Chapter III
'A Slave, a Branded Slave!'
1
I must have been driven to my limits by that last round of Torture and Zeta's enthusiastic fucking. Next thing I remember was waking and realising I was on a bed – a proper bed, for the first time for weeks, months probably! Not all that comfortable a bed, an ordinary basic hospital bed with a worn, hard mattress, and my still-shackled wrists and ankles were locked to the bars at the head and foot. Still, I could move about a bit, there was a good, soft survival blanket over me, a pillow behind my head, it was more comfortable than anything I'd experienced since I left home back in November before the coup, for what I thought would be just another weekend of Corrective Training ...
There were pads on my chest with wires, monitoring me now, not torturing me, and a drip-feed attached to me arm. I lay dozily, gazing at a white ceiling with a bright lamp in it. Eventually a male nurse came in, checked the monitoring apparatus, entered something on his tablet, and departed without a word. A while more, and he returned with a more senior man, presumably a doctor, who checked me over equally coldly. "She's okay," he declared, "It was shock mainly. Usual burns and bruises, a bit of bleeding in the genitalia, just superficial trauma. Normal feed by mouth for twenty-four hours, then they can have her back. Tell Zeta"
My heart sank at those words, "they can have her back." All too obvious, I was in the Medical Care Unit, so-called, really just a repair shop where victims are patched up and despatched, quick as pos, back to the Torture Chambers! My naked form wriggled under the blanket, no longer enjoying the comfort, feeling still the soreness and cruel sensitivity my ordeal had imposed on me.
The twenty-four hours passed all too quickly. The food was welcome, and a big jug of water which I could suck through a tube was blissful. Then the Orderly came and released me, still treating me as if I were a dumb animal of no use or interest to him – at least the Torturers get some pleasure from me, I thought! I stepped down to the floor. He clipped my wrist-shackles behind my back, and said the only words he ever spoke to me, "Out, turn left, keep ahead." I walked, unsteadily at first, through the door, into a corridor and along it as he'd instructed. A double door at the end brought me into the clinic where I'd been examined after the Torture Sessions, a white-coated man there, engaged in checking some other poor whimpering body, waved me down the ramp, back to the Console in the middle of the four Torture Chambers. I was sick with dread.
The Guard checked my ID on my wrist-iron, then to my surprise, pointed to the passage between the NE and SE Chambers, the one leading to the Waiting Area where we'd sat on the morning we were first admitted, and I'd been again when I was sent to be handed over to the SIS. What was this about?
I followed his instruction, in the Waiting Area I sat on the bench as indicated by the lanky Guard, still reading his comic. A couple of youngsters, still in sports clothes they'd been arrested in, started sobbing, pale with terror, at the sight of my naked, scarred and shackled body, a slightly older girl between them squeezed their hands to try to comfort them, she gazed at me with a look of fascination, there was even a hint of excitement in the quivering of her long, bare legs!
They were summoned upstairs one-by-one for processing. I was thinking, am I going to be tried now, and sentenced to death? But this is just the Civil Tribune, an ordinary Police Court, surely I'll have to face the Tribune Martial?
Another girl came along the corridor from the Console, she was still wearing pale blue briefs and bra, she was white, visibly trembling. She had to sit beside me, her still undamaged girl-skin rubbed against mine, sore and sweating. I glanced at her, trying to give an encouraging smile, but her flax-blue eyes were distended with terror – no doubt why she was here, she was about to be handed over for Torture.
She too was dealt with before me. At last, I climbed the stairs and stood, completely naked this time, at the ready, before the grey-suited magistrate. I felt conscious of the male eyes all around me, not only Court staff and Guards, even members of the public are allowed into the Courtroom, and the sight of a totally nude, shackled and Torture-scarred female was evidently of particular interest.
After reading a bundle of papers, he spoke. "Number and name?" I gave them. "I understand you've finally made the sensible decision to co-operate?" "Yes, Sir," I replied, sadly. "And you have confessed that you are an enemy of the State, right?" "Yes, Sir." "That means, of course, that you are automatically under sentence of death. When and how you die will be decided by the Court of the Tribune Martial." He glanced at me, I nodded, I knew.
"But," he went on, "I am informed by the Special Interrogation Service that they wish to investigate your case further, there may be other matters on which you will need to be interrogated." I sighed, dreading what that meant. "Your mother is still under Interrogation." God, I thought, they must be putting her through martyrdom! "You have at last given names and useful information about your accomplices and other female subversives. They of course have been rounded up and will be interrogated." I sobbed softly, feeling sick with shame. "And there's your sister, Laura. You still refuse to say where she is." I haven't the faintest idea where she is, but useless to say that. "She will be caught, and duly dealt with."
He paused, enjoyed my anxious breathing, my tearful eyes, my fearful tremor. "So, for the time being, at the request of Captain Zeta, you will be transferred to the Punishment Unit, where you will be put to useful work as a slave, undertaking rigorous hard labour. Do you understand?" "Yes, Sir."
I didn't understand, but at least it wasn't more Torture! I was directed out of the door from the Courtroom, across the Exercise Yard to the Foyer. There an office-slave emerged, and she escorted me through the Stripping Room, past the staircase and on into a room I'd not been in before, the Stores. She showed a paper to a Guard, "She won't need clothes, she can share her oppo's," he said; the office-slave took me to the end of the long, narrow room lined with large baskets full of different coloured slave-clothes, through the door at the end. "Wait here," she said.
Branding! He said it in such a matter-of-fact way. Of course, I'd seen the marks on the thighs of all the various classes of slaves, from the office-girls in their smart miniskirts to the naked Torture Chamber slaves like Rat and Piglet, a familiar pattern. Now I'm to be a branded slave too!
The area beyond the double door was a wide passageway, with light flooding in from open doors at the left-hand end. On the far side was a large alcove in which I saw a stove, a wooden rack on the wall holding a range of irons, and on the floor was a rectangular concrete platform the same as I'd experienced in the Torture Chamber.
I waited for a few minutes, then a group of men appeared from a door at the right-hand end of the passage, accompanied by a slavegirl. Their leader looked at up the paper which the office-girl had left clipped to a board in the alcove. "381152 Eulalia Merida?" "Yes Sir." "Over here!"
I crossed to the platform. One of the men, a Cadet, unlocked my wrist shackles, then tightened them with his key. "You know the procedure, slut, lie down!" Indeed, all too well I knew, I sat down then lay back, stretching out my arms and legs. Wrists and ankles locked to chains so I was X-stretched. The slave was busy already heating the irons. Two Cadets knelt down and took hold of my left leg, both gripping it very firmly. The fourth man, a Guard, knelt straddling my waist, grasping the top of my thigh and my groin. My female organs responded instinctively to this handling, he detected that reaction and began kneading and clutching at my pussy-lips in a way that had my pulse racing in excitement as well as fear.
The irons were ready now, the leading Guard took the first one from the stove and knelt down. My left thigh-muscles tensed, the three other men gripped even tighter. "Owwwwwww!" Although my inner thigh was already scarred by the cruelties Zeta and his team had inflicted, the skin on the front had been left intact, and it was here, near the top, that the first brand-mark was placed, the broken cross of the Military Security Commission, larger than the brands used in the Torture Chamber, about 10 centimetres across, and very, very painful.
I squealed and tossed my head back and forth, soaking in the pain, while the Guard selected the next iron. This had been prepared by the slavegirl with the digits of my prisoner number fitted into a clamp. Now glowing hot, they were pressed onto the front of my thigh so they read down from the broken cross brand nearly to my knee, 3-8-1-1-5-2.
They let go of my left leg and allowed me to kick and twist it for a bit, still shrieking as the heat burnt deep into my flesh, the succulent meaty scent filling the passageway. Now they took hold of my right thigh. On that, the brand was the lightning flash of the Special Interrogation Service, and beneath it the number M68A across (that, as I was soon to learn, was the number of my slave-squad), and the letters IPCG running down. They stood up and watched me kicking and squirming as the red of the tattoos deepened to a livid crimson. At last the leader smirked, "Right, Eulalia, you're a slave now – a branded slave!"
