Ivy’s head lolled forward, her chin resting against the top of her chest, the pacifier strapped to her lips pulsing with each slow drip of formula. The world had become a blurred carousel of humiliation—sounds distorted, colors bleeding at the edges of her vision. The grotesquely real squelch of her diaper with every movement dulled into white noise. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been hanging there in the harness—an hour? Two? Time had long since dissolved into the rhythm of her body’s betrayal. The taste of the latest feeding had gone unnoticed; everything tasted the same now. Sweet, cloying and wrong.

Her legs dangled without resistance, her body heavy and waterlogged. The sheer weight of her diaper defied physics, pressing down between her legs in a misshapen balloon of saturated padding. The plastic pants groaned audibly now, stretched taut over the unspeakable mass. Heat pulsed from her core, trapping moisture and shame against her skin until it was all she knew. The crowd had become distant again, a sea of sound that washed over her but failed to stir anything inside.

Until Mistress spoke.

“Well, well…” she cooed, her voice crackling with triumph and mirth. “Looks like Contestant Forty-Nine has had enough!”

A beat of silence before a sharp electronic buzz.

Ivy’s eyes fluttered open. Across from her, Eric’s bouncer now swung gently, empty. The straps that had once held him now dangled loose, swaying softly in the artificial breeze of the arena. The hatch beneath him was sealed again, hiding the drop, hiding whatever lay below.

Eric was gone.

And like a rope pulled too tight, the tension across the circle snapped.

The audience sensed it. The mood changed—not less cruel but less anticipatory. The fear of elimination had been the razor edge that kept the contestants clinging to the trial, gnashing teeth, blinking back tears, and enduring. But now? Now the punishment had changed shape. Now they knew: the final two would be caregivers. The others—those who broke next—would simply remain babies. Not gone, not erased, just… trapped.

Sarah was the first. Her hand trembling, she reached for the button and slapped it with a cry that was lost behind her pacifier. The door opened and she fell, the bouncer’s straps bobbing gently, and the crowd cheered.

Moments later, Mason groaned, his body twitching violently before his arm swung forward. Another ding and another drop. Then Maria, sobbing openly as she mashed her mittened hand against the red disk in front of her, her oversized diaper squishing loudly as she did.

Three gone in rapid succession, and now, only three remained.

Ivy. Clara. Finn.

Her pulse surged in her ears, despite the exhaustion. The crowd roared again, but it was distant, muffled. All she could see now was them. Clara hung motionless, lips parted around the pacifier, her eyes vacant but open, her body trembling as her diaper drooped dangerously low, nearly dragging across the bouncer’s strap. And Finn… Finn looked furious. Not at her. Not at them. But at the entire system. His eyes blazed, his limbs twitching in his bonds, his soaked and bloated diaper swinging like a pendulum beneath him.

They had made it.

There would be no elimination for them.

And yet… the trial had not ended.

The humiliation would go on, perhaps endlessly. The three of them were now the centerpieces. The final spectacle. The diapers around Ivy’s waist shifted again, the weight pulling further down, the padding now forming an unnatural dome of sludge that had to be nearing its physical limit. She wasn’t sure what would happen when it failed—only that it would.

The silence descended like a weighted curtain—heavy, suffocating, absolute. The crowd, once a roaring ocean of noise and delight, fell quiet in an instant, as if even they understood the gravity of what was about to happen. The ring of bouncers no longer swung in rhythmic humiliation. Most now sat empty but three still dangled in the center of the stage—swaying slightly, groaning with the impossible weight of swollen diapers and shattered pride.

Ivy’s heart pounded against the padding strapped tight across her chest, sweat pouring in rivulets down her temples. Her body felt like it had been hollowed out and refilled with fatigue, shame, and formula. But her mind—her mind—refused to let go. She blinked past the sting in her eyes and met Finn’s gaze across the circle.

His eyes were bloodshot. His lips pressed tight around the pacifier, a dribble of formula glistening at the corner of his mouth. But his resolve blazed through the haze of exhaustion. He stared at her, jaw clenched, chin raised, as if to say, Don’t you dare give in. Ivy’s chest tightened, her heart lurching. 

Then she looked at Clara.

The girl trembled visibly, her cheeks wet, her bouncer barely holding together as her diaper sagged so low it was nearly dragging along the stage floor. And yet… Clara’s eyes were open. Afraid, but defiant. She clung to the bar beside her, her mittened hand wrapped around it with white-knuckled desperation. She wasn’t going to quit either. Not unless someone made her.

The three of them hung in a triangle of tension, each suspended over the precipice, each unwilling to be the last one to fall. One would drop. One must. And the other two would become  caregivers. They would rise from this hell with their status intact. Dignity, or what scraps remained of it, restored.

Ivy sucked in a shaky breath through her nose. Her diaper shifted again, compressing against her with every twitch of the bouncer, and the heat that radiated from her lower half was nauseating. She could barely feel her legs. Her arms hung limp. Her stomach rolled with the weight of formula. But she refused to quit, she refused to let this be the end.

Their eyes locked across the circle—Clara’s and Ivy’s—and in that tenuous bridge of trembling gazes, something passed between them. It wasn’t words. It wasn’t a signal. It was something deeper, more visceral. Ivy saw Clara’s panic, not like hers, not the fear of losing face or rank or status, but need. Raw, suffocating need. Clara’s diaper had sagged so low it was no longer a question of discomfort but a matter of anatomy. It pulled down from her hips like an anchor made of shame, its shape so swollen and distended it barely resembled a garment anymore. Her plastic pants strained against their seams, translucent at the edges with the sheer saturation of their burden. Clara was barely upright in the bouncer, her legs wobbling, her arms limp at her sides, her mittens twitching like she wanted to cry out but no longer knew how.

Ivy felt it—the ache behind Clara’s pacified mouth, the silent plea blooming in her tear-rimmed eyes. She could see it all. If Clara lost now, if she were dropped into those seats again, she wouldn’t come back. Not this time. Not from the cartoons, not from the feedings, not from the diapers or the dreamworlds that waited behind eyelids too heavy to resist. Ivy knew, somehow, that Clara wouldn’t fight anymore. She’d surrender. And who could blame her?

Clara stared at Ivy. Ivy stared back.

And Ivy felt her jaw quiver.

The tears came, unbidden and hot, pooling against the pacifier muzzle and spilling down her cheeks. Her vision blurred with its weight—not just from fear, not just from exhaustion—but from the impossible decision crashing down on her. Could she do it? Could she fall? Could she give it up—her status, her dignity, her chance at survival—so that Clara wouldn’t be destroyed? Just so someone else would have the strength to continue?

Her eyes flicked to the button in front of her, its red light still pulsing gently, a cruel invitation to oblivion.

She imagined herself in the seat again, arms bound, pacifier gagged, her mind breaking inch by inch as Naomi and Oliver chirped at her through a haze of formula and cartoons. She imagined losing herself again. Becoming what they said she was.

No.

She shook her head violently, as if to physically throw the thought away. She wasn’t strong enough. Not this time. Neither of them was

And then—

Cheers.

Loud, sudden and electric.

Ivy blinked. Clara blinked, too. Both of them were twisting to see Finn’s empty bouncer..

Finn was Gone.

Ivy stared, her heart plummeting in her chest, her breath catching.

The harness that had cradled his sagging, broken body mere seconds before now swung gently. The hatch below it sealed shut, as if he’d never been there at all. The crowd’s roar thundered in Ivy’s ears, drowning out her heartbeat.

Mistress’s voice slithered in through the noise, gleeful and echoing.

“Contestant Ten has voluntarily forfeited the Trial! What a noble act… What a good baby boy.”

Clara broke first, a sob rattling her form. A moment later, Ivy followed, not with a scream or a cry but with stunned silence, her tears flowing freely as the truth hit her.

Finn had sacrificed himself.

The lights didn't dim, and the swelling finality of Mistress’s voice, so familiar after every cruel crescendo, never came. Ivy blinked, her heart hammering in her chest, her mind fogged with confusion and dread. Her body hung limp in the bouncer, legs spread wide, her lower half weighed down by a diaper so grotesquely swollen it sagged past her knees, and the plastic pants around it stretched to the brink. And yet… the game continued.

Clara was still beside her, suspended in equal ruin. Their eyes met, wide with disbelief. Ivy whimpered, a soft, strangled noise behind her pacifier gag. Her heart thundered against her chest like a trapped animal. Why hadn’t it ended? There were only two of them left. Two! That was supposed to be it. They both won. Both would become caregivers. That was the deal.

And then her bowels let go again.

Not a tremor. Not a cramp.

A wave.

A full-body surrender that left her gasping through her nose, her body curling in on itself instinctively as the new mess poured into her diaper, merging with the existing muck in a bloated, sickening swell. The diaper shifted, ballooned, and gurgled as the plastic pants creaked in protest. Her hips screamed from the pull, from the unrelenting pressure that her body, broken, battered, humiliated, could no longer resist.

Something inside Ivy snapped.

She had done it. She had. She had outlasted the worst. She had survived the cartoons, the feedings, the bouncer, the audience, and the shame. She had kept Clara in the game. She had watched Finn give up everything for her. She had earned her title. Caregiver.

Ivy turned to Clara one last time. Through the tears streaking her cheeks, she offered her a look—a flicker of something calm, resolute. She nodded, slowly and softly. Clara’s eyes widened, lips parting behind the pacifier. Then Ivy looked down.

She pressed the button.

The effect was immediate.

With a mechanical clang, the hatch beneath her sprang open. Light vanished as she dropped, the roar of the crowd surging like a tidal wave over her descent. Air rushed past her face. Her bouncer vanished. The trial was gone—just a void beneath her, a fall into some unseen fate.

She landed not with pain but with a bloom.

A soft and elastic net expanded to catch her like a cradle, dipping deep before gently bouncing upward again. The feeding tube had torn away somewhere during the fall, leaving her mouth free but her breath ragged. The net held her for a moment, swaying like a hammock in a storm. Ivy blinked up into the darkness, her limbs twitching weakly, her mind a blur.

Then—arms.

Mechanical, but almost gentle. They descended from the shadows and plucked her from the net like a doll, lifting her skyward. Her bloated diaper squished noisily with every movement, the weight pulling so heavily that even in suspension, her hips ached. Pain stabbed down her spine. The sheer mass of the padding forced her legs apart, and every jostle sent new waves of warmth and humiliation sloshing through the layers between her thighs.

The arms carried her with that same mechanical grace—efficient, deliberate, uncaring. Ivy dangled between them, her limbs limp, her swollen diaper squishing audibly with every shift, the plastic pants stretched so tightly around the mountainous mass between her legs that they shimmered under the sterile overhead lights. Her eyes fluttered open, and she realized where she was.

The caregiver's changing room.

Or what it had once been.

It was cleaner now—brighter somehow. The unyielding glare of overhead fluorescents had burned away the shadows. Every padded table gleamed, every edge polished until it seemed unreal, clinical, wrong. Ivy was lowered toward one of the tables, her body already sagging beneath her as the arms adjusted her posture, tilting her into a seated recline. The pacifier, her constant gag, let out a soft pssshhht as it deflated and slid free from her mouth, the sensation leaving her jaw aching from disuse. She gasped, tasting real air for the first time in what felt like hours or days. Her lips trembled, cracked from dryness, but she didn’t speak. Couldn’t. There were no words left inside her, only trembling silence and the echo of cheering far above her.

The sleeper’s zipper whirred to life behind her, parting down the back with a serpentine hiss. The thick fabric peeled, revealing her flushed, sweat-soaked body beneath. Her chest heaved with labored breaths, the warm air of the room prickling her skin as the plastic pants—shining, strained, sagging—were finally unclipped and removed.

The diapers beneath were another matter entirely.

One by one, the layers were unpinned and peeled back, each emitting a sickening squelch as they were released. The smell hit the room like a tangible force, thick and suffocating, yet the arms moved without hesitation, without judgment. The first diaper fell away and thudded wetly into a disposal chute. Then the second. The third. And onward, each heavier than the last, each layer peeling back more of her shame like bark from a rotted tree. Ivy didn’t resist. She couldn’t. She was too tired. Too empty.

When the final diaper dropped, the arms paused only long enough for a sterile nozzle to emerge from the wall. Without warning, a pressurized stream of warm water burst from it, striking Ivy’s lower half with a force that nearly made her flinch. The jet pulsed in careful, sweeping arcs—efficient, thorough. It scoured the mess from her thighs, her hips, her rear, rinsing away the last physical remnants of Trial Seven. The water pooled and drained away beneath her, red lights blinking in sequence as the nozzles retracted and the cleaning cycle ended.

Another set of arms descended, lifting her again, gentler now.

She was carried toward a large tub, reclined like an overgrown infant’s bath. Steam wafted from the surface, and the scent of lavender drifted into her nose—soft, soothing. Ivy whimpered softly as her body was lowered into it, the warmth enveloping her in a cushion of suds that crept around her body like foam-laced fingers. Her head rested on a padded incline, the arms releasing her, retreating into their ports. For the first time in what felt like forever, Ivy was alone.

The silence held like glass—delicate, fragile, one breath away from shattering. Ivy floated in the warmth, her limbs suspended, her fingers twitching beneath the soapy water without purpose. The steam curled upward, blurring the sterile lights above, and somewhere in the distance, the hum of machinery began again. She heard the doors open, the smooth hiss of hydraulics as the arms extended once more, carrying a new victim.

She didn’t need to look. She knew.

The arms were holding Clara.

Ivy didn’t lift her head. She didn’t turn. She simply listened as the same sequence unfolded beside her—pacifier released, sleeper unzipped, bloated diaper pants removed. The sound of tapes peeling echoed like thunder in the quiet. One by one, Clara’s diapers were discarded, the weight of her defeat thudding into the disposal chute just like Ivy’s had moments before. Then came the cleansing—swift, and merciless. Clara made no sound. No gasp. No whimper. Just the soft, defeated sound of breath.

And then she was lowered beside Ivy.

The bubbles frothed around Clara’s frame like waves around driftwood. She sank into it with the same limp surrender Ivy had felt. The arms retreated and the doors sealed.

And the two of them floated there in silence.

Steam rose between them in lazy, curling ribbons, obscuring each other’s faces in hazy fragments. Their bodies were submerged from the neck down, their eyes unfocused. Neither girl flinched. Neither averted her gaze. At this point—after the diapers, after the cartoons, after the screaming crowds and mechanical feedings and endless humiliation—what dignity was left to protect? There was no shame anymore. 

Then Ivy blinked.

And something shifted.

She saw Clara’s face through the mist. The red eyes. The twitch in her lower lip. The way her fingers gripped the edge of the tub—not out of modesty, not out of pain, but out of a need to hold on to something.

And Ivy felt it break.

A single tear slid down Ivy’s cheek, hot even against the warmth of the water. It traced the ridge of her nose and dripped silently into the tub, lost in the foam. Her throat clenched, no sound escaping. Not yet, but it had started.

Clara moved first.

Not much, just a hand, reaching across the narrow space between them, sliding through the water, fumbling for Ivy’s fingers. Their hands met—skin on skin, slick with soap and trembling.

Then she pulled.

It wasn’t graceful, nor was it elegant. The water sloshed as Ivy leaned forward, letting Clara pull her, collapsing into each other’s arms like girls caught in a storm. Suds clung to their faces, their hair, their backs as they embraced, foreheads pressed together, eyes squeezed shut.

And then they sobbed.

Not quiet, composed tears. Wracking sobs. Full-bodied cries that had waited too long to be released. Their shoulders shook as days of trauma, terror, and degradation poured from their mouths in hoarse, broken gasps. The room didn’t judge them, the lights didn’t dim, the arms didn’t interrupt. It was just them now.

Two survivors.