Fiona’s job title was Performance and Penetration. Before you get excited, I should tell you that what she actually did was to keep watch on the Company computer network looking for performance issues or penetration from either outside or internal miscreants. The company wanted Fiona’s various tools and techniques to be a mystery to everyone else which is why she worked in her narrow hutch separated by a brick wall from the rest of the IT Section.
Her isolation very much suited her temperament and she actually loved her little hutch which she thought of as her own private domain. That domain was long and narrow with a door at one end and a second door leading into the IT Dept. At the far end of the space, next to the small, square window sat Fiona with her array of keyboards and three independent screens. Most of the wall space was taken up by shelving containing box files of technical information and work logs. She also had a collection of air gapped laptops on which she could download malicious code without corrupting the network.
The Company had specialist software which trawled the system for potential irregularities and any “hits” were flashed to Fiona’s screen for her to perform detailed analysis. One hit was a video file and such files were not uncommon as the Company had a collection of training videos but the software had identified that this one had unique metadata so Fiona opened the file on one of her isolated laptops.
At first, she saw a blank screen and then she found herself watching a very graphic pornographic video. It was the usual grunting and groaning of pink bodies doing very athletic things but she found herself staring at it in shock because the female lead was very definitely herself! Her mind’s natural reaction was to freeze in incomprehension but she soon realized that the thing must have been generated using Artificial Intelligence. Someone had taken a picture of her face – possibly from the Company website and then instructed AI to put that face into a series of erotic situations. So there was someone in this company – almost certainly in AI just next door who was staring at his screen and watching Fiona perform in outrageous situations. He probably got hard whenever he saw her moving around the Department. But who was he?
Every device owned by the Company had a six figure identifier and Fiona read the number on the errant file. It would be a moment’s work to look up that number in the index. Using her left hand she typed the number into her main PC – ACCESS DENIED.
The whole point of Fiona’s job was that nobody was safe from her trawling through the system. Her index should be able to identify EVERY device code. So she now knew that her adversary was very good at being very bad. The pressure of work meant that Fiona simply had no time for the detailed work which it would take to unmask her rat but she would finish her working day, go home to eat and then return to the office to work long into the night if that is what it took. Her biometric door card could get her past the front door and into her hutch at any time of the day or night.
It was 9pm when Fiona entered her hutch. She wanted complete silence in which to work so she left time for the cleaners to complete their work and go home. Security would be at their screens on the ground floor but, up here, Fiona was completely alone.
She had a video file with minimal metadata and she had a six figure identifier code. She had to translate that into a position on the floor and a name and she settled to her painstaking work.
Fiona did not look up from her screens once until the sound of the opening door shattered the deep silence like a pistol shot. Looking up, she beheld the bulk of Hugo Faster moving down the narrow space towards her. He was No 2 in the IT Department with a PhD in Computing and an impressive record as a semi pro Rugby player. Fiona stood up to meet the obvious threat and his hand was around her windpipe before she could reach for the scissors which she kept permanently on her desk (just in case).
He was still only holding her with that one hand at her throat and he held her at arm’s length so that he was out of her reach. He pulled her upwards so that her toes briefly left the ground but then, mercifully, she felt the floor beneath her trainers. It was in his thuggish nature that he had to boast about how clever he had been.
“I thought you’d have to come back when no-one was around so I put an alarm on your keycard. I knew the second you entered the building.”
Still gripping her windpipe so that she was struggling for air, he used his free hand to unzip her jeans and undo her belt so that he could drag the garment down to her knees exposing her lemon knickers. Fiona tried to reason with him but it came out as a series of unintelligible gasps. In an instant, he had her knickers down around her knees so she was exposed, vulnerable and hobbled. It was easy for him to twist her around and force her down on her back onto the long worktop which ran beneath the wall hung shelving.
Her naked bottom was on the worktop and she was in a prone position with her knees bent and her legs hanging over the side. He dragged off her trainers and then yanked jeans and underwear over her feet and onto the floor then his face came down to within an inch of her own.
“You make a sound and I will finish you right now. Nod if you understand me, bitch.”
She nodded and he released her throat so that she could sit up as far as the overhead shelving would permit. Her own hands were massaging her painful throat and she was taking long, rasping breaths. He ordered her to open her legs but she clamped her knees together.
“Hugo, think what you’re doing. Think about….”
Snakelike, his hand reached out and his fingers were either side of her cheeks forcing them painfully together but Fiona was fed up of being a helpless victim. He had left his most vulnerable area unprotected and she rammed in her knee with all her force.
She saw the pain on his face and he doubled up. Fiona knew that she only had a second’s advantage but he had made another mistake by freeing her legs from the constraint of her jeans. She jumped sideways so that her hand could clasp over the silver scissors and she brought them up points first but it is well known that Rugby players can quickly recover from pain and his hand grabbed her wrist until she screamed and dropped the weapon. (You can tell that any moment now, he is going to say he likes a girl with spirit.)
“I like a girl with spirit.” (Told you.)
His free hand slapped her face forehand and backhand so that her head snapped from side to side and then the same hand went up her jumper groping at her minimal bra and pushing it upwards towards her neck so that her breasts fell free.
“Get your jumper off!”
He released her but, scared as she was, she was not going to be a compliant victim. She seized one of the laptops from the desk and swung it at his head. He tried to avoid the incoming attack but she kept swinging and the corner of the machine caught his eye knocking him backwards.
Fiona had always been an analytical person and she realized that a small part of her brain was still clicking away in the background. The fight which they had been having meant that his DNA would now be all over her so she could easily prove him to be the aggressor. That freed her from any legal worries about “reasonable force”.
The screen on the laptop was broken but the body of the machine, including its square corners, was still intact. As Hugo straightened up with one hand at his eye, she brought down a corner of the laptop onto the top of his head and then swung it into his forehead sending him backwards into the wall. There was no time to recover her scissors from the floor but she picked up a pen and jabbed it point first into the side of his neck where it briefly stuck like an arrow and blood began to flow.
He began to recover and, like any wounded animal, he was wild. With a roar, he rushed at her and using both hands, he grabbed her by the upper arms and his fingers dug in painfully. Her terror overwhelmed her as he bellowed at her and his spittle landed all over her face. She found herself thrown backwards over the worktop again and he gripped her jumper and pulled it up over her head before tearing at her bra and dragging the straps from her arms. As she lay naked and helpless, he unzipped himself and his huge, erect member leapt out at her. She shook her head in silent pleading but he was far beyond any humanity or rational thought. He simply rammed into her, oblivious to her screams of pain or the convulsions of her body. He was ramming in and out like the bolt on a machine gun and it seemed to last for an eternity before he withdrew, leaking his gunk all over her groin. She fell back and her legs came up as she curled up like a frightened hedgehog and she wept in pain, humiliation and defeat.
His hands were again on her body as she found herself thrown to the floor. He must have brought a bag into the hutch when he first arrived and left it by the door before she became aware of his presence because he now had clothesline with which he was binding her. Her arms were drawn behind her and bound at wrist and elbows then he tied her ankles and finally a scarf was forced into her mouth and held in place by rope around her head. As she lay belly down, still sobbing, he groped her bottom and then she was alone still in pain not only from the rape but also from the fight beforehand.
Her emotions were a total mess. In addition to her distress she felt anger and shame at not somehow being able to resist him. This was, of course, totally irrational but emotions don’t have to be rational. Why had she not been faster with those scissors, why…so many things?
The muscles in her arms and shoulders were really hurting because he had drawn her arms back so tightly and she was terrified of her blood flow being cut off by the tight ropes at her wrists and ankles. She struggled and writhed around on the dusty floor but there was no slack at all in the ropes. Time had completely gotten away from her but she assumed that it had to be around midnight so she had seven or eight hours before people began arriving for work and then how long would it be before someone came into the hutch?
She tried to speculate at what was in Hugo’s mind. Had he bound her so that he had time to flee? But, she realized that there was really nothing in his mind but lust and evil. His logical, sane mind had begun to pack up and leave when he first began to fantasize about her and had made that disgusting video. By the time that he reached tonight’s denouement he was simply a beast driven by the same instincts which drove rutting stags or multiplying amoeba.
And that was when the door opened and two uniformed Security guards burst in. There were cries of horror and then they began to make soothing noises as she was untied and one of the men put his tunic on her. After that, the paramedics and police arrived and she was taken to hospital for…lots of stuff and a female detective interviewed her sometime the next day in her hospital bed…Fiona was in the bed, not the detective.
It was only when she met the detective that Fiona was able to gain a clearer picture of what had happened. After Hugo had left her, he had gone to the elevator still dripping blood from his neck wound. He had pressed the button for the Ground Floor and collapsed in the elevator. Security had seen him enter the elevator on the camera in the corridor but when he failed to leave the elevator, they went to investigate. CCTV had recorded both Fiona and Hugo entering the building but that raised no alarm as both of them had every right to be there.
It had not been blood loss which caused Hugo to collapse; it transpired that he had a bleed on the brain caused by being struck with the laptop and the exertion of the rape had taken the bleed to crisis point. By the time that he reached hospital, it was all over for Hugo.