Industrial Espionage

Industrial Espionage

By Abbacor

Diane smiled as she left the building for the day. She had gotten the position as an executive assistant only two weeks ago, and already had the access codes she needed plus a security access card that should let her into the areas she needed. Diane had expected it to take about a month to get the access to the labs, which was her real goal of applying to work for Medical Bio-Regenetics Research, Inc., but the security procedures had been so lax she was wondering if this company was going to give her the pay-off she wanted.

Diane went on home and began to prepare for a “little midnight jaunt” as she liked to call her cat-burglar-style runs. She got her outfit ready to go; the tight but not body hugging mottled dark gray jogging suit, new black Isotoner gloves that would be thrown away afterwards, the rock-climbing shoes with the thin flat leather soles, and the spandex ‘ninja mask’ to hide her hair and face. A tight fitting belt with several small pouches to hold the electronic and mechanical lock picks, several USB thumb drives, a mini digital ‘spy camera’, a small aerosol can of Dog-B-Gone that could also be used to detect laser trip beams, a few specialized electronic devices, and some Silly-Putty™. She added in the list of codes and security card to her empty pouch and added the belt to the pile. Finally she took a shower using a non-scented shampoo and soap then went to bed early, setting her alarm for eleven o’clock.

Once her alarm woke her up Diane took another quick shower then got dressed and set out to a neighborhood close to the apartment she was renting. She quickly used a Slim-Jim© to open the car she had chosen where the residents were out of town and had left their car sitting in the driveway. She hot-wired the ignition and drove off in the direction of her target. She stopped and parked in a public lot about two blocks away, and headed on foot to the rear of the building where the service and delivery doors were located. On arriving, she headed for the door she had chosen making note of the stationary camera semi-hidden just behind and above the light-fixture that was creating a pool of light around the door. She stopped just outside of the circle of light and put on her mask and gloves, then pulled out a thin elastic head band to which she attached a directional broadcast device that would scramble the camera’s signal for about ten seconds which should be long enough to let her get inside without being seen. Using the first security code she was inside and headed down the hallway in about five seconds.

Diane quickly made her way around to the actual research area using several service hallways she knew about from the floor plan she had memorized and stopped at a corner just before she had to enter into another well lit and camera monitored area. She replaced the battery in her scrambler device to ensure she would have the full ten seconds from it as this door she needed to go through had dual cameras on either side of it that tracked continuously in opposite directions so there was an overlap of fields of view from them. She lay down on the floor and gently stuck a small dentists mirror around the corner so she could see the two cameras and watched them for several minutes to get their pattern down before walking around the corner and turning on the scrambler at the last second. On this door she had to enter another code then use the card and even pick a lock, and it took her almost the full ten seconds to do it and get through the door. 

She was in the access hall to the labs now, and walked quickly to the middle of the hall where the door she wanted was located. This one she didn’t have a code for, and the card would not open it either, but she didn’t expect to get those for this lab. She pulled out her electronic lock pick and inserted the ‘card’ on the end of the ribbon cable into the slot on the door and let the device go to work. This was the one point where she could potentially lose her jackpot, if the pick didn’t break the code in thirty seconds then an alarm would most likely be tripped and she’d have to high-tail it out as fast as she could before the guards caught her. She quickly changed the battery in her camera scrambler again, using the third of the four batteries she had brought, and watched the timer on her electronic pick. Right at twenty-nine seconds there was a gentle click as the door unlocked and she opened the door and walked into the lab while pulling out the ‘card’ from the slot at the same time and closed the door behind her.

There were a couple of security lights on giving her just enough light to see around the area, but not enough to make out fine details. She went to a file cabinet first that was close by and picked the lock on it. Squinting at the labels on the file folders in it, she found several that were promising so she pulled them out and walked over under one of the lights to get a better look at them.

“Jackpot!” she thought. “This is what I’m after!”

She quickly laid out the documents on a table and began snapping digital pictures of all of them. Once she was done she replaced them back in the cabinet and locked it up again. Then she made her way over to a computer terminal and woke it up. Using what she hoped was an executive level password she logged in and found it worked. She sighed in relief, not realizing she had been holding her breath at this next potential stumbling block. She quickly did a search and found the research notes and files she was looking for, and began downloading copies onto her thumb drives. Diane realized there was enough data here she was going to need to use all three that she had brought with her. She fretted over the time it would take, but she had to get it all or it was no good; her buyer would penalize her for lack of data, if not out right reject it and she’d get paid nothing. She swapped out the first drive for her second one, and was about half way through filling this drive when the regular lights suddenly turned on in the entire lab.

Diane was professional enough she didn’t even pause to think as she threw herself to the floor behind the desk she was at and immediately began to move as fast as she could in a crouch towards the left side of the room so she could try and circle around to the door. She had made it about half way there when she heard a noise behind her and gave up all pretenses at hiding and leapt up into a full run. She heard a soft ‘phut’ and felt a sharp sting in her left bicep when she was five steps away from the door, and just reached up and grabbed something out of her arm as she went through the door not even wasting time to look behind her. Running down the hall she looked in her hand and saw she had pulled out a small air-gun dart, the kind used to inject drugs into wild animals. By the time she reached the security door with the double camera, her entire arm was tingling and she couldn’t grasp the handle strong enough to open the door with her left hand. The delay this caused in getting through the door let the security guard who had caught her get another shot off, this one striking her in the right thigh. Diane made it through the door, and then yanked out the second dart as she headed down the hall. After only a few more seconds her entire left arm was dead and numb, completely unfeeling and useless while her right leg was already tingling, causing her to start to stumble and slowing her speed. She heard another shot from behind and felt the next dart hit her left thigh, injecting the drug into her yet again. She knew she was done for but continued to struggle as her right leg went completely numb and unresponsive, collapsing under her and dropping her to the floor. She tried to use her right arm and left leg to crawl even as the drug began to take effect on her leg. She felt the fourth dart hit her right bicep a few seconds later, and she used her remaining energy to turn over on her back, unable to pull the dart out of her arm.

The security guard walked up grinning and looked down at her as he holstered his air-gun, waiting the seconds necessary to allow the drug to finish rendering all four of her limbs useless before coming up close enough to reach her.

“In case you’re wondering, I’m told the drug in the darts is a nerve inhibitor. It blocks all signals to and from the brain along the nerves at the point of injection, and we train with these guns a lot so we can hit the arms and legs pretty accurately when we need to. The effect is pretty long lasting too I’m told, you won’t regain any feeling for at least eight hours while your body metabolizes it out of your system.”

He then pulled out a small gas canister with attached breather mask and lowered it towards her face. “You can try to resist me if you want, but I don’t think you’ll do much more than make this take an extra couple seconds for me to basically sit on you. It’s just a sleep gas to knock you out for a couple hours until the people who are going to make the decisions about you arrive.”

Diane was helpless at this point, so just let him place the mask over her mouth and nose and breathed normally as he turned the valve to release the gas. She quickly began to fade away and everything went black.

*two hours later*

Diane woke slowly, at first not knowing where she was at. It took several minutes to come out of the drug induced fog and remember what she had been doing and how she had been caught. She tried to move her arms and legs, only to find they were still numb and useless to her. She then opened her eyes and took a look around to see where she was at. She found herself in a well lit room that seemed to be a clinical exam room. She was lying on an exam table or maybe a gurney with a sheet over top of her covering her from the neck down. She also realized she seemed to be naked under the sheet as she could feel it against her breasts and belly. When she looked to her right there was a man sitting there at a table wearing a plain blue jogging suit. Her camera and thumb drives were sitting on the table, but the rest of her gear and all her clothing were no where to be seen.

Once he noticed she was awake and alert he began to speak to her. “So Diane, if that is your real name, you were trying to steal our research on our artificial skin replacement work. I’m sure you’re wondering who I am since you’ve never met me.” He paused as if expecting a response, and when he didn’t get one he continued, “Who I am is not really important. What is important is I’ve got some questions that I’d like answered. Let’s start with an easy one. Who are you working for?”

Diane kept her mouth shut and just looked calmly at the man. After a minute he sighed and said “Very well. I guess it’s going to be the hard way.”

He got up and opened the door to the room they were in. “Please come in gentlemen, and bring your equipment with you.”

Four men in lab coats came in, pushing several carts in with them. They immediately began setting up a couple of video cameras to apparently record what was going to take place, and then setup some other electronic monitoring devices either pointed at Diane or connected to her body after the sheet was removed revealing she was completely nude as she had suspected. It took them about ten minutes to get it all setup and they stopped and looked to the man who had called them in.

He looked at Diane and asked “Still refusing to answer my questions?”

After another minute of silence from Diane he simply gestured at the men and said “Continue.”

They all pulled on thick long cuffed latex gloves that covered their arms up above the elbows, then opened the lid on a cart they had yet to touch and two of them pulled out a couple rolls of what appeared to be bandages that dripped a clear liquid. They gently squeezed the rolls out, and approached Diane with them down by her feet. One of them lifted up her left leg and began tightly wrapping the bandage around her ankle, but not tight enough to cut off circulation, and working his way down over her heel and foot even going over her toes. When the first roll ran out the second roll was handed over and he continued wrapping where the first roll ended. About the time her foot was covered her interrogator spoke up again.

“You see Diane; our research hasn’t gotten very far yet. There are several synthetic skins on the market that have the potential for our end result, so we’ve been working on the ‘permanent replacement’ end of it. We’ve only gotten so far as to create a binding agent that we think will work at the cellular level, but there’s a lot of testing to be done yet.” He paused for a moment and looked at the progress being made with the bandages before continuing on. “We have an initial prototype ready, and we’ve applied it to standard four-inch linen bandages, but it has to be kept suspended in a pure saline and Teflon solution mix to keep it from reacting to itself. Eventually we should be able to limit it to just the synthetic skin we create for it, but for now it seems that pure latex is proof against it which is why you’re laying on latex sheets. We are really no where near ready for any type of clinical trials with it, let alone human testing, but since you’ve decided to ‘volunteer’ I think an exception can be made.”

By this time the men wrapping her leg had covered it up to just above her knee and a new roll was being passed over to continue higher. She blinked as she realized that she was being used as a guinea pig to test their product, which was much too early in development. The possible ramifications of this quickly went through her mind causing her to begin to worry. It could work as intended, and she’d never get these bandages off again, or it could be a complete failure at this point and nothing would happen. Alternately, whatever they were using could react badly and cause any number of horrible outcomes from permanent disfigurement to loss of her limbs, or even death. And her arms and legs were still going to be paralyzed for at least another five or six hours, possible longer. By this point they had completed wrapping her leg all the way up to her hip and set it back down on the table. She raised her head and looked down along her body to see her left leg completely covered in damp light-grey bandages. Her lip trembled slightly, but she kept her resolve to keep silent, hoping he was lying and just trying to use psychological pressure on her.

The men lifted her right leg and began wrapping a new roll around her ankle when her torturer began to talk again.

“Now, if this works as intended the binding process will take place over the next eight to twelve hours or so. We haven’t been able to narrow it down more than that just yet. We have no idea if it will be painful at all for the patient, in this case you, and since you’ve been injected with our nerve blocker we will probably have to wait to find out how it feels until we’ve gotten up to doing your torso. Of course, you could just answer my questions and I might just end this now.”

He paused and looked between her face and the leg the men were wrapping up several times before continuing. “But then, how will I know if you’re lying to me if you can’t feel anything happening? Such a dilemma. What will I do?” He watched silently as they finished wrapping her right leg up to the same level as her left leg then lay it down on the table with several inches separating her legs. One of the men examined her left leg closely, making several notes of how her leg looked along its length and especially how it looked just above where the bandaging had stopped. Once done he looked to their supervisor, Diane’s tormentor, and raised an eyebrow.

“Ah, what to do. How to solve my dilemma. What next.” He paused, intentionally trying to build suspense. “I think we should continue the dilemma while I think more about it. Wrap her arms next.”

The men nodded, and immediately picked up a new roll of bandages and her left arm. They began at her wrist and worked down the hand leaving the thumb free at first before binding it down between wet bandages, securing it to the side of her hand then tightly binding her fingers together held straight out like a mitten. As two of the men continued to work on her left arm, the other two picked up her right arm and began wrapping it in the damp rolls in the same manner as her left arm instead of waiting for the left to be finished like they did with her legs. After several minutes of intense work they had both of her arms completely wrapped all the way up to her shoulders where they stopped and lay her arms down, again keeping them separated from her body like they had done with her legs.

“Well now, it seems that all of your unfeeling parts are covered now. If this works as intended, then you are not going to have fingers anymore. And that leaves us with where to go next. Not many choices, are there? Will you talk yet?” When he got no answer he told the men, “Very well, let’s keep going from the bottom up. Don’t forget to do a close exam of her hips before you continue.”

The men pulled out several instruments and took pictures, measurements of several types including temperature and size, and even took some tissue samples. Once their exam was done, they lifted her legs and hips up and placed latex covered supports under her legs and middle back leaving her hips buttocks and lower back suspended in the air. They then proceeded to wrap around her left leg just below where they had finished and worked up over her hip to her torso. It took about five rolls to cover both hips with a continuous layer up from her legs and over her hips and buttocks to her waist. They even went between her legs and covered her crotch, leaving no skin uncovered. Supports were shifted as they worked their way up and shortly they were tightly wrapping her lower ribs just below her breasts. At this point her arms were brought out pointing straight away from her body to give room to work on her upper torso. When her breasts began to be covered they first went in a figure eight pattern to get between them, making sure no flesh was left untouched. Then they began wrapping in a circular fashion again, but alternating from the bottom side of her breasts with one wrap to the top side with the next wrap and back to the bottom side again on the next wrap until her breasts were completely covered. They had been tightly bound, but not so tight they were flattened against her chest. The men finished off with covering her shoulders, connecting to the bandages on her arms, and going a couple wraps up her neck.

“Oh, go ahead and wrap up her head too. Just leave her face exposed so she can see and talk if she so chooses,” said the man in the jogging suit. He had been silent and simply watched while her body was wrapped up. The men quickly complied, and in a few minutes her head was wrapped up as well, the bandages covering her ears, her forehead down to just covering her eyebrows, the top and back of her head, and her chin to just below her lower lip. She was now wrapped in the damp light-grey bandages from head to toe, the only exposed skin being that of her face; the lips, eyes, nose, and the cheeks directly between the eyes and lips.

So far, the only thing Diane had felt was the dampness of the bandages and the pressure from how tight they had been wrapped on her. The tightness was uncomfortable, and was causing a minor difficulty with taking deep breaths, but not to the point of putting her in distress. She had yet to feel anything else that her imagination had come up with for how this was supposed to feel, and she was now thinking that this whole scene was just a psychological dud and they had been messing with her mind. She looked over at the speaker and gave him a look that said “You’ve played your card, and I’m not impressed” but otherwise kept silent.

The man returned a look of raised eyebrows, and then looked at his watch. “Well, it seems we’ve only been at this for about an hour and a half so far. Take notes of the patient, then let’s do a second layer just like the first one.”

One of the others spoke up for the first time, “But Sir, the second layer will bond with the first layer if we do that.”

“Yes it will, if it works. She’s already a non-voluntary test subject, I don’t think we need to worry too much about using more now do we?”

The new speaker thought about it for a moment then nodded and the four men got to work making observations and taking samples. After about fifteen minutes their observing was done and they started in on the second layer beginning at her feet again. This time they worked on both legs at the same time, and when they reached the hips they just continued on up the torso; making sure to completely cover everything as before. When they got to her armpits, they stopped wrapping her body and switched to her arms starting at the wrists again and working on up until they had completely covered everything up to the top of her head again.

By this point Diane had begun to feel a little more than tight damp bandages wrapped around her body. She was feeling a tingling or an itching down around her hips and lower regions. It was subtle, but it was there and she was pretty sure the feeling was slowly affecting more and more of her body; the line of sensation moving upwards at about an inch a minute was her guess. Without realizing it, she was starting to get a worried expression on her face which was noticed.

“Starting to feel something Diane? We’d appreciate you letting us know what you’re feeling right now, as it would probably help our research towards the end result. Your arms and legs are still going to be numb for …” here he looked at his watch again, “about another hour and a half to two hours. But anything you happen to be feeling on the rest of your body do tell us all about it please.”

Diane just glared at him, but didn’t say a word. “No? Too bad. But maybe you’ll change your mind later. Gentlemen, as I just mentioned we have maybe two more hours before our little thief here begins to recover the use of her limbs. I don’t want her running away from us, so let’s do a third layer. But I think we’ll do something different this time with it. Wrap her legs together tightly as one unit. That should keep her from going anywhere quickly.”

Diane let a small whimper escape at that pronouncement. Her jailer just smirked at her while the four began to carry out his latest order. They lifted both legs and held them together while the first roll of the third layer was wrapped around her ankles and worked down over her feet then back up again. By now her feet, and when they got to them her hands, actually had six layers of bandages wrapped tightly around them; each time the wrapping had been started at the ankles and wrists, going down to cover the toes and fingers completely, and then wrapping back up again to work up the limb in question. They continued to bind her legs together, efficiently creating a layer of bandages with no gaps or missed areas, turning her legs into a single unit leaving her looking more and more like an odd grey Egyptian mummy. By the time they reached her waist, her entire body that she could feel was tingling, and the tingle had grown to an incessant itch that she couldn’t even try to do anything about since her arms were still just dead weights.

At the end of an hour, they had completed wrapping her in the third layer, and the itching had grown until it was a horrendous itch from her head down to her crotch, only her numb arms and legs being left out. She was worried how bad it would be once she could feel those limbs. Diane also realized that even if she could move, there was little she could do about the itching due to how her hands had been bound. With the layers of bandages covering them she would only be able to slap herself ineffectively. And the itching was getting worse.

“Well Diane, feel like talking yet? I know you’ve been feeling something for a while now from the look on your face. And you haven’t been able to keep your head still for at least the last fifteen minutes except when the guys were holding it steady to wrap the next layer on. We’re going to do at least two more layers I think, and you’re going to like what happens next even less than the last one.”

After a minute of nothing but muted groans from Diane, he said “Very well, start on layer four. This time bind her arms across her chest and cover her face, but leave her mouth open so she can talk.”

The men began to move, and Diane decided she’d had enough. “Wait! Stop! I’ll talk!” she yelled.

The four men stopped and looked to their leader. “How nice of you. I’m going to listen, but we’re going to continue with the wrapping while you talk. If I like what I hear, then changes will be made along the way as we go. Wrap a bit slower this time as well.”

Diane watched as her legs were lifted and they began the process of wrapping another layer around her. “Oh god, please no.” she sobbed.

“That’s not much of an incentive to change my orders. I suggest you come up with something better, quickly.”

A tear fell from the corner of Diane’s eye and she continued to watch as her feet were covered up again, and the bandages began to slowly work their way up her calves before she spoke again.

“You’re right, I have been feeling something. The numbness in my arms and legs has probably kept me from feeling it there like you guessed. It started out as a subtle tingle in my crotch and hips that gradually moved upwards to encompass everything from head to crotch. From there the sensation grew to a more pronounced tingling, and then progressed to an itching. At this point the itching is horrendous; I can’t do anything about it, and it getting so bad that it almost hurts.” The entire monologue had taken her over five minutes, and her eyes never left the progress of the bandages being wrapped up her legs. At this point they were just beginning to wrap over her hips.

“Very good Diane, you’ve bought yourself a small respite. I think we’ll not cover your face this time around. I need more to make more changes though.”

The wrapping continued to work up over her hips as Diane spoke again. “The wrapping of these bandages as tight as they have is rather uncomfortable. It’s a bit difficult to breathe, I can’t take a deep breath anymore.” More tears spilled from Diane’s eyes. “Oh god, the itching is becoming a burning sensation. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

The man came around so he was standing at the top of Diane’s head. He waited a minute for her to say more before he spoke.

“That’s good Diane, anything you can give us for the research is appreciated. But you haven’t changed my mind yet about making further changes. They are going to be at your armpits in about a minute, then they are going to be folding your arms over your chest just like a mummy and binding them down. Give me something more Diane.”

Diane was openly crying and sobbing by now, and couldn’t seem to say any more as they worked over her breasts and reached her armpits. They picked up her arms and were starting to fold them down when Diane screamed “NO!” The man immediately held up a hand and they stopped in mid motion, holding her arms suspended in the air above her.

“You know what I want Diane. Give me a name” he said sternly.

Diane crumbled, her will broken. She gave him what he wanted. She gave him the name of the man who had hired her, the company he worked for, how much they were going to pay her for the data she was to steal. Everything.

The entire time the man kept his hand raised, and her arms remained held in mid-air above her body. When she finished, he spoke.

“Very good Diane. That is what I wanted to hear the most. Leave her arms free, wrap them separately in a forth layer like the last three, and finish her head as instructed.”

Diane simply sobbed in pain as the orders were carried out. Her fourth layer was completed leaving her face still free and her arms loose from her body. It had been another hour of wrapping, and the eighth hour since being shot with the nerve blocker had been reached. Only six hours had passed since the initial wrappings had begun, and she hadn’t been able to feel her arms or legs. Until now. Sensation was returning to them, and it was returning quickly. Almost as fast as the drug had taken effect, she regained feeling in her limbs. The pain she felt was added to what she had already been enduring, and it was worse than the previous pain due to her legs having been the first to be wrapped followed by her arms. The increased level of pain made her scream incoherently for several minutes until her body adjusted to it and she was finally able to form recognizable words. During her screaming fit, the man who was leading her torture had stepped out into the hallway with his cell phone so he would not be interrupted, and when the screaming died down he came back into the room.

“Please! Make it stop! Give me something for the pain! Please!” begged Diane.

She had been thrashing around so much that she had to be restrained to keep from throwing herself off the table she was on. Her arms had been tied down with latex tubing at the wrists elbows and upper arms holding them out to the sides, while latex straps had been tied over her legs at the ankles knees and upper thighs to stop her from thrashing about.

“I’m sorry Diane, but if we give you anything it would skew the information you can give us about what’s going on and what you’re feeling. We can’t have that. Now, please tell us what you’re feeling.”

And for the next two hours they poked prodded and questioned Diane about what had been done to her. Eight hours had finally passed, and Diane was still in near excruciating pain as the bandages were bonding to her body, permanently trapping her in an inescapable new skin. The bonding formula was a success as far as the intended result was concerned; it just appeared it was taking longer than anticipated and was causing extreme pain in the process. Diane was finally untied from the table, her arms were placed over her chest, and she was wrapped up in the latex sheets she was laying on. Diane begged and pleaded strenuously for her arms to at least be separated from her body, intensely afraid they would bond in place, but her cries were ignored. She was loaded into a non-descript un-marked van and driven away from the complex. They unceremoniously dumped her at her car, the one she had left at the residence where she had stolen the second car from, and quickly sped away. She was still wrapped in the latex sheets, so no contact with anything else was being made. Diane’s screams of continuing pain and cries for help quickly brought out the neighbors, and she had to scream at them to not remove the latex sheets and just call an ambulance. The ambulance arrived, and it was an intense several minutes to convince the EMT’s to not touch anything but the latex, load her into the ambulance, and drive with all haste to the hospital.

Epilogue

Diane had convinced the doctors at the hospital that they should only touch her while wearing thick latex gloves, and had gotten them to move her arms away from her body. It was a good thing they had done so, because her arms had indeed begun to bond, and at a faster rate since the process had already been going for many hours already. It was what the doctors’ saw when they pulled her arms apart that convinced them that what they were being told might just be true and that they did not have the facilities to even try to treat their unusual and hysterical patient. They kept her wrapped up in the latex sheets, with her arms separated from her body, and sent her via a two hour helicopter trip to one of the top hospitals in the country. Two of the physicians accompanied Diane on the flight so they could directly report everything they could as both diagnostic information of her condition, and as a warning to all who might accidentally come in contact with her. It took another six hours from the time Diane was dumped at her car before the high levels of pain started to subside, and another three hours after that for everything to finally stop bonding so she could touch and be touched by anything non-latex.

Many tests were run, and it was determined that the layers of bandages had completely bonded with both each other and with Diane’s own flesh. The intense pain was a result of her nervous system growing up into the bandages. Strangely, her pulmonary system had not extended with it, so while there would be no bleeding if she was cut she would feel it as if her own flesh had been cut. The level of her sensation though was oddly muted. Cuts and hard blows would be felt almost normally, but gentle contacts such as a feather brushing against her wrappings was unfelt. This left the doctors attending her quite confused and she had to be placed under general anesthesia to perform several emergency surgeries so that she could eliminate her bodily wastes and have her menstrual cycles attended to. Afterwards, although most of the cutting had only been done on the layers of bandages, she required painkillers as if she herself had been cut open.

The eight layers over her toes and feet left them completely immobilized, unable to bend or flex in the slightest. Her hands were little better, She was barely able to get any noticeable movement from either her wrists or fingers at all. Her knees and hips were left extremely stiff, only able to bend with considerable difficulty to about forty-five degrees at the knees and maybe sixty degrees at the hips/waist. Her back was also held fairly rigidly allowing only minimal movement. Her arms were a bit more mobile, she could bend her elbows from nearly one-hundred degrees out to about fifteen degrees from straight with some difficulty. Her shoulders allowed her to raise her arms up just a little above the line of her shoulders, and nearly straight out in front of her. Her neck was just as stiff as her feet and hands, not allowing any bending or twisting of her head. When she completely relaxed, such as going to bed, her wrappings would lay her out straight from head to heels, toes pointed straight up if she was lying down, and her arms would be pulled up onto her chest laying her hands on top of her breasts.

Due to the tightness of the bandages, her breathing was restricted and she could not take deep breaths on her own. A permanent tracheotomy stoma was inserted in her neck, and at night she had to be hooked up to a ventilator to give her assisted breaths to fully expand her lungs. The layers of bandages over her ears noticeably reduced the level of sounds she could hear, but she chose to not have them cut open and decided to just live with that.

Once everything settled down around Diane, she was eventually sent off to a very private, government run, managed care facility where she was watched and helped. The mobility she had in her arms allowed her to feed herself using adaptive long handled utensils, but taking care of cleaning herself was practically impossible. She could get into a wheelchair on her own with limited difficulty, and could then slowly move around on her own.

Every All Hallows Eve, she was a big hit at a public haunted house where she would quietly show up from an unknown location, be placed in a special Egyptian display designed especially for her, and she would scare the crap out of everyone who would come through. The display would change from year to year. Sometimes she would be standing upright in an open sarcophagus and would bounce out at people and chase them out of her room, other times she would be laid out on a ‘stone alter’ with ‘priests’ mummifying her alive and she would break free and go chasing after people with loose bandages trailing behind her. Other times there were other changes, but she usually was able to go bouncing around as best she could to chase the customers. Then, when the season would end, she would disappear as quietly as she had arrived and the people running the haunted house asked no questions about the strange mummified woman who was such a big hit.

Meanwhile, in a research facility somewhere, a man was waking up to find himself tied down to a table. He was completely naked and lying on latex sheets. He struggled a bit, but his restraints were too tight and he could not loosen them.

“Hello. I have many questions for you, although I know most of the answers already. You are going to answer them all the same though. And I don’t think we are going to be quite as nice to you as we were to Diane. I believe we are going to go for the full five layers with no respites given.”

“Please come in gentlemen, and bring your equipment with you.”