Chapter 6: The Long Night of Compliance

Ariana stared at the phone. The blank signal bars sat at the top corner of the screen, completely empty. The situation was too perfectly aligned, too precisely executed to be a simple technical fault. The university network, U-Net, was known for its near-total coverage across campus, especially inside the brick dormitories. There was no such thing as a complete dead zone in her room. Lucas had not just engineered her physical isolation during the unsanctioned session, but he had also guaranteed her immediate, temporary communication blackout afterward.

This realization hit her with a cold, mechanical force, replacing the frantic guilt about Chloe with a hard knot of fear. Lucas and Jordan had managed her time, her body, and now her communication. They had essentially excised her from the grid for the specific duration required to ensure total silence following the humiliation. She ran a thumb across the glass surface of the phone. The device was inert, a useless slab of metal and plastic that could not perform its most basic function of connecting her to the outside world.

The sense of being utterly alone in her dorm room intensified. She wasn’t trapped in the small library study room anymore, but the confinement felt much more profound now. They had taken steps to manage the aftermath of their control, which was a chilling new level of thoroughness. It was not enough for them that she performed the action; they needed to control the narrative of her absence.

A primal urgency shifted her focus from the phone to her immediate physical security. The door, which she had practically flown through moments before, suddenly seemed flimsy. The normal noise of the hallway, usually a comforting backdrop of student life, felt abruptly threatening. Anyone could walk up to the door and try to open it.

Ariana moved quickly, crossing the small room toward her heavy wooden desk chair. It was an old, solid piece of furniture, designed in the blocky style of 1970s campus architecture. She grabbed the chair by the back and shoved it backward, dragging the legs across the thin carpet until the top rail wedged firmly against the door handle. The metal of the handle pressed into the thick wood, providing a solid, physical barricade. The action was purely instinctive, driven by the lingering unease that Elias, Lucas, or Jordan could simply decide to be in her room next, demanding some new, arbitrary act of obedience.

She stepped back, assessing the barricade. It was bulky, and anyone coming through would now have to exert significant force, which would give her at least a few seconds of warning. The placement of the chair was a small, immediate reclamation of control over her immediate physical space, the only thing they had not explicitly managed yet.

With that momentary reassurance, the realization of her vulnerability broadened. Lucas and Jordan had managed to manipulate the university’s communications network. The thought made a sudden jump in her mind, raising a different, profound worry. If they could remotely cut off her internet and cell service, what else could they do? Surveillance felt like the immediate, logical next step in their calculated isolation.

Ariana began a meticulous search of the small room. She moved slowly at first, starting with the most obvious points of entry or observation. Her eyes scanned the corners where the ceiling met the walls, looking for any misplaced smoke detectors or non-standard vents. Finding nothing obvious, she dropped to her hands and knees.

She started systematically checking along the skirting boards for small, misplaced holes or tiny lenses. The university-issued furniture—desk, dresser, and bed—was heavy, made of particle board, and bolted together with visible metal brackets. She checked the corners of the dresser, running her hands along the edges to feel for any rough patches or foreign objects affixed to the cheap wood grain.

The search continued under the bed. The bed frame rested on six plastic risers to create storage space, something most students did immediately upon moving in. Ariana had books and storage bins stacked there. She pulled out the bins one by one, inspecting the underside of the bed frame itself, checking the metal springs and the wooden slats for anything that looked like a camera, a misplaced cell phone, or any device that would not normally belong there. She ran her arm deep into the recesses, checking the back wall where the furniture met it.

She then moved to the closet. The closet was shallow, with a single hanging rod and a high shelf. She stood on her desk chair, steadying herself with one hand, and carefully inspected the shelf. She ran her fingers across the painted ceiling of the closet space and the back wall. She checked the hangers, the shoe rack on the floor, and the corners of the hanging clothes.

After nearly fifteen minutes of strained, silent searching, she found nothing. The room appeared absolutely normal, just the slightly dusty, over-utilized institutional space it had always been. The failure to find anything didn’t reassure her, though. It just reinforced the idea of Lucas and Jordan’s thoroughness. If they were installing surveillance, they would not choose the obvious, amateur hiding places.

Ariana stopped the frenetic activity, stepping back into the center of the room. She was practically vibrating with accumulated tension and exhaustion. Her breathing was fast and shallow. The search had consumed a considerable amount of energy that had already been depleted by the physical and mental stress of the Dogeza session and the frantic rush across campus. She leaned her shoulder against the cool wall, trying to regulate her ragged breath. The fear had receded slightly, replaced by a cold, hard internal tremor and the stark, painful realization that she was still completely alone.

The silence of the room was heavy again, punctuated only by her own existence. She moved toward the desk, which was cluttered with notebooks and textbooks for her normal classes. Her eyes instinctively went to the digital clock interface on her laptop, which she had opened before the communication cut-off. The clock on the screen read 5:01 PM.

She calculated quickly in her head. She had missed Chloe by an hour and forty-five minutes, which was terrible. Furthermore, this was the time of day when her schedule usually returned to normal. By 5:00 PM, she should have been eating dinner, then settling into a long, structured evening of normal academic study.

Ariana felt a sudden, profound lurch in her stomach. It was an acute, demanding hunger, the kind that reminded her she hadn’t properly eaten since a rushed lunch hours ago. The combination of intense physical stress and the sprint back to the dorm had completely hollowed her out.

She had to structure the remainder of the evening, but she faced massive constraints. The external world was inaccessible. She couldn’t text Chloe. She couldn’t email her TA. She couldn’t even leave the room safely to go to the dining hall, not with the paralyzing fear of running into Elias again, or running into Lucas and Jordan who might be stalking the hallways, testing her compliance.

She absolutely needed to eat something, she thought, checking the contents of the mini-fridge near her dresser. She pulled out a small carton of yogurt and a bag of pretzels, a meager meal that she ate standing by the desk, chewing slowly and mechanically. The food did little to dull the acidic churning of her stomach, but the physical act of eating provided a small island of normalcy.

Ariana realized the absolute disruption of her rhythm was exactly what Lucas and Jordan had intended by extending the session and then isolating her. The goal was not just to humiliate her but to destabilize her ability to function normally, to erase her reliable, structured identity. They had forced her to spend the hours she should have spent on History 101 review in total, non-academic submission.

The thought of facing a new day after this forced isolation brought the full weight of the required Tuesday session crashing down on her. Lucas had been specific: she faltered because her mind resisted. The ten-second pause in her descent represented a failure of absolute, instantaneous compliance. Lucas believed her internal resistance needed to be completely erased before Tuesday, otherwise, they would impose yet another session, potentially worse than this last one.

Ariana returned to the desk, her expression rigid. The only way she could regain any sense of control or minimize the damage was not through resistance or appeal, which were impossible, but through absolute, preemptive obedience. She had to eliminate the justification for their next intervention.

She decided with chilling clarity that she would eliminate the mental resistance. She had the remaining hours of the evening, during the enforced communication silence, to do it. The academic world was shut down anyway. She would leverage this forced downtime, this isolation, and turn it against them. If Lucas wanted instantaneous, mindless obedience, she would practice until her body couldn’t differentiate between thought and action.

Ariana carefully pulled her large, full-length mirror, which usually leaned against the closet door, into the center of the room. She placed it so the surface directly faced the main floor space. She needed visual feedback. She had to see the mechanics of her collapse, the exact moment the knee hit the floor, and the time delay before her forehead made contact with the carpet. The mirror would act as the only objective observer in the room, holding her accountable to the required fifteen seconds of instant, seamless action.

She stepped back to evaluate the space. The carpet in her dorm room was slightly cleaner and less abrasive than the industrial synthetic material in the library study room, but it was the same ugly, institutional brown. She would use the space in front of the mirror as her new, solitary crucible.

Ariana had to find a way to make compliance so swift and absolute that the mind simply did not have time to register the intention to resist. The problem was not the physical demand Dogeza itself. The problem was the micro-Hesitation, the ten-second pause that Lucas had identified with such clinical precision.

She considered the logistics. She needed to practice the transition point: the moment of decision, the single pivot from standing straight to full prostration. She had to eliminate the cognitive lag. She knew the steps of the ritual: step first on the left knee, then the right, hands flat on the floor, and then the final contact of the forehead. She had to compress those intermediate stages into a single, flowing second of action based on a non-verbal command.

She decided to start by drilling just the speed of the initial drop.

Ariana stood upright, facing her reflection. Her mirrored figure looked frail, nineteen years old, and completely overwhelmed. The reflection confirmed the dark circles under her eyes and the tension locked in her shoulders. She forced herself to stand completely still, adopting the stiff, neutral posture Lucas had demanded in the study room.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, then pushed it out. Focus on the pivot.

She mentally chanted the key instruction: Immediate and absolute surrender.

Then, without external command, she initiated the movement. She dropped her left knee quickly, the movement slightly clumsy, then her right. Her hands slapped the carpet almost simultaneously, and she instinctively paused for a microsecond before leaning forward, finally resting her forehead against the floor.

As soon as she made contact, she lifted her head and stood back up, looking immediately at her reflection, already critiquing the form. She was too slow. She could feel the mechanical, slightly awkward separation between the knees hitting the floor and the upper body following. That sequence of three distinct actions—knees, hands, head—was exactly where the time was being wasted.

She stepped back and dropped again. This time, she forced her hands to move simultaneously with her knees, trying to make the four points of contact happen almost at once. The timing improved sharply, but the movement felt dangerously unstable, like she might pitch forward too fast and hurt herself on the hard floor.

She repeated the action, focusing solely on smoothness and immediate flow. She drilled the movement twenty times in rapid succession, standing up between each attempt only long enough to reset her posture and take a single, sharp breath. Her knees started to ache almost immediately from the hard impact of the floor, despite the thin carpet.

After those twenty repetitions, she stopped and massaged her knees, a necessity more than a choice. She looked at the time again. Fifteen minutes had passed. She was making incremental improvements, but the sheer physical exhaustion was starting to cloud her concentration.

This was exactly the point, she realized. Lucas wanted obedience beyond the point of physical and mental fatigue, where the body takes over out of sheer training.

She resolved to integrate the full physical discomfort into her training. She would stop treating the floor as a passive landing area and start treating it as the destination point of absolute commitment. She needed to practice the speed, but also the total, immediate submission that followed the physical act.

Ariana stepped back into position. This time, she focused on collapsing her entire frame into the prostration immediately. Standing upright. Then, total collapse.

She imagined Lucas standing behind her. She imagined the cold, detached gaze of Jordan, his phone already recording the whole thing. She would give them nothing to record but perfection.

She dropped again. Faster. This time, the descent was a single, uncontrolled shift of weight, driven by momentum. Her forehead connected with the carpet with a slight, dull thud.

The sudden impact stunned her for a moment, and the physical sting of the carpet pressing against her skin brought the memory of the study room flooding back. The humiliation, the filming, the cold silence of the two dominant students watching her.

She held the position, keeping her shoulders relaxed, her spine bowed correctly. In this state of total submission, physically grounded and silent, she waited. She counted three full breaths before rising.

This was the core struggle: isolating the physical movement from the conscious mental resistance. The ten-second pause was not about physical ability; it was about the mind processing the command and deciding to override the instinct for self-preservation and dignity.

Ariana stood up. Her knees were now definitely starting to bruise, and the skin of her forehead felt slightly hot and irritated from the friction against the synthetic carpet fiber. She ignored the pain. The superficial discomfort was irrelevant to the larger goal of eliminating the source of their leverage against her.

She resolved to continue until the speed of descent was absolute, unthinking, and uniform every single time. She had to drill the action until her body moved even if her mind refused to issue the instruction. This wasn’t practice; it was conditioning.

She dropped again. One thousand one. She counted the seconds quickly in her head. She stayed down for five seconds, then up.

She dropped again. One thousand one. Up.

She repeated the action over and over, twenty repetitions at a time, taking mandatory, short breaks to prevent total physical collapse. She had to ensure she remained functional enough to continue the drilling for hours.

The idea of flawless, instant obedience solidified in her mind as the only viable strategy. If she could eliminate the possibility of failure, Lucas and Jordan would have no pretext for future sessions, no grounds for reporting resistance to Elias. The path to minimizing their interference was maximum compliance. It was an appalling philosophy, but right now, it seemed like the only accessible form of self-defense.

The phone remained dead, silent, a perfect symbol of her current isolation. She was accountable only to the mirror and the demands of Tuesday morning.

As the evening wore on, the pain in her knees became a constant, throbbing counterpoint to the relentless repetition. She didn’t look at the clock often, only allowing herself to check it every hour. Each hour was a milestone, confirmation that she was utilizing the forced silence to prepare.

Around 7:30 PM, she felt a profound wave of despair. It was the deepest point of realization: this was not a normal college class, and the demands were not academic. She was spending her critical study time physically simulating abject surrender just to survive the political context of a single elective.

She forced herself back into position. She had to eliminate the pause.

She dropped down, concentrating on keeping the descent smooth and fast. This time, the movement felt lighter, the body almost anticipating the instruction. She rose, then dropped again immediately, without resetting her full posture.

Drop.

Rise.

Drop.

The room seemed to spin slightly from the repetitive motion and the exhaustion. She was performing the movement now less as discrete steps and more as a single, fluid collapse. The mind had given up the fight. When she initiated the drop, the body simply surrendered gravity, taking her down to the floor without the ten-second delay Lucas had identified. She was conditioning the reflex.

She continued the cycle, the rhythm of descent and ascent becoming less conscious and more reflexive. Her focus narrowed to the small patch of carpet where her forehead rested, the texture becoming alarmingly familiar.

The fatigue hit her in waves, but the fear of Tuesday morning was a more potent motivator than the need for sleep. She wouldn’t risk another filmed session, another week of isolation, or another set of consequences because she failed to perform a simple, humiliating ritual with absolute perfection.

Ariana stopped, finally, around 10:00 PM. She stood in front of the mirror, her legs trembling slightly. She looked at herself. The girl in the mirror was covered in sweat, her breath still coming in gasps, but the tension was different now. The panic felt less acute, having been successfully channeled into physical action.

She stepped back, resting her weight against the edge of the desk. She could feel the dull, persistent ache in her knees. She had to test the final level of immediate response.

She closed her eyes. She imagined the silence of the classroom, Elias watching her from the front, Lucas standing with his phone raised. She imagined the cold, clipped word of command that she knew would come next Tuesday, even if Lucas didn't speak it: now.

She waited two seconds, collecting her entire focus.

Then, she executed the movement based purely on the imagined, non-existent command.

Her body folded perfectly. The movement was instant, seamless. Her knees hit the ground, and her torso followed instantly, her forehead pressing against the carpet in one continuous flow of commitment. There was no pause. The transition was absolute.

She held the prostration for a full minute, allowing the physical position to reinforce the mental submission required.

When she finally rose, she knew. She had found the necessary point of compliance. The ten-second pause was gone. It had been conditioned out through sheer fatigue and repetition.

Ariana had nothing left to give, physically or emotionally. She finally allowed herself to acknowledge the profound exhaustion that settled over her, heavier than any shame. She was still isolated, still cut off from the world, but she had secured her immediate defense.

She looked at her reflection one final time, the girl gazing back at her was strained but resolute. She had done exactly what was required to secure her safety from Lucas and Jordan: absolute and instant obedience.

Ariana dropped down onto the carpet in front of the mirror, completely physically exhausted but mentally rigid, and began her solitary practice of absolute obedience.