Generation XX Exodus by D.Night

[dnight]

Generation XX Exodus
By D. Night

Part 1 of 2

Lori started awake, blinking in confusion. What was that? As she was trying to kick her brain into gear she heard shouting.

“Lauderdale Sheriff’s Deputies!”

Sitting up, she reached for her glasses as she heard the shout repeated. It was a man. Then another man, his voice just as loud as the first. “Clear kitchen.”

They were in her apartment, Lori realized with a start. She got her glasses on just as her bedroom door flew open and bounced off the wall. The scream escaped before she could control it, then a bright light transfixed her. As she heard the door rebounding off the man’s leg, while he moved through the doorway, she heard him shout before going back to barking at her. “In here. Lori Pena? Sheriff’s Deputy, don’t move.”

“What—what?” Lori stammered before she felt twin spikes of pain lance into her chest as she sat in the bed staring at the light, trying to see past it. Then her body convulsed as every bit of her lit up with fire that just went on and on and on. She heard her teeth clack together, and she fell back against the pillows, shaking violently. A moment later the fire went out, but she kept quivering as she felt someone heavy kneeling on the bed.

She was rolled over, roughly, and fast enough to knock her glasses askew. Her hands were pulled behind her and handcuffed. Then she was pushed back over and the light went in her face again, dazzling her. “Yeah, it’s her,” a man said.

“What—” Lori tried again before she was swiftly yanked out of the bed to her feet. Her glasses slipped off and fell away somewhere, but she was more worried about how her body didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Her legs felt like jelly, and she could barely keep her head upright as it wobbled and swung about on her neck.

“Lori Pena, we’re serving a warrant for your enslavement,” a man behind the one holding her said.

That spiked a jet of icy fear right through her, and her lungs found enough energy to summon sufficient coordination to draw and properly expel a breath to talk with. “What’s going on?”

“Failure to stay current on credit cards,” the same man said, while the first started ripping at her nightclothes. Cloth was tearing.

“Let me go!” Lori said in alarm. “I’m not behind on my credit cards. I don’t even carry a balance.”

“Tell it to the judge. Bank already filed with the court.”

Her nightgown was in tatters as fabric parted, then the man holding her grabbed a handful of it and tore the rest. The ruined garment fluttered down her body, revealing her breasts. All she had left on was her panties, which lasted barely a few seconds before he started ripping at them too.

“I’m not behind on anything. This is unlawful. Let me go! Help, help, hel—” Lori said, her voice getting stronger as she went on, until she was finally screaming. Then she felt the fire again, and almost bit her tongue as her teeth slammed together and her body locked up. She fell over on the bed, bounced, slid off the edge, and landed on the floor gasping for breath through the pain.

Before she could catch it, she felt a knee on her back, then her head was yanked up and she felt something being strapped across her mouth. Before she could get her muscles to cooperate properly, whatever it was had been buckled down tightly. Gagging her.

“Got it,” the man over her said, in a lower voice.

“Same here,” the other said, followed by a sort of heavy thump as something was tossed on the floor. He was also speaking quieter now.

The man on her stood her back up, muscling her off the floor with both hands like she was a doll. She was entirely naked now, her hair swishing against her shoulders and back as he swung her around ahead of him. Then she was stumbling forward as he shoved her into motion.

Ahead in the doorway, just turning to lead the way out, was a blurry figure wearing brown; light brown shirt, darker brown pants. She couldn’t see more than that, not with the lights off and her glasses somewhere in the bedroom she was being frogmarched from.

She was propelled down the little hallway, through her living room, and out into the apartment stairwell. As it began to register she was outside fully naked, she heard the voice of her next-door neighbor. He sounded sleepy.

“Hey, what’s going on.”

“Get back inside sir,” the man ahead of her said in a brusque, borderline hostile tone. Loud again. “Not your concern.”

“But—” Steve said, sounding a little less sleepy and a lot more confused now. She could just make out his face, pointing in her direction.

“You wanna go for a ride too?” the deputy said, and she heard the click-clack of metal, along with a faint jingle of chain.

“No, but—”

“No buts, inside now or you’re coming with us. In a collar, not just handcuffs.”

Steve’s face came into vague focus as she was walked past him, as naked as she’d never been outside a doctor’s office or her home. He was staring at her with wide eyes and a pale expression. Then his eyes flicked down to her body, where they lingered for a second.

As horrifying as this was, her next door neighbor staring at her full nudity was worse. Just for a moment or so, but it sent fresh humiliation coursing through her. Yanked out of bed, stripped nude, handcuffed and gagged was all bad enough. Now a man who’d been sneaking peeks at her a few times a week when they passed each other on the way in or out of their apartments was getting a full view.

She wanted this to stop, but the deputy wouldn’t quit walking, wouldn’t let her go. Her naked form was just being shoved along the walkway like she was so much meat.

“Now sir!” the man holding her said.

Lori lost sight of Steve, but a moment later, as she was moved away from his unit, she heard the door close. She tried to pull away from the deputy holding her, but she was handcuffed, gagged, and he was both taller and stronger than she was. His fingers were like vice grips on her upper arms, and when she tried to dig her bare heels in she winced in pain as her flesh abraded on the concrete.

He didn’t stop, not even at that brief attempt to slow her progress. His hands stayed on her, and his strength kept her moving. Lori stumbled down the stairs, nearly falling four times except for his grip, and then out across the lower hallway to the parking lot where a black SUV with rotating blue lights was parked in the handicapped spot near the stairwell.

It was still night. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but she didn’t feel sleepy. But she wasn’t sure if that was from the shock of what was happening, or what they’d done to her in the bedroom, or just because she’d gotten enough sleep before it all began. All she could tell was it was still gloomy in the parking lot, with the barely adequate street lights doing their usual pathetic job of casting more shadows than illumination out from the handful of poles.

She wasn’t taken to one of the SUV’s doors, and barely had time to wonder why before she was at the back of the vehicle. The deputy ahead of her reached it first, but paused with his hand on the rear latch until the one shoving her along had circled past him and had her at the far side. Then he opened the back hatch, pulling it back swiftly.

Lori blinked as she dimly registered two more people inside. Naked, women from what she could tell. They were struggling, but she only heard a few faint sounds. Muffled screams. Muffled like hers. She started trying to wrench away from the deputies again, but she was pushed forward against the bumper and tipped inside like a piece of furniture.

She landed on her front, compressing both breasts painfully. Her breath drained away from the impact. Someone kneed her shoulder, which hurt. Then her legs were picked up and she was shoved all the way in. Her body bumped against the other two women, forcing them aside like a wedge as she was pushed in between them. She was struggling as hard as they were, picking up impacts that hurt even as she felt her knees and elbows landing on them that probably did the same right back.

Trying to roll over, she felt the man’s hands come down on her back, and the vehicle dipped as he climbed in after her. The door closed, then as he yanked her head back by her hair and began pulling a hood down over her head, she heard one of the front doors open. A moment later, as she lost even her uncorrected fuzzy sight, the engine started

* * * * *

Eric tightened the locking collar on the hood and double checked that it had in fact locked. The brunette was struggling, but the other two had settled back down when he smacked at them with his gloved hands. There wasn’t a lot of room in the rear, and the whole task became harder when Alejandro backed out of the space.

Bracing himself, Eric used his body weight to keep the brunette’s legs stabilized so she couldn’t kick at him, and waited. Alejandro shifted into drive and pulled out, but Eric kept waiting. Two more swift turns and the SUV was at the apartment complex’s front entrance. When Alejandro turned out onto the road and straightened out, Eric got back to work.

An athletic bandage captured her ankles as he wounded it around and around, then a ziptie from his police style belt ensured she couldn’t wiggle out of it. He checked the ziptie carefully, making sure it had engaged and didn’t loosen when he tugged on it. Another bandage went around her wrists, then he retrieved the handcuffs and replaced them with another ziptie.

Then he got off her and forced her legs to fold up behind her so he could use a third tie to secure her ankles to her wrists. Now she could not straighten, stand, kick, or reach. Now she was secure.

“How you doing?” Alejandro asked.

“Triple checking now,” Eric said.

“Good, be sure.”

Eric checked Lori’s bonds once more while using a small pair of nippers to clip the excess off the ties. She wasn’t going anywhere. Since he was back there, he checked the other two as well. Joyce, the blonde, was just as she’d been when they’d picked her up in Shreveport, but Stephanie, another brunette, had managed to somehow tighten her wrist tie a click or two and her fingers felt a little cold. He replaced it with a fresh tie, cut off the old one and the excess, and sat back to look over all three women.

They were all hooded securely, hogtied, on their bellies, and even as they struggled and tried to cry out, he couldn’t hear very much. Not even this close. “Okay, we’re good,” he said, looking at the front.

“Alright, hang on a sec,” Alejandro said. Eric waited, while the SUV pulled over to the side of the road. “Wait,” the driver said again.

Eric could see the headlights from behind them and did as Alejandro instructed. The vehicle went past them without stopping, and he heard the locks disengage. Opening the rear hatch just enough to squeeze out, he did so and closed it back, heard it lock and made sure it didn’t open when he pulled on the latch. Then he went forward to the passenger side and waited for the locks to click off long enough for him to open that door.

As they thunk-kachunked again, relocking the vehicle, Eric slid into the seat and closed the door. “Okay.”

“Great,” Alejandro said, checking his mirror, then looking over his shoulder, before pulling out into the empty lane and getting the vehicle back underway.

Neither man said anything else. Eric tucked his black tac-style gloves into a compartment on the police belt, and lifted a bottle of water from the cupholder on his side for a long drink. But after replacing the cap, he just continued to ride in calm silence. Alejandro followed the dash screen and it’s automatically updating map to the interstate, and rolled up the ramp to I-20 to head east.

Less than half an hour later they were over the border from Mississippi into Alabama. Alejandro left the interstate for US-80, and pulled off on a small two-lane country road two minutes later. It curved after half a mile, and they were in the middle of nowhere for the moment, with dawn still an hour away. The driver hit buttons on his door that unlocked the vehicle and rolled both front windows down, and took something out of his shirt pocket. “Make it fast.”

“Got it,” Eric said, getting out with the window scraper from his pocket already in hand. He closed the door and used the scraper to peel up the corner of the Lauderdale Sheriff’s Department logo, then continued using it to help the magnetic sticker detach from the door as he pulled on it. He got it off in one piece and dropped it inside the car. Then he did the same on the rear passenger door for the other logo’s other half.

Alejandro was already waiting when Eric opened the passenger door and dumped the second logo half before stepping up on the running board so he could comfortably reach the roof. He flipped the light bar’s electro-magnets off and accepted the whole bar when Alejandro did the same on the other end and helped lift and ease it over to him.

With it in hand, Eric stepped down and dumped the bar into the back seat atop the logos. Then he grabbed the other license plate before getting out. At the back, Alejandro had already used the power screwdriver to spin the plate’s screws out. He caught them but let the plate fall to the gravel on the shoulder. Eric held the new plate in place until Alejandro had the screws back in the holes and was tightening them down.

He took the old plate with him back up front and set it in the back seat, then returned to the rear of the SUV. While Alejandro started a circle of the vehicle, studying it and the ground around it carefully, Eric opened the rear door to check on the women.

All three were still hogtied, still hooded. They moved some when they heard the door, but the gags continued to stifle every attempt they made to communicate. Anyway, there was no one out here to hear them. Eric checked their bonds, then reached for the cargo cover he and his partner had rigged up.

It was just a roller affixed to the rear of the back seat, with the free edge of the cloth tied to a wooden rod. When he pulled it out, the fabric stretched out and covered the cargo compartment, and the hogtied women, completely. He slotted the rod into the brackets they’d added next to the rear door, and put in the cotter pins to ensure it stayed. Magnets on both edges of the cloth caught against others super-glued to the sides of the SUV, holding it from gaping or flapping loose.

Eric closed up and went to the back seat, where he shook out a black blanket and tossed it over all the gear and logo trash, then got in the front passenger seat again. A few moments later Alejandro finished his circle inspection and joined him, sliding in behind the wheel.

The locks reengaged, the windows rolled back up, and Alejandro performed a five point turn to back and fill the SUV across the quiet empty lanes so he could direct the vehicle back to US-80.

When they were on the road headed east again, Eric stripped off his police belt and got out of the vest with the patches and badge indicating he was Mississippi Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Deputy. It all went into a duffle bag waiting on the floorboard next to his feet. Alejandro did the same, shrugging carefully out of the vest and the belt as he drove and handed it all over to join Eric’s items in the bag.

Eric clicked on a mini-flash and checked Alejandro’s shirt and pants, then his own. “Good,” Alejandro said after glancing over to eyeball Eric’s clothes when the light swung to them. His seat belt clicked into place as he drew it down across himself.

Zipping the duffle up, Eric put it back on the floor and took another sip of water, then put his seat belt on and settled back for the ride. They were just two guys wearing brown cargo pants and light brown buttoned shirts in an unmarked SUV.

* * * * *

Lori was being pulled out of the SUV when she woke up again. The vehicle’s rough carpet hurt against her bare skin as she was slid across it. The trip was a blur. At first she’d tried to calm herself, reassured by how they would have reached the office or wherever they were taking her, and run her ID. After a records check, they would have discovered they’d made a mistake.

Sure she’d been hauled out naked, and scared shitless, but she did have no balance on her credit cards. So they’d process her, whatever it was they did, and then she’d be free. Revenge or compensation could come after they’d set her loose. At this point, Lori almost didn’t even care if she had to call a coworker or even her dad to bring her clothes while she huddled naked in a bathroom, as long as they let her go.

But as the hogtied ride had stretched well past what had to be an hour, she began to worry. The restraints didn’t hurt, but that wasn’t the same as saying they were comfortable. And the folded up position was making her knees and shoulders start to ache a little as the vehicle kept rolling and she stayed tied up. Her mouth was dry. She wanted to stretch out and couldn’t.

She had no idea what was ‘normal’ when someone was taken into custody for enslavement. She’d always structured her life to be certain she couldn’t fall afoul of such issues.

Military, not college since she’d been born to parents who had little means. In the service, the worst she needed to endure was being screamed at and having little control over when or where she slept, ate, and worked. But she kept her clothes, and didn’t have to fuck anyone. After being trained as a radar operator by the Air Force, it wasn’t difficult to pay for and pass the additional training she needed to be a qualified air traffic controller. The FAA was happy to take her and put her in an airport.

She owned her car, her apartment lease had no enslavement clauses. Neither did her credit cards unless she was more than ten thousand dollars behind in her payments. She had certified letters from a lawyer she’d paid to painstakingly explain all the legal documents to her in plain English, confirming she was at no risk of a collar.

Yet here she was, naked and hogtied in the back of a vehicle with a hood she couldn’t shake off her head. With two other women. She knew they were women because whatever her blurry nearsighted eyes had or hadn’t told her, she’d bumped and rubbed against them enough by now to know they were women. Soft bodies, rounded hips and breasts, and they were as bound and gagged as she was.

They sounded scared. Whatever was going on, Lori was scared too.

Yet nothing else had happened. The vehicle stopped once, and she heard some noises as the men puttered around with it for a while. They checked her, but just to make sure she was still bound. Then it stopped again, and hands checked her restraints and her once more. As bad as this was, worse didn’t happen; no one touched her. Not in the ways she was most scared of anyway.

As the ride kept going, and she began to accept that she couldn’t wiggle or break out of the restraints, she fell asleep from sheer boredom. She woke up being checked yet again, but went back to sleep as the trip continued. And now she was being hauled out, apparently at some sort of stopping point.

“On your feet,” a man said. She didn’t know if it was one of the same pair who’d done this to her. The trip was like a nightmare, as blurry as her vision, and just as dark thanks to the hood. It seemed so long ago since she’d been shouted at in her bedroom. Her arms and legs ached from the restraints. Then she felt the ziptie on her ankles loosen with an audible snap, and whatever they’d wrapped around them fell away.

He pulled on her and she swayed as she stood up, but her legs were weak. She stumbled, then would have fallen if not for his hands on her arms. Her skin felt hot as she struggled to get her feet beneath her. She heard him swear softly, but he stood her back up and she felt his breath rippling the fabric of the hood.

“Walk,” the voice said in her ear. “If I have to carry you, it’ll come with bruises. Understand?”

Lori nodded and tried to walk when he moved her again. Her legs didn’t really want to cooperate very well, but he seemed satisfied with her efforts. She felt the rough concrete turn into something smoother, hard but without the ridges and texture that hurt her feet. Now they were mostly just cold. The heat on her skin was gone as well, then she heard a door and she was in air conditioning. She felt her skin prickle with the abrupt change in temperature, and blushed as her nipples hardened some in the cold.

She was thrust down on the floor, and she heard the voice again.

“Don’t move. If you move, you’ll get about a step before I light you up with this,” he said. Then she heard an electric crackle, very close to her ear. She flinched violently away from it, and bumped into a woman next to her. “Understand?” the voice said.

Lori nodded as the woman she’d brushed against adjusted her bodyweight to push Lori away from her. Lori started to shift to sit, then remembered she was naked. She didn’t want to sit cross-legged and expose even more of herself, so she pulled her legs together and knelt there.

After half a minute or so she heard footsteps, then someone landed on the floor next to her.

“Don’t move,” a different man said. She heard the scary crackling noise again. “You want some of this, go ahead and move, got me?”

Lori felt whoever was next to her brush against her arm, and a muffled word that might have been ‘yes’ sounded. Then the touch on her arm was gone, and she heard footsteps retreating away. A minute later they came back. More than one, then she heard the woman on her left trying to say something past the gag. Then she felt fingers at her neck, and started to scream before she realized they were fiddling with the collar on the hood.

When it came off, she blinked. Everything was bright, and it wasn’t just the hood. She couldn’t tell where they were, even after her eyes stopped watering. Some sort of room, high windows near the ceiling with sunlight streaming in. What she could tell of it seemed kind of industrial, rough and rugged. Warehouse maybe, but it was all so fuzzy. She couldn’t see crap without her glasses.

There were four men in view. Two of them wore brown clothes, another wore black, and the fourth had on a suit that was blue. Their faces were just muddled masses of skin, three of them Caucasian, the fourth either tanned or Hispanic. When she looked to either side of her, she saw she was on her knees between two women. One was brunette, the other blonde, and they looked as scared as she felt. They were doing the same thing she was; peering around wide eyed.

The man in black worked his way down the line of women, closing collars around their necks. The click sounded more ominous than an air raid siren she’d heard once at a forward base overseas, knowing a drone attack was hurtling in under the control of people who were pissed America was there blowing them and their country up.

That sound had meant she might be injured or killed. This sound meant she wasn’t a person anymore.

“Up,” the same man said, when he’d finished with the last collar and grabbed the blonde, lifting her. She stumbled back to her feet as he pulled, then followed him several steps forward. There, she was held in place, turned a few times, while the man in the suit looked at her. Up and down. Then the blonde was passed to one of the men wearing brown and she was walked through a set of double doors.

Lori was hauled to her feet and pulled over to the suit, who studied her. Up close she smelled coffee when he stood there looking at her. He had black hair and eyes, and looked normal to her. Not mean, not excited, not rugged or weathered or rural, nor elite or blue-blooded. Just a guy in a suit who cleaned up nice and apparently drank a lot of coffee if his breath was gushing it out at her.

His eyes clung to her, face and body both. Lori realized she was being evaluated, and wanted to do something. Say something. But she didn’t know who had the electric stunner she’d heard, and anyway there were four of them. Even if she weren’t tied and gagged, she couldn’t overpower four people by herself.

The suit finally gave a slight nod, and she was handed over to the other man in brown, who walked her through the doors. The air wasn’t as cool in here, and was a little more stale. They passed the first man in brown, coming back without the blonde. After turning a corner, Lori saw the blonde. She was in a holding cell, floor to ceiling bars set in the concrete and disappearing up into the ceiling.

A fifth man was standing next to the open door to the cell, and he took Lori’s arm as the man walking her in let her go.

“Inside,” the new man said. “Bench, floor, I don’t care. Just shut up and sit.”

Lori was shoved, not hard but definitely pushed, into the cell. She stood for a moment, still wary of her balance after the long hogtied ride, then went over to the bench the blonde was on and sat down near her. The blonde glanced at her, then looked back down at the floor. She seemed terrified.

Which was fair, because so was Lori. What on Earth was going on? None of the men had badges, guns, nothing. They had that stunner, but nothing that seemed official. This cell, this wherever they were, it didn’t seem official either. There were no signs on the wall, here or in the hallway. Even if Lori could read them, which she couldn’t, they still weren’t there. Every military facility she’d ever been in sprouted signs like trees did leaves.

If this was a government building she’d sign herself into slavery willingly, because no government building would look this dumpy and haphazard. No official government building anyway. Instead, she had a sinking feeling that enslavement was about to happen with or without her cooperation.

Everyone heard the stories. Possession wasn’t nine-tenths of the law when it came to collars. Collars were possession. Everything the Slavery reforms had done made it impossible to get out of a collar once it went on. If she’d been kidnapped, a good old fashioned kidnapping, there might be hope. But she’d heard the stories. And they weren’t good.

Not if a collar was involved.

The brunette joined them, this time in the grip of the man wearing black. After she was thrust into the cell, the man at the door closed it and rattled it briefly to ensure it was locked. Then he walked away, turning the hallway corner and leaving the three naked women locked inside to wait. They stared at each other, eyes wide, still gagged with their wrists bound behind them, unable to do a single thing about what was happening to them.

* * * * *

“Thirty-five is a fucking joke,” Alejandro said, shaking his head.

“I got expenses,” Everett said, spreading his hands and shrugging.

“You’re gonna get one fifty for the three of them, easy. And they come with signed papers so they’re ready to Register.”

“Everyone above me wants a taste for their trouble. This doesn’t work if there’s no room for them to take theirs when these pieces come along to them.”

“We’re the ones who did the heavy lifting.”

“And me and the folks I know are the ones paying for it, but the connections that keep it running don’t come cheap.”

“Even so, no way we’re letting them go for thirty five.”

“The blonde is on the heavy side.”

“So you melt her down for a few weeks. Don’t even cost you all that much to hang on to her if you’re not feeding her. And one of the brunettes has really big tits, which more than covers the blonde’s extra weight and you know it.”

“I can’t hold on to any of them and you know that too,” Everett said. “This whole thing starts falling apart if they’re still on-site when anyone comes looking.”

“No one’s gonna come looking. Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Same routine; there’s not here, no one here’s looking for them.”

“Sure, today, it’s local. But give it a day or two and who knows what’ll happen.”

“Yeah, right,” Eric said, a touch sourly. But he subsided when Alejandro glanced at him. He shrugged, and Alejandro returned his attention to Everett. Who spoke before Alejandro could.

“Third party rule works in my favor, as long as I move them to that third party,” Everett said. “Once they’re all the way registered, their testimony is invalid because they’re not people anymore. But that doesn’t happen if they’re still here, and if I ship that fat one now she’s worth less than the other two.”

“So you tell the buyer they’ll get a couple of weeks of light feed on that one. Thirty-five is, what, not even twelve each? Forget it. Ninety.”

“Now who’s joking?” Everett said, but Alejandro just gazed at him steadily. “Alright, forty.”

“Eighty.”

“Forty-five.”

“You wanna be cute,” Alejandro said, “then I’ll drop to seventy-five.”

“Now don’t be like that,” Everett said, smiling suddenly. “Remember, my contacts want to turn a profit too. Forty-eight”

“Which they’ll get when they train them. Seventy-two.”

“I ain’t giving you seventy-two for three ungraded girls in their thirties.”

“One of them’s twenty-eight. The old one’s only thirty-four. You saw their IDs. There’s a good solid fifteen years in each of them. At least.”

Everett shrugged. “Okay, fifty.”

“Sixty, or we load ’em back up and hit the road to Savannah.”

“Fifty-five.”

“No, we split two ways,” Alejandro said, waving at Eric. “Fifty-six but you say anything other than deal before you start counting cash out and they’re coming with us.”

Everett smiled. “Alright, fifty-six.”

Alejandro returned the smile. “Deal.”

Everett shot his cuff back and held his hand out. Alejandro shook it, and they both let each other bask in their smiles.

“Follow me boys,” Everett said as he released the man’s hand.

Everett led them inside, and past the receiving pens, past the storage pens, and into the vacant auction room. The blocks were vacant since the house was closed until the weekend’s regular consignment auction. A bar lined one long side of it, shelves of bottles and beer taps decorating it and the wall. A bored looking man was behind it, leaning on the wooden surface while he fiddled with his phone.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Everett said, waving at the stools. “Luke, whatever they want. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Coffee?” the man behind the bar asked, straightening and putting his phone down as Alejandro took one of the stools. “Shots? Mix something up for you?”

“No, soda. Something without caffeine,” Alejandro said as he sat.

“Nothing for me,” Eric said.

“Sure,” Luke said, taking a glass from a stack waiting upside down on a towel next to the taps. Everett left him filling it as he went behind the bar at the end and through the administration door. The air conditioning was on full blast in here, the way he liked it.

After locking the door to his office, he opened up the safe and took out six stacks of wrapped hundred dollar bills. Four he split into pairs and laid side by side. A fifth stack he broke open before punching at the counting machine for a moment, then dropped the loose bills in and let it run. Money rifled through, piling in the output tray and paused when the counter read fifty.

Everett scooped that up and set it atop one of the wrapped stacks, then the other half on the second stack. Tearing off the wrapper on the last stack, he dropped those into the machine and set it to thirty. He ran that twice, adding each count to the separate stacks, then put the leftover cash back in the safe and took the counted amounts back to the bar.

“Here you go, as agreed boys,” Everett said, setting the money down.

Alejandro set his glass down and took one of the stacks, thumbing through the bills carefully. Everett waited while Eric did the same, then saw them both relax. “Pleasure,” Alejandro said, getting off the stool.

“Likewise. Let me know the next time you’re coming through with stock on your hands.”

“No sweat,” Alejandro said. Eric nodded to him, and they both headed for the door they’d come in by. Without prompting, Luke followed them. Everett took out his phone.

“Hey Marilyn, Everett. Got three if you’re interested. Yeah? Okay.”

* * * * *

Special Agent Katherine Pierce arrived at the weekly update meeting first, and claimed her favorite chair. She liked it, middle of the building side, because she had a nice view across the table. And out the windows at the park beyond. Twenty-three floors down but the trees could be seen and she found them soothing.

She opened her portfolio and spread out the paperwork from her active files, then brought her tablet to life, already pointing at the shared space the SRC unit used for electronic data. The other agents arrived in ones and twos, all men except for Jill Wilson, who had transferred into the unit just before Katherine came in as a trainee.

“Hey Kathy,” Knox said, before shaking his head with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Sorry, Katherine, my bad. How are you?”

“I’m good Agent Knox, how are you?” Katherine returned as he sat down, still smiling that non-smile at her.

“I’m well, thanks. Still not interested in grabbing a drink with me?”

“No, sorry. I just don’t—”

“—date coworkers,” Knox finished with a small sigh, shaking his head. “Pity, I know a great steakhouse. We could have a nice night out, you know, away from the office.”

Katherine just shrugged at him, offering a polite smile, and he shrugged back and looked at Franklin as he arrived and sat next to Knox. Before his eyes drifted away though, Knox let them drop down across her chest in the shirt and jacket. But he didn’t say anything, and didn’t linger more than a moment. Letting it go, Katherine went back to sipping her coffee and offering polite nods to new arrivals as they filtered in.

She didn’t dress up, she dressed professional. But she was fit and in shape, with a nice shape and brunette hair that even pulled back in a braid or wound into a tight bun still drew male eyes to her. She never wore low cut blouses, and never, never, appeared in the office in a skirt. Drawing attention was far too dangerous these days. Despite it, she was still a woman, and men looked. When that happened, problems could start.

While they talked and settled into chairs, she sat sipping at her coffee and studying the notes she’d made to field Hershey’s likely questions. Or trying to. The conversation the other agents were having kept pulling her attention, pushing her thoughts away from her cases.

The hot topic of the last couple of days was an article in The Atlantic that had been picked up by the Times – New York and Los Angeles both– and expanded on as those papers dug into the piece as well. The usual slew of online repost sites who’d add a few sentences and just copy most of the entire piece before linking the rest were fanning the publicity. Now after almost a week of gathering momentum it was hitting TV news as well.

“I don’t know,” Franklin said, “it seems like something probably should be done.”

Cook set his coffee down, looking mildly troubled as he glanced at the other man. “What can they do? Close the borders?”

“That’ll never happen,” Phillips said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, no way. That’s not America.”

Katherine held her tongue. She knew the article, and saw what was happening in the country that’d prompted it in the first place. America was a concept that was starting to die, being replaced by a new order that was anything but. It was a reversion to an older order, one before trivialities like rights and justice had made it so hard for some to organize things the way they wanted.

The article was titled Generation XX, all about the mass exodus of middle class women from America over the past decade. Rich and poor women were leaving too, more the former than the latter, but the bulk of those leaving the country in droves were middle class. More than half of that population in some states and locales. Some states had lost a lot more than half of their middle class women.

New York City alone had seen more than a million disappear from the census in the last decade, and the city was now over seventy percent male. Even if you added back in the enslaved population of women that only brought it back down to about sixty-five percent.

Congress had been rumbling about the change in the country’s demographics for a while, but the growing media thread started by The Atlantic had kicked some Senators and Representatives into gear to offer statements and use it for attention grabbing antics. Reporters had also been tracking down think tank wonks, university professors, slaving industry professionals, and economists from around the country to get their thoughts and add them to the growing gestalt of public debate.

The chaos in the online back-and-forth of debate didn’t even bear mentioning unless one was armed with a chainsaw and a bucket of bleach, to wade through all the wild notions and cleanse one’s self of the ickier ones being brought up.

“Well sooner or later they ought to do something,” Knox said.

“Like what, remove the implants?” Cook said.

Phillips rolled his eyes. “Who wants to fuck a pregnant slave?”

“At least it would boost birth rates.”

“What does that do for any of us now though?” Knox said, complained really.

“Just reduce emigration, make it harder to leave,” Franklin said, sounding like he thought it was a good idea.

“That.” Knox said, nodding. “That’s where they need to start.”

“Why?” Ramos asked. “This ain’t a police state.”

Yet Katherine thought, but she kept her mouth shut.

Ramos was still talking. “Someone wants to move, then they move. That’s how it’s always worked.”

“But there’s a limit, there’s just gotta be. Have you seen the dating scene?” Knox said before shaking his head at the older man. Ramos was a solid decade older than Knox. “No, of course you haven’t.”

“Hey fuck you, I date.”

“Sure you do,” Knox said.

“Yeah,:” Franklin said with a laugh. “Swiping your card at a Hourly Truck Fuck parked down on West Broadway and Hudson doesn’t count as dating.”

“Fuck you both,” Ramos said, glaring at them. “A man’s got needs.”

“All I’m saying is my options are pretty much either some socialite who won’t give me the time of day, much less even come out from behind the velvet rope to let me chat her up. Or some rube skank from the Bronx who’s probably going to end up in a collar before I can get to the third date with her,” Knox said, his tone grumpy.

Katherine held her tongue again. Fewer and fewer women in the country wanted to trust a man enough to date, or marry. The rational response increasingly was for the women who had the choice to flee. Congress and the States, the men, had left them little option but to get out before more laws changed.

Which was exactly the notion the article’s original writer, and now a growing swell of the hangers-on piling into the debate, were starting to solidify behind. Even some Congressmen, men not persons, were issuing statements saying as much. That something should be done about the women who were emigrating. Not something about why, just that the women could in the first place.

Increasingly large numbers of women trying to live their lives were ending up collared. Even traditional methods of staying or moving into the middle class, like attending college, were nothing but big gotcha games thanks to the slavery laws around loans. Especially college loans. Which funnily enough never seemed to focus on men, just women.

As more and more women recognized the dangers and how the changes were beginning to accelerate, those who had means were using their modest resources and looking for countries that would take them. If they could make it through college without ending up on their knees, or survive a collar with their sanity intact and then go back to work after it to bank some cash, they had some options that might open immigration doors.

The rich who stayed were retreating to closed estates. Behind trusts and foundations, layers of lawyers and bodyguards, setting up oversight to protect themselves from the collar. Even as they bought and sold less fortunate individuals who didn’t have those advantages and were collared and turned into living commodities. People pawns literally manipulated and discarded at the whim of someone wealthy.

Of course, some wealthy families had already begun to turn their female relatives into slaves. Maybe not common slaves, who mingled with the unwashed masses, but slaves regardless. Sure the trophy wife or blue-blood arranged match mate didn’t have to serve time in a corner brothel, but she was still trotting around naked behind her rich former husband. So were any of her daughters, her sisters, her mother, whoever else carrying that wealthy name who hadn’t seen it coming and hopped a flight to a non-slavery country.

And as for the lower classes, they lived in fear. They didn’t have the money to flee or to protect themselves. And the laws were stacked against them. Few people who lived on the bottom half of society didn’t know just one or two others who’d been naked on their knees for years. Most knew many.

“What would you know about dating then?” Phillips asked Knox. “If you can’t get any?”

“That’s my point, it’s impossible these days,” Knox said.

“Yeah,” Franklin put in. “When there’s no one to woo, might as well just get a membership at a brothel and jump in on the volume discounts and frequent fucker plans.”

“While saving up for a visit to the auction house.” Knox said with a laugh.

“I did that,” Cook said. “Best investment I’ve made.”

“How’d it go?” Ramos asked, looking interested.

“After Andrea left, I decided I could either spend money trying to date, or stay home saving my pennies,” Cook said with a shrug. “Skipped a new car even, drove government wheels for eighteen months, ate a lot of noodles, drank less beer. But then I had enough banked to become a regular in front of the blocks.”

“Yeah, but that’s expensive,” Phillips said.

“So’s shelling out for thirty or sixty minutes of fun at a time, even only two or three times a week.”

Ramos didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Yeah but still, you’re paying up front.”

“To save on the back end.”

“Long payback isn’t it?”

“Not if you look for bargains.”

Phillips leaned in, sounding interested. “How?”

Cook shrugged again. “Not every girl who goes up is eager, or even knows how sometimes, to push her value so only some rich asshole can afford to snap her up. I landed Susan for less than twenty grand. She’s only mid-thirties, but that’s fine. I straightened her out, and all the parts still work the same you know.”

“Plus she does dinner, the dishes, the laundry—” Franklin began.

“And shuts up during the ballgame,” Cook said with a grin. “Andrea never let me watch anything in peace.”

Katherine glanced at Jill, who was keeping her face as blank as Katherine’s as several of the men laughed. Neither of them were eager to join in the conversation. Especially since they were unlikely to share the views of the men. Or, rather, the men were unlikely to share theirs.

At first, the slavery laws had sold as a way to turn prisoners into assets, into a benefit to rather than a drag on society. But more than ninety-five percent of all criminals were men. In some states it was closer to ninety-eight percent. Throughout human history, men were generally far less well behaved than women. And these days they were writing a new chapter in it.

Sure slaves had to be naked, but protective clothing for job purposes was allowed so really it was just a punishment for those evil criminals to be humiliated some when they weren’t actually working. Americans have never been shy about deciding criminals deserve to be punished.

Congress and the States, and the men in them, had shown their true colors once they managed to empty out prisons into farms and mines that struggled to find employees willing to work for long hard hours at next to no wage. Collared men took over those tasks, and society started adjusting to this ‘modern’ version of slavery.

Debt had been added as an enslavable offense. Suddenly there were legal avenues to collar not just men, but women.

And collar women they did.

When legislatures removed collars from any form of court review to “streamline” dockets and keep the justice system from being bogged down by “nuisance suits” seeking to review and overturn unjust enslavements, that just made the naked lust of their larger plan readily apparent. Every other kind of legal transaction in the country – exchange of goods and services, contracts, fraud, crimes, anything – could be contested in court. Criminally or civilly. Reviewed, monitored, managed, overturned if found at fault.

It was the foundation of every legal system in the world. The line between barbarism and civilized society.

Except in America. Because collars were the exception.

Once it was on, the slave had no standing to object in court. Neither did anyone else. No lawyer regardless of skill or connections could make a case objecting to a collar, or calling for its revocation, since any such motion or suit was automatically dismissed.

A transaction between two free parties over the sale of a collar, for example, could be contested and fought out in court to decide who owed whom how much for the transfer of a collared person. But not the fact that the person had been enslaved.

No, that person stayed under no matter how they’d come to the collar. Which was insane, but it had passed. And courts all the way up to the very top had affirmed it. A collar couldn’t be revoked. But they hadn’t stopped there.

Somehow it wasn’t illegal, or there were no regulations prohibiting, loan officers and other issuers of debt from calling a loan in on the finest of fine print. For auction house wranglers to manipulate paperwork to “accidently” process someone as a sale rather than just a grading. Or for them or really anyone else to outright lie to maneuver someone into a collar.

Funnily enough, men carrying a debt weren’t regularly required to update their slave grades, to “make sure” their value “hadn’t significantly changed.” Yet women on a loan or other contract involving indenture as a possible remedy or payment needed to present themselves for slave grading every few years.

It was surely an accident of the laws that a collar was required for a slave grading. A collar that was just as real as any “actual” collar, even if grading was supposed to be a temporary thing. Needlessly humiliating and cruel, but necessary since a slave had value, and grading offered the opportunity to assess that value.

That it gave any visitor the right to fondle and grope whoever was on the block or post being graded, no matter how patently obvious it was they were never going to be bidding, was just a coincidence. That it required any person, any woman, undergoing that grading to submit collared and cuffed to that intimate handling, as hands and eyes roamed and probed everywhere across and in her body for hours, was just a necessary byproduct of grading.

Once that collar was on, an ever increasing range of shenanigans could be sprung on the helpless woman who could be physically and forcibly compelled to comply. No matter how humiliating or degrading the demands might be. Or how long that collar might be on.

Years in some cases. All because she’d been required to check herself in for a day to be graded.

Marriage was becoming much rarer, but divorce was no longer a problem for men who did secure a wife. Husbands who wanted out just waited for the wife to be required to report for grading for the mortgage or credit cards or the car loan, then gave the auction house new instructions. Suddenly he kept everything and collected a nice chunk of change when she was sold. She went quietly, one way or another thanks to forced compliance.

Families were even getting into the act. Even though by law slavery didn’t apply to those under eighteen, and any woman being graded – or enslaved – had to be eighteen. And thus an adult. Somehow, general practice allowed her relatives, who had no legal authority over her, to take advantage of her collared lack of legal standing to decide she was being sold so Mom and Dad or another relative could collect on the sale.

So when their daughter graduated and applied for a college or some other loan and needed to be graded, the family could just swoop in. Suddenly what would have been a single humiliating day, or two if the auction house was particularly busy, became years naked on her knees. All without anyone going to jail, and with her or anyone else completely unable to do a thing to change it short of writing a bigger check than whoever had bought her had.

If a woman made it to college with loans, she could be yanked out at any time if a loan officer wanted to call her in. Worse, many women in “needed” job categories, like medical or teaching, were “gotcha grabbed” by horny administrators and others who didn’t want to see the newly trained young professional move on with her career.

By maneuvering her into a collar, with the backing of the local community that wanted their small town hospitals and schools to have a trained person staffing a role there, she could be compelled to service that need. That the enslaved woman had to service other needs as well was surely just a coincidental bonus. Doctor by day, back office whore by night, it was win-win for everyone except the woman who’d just wanted an education.

Generation XX mentioned anecdotes like these as examples of an increasingly male society making rational decisions about the lack of available women to match up with men wanting one. The author, and many of those weighing in, found these kinds of stories logical extensions of what America should do with its remaining women. Particularly if those women kept deciding to stop “participating in American culture.”

Katherine had almost thrown her phone across the room when she’d gotten to that line in the article. Instead she’d just gone back to her work. Which was getting harder. She’d joined the Bureau hoping the FBI would show her things she didn’t know about the laws, things that would let her be part of helping roll back the worst of the abuses. She was finding the reality was much different.

She and Jill were saved from needing to use any prepared deflections against questions coming their way about the subject of slavery and the article when one of the Deputy Assistant Directors of Slavery Related Crime arrived, looking polished and poised as always.

“Good morning agents,” Hershey said as he took the chair at the head of the table. Greetings rumbled back while he opened his portfolio and then a file folder. He glanced at the papers, then looked up. “Where are we with that auction house in Philly?”

Katherine listened while she watched the tree branches waving gently outside in the park until she heard Hershey ask about Richmond Shipping. “That’s mine sir. The local office is still running down the company’s board, but so far they’re coming up clean. Staff already checked out.”

“No connection to the missing collars?” Hershey said. “Nothing?”

“No sir, not that they can spot. I’m looking through financials, and if they’re getting kickbacks I can’t spot it. Neither can Forensic Accounting, but I’ll check back with them after they’ve had some more time to dig.”

“Okay, but don’t stop until you’ve got something,” Hershey said, nodding.

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”

No, not good, Katherine thought. The same slave shipping company operating out of Richmond Virginia had seen three separate shipments, each of more than fifteen newly collared slaves, turn up missing in the last two months. Someone was on the take.

You wouldn’t think slaves could just be lost, considering that they – used to be – people. And people could be identified. Fingerprints, photographs, DNA. Yet there was a brisk black market slave trade, designed solely to avoid taxes. Both official, and the fees auction houses, mostly owned by large corporations, tacked onto sales.

Since all three trucks had been headed out of state, that made it FBI’s problem once the right people with the right ears to talk to began complaining. Which led to the people attached to those ears passing along the complaints to still more ears. And so on until the ears were on Senators and Representatives who could make ears belonging to people in the Department of Justice listen.

Since the investigation was turning up no leads in the company, that meant whatever was going on was hidden. Katherine might be barely out of her trainee period, but she knew that if you looked for something that should be there, but wasn’t, that meant someone was hiding it.

Except she knew Joe “Don’t” Hershey did not want to hear it, because that meant turning over stones that someone had gone to lengths to bury. Might upset someone else with the ear of a person who had the word “director” in their title, but not the word “deputy” or “assistant” tacked onto it.

Deputy Assistant Director Hershey was eager to get both of those words out of his title. He was nothing but a political animal.

Joe Don’t was what agents whispered behind his back, because Don’t don’t want to hear it. If it would ruin the nice, easily digested narrative he wanted to be able to lay out and make people who could decide his fate happy, he don’t want to hear it. He don’t want to read it, he don’t want you to bring it up. Just don’t.

“What about the Miami escort thing?” Hershey asked.

“Also mine sir,” Katherine said. “The surveillance there finally caught one of the trainers live and in color. That’s who was leaving security disabled so the after-hours outcalls could happen.”

“About time.” Hershey grumbled. “So they’re moving to arrest then?”

“They need to finesse the warrants a little. I have one in to the court here to have his bank release some additional records to me. When I can see where he’s taking payments from, and where he’s sending them, I’ll fire it off to the local agents and they’ll clean up their paperwork and get the arrest warrants signed.”

“Stay on it. There’s some heavy hitters breathing on us over this one, so don’t let administrative issues screw it up.”

“Yes sir.”

The problem wasn’t that slaves were being farmed out for after-hours sex work. It was just that the trainer was doing it off the books, without his company benefitting. He was taking payments to supply slaves for a night at a time to grey-market pimps, and cutting his corporate employer out of the loop.

When the slaves were deprived of sleep, and their mental states disrupted by threats and warnings and harsh sexual overwork, the company lost money. Customers complained slaves were late, more mistake prone, inattentive, which looked bad and made them customers of some other house that could supply their slave needs without issues.

Can’t stop the profit. The company had found an ear to yell in.

Hershey moved on to other cases. Finally he shuffled a new folder to the top and cleared his throat.

“Something new, this one’s got AD McCoy taking heat from a lot of people,” he began. That was always a bad sign, when he mentioned the man in the chair he wanted to sit in next. Hershey was one of four SRC unit deputy assistant directors, which divided the caseload of slave related crime across the country between them. McCoy oversaw them, and Hershey wanted the slot.

“An air traffic controller in Mississippi turned up missing, and after the locals got done fumbling around they finally remembered to call us in,” Hershey said, not even glancing at the file. Another bad sign, if he’d studied it enough to quote it.

“They waited even though she was Federal sir?” Knox asked. He was another political animal, always eager to score points.

“Even so. I already had a word with the city and county departments down there, reminding them we’re the first call when one of ours goes missing.”

“Good idea sir.”

Hershey traded self-congratulatory nods with Knox, then returned his attention to the table at large. “We found her in the Slave Registry, warming a bed at a brothel in Wilmington, North Carolina. She said she was picked up by sheriff’s deputies out of her apartment in the middle of the night. Who told her she was being repossessed for credit card debt.”

“Was she sir?” Franklin asked.

“Unclear. Doesn’t matter though. They bought her from a curious auction house in Memphis. Once the Memphis office started looking into it a bunch of established houses in the Southeast started clamoring for us to do something to shut them down. Except the local office can’t find anything they can act on, so they kicked it up to us.

“We need to look at the background and financials for everyone involved, figure out what’s going on. Memphis gave us a list of what they’ve come up with, but it’s not much. Knox, Franklin, Pierce, you get on this. Hopefully we can wrap it up quick and get back to bigger problems.”

“Yes sir,” Katherine said with the other agents.

Hershey nodded and looked down at his papers, flipped a page, another, then sat back and closed the portfolio. “That’s it, go to work.”

Chairs began rolling back and people rose to leave the briefing room.

[dnight]

Generation XX Exodus

Part 2 of 2

“This thing is not going to be quick,” Katherine said, dropping a sheaf of pages on Agent Knox’s desk.

“What’s the problem?” Knox asked, letting of the mouse he was using to navigate through the FBI database portal and turning to pick up the printouts. Not before his eyes swept up her legs in the suit slacks, to the hint of blouse peeping through the unfastened jacket. They cut away to the papers at her breasts, but only after stealing a peek at the clothed swells first.

Ignoring his lingering gaze, Katherine stayed focused on work. “Pena was registered minutes apart from two more women who also went missing and turned up in that same Memphis auction house.”

“Who’s Pena?”

“The victim,” Katherine said, keeping the pointed tone out of her voice. “The new case?’

Knox nodded as he turned one of the pages, eyes scanning down the lines of text. “Oh, the ATC. So wait, missing persons from Louisiana and Texas?”

“Same night,” Katherine said, reaching into the stack of pages and pulling out one that had a map of the Southeastern United States on it. She tapped a red line, connecting Dallas, Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana to Meridian, Mississippi. I-20 connected all three cities.

“They snatched from three different states in the same night? Weird.”

“No, slick,” Katherine said. “Gets them out of the local jurisdictions, county and state both. By the time friends and family start going ape shit there’s no one for the local cops to find when they start looking.”

“Okay, point. Did the beat cops do any work at all?”

“Not much, but some. According to neighbors who witnessed two of the kidnappings, it was a pair of men in deputy uniforms. There’s camera footage at all three incidents, door cams, showing a car with local department markings coming and going. They went in, grabbed her out of her apartment, and were gone in less than five minutes. Knew exactly who they wanted and where she was.”

“That is slick,” Knox said, sounding interested rather than grim. “No one stops a cop.”

“Perfect cover for a kidnapping,” Katherine agreed. “Haul a woman out of her home in the middle of the night cuffed and gagged, especially nude, and even these days nine-one-one would light up like Christmas. But cops, serving a collar repossession, everyone stays the hell out of it.”

“Okay, so three not one. But Hershey only gave us the Fed to look into. Pena.”

“They’re connected,” Katherine said patiently. “Same snatchers, and the vics were processed in at the same auction house. But they didn’t go to the same buyers from there. Pena went to Wilmington; Duncan to Athens, Georgia; and Riley to Panama City, Florida.” She waited a beat while Knox flipped another page, then glanced up at her. “The other victims,” she said, this time allowing her tone to grow pointed.

“Right. So you already alerted our local offices?”

“Interviews right there,” Katherine said, gesturing at the pages he was ‘reading’ without really absorbing as he listened to her. “Vics confirm they were yanked out of bed by two men in deputy uniforms who said they were being collared for debt.”

“Don’t definitely don’t want to hear this,” Knox said, shaking his head. “This just got really messy. Alright, did you pull financials?”

“Some. More coming,” Katherine said, reaching into the stack and turning up the relevant pages. “What’s already in paints a bad picture. Brothels in Athens and Panama City bought from the same Memphis auction. Small independent operation, only been running for about two months. Turn to the last page.”

Knox flipped and scanned. “A guy who didn’t exist three months ago came up with enough money out of thin air to rent a building, stock it with slaving gear and wranglers, and start trading collars?”

“If he even exists,” Katherine said. “Probably a false front for the paperwork and whoever has a pulse who’s using that identity for the records.” She didn’t say that the Memphis office should have spotted this, and would have if they’d bothered to do what she’d done. Namely, check the banking databases and actually look at what came back.

“I’ll talk to Memphis,” Knox said, picking up his desk phone. “You keep digging through that auction’s records, see if there’s any traces. Where or who the money came from, or where the slaves are coming from. Don’t definitely don’t want to hear we can’t shut down a fly-by-night op that’s horning in on the action of corporate houses.”

“I checked our three missing persons. They were all sold in by an independent owner who had papers.”

Knox paused in the middle of dialing, then put his finger on the hang-up button to disconnect the undialed call. “What papers?”

“It’s in the pages you flipped past,” Katherine said. “Local offices ran it down already. I confirmed it. All three women had apparently signed self-enslavement forms, notarized by the wrangler who sold them. Obviously they signed under duress, or the signatures are forged. That’s what let the snatchers or fence or whoever Register the vics so fast.”

“Doesn’t matter either way.”

“Of course it matters,” Katherine said. Whichever it was, it was fraud. Kidnapping too, but definitely also fraud.

“No, because they were moved on from Memphis to other owners,” Knox said with a shrug. “Unless you can dig up dirt on the brothels that proves they’re part of this scheme, it doesn’t matter whether or not the papers don’t hold up. The bills of sale will and you know it. It’s a waste of time and won’t help the case, so don’t keep going with it. Our focus is the auction house, not the slaves.”

Katherine pressed her lips together to keep from screaming. No judicial review unless every involved party was fraudulent or filed an objection to the transaction. Since the sellers and buyers, dirty in all likelihood, wouldn’t object to benefiting from it, that left needing to find fraud.

Except once a collared woman was in the system, if she just kept being sold, it wasn’t hard for her to be sold to a completely innocent buyer. Who could honestly say under oath, without a single shred of evidence to contradict it, that they had no idea the slave had been illegally enslaved.

So it wouldn’t matter that the slave objected, and the seller was dirty. If the buyer was clean, case dismissed. Collar stays on. And you couldn’t even open a case unless you already had evidence supporting the bad faith criminal actions. Which was impossible, especially if the dirty perps were clever and connected enough to sell to buyers as clean as the newly driven snow.

It was all completely insane, but the laws were clear and had not been struck down by the courts.

“So we’re not trying to get them out?” Katherine asked, still working to stay calm. She couldn’t believe there was no legal avenue to free these women, that they were just trapped. “If we can find who put them into the system—”

“We can arrest the perps, along with whoever else is connected to them. But those collars are on and gone,” Knox said. “Stay on task or the perps will be too. Go keep combing through that auction house’s records while I coordinate with Memphis. We can still give Don’t something he’ll be happy with if we lay out a clearer picture of what’s going on than this mystery-of-the-week bullshit here.”

Katherine watched as he moved his finger back to the phone’s buttons and began dialing again. She left the cubical before she gave into the urge to say something that would delay the case. Or get her in trouble.

At her desk at the end of the row, nearest the in-and-out hallway everyone used to get to the elevators and bathrooms, she opened up her links into the banking networks. But instead of diving back into the auction house and wrangler that had sold the three women, she started pulling up the records from the brothels in Wilmington, Athens, and Panama City.

If she could find evidence they were as dirty as every other link in this chain, she could get those women out of the collars they had no business being in. Her searches were already running on the other sources anyway. Those could wait.

* * * * *

Katherine arrived early the next morning, eager to return to her review of the money trails from to and from the brothels. Still hoping to find something that painted them dirty. Instead, she found a note on her monitor. She took one look at the sticky yellow square, then crumpled it up in her hand and dropped it in the trash as she turned right around and left her cubical. Knox wasn’t in his when she looked, neither was Franklin.

“Where is he?” she asked Cook, who had the cube across from them both.

“Who?”

“Knox. He said he and Hershey want to see me.”

“Oh, Don’t’s office,” the older agent said, looking up from the top page in a pile of paper he had in his lap. “I think they were looking for you.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Mmm,” Cook said, returning to his reading. Katherine left him to it and dropped her purse and soft sided case on her desk, grabbed her portfolio and tablet out of the case, and headed to the boss’s office.

Hershey had a corner office, with an outer office complete with a secretary. A collared secretary, because of course he did. Katherine and the other SRC agents had half-height cubicles and shared two secretaries and three general office functionaries with two other departments on the floor. A Deputy Assistant Director of SRC got his own secretary with benefits, all to himself.

Even though it was ten before eight, Cynthia wasn’t at her desk in Hershey’s outer office. She was housed in the basement pens with the other collared slaves who worked in the FBI building. Her day began at seven, and ran until she was released to go back to the pens.

Katherine had heard Cynthia had used to carry a badge, but she wasn’t sure how much credence to put into the rumor. Men talked, and liked to giggle even more than grade school girls as long as the subject involved tits. Cynthia’s were exceptionally large, so large Katherine found it kind of impressive the slave could type as fast as she did without being able to see the keyboard unless she leaned over to look past her naked chest.

Regardless, Cynthia and more than a hundred other slaves left the basement every day to spread throughout the building, serving the Agents supposed to keep the wheels of justice turning. Secretaries with benefits, mail clerks with benefits, receptionists with benefits, file room attendants with benefits. All sorts of minor administrative roles that came with benefits. If there were men in those pens, Katherine had never seen them anywhere in the office.

Except this morning, Cynthia wasn’t at her desk. Katherine hesitated, then walked to the door of Hershey’s office. Pausing when her hand rose to knock, she lingered as she heard sounds. A woman, gasping. And men, grunting. She almost went back to her cubical, but she knew she’d hate herself if she didn’t make sure. If she let herself later believe, convince herself, it was something else.

When she opened the door after a perfunctory knock, she saw Cynthia bent over the little conversation nook coffee table. The collared woman was naked as usual, but unfortunately Hershey and Knox were both half naked. Their trousers were down at their ankles. Hershey knelt at Cynthia’s head with his pelvis pressed against her face while Knox pumped his hips into hers with his bare ass flexing rhythmically.

Cynthia was caught between them, her breasts swinging across the table as she was handled and used like a fucktoy. Which was exactly what she was thanks to the collar. Her body belonged to her owner. In this case, the Bureau, who had set Hershey over her as her day-to-day handler.

The only reason Katherine didn’t turn around on the spot was Hershey saw her as soon as the door opened. He was looking at her as she registered the scene, before she could decide what she wanted to do. His grin was not the reaction she necessarily expected.

“Good, ah, morning Agent, ah, Pierce,” Hershey said as he held Cynthia’s head in place on his cock. Which was surely buried down her throat, judging by the angle and position of his hips, along with how she was choking and gasping for air.

“What?” Knox panted, glancing over his shoulder without stopping his hips. “Oh, hey Kathy.”

“Your note said we had a meeting,” Katherine said, refusing to correct him to use her proper name. Somehow she was certain he wouldn’t care.

“Didn’t figure you’d be in this … oooooohh, early,” Hershey said before he either showed Katherine his O-face or entered the first stage of a stroke. The last word of the sentence was mostly incoherent, but she picked it up from context.

“I’ll come back,” Katherine said as neutrally as she could manage.

“No, it’s fine,” Hershey said in a heavy breathed voice, extracting himself from Cynthia’s mouth. “You want a turn?” Apparently he wasn’t having a stroke.

As he tucked his dick back in his pants, the slave coughed several times, struggling to catch her breath. She didn’t rise though, because behind her Knox was still fucking her steadily, holding her hips in place for his to surge against. She didn’t spit either, which meant Hershey’s ejaculate was in her throat and probably stomach too.

Hershey looked at Katherine, and paused before zipping himself up to gesture at Cynthia and raise an eyebrow to the woman in the doorway.

“No,” Katherine said, just barely keeping the word from coming out sharp or surprised.

“Suit yourself,” Hershey said, standing up. “So, last night Knox put an interesting proposal in front of me. Based on your work with the financials on that new case, the one in Memphis.” He was straightening his tie, making sure his shirt was tucked back in smooth and clean all the way around his waist. Turning himself back into the neatly ordered Don’t who ran the unit.

Katherine nodded, keeping her eyes on him even as Knox did something that drew a particularly loud gasp from Cynthia. “I did notice the same independent wrangler proffered all three slaves to the Memphis house.” She didn’t say that was the only thing she’d really noticed about it. Those searches and requests had already been in progress before she’d turned her attention to wringing out the files on the downstream end of the chain to no avail.

“It was good work,” Hershey said, moving to his desk and dropping into his chair. He waved at the visitor chairs arrayed in front of it. Katherine picked one, the far left one furthest from where Knox was still pounding Cynthia, and sat. “Turns out that wrangler has a history of being investigated for questionable enslavements.”

Opening her portfolio, Katherine brought the tablet to life and pulled the files up so she could get current without being forced to merely nod along with Hershey. It was hard enough trying not to admit she hadn’t closely studied the wrangler. She blinked as the name of the suspect registered; a woman. Marilyn Riley. “Since the data trail starts with her, she’s either the fence or close to him.”

“She runs a sideline training,” Hershey said. “Knox did a deep dive on her. She keeps as many as a dozen slaves on hand, polishing them to boost their value before finding buyers.”

“Usual story,” Katherine said as she flipped through the data she’d hardly glanced at before attaching it to the report and tossing it into the shared space. “Waits for a valuable auction and puts a better trained collar on the block.” Something caught Katherine’s eye in the searches she’d configured and set loose to generate the data. “Did you see her phone records?”

Hershey blinked at her, glanced at the table when Cynthia gasped loudly, then back at Katherine. “What about them.”

Katherine was speed reading. “She buys a lot of disposable phones, goes through a couple a month. But she always uses the same stores, so I pulled their files too. None of them sell all that many burners, so looking for patterns in the call logs on those phones brought up the same auction house in Atlanta.”

“No, not connected,” Knox grunted.

“Would you finish already,” Katherine said, glancing briefly at him. He was hanging onto one of Cynthia’s breasts now like it was a handhold, his fingers squeezing her boob as his dick kept slamming into her with wet squishes. The slave was panting pretty heavily, even now that she could breathe openly without a cock jammed down her throat.

“Almost … done.”

“How do you think it’s connected?” Hershey asked Katherine. “I don’t want to get sidetracked.”

She looked back at the tablet. She might not have paid much attention to the data before filing it, but she’d done what she usually did; set her searches and analysis tools loose on it hard and fast. The patterns they’d brought up now that she was looking over what they’d found were obvious.

“Why would a slaver in Chattanooga keep calling an Atlanta auction house that she never buys from or sells to on the books?” Katherine said. “While she also calls the one in Memphis, where she does deal? On burner phones, and not her regular cell? Which never calls either of those locations at all?”

“Oh,” Hershey said, surprised for a moment before nodding with a slight smile. “That’s good. That’s two reasons to look at her. Good catch.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh … yeah!” Knox said, dragging the words out some like it was hard to get them out. Cynthia was gasping heavily, but when Katherine finally gave into unpleasant temptation and glanced over again, Knox had slowed down. He was just holding himself in the slave, rolling his hips lazily, while stroking the collared woman’s back. Milking himself into her pussy as he finished coming.

“Alright, let’s get this moving,” Hershey said as Knox lingered like that for a few moments.

Katherine looked back at her tablet and scrolled through the report, but she thought she’d refreshed herself enough. Trying to focus on work, and not the pornographic display happening fifteen feet from her. “Also, she’s been selling to this Memphis place, which already looks sketchy, almost to the day since it went active. That makes her sketchy too.”

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Hershey said.

“Oh?” Katherine asked as she heard a zipper while Cynthia’s breathing began to even out a little.

“Yeah,” Knox said. “Whoever’s behind Memphis is probably the big money here.”

“Low seven figures running through both months it’s been operating,” Hershey said, nodding as he looked at a folder on his desk. “Probably collecting from a lot of snatchers like the two who are feeding this Marilyn Riley character in Chattanooga.”

“That kind of money, they’re definitely worth nailing,” Knox said as he joined them at the desk, taking another of the chairs facing it. He seemed flushed and happy, not exhausted, now that he’d finished.

Katherine looked at Cynthia, who was cleaning herself with wipes taken from the lower shelf under the table. She was slick with sweat, but her hand was dabbing between her legs rather than drying off her arms and body. The slave kept her head and eyes down, not even glancing in the direction of the meeting she was no part of. Her expression was unreadable.

“I agree,” Katherine said, returning to the meeting. “But so is this new hit in Atlanta.” She consulted her tablet. “Everett Wheeler. For all we know he could be the first link in the chain.”

“Waste of time. Wheeler’s small potatoes next to the Memphis outfit.” Knox said, sounding vaguely exasperated.

Hershey was nodding. “I don’t want to hear about Wheeler right now, not when whoever’s behind Memphis is who we really want.”

“Okay,” Katherine said, not sure what they were arguing about without actually arguing. They were going to pursue all leads, obviously. One thing the FBI wasn’t shy about, following leads that produced clear charges it could file.

Knox was now looking at Katherine with a certain level of expectant excitement. “Thing is, Riley runs a really tight operation. Doesn’t work with anyone, does it all herself.”

“Makes it hard to find an angle,” Hershey said.

“Then it hit me. Why not send in a new collar to report back to us?” Knox said, still looking at Katherine.

“Why?” Katherine said. “Collars can’t testify, so what does that get us?” Slaves had no legal standing. They were effectively animals as far as courts and laws were concerned. It was how the slavery acts had gotten around little trivial matters like ‘inalienable rights’ to get to collars that stuck.

Hershey drew her attention back to him by clearing his throat. He was smiling as he spoke. “It gets us knowledge of who she’s dealing with, and when, and might tip us off to any new arrivals or outgoing sales she’s making.”

“We know when she’s sending a new slave up to Memphis and we can roll the whole operation up. Or when she brings a new slave in from her fence or whoever, we get those links too,” Knox said. “One fell swoop. It’ll be great.”

“How would we even insert someone, if Riley is dealing with dirty sources?” Katherine asked.

“Usual method is to pose as a new source, or place the girl into one of the existing mud pits to be picked up,” Hershey said, glancing at his desk again, shuffling a paper aside. “Wheeler. It’s in your report. He’s probably got mud on his shoes. Him or someone else though. Atlanta office will find us someone to use, and that’s the in to Riley.”

“Who’ll get us to Memphis,” Knox said.

Katherine considered that for a moment, still keeping calm. It was hard, what with this conversation turning so weird. And Cynthia rising naked only feet away to walk back to her desk to do the job portion of her secretarial role now that the ‘with benefits’ part was done for the moment. “Okay, but we can just keep that auction house under surveillance, track and gather that way can’t we?”

“No, because the Memphis office has too high of a caseload,” Hershey said. “They don’t have enough people to monitor it around the clock, not and also run down any slave who pops up on the Registry at that location. While gathering evidence we can use to convict with.”

“But if they know when an unregistered slave is arriving, they can pull people from other cases and run a raid, pin whoever’s managing the place to something they can’t wiggle out of in court,” Knox said, sounding more excited now.

“Then Chattanooga runs surveillance on this Riley woman,” Katherine said. “How are their staffing levels? They can alert Memphis when they need to shift resources.”

“Also not great,” Hershey said. “Frankly, the safest thing for the case is to send in a collar like Knox said. I don’t want slip ups.”

Katherine held her tongue for a moment, sorting her voice out so she didn’t betray herself. It wasn’t the safest solution, just the simplest. “Okay, so you want a ringer. I guess we need to look through some Registry records and find—”

“They wouldn’t know what to look for,” Knox said. “If we just pulled a random collar and tried to put her in. This Memphis place probably won’t be there for another month, six weeks tops I bet.”

Hershey nodded. “Then it’ll fold and shift somewhere else, become someone and something else. We won’t have anything to go on. It would take too much time to find and train a second or third rate slave to make observations, how to blend, how to organize and report her findings. You know, the usual stuff.”

Katherine blinked. “It’s an implanted radio,” she said. “She clenches her teeth to turn it on and off, and then just talks. She’ll have eyes and ears, and can be ours.”

“Still too risky,” Knox said. “Collars in the past couple of years have been steadily declining in reliability. Low grade from the get go, then they just sleepwalk through their terms until they’re released.”

“I’ve got some heat coming on this one,” Hershey said. “So does McCoy, and Sorenson above him as well. I don’t want to hear any plan that might mess the case up.”

“Like if the inside girl gets caught talking on the radio, or asking too many questions, or simply being too curious and attentive. Then the players we’re after are gone,” Knox said with a serious expression.

“Exactly. We need this handled right the first time, without any screw-ups that send the rats scurrying off to set back up somewhere else if we don’t nail them to the wall.”

Katherine allowed there was some small thread of reason in their reasoning. Not much, but some. “So what are you getting at?”

“You’re trained for observation,” Knox said.

She stared at him for a full second, then another two while she tried to keep from doing more than slightly clenching her jaw. Because she had to keep her mouth closed to avoid shouting at him, but looking like she wanted to shout would be as bad as actually shouting.

Hershey spoke while she was trying to manage her expression without letting on that’s what she was doing. “Chattanooga doesn’t have any spare agents who meet Marilyn Riley’s usual stock profiles. Neither does Memphis or Atlanta.”

Of course they didn’t, Katherine thought. Policing had always been a primarily male profession, and the discrepancy had worsened since collars entered the picture. Even at the Federal level. Katherine had been the only woman in her graduating class at Quantico. She was often the only woman, the only clothed woman with a badge anyway, in the elevators in this building.

“But you’re in her brackets for age, physical characteristics, and background,” Knox said. “She likes to hang onto to attractive girls who have a little more upstairs than the usual dishrags who turn up at auction these days.”

“You’d be able to spot when she brings in some who don’t look right, who are upset or panicked,” Hershey said. “Talk to them and confirm they’re snatched.”

“Then you let us know, and Memphis is standing by when they arrive there.”

“Case closed,” Hershey finished with a nod.

“That’s … an interesting idea,” Katherine said slowly, choosing her words carefully. They wanted her to strip down and willingly collar herself. Worse, do it as an illegally enslaved unregistered woman. Any smart criminal, and this ring did appear to be smarter than the usual redneck rubes who grabbed up women for joyrides, knew to not keep their less than honestly obtained slaves around.

“She’ll either hang onto you for training, and you can help us expand the case as new illegals cycle through,” Knox said. “Or she moves you to Memphis, and we just barge in and bring that down.”

“If I go under, I can’t testify,” Katherine pointed out, her voice still heavily managed. She hoped her expression was holding, polite, professional, and showed no sign of the horror ripping through her at what they were suggesting.

All it would take was her being sold to a legitimate buyer and she was stuck in the collar for the full term, which was generally up to the buyer and seller to determine. The law made no provision about extraordinary circumstances, nothing about a temporary collar, or a “law enforcement” collar. Collared was collared, and the rules were quite clear; they didn’t come off.

If the surveillance team, overworked and understaffed, went for a leak or took a phone call at the wrong moment, they could miss the opportunity to step in before a sale involving her was submitted to the Registry. Or they could sit back and let it happen because they thought it was better for the case if they allowed it to go through.

Or just because they thought it would be funnier to see her sold.

Hell, during the insertion they could make full use of her, just to establish their cover with the slavers. Not that they even needed a reason; once she was collared, legally they could gang bang her at high noon in Times Square and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop them.

Throughout the whole insane notion Hershey wanted her to agree to, she’d be naked on her knees. Collared, fucking and sucking, handled, beaten, abused. While fellow FBI agents watched. It would be part of the case files, show up in the court records. Be part of her newly minted Slave Registry record.

Permanently.

Supposedly Registry records were closed, but that was bullshit. Every trainer, wrangler, owner, cop, tax agent, and most government officials at both the state and local levels could access the Registry. Websites circulated the graphic photos required of all slaves. Not just normal nude shots, but showing the women in a variety of quite pornographic poses. Bending over, spreading themselves open, worse sometimes.

Free porn. Men sometimes had lists of women they kept track of. Neighbors, friends, coworkers, any woman who’d caught their eye. They kept checking the Registry sites, hoping to see the hot number down the hall or two doors down turn up because she’d been in for Grading and her pictures had “leaked.”

“We won’t need anyone’s testimony if we know when and where to find evidence,” Knox said while Katherine struggled to act like she was thinking, not sweating.

“We need a day or so to set it up anyway,” Hershey said. “So it’s not like we expect you to just go straight from here to the airport in a shipping crate.” He and Knox both laughed, and Katherine had to dig deep to produce a small smile.

“No, I suppose not,” she said as they chuckled. “But what about me after the investigation is wrapped up?”

“What about you?”

“There’s no provision in the Slavery Acts for a temporary collar,” Katherine said faking harder than she’d ever tried in her life to sound calm and casual. “I’d hate to lose my career just for one case.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Hershey said, waving his hand dismissively. “If you end up sold or moved on, whatever, the Bureau will pick you back up. Buy you if necessary. Worst case, we’ll just keep you here.”

“You’ll be collared, but still working cases,” Knox said.

“Just without a badge until the term’s up.”

“I see,” Katherine said. Their idea was that in a week or two, presumably, she’d be the one bent over the table. Or under desks with her mouth open. And the rest of the time, parading around butt naked for them to ogle.

Another Cynthia.

“Well, I suppose you should email me your plan,” Katherine said, managing to keep her voice intrigued instead of horrified. “So I can look it over, maybe make some preparations and do some research. Double check that I know Riley’s usual routines, the site, and so on.”

“Great,” Hershey said, smiling like she’d just given him the promotion he wanted. “That’s what I like to hear, good team participation. Knox will give you what we came up with. We’ll meet again this afternoon to see where we’re at.”

“Alright,” Katherine said, standing up. “Send it.” She forced herself to offer another small smile, and give nods she hoped were brisk to both men. Knox was smiling very broadly as she looked at him.

Turning before her mask dropped, Katherine left the office with her back crawling like she was in the crosshairs of a sniper. Cynthia was typing at her desk, and didn’t look up from the page covered with Don’t’s blue pen handwriting as Katherine went past. The slave just kept her head down, working until the next time some agent ordered her to come with him.

At her own desk, Katherine picked up her purse and almost left her portfolio before a moment of consideration made her decide that might draw questions too soon. If it were there but she wasn’t. So she brought it with her.

Two minutes later she was exiting the elevator on the ground floor, looking for the rideshare she’d summoned. As she walked past a sidewalk garbage can outside the building, she tossed the portfolio with its embossed FBI logo in it.

* * * * *

“Good afternoon,” the man in the blue uniform said as Katherine pulled her rental car up to the booth. She’d been waiting in line for ten minutes, as cars ahead of her moved forward one by one in fits and starts. Her car had been sniffed at by several different dogs, and other personnel had asked her questions about what she was or wasn’t carrying.

Her bags had even been looked through in the car, with an agent leaning in through the open back door to poke around in the handful of things she’d grabbed. She’d considered not even going back to her apartment, but she’d allowed herself the brief detour, and fifteen minutes of throwing clothes and what personal items that would fit into the overnight bag, suitcase, and pair of duffels she used for the gym and such sometimes.

Then she’d hit the road, headed north.

The entire drive up from the city had felt like she was braving a minefield. At any moment she half expected helicopters to swoop in, a roadblock barricading the Interstate, something, to appear and halt her progress. But the miles rolled past beneath the wheels as she kept the cruise control pegged to sixty-five, unwilling to trust her credentials to keep some local cop from pulling her over.

What if he called it in? What if Don’t had some pull, some leverage, she wasn’t aware of?

So she drove normally and tried to not give into the sense she was being chased. To the feeling heavy hands would fall upon her and yank away her freedom. Waiting at the border had been the worst. Armed personnel, mostly men on this side, who at any moment could receive a call, recognize her, and move in.

Now she was at the booth where the actual ID checks would happen.

The border agent took her passport and flipped it open, then glanced between it and her face a few times. “Purpose of your visit to Canada?” he asked as he scanned the identification document into his computer.

“Immigration,” Katherine said.

“Is this a planned immigration?”

“No, political asylum,” Katherine said. “But I believe I qualify under several normal immigration program paths as well. I’ll wait as long as Immigration wants as long as it’s on your side of the border please.”

The man looked troubled, but he stamped something in her passport, flipped to the visa form she’d tucked into the back page and stamped something else on it and scribbled something with a pen. “Pull ahead to the building right there. That one,” he said, pointing while looking at her to see that she saw it. “If you take off and don’t report to them they’ll mark you as an illegal and we’ll deport you.”

“I’ll go wherever you want as long as it’s not back to the US,” Katherine said, taking the passport when he offered it to her. “Thank you.”

She drove forward and eased over to the right. Then turned down a clearly marked side lane that became a road which dumped her into a parking lot attached to the building he’d indicated. The signs proclaimed it the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

She felt better already, off American soil. Away from the influence of Hershey, slavery, danger. In Canada, the rule of law still meant equality and justice. Basic case review, if nothing else. Not gotchas designed to strip women down and force them to service men.

Katherine left her bags in the car and went inside. She checked in with a clerk who gave her a little claim ticket and pointed at a waiting area. It was not lost on Katherine that most of the occupied chairs were occupied by women.

Racks of forms lined one of the walls, and she went along them plucking out ones that seemed relevant or likely to come up. Then she uncapped her pen and started writing.

She needed her phone to pull some required details up, from her resume, her bank account, her personal files. When she put the battery back in and it connected to the cellular network, it immediately downloaded a slew of missed calls. More than a dozen attempts by Hershey, Knox, and a couple of other agents in New York to contact her.

Ignoring the notifications, she focused on what she needed. There was nothing they possibly had to say to her that she wanted to hear. That was necessary for her to hear. And for all she knew, even talking to them could be dangerous in some way she hadn’t spotted yet.

Instead, she worked on the immigration paperwork like it was the most important thing in her life.

The problem with immigration was most countries didn’t want just anyone. In the modern era, even before slavery, nations would usually only take a certain number of dirt-poor nobody immigrants. Specifically, those who showed up willing to sign on for years of working in unwanted jobs, where local employers weren’t willing to pay what natives wanted to work those positions.

Usually countries wanted solid middle class or above applicants to become citizens, or even just residents. If they were accepting immigrants, that’s what nearly every nation preferred and focused on. Educated, not flat broke, without criminal or problematic records. Potential new citizens who could contribute to their new country as soon as they came across the border.

Katherine had never specifically planned to emigrate from the US. But as she sat there filling out forms and looking at what Canada was asking about, she realized it had pretty much always been in the back of her mind.

She had savings. She was educated. She had no black marks in her record. And she was still young enough that a new country – any new country – could reasonably expect she’d have decades of productive life ahead of her before she thought about leaving the work force.

Two hours later her number was called. Her phone had gone off a dozen more times. She continued to ignore each call. Even when one of the calls was from her dad. It might be him, it might not; but either way, he could wait. If it was him, she’d reassure him later, if she survived this. If it wasn’t him, then “he” could definitely wait.

If today went as she hoped, she’d email her resignation tonight. Her service pistol was in a fast food bathroom’s trash can, ten minutes from the border. She hadn’t been willing to give it up before that, or to allow the complications of having it at the border to have kept her from crossing. And she didn’t care what the Bureau thought about her not resigning in a “timely and orderly” fashion.

They could fuck right off.

When Katherine went to the door she’d seen other hopeful immigrants coming and going through, she was met by a short woman with a pinched expression and heavily permed blonde hair. Clutching her sheaf of forms, Katherine followed the woman along a corridor lined with offices until she was directed into through one of the doors.

“I’m Janice Michaud. What can I do for you Ms Pierce?” the woman said as she gestured at one of the chairs and sat down behind the office’s desk.

“I cannot return to the United States,” Katherine said, offering the forms she’d completed. “My boss attempted to convince me to enslave myself, and will probably look to find a way to do it without needing my willing cooperation once he figures out I’m here trying to emigrate from America. If he hasn’t already.”

“Who’s your employer?” Michaud asked as she looked at the top form.

“The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

That caused Michaud’s eyes to flick up to her. “Really?”

Katherine laid her opened ID folio on the desk, so the gold bell shaped FBI badge with the corresponding blue lettered card that had her name and picture were clearly visible. “Really.”

“Okay, that’s one I haven’t heard yet so I’m all ears.”

“They want to put a collared woman undercover to support an investigation. Their idea was for me, an agent, to do it. I have an email where he lays it all out, his expectation for me to participate. Except even if I wanted to, which I don’t, he doesn’t seem to recognize or care that once I collar and go into the Slave Registry, it’s permanent.”

Michaud nodded. “I’m familiar with the US laws on that subject.” Her voice was tense with an unhappy note as she spoke.

Katherine nodded back. “No exceptions for a temporary collar, no judicial review permitted. He claimed I would be taken back by the FBI and allowed to continue working cases while collared, but the collar is still a collar.

“I might end up bought, the way the case was going, and then I’d be in the hands of a private owner. Even if the FBI got possession of me, it would be up to the wranglers who manage the Bureau’s slaves whether or not I’m allowed to wear clothes, who I would have to service sexually—”

“—I understand,” Michaud said, holding her hand up. She was looking through the documents Katherine had handed her more closely now. “Are you currently a free woman under the laws of the United States?”

“Yes,” Katherine said. “No wants, no warrants, no debts, I am not in the Slave Registry.”

“But you have a degree from NYU. No debts, you’re positive?”

“I worked part-time and summers from sixteen until I graduated high school,” Katherine said. “Then I worked two and three jobs for almost three years until I’d saved enough to put myself through a bachelor’s in Mathematics. While working two more part-time jobs. I can provide bank records back to the day I opened my account proving I paid for everything myself.”

“Hmm,” Michaud said, flipping through the documents.

“I have twenty-eight months of job experience as an investment banking analyst. Graduate of the FBI academy, two months of on-the-job training, and two more as a full Special Agent,” Katherine said, rattling off facts she hoped would convince this woman to help her.

“I also have almost twenty-five thousand US dollars in savings I would like to transfer to a Canadian bank immediately,” Katherine continued as Michaud kept reading. “As soon as I’m allowed to open an account here and convert them to Canadian dollars.”

“Okay, slow down,” Michaud said, looking up.

“J'ai trois ans de lycée français, if that helps,” Katherine added quickly, hoping her pronunciation wasn’t too rusty to be coherent.

“It does. At least, it certainly doesn’t hurt. You know there’s a process for this.”

“Of course. As long as I can wait on this side of the border, process away,” Katherine said, working to keep calm. She was terrified of what Hershey might be able to pull if she had to go back across to the US.

“I’ll rent an apartment if you let me, take a job in a grocery store or whatever,” Katherine went on in a brittle voice, “but right now I don’t care if it’s a homeless shelter, or a leaf pallet in the woods. As long as it’s here. Conduct checks and run due diligence all you want on me. Just don’t force me to become a slave, which is what probably happens if you send me back.”

“You’re not going back. Relax. If everything you’ve told me is true, and what’s on these forms checks out, I think it’s very unlikely your application for residence will be denied. And if it is, we have a program to let you wait here while you apply to other Commonwealth countries. You’re not returning to the US.”

A wave of relief washed over Katherine, cold enough to batter away the scorching tension and worry she’d been feeling ever since Don’t’s office that morning. “Oh thank God.”

She was safe. Even if Canada didn’t want her, surely the United Kingdom, Australia, at least one of the former British colonies that hadn’t lost its collective national mind, would have room for a college educated woman still almost a year away from her thirtieth birthday. A better use than just forcing her naked to her knees.

Michaud nodded sympathetically and offered a tissue from a box she took from a drawer as Katherine started crying. “I can issue you a temporary visa right now, good for three months. Welcome to Canada Ms Pierce.”

[ZeeChromosome]

Reading this excellent story felt like reading a mainstream action-thriller paperback. I loved the way it just bursts into action right from the opening paragraph. I’m super impressed right now.

[TauriRed]

Why so totally stupid system design so even law enforcement is not above law even if it's necessary for cases?
How much educated women they will in next generation?

Also, some women do have professions on which they can cause high damage:
- FBI agent can just shoot everybody who try to enslave her and kill herself.
- Airline pilot could found out she's about to be enslave (even if it's not true) and decide to drive plane to ground (or to something important, think 9/11).
- Military pilot - see about except military plane have weapons

It's also possible to get situations with high publicity / high financial damage - let's say woman is astronaut (and ISS doesn't exist in this world or flight doesn't go here) and decide she wants to emigrate and other astronauts are either not against it or can't do anything (because they are drugged). As far as I understood, modern space capsules could land on manual control in emergency. She could just try to make emergency landing in Europe or Russia. It would be very difficult to miss. If ISS does exist here - this becomes even more interesting.

HOW it's handled? Women are not accepted to such professions anymore at all in USA even while they do have education? Looks like perfect scenario for brain drain. Also, this situation looks unstable.

[ZeeChromosome]

Why so totally stupid system design so even law enforcement is not above law even if it's necessary for cases?

Because the author is trying to paint things in the most dark and unsustainable way possible. Read his other story and the responses to it. D. Night is intending this story to be a takedown and critique of the legal slavery universe we’re working in. He’s being intentionally illogical in order to make it NOT make sense.

Also, some women do have professions on which they can cause high damage: FBI agent can just shoot everybody who try to enslave her and kill herself.

Heh, I was thinking this during the entire “escape” sequence. I suspect that D. Night is not American. If they were, they would know that the average American has access to multiple firearms. FBI agents most certainly do. On the other hand, perhaps that’s part of the critique. If the Doe-verse were to actually be implemented, I imagine that the slave catcher job would be a VERY high-risk occupation with literally tens of thousands of casualties per year.

…let's say woman is astronaut (and ISS doesn't exist in this world or flight doesn't go here) and decide she wants to emigrate and other astronauts are either not against it or can't do anything (because they are drugged). As far as I understood, modern space capsules could land on manual control in emergency. She could just try to make emergency landing in Europe or Russia. It would be very difficult to miss. If ISS does exist here - this becomes even more interesting.

Tauri, this is an insanely brilliant story idea. You are a genius. An astronaut is on a mission, she discovers that her debts have been called in and there’s nothing she can do to stop it/fix it, because she’s on a mission in OUTER SPACE. If she was at home, she could just log in to her bank’s website and fix it in 15 minutes. [Insert evil mastermind here, probably an ex-lover.] So now, what can she do? She’s in outer space and… what laws even apply here? If she returns to Earth and lands in any country with extradition to the U.S., she will immediately be enslaved. In this situation, I can imagine that her fellow astronauts would all agree that “Oh no! We were hijacked!” while ensuring that she landed safely in an anti-slavery country.

Tauri, you are a genius, this is brilliant.

Zee

[TauriRed]

Why so totally stupid system design so even law enforcement is not above law even if it's necessary for cases?

Because the author is trying to paint things in the most dark and unsustainable way possible. Read his other story and the responses to it. D. Night is intending this story to be a takedown and critique of the legal slavery universe we’re working in. He’s being intentionally illogical in order to make it NOT make sense.

Also, some women do have professions on which they can cause high damage: FBI agent can just shoot everybody who try to enslave her and kill herself.

Heh, I was thinking this during the entire “escape” sequence. I suspect that D. Night is not American. If they were, they would know that the average American has access to multiple firearms. FBI agents most certainly do. On the other hand, perhaps that’s part of the critique. If the Doe-verse were to actually be implemented, I imagine that the slave catcher job would be a VERY high-risk occupation with literally tens of thousands of casualties per year.

…let's say woman is astronaut (and ISS doesn't exist in this world or flight doesn't go here) and decide she wants to emigrate and other astronauts are either not against it or can't do anything (because they are drugged). As far as I understood, modern space capsules could land on manual control in emergency. She could just try to make emergency landing in Europe or Russia. It would be very difficult to miss. If ISS does exist here - this becomes even more interesting.

Tauri, this is an insanely brilliant story idea. You are a genius. An astronaut is on a mission, she discovers that her debts have been called in and there’s nothing she can do to stop it/fix it, because she’s on a mission in OUTER SPACE. If she was at home, she could just log in to her bank’s website and fix it in 15 minutes. [Insert evil mastermind here, probably an ex-lover.] So now, what can she do? She’s in outer space and… what laws even apply here? If she returns to Earth and lands in any country with extradition to the U.S., she will immediately be enslaved. In this situation, I can imagine that her fellow astronauts would all agree that “Oh no! We were hijacked!” while ensuring that she landed safely in an anti-slavery country.

Tauri, you are a genius, this is brilliant.

Zee

I'm also not from USA (So sorry for language mistakes). I also read both D.Night's stories (Gotcha just looks 'just clever usage of existing features' for me, you shouldn't abuse your secretary).
I read a lot of SF (I consider those stories special kind of social SciFi first and all other things only second ), including ones about slave-owner societies, not all of them. They either doesn't allow them near anything complex or try to make it acceptable for slave (or make slaves think their position is acceptable).

As for space law: as far as I knew it's done this way:
There's special agreement on ISS - NASA is lead coordinator, each country have jurisdiction over their own modules. There's Russian Orbital Segment(All Russian modules) and USA Orbital Segment(all others). Also, to add more confusion - Zarya module is part of Russian Orbital Segment and was made/launched by Russia but owned by USA because USA paid for it.

As far as I knew, there is some kind of internet access from ISS but it goes via ground controls centers and it's not clear how US bank will react to connection from .. unusual and non-residential place(I know how big banks in my country reacts to such connections - "please visit our branch office in person, yes, we understood you CAN'T, no we can't do anything. Our fraud checking system decide you need to provide code sent to you via SMS and you didn't enter it in time"


I have some questions about whole setting
I'm right that:
- USA is slaving country. Why and when it was re-introduced? (Anna's story says it's always was here but other stories are different as far as I understood).
- Arab states too and they have it for-life-only.
- Canada doesn't like slavery but sometimes accept it because of link to US.
- UK doesn't really like (Erin's story,etc) but slowly accepts - Claire's story).
- Germany. Unclear, likely not.
- Most of Africa. They just decide to made it official.
- Central/South America?
- Other places?

Also:
- Any stated information on other countries? Japan? China? Russia? India? Up to author?
- As far as I understood, USA have a lot of illegal immigrants. And some states decide it's ok and doesn't help federal goverment with finding and deporting them. Federal goverment sometimes legalize them (DADA Act,etc). What about their status in this setting?
- Roe v Wade in effect? Not in effect now? Does not exist? Could owner force slave to do abort? If not in effect - are laws of Texas/other states (doesn't remember which ones) with abortions bans now in effect have same punishment (big fine) or unlawful abort means ticket to life slavery both to woman AND abortion provider?
- Gender ratio - still 1:1? If not, why?
- Major historical differences from our world?
- Current geopolitical situation in this world? Does it ever specified? Mostly same as ours?
- How diplomatic immunity works with slavery? Especially not fully one but kind they have for families/personnel. Especialy with 3rd party rule. This could be solved by special agreement but what if country like Canada says "we don't EVER recognize slavery?"
- Are catchers/police with enslavement orders allowed to work in international areas of US airports?
- How enslavement/attempts to do so handled on cruise ships(regular ones, not USA-USA with a lot of slaves arleady on board)? On planes(order arrived but person arleady boarded - will plane return? what if it's arleady in air? arleady in air outside USA airpspace but could return and it's plane to non-slave-friendly country). On remote stations (like ones in Antartica - as far as I knew, their communications are limited and they don't have on-station police. They also could only be visited at specified times of year only)
- Can foreign citizen be enslaved in absentia and order issued by USA court because of enslavable offence?

[Danicali299]

Why so totally stupid system design so even law enforcement is not above law even if it's necessary for cases?

Because the author is trying to paint things in the most dark and unsustainable way possible. Read his other story and the responses to it. D. Night is intending this story to be a takedown and critique of the legal slavery universe we’re working in. He’s being intentionally illogical in order to make it NOT make sense.

Also, some women do have professions on which they can cause high damage: FBI agent can just shoot everybody who try to enslave her and kill herself.

Heh, I was thinking this during the entire “escape” sequence. I suspect that D. Night is not American. If they were, they would know that the average American has access to multiple firearms. FBI agents most certainly do. On the other hand, perhaps that’s part of the critique. If the Doe-verse were to actually be implemented, I imagine that the slave catcher job would be a VERY high-risk occupation with literally tens of thousands of casualties per year.

…let's say woman is astronaut (and ISS doesn't exist in this world or flight doesn't go here) and decide she wants to emigrate and other astronauts are either not against it or can't do anything (because they are drugged). As far as I understood, modern space capsules could land on manual control in emergency. She could just try to make emergency landing in Europe or Russia. It would be very difficult to miss. If ISS does exist here - this becomes even more interesting.

Tauri, this is an insanely brilliant story idea. You are a genius. An astronaut is on a mission, she discovers that her debts have been called in and there’s nothing she can do to stop it/fix it, because she’s on a mission in OUTER SPACE. If she was at home, she could just log in to her bank’s website and fix it in 15 minutes. [Insert evil mastermind here, probably an ex-lover.] So now, what can she do? She’s in outer space and… what laws even apply here? If she returns to Earth and lands in any country with extradition to the U.S., she will immediately be enslaved. In this situation, I can imagine that her fellow astronauts would all agree that “Oh no! We were hijacked!” while ensuring that she landed safely in an anti-slavery country.

Tauri, you are a genius, this is brilliant.

Zee

I'm also not from USA (So sorry for language mistakes). I also read both D.Night's stories (Gotcha just looks 'just clever usage of existing features' for me, you shouldn't abuse your secretary).
I read a lot of SF (I consider those stories special kind of social SciFi first and all other things only second ), including ones about slave-owner societies, not all of them. They either doesn't allow them near anything complex or try to make it acceptable for slave (or make slaves think their position is acceptable).

As for space law: as far as I knew it's done this way:
There's special agreement on ISS - NASA is lead coordinator, each country have jurisdiction over their own modules. There's Russian Orbital Segment(All Russian modules) and USA Orbital Segment(all others). Also, to add more confusion - Zarya module is part of Russian Orbital Segment and was made/launched by Russia but owned by USA because USA paid for it.

As far as I knew, there is some kind of internet access from ISS but it goes via ground controls centers and it's not clear how US bank will react to connection from .. unusual and non-residential place(I know how big banks in my country reacts to such connections - "please visit our branch office in person, yes, we understood you CAN'T, no we can't do anything. Our fraud checking system decide you need to provide code sent to you via SMS and you didn't enter it in time"


I have some questions about whole setting
I'm right that:
- USA is slaving country. Why and when it was re-introduced? (Anna's story says it's always was here but other stories are different as far as I understood).
- Arab states too and they have it for-life-only.
- Canada doesn't like slavery but sometimes accept it because of link to US.
- UK doesn't really like (Erin's story,etc) but slowly accepts - Claire's story).
- Germany. Unclear, likely not.
- Most of Africa. They just decide to made it official.
- Central/South America?
- Other places?

Also:
- Any stated information on other countries? Japan? China? Russia? India? Up to author?
- As far as I understood, USA have a lot of illegal immigrants. And some states decide it's ok and doesn't help federal goverment with finding and deporting them. Federal goverment sometimes legalize them (DADA Act,etc). What about their status in this setting?
- Roe v Wade in effect? Not in effect now? Does not exist? Could owner force slave to do abort? If not in effect - are laws of Texas/other states (doesn't remember which ones) with abortions bans now in effect have same punishment (big fine) or unlawful abort means ticket to life slavery both to woman AND abortion provider?
- Gender ratio - still 1:1? If not, why?
- Major historical differences from our world?
- Current geopolitical situation in this world? Does it ever specified? Mostly same as ours?
- How diplomatic immunity works with slavery? Especially not fully one but kind they have for families/personnel. Especialy with 3rd party rule. This could be solved by special agreement but what if country like Canada says "we don't EVER recognize slavery?"
- Are catchers/police with enslavement orders allowed to work in international areas of US airports?
- How enslavement/attempts to do so handled on cruise ships(regular ones, not USA-USA with a lot of slaves arleady on board)? On planes(order arrived but person arleady boarded - will plane return? what if it's arleady in air? arleady in air outside USA airpspace but could return and it's plane to non-slave-friendly country). On remote stations (like ones in Antartica - as far as I knew, their communications are limited and they don't have on-station police. They also could only be visited at specified times of year only)
- Can foreign citizen be enslaved in absentia and order issued by USA court because of enslavable offence?

Anna’s story is set in a different universe than the Doeverse. Just thought I’d answer that question at least.

[ZeeChromosome]

Our fraud checking system decide you need to provide code sent to you via SMS and you didn't enter it in time.

Exactly, it makes a good plot point – the actual owner of the account can’t access their own money in an emergency. I’m an accountant, this happened recently. People are always trying to steal our money, and my boss (tricked by an email) tried to give it to them. He was mad when he was unable to initiate a wire transfer from his cell phone while on vacation. He called me, furious, and I had to tell him to shut up and stop trying to send our money to a Nigerian prince in Dubai. It would have been funny if it wasn’t real money.

Anyway, it’s my opinion that “I’m about to be enslaved for no good reason” is an emergency. I could be wrong, though.

What D. Night fails to understand is that getting enslaved is bad, yes, but it’s SUPPOSED to be bad. In order to create dramatic tension in a story, the main character needs to struggle either FOR or AGAINST something. In this universe, the main character is generally struggling against being enslaved by nefarious means. Other times, she struggles against her own sexual desire TO BE enslaved. Or maybe she gets enslaved and then struggles to regain her freedom.

D. Knight also complains that this only seems to happen to women. I'm sure it happens to men, too, but it's sexier when it happens to women. My very first story is about a man who enslaves himself. So there's that.

I have some questions about whole setting
I'm right that:
1 - USA is slaving country. Why and when it was re-introduced? (Anna's story says it's always was here but other stories are different as far as I understood).
2 - Arab states too and they have it for-life-only.
3 - Canada doesn't like slavery but sometimes accept it because of link to US.
4 - UK doesn't really like (Erin's story,etc) but slowly accepts - Claire's story).
5 - Germany. Unclear, likely not.
6 - Most of Africa. They just decide to made it official.
7 - Central/South America?
8 - Other places?

Details vary by story and the author’s need to create dramatic tension. For example, the threat of being shipped to Dubai, Brazil, or Japan is scary because it will convert a 2-year indenture into a lifetime of permanent slavery. It’s supposed to be a scary, off-screen threat, and it works really well.
1 - When is it? As with any good dystopian sci-fi, it’s a lot scarier if it looks a lot like real life. So the timeline is basically “right now”. The Doe-verse is modern day, just twisted slightly. Or twisted a lot, you decide.
3 – As far as I know, D. Night is the first to introduce Canada into a story. He can do that because nobody else has bothered. Avicia’s depiction of the UK is the same way. Nobody bothered with it before, so the ground-breaking author gets to make up new rules.
5 – If you want to write a story in Germany, then that seems wide open for your imagination to set the rules.
6 – Africa has slavery in real life, right now. It never went away. So yeah, it’s pretty scary.

Regarding some of your other questions:
A – Illegal immigration. As far as I know, I’m the only author to address the issue. In “Gabriela 2”, I introduced a slave nurse in the Four Years to Freedom program. Anyone who wants to emigrate to the US can do so, provided that they have a useful skill and are willing to serve four years in a collar. Honestly, I feel like this is FAR more humane than the current immigration system we have right now in the real world.
B – Abortion: Nobody wants to talk about it. All slaves receive a 100%-effective birth control implant immediately, so their owners can proceed to have sex with them and not worry about it. It’s a common trope in this kind of fiction. In other, darker slavery universes, I’ve seen the slaves immediately and permanently sterilized upon enslavement. In other slavery universes, like in “Anna’s Story”, slaves are bred on purpose. It’s up to you. How evil do you want to be?
C – The gender ratio is still normal. This isn’t a Dolcett universe.
D – Most of your other questions can only be answered by the first author to put it in a story. I see you’re really interested in questions of international jurisdiction. I think that’s a great place to start your next story.

Zee

[ElJefe]

Ok, so let's back off a bit. This whole universe started as a take-off of a Japanese porn movie. In it, women are raised as farm animals. The thing is set as a "documentary" of this farm, interviewing employees as they process in a coffle of naked women, starting with them being unloaded from a truck and then cavity-searched and showered. Eventually the women are allowed "exercise time" in outdoor pens and are sexually used by the employees. The women are rewarded when they stay down on all fours and make animal sounds, and punished when they try to stand or speak intelligibly.

No, I can't remember the name of it, but I'm sure someone else here can.

It's an amusing bit of fluff, and I believe John Doe was the first to do stories inspired by it, thus creating the Doeverse.

Much of this stuff has "just evolved" in ways to suit the story being written at the time. It all doesn't make 100% logical sense. For example, the "Third Pary Rule", while extremely convenient for slaveowners, would never stand up if ownership was disputed (say by a spouse who wants his illegally enslaved wife back). In the short term, human behavior adapts to the law. But in the long run, the law adapts to the needs of human society. After about the third or fourth mass armed assault on an illegal slaving operation, the Third Party Rule would be replaced by a system to allow such disputes to be resolved without gunfire.

D. Knight also complains that this only seems to happen to women. I'm sure it happens to men, too, but it's sexier when it happens to women. My very first story is about a man who enslaves himself. So there's that.

Indeed, there are several stories about enslaved males on various fora. But what is the audience? The majority of men are sexually dominant and the majority of women are sexually submissive, and heterosexuals greatly outnumber homosexuals. Stories about men sexually dominating women press the most buttons. Read Carl Bradford's story about male-and-female twins undergoing a year of voluntary slavery in order to claim their inheritance if you want to read about men being forced to suck cock.

Historically, preferentially female slavery was most common in the Muslim world, from Arabia to the Barbary Coast. Many stories set in the Doeverse draw inspiration from that as well.

I also wanted to comment on space law. I know a little something about space, I used to be the manager for the ISS Crew LAN. When I was on-call, my most frequent response was, "Reboot the BRIE (the Russian router) and call me back if that doesn't work." That almost always worked and saved me a trip to Mission Control after hours.

In 2014, one of the astronauts entered into a same-sex marriage. She visited ISS in 2018, but by then her marriage had gone sour and she was in the process of divorce. While on ISS, her divorcing spouse accused her of illegally accessing one of the spouse's bank accounts from orbit, essentially accusing the astronaut of hacking and identity theft. The initial report was made to the Federal Trade Commission. After the astronaut landed in 2019, the spouse made further accusations to the NASA Inspector General Office. Within a month, the astronaut was also interviewed by the Inspector General. The next spring (2020), the case against the astronaut was dropped, and charges were filed against the divorcing spouse for lying to the authorities. That case is still ongoing nearly 3 years later.

Generally, anything the astronauts do while connected to the ground is either "official business" and very tightly controlled, or else "personal business" which is very private. Very few people have access to what the astronaut is doing, and just trying to snoop on the astronaut's personal business is grounds for dismissal. So, nobody would give a second glance to an astronaut accessing a bank account, until after some kind of accusation had been made. In the case mentioned above, the astronaut accessed the account using the password given her by the spouse, then the spouse changed the password, then the spouse accused the astronaut of illegal access. Given the nature of the link, I don't really think it's feasible to try to use any hacking tools over it. I was responsible for the contents of the Crew LAN server, and anything like that would have shown up on an audit.

If a serious accusation would have been made while the astronaut was on-orbit, there would have been a big deal about restricting that astronaut's access to the ground link, and that would have been a huge deal because connecting with family and taking care of personal business is considered to be essential to astronaut health and well-being. But suppose there was irrefutable proof of a crime, what then?

Said astronaut must return to earth. If the astronaut is unwilling, the issue can be forced from the ground as commands are sent to make the ISS uninhabitable. These can be overridden onboard, but you have to sleep sometimes, and the rest of the crew would either have to sleep in shifts to countermand the orders, or else communications with the ground would have to be cut off overnight. Either would be a huge deal that would make headlines down below. And as we will soon see, that's a moot point.

Where is the landing? The landing vehicle must follow the orbit path to the ground, deviating no more than a degree or two to one side or the other. The orbit path is stationary, but the earth rotates underneath it. On any one orbit, ISS travels from 51.6 degrees north, crosses the equator, to 51.6 degrees south, crosses the equator again, and returns to 51.6 degrees north. It does that about 15 times a day (one orbit takes about 93 minutes). So, on any given day there is a limited number of places where a vehicle could land, but over weeks and months the entire band from 51.6 north to 51.6 south is available. If you look at a map, that puts potential landing sites in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. The southern limit covers everything north of the southernmost tip of Chile and Argentina, and Antarctica. Everything between those extremes is fair game. Our fugitive will have to program in the calculations necessary to start the deorbit burn at just the right time to land within about 50-100 miles of where they want to go. Depending on the descent vehicle that may be easy, quite difficult (requiring knowledge of orbital mechanics), or impossible without considerable knowledge of both orbital mechanics and vehicle software, which might require some hacking/reprogramming. The landing vehicle may be designed for land only (Soyuz) or water only (SpaceX Dragon capsule). But if the fugitive can program in a landing sequence and operate the vehicle solo, she can go to anywhere in South America save the very tip, Africa, Australia, and all of North America that isn't northern Canada, all of Asia that isn't northern Kazakhstan, the northernmost tip of China, or Russia north of those place, and all of Europe that isn't Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, the UK north of London, most of the Netherlands, Scandinavia, northern Germany, northern Poland, the Baltics, or Belarus. Unless the rest of the crew is able and willing to subdue her, trying to force her down is pointless.

Currently, the only two ways we have to come down puts you in Kazakhstan near the launch site at Baikonur (Russian space infrastructure dates from when Kazakhstan was part of the USSR) or in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida (Dragon can land anywhere there is water, but a captive astronaut would be taken to the usual splashdown site). Any astronaut that has been in space for more than a few weeks will have deconditioned and will be in no shape to fight off captors at landing. Although it is possible for many astronauts to walk unaided upon return to earth, not all can manage the feat, and everyone is aided to avoid an embarrassing and potentially dangerous fall. I wouldn't expect an astronaut on land to get more than a mile or two from the capsule in the first 24 hours without help. After that, they get their "land legs" back, and can start to walk more or less normally. Of course, a much shorter stay in space doesn't pose that problem.

To put a nice fine point on the last paragraph, a criminal suspect forced to land in Kazakhstan will be placed in a recliner and warmed with blankets, then taken to a tent and given a medical exam. After that, it's a ride in an Mi-8 helicopter back to Baikonur. Prior to the helicopter ride, they'd be in the middle of nowhere, so it would make sense to take them into custody as they board or exit the helicopter.

Astronauts landing in Dragon will be picked up by a small (160') ship that barely has room for a helipad. The astronauts are taken by helicopter (Airbus H225, 18-seat configuration) to land, so again, just before or just after the helicopter ride would be the place to take custody.