by Amanda Milo
“Your family record is impressive. You must be a hell of a disappointment.”
Contrary to cliche, our dad never wanted us to feel obligated to go into the military, or to become a decorated Green Beret or be inducted as a super spy. He tried to give us all the normalcy and assurances he could; tried to make us secure in the knowledge that our choices were our choices. His efforts weren’t in vain, because I never did feel obligated. My sister, Charlie, felt pulled. But not me. I had no interest, and zero aptitude.
“Your scores are deplorable. You’re the perfect candidate: peak physical condition, aware of techniques, but technically unskilled. You’re a diamond in the rough. Raw clay, just waiting to be formed.”
The part about being aware of techniques is true. Our dad took us out and showed both me and Charlie all sorts of things. Before, I wasn’t physically ideal as a candidate for anything. Not until they started the experiments on me. I knew something was wrong when I suddenly had the urge to jog for miles.
Me.
Jog.
The urge to jog.
Downright unnatural. That more than anything proved I’d lost me.
I’m glad my family will never see me like this.
They wouldn’t recognize me.
I don’t even recognize me.
The skin over my knuckles splits as it meets the woman’s teeth. Ick. The bacteria in human mouths is disgusting. It would cause an infection considering I don’t have easy access to first aid supplies—but I don’t have to worry. Yet another perk to my forced chemical-injection upgrades: I heal well, and fast. I would know—the ‘medical team’ has made sure to inflict damage on me to test my recovery time.
I’m like their little pet guinea pig.
Most of us are, but as far as I can tell, we’re all enrolled in different sideshows. I think I’m sort of the closest to the Strongman in this freak circus. I always thought the scene in that old cyborg movie, the second one, where the Sarah character racks the shotgun using only a one-handed grip, was SO cool. Our dad let us try that move, and you have to respect the dedication to pulling off a reload like that; it takes serious muscle. I couldn’t do it then.
Now? After treatments, I feel like I could bend the barrel of a shotgun into a u-shape with my bare hands. In reality, that’d be a no—but I can lift some things that I wouldn’t have been able to before, and the team seems very interested in this change. They’re testing something with a social factor, that much I know; the purpose is the mystery.
I don’t know the extent of this new drug yet, but after they dose me for the day, the side effects—excess energy and hypersexuality—nearly have me climbing the walls in here.
I feel very alone. I have a desperate need to make connection, but also a desperate amount of dread, because every friend I make in here has been targeted.
It’s like I can’t stop myself though. I try, I try not to—I’m not mean, I just don’t hang out the friendly-shingle either. But the good ones are drawn to me. It’s always the good ones.
Zoya. Quinn. Lydia. Yahiro.
Yahiro hasn’t been taken away—yet. She watches, but she’s remained aloof; so collected, so cool under pressure, that she reminds me of my sister. She is quieter than Charlie ever could be with me, but that isn’t a bad thing in Alphapod. I keep waiting for the guards to crack down on the talking, the socializing between inmates. I’ve heard from transfers that each sector of the ship is run a little differently, either worse or worst, from the sounds of it.
But the guards don’t, and it’s weird, and I have to believe it has a purpose.
Ever since Zoya and Quinn were dragged away it’s gnawed at me—this is beyond loneliness. It sounds too far fetched but the research team did something to me, gave me an intense, bizarre desire to operate as something more than just… me. This must be what a hive insect feels like. This has to be why they keep tossing me back in the main cell here. Unfortunately, but perhaps by no coincidence, the new batch of chicas clad in orange are opposed to cozying up to me. It leaves me intensely frustrated, and even knowing it isn’t natural, even though I have no constructive goal in mind, I’m stuck with this great desire to… ‘people,’ I guess.
I swipe at my nose with the back of my wrist. Not bleeding; just feels like it. It’s a damn shame that my fellow inmates don’t share my newfound interest in convivial behavior.
A retaliatory fist comes flying in my direction. I block, and I hit her again. The next time she swings, I catch her arm.
Dad had a 1973 Dodge Charger. In a world where vehicles were no longer constrained to four wheels and a strip of pavement, it was an oddity. And this was no replica kit car built on some other chassis; she was the real deal—and she had a real Charger-bitch temperament too. To get her to stay operational, he had to work on her all the time. This wasn’t some museum floor piece: he had a temperamental, always-a-work-in-progress beauty that he went to the garage to bang on whenever he felt like cussing a blue streak.
Our dad is the epitome of the self-possessed male; level-headed, calm, cool—except for when it came to ‘coaxing’ that car. I was an impressionable seven-year-old who assumed that cunt and bitch were terms you applied to someone or something that you liked very much, but was frustrating you. My first grade teacher set me straight with a demerit and a visit to the principal’s office, for which my father shook his head and tugged me to the spot between his knees, so that he could lean over me and whisper for my ears only, “You can’t use those words. Even if I use them. You can’t do everything I do yet, okay?”
I’d find out I’d never be able to do everything Dad did.
I thought breaking wrists was one of those things.
I was wrong.
Inmate 1525 screams so shrilly that she sounds like a macaque monkey. More than the feeling of her bones shattering under the pressure, this is what disturbs me, it’s this noise she’s making that snaps me out of my numbed-down state. My reaction to her attack started with an indignant flare-up of anger, but before I made the first move, it’s like it got harnessed, and even now, I could be scrubbing burnt cheese off the bottom of an oven for all the excitement I feel in this moment.
Subduing her feels like a tired job.
I look around, taking note of the others watching us, seeing if any of her friends want to try shoving me to the floor. They’re like jackals at the fringes, watching the hyenas and lions tear each other apart, and waiting to see if any of the entrails and scraps the victor leaves behind are worth picking over. Although I’ve gotten used to the scents in here, in this moment my senses are heightened to such an ultralight trigger pressure that I can even pick out the slightly burnt odor to the air—compliments of the laser bars that pass across the length of our cell. No steel bars for us: we get a force field. Like a wireless fence for a dog yard. And like dogs, I could gain pack status right now if I tried. But I don’t want to be a lead dog. I just want to belong to something.
Ugh. That sounds pathetically needy.
I drop 1525’s arm, and I don’t even wince at how her hand now dangles useless and grotesque, like a broken puppet’s. My thoughts are mostly mercenary: she was a threat. Threat neutralized.
The thud of booted feet breaks through the buzzing murmurs of the other inmates.
I sigh.
Electricity surges through me, and I’m frozen in place until the current abruptly cuts off.
I promptly crash face down. While I’m incapacitated, cuffs secure my wrists, and it’s Drogan’s tsk that I hear in my ear. It’s his heat against my skin, his weight over me. I’d relax, but my body is still misfiring from the voltage.
Speaking of; what is up with this voltage?! The guard batons are basically cattle prods on steroids. This isn’t the first, or the second, or even the fifth time I’ve been taken down by one, so I’ve had the time and opportunity to wonder; what’s bigger than a cow? Bison. It’s gotta be a bison prod. This can’t be legal. Bison are huge, and they really do stampede—I get that it takes
a massive wallop from an electric source to remind bison to respect the boundaries, but talk about cruel and unusual: I am nowhere close to the size of a bison—not even a weaned bison calf. These sticks must be set to ‘fry’—they are so much stronger than they have to be.
“Preta,” he breathes in a tone that reveals his regret. When he’s on shift, he does what he can to stop these fights from escalating to this point. We both know this was unpleasant, but we also know him being the one to get to me first is a mercy—he doesn’t abuse and prolong with the punishment, not like some of these guards in here.
Case in point: his assigned partner on this shift is really, really eager to help. “I want in on some of this action.” Yuck. Just the sound of this guy’s voice makes my skin try to shrivel up and scamper off. “Here, give her to me; I’ll take her to solitary.”
He put an unnecessary and wholly unwanted emphasis on the last half of his suggestion. What a creeper. ‘I’ll take her to ‘solitary,’ hur-hur!’
“Naw, man—I got her.”
Creeper-guard laughs and it is an ugly sound, and he’s making me feel like the bad-dirty, not the hot-dirty, and I want a shower. Again, if my poor skin was capable of completely crawling off of my body, it would. At present, my skin and I are recovering from the brush with the electric fence-in-a-stick, so lying here placidly and unable to defend myself are about the extent of my abilities.
“Oh, you’ve had her.” (Hur-hur!) “Let somebody else have a turn.”
Great. More prison politics and drama. As much as I’m crazed for a release from the sexual tension that’s been plaguing me with the latest round of drugs, I’m not all that excited at the prospect of being this guard’s plaything. No thanks. Not ever. I’ll masturbate in front of a room full of women who want to see me dead before I willingly go off alone with this guy.
Willing I am not, however, I am at the mercy of the guards, and Drogan is the only one here that cares right now what happens to me. I’ve heard some of the women—and other guards for that matter—they think I’m fucking Drogan in order to retain some form of protection. Which… from the standpoint of survival, isn’t a half-bad idea, really. That wasn’t my goal, or my intent, but right now, I am grateful he feels a sense of protectiveness towards me, and I don’t care what motivates his chivalry; pussy, or pregnancy, or both. I’m just glad to have someone who has my back. It’s been difficult not to have that security. I think maybe that’s been one of the most difficult adjustments I’ve had to face; Charlie didn’t just have my back—she always pushed me behind her and stood in front of me. To have that level of trust in another person’s loyalties is priceless. I miss her presence with a keenness that makes it hard to breathe sometimes.
Although I have experienced a small reprieve lately because I’ve started to feel more and more numb to it all. Temporary gifts from the laboratory?
Definitely not feeling numb now.
Fear hasn’t settled in my gut yet, but it is working its way down the back of my neck, raising all the hairs there as Drogan attempts to avoid a scenario in which I get dragged off and molested if not outright raped.
More booted steps approach, and I feel the shift in my brain, like my super soldier senses are coming back online. Except this time, I don’t know what they mean. I tense—a feat which proves I’ve regained the use of my own muscles.
“Guard 0072?”
That’s Drogan’s number.
He must nod, or show some sign of acknowledgement—or maybe he doesn’t. From their hard, sadistic-flavored, smug tone, it’s obvious they know exactly who he is, and what he’s been to me.
“You’re to come with us.”
Drogan’s warm fingers brush against my cuffed palms, which are flopped limply on my back, before he moves to stand over my prone body.
The air silently crackles. There’d be more luck sawing through a two-by-four with a butter knife than trying to cut the tension in this room right now, but even in this moment my libido proves it’s completely out of control because this protective stance he’s taking? Hot.
“Let me process—”
“Inmate SS-48 is being taken into custody also.”
See? SS: Super Soldier, I’m telling you.
My injected skillset does me no good now though as I’m hauled up and frog marched alongside Drogan towards the exit. I sweep a calculating glance over the throng—and my outwardly calm appearance is not a pretense. Right now, I feel like I’ve gone dead inside. This is it. Drogan got protective over me one too many times—despite being the one to nail me with the bison stick more than once, I might add—there were too many little instances where he showed me favoritism.
He’s going to die for it.
Unlike my friends who were dragged in the direction of the labs, never to be seen again, guards get a special treatment.
Drogan knows it too: his shoulders are back and his chin is up and his silent sigh is resigned. All eyes are on us, and it’s eerie how their whispers blend together to make a background-noise hiss, the undercurrent of excitement unmistakable; we certainly are putting on a show for the ladies here in cell block whatever-this-sector is.
“It was nice knowing you,” he murmurs to me as they herd us out and into the corridor.
“Likewise.” I swallow, and now I do feel a tiny sliver of pain to the region of my heart before it’s abruptly cut off—it’s almost as if my system attacks it and replaces it with a sense of calm. “I’m sorry.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his grim smile. “Same here. If we’d known I was going to die today anyway, we could have enjoyed that second fuck.”
CHAPTER 3
PRETA
This prison ship has been cruising above Earth for something like ten years. It made big news back when it was launched. It didn’t matter to me much then. It didn’t affect my life at all, actually—not until I became a pawn.
Charlie is a soldier. Our dad’s a soldier. Both of them really are super soldiers—but not the laboratory-engineered kind. They’re entirely where they are today through God-given-talent and hard work. Both have access to all sorts of sensitive knowledge in plots that make the whole world run smoother, blah, blah—there are big things that they no doubt have big parts in orchestrating: blah. They’re the behind-the-scenes-heroes you only hear about in movies.
There’s no ‘blah’ to that part. That part’s just cool.
I think Charlie’s mom was really a spy. That’s my best theory. Honestly, I wouldn’t rule it out for grandma Sol either; two dominant, awesome-spy genes converging in our dad, thereby doubling up the action for Charlie’s nucleus down the line would make a lot of sense.
My mom must have basically been a true normal, because I was quite average in a long line of greats—but I was happy with that. Happy to be an unwitting civilian who loved two people that did secret things to make the world a little safer. I didn’t know what those things were, and as long as they were safe, I didn’t care, and didn’t care to know their various mission deets. Their secret lives didn’t affect me; their job details didn’t matter. Not to me.
Someone made it matter. Someone is playing a game and I don’t get to see the whole board, or the stakes, or the other players—I don’t even know what this game is called, because again—I’m just a pawn.
Someone is trying to hurt our dad, or Charlie, or both. I’m here because I’m leverage, and whoever’s running the show thinks they can control two legit super soldiers (the trained, real battle-tested kind, not the made-by-injection kind) by threatening their soft spot. The why’s of it aren’t important anymore; this has gone beyond a simple threat—I’m on this prison ship, and I’ve been here for six months. The fact that I’m still incarcerated here means that hell has frozen over. My family is not one to screw with, and their loyalty is vast and unshakable. Whoever pulled strings to get and keep me here is going to have a world of hurt rain down on them, and I’m sure my family is probably burning down cities in their efforts to get me out�
��I know they are—but in the meantime, things aren’t so good here.
Drogan’s been adjusting his stride for the purpose of keeping pace with me as we’re forced towards the laboratory. Dimly, I register that it’s dread that’s pooling in my stomach. This isn’t the first guard that’s been recorded as ‘dying in a prison riot,’ or whatever they put on the paperwork at the end of the day.
But he is the only guard that I’ve trusted enough to initiate sex with.
He’s also the only man I’ve made a tiny person with.
We never really spoke of it, because although we tried to hide so we wouldn’t get caught fucking, we still feared audible monitoring to an extent.
At least, that’s why I never brought it up.
Well… that’s one of the reasons I never brought it up. I’ve also been, from the moment I realized I was pregnant, fully aware that I wouldn’t be allowed to keep this baby. I thought, with the crap they pump into me, that it was unlikely I’d get to carry this little life to term, let alone deliver.
I would have been terrified for my child—our child—but I assumed they’d terminate it as soon as they found out, and if they terminate its life before it's born, at least it means they won’t be testing on it. No matter what happens, I know I can’t do a thing to protect it unless I go free.
And if that hasn’t already happened…
I’m pretty sure they don’t wrongly imprison an innocent woman, test on her, alter her, and then turn her loose to tell-all to the media.
My future’s looking kinda bleak.
When I’m no longer useful to them, I expect to wind up very dead.
Because with my family’s skills, let alone resources, whoever’s behind this would be damn fools to do what they’ve done to me and then send me back home with an apology note clipped to my collar. No, they might be trying to use me to force my family into doing whatever they want done, but they have no intention of letting me go afterwards. In the meantime, they’re making the best use of me that they can.