Chapter 2 - Reawakening

It was hard to tell exactly how long she had been out of it. But when she woke up the sun was already setting. Was it even the same day? How would she know? Her head was killing her now. If yesterday was just the worst hangover she had ever experienced, today was something far beyond that. It was almost to the point where her head felt like it was physically taking damage.As her wits slowly came back to her and she remembered the gas, Marisse could not help but worry that the stuff might be causing her brain damage of some kind given her headache. 
 
Rain pattered against the window off to the side of the room. Wait, what? Sitting up she looked over towards the window. Indeed, it had moved. Now the window was facing directly towards the window of another building only feet away, the other covered with cheap white curtains. Looking around she saw that the whole room as cheaper. This time the walls were covered in wallpaper that was slightly peeling about the edges, yellowed with mildew damage in spots. Had she looked more closely she would have noticed how the view outside was notably lower as well. 
 
However it was hard think about such things through her headache. Whatever she decided to do she needed to start thinking about it n-
 
“Jiāofù!” There was a pound at the door followed by the crinkling of plastic again and then footsteps leading away. At the sound of that voice her stomach gurgled and a pang of hunger ran through her body. Sitting up in bed it became clear that she was naked still, she could feel the sheets rubbing over her naked form rather acutely, almost sensuously. Her heart fluttered again, but this time in arousal. Was whatever they had knocked her out with messing with her head? This was not the time to be thinking about how she was completely exposed for anyone to see if they should come...in.
 
She had to think the perverse thought from her mind. As she stood up she heard several bones pop in her back, hips, and neck, as if they had been cramped while she was out. However, during the time she had spent under her bones had actually compacted slightly, trimming a couple of inches from her height. Similar changes to her bone structure had already started to take hold of her form. Her cheekbones had expanded slightly, as well as her brow having thickened slightly. Similarly her nose had widened as well, her nostrils flattened slightly while flaring to either side more, giving her a definitive Mongolian influence in her visage. Likewise her skin seemed more tan than before as well, but where her previous experience with tanning had been one of merely darkening her skin, her current fleshtone had a slightly more brown hue, giving it a yellow tint overall over her former pink. Her blonde hair swished about, dark roots now showing about the base of her scalp, nearly pitch in color. 
 
What Marisse did not know what indeed, whatever had been given to her was affecting her brain as well as her body. Through means best left unexplained, her lingual center was starting to shift, information forming that was not there before. While it was just the flickers of the beginning, Marrise found herself more comfortable around Chinese Kanji, her brain starting to pick up on symbol patterns and the like. Unfortunately, these changes were not all positive, but rather in exchange, the first beginnings of her native language starting to deteriorate in the wake of her acquired information. 
“Aaaaaw, god damn it, god damn it god damn it…!” she groaned out, groggy and ragged. Hunger, despair, rage, and self-hate boiled and frothed within her, almost forcing her to gag, her hands balling into fists and beating the cheap, creaking mattress below her. 
 
“Fuck me! Fuck! Me!” she shouted, quickly silencing herself - she didn’t want to send any mixed messages - she was being self-deprecating, not slutty. “Oh, what’s the difference? Nobody can fucking understand me, anyway.” She was pissed - at JadeTech, and at herself. While she still had her wits about her, for as much as they shone through the pain that was threatening to scatter her thoughts, she’d blown her chance at escape. “All because I couldn’t fucking hold my breath.” she spits.
 
Her legs once more swung around to the side of the mattress, kicking the sheets off of her as well. As the rest of her body repositioned, it felt like she was experiencing a bit of lag-time - like her head was a few seconds behind her body. Headrush didn’t wait for her to get up this time, instead coming as soon as she sat up on the corner of the mattress, facing the door and cradling her hands in her head. “I fucked up… They don’t need guards, they… They wired the place with something.” Looking up and around, she grimaced. “And then they moved me, so I couldn’t learn what they did to the last place. Assholes.” 
 
Her body sounded like a strand of firecrackers as she got up, joints popping with every subtle movement and leaving behind small, warm centers of pleasure, lasting only a scant moment. Propping herself against the wall, feeling the wallpaper shift beneath her fingers, her eyes were still down - on herself. How dark her skin had gotten wasn’t something she was about to miss… Nor was it something she’d properly pick up on. “Shitty lighting.” she mumbles, looking up at the yellowish ceiling. “Shitty ceiling. Shitty walls, shitty bed, shitty place. Shitty people.” she rants, if only to hear something other than the rhythmic pounding of her head. 
 
Marisse moves to the door first, opening it up slowly and peering down the hallway - seeing much what she’d expected. A dingier, if similar hall to the one she’d first run down. She wasn’t done trying to get out of this crazy place just yet… But she wasn’t going to barge out the door like last time. Instead, she grabbed the plastic bag and retreated inside, plopping down at her ‘new’ desk. “Just you wait, assholes.” she mumbles, dropping it on the desk before her and pulling everything out bit-by-bit. “I’m gonna bring hell down on you.” 
 
Looking to the takeout boxes, she smiled dimly. “After dinner.” The one she delved into was full of some sort of rice covered with sauce, forcing her to eat slowly - using the still-fused chopsticks as a makeshift spoon rather than using them properly. Everything that was in the last bag, to her knowledge, was in this one. The headset, food, water, pill bottle, cigarettes, and booze. As she ate, she moved the pill bottle closer to her, reading the labels to see if she’d be able to make out any important info - names, locations, what it even was. All she was able to figure out was that it had essentially the same stuff as aspirin, with a few other things she didn’t recognize. They must know she’d have a helluva headache from the drugs. “How thoughtful.” she grumbles.
 
She gulps down a pair of the pills with a mouthful of water, hissing as they go down - they’d at least clear her head up a little. Enough so that she’d feel like she wasn’t in a headlock, she hoped. Rather than try anything else for now, she finishes up her box of food and rises again, moving into the bathroom. Though it was dingy, she was able to find a mirror that was… Functional enough to give her a decent look at herself. Thankfully, she didn’t look like she’d felt. At least, as bad as she felt.
 
“Hm?” she thrums, tilting her head toward the mirror. “Black…? Did they mark me or something?” she muses, rubbing her scalp with one finger. To her dismay, nothing rubbed off on it. “Assholes.” she mumbles, patting her cheeks and trying to smile. Her face looked… Odd, though she couldn’t place just what was wrong with it. It wasn’t like she was looking at a stranger in the mirror, but it wasn’t like looking at herself either. It was like looking at someone that someone else would mistake for her. “Aaagh…” Frustrated, she pats her cheeks and turns away, cursing out the mirror as she moves back to her room. 
 
Another note had appeared with this bag, just like the last one. She didn’t open it just yet, mostly because she expected that it’d say the same thing as the last note, maybe with a paragraph chewing her out for running. Thinking on this, she thought to the computer it’d mentioned - that some more ‘instructions’ would be on it. Maybe if she played along with them, they’d relax security on her? Grabbing the headset, she fumbled with the inputs and looked around for where to plug them in the computer and where to power it up - even if she wasn’t going to work immediately, she wanted to find out what they wanted from her and who the hell they were.
 
It was surprising how natural it felt to without clothes after two bouts of consciousness without wearing any. A small part of her actually found it kind of liberating. An ironic thought considering her situation of course, but still there nonetheless.As she sat there in front of the desk she felt the stubble of her own pubic hair about her crotch, corasely rubbing between her legs and making her feel...antsy, similar darkened areas showing up under her arms as well, unlike the former blonde curls. How long had she been out exactly? It was so hard to tell time...
 
Like the last meal, the food settled heavily in her stomach, making her feel bloated again. Unlike "yesterday" where there was soft murmuring in the walls from time to time, the noise here was a bit more robust. Periodically she could hear someone flushing a toilet, or yelling something in some foreign language.
 
Popping the headset into the audio jack of the computer, she was greeted with the electrical hum of the current running through it. It felt like it vibrating her very skull like a tuning fork, but it was manageable. The laptop itself was pretty nice, though the casing was a bit scuffed. Had the one in the last room been like that? It was hard to recall, but not that it mattered. When she opened the lip the screen popped on, showing a fairly barren computer, with a bunch of programs she did not even recognize. Then she noticed something off about the desktop. 
 
In place of some quaint image of a beach or a stock photo of a happy family, was just a white box with black borders. In the box were two paragraphs in text, one in English, the other in Kanji. 
 
“Dear [font=ＭＳ]垃圾郵件發送者[/font],
 
Here are your work duties:
            Use provided programs to:
-Access online services and activate the gold revenue program inside the chat program.
-Hack Emails and Data Registries and then send revenue messages to said accounts.
-Access Skype and Facebook registries and contact users by text, voice, and video to acquire proper information for the bank account access programs. 
            -For text, use premade program. 
            -In some situations verbal communication might be necessary to show you are not an automated user. Conditions and terms of your employment here apply. 
            -If video chat is necessary, use intercom to request clothing. 
 
Your job is simple. Follow the guidelines above and reach your daily quota, provided in your daily greeting from our supply package, and upon reaching that goal, you are free to relax for the rest of the day. Failure to meet your quote by 5PM will result in measured response. 
 
 
Using this computer for any other means than for work or personal leisure and entertainment will result in swift and measured response according to the scope and scale of your breach. These activities include:
                        -Contacting the authorities
                        -Contacting known relatives and friends
                        -Contacting peers connected to your past in any shape or form.
                        -Attempting to educate yourself.
                        -Revealing your location or previous identity in any way, shape, or form. 
                        
Finally, we encourage you to enjoy your time here. As long as you meet your quota and do not violate the rules above or conveyed elsewhere, you may use your computer however you like. 
 
Sincerely, and with appreciation,
JadeTech.
 
The next paragraph of information was illegible, at least to her. Just use the programs and follow the rules and she would be fine, assuming it was true and nothing in the text below said otherwise. Looking in the bag, there was indeed a letter, but the English portion was the same as before. Was the quota written in Chinese?! Maybe if she managed to just do a lot she would be fine. She just would need to finesse a little bit, at least she could type well, all she needed was…
The keyboard was in Kanji…
 
“God damn it!” she shouted, her hands coming down upon her desk with a ‘thud’.
 
“How the hell do they expect me to work if I can’t read the goddamn keyboard!?” She was practically seeing red - there was no way for her to figure out what they keys said, and she had no idea if it was even arranged like the keyboards she was used to… Not that it’d help her much, she was never around keyboards often enough to perfectly memorize what they read. 
 
Slumping back in her chair and clutching her head, she moans “And I can’t even write Chinese.” It was… Occurring to her that this language was Chinese. She’d begun to pick up a few of its more obvious features, what… Distinguished it, though none of it made any sense to her. Dropping her hands, she looks back to the computer, at the damn wallpaper. She couldn’t educate herself? On what? Was that just a jab - did they know she couldn’t read any of this? Why would they want to keep her from learning it if they wanted her to work for them?
 
Her fist reared up, ready to hilt itself in the computer screen… But she stops herself before she makes that mistake, not only thinking of what harm might come to her, but what her kidnappers might do. “Pff, what can they do? Keep moving me?” she muses, looking around. So what if she could keep getting moved - they’ll probably replace the computer if she breaks it, but they couldn’t do jack if she tried to report them to the authorities over the web… Oh, wait…
 
“They’ve got hackers.” she blurted out flatly, sighing afterward. “Son of a… Ugh!” Stamping her foot, she glared at the computer again, shaking her head. “If they’re anything like what they want me to be like, there’s a fat chance I’ll be able to get anything out.” Without a little subtlety, she silently adds. 
 
Well, she didn’t want to seem too suspicious - she didn’t want them to need to keep an eye on her all the time, and if she refused to at least try to work, she wagered they’d pay her some mind. Marisse sighs. “At least the mouse is universal.” she mumbles, dragging it across the screen and testing it out. Finding it in proper order, she rolls it over to some of the odd programs, opening them up just to figure out what they do, occasionally reaching over for a drink of water. The sounds bleeding through the walls around her weren’t like any other ambiance - it wasn’t background noise that’d simply fade into the background with time. It was a constant din that was always reaching into her ears, bugging her and nagging at her - that she couldn’t understand it made it fall from a mere annoyance to a something more threatening, something she feared, because she didn’t know if it was casual conversation or notes on her performance. 
 
Her eyes rolled over to the vodka, looking at it wistfully. She wanted something to… Help her escape from this place for a while, but she had absolutely no doubts that it’d do more harm than good. With an exasperated groan she shoved it and the cigarettes beside it over to the very edge of the desk to get them out of her field of view, removing them as a temptation. Well, the cigarettes not so much - she wasn’t a smoker, and had no plans to start, even in a situation as stressful as this.
 
Every so often a thump would come up from the floor below as something hit it. A muffled sound of someone making noises made itself known shortly after, though it was hard for Marisse to tell what exactly was going on. Were there other people trapped here too? There had to be given all the hallways. But if so, why weren't people screaming for help?
 
Maybe they had figured out there was no hope.
 
No! That was an unacceptable situation. But what was she to do about it? That vodka continued to look appealing, almost like itself was an escape, even if it was only a symbolic doorway out of here. Unaware that whatever was happening to her was affecting the very anatomy of her brain, slowly expanding the addictive centers and regions that dictated a propensity for compulsive and binging themed behaviors,  it did not occur to her that the bottle looked more tempting than usual because of something they were doing to her.
 
At least her headache was fading slightly. Or maybe she had just gotten used to it. It was a bit hard to tell, the sensation almost like ringing ears in a sense. What she did not know was that all the items inside the room were working on her in subtle, but increasingly more potent ways, each moving her body and mind in a general direction but individually having unique focuses that allowed her to eventually form her own identity in this new existence, even if it had nothing to do with her old one. 
 
Unlike the usual headaches which usually are a result of vascular dilation and constriction in the brain, there was something more going on. Whatever chemical wonder working through her body had essentially washed over the surface of her brain, soaking into it in a solid coat almost like someone staining hardwood floors. It was both thorough and sealing, making all of her mental changes permanent and progressive with a ratcheting effect. She could change further, but never backwards. 
 
As such the process left her feeling somewhat groggy and drugged, but it was hard to notice given that she was just knocked out for god knows how long. If she was going to be forced to use the computer, she would need to figure out some way to appease them in the short run. Surely they would not punish her for not being able to understand a language she did not know right? They had to know she was a foreigner. The most Chinese she ever heard before in person were a bunch of Chinese chefs in the back of a take out China Star while she was waiting for food back in college. 
 
Still, she found that when she right clicked the screen, the prompts were in English. Maybe she could do it all by mouse? One of the programs, labeled in Kanji, had an icon of a gold coin with some Yuan symbols behind it, the word just coming to mind, unknowingly at the cost of easily grasping for the English equivalent, the flickers of that verbal deterioration sparking ever so subtly from those pills. The next one was of a picture of an envelope with a black fedora on top of it. Beneath those were the desktop icons for Skype, but with Chinese characters under it, and Facebook. When she clicked the Windows Start button she was greeted with a long slew of games, all of them in Kanji of course. She could make out a few icons just from popular culture, World of Warcraft, Farmville, and a few others. But the rest all escaped her. 
 
It felt to her like someone was wrapping a hand around her brain, squeezing and locking up her thoughts and making each attempt at thinking, or even doing nothing, hurt as bad as banging her head against a wall. Not like she wouldn’t like to do that, at this point in time. The backwards logic of this freaky organization was driving her up a wall.  
 
“Oh, hey, let’s kidnap a girl who doesn’t know a lick of Chinese. Or Japanese, or any language other than English.” she groaned, her intermittent clicking being the only sound in the room that wasn’t being generated by her… Neighbors, she supposed. Whoever they were - voluntary occupants or otherwise. Maybe she’d get to socialize with them eventually…? No, she didn’t think so. Not when they wanted her to be fucking rooted to this computer. 
 
Marisse’s lips briefly curled into a smile, her head shaking. “Maybe their kidnappers just messed up and grabbed the wrong Marisse.” she muses, finding a small bit of humor in this dark situation. “And they realized it halfway through, but decided to roll with it. Heh, I hope someone’s getting fired because of me.” Her hands once more run through her hair, smoothing it out and working as a makeshift comb to clear up the few kinks that her drugged slumber had birthed. Once they were done, they rested on her head for a moment, and she grinned, thankful that her headache was relaxing somewhat. She didn’t know if it was because the pills kicked yet or what. One part of her hoped that this was the case, because if it was, she’d be blowing through that bottle just to get her head straight. 
 
She takes a long drink of water and sighs. Whatever the case was, she knew she had to get to ‘work’, or at least try to figure out what the applications did. Her first, most obvious target was the coin.
 
Running her hands through her hair had left a bit of a greasy feel on her fingers, reminding her that she had not showered, or even cleaned up at all since she had arrived in this place. Going without being seen by anyone must have made her slack off a bit. That or being kidnapped, but who knows. The thought made her chuckle softly and idly wonder if she was starting to lose if it she was finding humor in this serious of a situation. In the least, no one had seemed to have actually harmed her. And despite not having any clothes, she had not been raped or anything like that either. 
 
It was all in the little things. 
 
Of course, in the poorly lit room she did not see that her hair was actually quite greasy, whatever had been happening to her hair having made it extremely oily and prone to being a thicket of a rats nest if she did not take care of it every day. However, in combination with this, whatever was saturating her brain was also eating at her frontal lobe and slowly beginning the process of deteriorating her capacity for forethought, patience, and self restraint, let alone discipline and care for proper routine.  All of it was just beginning, but such things were destined to snowball substantially as time went on. This was merely the sneeze that would initiate the avalanche. 
 
Clicking on the coin icon a large window popped up reminiscent of the command prompt screen that always was too intimidating for her to mess with whenever it popped up back on her home computer. After a moment a bunch of Kanji appeared in the black box, flooding the window as it started scrolling further and further down until finally ending in a blinking cursor. 
 
Marisse looked down at the keyboard, unsure what to type. But before she could do anything the program seemed to kick itself into second gear, another window opening up. This one looked like a game. While the subtext was in Kanji the title was in the Roman Alphabet. “Aion.” She had vaguely heard of such a game somewhere before. A login prompt came up and the black box in the other window sputtered out more Kanji before the prompt filled itself out and logged her in to show a full character roster, each named random garbage like “swefw” or “aztsgll.” She clicked one tentatively and watched as the game booted up. 
 
English! The game was in English!
 
A flutter ran through her heart. Maybe she could contact someone and ask for help, maybe get them to call the police and...She paused. The keyboard was still in stupid Chinese letters, how the hell was she supposed to type anything? She didn’t even know how to move! 
 
However the program running in the background seemed to do almost all of the work. It was not long before she noticed her character “speaking,” both with a speech bubble and in the chat box below.
 
“<<<<<BUY 5.99USD 4 12000PLATNUM, BYE NOW JADETECH.CN.>>>>>
<<<<<BUY 5.99USD 4 12000PLATNUM, BYE NOW.JADETECH.CN.>>>>>
<<<<<BUY 5.99USD 4 12000PLATNUM, BYE NOW.JADETECH.CN.>>>>>
<<<<<BUY 5.99USD 4 12000PLATNUM, BYE NOW.JADETECH.CN.>>>>>
<<<<<BUY 5.99USD 4 12000PLATNUM, BYE NOW.JADETECH.CN.>>>>>...”
 
The phrase kept repeating itself, prompting others in the chat to curse her out. What was she even supposed to do anyway? Why kidnap someone to just run an automated program? A ping interrupted her thoughts. Glancing down at the chat box in the lower left corner of the game’s window, she saw a message pop up.
 
“How safe is it?”
 
She looked over and saw it was a “whisper.” But how was she going to reply? Another ping.
“I won’t get banned for this will I?”
 
All the while her character continued to spew the message. Maybe if she hit the keyboard she could figure out what key meant what for English? Perhaps it was worth a shot. 
 
“Uh.”
 
Looking over the keyboard, she found herself at a complete and utter loss. She didn’t even know where to begin typing, a single digit hovering over the keys tentatively. 
 
“Uh…”
 
Besides, did she even want to respond to these people? She never played many games herself, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that randomly repeating offers in the format ‘her’ character was providing weren’t exactly legit, especially when real money was brought into the equation. No, no, they didn’t just want her to just hang around and… Idle, was it? They probably wanted her to talk to people, so that they could buy whatever the hell this platinum they were selling was.
 
“Uuuuuh…”
 
Her short nails scratch at her dry scalp, through her slightly-greasy hair. God, why did she even want to help these people that kidnapped her? So what, she could ignore these people - who knows what the hell JadeTech would do to these people to get their money, let alone their offer… Something in her doubted they’d just provide whatever they were supposed to without any strings attached. 
 
Biting her lip, she throws her hands up and collapses back into her chair, muttering “Fuck it. Fuck ‘em. They’ve got a link to… Whatever they’re offering, I’ve done my job.” 
Grabbing her water, she takes another sip before casting another speculative glance at the keyboard, her gaze sticking on the foreign symbol it lands on and her brow furrowing.
 
“No…” she mumbles. “No, just saying ‘Fuck ‘em’ won’t get me anywhere.” 
 
With a deep sigh, she leans over the keyboard again and moving her hand toward the highest, leftmost key. In the day and age she lived in, she couldn’t say she’d never used a computer before, not so much that she didn’t have rudimentary memory of how it was structured, both practical and muscle memory. 
 
“Alright… They’re called ‘QWERTY’ keyboards, right? That means… This is the function bar… These are numbers… And these are the letters.” she mumbles to herself, running her finger lightly over the first, second, and third rows of keys respectively. “Q, W, E, R, T, Y.” she chimes, running over the second-through-seventh keys.
 
A stormy look crosses over her face, dark shadows cast across it by the illumination from the monitor.  “Unless it’s DVORAK. Those are things. And… Aw, fuck, Chinese doesn’t work like that…”
 
Blankly, she stares at the monitor for a moment. 
 
“Fuck ‘em.” 
 
With that, she reclines in her seat again, idly scratching under her arm. Looking around the game’s UI, she looks for a clock or any method to tell what time it was - regardless of if she had twelve hours or twelve minutes until her ‘deadline’, she knew it was going to feel like an eternity.
 
The sounds coming from the other rooms still made their way through the thin walls periodically, stripping her of her sense of total privacy in the aspect of seclusion. But there was a certain anonymity about being part of what could be an entire building of captives that was oddly comforting. Well, perhaps comforting was not the right word. It was more like there was a sense of being able to get through this if she was not the only one. Or was that it? The more she thought about it, taking another sip of that water, the more she realized something. 
 
She was no longer scared. 
 
Concerned, angry, of course, but mostly if she were to articulate her current state it would be annoyed, maybe even slightly apathetic. It was like the situation was just not quite as interesting, which was absurd intellectually, this whole thing should be driving her up the walls. Except it did not. In reality, the chemical cocktail/bombardment that was working over her was already working at her personality and patience, but also her energy. As such, there was a certain lethargy that had begun working over her, further eating away at her patience since things seemed to be more of a hassle than before, but more importantly, it was blunting the edge of the circumstances and making it easier for her to slip up on her escape plans and just give up “for now.” 
 
Scratching under her arm again, she found that she was a bit itchy all over. Going without bathing for at least a couple of days, if not more, could do that to a person. Without any clothes on Marisse could felt the stubble of her underarm hair growing back in, though she did not see how it was darkened to the same shade as her roots. It was hard to tell at this stage, but the shadowed area that was developing about the base of her armpit was substantially larger as well as denser, tapering off out towards her arm and down towards her side. It did not matter though, who the hell was going to see her? Aside from the guy that left her food, she was alone effectively. 
 
The screen in front of her continued to show her character blaring the repeated text again and again and again in an unending stream of spam. She saw a couple people send her messages. One looked like another inquiry but most appeared to be threats, or at least it seemed that way. It was hard to tell since her character would just spam again and the chat log would spiral upwards and the private messages would disappear. Still, she saw enough of them to feel a pang of anger. She was still a person! Behind a spam bot or not, death threats were not called for, and she was the victim here not them! 
 
Marisse had to shake her head of the thought, her heart fluttering slightly from the agitation. She had to figure out something right? Maybe if she played with the buttons enough they-
 
The program cut out suddenly, the desktop note taking up the screen again. However this time there was a new window. It looked like a CMD prompt, not that she knew it by that name, but the text was all in kanji. It streamed down for a while before stopping. Then a small pinging noise came from the laptop speakers. Looking down at the corner of the screen she saw that the clock was flashing. It read 5PM. Marisse doubted if she had accomplished their goal, but what would they do about it? Kidnap her again? 
 
At the very worse, they’d just gas her again to knock her out. Not that she had any abhorrence to sleeping about now - for having awoken in the late afternoon and having done nothing, she was feeling pretty beat. She didn’t know if it was her sad resignation to this whole situation that made her tired, or if it was how tired she felt that was making her so apathetic… But, she supposed she couldn’t really dwell on the fact she’d been kidnapped forever. She should be scared by all rights, but there was a point where quaking in fear becomes a hindrance. Marisse didn’t know if she’d hit that breaking point yet, but supposed it was better that she wasn’t trembling like a little girl at the thought of a monster in her closet. 
 
Dejectedly, she curled her legs up into her chair and wrapped her arms around them, getting into a fetal position which she only really broke to scratch at herself. 
The blinking clock on the screen annoyed her - all of her ‘work’ did. For people so set on their deadlines, they didn’t give her a time to wake up, so she probably couldn’t even have gotten her quota for the day done, whatever it was, even if she was actually trying! Or, did she even need to try? 
 
“Aaaaagh.” she grumbles, gripping her head. “I can’t make heads or tails of any of this… Why? Why me…?”
 
They didn’t even take into account how people would be pissed at her - she knew how ticked off people could get when spammers show up. She understood the rage, and beyond that, didn’t expect anyone to ever think there’s an enslaved American woman behind that spam.
 
Scratching at her crotch, she grimaces - it wasn’t just her armpits that’d gotten a bit stubbly since… Well, whenever she’d arrived, it was her crotch too. She never really intended to… Show it off to many people, but she did like to keep a nice, smooth shave down there, and now that the thicker, prickly hairs had begun to sprout up, it was beginning to unnerve her. 
 
Cleanliness, exercise, and eating semi-well were things that she always had the will to not only abide by, but to keep on doing - this made how weak-willed she was feeling even more concerning to her. She knew she shouldn’t have eaten and hopped on the creepy computer before taking a shower, but… She just didn’t feel she needed one, and it took an effort for her to think of how wrong that was. 
 
Marisse sighs, looking to the greasy box of food again. Idly, she stares at it for a few moments before a small ray of sunlight parts the clouds covering her mind - she gets an idea. One that’d probably not work, but an idea nonetheless. 
 
“Someone brings me a care package every day, right…?” she muses, beginning to tear a side off from the paper box, begrudgingly licking the sauce-laden side to a degree of cleanliness and plucking the metal handle from it. “So… They can get messages.” Slowly, she uses the end of the metal to carve two words, in English of course, into the newly-cleaned side of the box: ‘need razors’. 
 
This brings a smile to her face - she didn’t really know if they were actually going to listen or not, but this method gave her some form of communication with her captors. Slowly rising from the chair to account for the oncoming headrush, she moves over to the door, slipping her little note under it. With that, she takes out another one of the boxes, a full one this time, and sets it to the side, using the bag to store her trash. 
 
Having seen no change from the blinking ‘5PM’ on her screen, Marisse assumes that they’ve got to… Do some review on her work or something, and that gave her time to herself. Some time off the clock, she thought, smiling solemnly. 
She moves to the conjoined bathroom and leans on the sink, looking into the mirror. One tentative finger traces across her face, in doing so building up a small bit of grease. Visibly wincing at this, she washes her hand off with plain water. God, did she get even worse over the course of the day? It was… Gross, just looking like this… But she supposed she did have the mercy of being alone. Now having a bit of time on her hands, she looks around the bathroom a bit more, trying to find the shower.
 
Periodically Marisse would scratch herself again, unaware that it was both a symptom of her mental changes as well as developing physical ones. It was a small sign, but notable nonetheless. She was scratching without thinking about how her actions conveyed herself. It was all part of the slow deterioration of her self awareness in her mind. Combined with her eroding mental filter for her thoughts, Marisse continued to slowly lose her ability to realise how she was conveying herself. Fortunately for her it was not like there was anyone to judge. Still, seeing her already growing her pubic hair reminded her that she was without amenities, and while unharmed, still very much a prisoner. She could feel the friction of her crotch stubble between her legs as she had walked towards the bathroom, the shadow of the emerging hair also significantly larger, darker, and denser than what had been her normal before. It made her feel outright primitive.
 
A grunt escaped Marisse's mouth as her facial structure shifted again as she splashed water on her face, mistaking the sensation for her jaw popping unexpectedly, her cheekbones growing even more pronounced as well as her brow line, making her look both increasingly less Caucasian in appearance as well as much less civilized. It was not much, if she had seen she might have mistaken it for swelling maybe from a food allergy, but it was indeed changing bone structure.
 
Similarly, her pores seemed bigger as well, Marisse being unaware that they were weeping much more oil than before, making her uncleanliness progress much quicker than a normal person, and in theory, progress to much more unsettling levels given enough time.
 
As she went about trying to clean herself she could hear thumping coming from the other side of the wall. Marisse stopped to listen for a moment, hoping maybe it would be some sort of code, but upon hearing what either were moans in Chinese, or someone just babbling, she let the hope drop. Figures she would be the only one that was not from this forsaken country-
 
She did not even notice the gas pump into the room until she was collapsing to the floor. 