The mask was sealed to his face with a rubber rim that had gone warm and soft against his skin, and his own breathing was the loudest thing in the world for a while—a wet, hollow rush that filled his ears and fogged the inside of the clear plastic. Then the bulb's hum went soft, and the rush went soft with it, and Tyler's head lolled against the cold steel rest behind him, his neck gone to rope that couldn't hold his skull up anymore.

Renata's hand kept moving on him. Slow. Patient. The way she did everything down here, like there was nowhere else to be and nothing else that mattered. Her palm was slick with something—spit or the fluid that leaked from him, he couldn't tell anymore—and it rode up the length of his cock and back down, a lazy, dragging stroke that pulled a sound out of him before he could stop it.

The sound came out muffled through the mask, a low, broken thing that didn't sound like him. His hips tried to answer, tried to lift into her hand, but the strap across his thighs held him down, and all he managed was a twitch, a useless roll of bone against leather.

"Easy," Renata said. Not looking at his face, looking at her own hand, at the way his cock jumped when her thumb passed over the head. "Easy, Tyler. We're not in a hurry down here."

His dead tooth throbbed. That was the thing he couldn't get away from—the pull in his jaw, the deep grip in the bone behind the molar that Dr. Mack had opened and broached and left open. It beat in time with her strokes. Throb, stroke. Throb, stroke. His whole head pulsed with it, and the pulse ran down his neck and into his chest and settled somewhere low in his gut, and he couldn't tell anymore if it was pain or pleasure or something that had stopped being either.

Dr. Mack stood at the cart. He could see her through the fogged plastic, a smear of white coat and pale hair, her severe bun a dark cap against the concrete wall behind her. Her hand was on the valve. The tank sat under the cart, and the line ran from it to the mask, and her fingers rested on the brass wheel like it was a thing she was considering, a decision she hadn't finished making.

She turned it a quarter turn.

The gas sweetened in his throat—a taste like rotting fruit, like the air in a room where something had died and been left to soften. It coated his tongue and the back of his nose and made his eyes want to close. His chest went heavy. His arms went heavy. The weight of his own body pressed him down into the chair, and the chair held him, and the straps held him, and the only thing that moved was Renata's hand.

"That's it," she said. "That's good. You're doing so good, Tyler."

Her thumb dragged over the head of his cock, and the slick sound of it filled the silence under the bulb's hum. His hips lifted. Once. The strap bit into his thighs, leather against denim, and he fell back against the chair, the metal cool where his shoulder blades pressed into it.

He was shirtless. He'd been shirtless for a long time now, or maybe not that long—the basement had no windows, no clock, no way to measure anything except the bulb and the hum and the slow, patient stroke of Renata's hand. His jeans were open. His cock was out, hard, leaking, red at the head from how long she'd been working him, and she held him like he was something delicate, something that needed gentling.

"You want to come?" she asked.

He couldn't answer. The mask was in the way, and his tongue had gone thick, and the gas had made his thoughts slow and syrupy, sliding over each other like oil on water. He tried to nod, and his head rolled instead, his cheek scraping the steel rest.

"I asked you a question," she said. Her hand stopped. The absence of the stroke was a physical thing, a cold space where the heat had been. "Do you want to come, Tyler?"

He made a sound. It came out of his chest, a low, desperate noise that the mask swallowed and turned into something smaller, something almost like a whimper. His hips pushed against the strap. His hands flexed against the cuffs, the metal biting into his wrists.

"He wants to," Dr. Mack said. Her voice was quiet, level, the same flat clinical tone she used for everything down here. "He's just forgotten how to say it."

Renata looked up at her, and something passed between them—a look, a shared understanding that Tyler couldn't read through the fogged plastic. Then her hand started moving again, faster now, firmer, her fingers wrapped tight around him, and the pull in his jaw throbbed in time with the stroke, and the gas sweetened in his throat, and the room went soft at the edges, tilting, the bulb's hum the only fixed thing left.

"Say it," Renata said. "Say it and I'll let you."

He couldn't. The words were in him, somewhere, but they were buried under the gas and the throb and the slow, patient drag of her hand, and he couldn't find them, couldn't shape them, couldn't push them past the rubber rim of the mask.

"Please," he managed. It came out a slur, muffled, barely a word at all.

Renata smiled. He could see it in the corner of his eye, the dimple that appeared when she smiled, the way her green eyes crinkled at the edges. She looked warm. She looked kind. She looked like the woman who'd asked him about his job and his car and his mother, and that was the worst thing about her.

"Good boy," she said.

Her hand tightened, and the stroke changed, faster, harder, her thumb working the head, and the throb in his jaw spiked, and his hips lifted against the strap, twice, three times, useless, helpless, the leather biting into his thighs as the pressure built low in his gut, hot and urgent and unstoppable.

"That's it," Renata said. "Come on, Tyler. Let go."

He came. It took him, dragged him under, his body jerking against the straps, his hips bucking into her hand, the sound of it swallowed by the mask, a long, broken moan that he couldn't have stopped even if he'd had the breath. His cock pulsed in her grip, and he felt it spill—hot, thick, running over her fingers and into her palm, and she held him through it, kept stroking, kept working him until he was empty and shaking and spent.

The gas was sweet in his throat. His chest was heaving, the mask fogging and clearing with each breath, and the room was tilting, the bulb's hum going soft and far away, and the only thing that held him was the chair, the straps, the steel that had become the whole world.

Renata's hand stayed where it was, cupped under him, the wet weight of his come warm against her palm. She looked at it. She looked at him. The dimple was still there, the warmth still in her eyes.

"That's my good boy," she said, and her voice was warm, and it was the worst thing in the room.

Dr. Mack's hand was still on the valve. She hadn't moved it, hadn't turned it back, hadn't closed the line. Her pale blue eyes were on his chest, watching it slow, watching the rise and fall of his ribs go longer, deeper, the fight draining out of him with each breath.

"He's ready," she said. Not to Renata. To the room. To the record she kept in her head, the meticulous notes she'd take upstairs. "He's ready for the next setting."

Tyler heard it. The words reached him through the gas, through the fog, through the slow, syrupy drift of his thoughts. He understood them, or thought he did, but understanding was a thing that lived far away now, on the other side of the mask, and he couldn't reach it, couldn't hold it, couldn't make it matter.

His chest slowed. His head lolled. His eyes were half-closed, and through them he could see the bulb, the stark white circle of it, the hum that filled the room like a held breath.

Renata's palm was still cupped under him. The wet weight of it had gone cool, and he could feel it against his skin, a reminder of what he'd done, what he'd given, what he'd lost to her hand.

He tried to lift his head. The muscles in his neck wouldn't answer. They'd gone to water, gone to rope, gone to the same soft, heavy stillness that had taken the rest of him.

"Shh," Renata said. Her free hand came up, and her fingers brushed his forehead, pushing the damp hair back from his face. "Shh. It's over. You did so good."

The mask was still on his face. The gas was still sweet in his throat. The bulb was still humming, and the valve was still open, and Dr. Mack's hand was still on it, a whole quarter-turn of setting left to give.

Her fingers stayed in his hair for a long moment, stroking the damp strands back from his temple with a tenderness that made his stomach turn. Then she withdrew, and the cool air of the basement found the sweat on his skin, raising goosebumps along his bare arms. He heard her shift, heard the soft creak of her weight moving on the concrete floor, and then the click of her heels as she walked around the chair to stand beside Dr. Mack at the cart.

"He's under," Renata said, her voice dropping to something lower, almost intimate. "Really under. Look at his eyes."

He couldn't see his own eyes, but he could feel them—half-lidded, unblinking, fixed on the white circle of the bulb. The mask fogged and cleared with each slow breath, and each breath was longer than the last, the pause between them stretching like taffy. He was aware of the two women at the cart, aware of their voices, but the words came to him through water, through wool, through the sweet, rotting thickness of the gas.

"He's not fighting," Dr. Mack said. He heard the click of her nails on the steel tray, a sound he'd come to know down here. "He's not even trying to fight. The last one—" She paused, and he felt the weight of her attention shift to him, a pressure against his skin. "The last one was still jerking at the straps at this stage. Still making sounds behind the mask."

"He's better," Renata said, and there was something in her voice he couldn't name—pride, maybe, or satisfaction. "He's been better since the broach. That's what you said. That's why you used it."

"It's why I'll use it again."

The words settled into him like sediment, slow and heavy, and he understood them the way he understood the hum of the bulb—a constant, a thing that had always been there and would always be there. The broach. The hook in his jaw. The grip in the bone that held him still when everything else in him wanted to run. He'd felt it when she'd seated it, the deep pull in the dead tooth's canal, and he felt it now, a low throb that matched his heartbeat, that matched the slow drag of his breath.

Something moved at the edge of his vision. Renata's hand, coming back into view, and in it a small cloth—white, folded. She wiped her palm with it, slow and deliberate, and he watched the cloth come away stained, translucent, marked with what he'd given her. She folded it again and set it on the tray, and the gesture was so ordinary, so domestic, that it made something in his chest tighten.

"He's clean," she said. "For now. He'll need—" She hesitated, and the pause was a door left open. "He'll need to be cleaned up before the next setting. The gas does things to the body. You know that."

"I know that." Dr. Mack's hand moved on the valve, a small adjustment, a fraction of a turn. He felt the gas shift in his throat, felt it thicken, and his eyes wanted to close. "I know exactly what it does. That's why we use it."

His head lolled further, his cheek coming to rest against the cold steel of the chair rest. The metal was warm where his skin had been, cool where it hadn't, and the difference was the only thing he could feel besides the throb in his jaw and the slow, syrupy drift of his thoughts. He was aware of his own body in pieces—the weight of his arms, the ache in his wrists where the cuffs bit, the sticky coolness on his stomach where his come had begun to dry.

"He's going to need the jacket again," Renata said. "For the next one. He won't be able to hold still on his own."

"He held still for the broach."

"Because I was holding him. And because the gas—" She stopped, and he heard her take a breath. "The gas won't be enough for the next one. Not at the setting you're planning."

Dr. Mack was quiet for a long moment. The bulb hummed. His breath fogged the mask, cleared, fogged again. The throb in his jaw pulsed in time with his heart, a deep, insistent beat that seemed to be counting down to something he couldn't name.

"Then we'll use the jacket," Dr. Mack said. "And we'll use the broach. And we'll see how much of him is left when the gas wears off."

Her hand came off the valve. He heard it, the soft release of her fingers from the brass wheel, and the sound was like a door closing. The gas was still sweet in his throat, still thick in his lungs, but the source of it—the hand that had been turning it, the will that had been measuring it—had stepped back.

"Clean him up," Dr. Mack said. "I'll get the jacket ready."

Her heels clicked across the concrete, toward the stairs, and the sound of them faded into the dark above. Renata was still beside him, and he felt her hand come to rest on his chest, flat against his sternum, feeling the slow rise and fall of his ribs.

"You did so good," she said again, softer now, almost to herself. "You don't even know how good you did."

Her hand stayed there, warm and heavy, and the throb in his jaw pulsed beneath it, and the bulb hummed, and the gas sweetened in his throat, and Tyler's eyes finally closed.