They were woken up earlier than normal by a guard striding in, banging on the cage doors. He thought he was starting to recognise the guards by looks, but he hasn’t seen this woman before. He started coming up with nicknames for the guards to be able to differentiate them – sour face, Voldemort, and donkey to name a few – but is yet to find something for this woman. Blaine sits up and patiently waits for her to get round to him, opening the door but not unlatching his cuffs when he presents his hands. He drops them shyly.

“All of you out. I need to check you are presentable before I take you down. Hopefully, for your sake, you did all wash last night.” Blaine ungracefully scrambles out of his cage, almost falling without the use of his hands. The guard makes her way around the room, roughly grabbing each sub in turn and slowly spinning them around, looking up and down their bodies, and then putting something in their mouths. Blaine isn’t sure exactly what she is looking for, but when she reaches him he moves without objecting, and she seems satisfied with whatever she was looking for. She pops the object in Blaine’s mouth once she has finished, and he relaxes when he realises it’s just a mint. He would prefer being given a toothbrush, but at least it is something for the time being.

“Ok.” She continues. “You already know the rules for today. I’m taking you down to the hall now, we open the doors at half 7, although people don’t tend to start arriving until 8, so you have about an hour. At mid-day we hold lunch for the visitors, so you will get a break. Then the auction will start late afternoon. This year it will not take too long as we only have 6 new subs and 20 returned subs, which is just over half of what we normally have to get through. Once the auction is over, you will probably end up with more attention, people being annoyed that they didn’t win an auction lot this time so will look at what merchandise we will have in coming months.” A shiver runs down Blaine’s spine, another reminder that he is simply an object to most of the world. “As the night progresses though, you will become less popular, seeing as we only lend out the older subs for a ‘trial night’. You will be brought back a few hours earlier than the rest and be allowed a bit of time to relax before lights out. Now that’s all said, follow me.” She says, turning on her heels and walking out, not looking to see if they are following. Of course they all do, after the demonstration they got yesterday when a dark haired sub didn’t do as he was told; no one was going to risk it.

After a surprisingly long walk, they arrive at a huge room Blaine hasn’t seen before. It’s a strange shape, not one open space but several walls seemingly in the middle of nowhere and for no apparent reason. Blaine and his group are led to one end of the room, labelled with a 1, and told to kneel by one of the thin chains on the floor within an area surrounded by three walls. Blaine and Nick both end up next to each other, with Tina on Blaine’s other side and Brittany opposite Nick. Several other guards join the first in clipping the chains to the back loop on their collars. When a male guard makes his way round to Blaine, he also unhooks his wrist cuffs before latching them once again behind his back. Because of the angle, it means Blaine would now be unable to undo the simple clip on the chain like he could have with his hands linked in front of him. He looks up and notices that both Nick and Tina have been put in the same position already, not just him.

Once the guards have finished, all but one leaves, obviously having other jobs to do. The original female guard is the only one remaining, and she takes up a position in the centre of the only exit. The ‘room’ they are in is square, about 34 feet along each edge, missing one wall. Blaine counts four rows of four chains – five of them not being used – spaced evenly within the room. Blaine realises there is enough space between him and his neighbours for people to walk. The strange set up of the main room makes sense now – these are like cubicles, each month with their own one, allowing people to walk around and inspect them. Looking out the gap past the guard, he sees an identical set up opposite but labelled with a 2, possibly for the subs a month older than him. The guard sees him looking around and strides over, swiftly slapping his face.

“You were told to keep your head down. Has it not yet stuck that when you are told to do something, you do it?” She asks rhetorically. “Now if I have to come over here again because of you, there will be a harsher consequence. Is that understood?”

“Yes Ma’am.” He replies, with his head down, knowing the woman wanted a verbal response. Without acknowledging him, she walks back to where she was stood earlier. Blaine notices Nick looking at him in question, but pretends he hasn’t seen.

As predicted, people don’t start turning up until an hour later. By that time Blaine’s knee’s where already incredibly sore. Yes, he may have had to spend the last few days on his knees, but not for an hour without moving, and he doesn’t dare fidget in case it causes the guard to come back over. He had decided to call her ‘slapper’, since she so far has been the only one to not use a Taser for a minor punishment. Plus it feels appropriate.

It takes another hour before people start appearing at their cubical, the first few people only pausing to look at the number before moving on. By this time the other subs have all started fidgeting slightly as well, so far unnoticed by slapper.

The next person who visits walks down the rows, grabbing a few heads to force the targeted sub to look up, but he soon leaves, apparently not finding what he wants. This is repeated a few times, but thankfully Blaine isn’t touched by anyone. Nick however isn’t so lucky, and gets man handled by almost every visitor. By the sixth person Blaine can see Nick straining not lash out, and by the seventh he does.

The current offender had squatted down so he was only slightly taller than Nick, and grabbed the hair on the back of his head to yank it at uncomfortable angles.

“Kneel up toy.” The man instructs, pulling once again on Nicks hair. Slowly he obeys, taking as much time as he can to move the short distance, agitating the man. “Not bad.” He says, reaching his hand out to touch Nick’s cock.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” Nick shouts. The man pauses briefly, then while still holding Nick’s head with one hand, proceeds to slap his face repeatedly. Fortunately slapper notices the event and walks over, asking the man to stop. He walks to the exit of the cubical with slapper, allowing Nick to slump back down. Blaine sends his friend a supportive smile.

A few minutes later slapper walks over, having just finished the discussion with the horrid man, and stops in front of Nick.

“What do you think you were doing? Do the rules not count for you? He was perfectly within his right to check you out, that’s why you are here! We don’t like having to discipline you in front of people; it lowers your value if people see you being punished while still being in such a controlled environment. That doesn’t mean we won’t if we need to. You talk out of turn again and you will be gagged for the rest of the day. And don’t think this means you are cleared, this will be brought up once everyone has left.” With that slapper returns to her previous position, sending a quick message through the radio she is carrying.

“Breathe, Nick. Please. We will talk this evening.” Blaine whispers, luckily only being overheard by Tina.

As the day progresses more people appear, but thankfully none of them as handsy. At mid-day everyone vanishes, and a naked Santana appears – as well as other collared subs he hasn’t seen before - to give them all a drink and escort them to the toilet. Blaine wonders why these subs are trusted with this job when there are so many important people around that need to be ‘impressed’. But then again, maybe they are impressed by the fact that these subs are trained well enough to be given such a responsible job. Surprisingly even Nick doesn’t put up a fight while unchained with no guards around. Blaine thinks the earlier threat has affected him more than he lets on.

Although once they had returned from the toilet they had been rechained, no one told them to be on their knees or to stay silent, so of course they had took the opportunity to rest their legs. Eventually slapper returns and orders them all back onto their knees and into silence.

After lunch continues much like before but just with more people – between 7 and 15 people in their cubical at one time. Blaine also sees some people in collars walking around, trailing someone else, some on leads and some simply following. He assumes these are subs and their owners, here to either be exchanged or simply because their owners decided to bring them for the trip.

After lunch is the first time people start paying much notice to him. A few people asking him to kneel up, and even a few asking him to stand before walking all the way round him. Luckily no one try’s to touch him like they did Nick, he isn’t sure what his reaction would be in that situation and doesn’t really want to find out. One person does start yanking him around a bit, poking and prodding him, but slapper notices and speaks up.

“Just be careful, Hunter has his eye on that one.”

“Why?” The man questions, having stopped touching Blaine but not yet looking away.

“I’m not sure to be honest. The man took a liking to it on the first day and has even started saving up. It’s going to be an expensive one, I know that much.”

“I guess I need to start saving now as well then if I want a chance of winning it. Have you done your approximations on them yet?” He asks slapper, turning away. Blaine takes that as his cue to sit back down, hopefully taking him out of the lime light.

“Nope.” She replies, popping the p. “But I’ve heard Hunter is planning to set aside forty thousand from wages and savings each month, so I’m thinking he is going to reach the half million mark. I don’t know why yet though, it’s not been here long enough for us to know how well behaved it really is.”

“Ouch. That’s twice as much as I paid for the last new one.” The man pauses and looks down at Blaine. “If he trains up as well as my last one though, he will likely be worth every dollar.” The man sighs. “Would you do part exchanges?” He says, leaving the cubical to discuss more with slapper. Blaine sees Nick in his peripheral vision staring. He looks up and shrugs slightly, not sure what to make of the information himself.

Only a few minutes later another pair of feet stops in front of him. He takes a deep breath preparing for another examination. What happens next shocks him.