27. Sophie
Sophie
Diana finds me at my borrowed workstation the next morning, a tablet tucked under her arm and something close to excitement in her eyes.
“Change of plans,” she says. “I need an extra pair of hands in the clinical wing this morning. We’re doing user trials.
We run weekly feedback sessions with our volunteer panel—omegas who test our products and report on efficacy, comfort, side effects, that sort of thing.
” She smiles, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear.
“It’s actually really exciting stuff. You’ll see. ”
“I’d love to,” I say. “Lead the way.”
I follow her through two badge-controlled doors and a corridor I haven’t walked before.
The clinical wing is in the east section of the fourth floor—separate access logs and the kind of infrastructure that tells me Synthera takes its trial protocols seriously.
Diana badges us through the final door and holds it open for me.
I step through.
The room is very bright, with white walls and observation glass along one side, a row of partitioned stations with medical-grade reclining chairs and monitoring equipment. And in the chairs—in the stations—there are omegas.
Six of them. Women, mostly, and one man. Sitting in clinical chairs with wires attached to monitoring pads on their wrists and temples, surrounded by equipment and observation glass and people in lab coats with clipboards.
Omegas being observed and tested on.
The fury hits me like a wall of cold water, radiating from my chest outward until my jaw locks and I can feel the muscles in my neck pulling taut. Because I’ve seen this before. In a facility in Baton Rouge that I still can’t think about without my hands shaking.
I know what it looks like when omegas are treated as test subjects. I know what it smells like. I know—
I take a deep breath, forcing my shoulders down, and make myself take a better look.
The omega nearest me—a woman in her thirties with short red hair and paint-stained jeans—is reclined in her chair with a coffee cup balanced on her knee, the monitoring pads stuck to her wrist with the casual indifference of someone who’s done this many times before, and she’s laughing at something the woman in the next chair said.
The man two stations down is scrolling through his phone, one leg crossed over the other, looking bored, as if waiting for a dentist appointment.
A younger woman at the far end is chatting with the lab tech adjusting her monitoring pads. “How’s the cat?” the tech asks, and the woman laughs and says, “Still an asshole. I’ll show you the video after.”
This is nothing like Baton Rouge.
These omegas walked in here voluntarily.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Diana has already moved into the room, greeting the volunteers by name.
“How was Barcelona?” she asks the red-haired woman, who launches into a story about a restaurant that served the best paella of her life.
Diana listens, laughs, then checks her tablet and asks about last week’s side effects with the same warmth.
The volunteers trust her. I can see it in the way they relax when she approaches, the way they answer her questions openly, without performing.
Interesting. Diana Quinn, possible corporate mole, is also apparently the kind of clinician who makes omegas feel safe.
“Sophie, come meet the panel,” Diana calls, waving me over.
I put on Sophie Dysart and walk in.
I meet Blair later that morning.
She arrives late, breezing through the door with the energy of someone who considers schedules a suggestion rather than a commitment.
She’s mid-forties, tall, broad-shouldered in a way that suggests she was an athlete at some point, with natural gray streaking through dark curly hair that she wears loose and wild.
She’s carrying a tote bag printed with a cartoon cat giving the middle finger and wearing bright orange sneakers that squeak against the clinical floor.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she announces to the room at large, dumping her bag on the nearest surface and shrugging off her jacket.
“Traffic was a nightmare. Also I stopped for chocolate croissants. Also I forgot my intake form and had to go back for it. Also—Diana, is that a new haircut? You look gorgeous.”
Diana, mid-conversation with the lab tech, raises an eyebrow. “Blair. Thank you. You’re forty minutes late.”
“I know, I know. But I brought chocolate croissants for everyone, so we’re even.” She produces a bakery box from the tote bag with the flourish of a magician, and two of the other volunteers actually cheer.
Blair drops into the chair next to me—the observation chair I’ve been using to take notes—and looks me up and down with the frank, assessing gaze of a woman who has exactly zero interest in pretending to be anything other than what she is.
“You’re new,” she says.
“Sophie.” I extend my hand. “I’m shadowing the department this week.”
“Blair.” She shakes it—firm, warm, calloused. “I’ve been doing these trials for three years. Best gig I’ve ever had. Free products, free coffee, and I get paid to have orgasms.” She grins. “Don’t tell me that’s not the dream.”
Certainly not mine. But I find myself watching her anyway.
Blair moves to her station, gets wired up with the casual ease of someone putting on a seatbelt, and begins the feedback portion of the trial. I’m close enough to hear her conversation with the lab tech, and I can’t help listening.
“The new model is better,” Blair is saying, leaning back in her chair, one ankle crossed over the other.
“The inflation curve is smoother—less of that weird stutter the old one had at the peak. And the temperature regulation? Chef’s kiss.
” She actually makes the chef’s kiss gesture while discussing the performance characteristics of a knotting device.
“Tell Ethan I said he finally got it right.”
The lab tech—a young beta man who looks like he’s considering a career change—makes a note on his tablet without meeting Blair’s eyes.
“Although,” Blair continues, apparently unbothered by his discomfort, “the girth on the secondary shaft could go up a notch. I mentioned this last time. Some of us aren’t built for the starter model, you know what I’m saying?”
“I’ll... note that in the feedback,” the tech manages.
“You do that, sweetie.” Blair pats his arm. Then she turns to me, catching me watching, and her grin widens.
“You look scandalized,” she says.
“I’m not scandalized.”
“You’re a little scandalized.” She waves a hand. “Everyone is the first time. But look—I’d rather have a knot simulator than a dick in me, if I’m being honest.”
The lab tech is staring very hard at his tablet.
“Not that I don’t like dicks,” Blair adds, as if this clarification is necessary.
“I do. Very much. Big fan. But it’s hard to find an alpha that it’s attached to that I actually like too, you know?
The knot is great. The ego that comes with it?
Not so much.” She laughs—a big, warm, room-filling laugh that makes two of the other volunteers look over and smile.
“And this is much better than what I used to do when I was younger. I used to go to clubs and pick up random packs.”
She pauses, looks at me, and her grin softens. I must look more shaken than I thought.
“I know, I know. Not safe. Terrible idea. My mother would have killed me if she’d found out.
But what was I supposed to do? I was single as fuck, my heat was coming on like a freight train every couple of months, and I didn’t have the money for escorts or one of those heat service centres where they charge you five hundred dollars to lie in a room with lavender candles and a machine.
” She rolls her eyes. “So yeah. I went to clubs. I found packs who were willing. And I survived, but I’m not going to pretend it was smart. ”
She looks at the monitoring equipment around her, the clinical chair, the neatly arranged products on the testing tray.
“This is better,” she says, and her voice suddenly becomes quieter.
“A clean room with a product that works, reporting my feedback to people who actually listen, and going home with a device that does what I need it to do without the risk of waking up next to a stranger who doesn’t remember my name. You know?”
I nod. Because I do know. Even though I’ve spent a decade making sure I never have to.
“Anyway.” The bravado is back, full volume. Blair swings her legs off the chair and stands, stretching her arms above her head with the unselfconsciousness of a cat. “I’m done for the day. Diana, are we good?”
“We’re good, Blair. See you next week.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Blair scoops up her tote bag, then pauses at the sample station near the door—a display of products that volunteers can take home between sessions. She picks through them with the practiced eye of a sommelier, selects one, examines it, and then turns to me.
“Here.” She holds it out. A sleek, matte-black device. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. This one’s the new model—the one I was telling the tech about. The temperature thing alone will change your life.”
I stare at the device in her outstretched hand. I’m aware of my face doing something I can’t control—a blankness that’s working overtime to cover whatever is happening underneath.
“Oh, come on.” Blair waggles the device gently. “It’s not a grenade. It’s self-care. Every omega should have one.”
My hands don’t move. Because the thought of accepting a knotting device from a stranger—a device designed to replicate something I have spent a decade chemically and psychologically preventing my body from wanting—has short-circuited something between my brain and my fingers.
Blair watches me for a moment. Her eyes drop to my hands, which are still at my sides, and then back to my face.
Then she shrugs, leans past me, and drops the device into my open bag on the chair.
“You’ll thank me later,” she says, and winks. Then she’s gone, orange sneakers squeaking down the corridor, and I’m left standing in the clinical wing with a knotting device in my bag that I didn’t ask for and can’t bring myself to put back on the shelf.