Division Zero: Thrall

by Matthew S. Cox

  He held her hand as they climbed the steps of his manor house. White walls shifted with shadows cast by imitation firelight from numerous holographic lanterns. Kirsten shivered, gathering her coat close to her back as a shield against the wind. The estate, east of the northern edge of West City, had open grounds free of the burden of city plates. Trees, streams, and several constructed ponds dotted the landscape.

  “This is so beautiful. The only times I’ve seen real ground, it’s been desert or covered by city.”

  “Nature has created many things of wondrous beauty, Kirsten. Far from the least of which I find on my arm at this moment.”

  A rush of warmth ran to her face and she found her legs unsteady. Konstantin drank in her adoring stare for a moment before ushering her through the door. Inside, the warm air of a cavernous foyer banished the cold northern wind. A man in a dark suit approached without speaking, taking both their coats.

  Led by the hand, Kirsten followed him up a long, curved staircase to a second-floor hall. The extravagance lifted her out of the real world. She slid into the fantasy of a princess in her castle, her doe-eyed gaze unable to believe the paintings, statues, polished rosewood floors, and carpets that passed her on both sides. He stopped at an archway. A fireplace waited at the far end of a room full of medieval weapons; several sets of armor arranged on pedestals.

  “Would you care for some hot cider by the fire, perhaps cognac?”

  Kirsten leaned into him, palms flat on his chest. Hand over his heart, she listened for several beats while staring into the distant hearth. She caressed him, once again startled by the firm, statuesque muscles beneath his shirt. Feelings of safety enveloped her with his arms. After a moment of quiet, she leaned up and kissed him.

  “I want you to be my first,” she whispered, shrinking down off her toes to cling to him again.

  He swept her into his arms and carried her. She folded her hands to her heart; paintings, candles, and little statues drifted by. Another stairway took them up to the third floor; she floated in a haze of contentment. He shifted sideways to swing her through a set of double oak doors engraved with squares reminiscent of the main gate of a castle. The room was larger than her entire apartment. Konstantin set her on the edge of a great canopy bed with a carved cherry wood headboard in the image of a pair of entwined Chinese dragons.

  She pushed her hands into the burgundy silk, astounded. “A cloth mattress?”

  The smile he gave her said ‘of course.’ An expression she once thought contemptible and arrogant. Her heels slipped out of her shoes before she stood and shrugged a shoulder out of the gown. Shimmering azure cloth fell away in a second, gathering around her bare feet. Not a synapse was wasted toward embarrassment at a man seeing her in only black silk panties and a gold bracelet. She wanted him like she wanted nothing ever in her life.

  Konstantin stepped to her, hand behind her head as he tilted her into a long kiss. She swayed, arms lax, surrendering her body to wherever he moved it. The smooth silk of his shirt brushed her nipples and stomach. She inhaled his scent; their kiss paused long enough for him to gaze into her eyes. He tilted her to the other side, leaning until she slid onto the bed. He sat up, coarse worker’s hands touching her pale, silken skin, sliding around her breasts and pausing just above her hips. He twirled a finger through the band of her panties, lifting an eyebrow in question.

  Kirsten could not believe she was with this man. With the pick of any woman in the world―he wanted her. She reached her arms over her head, managing a quick nod before closing her eyes. A weak gasp escaped her lips as the elastic slipped over her hips and cool air brushed her intimates. Silk glided down her thighs. Kirsten pulled one leg free, shuddering as he used both hands to guide the material all the way down her left leg. He released her foot, and she slid farther into the plush bedclothes, waiting for his touch.

  A minute of nothing but the caress of cool fabric on her nakedness.

  Impatient, she peeked. Unbuttoning his shirt was a methodical task that ended with a neat folded garment set on a nearby ottoman. The sight of his bare chest took the strength from her limbs. Such a body belonged to professional athletes, not billionaire playboys. Regardless of how much surgery this being sculpted from tanned flesh-colored marble may have endured, he stole the breath from her lungs.

  Konstantin strode to the foot of the bed and was soon atop her, kissing his way from thigh to the base of her neck. His lips descended, attendant to her right breast. She grasped handfuls of bedding, clenching and releasing from the sensation. The scratch of unshaven man on her flesh, the warmth of him all over her, the scent of his breath―she drowned in Konstantin. He leaned upward, again kissing her lips while he caressed her other breast. Rolling to the side, he slid his hand down her back, over her ass, and back up the inside of her thigh.

  All the way up.

  The beeping NetMini fifteen feet away did not exist.

  She squealed at his touch. Arching her back, she squirmed and begged him not to stop as pleasure burst through her. When sensation faded enough for her to notice his hands no longer made contact, her eyes fluttered open. He looked back, draping his black dress pants over the back of a chair. Violet boxers hugged the kind of contours Nicole so often gawked at online. Kirsten bit her knuckle at the sight of how ready he seemed to be.

  A demure shiver ran through her as she looked away. “Oh, my… Konstantin.”

  He shed the last of his garments, sliding onto the bed at her side. He brushed across her thigh as he hovered over her, leaning down to kiss her on the neck.

  “I can’t believe this.” She closed her eyes. “Why me? You are so perfect…”

  Konstantin guided her hand down, grunting as she gripped a little too firmly. “This is your first time. Are you sure you want to continue?”

  She caressed his length, gasping. Last time, she had cringed and waited for it to be over as fast as possible, now she wanted to enjoy every second.

  He let her examine it, mouth curled back and eyebrow raised as if showing off a priceless artifact unmatched by anything in another’s collection.

  “If you promise you won’t hurt me,” she whispered, biting him on the ear. “My body or my heart.” Her eyes leaked open with a sliver of guilt. He’s going to know he’s not the first. He’s going to throw me out. I’m such a whore. Kirsten burst into tears. “I’m not good enough for you.”

  A kiss took the tear from her cheek and put it on her lips. “Shh. I know.” He ran a hand over her head. “You were an orphan doing whatever you needed to do in order to survive.” The next kiss brushed her neck. “To me, you are still unsullied.”

  On a surge of adoration, she sat up and cuddled to his chest, letting him hold her for a moment before she reclined and offered herself to him. “I want you to make love to me for the first time.”

  Konstantin shimmered with an angelic aura; his face, beaming with passion, seemed even younger. In this light, he looked no older than twenty-five. He prowled over her, a stalking panther. Kirsten shivered as he dragged over her thigh and across her belly, tensing, waiting for the feeling of him inside her.

  The room flooded with classical Russian music. Konstantin froze, not moving a muscle for twenty-six seconds until it ceased. Anger swam over his face and it took him a moment to relax, helped along by her hands on his chest. Just as he eased her onto her back again, the music returned.

  “Someone wants me to cut their balls off,” he growled. “I am sorry, Lyubimaya, I must take this call. It is a special line.” He slid from the bed, lifting her hand and kissing it before setting it between her legs. “Keep yourself warm, I will be just a moment.”

  Kirsten barely noticed him grab a silk robe and storm out. She rolled on her side, snuggled in the thick comforter. Hazy eyes settled on her purse, wondering what the strange object was.

  Beep. “Incoming Vidcall from… Evan.” The digital voice gave way to a little boy’s gleeful chirp of his own name.

  Evan. Kirsten grinned, lic
king the taste of Konstantin from her finger. I know someone named Evan. She laughed.

  Beep. “Incoming Vidcall from… Evan.”

  She scrunched up her face at the bag. I’m busy, kiddo. Kirsten shot upright. Kiddo. Boy. Evan! Holy shit! What the fuck is wrong with me! Kirsten leapt from the bed, tearing at her purse to grab the device. She got it out just as the ringer ended.

  Redial.

  “I’m sorry, I’m inside school now and not ‘llowed to have calls. If this is a ‘mergency, call my mommy.” A link popped up on the screen to contact her.

  Kirsten’s head swam in a nauseating spiral that left her on her knees. She sat back, covering herself with her arms. Her clothes were gone: heels, panties, dress, all of it. Moving to the bed, she gathered the comforter around herself for a moment. It would be too heavy to carry. Some force pulled her to her feet; she found another red silk jacket in the cabinet. The sheer fabric slid cool over her skin as she bundled it closed and tied a quick knot in the belt before dropping her NetMini in the pocket.

  E-90 in hand, she peered out into the hallway. Nausea pummeled her in the gut, the walls shifted back and forth. The paintings seemed to animate and mock her; little voices from figures within them called her disloyal to Konstantin. They ordered her back to the bedroom.

  She clung to the doorjamb to keep from falling down again; swaying back and forth, she searched for somewhere to go. To the right, past a long red carpet, a fancy set of red-stained, wooden double doors glimmered with solid gold doorknobs in the shape of Chinese dragons. Something about them drew her, and she staggered closer. Halfway there, her balance returned. With one hand on her head, she approached. Intricate workmanship on the handles rendered every scale in precise detail; the eyes, rubies worth thousands of credits each, gleamed.

  Each dragon had a movable pointed tongue that curved out of the gaping maw; depressing one opened the latch, and she passed through into a small chamber containing only a spiral staircase and drab walls. I know I’m at least on the third floor. I gotta get out of this house. I’m suffocating. Did he slip me something? The metal stairs were cold to the point of numbing her feet. Holding onto the railing, she navigated the featureless grey passage until the spinning stopped at a plain door. She wobbled upright, abandoning her friend the railing, and pushed through the door into a small room with a table, couch and holo-bar creating a hundred-inch screen full of a live Gee-ball game.

  Basement? Man cave? She ignored a small leather-covered door behind the couch, heading for a larger one opposite the way she entered. It opened into darkness. Behind her, a toilet flushed. She ducked through into the black and edged the door closed behind her, heart racing.

  It was cold in this room, the floor felt like bare concrete with grit on it. The scent of wood, straw, and strange spices hung in the air. She fumbled, searching the wall near the door for the expected panel. Something made a tiny chirp, sensing her touch, and the lights came on.

  Piles of wooden boxes, many with Arabic writing on them, were stacked all over. Thirty feet to the right, past a large conference table, several steel cabinets stood against the wall. The sound of breathing attracted her forward and left, around a pile of coffin-sized crates. Most had customs imprints from the Middle East. When she peered around the edge of the boxes, her heart almost stopped.

  Between the two large cabinets, a squat table held a carved box she had initially mistook for an Oriental shrine. On the wall above it hung a solid black mask with gold filigree around the eyes, and two thin lines falling like tears to the jawline. Sickness hit her in the gut with the force of a cyborg’s punch. Her mind dove into the scene from Brooke’s memory―the man with the knife. The same knife she somehow knew was in the fancy carved box at the center of the table. Brooke’s vision zoomed in, as if a camera rushed at the man in the mask. She peered close, through the holes.

  Konstantin’s red-brown eyes, lit wild with bloodlust.

  “No!” She covered her mouth to mute the wail. “No,” she cried, in a breathy rasp.

  When she rounded the corner, four hundred credits-worth of half-digested fish came through her fingers. A short distance ahead of her, behind a barred door lifted from a medieval prison, a naked woman lay on the ground bound hand and foot with metal restraints. Just like Alaina Munoz had been.

  She appeared to be sleeping or drugged. Shoulder-length black hair had lightened with a coating of the ubiquitous dust, which also highlighted her musculature where her brown skin touched the floor.

  Gagging on the urge to continue vomiting, Kirsten half-crawled, half-walked to the cell door. Aside from the woman, it contained a large pan of cat litter. She aimed the E-90 at the shiny bars, hesitating at the fear the laser would reflect away without harming it. Despite being modern plastisteel, the polished cell door used a mechanical key and had no electronics programmed to accept police override codes.

  Kirsten reached through and got a hand on the woman’s foot. Slapping her several times, she whisper-yelled. “Hey, are you alive? Hey? I’m gonna get you out of here.”

  Huddled against the wall outside the bars, Kirsten pulled her NetMini from the robe pocket. A red icon at the bottom caught her eye that she had not noticed before. Email. Based on the timestamp, it arrived while she had been at the restaurant. She did not recall hearing the chime. Three flicks of her thumb opened a message from Samuel Chang.

  “Kirsten, I went looking for Nafiz online. I managed to trace the call that warned him. It looks like it came from a manor house way out in the north. It’s owned by Enigma Capital, of which eighty-two percent controlling interest is owned by Davosk Shipping. Davosk shipping is… you guessed it… owned by Kukla. It contained the following:”

  Her heart pounded in her head as she scrolled down past the words: “She is coming here, go, now. Do it.”

  Beyond the ominous words, three still images were embedded in the message. In the first, she led Evan to the patrol craft outside Nina’s apartment. In the second, she opened the patrol craft’s door for him. In the last photo, Evan sat in the driver’s seat, saluting her while she laughed.

  The nagging sense of a paranormal presence that had dogged her for days reverberated in the back of her mind, pulsing in time with the nausea which kept her legs from supporting her. Driven by fear for Evan, her mind lashed out, grasping at thin air. A sense of tangibility led her to the gold serpent bracelet around her right wrist.

  I couldn’t get it off that night. She grabbed it, twisting and squeezing. Her skin reddened as she tried to pull it over her hand. One of the horns nipped her finger as she squeezed at it, trying to find whatever mechanism released the metal teeth from the tail. What the hell is this thing? Is he… what is he doing to me? Her mind flashed to the restaurant. Her hand had been on the E-90, about to challenge him, but on came blind adoration. He’s making me love him. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she twisted her arm through the cursed jewelry. Get off. She shook her hand. Get off me! He can watch everything I do. Oh, shit!

  She held her fingers over it and focused. The bracelet levitated around her wrist, spinning and wobbling. Paranormal energy imbued within it reacted to her ability to manipulate astral forces. She grunted, trying to will it open. A sense of panic came from it as it whirred about as if under the force of an invisible magnet. When the direct psionic assault failed to do anything more than spin the bracelet, she fell into a primitive physical tug of war with it. She screamed in her mind, as if chained by the wrist to Konstantin. Somehow, this bracelet affected her. Fishy bile coughed through her teeth as she thought about what almost happened upstairs. Far more than what she did ten years ago, that would have felt like rape, had he gone all the way.

  Anger swam to the surface, her brain switched gears, and she held her right arm out at length. The glimmering lash formed around her left hand, and a quick swipe through her other arm hit something solid. A wave of energy rocked through her with the sense of a soul meeting obliteration. The crippling pain in her stomach faded to the so
rt of dull ache that follows a bout of vomiting. Her shaking hand squeezed the horns of the now-hot bracelet, and the tail of the ouroboros slipped loose from its mouth. She flung her arm to distance such an unclean thing from her body.

  Her thoughts jumped to Evan. Oh, no. Nafiz. Calm down, K. Evan’s with Nila. She’s a pyro. She’ll end anyone that tries to hurt my son.

  Kirsten stood, glaring at the ‘no signal’ error on the NetMini. She backed to the end of the corridor away from the cell, getting a connection as soon as she was once more in the wide open basement.

  “Hello, Lyubimaya.”

  The voice came in time with an assassin’s embrace from behind. Rather than a knife at the throat, the tiny nip of an autoinjector found her neck. He released her and she slumped to the ground, rolling onto her back. A mild burn spread through her body, stealing her ability to move or even speak. Melting walls drooped around her, swirling into a spiral surrounding the wrinkled face of a man in his early seventies. Darkened teeth appeared within a dour smile. His robe was open, proving his face was not the only thing idealized by enchantment.

  “I am sorry it came to this, my love. I was so enjoying your company. I am impressed, Kirsten. I thought you had pinned everything on that smiling drunken playboy, Suvorin. Fortunately”―his voice echoed as her ability to see faded away― “your little friend is the last piece I need.”

  “Charazu?” she wheezed.

  Konstantin’s blurred face smiled. “Ahh, yes. That was an early effort that proved too difficult to control adequately. I should thank you for helping me clean up my oversight. The ancients are so much more difficult to control than a returned mortal.”

  Kirsten couldn’t move. All her attempts to scream happened in her mind. Vision faded to darkness, and sound swirled as if she went underwater.

  Konstantin crouched and patted her cheek. “I promise you, he won’t feel a thing.”

  van crossed his arms over his face and screamed as the enormous fanged, pink rabbit engulfed him. He pulled the gaming goggles off his head and pouted at the giggling girl on the other side of the sectional. The cartoon bunny on her nightgown mocked him more than her pointing finger. He sulked. The hand-to-hand fighting game was too simple. Evan had spent an hour searching for effective combos of moves, but his efforts at strategy continued to succumb to Shani’s random button-mashing.