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You are breakable, though. They broke your ass last night.

Buckeye strenuously ignored any ideas her brain had about panic. Ignored them harder when the second ankle mirrored the first in restraint. What could go wrong with her feet tethered to a crossbar while she stood naked in a room full of men?

Her peers were in the same predicament. Well. At least the ones who weren’t kneeling on the other side of the room, lifting Covvie cock out of black trousers.

Priests were standing now, all along the row of recalcitrant Vicers. Moving behind them even as Mather began to speak again.

“I have explained the nature of the service the church requires,” he said. “There are those of you who already understand their place.” The backs of four heads bobbed, the noises they made soft and wet. “The rest of you must come to accept.”

Other sounds were happening at Buckeye’s back, but she couldn’t turn her head enough to see what the priests were doing. Some liquid spraying, the shuffling of shoes. She rotated her wrists, but the manacles were too small for her knuckles. There’d be no slipping loose.

“You are the first servants of your kind in New Covenant,” he went on. “A number of trials are necessary for us to determine the best way to proceed with others who may follow.”

One of the priests in black had his fingers threaded into the hair of the woman in front of him. He guided her movements. Buckeye put her eyes to the ground and tried to bend her knees inward, but it did nothing to close her legs. Mather kept talking.

“As our contact transported you here, they should have introduced you to SNG-8. The Song.” Something about this took a tight grip on her attention. “You would remember experiencing certain … responses. Desires.”

Buckeye’s pulse woke up.

That drug. Whatever they used to soak the fabric of those hoods.

“The Song is meant to encourage your acceptance of your new role serving the Church. The initial dosage, administered in transit, was designed to attune your systems to its effects. We’ve learned a full dose without prior conditioning can be … counterproductive.”

Counterproductive?

That itch between her thighs. The woman mewling in front of her through the gag. The man at her back, humping, mindless in the back of the truck. She would have let him. If there hadn’t been clothing and restraints, Buckeye would have let h—

Thick fabric covered the lower half of her face. A hand clamped it on from behind. Acrid mint seared her nostrils.

“Today’s dose is a bit more than half,” said Mather.

Buckeye jerked, and the metal tube smarted against the back of her skull. The hand with the drug-damp cloth held firm, riding out her protests and ability to hold her breath. Of all useless things, the priest holding the rag made quiet shushing sounds as if she were some fussy infant, and not a full-grown woman who didn’t want a bunch of unidentified chemicals in her body. Again.

“Allow yourself the opportunity to accept this experience,” said the head priest. “It will not be efficient for us to require the use of batons every time you are called upon to serve.”

She danced on the metal structure. Grunted profanities into the handful of cloth, even as she couldn’t stop herself from sucking tainted air down into her lungs. Her hips thrust far out from her manacled wrists, and the whole steel contraption jumped with a clang on the stone floor.

The priests let go all down the line after some measure of time known only to them. As Buckeye heaved fresh air, the remaining VT men still bucked and shook heads against the smothering rags. Larger dose for more body mass? Was that why the clergy held onto the men?

Doesn’t matter. You got other problems.

And so she did.

Across the room, the situation was evolving for those free Vicers who’d volunteered without a fuss. The first of the priests receiving their ‘service’ backed away from the work of a mouth and knelt on his red mat.

He extended a hand to guide the woman who’d gone feral in her cell down to lie on her back. What sort of nightmares had she gone through last night to obey this priest now, docile like a tamed pet? Her knees fell apart at the touch of his hand, and the man settled between them, clothing still intact, with the exception of his exposed prick. Testicles shelved atop the open fly. He aimed himself and Buckeye bit her lower lip.

Oh hell no.

The priest mounted the woman, her knees pale brackets around his hips. He began to move, firm and deliberate, as though he were counting out Our Fathers as he pushed his cock into the passive Vicer.

One of his peers followed suit, this one directing the unbound group’s only male to the ground. The man went onto his back, the same as the woman. It made no difference; this priest spread and penetrated his ‘servant’ in much the same manner. The male Vicer, however, took his own flaccid length in hand and began to tug. No one stopped him.

These sons o’ bitches.

The other two pairs were joining the first. Lustworkers taking the mats, parting their legs. Black fabric pulling taut and bunching over the flexing backsides of clergy. Cocks pushing home.

How long had it taken, that time in the truck? Between when Wayland had come around and sprayed that shit on their hoods and when Buckeye had started feeling that itch?