Veil of Protection 06

Chapter 6: Javier

Having been trained by the DEA to adapt to any situation, Javier Roca approached his confinement with calculated composure. When the door clicked shut behind him, he didn’t scream or demand answers. Instead, he stood still, scanning the room with sharp eyes, cataloguing every detail for future use. The sterile walls, the bolted-down furniture, the sealed hatch by the entrance - nothing escaped his scrutiny.

When NINA’s detached, robotic voice greeted him and began referring to him as Daisy, Javier’s expression remained impassive. He neither challenged the name nor acknowledged the AI. Unable to determine whether he was truly in witness protection or if he’d fallen into the hands of the cartel, he moved to the bed, closed his eyes, and began to meditate, conserving his strength for whatever might come next.

For the next few days, the standoff continued. Javier refused the bland meals delivered through the hatch, taking only sips of water to stay hydrated. He ignored NINA’s persistent attempts to engage him in therapy sessions, his silence an act of defiance. But a crack appeared in his resistance when, one morning, he awoke groggy and disoriented, his body feeling strangely bare.

Running his hand down his thigh, Javier shot upright, his heart pounding. His skin was smooth - unnervingly so. A quick inspection confirmed his fears: his dark covering of body hair had vanished overnight. However, even more disturbing was the absence of his eyebrows. The patchy memory of waking briefly, choking on blue gas before slipping back into unconsciousness, sent a shiver down his spine. Yet, it was nothing compared to the icy chill creeping over him now.

Glancing down, he saw that his only clothing was a pair of tight pink underpants, an indignity he met with clenched fists and gritted teeth. Having engineered a moment of vulnerability, NINA turned the screw - lowering the air temperature in the tiny cell. For an hour, Javier held firm, his jaw locked in defiance, even as the icy chill seeped into his bones, numbing his fingers and toes and turning his hairless skin a pale shade of blue. But as the cold gnawed deeper, he relented.

“Fine, I’ll talk!” he shouted, his teeth chattering violently. “Just turn up the damn heat! Will ya?”

NINA’s calm reply came instantly. “Please approach the screen to begin your therapy session, Daisy.” Shivering and defeated, Javier staggered to his feet, the frostiness of the room still clinging to his breath. The first crack in his resolve had formed.

From that moment on, Javier began to resist less and less. He reasoned it was wiser to play along and bide his time than freeze to death. He ate the meals provided, told NINA what he assumed she wanted to hear, and grudgingly participated in the assigned exercise routines. For weeks, this became his life, the monotony driving him nearly insane as he obsessed over where he was and who could possibly be behind all of this.

Then, one morning, he awoke once more with an overwhelming sense that something was wrong - only this time, it was far worse. His body felt stiff and unresponsive, his muscles tight, as though he’d been asleep for weeks. But it was the feeling of his dry and itchy eyes that captured his attention first. Carefully rising from his bed, he stumbled over to the screen, blinking as his sore eyes took a moment to focus. When his reflection finally sharpened, his heart skipped a beat, and his mouth fell open in silent horror.

The face staring back at him wasn’t his. Small, subtle changes - an adjusted chin, and slightly lifted cheekbones - had softened his features. But two glaring alterations made his breath catch. His nose was smaller and more delicate, erasing the Javier he was used to seeing and creating a new one that felt unnervingly foreign. However, the most startling of the changes were his eyes. Once a deep brown, the same shade he’d inherited from his father, his eyes were now a piercing, bright blue. Initially, he thought they might be contact lenses, but as he reached up to remove them, a sharp sting of pressure confirmed the horrifying truth - they were his eyes!

Stunned by what had been done to him, Javier sank to the floor, his mind racing in a whirlwind of disbelief and desperation. He fought to recall his training, clinging to every strategy he’d learned for enduring psychological torture. Forcing slow, measured breaths, he tried to steady himself, struggling to maintain composure. But when his gaze fell to his smooth, slender legs emerging from a pair of tight pink panties, the sight felt like a cruel mockery - a taunt that pushed his resolve dangerously close to breaking.

After enduring a slow and relentless transformation - through a meticulously designed diet and exercise routine, special shampoo, and cutting-edge surgical techniques - Javier had little energy left to protest when presented with a new set of clothes. A pair of white jeans that ended mid-ankle, a soft pink turtleneck sweater, and undeniably feminine pink shoes with a small heel were a far cry from his normal choice of attire. Yet, compared to his slimmer frame, the unnaturally rapid growth of his hair, and his altered face and eyes that almost completely erased any signs of his Latino heritage, the clothes felt almost inconsequential.

The shoes, however, threw off his balance, making each step awkward and unsteady as he followed NINA’s instructions to leave the room. He plodded out of his cell for the last time, passing through a cubic room of doors and into a new pink prison. Just as when he first entered the facility, the remotely controlled door swung shut behind him with a heavy finality. The sharp sound startled the effeminate-looking man, making him flinch as he glanced back over his shoulder, unease flickering in his eyes.

(See image 17)

It didn't take Javier long to survey his new room, quickly confirming what he had already suspected: escape was impossible. The only exit was the door he had entered through, now locked.

After twenty-four hours to acclimate to his sickeningly pink surroundings, he was introduced to 'the training room.' Like every other room in the facility, it was sparsely furnished, secure, and designed purely for function.

It was here that Javier's mental resilience was tested to its limit. Questions swirled in his mind: Why was this happening? To what end? These thoughts looped endlessly as NINA introduced him to an array of cosmetics and application tools. When instructed to follow video tutorials to apply liquids and powders to his surgically altered face, he begrudgingly complied, suppressing his disgust while silently waiting for an opportunity to escape.

After days of repetitive practice, Javier’s makeup skills evolved from clumsy to passable. That was when a new task was introduced: a mannequin head with disturbingly lifelike synthetic skin emerged from a drawer, accompanied by a tray of needles. His initial reaction was wariness, but curiosity soon took over as he followed the tutorial on the screen. Carefully injecting the clear solution into the mannequin's eerily realistic skin, he watched with reluctant fascination as the "Botox" smoothed and plumped the surface before his eyes.

Ten days in, Javier had become a master of his tasks. He could apply makeup - traditional or semi-permanent - with flawless precision, and his hands moved deftly with needles, injecting filler and Botox like a seasoned professional. Dressed in his usual white pants, pink top, and pink heels, he worked with mechanical precision, following the tutorial on the screen as he methodically painted his face.

As he carefully lined his eyes with dark eyeliner, his thoughts wandered to the subtle changes in his wardrobe. Each night, he placed his outfit into the wardrobe, and by morning, it reappeared, slightly altered. The differences were so small - the clothing just a touch tighter, the heels a fraction taller - that anyone else might not have noticed. But Javier did. He always did. It gnawed at him - the slow creep of change designed to slip past his defences.

The thought nagged at him as he brushed mascara onto his lashes, giving them extra volume and length. He moved on to his lips, outlining them with care before filling them with a bright red hue. As he worked, a troubling question began to surface, one he couldn’t ignore. Surely, they knew his background - his training, his attention to detail. Did they truly believe these gradual changes would slip past him unnoticed, as they might with the average Joe? Or had they already decided it didn’t matter whether he saw through their carefully orchestrated plan?

As the tutorial video ended, Javier set a bottle of setting spray down on the counter before glaring at his sissified reflection with a look of disdain.

“Exercise complete,” NINA announced in her cold, mechanical tone, loud enough to make Javier flinch. “Please stay seated, Daisy, and refrain from panicking.”

Before he could respond, pale blue gas began seeping into the room. Ignoring NINA’s directive, Javier shot to his high-heeled feet, his instincts kicking in. He stumbled to the door, pounding on it with all his strength, but it refused to budge. The gas thickened, and his struggles weakened. After a brief, frantic fight, his legs gave out, and he crumpled to the floor unconscious.

What he found when he woke finally broke him. Groaning, he pushed himself upright, taking a sharp intake of breath as long blonde strands spilt into his peripheral view. Alarmed, he froze before a dull ache in his ears drew his attention. With trembling fingers, he reached up to touch his earlobe - his fingertips brushing over a row of piercings, each one amplifying his panic. With an even louder groan, he seized the golden locks cascading past his shoulders, yanking at them in disbelief as a sharp pain confirmed they were firmly rooted to his scalp.

(See image 18)

“Let me out of here!” he screamed, his voice cracking with desperation. “I’m not a woman! I’m not Daisy!”

For a moment, the room remained silent until NINA’s monotone voice broke the stillness. “Request denied. Please return to your workstation and prepare for your next lesson."

Javier’s head dropped as he took a slow, shaky breath. His eyes scanned his once strong, masculine frame, which had become a frail, feminized shadow of its former self. The sight defied everything he believed to be possible. How had he lost so much weight so quickly? And why did his backside and hips seem to grow rounder and fuller with each passing day? The snug pink-and-white outfit clinging to his reshaped body only highlighted these changes, while his sore feet wobbled in three-and-a-half-inch heels that lifted him unnaturally off the ground.

Trapped and unsure of his next move, Javier felt reluctant to turn towards the screen. The thought of his reflection filled him with dread. He could already picture it in his mind - a blonde-haired, eyebrowless man with a face covered in makeup, a horrifying image he couldn’t bear to confirm.