The male trial opened on the nineteenth of May. Lea knew the date because she had drafted the protocol amendment herself, in March, at her corner desk — HCM-2, Phase I, healthy male volunteers, n=12 — and because it was the first thing in five months that she had been allowed to read all the way through. There were no grey boxes in it. No restricted sections. It was a male device, and nobody minded her knowing what it did.

The consent packets started arriving on her desk the week before. Twelve of them. As general counsel she reviewed each one for completeness before it went to the ethics board: signature, date, initials on every page, witness line, emergency contact, the participant questionnaire. Boring. Clerical. Exactly the kind of work she’d have handed a paralegal at the firm. She did it herself, because she didn’t have a paralegal, and because it was the only part of her job where she knew everything.

She knew the device. She knew it better than anyone in the building except Priya. Integrated urethral element. Prince Albert anchor. Base ring with adaptive constriction. Optional rear module. She’d reviewed the risk section line by line. She knew what adaptive meant. She knew what rear module meant. She had, God help her, drafted the sentence Participants may experience scheduled maintenance procedures (see Appendix C), and she knew exactly what was in Appendix C, and she had made it sound like a dental cleaning.

She read the first nine packets on a Tuesday afternoon. Regional sales reps from Verity. Two Halo engineers who’d volunteered. A graduate student. A retired anesthetist. Ordinary names. Ordinary signatures. Men who’d read the participant information sheet — she’d written that too — and thought easy money.

The tenth packet was on top of the pile on Wednesday morning.

She opened it and read the name on the cover sheet and didn’t move for a long time.

Participant: Craig Alan Whitford.

She knew the handwriting before she’d finished reading it. She’d seen it on a hundred birthday cards. On the lease of their first apartment. On the marriage license, in a registrar’s office in the rain, eleven years ago, the C a little too large, the tail of the d running off the line. On the separation agreement, two years ago, which she’d drafted, because he couldn’t afford a lawyer and she’d told him she’d be fair, and she had been.

The same signature. At the bottom of page forty-one. Under a paragraph she had written.

She read every page. She told herself it was her job. It was. She read his questionnaire — Do you have any prior experience with chastity devices? No. Do you have any prior experience with urethral insertion? No. Why are you interested in participating? — and in the box, in that handwriting, a little too large:

Honestly? The money’s good and it sounds like a laugh. I’m not worried. I figure I can handle a few weeks of anything.

She sat with that sentence for a while.

I figure I can handle a few weeks of anything. It was so exactly him. The Craig who’d said he’d handle the mortgage, and the move, and her hours, and then hadn’t, and had told her for two years that everything was fine. The Craig who’d been so sure of himself, so easy, so certain the world was a manageable size. The Craig who’d been sleeping with a woman from his office for eight months while telling her, every night, that he was fine.

She’d found out on a Thursday. She’d been gone by Friday afternoon.

She turned the page.

Scope of consent. She’d written it. It was the same template as everyone else’s. And there, in the middle of the second paragraph, in the clean font, in her own drafting:

…including but not limited to the HCM-2 base ring, urethral element, anchor piercing, and associated components…

Including but not limited to.

She knew that phrase. She’d struck it from a thousand documents in her old life. She’d signed it herself, strapped to a table in January, with a speculum in her. And she’d put it here, in his packet, in all twelve packets, because Abby had told her to and because it was standard, and because she hadn’t, at the time, been thinking about who would sign it.

Associated components. She knew what the associated components were. She’d read the engineering spec. There was a component in the spec that wasn’t in the participant information sheet, because the participant information sheet only described what was in Phase I, and the component she was thinking of was listed under Phase I — Configuration B (keyholder-elected). A cage. Contoured, short, sized under flaccid, threaded down over the urethral element and locked to the base ring. The information sheet didn’t mention it. The scope of consent didn’t name it. It didn’t have to. Including but not limited to.

He didn’t know it existed.

She turned to the last page. The administrative page. Witness line: blank, for her to sign at the fitting. And above it, two fields.

Emergency contact: — and in his handwriting, a name she hadn’t expected, though she should have. Dana Ruiz (sister-in-law), and Dana’s mobile number, the one she’d had for fifteen years. He’d never updated it. It was the emergency contact from their marriage, copied over from some old form in his head. He’d written down her sister, without thinking, as the person to call if something happened to him.

And below it, in a different hand — typed, actually, an administrative entry added after the participant had signed — the last field on the form.

Assigned keyholder (Configuration B): Ward, P. (Verity Wellness, Board)

Lea put the packet down on her desk, very carefully, square to the edge.

She didn’t call him. She couldn’t. She’d have had to explain what she knew, and how she knew it, and what she was, and what was in her. She couldn’t warn him. There was nothing in the packet that wasn’t legal. There was nothing in it she hadn’t drafted. She sat at her corner desk in the north light with her breasts at one in their rings and the ring at the top of her listening and looked at his signature, and at Pauline’s name typed under it, and understood that she was going to initial this packet as complete, because it was, and send it to the ethics board, and then, on whatever day they set, sit somewhere and sign the witness line.

She initialed it. Her initials came out steady. That frightened her more than anything.

She saw him two days later, in the lobby.

She was coming in from the car at 8:40 and he was standing by the reception desk in a navy suit she didn’t recognize, with a visitor badge on a lanyard and a Halo tote bag over his shoulder, talking to the receptionist and laughing at something. He was a little heavier than she remembered. His hair was shorter. He looked well. He looked, she thought, pleased with himself, the way he always had when he’d decided something was going to be easy.

He turned and saw her and his face did several things in quick succession.

“Lea.” He came over. He didn’t try to hug her; there was a moment where they both decided that, simultaneously. “God. Hi. I wondered if I’d — I mean, I knew you worked here. Dana said.” He gestured at his badge, half-sheepish, half-proud. “Intake. I’m in the — there’s a study.”

“I know,” said Lea.

“Of course you do. You’re the—” He waved a hand at the building. “Big boss lawyer. Dana told me. That’s great, Lea. Really.” He smiled, the old easy smile. “Bit of a change from the dead men.”

“A bit.”

“You look—” He hesitated. She watched him look at her: the thinness, the stillness, the fine gunmetal chain at her throat, the cream blouse. He didn’t know what he was seeing. “You look different. Good. Different good.” He laughed. “Sorry. This is weird. Is this weird?”

You have no idea, she thought. You have no idea what’s under my blouse, or what’s in me, or what’s going to happen to you on whatever Thursday they set, or who’s going to be sitting next to you when it does.

“It’s a little weird,” she said.

“It’s just a few weeks,” he said. “It’s money, mostly. I’m between things. And honestly—” he dropped his voice, conspiratorial, grinning — “it sounds kind of fun. Some kind of — you know. Wearable thing. They’ve got this woman from the board who’s sort of my — supervisor, I guess? Older lady. Very classy. She interviewed me herself. Said I seemed like someone who could handle it.” He shrugged. “I can handle it.”

Lea looked at him.

He was falling. She could see it. He didn’t know it yet. He was standing at the top of the hole in a navy suit with a tote bag, telling her it looked shallow. And she was standing at the bottom, with a ring at the end of her and steel around her breasts and forty-odd ruins behind her, looking up at him.

She thought about telling him. She thought about it for three full seconds. Craig. Listen to me. Go home. Use the word. Whatever word she gives you, use it on the first day, before she—

The rings tightened. To two. Gently. Briefly. A hand on her arm.

Abby. Somewhere upstairs. Watching the line jump.

“I’m sure you can,” Lea said.

“Thanks.” He smiled. He’d always believed her. “Hey — maybe coffee sometime? Not like — just coffee. It’d be good to catch up. I feel like I never—” He stopped. “I don’t know. I never really said sorry properly.”

“Maybe,” said Lea. And then, because she couldn’t not, because it came up out of her from the place below everything: “Craig. The woman from the board.”

“Mm?”

“Her name’s Pauline.”

“Yeah. Pauline. You know her?”

Lea looked at him for a long moment.

“A little,” she said. “Be careful what you tell her.”

He laughed. “About what?”

“About anything.”

He was still smiling, puzzled, when the elevator came and she got in it and the doors closed between them.

Pauline came to the house on a Saturday.

Abby told Lea on the Friday night, in the kitchen, without looking at her. “Pauline’s coming for dinner tomorrow. Business. Verity’s board wants a site visit before they move to the next stage. She’s chosen to do it informally.” A pause. “Here.”

“Here,” Lea repeated.

“You’ll serve.” Abby was chopping something. The knife was very steady. “You’ll be in the grey dress, the bands with the hobble chain, the collar under a scarf. You’ll bring the courses and clear them and pour the wine and you will not speak unless she speaks to you. If she speaks to you, you’ll answer, politely and briefly, and you won’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know.” The knife stopped. “And she won’t touch you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I told her she can’t.” Abby started chopping again. “And because she doesn’t need to.”

Pauline arrived at seven, alone, in a dark green dress and the reading glasses on their cord, with a bottle of something very old wrapped in tissue, and stood in the front hall and looked up at the stone and the glass and said, “Oh, Abby. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what you’d build,” in a tone of such warm delight that Lea, standing behind Abby in the grey dress with the hobble chain between her thighs and the scarf around her collar, felt sick.

Then Pauline looked at her.

“And Ms. Calloway. How nice.”

“Good evening,” said Lea.

Pauline looked at her for a moment longer. Her eyes went — briefly, unhurried, the way they’d gone to the dome in Lea’s office — to the scarf at Lea’s throat. To the hem of the grey dress, where, if you knew to look, the chain made the fabric fall a little strangely between her knees. To her chest, where under the dress the rings sat at one. Pauline couldn’t possibly see them. Lea knew she couldn’t possibly see them.

“How nice,” Pauline said again, softly, and went past her into the house.

Lea would remember the dinner in pieces. Small steps on the oak floor — the hobble chain allowed her a stride about the length of her own foot — carrying plates in from the kitchen. The candlelight on the glass. The terrace dark beyond it, and the river below, doing nothing. Abby at the head of the table and Pauline on her right, and the two of them talking, talking, talking, in the language Lea had once been fluent in and now only half heard: valuation, earn-out, retention, IP assignment, change of control. Lea pouring the wine. Lea clearing the plates. Lea standing by the sideboard with her hands folded in front of her, because Abby had told her that was where she’d stand between courses, and because standing still was easier than walking.

And Pauline never once looked at her while she talked. That was what Lea noticed. Through three courses, Pauline’s eyes stayed on Abby — warm, attentive, delighted — and Lea stood by the sideboard like furniture and was not seen at all.

She’d been prepared to be looked at. She hadn’t been prepared for this.

It was during dessert that Pauline said, lightly, cracking the crust of a crème brûlée with the back of her spoon: “I’ve taken one of your participants, by the way. For the male arm. I hope you don’t mind.”

Abby’s hand stopped on the stem of her glass. “Verity’s allocation is four.”

“Mm. I’ve taken one of the four. Personally.” Pauline ate a spoonful. “I thought I should be hands-on. I’ll be keyholding him myself. It’s useful to understand the product from both sides of the lock, don’t you think? You always told me that, in Palo Alto. Know the user.”

“Which one,” said Abby.

“Whitford.” Pauline set her spoon down. “Craig Whitford. Rather sweet. Very sure of himself.” And then, for the first time all evening, she turned her head and looked across the room — past the candles, past the glass, past Abby — at Lea, standing by the sideboard with her hands folded and the hobble chain between her knees.

“I believe you were married to him,” she said. “Weren’t you, Ms. Calloway?”

The room went absolutely still.

Lea looked at Abby. She couldn’t help it. And Abby — Abby’s face, which Lea had seen cold and amused and hungry and composed and once, in the back room, cracked — Abby’s face had gone completely white.

She didn’t know.

Lea saw it land. Saw it go through Abby like the needle in January. Abby had not known. Abby, who knew Lea’s resting heart rate on any given Tuesday and the length of every one of her edges and the exact second she’d pressed I ACCEPT on a sleeve in September — Abby hadn’t known that the tenth man in the male trial was Lea’s ex-husband. Because Verity had allocated him. Because Pauline had chosen him. Because Pauline had reached, without asking, without telling, into Abby’s trial, and taken the one man in the world who knew Lea before Abby did.

“Yes,” said Lea, from the sideboard. Politely. Briefly. “We were married for nine years.”

“Nine years.” Pauline smiled. “He must know you so well.” She turned back to Abby. “Isn’t that interesting? I thought it was interesting.” She picked up her spoon again. “The fitting’s set for the twelfth. Your lab, I assume — I’d like to use the Halo facility; it’s better than ours. Anand, if she’s free. And I’d like Ms. Calloway to witness. She’s general counsel, isn’t she? I believe the protocol requires a legal witness for Configuration B.” She took another spoonful. “This is wonderful brûlée, Abby. Did you make it yourself?”

Abby didn’t answer.

Lea, by the sideboard, watched her not answer. Watched her sit at the head of her own table in the house she had built, with her hand frozen on the stem of her glass and her face white and her eyes fixed on the woman beside her — and saw, for the first time in nine months, plainly, without any possibility of mistaking it, what Abby looked like when she was afraid.

It looked like Lea, Lea thought. It looked exactly like Lea in the mirror over the steel sink.

“Yes,” Abby said finally. Her voice was perfectly level. It cost her something; Lea could hear what. “I made it myself.”

“You always were good with your hands.” Pauline dabbed her mouth with her napkin and stood. “I should go. Thank you for a lovely evening.” She came round the table, and paused, as she passed the sideboard, beside Lea. Not close. Not touching. She never touched. She simply stopped, a foot away, and looked at Lea — properly, for the first time all night — with those pale, steady, unhurried eyes.

“The twelfth,” Pauline said. “Nine o’clock. I’m so glad you’ll be there.”

Then she went out into the hall, and the front door opened and closed, and a car started on the gravel, and it was quiet.

Abby sat at the head of the table for a long time after the car had gone. Lea stood by the sideboard, because she hadn’t been told she could do anything else.

Finally Abby said, without turning her head: “Did you know?”

“I reviewed his consent packet. On the fourteenth.” Lea’s voice was steady. “Her name was in the keyholder field. I initialed it as complete.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t ask.” It came out before she could stop it, and she heard it, and heard how it sounded — her voice, her rule, you don’t ask — and Abby heard it too, and turned her head, and looked at her.

Lea waited for the cabinet. The thigh bar. The rings to ten. Something.

Abby just looked at her. And then she put her face in her hands.

She didn’t make a sound. She sat at the head of her own table, in the candlelight, with her elbows on the cloth and her face in her hands, perfectly still, for a long time. Lea had never seen her do anything like it. Lea hadn’t known she could.

When she looked up, her face was composed again. Almost.

“The twelfth,” Abby said. “You’ll witness. You have to — the protocol requires it, and I can’t refuse her without telling her why, and I can’t tell her why.” She stood. “I’ll be there with you. Behind the glass. I’m not leaving you alone in a room with her.”

“Why?” said Lea.

It was a question. She heard it leave her. It wasn’t about the second product, or the platform, or anything in her — but it was a question, and she’d asked it, and she waited for what it would cost.

Abby looked at her for a long moment.

“Because she’s going to do something to him in that room,” Abby said, “that’s meant for us.” She picked up her glass, found it empty, set it down. “And I want to see your face when she does. So I’ll know how bad it is.”

She went upstairs.

Lea stood alone in the dining room in the grey dress, with the hobble chain between her knees and the candles burning down, and looked at the empty chair where Pauline had sat.

The twelfth. Nine o’clock.

She thought about Craig in the lobby, in his navy suit, grinning. I can handle it.

She thought about the cage in Configuration B, that he didn’t know existed.

She thought about her initials on his packet, steady, complete.

And then — because she was what she was now, because nine months had made her into it — she thought about the fact that she would be behind the glass, and that he would be on the table, and that for the first time since September, someone else would be the one strapped down, and she would be the one watching.

And somewhere at the top of her, the ring warmed — not a pulse, not anything Abby had sent — just warmed, on its own, as if it had heard her think it.

She stood very still and did not let herself understand what that meant.

HALO BIOMETRIC — PARTICIPANT NOTES (PRIVATE)

Subject: L-01.
Day: 70.

P. took Whitford. L.'s ex-husband. Through Verity’s allocation. I didn’t vet Verity’s four. I didn’t think I needed to.

L. knew. She reviewed the packet on the 14th. Didn’t tell me.

“You didn’t ask.”

She’s right. I didn’t.

P. at the house. Didn’t look at L. once until she wanted to. Then said his name.

Fitting: 12 June. P. keyholding. Config B. L. witnessing. P. requested her by role. Protocol requires it. I can’t refuse without telling P. I’m afraid, and if I tell P. I’m afraid she’s already won.

I sat at my own table and couldn’t move. L. watched me.

HR 71 at the end of the night. Lowest she’s been since March. Watching me afraid calmed her.

I don’t know what to do with that.

I’ll be behind the glass with her. I told her it was so I could see her face. That’s true.

It’s not why.