mean looks capitalist? Those pigs have been whoring themselves to the capitalists for decades!"
Xiang smiled. "Remember, Miss Phan, you're talking to one of 'those pigs.' I'm certain the Trojans thought that they had the Achaians on the run as well. Chinese Communism is poised to make a decisive strike; all they need is a few more sensitive military secrets. You can help us, Miss Phan."
"You trapped me into destroying a real People's movement! I'm not helping you with anything!"
"But you already have." Son turned red. "No matter, though. Little uprisings like the Agricultural Front are inconsequential historically--only as sacrifices do they signify anything. But where were we? Ah, yes! I thought your Guatemalan comrades would enjoy seeing you laughing at them as they prepare to die at the Americans' hands. That way, if the prisoners of war get to communicate with anyone on the outside, they'll know precisely who sold them out."
"What makes you think you can make my picture laugh?" Xiang held up the green feather. "You bastard." Xiang smiled again.
"Let's see if the little leftist's left sole is tickish, shall we?" A red light began blinking below the camera's lens, and Son knew that she was being recorded for her own humiliation. She attempted one last act of sabotage:
"Death to the bourgeoisie! Long live the commyooo!!!" The feather began to swipe at her sole, and her battle-cry dissolved into a shriek, then giggles as her lungs pulled air back in. Xiang made quick diagonal strokes from the ball of her foot to the center of the sole, from the heel to the center, from the instep across to the outside of the heel. The attacks were quick and precise, not letting up and every one unbearably ticklish. Son's reality was now the enhanced world of cybernetic nerves; her left foot was humanity's most ticklish spot. And Xiang was working that spot with an inhuman and unrelenting feather. As her mind turned loose her dignity and just dissolved into the sensation, he jabbed the awful quill between her first and second toes, and a wildness entered into her laughing. He gave each toe-gap its turn, and Son was sweating by the time he stopped.
"Well, I'll have the boys in the lab edit that down to the best six-second clip we can produce, and those Front boys will get a treat when they think they're getting intel. Tickled more than you ever imagined, eh, Miss Phan?" Son could only nod. "We're going to have all kinds of fun in the next few months, you know." She could not even manage a glare.
As Son's breath came back to her, a moment of clarity hit her mind. "If you didn't even know what that interrogator wanted to know, how do you know about all that American military secret stuff?"
"I lied, Miss Phan. And you believed me. I'm the head of Ilium corporation. I told you I wasn't looking for answers so you wouldn't simply tell me what you thought I wanted to know." Now Son glared. "And that's why I can offer you a job right here and right now. You're a dead woman if you venture out of our compound, as I'm sure you know. I can use your talents for the cause of true Communism, and your life with us will of course offer you opportunities to expand your art as well."
"Die."
"If you don't want to join us now, I have all the time in the world now to convince you. Nobody from the Front is going to break in here to rescue you, and at the push of a button we can release your name to every government anti-terrorist agency in the world. They wouldn't let you come back, and they won't come looking to rescue you either.
You see, Miss Phan, here in Ilium, you can have boyfriends and enjoy life and maintain your public artist persona. Out there, you have no life left. It's that simple."
"I'd rather die out there than have to look at you in here."
"You won't think that after a week of tickling. But that can wait. If you join us, you won't see me again unless you decide to cross us. Your talent is valuable enough that I'm willing to leave you alone unless you ask for another round in the chair. The question is, Miss Phan, whether you'll be like those trophy wives, begging for another round of what only I can do for you, or whether you'll be content to stay quiet and avoid me." As he said this last line, he leaned in. "I can't wait to find out."
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?t=80503 Part 2
Here it is, finally--part 3 of Room 101. The story does build with each part, so I recommend gong back and looking at the first two. At any rate, this is the last installment of this one, so please leave feedback!
KI
Room 101
part 3
by
Kid Indy
Phan Cong Son woke up on a cot in a small room. Unthinkingly rubbing her sore arms (they had been suspended over her head for several minutes), she looked around. She was still wearing that awful pink bikini, but her hands and legs were free. She swung them down and put her soles on the cold tile floor. Her cot was the only object in a small room, perhaps two and a half meters by three, and one door, with one small window, was the only way in or out. She looked through the glass to see a narrow hallway and one guard, his back turned at the moment, patrolling it.
Son knelt down below the window and began to think quickly. She couldn't have been down long, and she remembered now the urgency of her situation. General Williams would be on the ground in Guatemala within twenty-four hours, and she needed to get out of this place and start on the hack. This place... Son suddenly realized that she had no idea where the Ilium complex lay; she had been on a helicopter, blindfolded. No matter. She stood up and looked out the window, at the guard who was now turned her way. She knocked on the glass, and a short, young, awkward-looking white man (boy, really) approached.
"I really need to go to the bathroom!"
"The other guard will be back soon, and then we can--"
"Please! I need to go! Just do me one favor. I've been unconscious! I feel like I'm dying!"
"Well, I--"
"Well nothing! Let me go to the bathroom!"
The kid was plainly out of his league. "Well, I guess I can do something... Look, just stand back from the door, okay?" She did. He fumbled his taser out of his belt and, holding it with one hand, swiped a card through an electronic lock with the other.
As he turned the heavy handle, Son pounced, leaping through the air and giving the door a flying shove with her right foot. The metal edge caught the guard squarely in the face, driving him backwards into the hallway's wall and knocking the heavy plastic stun gun out of his hand. Son quickly retrieved it and fired one dart, then another into his torso. He wasn't much bigger than her, so she quickly sat him up, took his jacket off, and used his handcuffs to bind his still-twitching hands behind him. Moving as quickly as she could, she took his pants and boots and hat, making herself an unconvincing but at least clothed imitation of an Ilium guard. After she had locked him in her cell, she used his magnetic card to let herself out of the cell block.
The building in which she was held was a small one, and she found her way to daylight with no problem. She heard a train's whistle, and she knew that it was most likely heading back to Chicago. A gate, which she hoped her card would open, was only a hundred or so meters from the detention building, and she walked in too-big boots (she imagined she must have looked something like the gangly kid) towards freedom. Nobody stopped her, and her card worked, and she was out of the complex. She ran down a moderate bank towards the train, jumped as best as the boots would let her, and stowed away on the back of a CSX heading for Chicago.
Son's apartment was only a few blocks from the train depot, but by the time she got there, her feet ached from the boots. She retrieved her spare key from under the welcome mat five doors down, two floors below (no sense in hiding things like that in front of one's own door) and got into her apartment. She was exhausted and sore, but there was no time for rest at the moment. She knew that she had to get onto the Internet and make contact with the Front. She changed out of that awful pink bikini and the stolen uniform and back into clothes that made her feel like herself. As she put her white cotton socks on, she remembered Xiang's touch and shuddered a little before setting her mind back to her mission.
She pulled her spare computer out of her personal safe. The enemy had her other computer, but she knew better than to store any sensitive information there, so all they had was a relatively expensive piece of civilian hardware. She plugged in her virtuport and began to compose a quick message to the Front's general. She sent that off and retrieved a spare copy of the Front's transmission to her. She made mental notes as she decoded: "Operatives at Green 42.775 ten kilometers from American base. Awaiting signal to proceed with rocket strikes. Need locations of ordnance and officers and communication points." This was going to be a standard op--let the Front dictate the shape of the battlefield, blind the opposition, and paint-by-Internet targets for missiles and snipers. Only this time, Son knew, General Williams would be one of those officers, and the Front would be killing a popular American military/media figure.
As the operation's start time approached, Son stretched and meditated, getting her mind ready to take control of her computer. She sat in a lotus position as she plugged her computer into her Virtuport. Son began her hack of the U.S. Army's communications satellite.
When Son entered virtual space, her body told her she was floating in an undefined, gravity-less darkness, free from all restraints. As she needed them, "screens" and "holograms" would appear in her proximity, and she could manipulate them by sending signals to her imaginary hands. Her body was still humming just a little from the Xiang treatment, though she hated to admit it, but the edge was making her decisions more intuitive and more precise, given the speed at which she worked. She pulled up three-dimensional schematics of the Army's security software and dipped into them with the dexterity of a safe cracker. Each layer of security fell on the first or second try, and before long, she was in control of every computer on the Guatemala-54 base. Turning to the Front's display at her left hand, she transmitted schematics of the base and locations of all the soldiers' transceiver signals to the general's computer. She saw the mission countdown reach T minus thirty seconds, and she prepared to transmit her trademark bikini picture. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
As she executed the command to kill the base's communications gear, a surge of energy seized her midsection, and her knees squeezed together as a blazing sphere of pleasure started between her legs and took her breath away as it swelled, pulling a gasp from between her lips as it enveloped her body. The Front display disappeared, then Base 54's, then the satellite link's, and directly in front of her appeared a sight that drew from her a scream.
"You know where Guatemala?"
Xiang, or at least a computer graphic based on photographs of Xiang, was now the only entity occupying Son's virtual space. She tried to conjure up viruses and system shutdown codes, but nothing appeared to use as a weapon. The Xiang-graphic laughed.
"Do you really think you're back in Chicago, Miss Phan? We're in a virtual space designed by Ilium. We used the intel that we gathered tracking you, plus your own expectations, plus a link to your laptop, to create this lovely virtual reality that you've just experienced."
"Where am I now?"
"In another part. And subvocally, you've given Ilium's combat programmers enough information to lead your precious Front right into a crushing ambush. Your cause is going to die, Miss Phan, and you've provided the lethal injection. I don't think we'll be needing this program any more."
Son sucked air as she woke up, still strapped to Xiang's chair. She still had the pink bikini on, and Xiang was still plugged into the torture computer. Looking around, she silently cursed her carelessness.
"You see, Miss Phan, I intentionally overloaded your senses on that last interrogation. Pleasure is a convention, really, a matter of balance. No human body, given those stimuli with that intensity, could possibly keep a straight line of thinking going. When you thought you fell unconscious, you simply entered the world we created, and since your foot felt so good, you didn't notice the jump. We knew you lived close to a train depot, so we created the train. We knew that you had a spare computer, so we waited for your memory to tell us what it looked like. You thought hours were passing, but in our world, your eight hours took only ten minutes."
Son could barely fight back the tears. She had indeed betrayed the Front, and there was nothing she could do to set things right. Not even thinking about what she might do, she strained against her bonds. Unable to find words for her own state, she hissed through clenched teeth, "I hope they find you and tear you to pieces!"
"Not likely after today, Miss Phan." He reached into his tool compartment at the base of the chair. "After the Americans get done with this counter-strike, they'll be regrouping for at least a year. They won't be able to take on the Americans or Ilium for some time, and they probably won't have the resources to do much but hunt you. But that's hardly the cheerful girl, is it? Why, you've just rid the world of a dangerous terrorist group! You should be just tickled about that!" With that awful pun he produced another feather, this one striped green and black, its spine so stiff that it didn't bend as he waved it at her foot.
"NO! I've already done what you wanted! Leave me alone!"
"You're never alone, Miss Phan. And you need to laugh more." Xiang twirled the feather between his finger and thumb, and when the tickle-drill made contact with the middle of Son's right sole, she didn't stand a chance of resisting; she could tell that he had her nerves turned up. She shrieked and squirmed, throwing her head back, her tears stopping immediately and her giggles filling the air. The feather continued to twirl, drifting down to the edge of her heel, then to her instep, from the ball of her foot across the bases of the toes and down the side. She gasped and released giggles, gasped and released giggles.
Her toes reflexively separated, and the feather was a lethal weapon when it slid between them. She let out a scream of pleasure and laughter every time he managed to slide it in, and after the feather departed, he would twirl it again, dancing the feather's tip across her soles and bringing giggling bubbles out of her liquid body. Then he would find another breach between toes, sawing away at the soft skin, making her scream again. He tickled and tickled and tickled, every sensation magnified by the computer system, every stroke of the quill even more torture to Son's poor foot. Every cell in her right foot was a ticklish explosive, and he was lighting every square centimeter up with his cruel feather.
He released, pulling the feather back. That he had only tickled one foot was not lost on her.
"Now, Miss Phan, let's send our boys on the front a little gift. In just a few hours, the Front will begin moving in on the American base. As I remember, one of your favorite little tricks was to put a bikini picture of yourself in the Americans' computer screens. What do you say to giving a bit of that to the Front?" Son could see a robotic arm extending from the base of the chair, and a camera lens now looked at her.
Son had recovered a bit of martyr's defiance over the course of his speech. "I can hardly help that, you freak. Go ahead and take my picture, American pig."
"American? Oh, Miss Phan. You really are naive. Do you know the story of Ilium?"
Son was curious, despite her hatred for the man and his feather. "Homer, right?"
"Homer indeed. And do you remember how Ilium fell?"
Son did not feel like a history lesson, but at least it wasn't tickling. "Trojan horse, right?"
"Yes! The Trojan horse. You see, this company is like a kind of Trojan horse, if you can imagine America as Troy."
"Then who's Agamemnon?"
"Why Miss Phan, you've done some reading! Kudos! Agamemnon, my beauty, is China. They've sent forth the Ilium corporation to acquire military secrets from America, not by stealth, but by asking them for them. Not surprisingly, the Americans have been willing to ally with anything that looks capitalist."
"What do you mean looks capitalist? Those pigs have been whoring themselves to the capitalists for decades!"
Xiang smiled. "Remember, Miss Phan, you're talking to one of 'those pigs.' I'm certain the Trojans thought that they had the Achaians on the run as well. Chinese Communism is poised to make a decisive strike; all they need is a few more sensitive military secrets. You can help us, Miss Phan."
"You trapped me into destroying a real People's movement! I'm not helping you with anything!"
"But you already have." Son turned red. "No matter, though. Little uprisings like the Agricultural Front are inconsequential historically--only as sacrifices do they signify anything. But where were we? Ah, yes! I thought your Guatemalan comrades would enjoy seeing you laughing at them as they prepare to die at the Americans' hands. That way, if the prisoners of war get to communicate with anyone on the outside, they'll know precisely who sold them out."
"What makes you think you can make my picture laugh?" Xiang held up the green feather. "You bastard." Xiang smiled again.
"Let's see if the little leftist's left sole is tickish, shall we?" A red light began blinking below the camera's lens, and Son knew that she was being recorded for her own humiliation. She attempted one last act of sabotage:
"Death to the bourgeoisie! Long live the commyooo!!!" The feather began to swipe at her sole, and her battle-cry dissolved into a shriek, then giggles as her lungs pulled air back in. Xiang made quick diagonal strokes from the ball of her foot to the center of the sole, from the heel to the center, from the instep across to the outside of the heel. The attacks were quick and precise, not letting up and every one unbearably ticklish. Son's reality was now the enhanced world of cybernetic nerves; her left foot was humanity's most ticklish spot. And Xiang was working that spot with an inhuman and unrelenting feather. As her mind turned loose her dignity and just dissolved into the sensation, he jabbed the awful quill between her first and second toes, and a wildness entered into her laughing. He gave each toe-gap its turn, and Son was sweating by the time he stopped.
"Well, I'll have the boys in the lab edit that down to the best six-second clip we can produce, and those Front boys will get a treat when they think they're getting intel. Tickled more than you ever imagined, eh, Miss Phan?" Son could only nod. "We're going to have all kinds of fun in the next few months, you know." She could not even manage a glare.
As Son's breath came back to her, a moment of clarity hit her mind. "If you didn't even know what that interrogator wanted to know, how do you know about all that American military secret stuff?"
"I lied, Miss Phan. And you believed me. I'm the head of Ilium corporation. I told you I wasn't looking for answers so you wouldn't simply tell me what you thought I wanted to know." Now Son glared. "And that's why I can offer you a job right here and right now. You're a dead woman if you venture out of our compound, as I'm sure you know. I can use your talents for the cause of true Communism, and your life with us will of course offer you opportunities to expand your art as well."
"Die."
"If you don't want to join us now, I have all the time in the world now to convince you. Nobody from the Front is going to break in here to rescue you, and at the push of a button we can release your name to every government anti-terrorist agency in the world. They wouldn't let you come back, and they won't come looking to rescue you either.
You see, Miss Phan, here in Ilium, you can have boyfriends and enjoy life and maintain your public artist persona. Out there, you have no life left. It's that simple."
"I'd rather die out there than have to look at you in here."
"You won't think that after a week of tickling. But that can wait. If you join us, you won't see me again unless you decide to cross us. Your talent is valuable enough that I'm willing to leave you alone unless you ask for another round in the chair. The question is, Miss Phan, whether you'll be like those trophy wives, begging for another round of what only I can do for you, or whether you'll be content to stay quiet and avoid me." As he said this last line, he leaned in. "I can't wait to find out."
