The Institute, Daddy Issues(76)

“Hey Ed, in­form Berkley I’ve got a snooper here. Go­ing to take her to his of­fice for pun­ish­ment as usual.”

“Got it, Mi­chaels. I’ll let him know,” a voice on the other end said with a crackle of static.

I was dragged along, help­less to do any­thing but com­ply. Ap­par­ently this wasn’t an un­usual scen­ario at all here at the In­sti­tute. Prob­ably it was an­other way Littles could get their Big’s at­ten­tion in or­der to be spanked—just like throw­ing a tan­trum at the table. Damn, what had I got­ten my­self into?

Of course, Berkley’s of­fice was in the pun­ish­ment wing—where else would it be? I kept protest­ing as the guard dragged me up the stair­case but it did no good. I also kept a sharp eye out for my part­ner but Salt was nowhere to be seen. Part of me hoped he was us­ing this dis­trac­tion to get some ma­jor sleuth­ing done. After all, no one was watch­ing the mon­it­ors in the viewscreen right now so it would be the per­fect time to dis­cover the where­abouts of the secret Please lab—if there was one.

An­other part of me, how­ever, was des­per­ately afraid and wish­ing my part­ner would come to my res­cue. There was only so much I could do to de­fend my­self without blow­ing my cover. Also, I didn’t like the feel­ing of be­ing dragged to Berkley’s of­fice like a naughty school girl get­ting sent to the prin­cipal.

Salt was still nowhere in sight when the guard came to a thick wooden door with the words, Dir­ector Berkley, on a golden plaque af­fixed to it. It was at the very end of the pun­ish­ment wing and I wondered des­per­ately if Salt would be able to hear me way up here, even if I screamed. The guard rapped twice on the door be­fore push­ing it open.

“Well, well, well…you seem de­term­ined to get your­self in trouble today, mishka.”

Berkley was sit­ting be­hind a large wooden desk look­ing ex­tremely self-im­port­ant. There was a gleam in his eyes as he re­garded me, his long fin­gers steepled just un­der his chin.

“Leave me alone,” I said, try­ing to get free of the guard’s pun­ish­ing grip. “I wasn’t do­ing any­thing wrong.”

“Ex­cept snoop­ing around in a very re­stric­ted area. Do you deny that? Hmm?” Berkley raised one salt-and-pep­per eye­brow at me mean­ing­fully.

“I wasn’t snoop­ing—I was just, uh, curi­ous,” I said, aware of how lame it soun­ded. “And I didn’t know it was a re­stric­ted area—how could I?”

“Maybe the fact that it wasn’t marked as a pub­lic area?” Berkley said, frown­ing. “I warned you when you first came here that snoop­ing into re­stric­ted areas was a very ser­i­ous of­fense.”

“But—”

“Here at the In­sti­tute if you break the rules you have to take the con­sequences.” There was a gleam in Berkley’s eyes I really didn’t like. “In other words,” he said, lean­ing for­ward, “You have to be pun­ished.”

“What do you mean?” I said, wish­ing my voice was a little stead­ier. “Nobody can pun­ish me ex­cept my Daddy!”

“Not true, my little mishka. I am also en­titled to pun­ish any of the Baby­girls as I see fit at any time. It’s in the con­tract your Daddy signed and I’ve been want­ing to pun­ish you from the first minute you walked into the In­sti­tute.” Berkley had a very un­pleas­ant smile on his nar­row fea­tures as he rose from be­hind his desk. “Bring her to med­ical suite num­ber one, Mi­chaels,” he told the guard. “It’s time this Little learned her les­son.”

The med­ical suite—the med­ical suite? my mind babbled as the guard dragged me out of Berkley’s of­fice and down the hall­way. Why not just got to the pun­ish­ment room if he’s go­ing to whip me? Why the med­ical suite?

I found out sooner than I wanted to.

The minute the guard got me into one of the sterile-look­ing rooms with the pad­ded exam table and stir­rups, Berkley told him to strap me down.

“No!—No!” I fought with all my might as the two men forced me to lie on my back on the cold vinyl table. I kicked out and landed a glan­cing blow to the guard’s solar plexus.

“Hey, she’s a fighter!” Mi­chaels grunted but didn’t loosen his grip on me.