Author's note: This is a story that has sat untouched on my hard drive for several years. It's actually the first part of a longer narrative, but I confess my inspiration for this project dried up and I've not added to it in a long time.
I'll be the first to admit that the premise is a bit silly, but I think it's also rather fun and makes for an entertaining yarn. I certainly enjoyed myself writing it at the time so I thought that this work is probably still worth sharing, even though I'm unsure if I'll ever write subsequent instalments.
Maybe if I get enough interest, and some suggestions for other automated traps that might exist in the Ultimate Fantasy Challenge I might write a part 2.
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Cassie woke up very suddenly. That was her first clue that something was amiss.
The transition to consciousness was complete and instantaneous, which never happened when she opened her eyes in her bed in the morning. One moment she was asleep, the next she was wide awake.
The place was all wrong too. This wasn't her bed, there were no covers. Then she was sitting up, but it wasn't her doing it, it was the bed. In fact it wasn't a bed, it was some kind of chair. As she reached upright she realised that she wasn't alone.
She was one of six young women each on their own chair arranged in a circle facing inward. The chairs were padded but slim, sleek, minimalist. They matched the decor of the room, which was bare; flat white panels with dull grey borders.
As their feet reached the floor Cassie and the other women, as though acting out secret instructions, lifted themselves out of the chairs. She noted that like her they were all young, with well proportioned bodies and pretty faces.
They were each dressed in a black jumpsuit, skin tight and made of an ultra-shiny fabric that reflected the light in a way that outlined every curve of the wearer's body. The material flowed down from shoulder straps and an open back through a tightly enclosed waist and legs to built in boots. The boots had several inches of heel built in, sexy but not excessive. Bare arms and tightly enclosed breasts completed the look.
There was something else too. They were each wearing a silver collar around their neck. Cassie put her hand to her own neck and sure enough she was wearing one too. It was seamless, and felt like it was made of a rubbery plastic.
No sooner had they all stood up the chairs all folded up and vanished into slots in the floor. It was a slick mechanical ballet that lasted mere seconds, leaving no evidence of them ever having existed.
"Wakey wakey rise and shine ladies!"
The voice seemed to come from all around. It was male, and sounded insanely upbeat and cheerful. Cassie took some reassurance from the way that all of the other women seemed to look just as perplexed as she did about just what was going on.
"I'm seeing a lot of confused faces. Don't worry, all will be explained."
They were indeed all looking at each other in a state of bewilderment.
"Now, as well as being all being sexy young ladies you all have something else in common. You all, in a secret moment of web browsing, applied to try out for the Ultimate Fantasy Challenge gameshow."
They all looked at each other, and Cassie had a sense that, like hers, the other womens' looks of confusion became forced as the realisation dawned. She vaguely recalled coming across the ad one night when she was browsing the seedier parts of the virtweb. She had had a glass or two of wine and at the time the idea of being amongst the many tens of thousands of people who had already signed up to try out for some kind of mystery sexy gameshow had seemed like a great idea. She had clicked through many pages of legal fine print, which in hindsight she should have read more closely, and clicked agree.
"Yes, that's right! Of course none of you were expecting that you would just go to sleep one night and wake up in the middle of the world's premier adult gameshow, but we think that that just adds to the effect."
Cassie realised that this was right. The last thing that she remembered was going to sleep in her own bed after a long day at work.
"Don't worry though ladies, you are perfectly safe. We also have amazing prizes for you to win, and for those of you who are eliminated we promise a very... enjoyable consolation prize."
And what did he mean by that?
"Next we will proceed with orientation. Let's see which of you ladies figures this one out first."
A glowing circle of light about a metre across appeared on the floor in the middle of the room.
The woman to Cassie's left, a beautiful tall woman with black hair that flowed down her back to her waist, was the first of them to speak.
"What do you think he meant eliminated?"
They all shrugged.
"I think we need to..." The woman stepped forward into the circle. Instantly there was a sound much like that of a whip crack and something happened. Cassie had to mentally re-play what she had just seen because it had happened so fast. One moment the woman had been standing there in front of the group, the next black straps had shot out from the walls and connected with her wrists and ankles.
"Wha..." she had barely a moment to register the presence of these apparitions before the straps were retracting, pulling her arms and legs out away from her body.
"The lovely April has volunteered to be our demonstration subject for the game rules." The disembodied voice declared cheerfully.
Like all the other girls Cassie could only watch in shock. April was struggling against her bonds, even as the straps pulled out her arms and legs leaving her standing spread eagle in the middle of the room. On the end of each black strap was a solid seamless cuff that had formed around each of the young woman's ankles and wrists. It was all made of a shiny black substance, like a kind of molten leather. Each cuff must have flown out to exactly the right position in space and then closed around their target limb in the blink of an eye.
Cassie shifted her weight uncomfortably. Were there more of these things hiding in recesses in the walls ready to spring out on the rest of them? Worse than the shock of seeing what had just happened to April was the realisation that the emotion she was feeling wasn't fear exactly.
"The six of you are in a maze, made up of lots of rooms of which this is just the first. Your goal is simple: to reach the exit, as a team. You will each be paid the sum of one million credits for each of you that make it to the exit. So for example if all six of you get there, that's six million each."
