by T J Mott
He was now laughing maniacally, sounding convincingly like an unmedicated escapee from a mental hospital who could snap at any second. Earlier, Adelia had noticed the armed guards interspersed among the crowd, and she nearly hoped that he would snap, just so they’d be forced to gun him down.
“Once she dies, Marcell, I will ship you to the prison mines in the moons over Tor, where you will live out the rest of your life in hard labor. We have strict work quotas there, and I will not reduce your quota due to your recent—” He gestured with his cane at Thad’s severed hand, “—handicap.
“I will also give you your very own cell to live in when you are not busy working in the mines. It will be separate from the rest of the prisoners, your own little place, your own private hell. Customized to my exact specifications, designed to increase your torment. One wall of the cell will be made of high strength clear plastic. It will be a display case, complete with spotlights to illuminate one particular item. And in this display case I will place your beloved’s preserved head on its spike, to look on you and torment your very soul for the rest of your life!
“One other wall of your cell will be a giant display screen. I, of course, will record her death in its entirety. Whenever I’m feeling blue, I will come to the prison, pull you from the mines and lock you in your cell, and force you to rewatch everything on that screen, and that will lift my mood. You will again and again listen to her screams of agony as I slowly melt the skin from her body. And I will constantly remind you that you once did the very same thing to my beloved.”
The prince spat in Thad’s direction and began walking to his seat. “You took everything that was dear to me, Thaddeus Marcell, and you destroyed it. And I will return the favor, in full, with interest paid.”
He took his seat. The room remained silent for many long seconds, but then, abruptly, applause and cheering erupted from the calm, growing into a thunderous roar that finally pushed Adelia to her limits. She leaned to one side, over the armrest of her chair and as far as her restraints would allow, and vomited. After a few retches, she put her arms and face down on the table in front of her, and cried loudly, though she was completely drowned out by the rest of the room. Through her own sobbing, she dimly heard Captain Dontun’s amplified voice as he closed out the event.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been an exciting and entertaining day indeed! We will reconvene tomorrow. Bidding for Thaddeus Marcell and Adelia will commence sharply at 1300. In the meantime, please explore our hosts’ hospitality. I’ve been told that the Double Ante on the third level is one of the best steakhouses in the facility! Goodbye for now, and I will see you all tomorrow!”
Chapter 25
She was completely miserable, overwhelmed by nausea, and felt sicker than she’d ever felt in her entire life. Her cold, sweat-soaked body shook uncontrollably, her stomach threatened to completely remove itself from her body, and her mind spun compulsively over all the things she’d just heard and seen, unwilling—or unable—to accept that that was reality, hoping that it was all just a bad dream. Hoping that the past months or year or eleven years or however long were all just a vivid nightmare and that she’d soon wake up in her cabin aboard the Lunar Dawn.
She couldn’t clear her thoughts. The image of Thaddeus, beaten and naked and chained up, standing in a pile of his own filth, continued to haunt her. The memory of that sword cleaving through his arm replayed over and over again in her imagination, and she was powerless to stop it. And through it all, the voice of High Prince Saar spoke in her mind, telling her over and over again how he planned to torture her to death. Her stomach was completely void of any contents now, though that did not prevent it from trying to vomit.
She was still shaking two hours later when Dontun’s men came into the dim, closet-like room they’d tossed her in after the auction room cleared. The men tried to lead her away, but her legs buckled and refused to support her and they had to resort to dragging her. “Don’t ever say that Captain Dontun doesn’t have a heart,” one of them told her as they pulled her to a similar room. Then they let her go. She still couldn’t stand and crumpled to the floor as the men dropped her and left. The door locked with an audible click after it shut.
She barely found the strength to climb up to her hands and knees, then, shaking, on the verge of complete collapse, she vomited nothing again. The sounds of her sobbing filled the room.
And then she heard painful, ragged breathing, and it took her a long moment to realize it wasn’t her own. She looked around and saw a form curled up in the corner of the room. He lay on his left side. His back was pressed against a wall, and the top of his head touched the other wall. He was shivering violently beneath a thin blanket, situated with his knees pulled up nearly to his chin. An IV bag hung taped to the wall above him.
“Thaddeus!” she croaked. She still couldn’t find the strength to stand, and so she crawled across the floor to him. Her arms and legs wobbled like gelatin beneath her as she moved. She arrived by him, sat on the floor, and leaned against the wall, and then placed one very shaky hand on the side of his head.
He was sweating profusely. His hair was completely drenched and dripping, his eyes were locked shut tightly and his face was twisted up and contorted in pain. His breath came to him in short, uneven gasps. She stroked his cheek. It was cold and clammy and wet. He twisted his head slightly to look up at her and opened his red, puffy eyes.
“Adelia,” he muttered. “He said you were dead. Lied to me.” His voice was weak, raspy, and breaking; syllables cut in and out as his feeble breath wavered.
“He lied to me too, Thad. He told me I was the only survivor.” She felt fresh tears well up in her eyes as she looked down at him.
“Hope they treated you better than me.”
“Yes,” she replied. “He treated me well. Thad, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe what they did to you…”
She stroked his cheek again, and he pulled his right hand from under the blanket and put it on top of hers. “Sorry you’re here, what they want to do to you, because of me. So sorry…”
“Thaddeus,” she started. Her own voice was beginning to crack. So many doubts filled her mind now, and the next words stuck in her throat. Eventually she found the strength to say them. “I have to know…some of those statements were…terrible. How much of it was true?”
He took several pained breaths. “Some. Some of it was…exaggerated. Some just nonsense. Saar—he’s an idiot, wouldn’t…listen to my warnings. I was winning…told him to keep his ship away. But…yes…most of it happened…”
She felt a new wave of heaviness come over her heart at his confession. It was one thing to be a mercenary, to fight and kill in war. Most wars had collateral damage where innocent bystanders suffered greatly. But so many of the stories she’d heard in the auction room went well beyond that. It seemed like an ongoing bloodbath followed him everywhere he went, especially in his search for Earth.
He was no longer that sweet, shy junior engineer from her past. Now he wielded his power like a sharp, two-edged sword which he swung wildly through the universe in search of his own selfish goals, caring nothing for whoever got in his way. Now he was a cold-blooded killer.
A monster.
And she’d nearly fallen for him. Maybe she already had, she realized, recalling their moments aboard the Caracal’s wreckage, when they’d both thought everything was coming to an end. Much of that, she knew, had been a simple emotional overreaction to him being her rescuer, and the joy of running into someone she knew after being alone in a strange universe. And the need to be comforted after being pulled out from a terrible form of slavery…
She felt like the universe had nothing left for her anymore. She was completely alone, abandoned in a strange galaxy, betrayed by the only link she had to her past life, and now destined to die a cruel death at the hands of an enraged egomaniac. An egomaniac who wanted to use her death to punish a lesser maniac named Thaddeus, in the now-mistaken belief that the two of
them were romantically involved.
“Why? What happened? Why would—how—I don’t…” She struggled for words, and took a deep breath, trying to find something coherent to say. But when she spoke again, she just sputtered meaninglessly.
Yet he apparently understood what she was trying to say. “Just…wanted to…to go home. Find…Earth. Pay any price…do anything…for a chance…At some point…crossed the line.”
A bitter sense of anger built up inside her heart. Anger towards everything. Anger at Thaddeus for who he’d become, and for rescuing her not for her own sake, but as part of his own selfish search for home. Anger at Saar for his terrible plans for her. Anger at the men who’d enslaved, abused, and raped her. Anger at the universe itself for being so cruel to her, and then capping off its unprovoked war against her with a final twist of betrayal and cruelty so shocking that it froze her heart solid.
She suddenly saw her life—her universe—as if it was a giant lake, and she was floating in the middle. But the sudden cold within her spread out from her body, forming a rapidly-expanding sheet of ice on the surface which killed everything it touched as it spread out, and stopping every current within. The slow but strong current of new love she’d felt pulling her towards Thaddeus, which had started long ago on the Lunar Dawn and reappeared weeks ago—frozen solid. The random eddies of life which occasionally swirled in from nowhere, providing those unexpected, brief moments of beauty to existence—now unable to form. The waves and patterns that used to subtly ripple across the surface of the water, linking her heart and life and hopes to those in the water near her—completely flattened out into a cold, dull sheet. The universe which before had seemed to be a warm, beautiful lake full of life and energy was now a dead, unyielding block of ice which fatally and cruelly imprisoned everything within.
Finally, after everything she’d been through since being taken from Earth, even after all the pain and abuse and suffering, she gave up. Completely. The cold consumed her, engulfed her, destroyed her. Her feelings went numb, the last remaining shreds of hope within her dissipated like inconsequential vapors, and she stopped crying.
Thaddeus’ breathing became more pained. He squeezed his eyes shut and winced. “I…I slipped. Toed the line out…further each time. Now…I’m not who I used to be.”
She heard the sense of shame in his words. He knew what he’d become.
She sat next to him and began to wait patiently for her end—the brutal end which was still some weeks or months ahead of her.
***
They shackled him back to the pillar in the middle of the auction room. His left arm was a blazing inferno of pain that refused to subside. They wouldn’t give him any painkillers at all, not even when they’d performed a quick field surgery to tie up his severed arteries and bandage up the stump.
They did give him strong stimulants before bringing him out, though. He had little strength, but he was aware and alert. Painfully aware and alert. He wished he was unconscious. The pain scale went far higher than he ever imagined possible.
He hung limply hung by his right wrist. His right arm was a blazing inferno too, a mess of pinched nerves and bruised blood vessels and stretched ligaments forced to support his body for far too many hours. Why even bother to chain him up? He didn’t have enough strength to fight or run or even stand upright on his own two feet. Even picking his head up to look at his surroundings was an excruciating chore that left him even more exhausted than before.
He had to be on the verge of death, and he actually found that reassuring. If I die first, there’d be no point in torturing Adelia.
At least they’d cleaned the floor up, he thought. And at least they’d clothed him today, too.
He looked around the room, at the people assembling around him. They were streaming in constantly now. Many brought in beverages or trays of food, rushing to get a good seat even before finishing their lunches.
They had given him lunch, too, in the form of another intravenous nutrient bag. Just like they had the day before, when he’d had no appetite and been too weak to eat.
Adelia sat at the same table as before, but she looked different. Her expression was now impassive, indifferent…cold. Almost like she wasn’t even there anymore.
I’m sorry, he thought. I’ve betrayed you. I became a monster, maybe even a murderer, and you fell for me without knowing who I was.
Knowing how badly he’d hurt her was nearly as painful as his missing hand. I can’t believe what I’ve become. When did it happen? Where did I go wrong? Ten years ago I’d have thought twice about those things. I wouldn’t have taken on most of those contracts. Never would have instigated wars in exchange for flimsy promises about supposed artifacts from Earth. Never would have committed atrocities and framed others, for the chance to swoop in between new enemies and steal their military secrets in all the confusion. I cared so little for anything but my search for Earth that I never hesitated to trample over anyone who might be in my way.
Then his thoughts returned to High Prince Saar’s sociopathic monologue the day before. Many of the accusations he faced were true, but Saar’s was not. The incredible death toll on Tor wasn’t even close to being Thaddeus’s fault. He’d pointedly—and repeatedly—told Saar to keep his dangerous antimatter-powered “battleship” out of the fight, but the High Prince was hell-bent on joining in on some glorious defense of his home world. He had refused to listen, and ordered it into action at the worst possible moment. Millions had died as a result.
And, in an incredible twist of unfairness, Adelia would be the one to pay the price.
Saar was way too proud to accept responsibility for his mistake, and it had broken him. He had become twisted and angry, and the only way he could protect what was left of his psyche was to warp his memory of the events until it wasn’t his fault anymore. And now he was insane with rage, consumed by his misplaced anger towards Thaddeus.
If High Prince Saar won the auction, Thaddeus decided, and shuddered as a shiver ran down his spine, he would find a way to kill Adelia. He had to. He couldn’t let the sadistic ruler of Tor follow through on his promises to slowly torture her to death over a period of months.
The thought of killing the woman he was starting to love, even in mercy, hung heavy in his soul. It added yet another facet of blinding pain to his condition, and he also knew the action would be his final undoing. It would destroy what was left of him, and Thaddeus Marcell would cease to exist, replaced by a broken a shell of a man. But for her, he knew, it would be far better than the alternative.
He looked at her as tears streamed from his face, clutched his heavily-bandaged left elbow against his stomach, and then closed his eyes. He focused on his breathing, trying to take deep, long breaths, counting each respiration, holding each for five seconds before releasing. He was trying his best to focus his mind on something other than the searing, throbbing pain—both from his arm, and from his heart—which threatened to consume him.
Captain Dontun’s smooth, high-pitched voice soon broke his concentration. “Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen! As promised, we return today for the final event of this auction: the auction of the infamous Thaddeus Marcell! The crazy Earth-hunter who kills widows’ only sons and drops antimatter bombs that can wipe out entire continents and millions of people in an instant! Who will bomb any Capitol Building for a few credits, or blow up any courier for a chance to swipe top secret documents!”
The crowd cheered with sickening enthusiasm. Dontun quieted them with his gavel. “I believe we are mostly all assembled, and it is now officially 1300, so we will commence the auction! Each of you has a button on the desk in front of you. If at any point you wish to make a bid, just press the button and the computers will track the result. The starting bid, set to match High Prince Saar’s live bounty, is fifty million credits. Do I hear fifty million credits?”
A pleasant dinging sound broadcast over the PA. “Fifty million credits, as expected, from High Prince Saar. How about fifty-five? Does a
nyone want Thaddeus Marcell for fifty-five million credits? We have fifty-five, from General Corseer of the Getainne Defense Force. Sixty? Can we do sixty? How about sixty? Sixty million credits, from the lovely Queen of Emeraldis III! Sixty-five! Who will do sixty-five? Sixty-five million credits, once again from the High Prince of Tor!”
The bidding continued, the price going up a few million credits at a time. Thaddeus continued to focus on his breathing and ignored the world around him, and the pain inside him.
I guess I deserve this, he realized. I’m no better than those monsters. I’ve fallen just as low as them, and now they will rightfully destroy me. I just can’t believe the misfortune of dragging Adelia into this. The universe must really hate me.
I spent everything to search for Earth. How is it, then, that the only other person from Earth will be punished for my actions?
When he returned his attention to the auction, Saar was locked in a bidding war with the Queen of Emeraldis. They went back and forth, back and forth, the queen becoming more determined with each bid, and the prince becoming even angrier.
“Seven hundred million credits for the Queen! Let’s try for seven-fifty! Does the Prince want to bid for seven-fifty? Is his vengeance worth that much? Seven hundred fifty million credits! Any bids for eight hundred? Going once! Going twice! There it is, eight hundred million from Her Majesty. Next stop, eight-fifty! Any bids for eight hundred fifty million? Going once! Going twice! This is it, your last chance to bid! Going again…and…sold! Thaddeus Marcell, the Bandit of the Independent Regions, and his woman Adelia are sold to Her Majesty the Queen of Emeraldis III for eight hundred million credits! Unbelievable!”