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mousetrap.
    "Oh my." It was a little larger than average, but not so big as to be intimidating. She held it, warm in her hand and rigid as a candle, and leaned over to lick it and take it in her mouth, very European.
    "Take off your clothes," Jimmy said, "and put them on the dresser."
    "Yes, sir." She smiled, realizing it was a stock phrase he must have learned from doctors examining him here. She undressed langorously, folding her clothes, carefully rolling her stockings. She turned her back to him when she stepped out of her knickers, discreetly applying saliva. She didn't expect the preliminaries to be elaborate.
    She felt Jimmy's clasp on her waist and started to say something— and then there was a horrible stab of pain that forced the breath out of her. She gritted her teeth against screaming. "No, Jimmy! No! That's the wrong place!"
    He withdrew obediently and she turned around, holding onto his penis, trying not to panic at the string of bloody mucus. "Let's wash this off and—"
    He picked her up like a large doll and threw her onto the bed.
    It was a good thing she'd left the glass doors open; the gardeners heard her screams. Bad thing that she'd locked the door. By the time they had beaten it open, Jimmy was standing at the end of the bed, naked and unaroused, staring placidly at Dutch, who had crawled to the far corner of the large bed, cowering and whimpering and bleeding.
    They knew better than to call the police. The one who spoke the best English called Mr. Berry at his law office while the others helped Jimmy dress and led him down to the pool. The Mexican cook and one of the male nurses tended to Dutch.
    Mr. Berry showed up in ten minutes, bearing his most potent weapon, the checkbook. He listened to Dutch while she quieted her sobbing and haltingly described what had happened.
    He was extremely sympathetic. Of course she was the victim here, but the law was complicated. Jimmy was, after all, a minor, and an unscrupulous lawyer might claim that she had seduced him.
    She looked him in the eye, resolute through tears of pain. "I did start to seduce him. But then he raped me, two places. Should I go to the police?"
    Mr. Berry asked the others to leave the room. In a half hour, an ambulance from a private hospital rolled up quietly to the service entrance, and Dutch was carried out over the gravel in Jimmy's old wheelchair.
    The doctor who examined her had never seen a broken pubic bone before. He accepted her story about a bucking horse out of control, but suggested that during her confinement she might want to be examined for pregnancy, just in case.

    - 9-

    Apia, Samoa, 2019

    CNN runs a news special on 14 December 2019.
    The camera pans along gentle surf, to rest on the artifact. It closes in during voice-over introduction:

    MALLORY (VO)

    Over the past several weeks, what began as a mystery has become an enigma. It started when a private marine research organization, Poseidon Projects, claimed salvage rights for an unclaimed wreck deep in the Tonga Trench a few hundred miles from this Samoan island.
    With the help of Poseidon Projects, famous for having raised the Titanic, Atlantis used acres of floats to bring the "wreck" to within a few fathoms of the surface. They towed it with tugs to a holding location...

    Archive footage of towing and parking the artifact.

    MALLORY (VO, CONT.)
    just offshore of Independent Samoa, where they had secured a ninety-nine-year lease on a piece of undeveloped land, which was being turned into a small research center...

    Archive footage of the shrouded artifact being pulled toward shore.

    MALLORY (VO, CONT.)
    built solely to investigate this thing, which was obviously not the wreck of a ship.

    Archive underwater footage: the shroud flaps teasingly, to show the bright metal surface of the thing. A montage of scenes while Poseidon engineers attach the towing collar to the artifact, and start dragging it in.

    MALLORY (VO, CONT.)
    That cable is powered by this machine ...