by Roxie Ray
Heck—I didn’t want to spend any more time in the room at all.
The worst thing about the room, I quickly learned, wasn’t that I was captive inside it. Yes, I was a prisoner—but at least no one was beating me. Apart from that weird, growly snarl when I first woke up, no one had made any move to scream at me, either. There was no one to call me stupid, or worthless, or a waste of resources, money, time. In that sense, at least this was an upgrade from being with Michael.
No, the worst thing about the room was that there was nothing to do at all. I passed my time the same way a trapped rat passes its own: clawing at the walls, trying to slip my nails between the tiles and pry my way out.
Eventually, the sucking sound returned again. Mealtime again, which meant that hours must have passed. This time, I wasn’t stupid enough to grab at the arm again. I’d learned my lesson about that the first time. And whether I liked it or not, I was too exhausted to jump for the hole in the wall as well.
Hungry, my stomach reminded me with a furious grumble. I could practically feel my brain beginning to cannibalize itself out of need for energy.
Drugged or not, eventually I was going to have to eat something. If I wanted to get free, I’d need my strength.
Gingerly, I crawled over to the tray to inspect the claw’s latest offerings. This time, it had sent down another loaf of that dark bread. This time, it was accompanied what looked like it might have been meat once upon a time, before someone had thrown it into a fire and left it there until it was burned to a crisp. There were greens, too. Glowing ones. I pushed one with the back of my fork and could’ve sworn I heard it hiss.
Okay. That was a no on the veggies, then—if they even were vegetables. The meat looked too charred to be appealing, too. I wouldn’t have eaten it even if I hadn’t been afraid it had been marinaded in more knock-out juice.
Which left the bread. It was a gamble, but I’d have to eat something.
I was still picking at the scorched little loaf when the claw returned, taking the rest of the food away.
Three more times, the claw descended. The menu didn’t vary. It was either jelly soup, nuclear Brussels sprouts, fillet mignon extra-well done, or the slightly overbaked bread. I took the bread each time, nibbling the crust away to find a bizarrely purple, but thankfully edible, interior. As far as I could tell, it was safe—but I couldn’t trust that anything else was. Aside from that and water from the tap, it was all I dared to chance.
Sometime after the third time the claw descended, the ceiling darkened into a deep blue glow, almost aquarium-like. At least that was something—it told me that, as far as I was concerned, it was night.
If I slept, when I woke up I didn’t feel rested. If anything, I felt even more exhausted and even hungrier than I’d been before I laid down.
But then, sometime the next day after the claw had retrieved my fifth unfinished meal, something happened. It started with a shimmer along the wall opposite my bed, a glistening on the tiles so eerily beautiful that at first, I thought I must have been having a hunger-induced hallucination. Sure, I would’ve rather hallucinated a cheeseburger, but at least the shimmer was nice to look at.
Or, it was—until a man stepped out of it like he’d phased through the wall.
There was a tray in his hands. The fact that that was the first thing I noticed practically screamed how hungry I was. The second thing I noticed was his sneer. His lips were pulled back in a snarl, with two beastly, long, sharp incisors bared.
“Rrvlvik!” he snapped at me, shoving the tray in my direction. “Rrvlvik, vringna, ssgssis vrlkvssis!”
Panic shot through me as his voice bounced off every wall, echoing and amplifying until it was shrieking in my ears. My pulse skyrocketed. My chest clamped down on my lungs, ribcage threatening to crack and puncture them both if I so much as moved. But I had to move. My adrenal system demanded it. I scrambled back on the bed, chin tucked to my clenching chest, arms held up defensively over my head.
I didn’t know what he was saying, but I knew that tone all too well. He was an angry man—or something like one—and me? I’d just pissed him off. I’d spent a decade of marriage learning well what would happen next.
But as I cowered in the corner, gasping for breath and flinching in preparation for the first blow to fall, I knew that his tone wasn’t what really should have scared me.
No, what should have scared me was his height. Michael had been six feet one and fairly muscular. This newcomer would have made Michael look like he needed to go back to the kiddie pool if he wanted to play.
What should have scared me was his skin, a deep, intense burned orange. His hair, falling down to his shoulders in thick, shimmering silver waves. His eyes, wolf-like. His irises, red as a blood moon.
What should have scared me most about this man was that he was no man at all.
He was something…else. Something else entirely.
I might have never been overseas, but this… whatever he was—
He wasn’t even of this Earth.
3
Kloran
For two days, I had observed the creature.
For two days, I had failed to understand how she worked.
In the three years since the high council of my people had agreed to begin purchasing breeding slaves in order to save our dying species, I had never seen anything like her.
From the moment I first saw the holoscan of her in the auctioneer’s collection, I’d known she was the one I needed to acquire.
She was past midway through her breeding years, true, and had never borne a child before. Though the auctioneer had assured me that it was typical of her species, to my eyes, her pale skin implied that she was weak. Perhaps even sickly or malnourished. And despite all this, the opening bid to purchase her was triple that of any other breeder on offering.
“She’s a human,” the auctioneer had told me, a smug grin on his sly, pale lips. “Very rare. It will be a long time before you see another like her here again.”
By all accounts, I should have chosen another.
Instead, I had outbid every other buyer and paid a hefty price to make her mine.
Even in flickering holographic miniature, there had been something about her that called to me. The scan of her body showed that she had broad, well-shaped hips. Perfect for childbearing. Her breasts had also suggested that she would make for a good breeding candidate. They were symmetrical and full, her nipples a dark shade of rose pink that seemed it would be well-suited to draw a newborn’s eye for feeding.
Her stature was smaller than that of Lunarian females, but she was well-proportioned, with long, thick dark hair I could imagine looking quite striking on a Lunarian child if it were to favor her genetically. In spite of her paleness, her vital signs showed that she was healthy, without any predispositions for disease.
Best of all, Lord Haelian’s research had determined that humans, though rare, were an incredibly fertile species. Her eggs were not limited like those of Lunarian women. In fact, he believed she would produce an egg approximately once per one of our lunar cycles, which were similar to those of her home planet—a promising prospect if true.
For all of those reasons, the price I’d paid for her had seemed more than fair. She was exquisitely desirable for bearing children in every foreseeable manner. An ideal, willing candidate—one who could become the solution to all of my problems, if all went according to plan. I could see well why she had submitted herself to become a breeding slave.
At least, I had believed so until she woke up.
The initial scan from her bio-cell had revealed the first issue with the human. She was not nearly as healthy as her papers from the auction house had claimed. At first, I thought perhaps she was reacting poorly to the strains of transportation. Lord Haelian’s research had also revealed that humans rarely left their home planet, and the few who did first needed to endure years of training and preparation to do so.
But after waking, her health had only continue
d to decline. Immediately, I had reason to believe that her mental evaluation had been fabricated completely. She had clawed at the bio-cell’s walls like a trapped voidling, causing me to believe she had already come to regret offering herself up for the breeding process. Worse, her bio-cell showed wild fluctuations in her blood pressure, heart rate and temperature, and she had burned her tiny human hand on the food distributor in her attempts to escape. Our readings from the bio-cell assured me that the burn was minor, but that she had attempted to grab hold of it at all only spoke further of some trickery afoot.
Her post-purchase orientation should have informed her of the dangers of touching the food distributor, just as it should have reassured her that she would be released from her bio-cell once the breeding process had reached its completion. Similarly, the importance of maintaining a suitable food intake should have been stressed to her, lest her body weight drop beneath the minimum fat content her reproductive system required for egg release.
And yet, she had refused nearly all food she had been offered. With every passing meal, her body only weakened. Every bio-scan her cell delivered to us only returned more and more grim.
I snarled, curling my fingers into a fist and slamming it down against the arm of my chair.
“This is not what I purchased.” I turned to Lord Haelian. “Are we certain this is the same human female from the auction house’s ledgers? Perhaps they made a mistake.”
It was a generous perhaps. With every moment that the human failed to thrive, I was becoming more and more certain that they had fooled us somehow. Sold us one human female and delivered us another. If intentional, I would have to be sure that the auction house paid dearly for it.
“She looks like the female from the auctioneer’s holoscan…” Haelian leaned over the screen that relayed video of the human female’s bio-cell to our observation deck and sighed. “But mistake or no, you will have to intervene soon. If she goes much longer without food, she will faint from malnourishment. Her weight has dropped significantly already.”
“From just a few days of decreased rations?” I scoffed. I had wanted her bred immediately but given the results of her last bio-scan, it was becoming more and more unlikely that she would be bred at all. “Perhaps these humans are too weak of constitution for breeding. We should return her to the auction house at once.”
“I believe it is…stress, General.” Haelian turned and shrugged at me. “At this rate, I do not know that she will survive the journey back to the auction house. Her attempts to escape are burning energy more quickly than she can take it in.”
“Why attempt to escape at all?” I scowled. “It’s not as if we brought her here by force.”
“I…” Haelian opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it.
He knew something. I could tell. He was simply afraid that revealing it might only further frustrate me.
“Lord Haelian.” I rose from my chair and leveled my gaze at is. “You must speak freely with me.”
“It is only…” He sighed. “You are right. I should have mentioned when you brought the human aboard, but it seemed too late. The purchase had already been made. I fear, though… My research of humans suggests that they may not be engaged in the slave trade as of yet, though I cannot be certain. I have not researched the particulars of Earth’s laws in some time.”
I moved to the screen at the controls that showed me the interior of the human female’s bio-cell. She was pacing the cell—feeble-minded imbecile! Did she not realize that with every movement she made, she only decreased her energy even further?
“What do we do, Lord Haelian?” I was at a loss. Whether she had entered the slave trade willingly or had been forced into it illegally, her life was in my hands now.
“She needs food and vitamins, or else she will be too weak for testing.” Haelian’s gaze was grim. He was my adviser, my confidant in all things as we sought to secure adequate breeding slaves to save our people. And though he had not been fully honest with me before I purchased the human, at least he was able to guide me now. “If her body is not nourished, no amount of medicine can force her to produce an egg to fertilize. And if she continues to weaken, she will die.”
“How long do we have?” I was still of the mind that we should return her to the auction house and demand a refund. It was only a five-day flight.
“Another ten days,” Haelian informed me. I brightened at that. It was more than enough time to take her back to where she had come from. But then his next words stole that brightness from me once more. “But she is under duress, General. Given that, we are likely to lose her even sooner. Humans are a…spirited species. Once that spirit breaks, all hope of saving her may be lost.”
“Blood,” I swore. A dead breeding slave could not be returned. Worse, revealing that a breeder had died of malnutrition under our protection would mean that we would not be able to purchase any more for a generation. Unfortunately, Lunaria simply did not have that much time.
In a generation, our race would barely exist at all anymore.
“And even if we were able to return her,” Haelian continued, “we have reason to believe that she may not have come here under the most…willing of circumstances. It would be a breach of our code of honor to return her to her captors, General. At least while she is here in our care, we can guarantee her safety. Her next buyer may not be so kind.”
A low growl escaped my throat. I focused on the human female again, watched her pacing on the screen. Almost delicately, I let my thumb slide across the screen, tracing her form.
There was a beauty to the human, it was certain. Her species had great promise to the goals of my mission, too, if she could be convinced to comply with what I needed from her. And despite her duress, her spirit had not broken yet.
But it was Haelian’s final words that truly compelled me. She was under our protection. Likely terrified, alone, confused and far from home. When I tried to imagine what would happen to her if she was resold to a less civilized species—the Voyteks, or worse, the Rutharians.
“Then it is settled.” I slapped a button on the wall and a panel opened. A fresh food tray was dispensed. I took it in my hands as my blood boiled. The mere thought of what the Rutharians would do to the human if she fell into their brutal hands made my eyes flash red. “If she will not eat willingly, we will make her eat.”
“General—” Haelian called after me. He had obviously smelled my anger.
But I would not be stopped.
This was for the human’s own good.
As soon as I entered her room, the scent of her fear bloomed up around me. I was encapsulated by a thick, heady cloud of it, so tense I could practically taste the sour, metallic tang of it on my tongue.
Likewise, her body only further broadcast her terror. She scrambled onto her bed and wedged herself in the corner, making her body as small as she possibly could. Her chest rose and fell quickly beneath the thin gown she had arrived in. It drew great attention to her breasts—which only caused my frustration to intensify.
She was perfectly formed. Perfectly suited for all that we required of her. But—
Blood! Did she truly value her life so little, to adamantly refuse to live and thrive?
“Eat!” I barked at her. With a sharp motion, I shoved the food tray in my hands toward her. “Eat, you ridiculous female, or else you will waste away!”
If anything, my words only further terrified her. A fresh wave of fear-scent emanated from her form as she cowered in the corner, eyes clenched shut.
“Stupid thing! How am I meant to help you if you will not even help yourself?”
Suddenly, the air shifted. The scent of her fear parted, making way for a new, spicier scent that burned in my nostrils and warmed the back of my throat.
Anger. A scent I knew well.
“I can’t understand you! Can’t you see that? I don’t know what you’re saying, you…” Her lips pulled back in a sneer as she launched herself forward slightly, pound
ing her fists against her mattress while fire burned in the pale browns of her irises. Her voice shook with rage as she unleashed on me, finally finding the words she was seeking. “You roaring bazterd creep!”
Well, then. That was an improvement. The human may have been ill-mannered for a breeding slave, but at least I could rest assured that her spirit was not broken yet. Her words were slurred in places where my translator chip could not quite account for her accent. The insult she had hurled at me—I assumed it must have been a curse—the chip hadn’t been able to translate at all.
Bazterd. Briefly, I wondered what it meant.
But at least in her outburst, the human had revealed a problem that I could fix. All slaves were fitted with translator chips. Generally, they were inserted in the hearing orifices of their species at the beginning of orientation and activated immediately. When the high council had agreed to begin purchasing breeding slaves and I had been assigned to procure them, I had been fitted with a chip myself through my ear.
The human had come with a remote to control her chip, which her paperwork assured me had been implanted, true to protocol. I could turn it off and on at will—important, on occasion, for discussing discretionary materials when a slave was in the room.
If she hadn’t completed orientation, though…
Obviously, her chip had not been activated yet.
I took the remote from the pocket of my breeches and pressed the activation button. The human winced as her chip turned on. I did not blame her. It had likely let out an unpleasant, high-pitched tone. I had winced too when my own chip had been activated.
But then the moment passed, and her face relaxed slightly.
“There.” I tucked the remote away again. “Can you understand me now?”
It was hard not to be angry with the human, though I was slowly becoming more certain that none of this was truly her fault. My temper, my father had often told me, was my worst quality. To the human, in her current situation, I probably appeared as awful as even the worst of the Rutharians.