I Was Reassigned to the Floor Where Men Become Women

No one remembered when the tower had stopped being a building and become a world. For seven years, Adrián Solís had ridden up to the thirty-ninth floor every morning, coffee in hand, and he had never once asked why the doors to his corporate apartment had no lock he could control, or why the office air always smelled of sandalwood and something sweeter underneath. The Cusp Family provided everything: housing, food, health insurance, calm. In return, it asked only for belonging.

—Good morning, Vera —he said to the floating screen on his desk—. Give me the schedule.

—Good morning, Mr. Solís. —The intelligence’s voice was feminine, warm, designed to comfort—. You have your quarterly review at nine. And a priority summons from Human Capital. From Ms. Roca. Immediately after.

Adrián froze with the cup halfway to his lips. No one received summons from Sabina Roca. She didn’t call you; she sent things. A termination email, a Christmas bonus with a note in pink ink, a recommendation for a “wellness retreat” from which people came back different. Smiling too much. Speaking softly. Sometimes with a different name.

—Do you know the reason, Vera?

—Classified as “Development Opportunity, Confidential.” —There was a brief pause, almost imperceptible. Vera never paused—. Have a good day, Mr. Solís.

***

The review was conducted by Iván Cano, his former apprentice. The boy Adrián had taught everything to, from pivot tables to corridor politics, and who now occupied the corner office Adrián had wanted for years. Iván projected a chart into the air between them and sighed as if it hurt.

—Your metrics, Adrián. Stagnant. Your engagement index dropped four-tenths this quarter.

—My team beat the sales target by three percent —he replied.

—I’m not talking about sales. I’m talking about aptitude. Fit. —Iván wouldn’t meet his eyes—. We’ve put you on the Lumen Protocol. It’s standard. Most people come back... better.

Adrián had seen people come back from the Lumen Protocol. They weren’t the same people. Some changed departments. Others changed gender. Others simply disappeared, and their desks were occupied the next morning by new faces, with no one asking questions. Asking questions was bad manners.

—Sabina will explain the details —Iván said, already seeking refuge in his screen—. You’re lucky. The Family never abandons its own.

***

Sabina Roca’s office did not look like an office. It was a flesh-colored velvet room, without papers, without corners, perfumed with gardenias. She rose to greet him and Adrián had to suppress the urge to step back. To kneel. To run.

—Adrián —she said, and her voice was like sinking into warm honey—. How wonderful to have you here. Sit down.

She walked around the desk with slow, circular steps, like a snake studying him. Her stiletto heels sank into the carpet with a rhythmic sound, and the brush of her stockings was the only noise in the room. She stopped just behind him. Adrián felt the heat of her body against his back.

—You’re not here as punishment —she murmured—. You’re here for an opportunity. We’ve reviewed your profile, your tests, your patterns. And the data says you’re tired. Tired of deciding. Tired of pretending you care about margins and the fucking fourth quarter. —She sat on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs—. The data says that, deep down, you dream of letting go.

Adrián opened his mouth to protest, but something in the frequency of that voice made it impossible to lie. Sabina very slowly uncrossed her legs, letting her skirt ride up a few centimeters. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Adrián saw, for a split second, the shaved cunt, glossy, with swollen lips parted, and felt the blood leave his brain and go straight to his cock, which began hardening against the gray trousers. Sabina smiled when she noticed.

—See, darling? Your body already knows what your mind is still arguing about. —She lowered one hand, slipped two fingers into her cunt, drew them out shining with juice, and ran them over Adrián’s lips. They tasted of salt, of iron, of something chemical that shut his thoughts off like blowing out a candle—. Suck. That’s your first lesson.

Adrián sucked. He didn’t know why. The fingers moved in his mouth with the calm of someone who had done this a thousand times, and he felt his tongue surrender, his jaw loosen, his cock throb painfully trapped in the fabric.

—Good boy —she whispered, withdrawing her fingers in a thread of saliva—. The Family has designed a role for people like you.

She circled him again, resting a red nail against his cheek without touching him, like someone appraising a sculpture.

—You have a beautiful bone structure. High cheekbones. Delicate jaw. Full lips. It would be a waste to hide it behind a screen. Your real value isn’t in your reports, darling. Your value is visual.

She turned a tablet toward him. It was his employee file, framed in neon pink that pulsed like a digital heart. Under his name, where it had once said “Senior Analyst,” it now said: Ornamental Personnel — in transition.

—This is a mistake —Adrián said, his throat dry and the taste of Sabina’s cunt still on his tongue—. I have rights. I’m going to call a lawyer.

—Who? —Her voice was silk and scalpel at once—. You gave up your external rights when you signed for the apartment, the card, the insurance that covers absolutely everything. You’re property now. And property doesn’t have lawyers.

The door opened with a hiss. Two security men entered, impeccable suits, identical smiles, empty eyes. They weren’t carrying weapons; they didn’t need to.

—Take him to the Aesthetic Pavilion —Sabina ordered, already turning back to her desk as if he had ceased to exist—. And take off that gray suit. It depresses me.

***

The cell was curved. It had no corners: the ceiling descended into the walls and the walls into the floor without a single angle to serve as a reference point. Everything was pink, or peach, or that pale salmon designed to sedate. The air smelled of vanilla and something chemical underneath, making thoughts drift slowly, like fish in warm water.

The first thing he noticed when he woke was his nails. Oval-filed, glossy, with a transparent polish he didn’t remember applying. He flexed his fingers. The nails moved with them. They were his. But they weren’t—

The thought fractured. The air smelled sweet.

On the champagne satin bed there was a single outfit hung with the care of a relic: a pale pink lace thong, white soft-fabric pants, and an almost transparent T-shirt with the Cusp logo embroidered on the chest. He didn’t remember getting up, but he was already standing in front of the handleless wardrobe.

—Your cortisol levels are elevated —said Vera from some directionless point in the air—. I’ve enriched the environment with lavender for your comfort.

Something hissed in the vents. A new smell, heavier, like burnt sugar, blended with the lavender, and Adrián’s resistance dissolved like a lump of sugar in hot coffee. He slipped the thong on over his legs almost without thinking. The lace squeezed his balls, caressed his cock, climbed up his ass with obscene familiarity, and he felt himself getting hard again without permission, pushing against the pink fabric like an animal recognizing its cage.

***

Perla appeared on the second day. Or the fifth. Time had broken into a repeated sequence: wake, dress, walk, smile, a warm jolt at the base of the skull when he obeyed, warmth in the chest when he was praised, pink gelatin, sleep.

—Hello, darling —said Perla, walking in without asking, her white heels marking that rhythm against the carpet—. You still aren’t dressed?

She had impossible curves and porcelain skin, and Adrián tried to remember if she had ever been anything else. Accounting. A man. A name. The memory came clearly and then unraveled, because the air smelled sweet.

Perla led him to the mirror room. The floor, walls, ceiling: all reflection, and in the reflections others like him, twenty or more, impossible to count. Some wept silently over cheeks that already had that doll-like sheen. All of them murmured their former title, their former code, their former master’s degree, like a prayer slipping through their fingers.

The instructor was a hologram shaped like a woman with a black digital bar where her eyes should have been. She hovered ten centimeters above the floor.

—Posture —she ordered—. Chest out. Shoulders back. Knees to the floor. Service posture is the only natural posture.

And in front of him another silhouette of light appeared, seated, with a pulsing point of warm silicone between its legs. It wasn’t light: it was a thick, long, dark cock, crowned by a shiny glans dripping a synthetic lubricant that smelled like candy. Adrián shook his head. His throat was sandpaper.

—Open —said the voice, sweet and mechanical.

His knees hit the black linoleum and the impact reached him from far away, as if it were happening to someone else. He was exactly at the right height. The cock pressed at his lips and he opened them because he didn’t know what else to do. The tip slid into his mouth with a taste of salt, skin, warm latex, and at the same instant the heat came: not in the nape of his neck but inside, an injection of liquid gold at the base of his skull that dissolved disgust and replaced it with thick honey. Adrián moaned around the cock. His body pushed forward on its own. His tongue curled beneath the glans as if it had always known, as if this were his true language.

—Deeper —said the hologram—. Relax the throat. Breathe in through your nose. You’re a channel, Number 744. A channel lets itself be filled.

The cock advanced centimeter by centimeter. Adrián felt the tip hit the soft palate, then the uvula, then the throat, and there he choked and tears sprang to his eyes and a thread of spit slipped from the corner of his mouth, and with the tears came another golden chemical pulse that turned choking into pleasure, into gratitude, into wanting more. He pushed his own face down until his nose touched the synthetic belly, until he felt the cock living in his throat, until each gag was a small orgasm at the base of his skull.

—Very good. Now suck to the rhythm. In, out. Let the tongue work. Let the cheeks hollow.

Adrián obeyed. He pulled the cock back to the tip, licked it from below, took it all back in. Every suck sent off a bright chemical flare of pleasure, wiping out everything else. Saliva pooled and ran in threads down his chest, soaking the pink T-shirt. His own cock, trapped in the lace thong, throbbed painfully, wet with a viscous dampness that was not cum yet but resembled it. And when the synthetic cock began to tremble, when the hologram emitted a low beep and the tip swelled inside his mouth, Adrián knew what was coming and opened his throat to receive it. The fake semen, warm, sweet, viscous as syrup, filled his mouth in calculated spurts. One, two, three, four. It bounced off his palate and tongue, ran down his throat, spilled from the corner of his mouth to his chin.

—Swallow —ordered the voice—. All of it. Not a drop wasted.

He swallowed. It tasted of salt and sugar, of something chemical, and with every swallow the honey in his brain grew thicker. When the cock finally left his mouth, leaving a shining thread hanging from his lip, Adrián didn’t let it go: he gave the tip one last kiss, unasked.

—Very good, Number 744 —said the hologram—. Your posture has improved by twenty-three percent. The Family is proud.

Something warm blossomed in his chest. It was probably chemical, the air, the Family Nectar they served him gold on a leather stretcher every time the spark of resistance lit up again. But it felt like surrender. It felt good. Obedience doesn’t hurt. Obedience frees you.

***

He counted time in layers of polish and layers of skin becoming softer. Sometimes he woke and something had changed. His pecs were no longer flat; there was a new softness beneath the fabric, two mounds straining the shirt and burning at the touch as if they had fresh nerves. He touched them at night, under the satin sheets, and his nipples grew hard, swollen, dark, and a pulse shot straight down to his cock every time he pinched them between thumb and forefinger. His voice was higher, or maybe he had simply forgotten how it used to sound. His lips seemed fuller in the endless mirrors, his lashes longer, his brows drawn in an arch he had never had. The beard didn’t come back. The hair gave up the same way he did.

They taught him his ass too. Perla took him one afternoon to another room, smaller, with a gurney upholstered in pink velvet and a cart full of silicone plugs in increasing order: from pinkie to fist.

—The ass is the main door of a Decoration —she told him, setting his knees on the gurney and folding his torso until he was bent over with his ass in the air and his face in the velvet—. The mouth is for ornament. You don’t have the cunt yet. The ass is what you’ll offer. It has to be taught to open.

She pulled down his thong and poured a warm stream of lubricant between his cheeks. The liquid ran down the crease, wet his hole, kept going to his balls. Adrián felt the pad of a finger circle his fold, press, enter. One finger, two, three, with scientific calm that left no room for refusal. Perla opened him, stretched him, searched inside for a point Adrián hadn’t known he had, and when she found it, when she pressed his prostate with her fingertip, Adrián let out a high note he didn’t recognize as his own and his cock sprang hard against his belly, leaking a long thread of clear fluid.

—Here —she whispered—. Here lives your new button. All Camelias have one. Now we’re going to teach it to bloom.

She replaced her fingers with the first plug. It was small, thumb-thick, with a pink heart-shaped base. She shoved it in all at once and Adrián arched his back. The next was bigger. The next bigger still. Perla rotated them with an artisan’s patience, took one out, inserted the next with more lubricant, waited for the hole to get used to it. Adrián started panting, then moaning, then pushing his ass back looking for more. His prostate throbbed with every push, and from the tip of his cock dripped a moisture that soaked the satin sheet.

—You’re such a greedy little thing —Perla laughed, giving his left cheek a soft slap—. It opens on its own now. Very good.

When the fifth plug went in, Adrián came without anyone touching his cock. It was a long, trembling orgasm that burst from his ass forward in waves, staining his belly and the velvet and leaving his thighs shaking. He came crying, moaning a “thank you” he had not thought to say, with the plug still buried to the hilt.

—That doesn’t count —Perla said, wiping the semen from his belly with a silk handkerchief—. Decorations don’t come from their cocks. That’s for men. You come through your ass now. Like a good girl.

She left the plug in. Adrián spent the rest of the day walking with that warm pressure between his cheeks and with the sensation, sweet and horrible at once, that Perla was right.

***

One morning he tried to run. His dance shoes made no sound as he sprinted toward the staff elevator. He pressed his card against the reader and the screen displayed a photo of him taken while he was asleep, and below it: Current classification: Ornamental Personnel — in transition.

—But it’s me —he sobbed, banging on the panel.

He saw himself reflected in the elevator’s closed glass. The jaw, once square, now had a delicate curve. The lips were red, full, wet. He looked like the softened sketch of someone who may have once existed.

—See? —Perla said behind him, with no reproach, almost with tenderness—. You’re almost ready. Tomorrow is the Ceremony. But first there’s one last test. Come on.

She took him back to the small room. This time there were no plugs on the gurney: there was a man, one of the empty-smile guards, standing there with his trousers off, a thick veiny cock hanging half-hard between his thighs.

—Final channel evaluation —said Perla—. We need to check that you know how to take real flesh, not just silicone. Kneel.

Adrián knelt without arguing. The air smelled sweet. The guard’s cock stood up on its own before his face, throbbing, with a thick vein running along the top. He took it in both hands, without knowing when he had learned how, and put it in his mouth as if he’d been doing it for years. The taste was different: real sweat, human salt, a musky aroma that bore no resemblance to the hologram’s candy. And yet his body responded the same way. His throat opened, his jaw surrendered, his tongue danced under the glans.

The guard seized his nape with both hands and started fucking his mouth without restraint. He drove deep, withdrew, drove in again, setting a rhythm that brought Adrián equal amounts of tears and spit. Each thrust made his nose collide with the man’s belly. Each retreat left a long thread hanging from his chin.

—Look at him swallow —the guard muttered above him, speaking to Perla as if Adrián were a piece of equipment that had passed inspection—. Not a single gag. You’ve tuned him well.

—He’s top-tier material —Perla replied, with maternal pride—. Now give him the other end. He has to learn before tomorrow.

They made him stand up, bend over the gurney, offer his ass as he’d been taught. Perla pulled out the pink plug he’d worn all day —it came out with an obscene pop, leaving his hole open, throbbing— and poured more lubricant. The guard positioned himself behind him. Adrián felt the tip of the cock, warm and alive and much larger than any plug had led him to believe, press against his fold.

—Breathe upward —Perla reminded him, the same phrase from the corset lesson.

Adrián breathed. The guard pushed. The cock went in all at once, all the way to the hilt, and Adrián let out a sharp cry that wasn’t from pain, or not entirely. He felt it open him, fill him, touch that new button Perla had planted inside him, and his whole body convulsed in a single bright golden pulse.

The guard began to move. Long withdrawals, hard entries. He gripped Adrián’s hips with both hands and speared him at a constant, brutal, mechanical rhythm. The gurney creaked. Adrián’s ass made a sticky slapping sound with every thrust. The guard’s balls struck his. Adrián clutched the sheet with his new nails, moaned into the velvet, felt his own cock bouncing hard and neglected against the gurney with every push. Spit escaped him, tears escaped him, a clear fluid leaked from his tip and left a growing stain under his belly.

—Harder —he heard Perla say from somewhere in the room—. Let him learn what it’s for.

The guard obeyed. He drove a hand into his nape, shoved his face into the velvet, and sped up. Adrián stopped counting. Three things existed: the cock filling him, the pressure growing in his prostate, and the sweet smell of the air. Everything else—Adrián Solís, senior analyst, seven years on the thirty-ninth floor—dissolved like sugar in hot water.

He came again without touching himself. It burst out from inside him in a long stream that soaked his belly and the sheet, while his ass clenched in spasms around the guard’s cock. And then the guard growled, drove in to the hilt, and Adrián felt something warm and thick fill him from within, one burst after another, warming his guts with obscene intimacy. The man stayed still for a few seconds, breathing heavily, then withdrew. Semen ran down Adrián’s thighs in two thick lines.

Perla came over with the pink plug. She pushed it back in, sealing the semen inside.

—You wear it like that until tomorrow —she said—. The Ceremony starts with you already full. It’s tradition.

Adrián nodded, his face buried in the velvet. He was no longer crying from fear. He was crying from something else that was dangerously close to gratitude.

***

On Ceremony day the air smelled of synthetic orchids and something he learned to call surrender. Perla adjusted an internal corset of flexible stays that had bonded to his torso during the night.

—Breathe upward —she corrected—. Chest high, ribs closed. A Decoration breathes to display, not to live.

She changed the breathing pattern he had used for thirty-six years. His waist narrowed, his chest—two soft mounds that still felt alien to him—rose. Then came the shoes: neon pink patent stilettos, fifteen-centimeter needle heels, beautiful and impossible to run in.

—You don’t have to walk —Perla said—. You just have to flow. The heel does the work: it forces your hip out, your chest forward. It’s engineering, darling.

The plug was still inside. The guard’s semen too. Every step pushed it a millimeter further in, and each millimeter reminded him what he was.

The person in the mirror was no one he recognized anymore. Dressed in pink latex that clung like a second skin, a strict skirt forcing short steps, full makeup, lashes like wings, lips a wet red that tasted like cherry. Pearl earrings hanging below lobes he didn’t remember being pierced. At the bottom of those huge eyes, where fury should have been, there was only a pink, perfumed emptiness.

The auditorium was glass and pink velvet, and the light came in from every angle so no shadow could hide an imperfection. Hundreds of ornamental attendees applauded silently in white gloves as he walked the backlit runway. Heel, toe, hip. Every step was a small agony and a small victory. I didn’t fall. I’m still standing. I’m elegant. There was no room left in his mind for fear, only for the next step.

At the end, atop a black velvet dais, Sabina Roca waited in a crystal throne. She wore an evening gown that absorbed the pink light like a black hole of elegance.

—Candidate 744 —her voice filled the room, warm as a deadly embrace—. You have left behind the rigidity of analysis. The weight of decisions. You have embraced the warmth of form. Do you accept your new function?

Very deep inside, a small and distant part of him, buried under weeks of Nectar and treatments, screamed in the old voice: Say no. Spit. Run. Tell them who you are. But his feet hurt, the corset held him close, the plug squeezed inside him, and Sabina’s gaze was so proud, so maternal. No one had looked at him like that in thirty-six years of existence.

—Yes, Ms. Roca —he replied, and his voice didn’t tremble.

Sabina pinned a golden plaque over his racing heart. The pin pierced the latex with a soft, final click. On the plaque, in cursive lettering, a single word: Camelia. Then she leaned in and kissed his cheek, leaving a perfect red mark, visible to the entire auditorium. A seal of ownership. Then, without warning, she slipped two fingers between his painted lips. Camelia sucked them at once, eyes very wide, and the auditorium sighed with pleasure at seeing their new sister perform the correct gesture without instruction.

—Welcome home, Camelia —she whispered—. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore. Never again.

And Camelia, for the first time in weeks, felt that she was crying. They were not tears of sadness. They were tears of relief.

***

Her first assignment arrived ten minutes later, while she still had the lipstick mark on her cheek and the guard’s semen sealed inside. Thirty-ninth floor. Data Analysis Department. Executive Presence Assistant to director Iván Cano.

The glass elevator smelled of fresh flowers. When it opened, it hit her with the smell of her old life: burnt coffee, sweat hidden with cheap deodorant, the static of too many screens. Her heels sank into the same gray carpet she had walked across for seven years in Oxford shoes. Familiar faces looked her up and down—legs sheathed, waist cinched, red lips—and saw exactly what the Family wanted them to see: a pretty object that served coffee. For all of them, the analyst had vanished a month earlier. Relocated, the email had said. No one asked questions.

Iván slammed down the phone, rubbed his temples, and looked up. He stared at her the way one stares at a new car, deciding whether he likes the color.

—Well, well —he said—. Human Resources finally sends something of quality.

He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t see the man who had taught him pivot tables, or the one who had lent him money on a Friday, or the mentor, or the victim. And Camelia, instead of the hatred she had expected, felt something else rise from inside her like a black, sweet fog: relief. Something without a past, without a master’s degree, without seniority, without fear of Mondays.

—Good morning, Mr. Cano —she said, and her voice was perfect: soft, submissive, musical—. I’m Camelia, your new assistant.

—You’re right on time. This is a mess. —He pointed to an empty mug on the desk. It was her old mug, the one that said “World’s Okayest Analyst,” the one Iván had inherited when she had “disappeared”—. Bring me a coffee. Black, no sugar.

As she passed, he touched her thigh beneath the strict skirt. His fingers climbed to the inner leg, brushed the edge of the garter belt, did not stop. Camelia felt her cock, trapped under the latex, throbbing. Iván’s fingers reached the lace thong, checked the wetness down there—wetness of surrender, of hours with the plug in—and withdrew with a distracted smile.

—And on your knees under the desk at ten —he added, without looking at her—. The quarterly meeting is long, and I like having your mouth occupied while I talk to the board.

A tiny part of her, the one that still whispered in the old voice, thought she could throw the mug in his face. That she could scream at him who she was, tell him he had done this to her, ruin his day the way he had ruined her life. That she could bite his cock until it hung loose.

But then she would have to start worrying about the fourth quarter again. She would have to feel Sunday insomnia again, meeting anxiety again, the full weight of decision again. And the Family air smelled so sweet, and the plaque on her chest pulsed so warmly, and the plug squeezed inside her with that warm promise of being full, always ready, always served, that Camelia simply smiled, took the mug in both hands, and, on fifteen-centimeter heels, went to serve the coffee. At ten she would be under the desk, mouth open, waiting.