The Verity regional sales meeting was held in the ballroom of a glass hotel on the waterfront, on the fourteenth of March, under a banner that said VERITY 2027: THE INTIMATE FUTURE in a pale, elegant serif.

Lea had been booked to speak at 10:40. Regulatory Landscape: HCP-2 and the Path to Market. Twenty minutes, then questions. She’d written the slides herself.

She stood in the wings of the stage at 10:35 in her best charcoal suit, wide-leg trousers, a high-necked ivory blouse over the silk camisole, the fine chain at her throat, and looked out at the room through a gap in the curtain. Two hundred chairs. Round tables, white cloths, water glasses, Verity-branded notebooks. Sixty-two sales directors from eleven countries in good suits, and their teams, and a front table reserved for Verity’s executives and board.

She found the front table without meaning to. Okafor. The head of product. Two board members she didn’t recognize, a man and a woman, with place cards. And a third place card, second seat from the left, face-down on an empty plate. Nobody in the chair.

She sent regrets. Lea looked at the empty chair for a long moment, and breathed out.

Lea stepped back from the gap.

Under her suit, the cage. It had not come off in eight weeks — not for cleanings, which were done through its bars, with saline and the stinging blue compound; not for anything. Her clit had not been touched by anything but air and spray since the morning of the triangle. Eight weeks. Fifty-seven days. And the healing was done — Anand had confirmed it on Tuesday, all sites closed, all sites sound — and still the cage stayed, holding everything a centimetre clear, and the triangle held her clit up and out inside it, and the rings hung, and her clit had been swollen and throbbing for so long that she no longer had any memory of it being anything else.

Deep in her, the ring. Listening.

She had not asked about it again. Not since February. She’d kept the rule. She had a title she couldn’t open and five faint dots on a grey diagram and a word, yet, and that was all she had, and some nights she lay in Abby’s bed with her wrists tethered and the sleep hood hissing and went round and round them in the dark — firmware capabilities, v2.0, associated elements, yet — and clenched around the plug and felt the ring, and could not get from any of them to anything at all.

“Ninety seconds,” said a stagehand with a headset.

Lea nodded. She put her hand flat against the curtain to steady herself, and felt, under the blouse, the tourmaline stones shift on their bars, and the bars pull, and the familiar wire of it go down through her into the cage.

You’ve stood at the head of a table with your clit being tapped by a phone, she told herself. You did the whole Hadley closing like that. You can do twenty minutes with nothing happening at all.

Nothing was happening at all. That was true. The platform was passive. Sensing only. She’d written that sentence herself, in the De Novo. She’d made it small and dull.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the MC, “please welcome Halo Biometric’s General Counsel—”

She walked out into the light.

She was good. She knew she was good. Twenty minutes, clean and clear and confident — the classification pathway, the De Novo, the timeline to clearance, the international picture, the privacy architecture. She’d done it a thousand times in a hundred rooms. Her voice was steady. Her slides were elegant. Her clicker worked. The tongue stud clicked once, faintly, against her teeth on the word sensing, and nobody in the room could possibly have heard it but her.

On slide eleven she put up the device description. Her words. A passive implantable intravaginal sensing platform for continuous monitoring of pelvic floor function, comprising a primary sensor array and associated elements. And she stood there under the lights and read it aloud to two hundred people, in her lawyer’s voice — implantable intravaginal sensing platform — with the thing itself seated at the top of her, locked, listening. She heard herself say associated elements and felt, for no reason she could name, the bars through her nipples, and the rings, and the triangle. Passive, she told the room. She believed it. It was in the filing.

On slide fourteen — secondary applications: under development — a hand went up at the back. A regional director, Italian, cheerful. “And when can we sell the secondary applications?” Laughter around the room. He grinned. “Is that what this afternoon is about?”

More laughter. Lea smiled. She heard herself say, smoothly, “I’ll leave the afternoon to Ms. Maddox. My job is to make sure there’s a legal path for whatever she shows you.”

“Will you be there?” the Italian called.

The room laughed again. Easy, friendly, collegial laughter. Lea stood in the light with the clicker in her hand, and her face was perfectly composed, and her pulse was a hundred and twenty, and somewhere, in a hotel suite twelve floors above, a line was lifting.

“I’m afraid I have calls,” she said.

Somewhere in the room, someone laughed again, warmly, and the moment passed.

Lea did not take any calls.

She went up to the twelfth floor, to the suite Halo had booked, and stood outside the door with her keycard in her hand for a long time, and then she knocked, because she could not make her hand use the keycard.

Abby opened it. She was dressed for the afternoon — a black suit, sharp, a white shirt open at the throat, the chain with its three keys lying against her sternum: the shield key, the small brass padlock key, and the steel tuning fork. Behind her, the suite had been turned into something Lea recognized. A rolling steel tray. A clothes rack. Priya, at a table by the window with two laptops open. And Dr. Anand, in her grey sweater, sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea.

“You’re early,” said Abby.

“He asked if I’d be there.” Lea came in, and Abby closed the door. “The Italian. In front of everyone. Will you be there. And they all laughed, and I stood there and—” Her voice was going up. Priya didn’t look up from her laptops. Dr. Anand set her tea down. “Does anyone know? Does anyone in that room know it’s me? Did you tell Verity? Did you tell Okafor? What am I going to — what’s going to happen to me down there, Abby, what does it—”

“That’s five questions,” said Abby. “In one breath.”

“I don’t care—”

“Yes, you do.” Abby didn’t raise her voice. “Every one of them is about the second product. Isn’t it, Lea? Everything is now.” She came closer. “Who’s in the room this afternoon. Why they’re there. What they’re going to see. What’s inside you. What it does. Every question you have left in the world is the same question.”

Lea stood in the middle of the hotel suite and shook.

“You can ask it,” Abby said quietly. “Right now. The real one. The one you’ve been not-asking since January. Ask me, and I’ll tell you. All of it. Who’s in the room, the supplement, what’s inside you and what it’s for.” She tilted her head. “And then you’ll walk down to that ballroom this afternoon knowing. Hooded, strapped, in front of two hundred people — knowing exactly what’s about to happen to you, second by second, before it does.” A pause. “Or you can not ask. And find out the way they do.”

Lea opened her mouth.

Ask her. The deposition voice. Ask. You have the right to know what’s being done to your own body. Any court in the country would—

Every edge she’s had in her sleep is mapped. She didn’t know where that thought had come from. She’d never read it. It came up out of nowhere, in Abby’s voice, and she didn’t know what it meant.

She thought about knowing. Walking down to the ballroom knowing. Lying in the chair with the hood laced over her face, and knowing what the next ten seconds held, and the ten after that, and watching it come toward her, blind, the whole way. She thought about not knowing. Lying in the dark, and the room full of strangers, and the ring, and then — whatever it was. Arriving. All at once.

She found she could not choose. She stood there with her mouth open and could not choose, and she understood that Abby had known she wouldn’t be able to, and had offered anyway, so that Lea would remember, later, that she had been offered.

She closed her mouth.

“I don’t want to know,” she whispered.

“I know.” Abby reached out and, for a moment, laid her palm flat against Lea’s cheek. “That’s why I’m going to make you find out in front of everyone.”

Getting ready took an hour.

Dr. Anand checked her first. Blood pressure, heart, a light in her eyes, two fingers on her wrist — “you’re running high, Lea, but you’ve been running high since September” — and then the cage. She had Lea stand with her feet apart on a towel on the hotel carpet and examined every piercing through the bars with a penlight. Nipples. Labia. Triangle. Each one. “Beautiful,” she murmured, to herself. “Fully healed. Lovely work.”

“It’s your work,” said Abby.

“It’s her body.” Dr. Anand clicked off the penlight and looked up at Lea. “I’ll be in the room the whole time, Lea. Front row, by the stage. If I see anything I don’t like on Priya’s screens, I’ll stop it, and I won’t ask anyone’s permission. Not Abby’s. Not Verity’s. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll have this.” The bell. The same small brass bell, warm from the doctor’s palm. “Drop it, and I’ll hear it. I’ll have it stopped in under three seconds.” She pressed it into Lea’s hand and closed her fingers over it. “That’s my promise. Not hers. Mine.”

Lea held the bell and looked at the small grey-haired woman who had put a ring at the top of her, and understood that she believed her completely.

Then Abby.

The suit came off. The blouse, the camisole, the trousers. The plug, docked at six that morning on the app’s order, stayed. Lea stood naked in a hotel suite twelve floors above two hundred strangers with nothing on but the cage and the chain at her throat, and Abby unlocked the chain — the tiny padlock, for the first time since December — and took it off her, and put the wide black leather collar on her instead, and buckled it, and padlocked it at the back.

The thigh bands she left as they were; they never came off now. Wrist cuffs. Heavy, fleece-lined, with steel D-rings, padlocked. Ankle cuffs, the same. A wide leather belt around her waist, cinched, with rings on either side. Each lock a small, distinct, final sound.

“Mouth,” said Abby.

The gag. Not the bit, not the ball. A ring gag, padded steel, holding her jaw open. Lea’s tongue lay loose and helpless in her open mouth with the stud in it.

Then the hood.

Abby held it up in front of her. It was new. Black leather, soft, thinner than the old one — Lea could see the lamplight through it in places, faintly — with nose ports, and a wide opening for the ring gag, and laces up the back, and across the eyes a fine closed seam — a zip, Lea realized, the teeth so small they were almost invisible — so that the eyes could be opened from outside, by someone else, if someone else wanted. And on the front, over the place where Lea’s forehead would be, embossed small and neat in silver, a word. A brand. HALO.

Inside, over each ear, a padded panel. Lea knew them. She’d slept in panels like them for six weeks.

“So they know whose you are,” said Abby.

She pulled it on. The world went black — not quite black; dim, warm, close, the faint glow of the suite lamps through the thin leather. The laces drew tight at the back of her skull, one cross at a time. Her own breath roared in the nose ports.

And then — nothing.

She waited for the hiss. Her whole body waited for it; her shoulders were already loosening for it, the way they did every night now when the sleep hood went on. Rain on a far roof. The sea in a shell.

It didn’t come. The panels sat over her ears, padded and sealed, and inside them there was only silence. Not quiet — silence. The room was gone. Priya’s keyboard, Anand’s teacup, the traffic twelve floors down, Abby’s breathing: gone. There was only the inside of her own head, and her breath in the nose ports, and her heart.

She stood in it, blind and deaf and gagged, and didn’t know how long.

Then, very close — so close it seemed to come from the middle of her skull — a voice.

Halo. Accessory connected.

Lea jerked so hard that hands caught her from both sides.

It was a woman’s voice. Soft. Warm. Unhurried. Not Abby’s; not anyone’s. Too smooth to be a person and too kind to be a machine. It spoke right into the center of her, intimate as a thought, and then it was gone, and there was silence again.

Something happened at her left breast. She didn’t feel a touch; she felt — attention. A presence near the bar. Priya, she’d learn later, with a slim white pen, holding it a millimetre off the jewelry.

Element zero-one. Left nipple. Online.

She jerked again. The hands held her. She hadn’t felt anything — no tick, no pulse, nothing in the steel — but the voice had said it, inside her head, and named the part of her body as calmly as a station announcer naming a stop.

Element zero-two. Right nipple. Online.

Then, lower — the presence moving, crouching, close between her legs, near the cage.

Element zero-three. Left labium. Online.
Element zero-four. Right labium. Online.

She was shaking. The voice was so gentle. It was the gentlest voice she had ever heard, and it was reading out her body like an inventory.

The presence came very close to her clit. She flinched before the voice spoke, and swayed, and someone caught her elbow.

Element zero-five. Clitoral. Online.

Five.

Five faint dots on a grey diagram, alone at her kitchen island in February, with fine lines running from each of them to the ring.

The thought got as far as five and stopped, because there was nowhere for it to go. She knew now that the jewelry was talking to something. She could hear it being talked about. She had no idea what it was saying.

Fingers at her jaw, through the gag’s opening. The presence at her mouth.

Element zero-six. Lingual. Online.

Six. There had been six. She’d only counted five.

A pause. Then the voice again, a little slower, as if summing up for a client:

All elements online. Subject L-zero-one. Platform: present. Firmware: one point four. Mode: passive."* A beat. *"Standing by.

And silence.

She stood in it. Subject L-zero-one. That was her. The voice knew her name — not her name; her number. It had read her out, piece by piece, and then it had said standing by, and she understood that it was waiting. For what, she didn’t know.

And then, last, something cool and metallic against her caged crotch, and a series of clicks, and a strange new weight. Abby’s voice — and it came from very far away now, through leather and padding and silence, small and muffled, a voice from another room.

“Shield’s back on. Over the cage, for the walk down. Nobody sees anything until it’s time.” A pause. “Then they see everything.”

Hands on her arms. Abby on one side, Priya on the other. The hood said nothing at all.

She couldn’t hear anything. That was the thing she would remember about the walk down: that it happened in total silence. The door — she felt the draft of it. A corridor — carpet under her bare feet, cool air on her skin, her own breath roaring in the nose ports, the only sound in the world. An elevator; she felt it drop, and her stomach drop with it, and the plug shift, and the ring sit there, deep, listening. Another corridor. A door. And then, through the soles of her bare feet, through the floor, a vibration — a deep, diffuse trembling that she understood, slowly, was a large room full of people. Two hundred voices. She could feel them in her feet and couldn’t hear one.

Hands guiding her up three steps. Bright light, even through the hood. Hands turning her, sitting her, laying her back.

The chair. She knew it by its shape against her back, by the angle of the leg rests, by the cool padded steel ring at the headrest as the back of her collar clicked onto it. They’d brought the chair. The chair, from the lab.

Straps. Upper arms. Forearms. Wrists. The bell, pressed into her right fist — and a hand closing around her fist, small and dry and firm, and squeezing twice. Anand. She knew it the way you know a voice. I’m here. Then the hand was gone. Waist. Thighs. The leg rests rising and parting, slowly, mechanically, and she felt them carry her open and couldn’t hear whether the room had gone quiet to watch. Knees. Ankles.

She lay strapped and open in silence and waited.

“Halo,” said the voice, in the center of her head. “System check.”

Her whole body flinched against the straps.

Accessory: hood. Connected.
Platform: present. Seated. Temperature thirty-seven point one.

She felt something at the top of her — not a touch; a warmth, a faint awareness, as if the ring had turned its head.

Element zero-one. Online. Element zero-two. Online. Element zero-three. Online. Element zero-four. Online. Element zero-five. Online. Element zero-six. Online.

Faster this time. A roll call taken by someone who already knew the answers.

Subject: L-zero-one. Heart rate one hundred and twelve. Conductance elevated."* The softest pause. *"Subject is aroused.

Lea made a sound through the ring gag. The voice didn’t stop for it.

Firmware: one point four. Mode: passive. Update available.
Ambient audio: pass-through enabled.

And the room came in.

All at once, like surfacing. Two hundred people. Chairs. A cough. Glasses. A low, rolling murmur of voices that broke and dropped as she heard it, into a hush — the hush of a room watching a woman flinch. And under it, close, warm, amplified, from every side at once —

“Good afternoon,” said Abby. “Thank you all for staying.”

HALO BIOMETRIC — PARTICIPANT NOTES (PRIVATE)

Subject: L.
Day: 100 (cycle 2).
Entry by: A.M. — 13:58, mobile.

She was magnificent this morning. Twenty minutes on HCP-2 from the main stage with all of it in her and not a crack. HR 120 on the Italian’s question. P. watched the whole talk on the AV feed in 1408. Says she’s never seen better poise.

She looked at P.'s empty chair before her talk and breathed out. HR fell 9 beats. P. is upstairs, in 1408, with a sandwich, waiting for the lights.

Offered L. the whole truth in the suite. All of it, in exchange for one question. She couldn’t choose. Then she chose not to know. She chose it, out loud, in front of Anand and Priya. She’ll remember she was offered.

Hood on first, silent — she braced for the sleep hiss and got nothing. Then Priya brought each element up and the hood announced them. Six names in the gentlest voice Priya could synthesize. She jumped at every one. Body-area mesh, no leads. She knows now that the jewelry talks. She still doesn’t know what it says. Handshake at 13:51, still v1.4, passive. v2.0 staged for live push on stage. I want her watching the progress bar when it installs. I want her to read every word and not understand one of them until she feels it.

Room is full.

Going on.