But even the most well balanced of societies has its dissenters. Jane is seized in the middle of the night by masked men from the IRES: the Irontown Rules Enforcement Society. In the hope of causing a scandal, Jane is stripped, marked with a fake part-number, and taken to Rowland and put in the castigorium, where disobedient women are displayed for public humiliation and punishment. But she is recognised as an outsider by young cub reporter Adam Tamper and taken to city Mayor Goldsmith.
To keep her from revealing Shackleswell's secrets while the authorities hunt down the IRES, the Mayor offers Jane a commission and a strange proposal. She will be given the official part name of BRUSH 01 and Adam will be her temporary master while she explores the heritage of Irontown and samples slave life at first hand. When her commission is completed she can go free.
And so Jane serves in Adam's bed along with a pair of compliant naked house slaves; visits the Museum of Flesh and Iron where naked slave girls are used to demonstrate devices from Irontown's past incorporating living female bodies into their mechanisms; samples the wares of a high-class restraint shop and is offered the job of painting a rich man's wife in a most degrading and intimate of poses. All of this appals and yet also darkly arouses her.
Then the men from the IRES dramatically intervene. Can Jane be rescued from their clutches before her will is broken? Even if she escapes, will she ever be able to function as a normal person again, or resist the dark thrill of mastering other women?
BOOK THREE OF THE IRONTOWN SERIES