Contract Broken (Contracted #2)

by Aya DeAniege

  “That’s off?” I asked, motioning with my head to the camera.

  The man smiled that Cheshire cat smile of his, it was my only warning before he grabbed me and thrust me onto the bed by the back of my neck. I struggled as he fumbled, then squealed at the sound of leather striking flesh. Mr. Wrightworth’s hand remained on my neck for a moment as I whimpered against my blanket.

  “Would I do that if it were on?” Mr. Wrightworth purred, bending down over me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” he said in that tone that Nathaniel was such a fan of, his hand running down my back and hesitating just above my backside. “If you prove petulant, I will strike you again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I understood that doing wrong would result in pain. What I didn’t understand was why I was wet, why there was a sudden tremble that seemed to be a throb between my legs.

  I wanted him to strike me again.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  I writhed against the bed, embarrassed to say. His belt had hit the left side of my backside. It burned and hurt, but there was nothing on the right. I felt as if everything was unbalanced.

  “Darling, if you don’t tell me, I can’t see to it.”

  “Please, Sir, the other side?” I asked, lifting my backside off the bed.

  Mr. Wrightworth shuddered out a breath. “That was discipline. But this one time, I’ll do as you ask. Keep your backside up.”

  The second strike made me cry out again, but in relief. Everything seemed to recenter. Everything was balanced. I had asked for something and received it. The strike of the belt was a a pain more than what Nathaniel had shown me, but a great deal less than what had been done to me by his father.

  I found comfort in being beaten at my command.

  What is wrong with me?

  Mr. Wrightworth’s hand slid over first one, then the other hip, roving over the burning flesh. The pain seemed to dissipate as his hot hand flowed up my back, to grab a fistful of hair. I was dragged off the bed and bent backwards, but Mr. Wrightworth’s other hand slipped around my waist and held me up as those hazel eyes seemed to bore into my soul.

  “This can’t happen,” he said sternly. “You are still recovering. You don’t want to be struck, your body is going through a type of withdrawal.” He released me, stepping away as I almost stumbled. “You will behave. If you don’t behave you will be subjected to the same discipline as others in the building.”

  “What is even going on?” I asked.

  “Orientation would have explained that,” Mr. Wrightworth snapped as if it were my fault.

  “No one told me that orientation was even happening,” I snarled back in a similar tone.

  His hand clenched as his eyes closed tightly. There was an inward struggle. After a very long moment, the hand relaxed slightly, thumb running over index and middle finger. His hazel eyes drifted half open, staring at my desk as he seemed to consider.

  “I will do your orientation,” he said finally, turning to me.

  “All right,” I said with a shrug.

  “They probably couldn’t face you anyhow,” Mr. Wrightworth muttered before he made a motion and left my room.

  It took me far too long to realize what that motion meant. I finally stepped out of the room and closed the door behind me. Mr. Wrightworth motioned to the black square on the door, just above the doorknob.

  “Fingerprint access, no one else besides myself and the cleaning staff have access to your room,” Mr. Wrightworth said, motioning again as he walked away.

  With a sigh, I followed him. Suddenly I wasn’t certain I wanted Mr. Wrightworth giving me my orientation. I wasn’t certain he’d actually give me any answers, or if he’d just leave me more confused than when he started.

  “I’ve worked out a job for you in the auditing department. You don’t have to deal with rich people or poor folk coming into the contracts. You’ll be reviewing contracts, then calling both the rich and poor person involved to ask them questions about their time with the Program.

  “The purpose is to check on people who were once in the Program. To hopefully draw the rich folk back in and get quotes from the poor folk to use for advertisement in the slums. You will end up having to deal with people, just not face-to-face.

  “You will need to learn a great deal, most of the contracts are written up in legalese, meaning in the language lawyers use, really. It’s annoying and hardly makes sense.

  “Tomorrow morning you will be taken to the archive rooms. From there you will learn the system and pick a file. The point is to pick at random. No names are on any of the files. Everyone has been given numbers and contact ids. You won’t know who they are and they won’t know who you are. If you encounter someone who you met while you were with Nathaniel, please be as discrete as possible. Phone calls are monitored and anyone that the Program knows you had contact with has been notified.”

  “I’d like to go to church,” I said.

  We both came to a stop in the hallway. Mr. Wrightworth turned towards me and almost frowned.

  “You cannot have contact with Nathaniel until the review has been complete. But it is my understanding that you found the church to be ... eye opening, and I will see what can be done. It will still be several weeks before you can leave the building. We need to make certain you are more stable before we let you out of the safety net. Come along.”

  My stomach grumbled as we went along to the elevator. I looked down at the floor. A grey carpet with a single blue line leading to the elevator. On the elevator, there was a blue line up the wall and to a particular button.

  “Where’s that go?” I asked. “Fire exit?”

  “In the event of a fire, the ceiling will light up, leading you to the stairwell and then out of the building,” Mr. Wrightworth said, then pointed at the blue line. “That leads to my room. I have a closed circuit system, like a rich person, but also have no real privacy. My rooms are supposed to be sound proof, but I haven’t mustered the courage to ask my neighbours about what they can hear. I have few visitors, though.”

  “Oh,” was all I managed to say.

  The doors opened on another floor. I frowned at the buttons, then looked at Mr. Wrightworth.

  “The whole building is under the control of a couple of people. They control the alarms, the elevators, and various other things. The point is to have a security system, but have a thinking system. Our computer systems are coming along nicely but it’s not exactly unhackable yet. You step in, it will take you to where you need to go. For the first few times it may be best if you speak out loud what you want. Once they know you better, everything will just seem to work even if you aren’t certain what you want.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “They are very good at what they do, and I love them to bits for what they do for us,” Mr. Wrightworth said quickly. “It’s also the only way they can function. If you’re worried about giving them dirty thoughts, you can’t. People say they suffer from something, but it makes them incapable of making such a connection. They wouldn’t even understand that they were bring bribed or that someone else wanted something.

  “Where they took us to now, is the cafeteria.”

  I stepped off the elevator with him, into a huge room. There were people sitting at tables all over, they came to a stop as Mr. Wrightworth stepped out of the elevator. Then their eyes roved over me and suddenly everyone turned back to their own tables.

  As I said before, I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror yet. I avoided it and any and all reflective surfaces.

  “You need to see a stylist,” Mr. Wrightworth said as he motioned towards the line. “Our plastic surgeons did a marvellous job stitching up the cuts on your face. In a few more months it will be almost impossible to tell you were cut. They did that work all over, not just your face.”

  “Which was why I had three stitches removed from—”

  “Which is why,” Mr. Wrightworth said stern
ly, giving me a warning look, “they kept you for so long in medical. To give the flesh as much chance to mend as possible. Work may pull at the new scar tissue. That hidden by your clothing isn’t that big of a deal, it could take years to fade. It was the visible scars they were concerned about. But apparently another two weeks was too much time.”

  The surgeons did a marvellous job, as he said they did. The scars were visible for about a year afterwards, but fading constantly. I don’t recall if Nathaniel’s father had been particularly focused on my previous scars, or if the surgeons had taken it upon themselves to fix the marks on my wrists from my previous suicide attempt.

  Rich folk had some fantastic plastic surgeons. They could fix almost anything, given the right conditions.

  “Here you will find a great many foods to choose from. You will choose one meat, two vegetables, one starch, a piece of bread, and a serving of dairy. Either pudding or milk or cheese, I don’t care how you get it, you will get it. If you don’t know what a food is, you will ask. Today you will eat a salad. She will have a salad, Mark, the spring greens with the chicken breast and balsamic vinaigrette. Have the same delivered to my office in two hours, except in wrap form and Havarti instead of whatever it is you’re serving that with. Is it even cheese?”

  “Just because you think you know cheese, don’t mean what I serve isn’t cheese,” Mark responded gruffly.

  Mark was a big man. A big, big man. He had a barrel of a chest and was wide at the shoulders. Mark was also a recovery, though he had been recovered when his contractor was caught forcing homeless people to fight to the death. Mark had turned his contractor and the contractor’s friends in, forcing him to work in the Program building because of death threats. He loved his job though, and Mr. Wrightworth made certain he was never lacking for fresh ingredients.

  “I’m going to put a sausage in a bun on the side,” Mark said, adding exactly what he described to my plate before he handed it over to me. “Girl looks like she needs meat on her bones and you don’t get meat from salads.”

  “Just for now, Mark,” Mr.. Wrightworth said, then shook his head as we continued on.

  Somewhere along the way he picked up a tray and made me put my plate on it. To the tray were added a banana, which almost made me laugh, and a glass of milk. Mr. Wrightworth took me over to the windows, where a table cleared out at the sight of him, and sat me down. He watched me eat every bit on my plate, not saying a word.

  “I don’t like the black stuff,” I said, poking at the remaining vinaigrette at the bottom of my bowl. “Tastes bad.”

  “You don’t like balsamic vinegar, there are many dressings to choose from,” Mr. Wrightworth said quietly.

  “Are you going to show me where to go for work?” I asked.

  “No, not today. But tomorrow morning I might take you there. No, today I want to discuss the expectations. You are not to speak to others about your work, except those in the archives or those you need to ask about certain terms. No visitors are allowed in the archives, those you contact—the ones you are auditing—are not allowed to ask you questions about specific contracts, not even the contracts you are auditing. Everyone who participates in a contract is provided a copy, they can refer to that document. If they demand to speak to a supervisor you are to put them on hold, then press the star button and one-one-nine. That will direct them to who they need to talk to. No one will have a way to call you directly. You shouldn’t be receiving any phone calls from outside of the building. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” I said, fidgeting as the cafeteria seemed to empty out suddenly.

  “Lunch is over for them,” Mr. Wrightworth said quietly. “You will come here each meal period and eat a meal, then return to work or your rooms. Weekends off, your work day will be nine to five. This is interim work while we find a solution and review your contract, so there’s not really a pay of any sort.

  “Once your case has been reviewed, we will talk again about your future and your options. But you should know that I will fight for your every right, just as Albert will fight to get you back. He’s already begun the process of suing the Program for illegally collecting on a contract.”

  “Who’s Albert?” I asked.

  “Albert Edwards, Nathaniel’s father. He didn’t tell you his name?” Mr. Wrightworth asked.

  “No, we never spoke... I think.”

  “I wonder if his behaviour has changed,” Mr. Wrightworth muttered. The man sighed and looked out the window, then back to me. “As to Nathaniel.

  “You will find no one in the Program willing to speak to you about him. Not how he feels about you being taken away, or how he is doing. They won’t say where he is, or if he has a new ... whatever role you played for him. You are to have no contact with him and him no contact with you. Can’t have him getting his claws into you.”

  “He didn’t really do anything wrong,” I said.

  “We can discuss that later,” was the soothing response.

  Always later, they would always want to talk about Nathaniel later. No one wanted to talk about him right then, or even when I was finally ready and strong enough to face the truth. It was like a break up, except the people around me were truly committed to making certain that I got over him.

  “Each morning you will rise, you will go to the gym and you will work out. There are personal trainers there, they have been notified of your conditions and health record. You will do exactly what they say. Once a month you will go to a stylist to have your hair cut. You will also go to medical once a month to have a full examination. Once a week you will see a therapist who I have chosen. It is my understanding that she is well versed in the sort of proclivities that Nathaniel is interested in.”

  “So you trust her?” I asked.

  “I see her three times a week, so yes, I trust her,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “I will take you to the stylist now, and you will have your hair trimmed. You will not have a fit when you see your face. Those marks will disappear, and anyone who brings them up should be referred to me because I will give them similar markings for throwing it in your face.”

  “Why do I need to see a stylist?” I asked, reaching for my hair.

  My fingers had been bandaged for so long, I didn’t have a full grasp of what had been done to my hair and scalp.

  Suffice to say, an hour later I was weeping as the remainder of my long hair was being chopped off into a short pixie cut. I loved my long hair, it was the one feminine thing about my looks that I had kept, even as a labourer. Mr. Wrightworth assured me that the cut looked good on me, as did the stylist. Their reassurance didn’t help me any. Nor did hearing the two of them make the plans for it to grow back out.

  It would take two years to get any good length back, three before I had my full head of hair again.

  Three years I would carry the physical mark of Nathaniel’s father on me. Long after all the scars faded, there would still be something there physically, reminding me of what had been done.

  It was only then that I realized the invisible marks, those on my soul and mind, would remain with me for the rest of my life.

  Chapter Three

  For a while, my life was...well, boring. I went to work. I sorted files, I ate, I went home. I learned who not to so much as make eye contact with because she’d just keep talking and talking and talking.

  I didn’t exactly make friends. Mr. Wrightworth was right about the marks on my face.

  Others would get a look on their face and then start acting like I was about to break down sobbing at any moment. The only thing that ever made me want to cry was seeing that look on someone’s face. Rich or poor, it didn’t matter. The moment people heard I was a recovery was the moment they treated me differently.

  So I kept to myself, mainly.

  The only person who didn’t treat me like I’d break would never shut up. It was like she had no filter, and she thought she had lived a sad life, but she hadn’t actually. One of those one-uppers was what she was. When it somehow got
leaked that I had been raped, she immediately had to tell me about how she had been raped by three men.

  She never was, I saw her file.

  It wasn’t even the lies that bothered me, at that point in my life I believed her when she told me things. No, it was the fact that she never stopped talking, but in the same breath complained about how they expected too much of her and didn’t give her enough time.

  Which wasn’t hard to do, I suppose, as the woman never seemed to breathe. She also had no time to work because she spent it all in the archives talking at me. Not to me, just at me. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise and if I did, somehow the conversation to a dark turn.

  Finally, I reported it to Mr. Wrightworth and poof. Her clearance was revoked. I finally had peace and quiet.

  At least while in the archives. While outside of them I still had to put up with her nattering whenever she cornered me in the hallways or the cafeteria.

  It took me two months to work through my first contract. During that whole time, no one told me anything else about my job unless I asked them about it. No timelines were given, no goals. Unless I specifically went out of my way to ask the others in the archives a question, they asked nothing of me.

  They didn’t even work in the same areas as I did. Their computers were logged into a giant mainframe in one room, and I was down the hall with a small computer and all the hard copies of the contracts. Almost a decade of contracts, thousands of them, were stored in three locations in physical form as well as two separate hard drive systems on opposite ends of the country.

  Rumour said that some rich person had tried to destroy the contracts once, to get out of paying a poor person when he broke the contract. I had no idea if it was anything more than a rumour.

  I would find out later that this was because I wasn’t being paid by the hour for my work. So no one wanted to give me a deadline like I had a real job. Auditing contracts was supposed to be busy body work, something to keep me busy until the review was done.

  Which no one told me how it was going.

  I went to the gym every morning, and they put me on a workout similar to what Nathaniel had assigned me. Even in two months, I saw a difference in my body and my stamina. I just felt better, I didn’t ache over all, and I spent more and more time on my feet. I was on my feet because my hip no longer hurt, it was a novelty to be able to stand and walk without constantly trying to ease the pressure in my joint.