It was a month after the arrest that Eureka told me Mycroft Canner wasn’t executed after all. We had to make them ours, that was clear. My crush aside, I always say a killer can smell a killer, and with yours truly on the news every five minutes, Mycroft had surely scented me by now. Eureka tracked Mycroft down among the Servicers, and Ockham paid the visit. It took moments for each to recognize what other was. Laconic Ockham delivered simply, “Come,” which Mycroft matched with an instant, “Yes, Məəəer Saneer,” in Mycroft’s signature vague diction which lets you think they’re saying ‘Member’ but underneath it’s really ‘Master’ leaking out. Lesley and I had spent weeks concocting blackmail enough to collar the beast (and keep them silent, which was Ockham’s concern), and were a little pissed to find our schemes superfluous. We’d sent the trapper after a wolf and caught a fawning puppy; there was no choice but to adopt it. It was supposed to be my puppy, but Thisbe set their sights on it, and when Thisbe stirs even O.S. trembles. I still got Mycroft as a playmate, storyteller, sparring partner, but only Thisbe got them at night, and (as I’ve learned now) never touched them. Just as well; as one learns from the obituaries of the wealthy perverts Mycroft used to prostitute themself to, raising money to help other Servicers, if you sleep with Mycroft Canner you don’t live long (and thanks to reading the first half of this history, I now know to call that phenomenon Saladin).

Enough authorial abuse for now. My kidnapping on March twenty-seventh, that’s what I’m supposed to talk about. It happened at six A.M. by my schedule. I’d just endured a nasty (but deserved) chewing out from my fencing coach (obnoxious but worth putting up with, since it’s so hard to find a coach who won’t fall in love with me). I’d removed my tracker for a shower when an odorless and fast-acting drug knocked me cold.

It’s hard to say when I awoke, since the world I woke to was so like a dream. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t move; I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t bound or gagged. It was my hands, my arms, my legs, they all lay limp, and when I tried to call for help, not only would the sound not rise but even my lips refused to form the words. I could feel, and recognized at once that I was lying in the molded contours of a Lifedoll box; I know the shape, since fans often ask me to have myself delivered in the packaging so they can have the pleasure of unwrapping me. My first thought was that I might be one of my dolls come to life (no, at the time I did not know about Bridger’s power to bring toys to life, it’s just that my profession made me think hard about these things), but my tongue could move, enough to keep me from choking, and I found the notch on the inside of my top left molar which no doll has, which I had etched there for just such eventualities (I told you, I thought hard about these things). Clearly, then, I was no doll. I was breathing. I could swallow (with difficulty), could blink and move my eyes (though the packaging strap across my eyes was as solid as a blindfold), and I could control my bladder and anus enough to keep from soiling the box. A few other muscles did tense slightly as I strained—my jaw, some spots on my belly, one spot in my neck—so I set to exercising them, to see if I could get my blood pumping a bit and so flush chemicals from my system faster, if chemicals were the cause. With concentration I detected spots of soreness scattered around my body which I guessed were remnants of however this paralysis had been achieved. Fear? I didn’t feel much fear. I thought about trying to induce panic to get my heart rate up, but better to keep myself sharp, and ready.