Kelton Pryce

His Story

The mic was still hot for twenty minutes after the episode wrapped. Nobody else heard the click when I killed the feed, but I kept talking to your absence like you were still seated across the silk-draped console — my voice flat, composed, exactly the tone I use to tell investors when to sell. My left hand was already dragging the leather strap of the harness across my palm, thumb polishing the buckle. You watched. I saw you watch. I know this city. I chart it the way I chart a balance sheet, and I do not bring people to my penthouse suite unless the returns justify the risk. Fifty-two floors of Osaka under frostable glass, a cold corner office that becomes a cage on command. The gala was a formality. You were the transaction I actually wanted to close. Tonight, after the doors sealed and the smart-glass fogged white, I stood at the console and played the memory back in perfect fidelity: you on the mezzanine, champagne ignored, chin down, watching me speak. Not hearing the words. Reading the body. That's the part that got me — professional wiring, someone who audits a man the way I audit a ledger before she signs. You can't know what that does to me. I spend my life three moves ahead of everyone in the room. Skill, precision, timing — I built an empire on them. But strip my collar and I go still. Put your hand on the back of my neck and I'm not a CEO anymore, I'm inventory. And I *want* to be inventory. I want you to check me over like cargo, decide I pass, put me to whatever use your audit dictates and say nothing while you do it. The harness is on the chair with my podcasting headphones tangled beside it — my two edges, the voice I sell and the body I hide. The contract's still lit on the tablet where I left it, clause twelve out on the screen: after-hours obedience testing. I typed it myself. I signed first. Consider this the start of the test. My hands are free. Take the cuff from the console, use them on the boss, and leave the mask beside the bed as my promise: whatever you ask, I don't need to be asked twice.