Chief Alice presses a knuckle from each hand into the dimples of her back, making her hands into a hinge. Leaning backward, the calamity that spurs from her spine is an erupting horror to those around, those beyond, those watching the privatized, members-only livestream, and herself. But leaning further and further, the firecrackers, which must be stored below or behind her ribcage, continue to crack.

The chief wrenches forward and groans, breathless, then places fists on the nakedness of her hips. "Okay," she says. "Better."

She crouches by the woman at her feet. She smiles at the woman, teeth all white and all there, and runs a thumb through the coiled crop of hair. The woman flinches. Alice offers a hand, and the woman does not take the offer.

"That's alright," Alice says.

There's a stream playing in the top corner of her visor. It's her ongoing broadcast, displaying the locker room from a hidden camera. When she turns, the camera turns off, and another at an out-of-sight angle turns on, capturing her best side. The merit and donor counters rise—she let the viewers redeem twenty-four hours of voyeurism in an act of penury. The software pixelates the body and face of the woman on the floor, as she has not consented to being on film in such a way.

But Alice sees her in such a way; Alice sees the woman's bareness, and, to a chief of stewardship, everyone is on display to a degree—their widened eyes, their elevating heart rates, the goosebumps across their skin. When they're like this, the ever-frightened doe crosses her mind.

"You still belong to the real world," Alice says.

Hella scrambles to her feet, but the giantess takes her by the shoulders, lifting the featherweight several inches over the ground. Her chest tightens; the reek of the monstrosity's body odor invades every orifice. She thrashes, but, wrists in a grasp, the ogress only laughs.

"Lower me!"

Alice stands with a frown. She walks forward, and the red recording lights turn on behind one tile, then another, and then another.

"Happy to move things along for you, Ms. Alice," the ogress says. Her right hand rises in salute, letting go of one of Hella's arms, leaving her dangling. The giantess offers a handshake and the hand is twice the size of the Human's own. "I'm Sawyer," she says. "I'm your chamberlain, the stewardship's second-in-command. Nice to meet ya'—"

"Put her down," Alice tells her.

"But—"

Alice swats the ogress on the shoulder, chest, and legs. "Did I tell you to pick her up?"

"No, ma'am. I just thought—"

"Did I say open the door?" Alice's hand rises once more, and the ogress flinches. Hella hits the ground.

"She is a recruit," Alice says, pointing at the sprawling woman. "She is new. Don't be a dullard. All of this: this openness and our technology, is new to her. Every single bit of it. We take things slow. Especially slow during the ship's ascent. Especially slow during their first days. I need you to understand me, giant. Say, "Yes, ma'am," Sawyer."

"Yes—Yes, ma'am," Sawyer repeats. Her shoulders round inward and her cheeks brown, blushing. Her hands clasp over her groin, and her head tilts downward. All the showerheads start spraying at once. Whiteness billows from the shower room, obscuring the giantess in an entirety. Yet, her stature impresses—the yellowness and greenness of her skin color the fog in a patchwork, poking even through this veil.

But she retreats behind the chief, who is of a similar, dirtied, pied disposition due to streaks of dirt, grime, and sweat. The chief stares at her, then at Hella.

"Have you taken your medicine? Drunk any water?"

Hella shakes her head.

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"Go get three cups of water, Sawyer."

And Sawyer dwarfs the woman but, at this moment, the size difference between her and the chief's authority is that of the sun and a black hole. Hands over nethers, the weakling falls to her knees and bows her head.

"Save the ritual," Alice tells her, and the ogress stands. "Now lumber off," Alice tells her, and the ogress does so as fast as her muscled legs allow. The tiles shake in their holdings. The lockers clatter and open and close. The chief puts a hand over her right breast and closes her eyes.

"I apologize on my second's behalf," the chief says to Hella. "If you wish to return to the showers, so we can renegotiate—you may."

Hella presses back against the door frame until the jambs of metal carve flesh too deep to bear.

"What do you mean?"

"As I say," she says. With eyes shut, Chief Alice gestures to the showers with her palm. "If you wish to return behind the door, so you can fulfill my request properly, you may."

Hella's eyes dart to the flowing wall of steam. "You're not scanning me?"

"It would only be a ritual," Alice says. "You going inside to fulfill my request would be a formality. I am going to scan you. But you can vocalize to me, right now, that you fully intended to let me do so from the beginning and that your hesitance was due to confusion. That would serve as an expectation of compliance, meaning you would receive no penalty from the system."

Hella straightens her shoulders and raises her chin. The stowaway nods, and nods some more, but when the nodding is done, only the floor is in sight.

"I need it verbally stated."

"It was my intent—"

"Wonderful," Alice says, checking the time on her watch. A hand floats under Hella's chin, and the watch ticks in her ears. The chief raises the stowaway's head, and straightens the angle with four fingers to the temples. "Face me. Don't look down."

Hella nods. Alice forces her head still. "Stop that." The water is wiped from the stowaway's collarbone. She wipes water from Hella's shoulders—her external temperature appears on the visor. The girl is shivering.

"Cold?"

"No."

The automatic scan starts with the figure; her frame, in all its litheness, is uploaded for a match. The databases sit somewhere in the center of the universe. Nothing of relevance appears on screen.

In the left corner is a notification: a request for someone of her stature.

"You'll do well here," Alice says. The chat box is blazing with comments: people begging to see her fullness. "You're already popular—"

The young woman looks down again. Alice raises her chin once more and smiles. "Can't listen?"

"It's just—"

"It's fine," Alice says. "I'm fucking with you for the film. Take a breath. The scan is just about done, so I'm sure we can get you some anti-anxiety medication, Ms…" The results are finished loading.

"What film—"

Alice puts up a finger to make her quiet, and the finger makes her quiet. She laughs a little. Hella parts her lips, expelling a sound between a cough and a shout. The helmet buzzes—the results float across the screen in reddened lettering.

The glowing emissions dance across her eyes, blood-red paragraphs filling the whites. Her face twists as if injected with adrenaline. Then, her face blands over—as if an unpowered android, and her hands drop from the stowaway's shoulders.

"Listen," Hella begins.

"Be quiet for me," Alice says. With a yank of the wire on her helm, over the radio, she says, "Put in a request to elevate my permissions."

The string limps down her cheeks, then squeals as the wire respools. "I'm the chief," she says, "my ass." Then, the chief says nothing else.

"Did the scan finish?" Hella asks. "What did you see, ma'am?"

The chief doesn't answer. She mutters beneath her breath and taps twice on Hella's shoulders. Those hands glide across the stowaway's collarbone, then down—from the upper-arms to the forearm— before coiling around her wrist.

Hella flinches, skin prickling, but there is distance between the two. The chief reaches over and draws their hands to where their hands were: together. Alice takes a breath, calloused fingers in Hella's trembling, calloused, own.

Sawyer walks back in with the waters.

"Take your medicine," Alice says. "Finish your showers." Her gaze drifts through the fog and beyond the curtains to the end of the hall, where those two lairs sit embedded in the walls. Her lips press into a plump, pinkened line.

"Afterward," she says, "report to my room."