T W E N T Y - S E V E N

I Can Read You Like A Magazine

2024 March 31
Sunday

She was probably still somewhere in Dorley Hall’s basement. The concrete was the same color; the air conditioning was the same temperature; even the smell seemed somehow familiar. But she wasn’t sure, because she couldn’t remember seeing a room there like this one.

Persephone had awoken in a concrete cell with no furnishings save a small cot and a metal sink/toilet combo. Her clothes were still on, from her glasses to her shoes, but her purse was missing, and with it her phone.

The cell had one glass wall with a door cut into it and a black brick of a lock straddling the seam. She walked to the door, studied the lock, but it was featureless on this side; she peered into the hallway, but all she could see was a long stretch of concrete, a row of florescent lights overhead, and a couple of folding tables.

Scanning the cell for anything else distinguishing, she spotted a camera mounted on the ceiling. No, she had seen rooms like this—just not in person. She’d seen them on the screens in the security room. The cells those two trans women were locked inside.

Well, now there were three trans women in cells.

Persephone shuddered and turned away from the camera; instead, she sat on the cot, clutching at the silver pomegranate around her neck.

Why would a dormitory be keeping a handful of trans women in a secret underground prison? Persephone’s first thought concerning “prison” and “trans women” was inevitably conversion therapy, but was Summer really capable of that?

Persephone wanted to say ‘no’, but…she remembered Summer’s inexplicable skill with a taser. She remembered Summer ambushing two soldiers and kicking one in the head when he was down. She remembered Summer escaping from her flat and sneaking around Edinburgh like it was something she did all the time. She remembered Summer tormented by some horrible trauma. She remembered Summer rushing out of a lovely Easter party to use her taser once more.

Which one of those is the real Summer? she’d asked herself once, and she’d never really gotten an answer, had she?

Perhaps there was a more fruitful line of questioning, though. Would it make sense for Summer to be involved in conversion therapy? Or Tabby, or Stephanie, or Ellen? Not really, she had to admit. All of them were out and proud trans women; why would they force other women like them to detransition? And why would Auntie Elle fund them? (Glass-walled cells don’t pay for themselves to be installed, after all.) And if Persephone’s mother really had been involved here, why would he have participated in such a thing? Persephone couldn’t imagine a reason.

But what could this be that would make sense for people like them? The only things Persephone could think of were pretty farfetched. Social media discourse reeducation? Infectious brainworm quarantine? Fashion police? Horny jail? Perhaps consistent with a desire to help trans people, but kind of ridiculous. And the only other possibility she could come up with was so utterly absurd that it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

Whatever it was, though, it was so much bigger than she had suspected just this morning. If she’d known, she wouldn’t have poked the bear; might have run away screaming instead.

Before Persephone could come up with a better theory, though, she heard footsteps outside. She rushed to the glass, peering down the hallway to find two women she didn’t recognize coming down the hall. The one in front was carrying a canvas bag; the one in back, who was taller and broader, was carrying a tray, which she set down on a table. They were both wearing nice clothes, like they too had come down from the party, although the tall one had slipped a taser into her pants pocket.

She briefly wished Summer were here, before reminding herself that Summer seemed to be part of the problem, not the solution. No, Persephone would have to rely on her own spine. She could do that, though. If she’d stood up to Uncle Albert, she could stand up to these women.

“I do hope that you’re here to release me,” Persephone said dryly, by way of greeting. “Or if not that, at least to explain yourselves.”

* * *

Tabby, holding headphones to one ear, glanced over at Summer. “Did you teach her the Elle voice?”

“No,” said Summer, her eyes locked on the security screen showing Persephone’s cell. “But she’s Elle’s goddaughter; she must come by it naturally.”

Indira, who was passing by, stopped short and leaned down between them. “She’s Elle’s—you’re kidding.”

“I wish I was,” Summer said grimly.

* * *

“I’m afraid not,” the woman with the bag said, approaching the glass. “I’m not authorized to let you go, and I’m not authorized to answer questions. I’m the nurse; I’m just here to check if you need medical care.”

“Medical care like you give in that operating room upstairs?” Persephone said. The nurse winced; she’d guessed right. “I’m afraid I must decline.”

The other woman stepped forward, resting her hand on the taser at her hip. “There are two ways this can go,” the guard said. “Either you let her do the exam voluntarily, or I tase and restrain you before she does it anyway.”

The intercom crackled. “Stand down, Monica,” a familiar voice said.

Persephone looked up at the camera. “Summer?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Can you get me out of here?” Persephone asked.

“I’m trying,” Summer’s voice said. “This place has a system, and I’m working that system as fast as I can to release you. But I’m going to need you to cooperate, and that starts with sitting down on the cot so Rabia can come in and examine you. She’s just going to check for a concussion; nothing invasive, nothing you’ll have to leave the cell for. Okay?”

Persephone stared mutinously at the camera’s unblinking lens.

Summer sighed audibly into the microphone, and when she spoke again, her voice was a little gentler. “I know you’re afraid, sweetheart. I know because I’ve been exactly where you are now—in the very same cell, even. But I got out, and so will you, if you let me help you.”

“How long?” Persephone demanded.

“A couple hours, I hope,” Summer said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

Persephone wasn’t sure she could trust Summer, but what other choice did she have? “Fine,” she finally said, and strode back to the cot.

“Thank you,” Summer said quietly. “I’ll see you soon.” The intercom clicked off.

Nurse Rabia only needed a few minutes to give her a clean bill of health. Before she left, she even brought in a tray with the dessert Persephone had missed by sneaking away from the lunch. Then the lock buzzed as its latch engaged, and the two women left her there.

Persephone stared at the plate of profiteroles, but she didn’t touch them; instead she sat on the cot, fiddling with her pomegranate necklace. She might not believe in the myths, but some silly, superstitious part of her still warned her not to eat any food offered in the underworld.

* * *

“Are you sure you should have told her that much?” Indira asked Summer. “We haven’t decided if we’re going to disclose her.”

“I don’t see how this ends in any other way,” Summer said. “We know from the video that she was in OR-1, and from what she said to Rabia, it sounds like she figured out it’s been used recently, so we can’t just release her with a few clever lies. Does that leave anything on the table but disclosure?”

“Finish the intake process?” Indira suggested. “Bring her into the program as a subject.”

Summer’s first instinct was to say Over my dead body, but she bit it back. Not helpful. She needed to argue it in the program’s terms. “At the end of March?” she asked instead. “The 2023 intake has already bonded, had first disclosure, had their orchis. I imagine some have had second disclosure, too?”

“Most of them,” Tabby said.

Summer nodded. “Melissa was only a month late, and that alone was enough that she failed to bond, so it’s way too late to add Persephone to ‘23. Meanwhile, the 2024 intake is still six months away; we can’t hold her in isolation that long. And nobody survives the basement alone. She’d need an intake, and we don’t have one for her.”

“True,” Indira said with a sigh. “I mean, we could just…get rid of her.”

That suggestion required even more self-control. “Even if we were in the habit of doing that just for knowing too much,” Summer said very carefully, “Elle wouldn’t stand for it with her.”

“Indira,” Tabby said, “you have to understand. Persephone isn’t just Elle’s goddaughter—she’s Dylan Chase’s kid.”

Indira’s eyes widened. “Really? That’s little Chase?” She leaned in towards the screen, squinting. “Well, I guess I’m not that surprised.”

Summer looked between the two older sponsors. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What does Persephone’s mum have to do with this?”

The two older sponsors exchanged glances. “Dylan used to work for us,” Tabby said.

“I know that,” Summer said. “You sent me to him for my NPH, remember?”

“No,” Tabby said, “that’s not what I mean.”

Indira took over. “Summer, Dr. Chase was on staff. Working on-site. Disclosed. The whole shebang.”

Summer stared at her. “There was a man on the staff?” It was incomprehensible.

“Nobody knew he was a man at the time,” Indira pointed out. “We all thought he was a woman. Kind of butch, but that wasn’t a bad thing for the girls to see during their development, you know? And a psychologist with expertise in gender and trauma, and someone Elle trusted with her secrets—he was perfect for the job.”

Summer frowned. “The job? He wasn’t a sponsor, was he?”

“No,” Indira said, shaking her head. “He supported the program in principle and was happy to help the sponsors strategize, but he had a pretty strong aversion to working in the basement—said it gave him nightmares.”

Summer winced. She could imagine that—a man denied his manhood from birth, watching other men being forced to become women. It was a wonder he hadn’t burned the place to the ground.

“Officially,” Indira continued, “Dylan was the staff psychologist. His job was to provide therapy to the girls who’d been rescued from Grandmother, and later, as we discovered how emotionally taxing the work was, to the sponsors as well. A few graduates, too. But he was like anyone else around here—he’d pitch in where he was needed. Watch the second years for a few hours, talk someone through their troubles, handle a little paperwork. And he was one of Aunt Bea’s confidants—she would always listen to him.”

“He actually helped me convince her to start doing trans NPHes,” Tabby said.

“Really?” Summer said.

“Really. Aunt Bea thought it was a terrible risk, sending girls out with identities that said we were trans.”

“That the program would be discovered?”

“No—that we would have to deal with more bigotry and discrimination than the cis graduates, more than we realized. Dylan took my side and convinced her that I knew what I was getting into. So they set up the procedure you ended up following, where he and Mrs Prentice would produce the letters used as medical evidence.”

Summer frowned. “Wait—when you sent me to meet him, you told me that he wasn’t disclosed.”

“It was a practice run,” Tabby explained. “That was your first time going over your NPH in depth with someone out in the world, right?”

“Right.”

“So if you’d slipped up, it wouldn’t have caused a breach; we’d just have had to practice it more.” Tabby grinned. “Besides, he said that lying to a medical professional was a ‘trans rite of passage’.”

Summer laughed. “He sounds like a good guy.”

“He was,” Indira said quietly. “I miss him.”

“Why’d he leave?” Summer asked.

“His egg cracked,” Indira said simply. “He still worked with the girls from before Aunt Bea, and he was still willing to help with girls like you who were near graduating. But he stayed away from the Hall and from the messier parts of the work.”

Summer could fill in the blank: it must have been harder to repress his feelings about the program once he understood their source. “Understandable.”

“Yeah. We thought so too.”

Summer looked back at the monitor. So Persephone’s godmother was Dorley’s funding source, her uncle was a patron of Grandmother’s, and her mother was a former employee. And nobody had thought to tell Summer any of those things ahead of time. Sometimes, Dorley Hall reallykept too many secrets for its own good.

No use complaining about that, though; that was for the postmortem, not the crisis response. “And ‘little Chase’?” Summer asked instead.

Indira shrugged. “Dylan only brought his, well, daughter here a few times. But even back then, she was in dresses half the time, and she neverlet anyone call her anything but ‘Chase’. It makes sense that she’d be a trans girl.”

Summer imagined Persephone in the position of little Amelia upstairs—the darling of a room full of unusually-gendered women—and smiled despite the grim situation. She must have loved it here.

Indira peered at the young woman on the screen. “I guess you’re right, though,” she said. “We have to disclose her. We have to try. For Dylan’s sake, if nothing else.”

* * *

When Beatrice Quinn descended upon the security room and cleared her throat to gain everyone’s attention, she was in full Aunt Bea mode. The chatter of sponsors trying to handle three crises at once died down instantly.

“Aunt Bea!” Indira said. “You didn’t need to come down, we’ve got this well in hand.”

“That was not the sound of ‘well in hand’ that I just heard,” Aunt Bea said. “Let me see if I’ve got this all straight. We’ve got run-of-the-mill planned boy fights in the basement—on Easter, no less.”

Well, not so much planned as anticipated, from what the other sponsors had said…

“We’ve got an undisclosed girl who’s been allowed down here for electrolysis slipping into the basement and getting thrown in a cell, thus making whatever she saw so much significantly worse in her mind.”

Summer had questioned that decision herself, but the duty sponsor, Pamela, had decided to improvise based on established procedures because she was juggling two problems at once, and she couldn’t really fault her for that.

“We’ve got Sophia finding out something, which I can guess was the secrets we’ve kept from her, that upset her enough she ran off to the back rooms being chased by Ashley, who I’m sure will offer to take her away.”

Well, that sounded like a whole different clusterfuck.

“And in case you all hadn’t noticed yet, Trev Darling chose today, of all days, to show up and interrupt dessert—don’t worry, they’re cooling off in the gym.”

Trev? Really? Summer wished she had the time to go upstairs and rip them a new one.

“And as a topper, we had a couple of dozen undisclosed guests upstairs. Did I get it all?”

“Yeah,” Indira said reluctantly. “That sounds like all of it.”

“Actually, a couple of dozen minus one,” Ellen said as she entered. “I just finished disclosing Belinda and decided I’d come check in before going to be with Stephanie.”

“Oh, of course, yes,” Aunt Bea said. “Saw you heading into the kitchen with her before getting waylaid by every conversation on the way down here.”

Ellen turned to Maria. “What do you think, sis—did we crack a ten yet?”

Maria laughed. “No press, no police, no outside PMCs invading—9.5,” she said. “And the only person who needed to get disclosed after Sophia’s outburst is Belinda, and you wouldn’t be back down here underfoot if Belinda had taken it badly, a nine max—” she glanced at another set of cameras, and grimaced, “—oh, sorry, it appears that Sophia is actually taking Auntie Ashley’s offer. That’s unfortunate and risky, but still only a 9.5.”

“Shit,” Ellen said, quickly turning to leave. “Someone she knows should be there when she leaves.”

“Go,” Maria said, and Aunt Bea nodded as Ellen headed back up the stairs.

“As for me needing to come down,” Bea said evenly, “dear Persephone, as you may be aware by now, is Elle Lambert’s godchild. I must make sure when I report to her shortly that the situation is well in hand. Who has been assigned to sponsor her?”

Summer stood and faced her. “Me.”

She could swear Bea’s lips twitched, but only for a moment. “Welcome back to the program,” she said. “I require a briefing on her situation immediately.” She turned her attention back to the other sponsors. “As for the rest of this, there will be discussions to come about the decisions that led up to today. Nothing individually was perhaps terribly wrong, but we lost sight of cumulative risk. For now, carry on.”

Aunt Bea marched out of the room without another word; Summer scooped up the tablet she’d been working on and followed her down the hall at a trot.

The security room got crowded with more than a dozen people present, so although it was convenient for routine sponsor meetings, the program needed a large secure meeting space for bigger groups like the annual intake panels. That’s what the conference room was for. It had a long table that could easily seat a dozen people, extra chairs along the walls that could accommodate two dozen more, a lectern at the front, a large screen, and a fancy teleconference setup that had been replaced since Summer last saw it.

Thankfully, it also had a cable for the screen, which Summer plugged into the side of her tablet. The network security head, a girl named Christine who had slipped down from the party and gotten Persephone’s phone unlocked in about ten minutes, had apparently upgraded half of Dorley Hall’s systems since Summer left; after two hours of fumbling around the new video archive app, she didn’t fancy trying to figure out how to pair her tablet with the new equipment while Aunt Bea waited.

Summer quickly called up the live video from Persephone’s cell, which appeared on the wall behind her, almost life-size; Bea studied it for a moment before she spoke. “What’s her status?” she asked. Summer half-expected her voice to echo in such a cavernous space, but the walls were padded to dampen sound.

“Persephone is presently in Cell 3,” Summer began. “Rabia says she’s in good physical health with no sign of concussion, but she appears frightened and agitated—no speech, but lots of pacing, fidgeting, looking out into the hallway. She was uncooperative with the nurse until I talked her down over the intercom. She hasn’t taken any food or drink, but it hasn’t been too long since lunch, so that might not mean anything.”

Bea nodded. “Walk me through how she got here.”

Summer had saved a few clips from the security recordings that she used to illustrate: Persephone had tailgated a group of sponsors to get into the basement. She had snuck into an operating room and seemingly discovered evidence of a recent surgery. (“It seems a Grant Wilson had an orchiectomy on Friday, and Tabby tells me the medical waste disposal contractor doesn’t pick up on weekends.”) She had spent a few minutes looking into the security room during the aftermath from the fight before she was caught, and an overeager PMC had tased her as she tried to flee.

Bea absorbed this all calmly, then asked, “Recommendations?”

“Disclose her,” Summer said. “She’s seen too much not to.”

Bea nodded. “I concur,” she said. “Have you disclosed anyone before?”

“Just, um, George,” Summer said, “in the 2016 intake.”

“Ah,” Bea said, in the manner of someone who has just realized that she very nearly blundered into a landmine. “You’ll need to pull an NDA from the server for her to sign first; we’ve had occasion to disclose a number of outsiders in the last few years, so we wrote a specific variant for it. Besides the paperwork, disclosing an outsider is…a bit different from disclosing boys in the basement. More unpredictable. I once disclosed two people at the same time. One of them accused a sponsor of being a rapist; the other seduced and later married one.”

“From the same meeting?”

“Yes,” Bea said. “And they were best friends, too—similar backgrounds, little reason for them to respond differently. It’s a volatile situation; be prepared for a strong reaction.”

“Understood.”

“Good. Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” Summer said. She tapped a few controls on her tablet. “Your Christine found this photo on Persephone’s phone; she apparently took it a couple of days ago. I think it’s the reason she stopped trusting us and decided to sneak around instead.”

Aunt Bea stared at the snapshot of Dylan Chase’s photos in a scrapbook.

“Aunt Bea,” Summer said softly, “if I had known that her mother was former staff sooner, I could have headed this off. And if I had known that Albert Chase was involved with Grandmother, I could have avoided him setting his sights on me. Is there anything else that I should know before I step in it once more?”

Aunt Bea paused for a moment, studying her. Summer’s stomach sank as she realized that the answer must be yes.

“There is,” she said at length. “But there’s too much to explain right now, and Persephone should not hear it secondhand. I will see that both of you are briefed on the matter, soon. Just not today—I’m having enough trouble just keeping the Hall in one piece.”

“Is there anything I should know now?” Summer pressed. “Before I disclose her?”

Aunt Bea hesitated. “Persephone is important to the long-term viability of the program,” she said cryptically. “For today, it will suffice to secure grudging acceptance that the costs of exposing us are too high. But if she never gets any further than that, she can end us.”

What the hell could that mean?

Aunt Bea’s phone beeped; she checked it and said, “I’m needed upstairs. Are you ready for this?”

“I suppose I’d better be,” she said grimly.

Aunt Bea reached out and clasped her shoulders. “Summer,” she said, “you are ready for this. There is nobody I trust more with this job than you.”

Summer gave her a wan smile. “Thanks, Aunt Bea.”

Bea smiled back. “Although,” she said, tilting her head, “you’re probably not actually ready until you fix your makeup. Break a leg.” She picked up her purse and strode from the room.

Summer pulled out her compact and checked it. Ugh, Bea was right; her makeup had run a little when she’d cried.

Although…

Summer had to tell Persephone the truth—that was the only way out of this situation. But she could still use truths as levers by presenting them the right way. And the truth that she had cried over Persephone being locked up? That might be helpful. Disarming. Help reinforce the bond that was already being strained by this, if the conversation about the nurse was any indication.

For that matter…

Summer walked back to the security room. Found her taser, checked it, swapped out the battery. Then she drew a cloth belt from a drawer and started threading it through a holster. She could have kept the taser in her purse, but she wanted it visible.

As she did, she glanced over towards the security console and the woman currently stationed there. “Hey, Nell,” Summer said, “are you still angry at me?”

“You fucking tased me,” Nell spat. “Of course I am!”

“Great. Could you listen to the mic on Cell 3 for an opportunity to be angry at me over the intercom?”

Nell stared at her a moment, then flipped her the bird.

* * *

beccadax

A year ago last Thursday, I came up with the idea that would become Invisible String, and next Friday will be the anniversary of the draft that became Chapters 1 and 2 being posted on the Dorley Discord. Thanks for sticking with this!