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Transformed & Forced

Part Four of four

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Growly

Several years later…

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Kate's revenge had not stopped with John and Mike, to say the very least of the captivity of the two lions. But not a single soul in the world could have told just how far and how deep her twisted desire for control and abuse could have run. She was, after all, a woman with power, the ability to transform human beings into whatever she pleased, whether that was animal or something else entirely. And who in the world was ever going to catch her when it seemed like something out of a sci-fi or horror film?

The exam room stood, but not empty. The walls were clean and everything clinically sprayed down with disinfectant, ensuring that anything that happened to the inhabitants of the enlarged room, designed for her purposes, was under her control. Yet none of that would have been obvious to a bystander merely wandering into the laboratory, wondering what had gone on there, if something truly terrible had taken place, all in a way that someone not in the know would have struggled to understand.

On the walls were two, modern, big-screen monitors, facing one another. The coat of paint on the walls was new, if not fresh, though they glistened with a kind of paint that would also allow them to be washed down easily, if the need ever allowed, a slick paint that was quite often used in dairy milking parlours too. It was amazing just what could be repurposed to nefarious, sordid needs when one truly tried.

The floor also had been refinished, the drain tucked to the side with the flooring slanting down slightly to it, though, oddly enough, one part had not been finished with new tiles. The grey flooring tile remained, perhaps as a memento to times long gone by, a scratched, raked scribble there that read, “I AM JOHN". It looked as if it would have been barely legible at the best of times, though had faded over the course of many years, many days of light and many bodies moving over it, one after the other.

It stood out because it was meant to. It was meant to be there, the beginning of the end for so many.

A deep reek filled the room, one that could never be cleaned away, despite the air filtration system that had been installed also, whirring away in an upper corner of the exam room. But it was not much of an exam room anymore, if it had ever truly been, a woman with twisted, wicked needs controlling it. Yet no one had caught her and the world that she had created rolled on before her, bored with what she had created and seeking out increasingly vindictive, cruel ways to torture those that she had claimed as her own.

The stench though… It clung to every surface like a second layer, twisted through feline sex and heat, cloying and sticky as if it had come forth in summer heat. Sex toys that did not belong there, dildos that were far, far too large to fit any normal person, were strewn around the room, cast aside like so many before that had served their use and then been set away. They were not needed, after all, once they had served that initial purpose.

Puddles dotted the floor, some larger than others, though the fluid as thicker and milkier. If one dipped their fingers into it, it would have clung between their digits and strung out between them as if it was sticky, clinging on. There was no one there, no one truly human, to do such a thing, of course, but puddles of big cat sexual juices, whether cum or female arousal, were common in the exam room by that time. To not find them there would have been stranger than anything else.

One puddle of mixed bodily fluids, however, proved to be a little different to the rest. With a winding trail of wetness leading away from it, it gave the impression that something, though one could not tell what, had slithered through it, the trail leading out from the puddle, all in contact with the floor. There were no trips, the trail fading the further away from the original puddle that it got, the wetness cleaned from the body of…something.

Maybe someone should have noticed the syringe nearby, a plain but large syringe with the needle already attached, a red label stuck to the side. If there was any text on it, no one in the room would have been capable of reading it anymore. A drop of fluid clung to the tip of the needle, suspended where it dripped, the needle striving to empty itself of its contents even then. The needle, however, did not know that it had been used for a far deadlier cause, an inanimate object that could not, not in any way, be responsible for the hand that had wielded it.

The mouse cage, set in the corner of the room, offered more answers, even if it was still a mystery as to exactly what had happened there. The cage was not very larger, as it did not need to be, four mice tucked away inside, scurrying through small shavings that served as a covering for the floor. It was rough and stuck to their paws as they scampered, the mice darting to the drinking bottle from time to time, though the food dish was empty. It had been a little while since they had been fed last, though it was not up to them as and when they were given sustenance.

Four mice: only one brown, the rest white with black and brown splotches. They weren't the kind of mice that would have been deemed “cute" and picked up quickly in a pet shop, though they were male, at least, which meant there would not be any chance of unwanted offspring from them.

One of the mice scraped helplessly against the plastic of their enclosure, eyes bright, though the light within them was fading, more and more, day to day. How could it not when that was their life, their imprisonment, locked in there, not knowing any other life?

They could not read the dry erase board above them, an eraser and a few multi-coloured pens set on the little shelf beneath it, but a human with knowing, seeing eyes could. The text read, “GENs of Johnsons". Tally marks ran beneath the words, though the marker had faded, one, two, three – all the way up to forty-three in total.

One of the monitors, complete with speakers, played a video of a snake's head slowly being thrust like a piston in and out of what seemed to be a lion's sex. Sounds of pleasure filled the room, colliding with the light sound from the other, but it seemed that one monitor would dominate the other, depending on the content played at any one time. The tawny fur of the lioness on the screen was soaked with her own juices, not a drop of unnatural lube in sight, the snake black with gleaming skin, seemingly willingly doing what it was to the lion who, undoubtedly, was not just a lion.

None of the animals there, well… None of them were “just" anything. They never had been, even if their lives were not intended to be such, not before the twists and turns of transformation had been laid upon them.

But that was okay, even if it was not okay. They were not there for their own will and being, after all. They were there for someone else, someone else who had deemed that they had use for them.

The snake on the screen, used like a living dildo, pumped its body in and out with a loud, lewd squelch of sexual fluids, though the lioness shuddered against it as if she was enjoying every second. She did not move in a cat-like way but in the manner of one who was used to pleasure and thought with a conscious mind, the camera panning out and out and out to reveal her full figure. For, while the snake fucked her slit, blinking softly every time their head pulled back out, gleaming with the feline's arousal, the lioness sucked on a male lion's cock, taking it deep into her maw.

Her tongue, on the video, obviously twirled around that cock, tracing the base, though there was no quite telling how she had learned, possibly over years, to be careful of the barbs, the bane of every feline shaft. But that was not something quite to be worried about when it was just happening on a screen, not in a place where it could hurt anyone.

On her back, the lioness' eyes were half-lidded with pleasure, as if she and her body were so locked down into the moment that to let anything slip away from her would have been a true travesty indeed. She wanted that cock, quite clearly, more than life itself, her paws up against the male as he fucked her face, hips rolling at a pace that, somehow, was considerate enough for her to move with him. The two felines were perfectly in sync with each other – but all that swept away attention in an ear-splitting roar, exactly at the moment that the lion's cock throbbed, thick ropes of sticky cum filling the lioness' mouth. It drooled out from the corners of her lips and strung out between her teeth, playing around her mouth and pooling over her tongue.

A deep purr rose from the speakers, softening their aftermath, the afterglow of such a liaison. But the male lion was not done with her quite yet.

The other monitor, however, showed a very different scene, the quality a bit grainier. A timestamp in the corner dated it at over twelve years ago, two dark-scaled snakes with diamond patterning curled around one another in the foreground of the video, softly entwined. It could have been perfectly innocent at first glance, though it swiftly became evident, with the thrusting shift of their bodies, that they were joined together by a pair of penises, though they were barely visible between them.

One snake had to be male…which made the other, in such a situation, female.

They were not alone, suspended in mid-air by a hand, the body that it was attached to unseen, as if they drifted through the laboratory and exam rooms like a ghost, manipulating and changing and interfering with anything that they willed. The video jumped and stuttered a little, even though it was a digital copy, reflected the shakiness of another hand holding a camera, the fingers of the person in the video gently helping the snake pump his shafts into the female serpent.

The snake didn't seem to know what to do, twisting his head back and forth, a sense of hopelessness in the gleam of his eyes. It didn't seem to match with the fact that he was a snake…but not just a snake, never just a snake.

In the background of the video, barely visible but just about if one squinted, was a shabby, scruffy black mouse. They were not still, not at all, not as they pushed over the body of a smaller, white female, both scrawny and skinny, though the white mouse had a white spot on their face, which was one thing that could have helped identify them.

Sexual sounds, hisses and squeaks filled the room from the second monitor, though the roars and grunts of the lions still ruled, as was their right. They were the terrors of the savannah, after all, powerful for the lives they had led. Only, humans did not truly face the terrors that lions did, did they?

However, not a single creature in the room, despite everything, had their eyes on the monitors. Why would they when they had already lived it all before?

The exam room had been adapted, no longer with a great span of empty floor space. Instead of the boring, plain flooring, a large terrarium had been placed in the centre of the room, allowing those inside a good view of all that was happening around them. The top was hinged, but the padlock showed quite clearly how it had never been opened, for there were other ways to feed the occupants. Claw marks scratched the sides of it, jagged and threatening, though the walls of the clear terrarium had yellowed with age, a few of the older marks fading as if they had been there for many years.

At first glance, the claw marks could have been on the inside of the terrarium…but that was merely an effect of the terrarium fading with age, marks rendering them softer and duller. However, the claw marks were on the outside of the sizeable terrarium, indicating that someone on the outside had tried to stop something happening on the inside. Yet it took time to take everything in, moment by moment, the horrors unravelling one after the other…

Outside the terrarium, however, were two female big cats, though it was difficult to see what species they were at first glance. They didn't look like the lions on the first monitor – well, one of them could have been a lion, their fur duller and matted, less of the tawny glow and life to it than the younger lion on the screen. The other was grey in colour, though the variation in shades changed throughout their coat, not seeming to match any known patterning. Maybe that was what happened when a feline like that did not live out their natural life. Already, the two female big cats appeared to have a lot of mileage on them, to put it delicately, their sexes soaked with arousal, stretched out, their teats even drooping, lending a saggy effect to their bellies.

Even their muzzles were wet and matted with some kind of moisture, especially around their inner legs and under their stomachs too. But that was evidenced by the sprawling male lion inside the terrarium, the king of his little domain, even if there was a tired, defeated look in his eyes. Cum dribbled from his half-hard shaft as he laid there, licking himself, cleaning off, a little better groomed from the attentions he stole from the other felines in there with him. Or maybe he had resigned himself to his fate, taking all that he could from the world around him.

The space around the big cats was hardly clean, a low-lipped water bowl set nearby, the room their enclosure, with a latex dildo sitting upright in it, as if it had been recently used. The liquid swilling about and filling the bowl itself didn't look like water at all, but more like some kind of milky soup, thick and struck through with streaks of white.

The lioness pawed at the terrarium, woeful, as if she knew that it would not do any good. She peered inside, blinking slowly, yet her sight had softened over the years, even though she could still see. Sometimes, it seemed to take her longer than most others to understand what was happening before her, more intelligence lingering in the backs of her orbs than should have been present in a normal big cat.

Stranger than their home in the exam room, however, was the little mouse tucked away in the corner of the terrarium, resting in their nest, taking a moment of respite where they could. Their eyes were as tired as those of the male lion with the matted, thick mane in the terrarium with her, though it was unusual that the cats seemed to have left her alone there, not harassing her through the walls of the terrarium. Her stomach swelled with an obvious pregnancy, bulging out to her sides as she nestled deeper into the soft fluff of her nest, a wound twist of grasses sheltering her.

On her face was a black spot – ah, the white mouse from the video! That was strange, very strange, but, if the video was twelve years ago, the mouse did not appear to have aged in that time. The lifespan of a regular mouse no longer applied to her, not in any way that most people would understand, for the science and research that took place there went far, far beyond any natural bounds.

Maybe it could have helped people. Maybe not. Who was to say?

The mouse, however, should not have been alive after so many years, joined by a more sickly-looking black mouse with rough, unkempt fur sitting atop a rock nearby. He faced the female in the nest, though did not move, not an inch, not a muscle. He never would again, for he was dead, a taxidermy mouse with a woman's wedding band sitting around his neck as if it was a collar, though he was not chained.

The mice, however, were not alone in the terrarium, not even counting the cats outside, watching, always there, always close. For a couple of snakes, ball pythons with smooth brown colouration in differing patterns, challenging the eye to follow down the line of their bodies, twisted as if needing something. One female had been suspended in a strange sort of bondage, close to the terrarium wall so that she was on show and on display, but her body held in a curved C-shape with small, strong ropes and tape, which stuck to her body and stopped her from wriggling out of it.

The snake female wriggled helplessly, her vent facing upwards as she curved over it, her head mere inches above it, though her squirming body wasn't going anywhere. Straining and hissing and making soft sounds, being a naturally quieter species, she pushed to lay an egg, forced to watch her own stretched cloaca stretching around it. The egg bulged, much larger than would have been normal for a ball python, but there were already several eggs that looked to have been recently lain sitting on the ground just below her, all huge, all glistening faintly.

She hissed weakly and tried to thrash back and forth, but all she could do was strain and strain, pushing to lay the egg, her body trying to contort even in her bondage, which kept her in place for the pleasure of the one who had put her there. After all, animals did not create bondage, not even in a place like that, and such a thing to hold her there, her head even tied down to her vent so that she could never pull back from it more than a couple of inches, eyes locked onto her own slit. So it was the way she would stay, her mouth opening wide, revealing the pink of her mouth inside, dribbles of mammalian semen oozing from her mouth. She had been used in other ways, her large body strong and yet weak when she had been trapped.

As she strained, drops of pearly cum dripped from her hanging open maw, splattering onto her vent like raindrops, though no one in the terrarium had felt the touch of such moisture, not like that, in many, many years. They didn't think they ever would, not ever again.

However, even the lions had their attention on the darker ball python beside her, his body boasting an odd, liquid-like sheen over his scaled body. It was almost clear, though one who had been there for some time would have been able to easily tell that it was the semen and arousal of a feline, the snake coated in the scent. They were not denied heightened arousal, after all, using themselves and their bodies as they pleased.

He twisted back and forth, writhing, coiling and uncoiling, distress lining the tight curls of his body. He opened his jaws wide as if trying to say something, pain in his eyes, though he could only shake his head violently, wavering back and forth, back and forth, losing himself in a strange dance that had only a violent end.

He coiled his body around and around, so very tightly, shuddering, though not even slamming his own head against the wall of the terrarium seemed to do him any good, minutes passing, the lions uncomfortably looking away. The leopard stretched out a paw to him, but even she, the muddy, grey-ish feline, seemed to know that there was nothing that she could do to help the snake that she shared her enclosure with. She had been trying for years to reach them, but the male was far too far gone to be called back, even then.

He grew increasingly desperate as more minutes passed, his coiled shudder not helping, slinking around the female, twisting, writhing, though his energy could only go so far. For in desperation there came the loss of himself too, appearing to calm – to the eye that did not know, truly, what was going on, of course.

He stilled, a dullness entering his eyes, intelligence that did not belong there, not for his sanity, fading. The cold stare of a reptile took over, sapience pushed to the back of his mind, instinct taking over. After all, even a snake needed to feed, to follow the rhymes and rhythms of the body, to live, to procreate, to survive.

He slithered up to the female snake, tongue flickering out curiously, watching as her egg finally crested, stretching her poor cloaca to what had to be its limit, there was no other way for it. It had to come out, because it surely was not going to go back up inside her, the snake trying to twist in her suspended bondage, quivering only an inch above the ground.

The male snake hissed, lashing his tongue several times against her, the wet, slippery appendage, seeming slick with more than simply what his mouth secreted quite naturally, excited to see the egg coming. Perhaps he was keen to breed her again, the serpent, or perhaps he was satisfied at the power of his progeny, how strong and how healthy they would be, especially considering the size of the egg. But there was little he could do to help her, even as the female ball python hissed at his touch, seeming to arch into it a little bit. But only the snakes themselves could tell anyone just how they felt about things, the aching need deep inside them.

Pulling back, the male's vent parted, the cloaca that held his twin shafts within, glistening, wanting to slip out. He wanted to breed her again, of course, he did, but he had to wait, all the time, until she was done laying a clutch of eggs. Once her laying was complete, the serpent would waste no time at all in taking her, whether it was for their mutual pleasure or not.

Until then, he would have to wait and he would have to watch, eyes gleaming with sharp lust.

His tongue flitted out again, teasing against the side of his snout, the softer scales there. The fangs within his mouth were not venomous, though the presence of them must always have been felt, a different kind of mouth than what the snake, in his past, had been used to. But that history seemed very far away, very far away indeed, as he tasted the air, catching a scent with the sensitive receptors there.

He slithered, seeking it out, that delicious, “fat" scent, the one that enticed him so sweetly, a need that had to be fulfilled. Some things, after all, could not be changed and he was a snake, a snake with a stomach that ached to be filled. Snakes did not eat every single day, of course, going through cycles of starvation and gluttony, their meals often larger than their jaws could take, forcing them to unhinge to swallow down their prey.

The black mouse stared straight ahead, dead in taxidermy: not very appetising. No, the mouse that did not live was not what the python smelled, slithering closer, his tongue flicking out, sensing the tiny vibrations in the ground. Not the cats, no: something else.

His gaze followed the mouse's line of sight, finally catching the scent of what had caught him so. The snake licked the air as the white mouse squeaked and cowered, little paws waving about as if it was trying to do something, yet the poor little thing seemed paralyzed with fear, stuck in one place, trapped in the nest to its doom.

The squeaks might have been what got the snake to hesitate, even if only briefly, licking at the air, shaking his head from side to side. To all outward observation, the snake looked as if he was trying to clear his head – though for what purpose no one could tell. Again, he swayed his head back and forth, less aggressively that time, yet it didn't seem to have any effect on him, his tongue flickering out, again and again, seeking his prey.

His attempts and waking himself up, however that was to come to pass, were fleeting at best as he slithered with great purpose towards his next, fat meal.

The big cats yowled and scratched at the clear sides of the terrarium, adding to the collection of many, many scratches and marks that had been left from before, over the course of many years. They had to stop the snakes, had to try, had to save the mice, had to save them all… Yet where did they think they were going to get, after all that time?

The lioness stood on her back legs, pawing desperately at it, though her claws had been blunted from striking it so many times, worn down and useless, not sharpened from running over better-suited ground for a lion's large paw pads. There was nowhere in there, in their prison cell, for them to run, let alone find the freedom that would have allowed them to live something like a more natural lifestyle. No more could they save those that were trapped in there with them, the cycle repeating.

The lion did not quell himself. Furiously, he roared and slammed his paws, once, twice – three times into the cage, brutally attacking it, though it was reinforced and he, of course, did not make a single dent in it. The terrarium rose above them, sealing them in, a yellow-tinted prison that would be their home until the end of their days, their lives ones of use and abuse, there to be used, all under the watch of another.

The lioness wailed, yowling and pressing up against the snow leopard, the dirtied, grey feline, but they did not get anywhere in their misery. It was debatable whether it made them feel any better or not, but it used up some of their pent-up energy when they could not breed and fuck, their bodies heavily evidencing just how used up they had become over the years.

The male lion was the first to turn away, his nose turned down, as if he could not find the energy in himself to look up past the limits of his paws. There was nothing else for him there, no matter how hard they tried. They'd never get out. The snakes were beyond their domain, yet so close they were forced to see, forced to watch.

He laid down, his head on his paws, his back to the females, who had shifted to trying to bite at the padlock, though the hinged lid was not going to open for them. Maybe, deep inside, the two of them still held a tiny modicum of hope.

Maybe. It was unlikely.

The snake, on the other hand, slithered up close to his target without paying the felines any mind. They were of no danger to him, his tongue flickering out, again and again, as he hungrily stared down the mouse. The little white mouse shook in place, but did not even try to flee even though she could have, her eyes wide and plaintive, something that a bystander could not see shining in their glassy, dark depths.

One more time, the snake looked up and away, shaking his head. Back and forth, back and forth… But would that ever be enough to clear the fog from his mind? He did not know, could not know, not as he flickered out his tongue to lick the mouse, looking down at her as if she was nothing to him. To a snake, of course, a mouse was just food.

Hisses and feline cries wove together, drowning out even the moans from the monitors up on the walls, display ever-increasing and varied scenes of sexual debauchery, things that no sane mind should have come up with. Yet the insane were so very often the ones with true power in the world, the power of control.

The snake opened his jaws wide, so wide, the pink within glistening, fangs gleaming, though they were for holding prey, not injecting venom. Although she quivered, the mouse did not run, closing her eyes, a part of her accepting her fate.

And into the snake's mouth she went, the serpent enveloping her, though she could not stop her panicked squirming and wriggling as he closed his mouth around her. She was fat, so big that she was rather a mouthful for a ball python of his size, even if he did not have to stretch his jaws quite to their fullest extent. Yet that particular snake was used to swallowing mouse-sized meals, whether they were hunted or fed to him with a feeding stick and a hand that threatened trouble.

She squealed and fought him, instinct getting the better of her even though the time to fight and run was long gone, his jaws working hard to get her inside, each gulping swallow dragging her a little bit more into his mouth. The fangs did not penetrate her hide, though that might have, at least in her case, made it a quicker death for her.

Not yet inside his throat, the mouse thrashed and twisted, yet she was no threat to a python of his size and he would be fed for at least a little while with the round of her pregnancy. His tongue wriggled against her, though it was the pulsing muscles of his mouth and throat that would drag her deeper, swallowing again and again as she was pulled into the darkness.

It was not a quick affair for her, suffocating in the darkness, scratching and twisting with her tiny claws, though the mouse's fate was already sealed. She had just been tired, so very tired, that she had not had the will, that time, to run, disappearing with the pulsing swallows of the snake, down and down and down into his gullet.

Maybe it was a blessing, in a way, for it meant that her ordeal was over. Yet the snake could still hear her muffled squeaking in his throat as she slid down, the lump that was her slowly, so very slowly, moving down his throat. But the python did not think any more of her, for he had found the source of the sweet scent, had found his next meal, his stomach sated for the time being. She was only food to him, a mouse that had met her end in what could honestly have been said to be a very timely fashion. Few lived as long as she had, after all.

The gravid mouse made quite a bulge in his stomach as the snake curled up into a ball, such a meal to take down that he would need quite some time to digest it. She was larger than the mice that he was usually fed and the extra sustenance within her pregnancy would sustain him for quite some while.

Slowly but surely, the muffled squeaking faded, bit by bit, squirm by squirm. It did not change him in any way, his head relaxed, no tense, stiff lines in any part of his body. Now that he was fed, everything was right with his world again.

In his belly, the lump stilled, though there was still squeaking, however faint. Instinct, the desperate fervour to live, could not give up that easily. That was one thing that all of them had had to learn.

His eyes glowed with intelligence and, as if coming back to himself in a different way, the snake turned his head curiously, nosing at the lump in his stomach, the obvious round of a meal that had had to be taken. Yet it had not been his choice to take her, to swallow her, the snake weaving his head back and forth in a manner that could have been deemed sad, though it was difficult to consider it such, even then.

He was just a snake…or wasn't he?

He dipped his nose, pressing it to the lump that had been a mouse, a living, breathing, squirming mouse. Her squeaks were so faint that he could not be sure if he had imagined it, if life had already left her or if she was still fighting on, straining to live, all inside him. It would be a false hope of instinct on her part, of course, but life would always try, even in the most hopeless of situations.

If a snake could have cried, he would have done so. Yet his body did not possess the function, not even to wash anything from his eyes via a tear duct.

Raising his head, he looked up, through the glass, at the lioness staring at him, her eyes boring into him. There was something accusing in her gaze, though she could not hold him responsible for his actions. They had stopped doing that a long time ago, realising that not a single one of them could ever really be held accountable for what they had been forced into.

She watched, her eyes sad, drained, tired, staring as the light faded once more from his eyes. It was better for him like that, retreating into some part of his mind that kept him safe from his reality. If it made it easier for him to live whatever years remained of his life there, it was not something that she was ever going to deny him. Not that the lioness either had any choice in the matter there. She'd never had any choice in the matter.

Maybe that was what she told herself too. Maybe that was what got her through the days, hours, even the minutes too. But, in there, they all did what they had to do. That was the way of it, the reality that they clung to, even in the fantasy of hope.

The python licked at the air, his dark tongue flickering out of his mouth before being scooped back in again. He had other things to contend to, not needing to rest as long as a natural ball python, especially not when his mate appeared to have finished laying the last of her clutch of eggs, her cloaca strained open for him.

It was an offer that he could not refuse, his hemipenes emerging from his vent, glistening faintly and dark, as eager for her body as his mind was. All he knew was to feed and to breed, to repeat the cycle, to sustain his body, to procreate. What more could there be in the simple world of a serpent, after all? A python needed no more and stripping all other needs from his life had freed him, in a sense.

Maybe that was what he told himself. Maybe that was got him through the days, the hours and even the minutes of his fate. But no one would ever know, not as he hissed and plunged into his bound mate, her nose pushed down close to her cloaca, the point at which their bodies joined, forced to watch him take her yet again. Together, to the limits of their bondage and position, they twisted and writhed anxiously together, hissing passionately.

Such was the fate of those transformed, those forced, yet their tale was not one that was ever told. Some say that it will never be unveiled, the horrors that lingered in that laboratory under a haze of goodwill, donations to the big cat sanctuary keeping it going. The place had never been at risk of closing, always flush with money. No one ever questioned why.

They never had any reason to.

Not those on the outside.

Not those that had not been taken.

Those that knew, of course… Well, they didn't have any say in the matter anymore, did they?