6:30. Had it really taken that long?"Wha- how much is the fee?" she asked, her voice now trembling."Hmm, good question, whaddaya think boys? Those pan...ties look pretty nice!"The group murmured excited grunts of assent, but one spoke up. "We'd better inspect them first."With that, Katie was thrust to one of the nearby men. His hands reached up and began cupping her ass, caressing her cheeks through the material of her panties. He spun her around and began rubbing her crotch. She tried to squirm. Surely.I slowly pushed the door open, peeking inside to find Melissa facing away from me, busying herself with her hair. I removed my nightshirt and stepped into the walk-in shower. Mouth open, breathing stealthily. I felt so anxious. So scared. My lips wouldn’t stop quivering. She looked so beautiful.I took one step closer.Melissa moved her head to one side to wash out some soap from her ear.My mind was in turmoil. Do it – fucking do it.Another step closer and I saw Melissa start to move.I was. Mary Hendricks, the deputy chief of mission—the DCM. But why the concern? Mary had said no more than three sentences to Ally since the junior officer arrived at the embassy. Frigid, dismissive expressions. As if Ally wasn’t even there, as if she was too peripheral to the business of the embassy to care about. What? Why? This wasn’t the embassy—no room like she’d ever seen in the embassy. ‘No, don’t try to move yet, Ally. The nurses are coming. It’s OK. You’re going to be fine. The care here is. There was no sense of disaster, no urgency in the palace and Imperial bureaucracy. Esfalan felt he was in some surreal dream, almost as if the world outside the palace were irrelevant.The small group stopped in a large antechamber, populated with other small groups, each with some sort of palace staff member. Their guide brought them over to another official at a desk, where Pylonem's name and reason ("summoned") were recorded, then they were issued another palace official to wait with.