by Shelly Crane
Too many of us know that slaves exist, but we turn and hope we never have to come face to face with the horrors of their life. And now there I was, bunking in for the night with one and all the details that made her up. I even had to stop her from cleaning up my trash from breakfast. It was just that ingrained in her to do it automatically.
“Hey,” I called softly, “I almost forgot.” I put my bag on the grate under my feet and dug around until I found the canister I was looking for. “I had to go to a few vendors until I found it, but…” I turned to face her.
She eyed it and right away I knew she knew what it was. “It exists.”
My eyebrows rose. “It will make you better in no time.”
“My proprietor always taunted me with it.” She clenched her jaw and her fists. “Said if I…screamed louder,” I couldn’t stop my cringe, “jerked against my restraints harder, gave them a good show, that he would give me the salve. But he never did.”
I took a second to make sure I was calm before stepping toward her. She was still staring down at the can in my hand so I lifted her face with my finger, fully expecting her to pull away or flinch at the very least, but she did neither. She looked up at me expectedly.
“That part of your life is over. You left it all behind.” She nodded slowly. “Let me—” I began to ask her to turn around, but she stopped me.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“You can’t reach your own back. Let me do it.”
She shook her head, looking down. “No. I’ll figure it—”
“Sophelia.” She looked up. I tried to look stern or…something. I wasn’t sure what I looked like, but she seemed to be taken in by something on my face. “We have to get going. Please, let me help you.”
I’d never seen someone look so uncomfortable and I had seen a grown man have his rectum probed before. Don’t ask. When you’re in a business as shady as mine, there were all sorts of things and searches going down that were uncouth and uncalled for.
She puffed out a breath that landed against my neck, causing a heated shiver to spread across me when she turned. Thank God she hadn’t seen it. She pulled her arms to her chest and leaned her forehead against the wall. I tried not to waste any time because I knew the more time I took, the more awkward this would become and the more scared she would be.
I lifted the back of her shirt slowly, untucking it from her pants, and then tucking it into the shirt’s collar to hold it in place while I worked. She and I both reached for her wild, loose curls at the same time to pull it to the side, out of the way. She looked over her shoulder at me for three point four seconds before letting her forehead rest against the wall once again. She had no bra on. She was wearing off-white bindings against her pale skin instead, and it didn’t even matter—it was making me hot all over. I gulped as I stared at her bare back a second longer than necessary before turning the cap on the salve.
The stripes of her wounds were angry. Some were slightly bleeding still and some not. There were seven of them. I gritted my teeth at that bastard. I’d only known Sophelia for a day and a night and there wasn’t anything she could do to make me do this to her.
I opened the lid and stuck my thumb in the cool substance before putting it on the first stripe. She flinched and moved away, sucking in a breath, but then calmed and resumed her position. When I touched her again, she hissed at first and then moaned as I continued down the long line of it, arching her back a little, and breathing harder.
“Sophelia?” I whispered.
“It’s okay,” she whispered back. “Finish it.”
When I was on stripe number four, she muttered, “I’m sorry you have to do this for me.”
I stopped. “It’s no problem.” That’s when it hit me. She was a slave. She had always done for others, never had anything done for her for the last ten years. And here I was, coming in to act like a freaking hero, buying her clothes, saving her, getting her dinner and salve. I shook my head. No wonder she thought I had an ulterior motive. “Now your wrists.”
I reached for the first one slowly, tugging the makeshift bandage I’d made off before putting the salve on with my thumb just like I’d done with her back. I thought maybe she’d protest and say she could definitely reach her wrists, but she didn’t. She just watched me do it silently.
I finished up with the salve and then made a point to make sure she understood that, in the new world she lived in, she didn’t wait on anyone. She took care of herself first and then we take care of our own. That was our world.
She wasn’t a slave any longer.
We climbed down leaving no breadcrumbs behind that we had been there. Me first, her second, so I could feel like I was in control of things. So I could feel like I was being the hero, even if I wasn’t.
“So why did you come here, to the stacks, when you left me yesterday?” She looked at me sharply. It didn’t escape my notice how her fingers clutched the bag that she had acquired yesterday since she left me. I gave her my best wry look. “If you can’t trust me right now, who can you trust? We’re in this together, Sophelia, whether you like it or not.”
“It’s not that I don’t—” She looked over. We walked closely in the crowded lower business district. Messengers were running all over the place. Bots were marching on their loud, mechanical legs and wheels to do their proprietors’ bidding, shops and restaurants were open for business if you could afford to go there, the tram was rolling above us, so loud it almost took all the other noises away. “I’ll tell you my truth if you tell me yours,” she said loudly, putting her hand on my arm to steady herself as a messenger swiped by her on his hurtle boots.
“Watch it!” I yelled, but he was long gone.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. Too softly. I looked back at her to find us almost nose to nose, my hand curled around her elbow.
I used that opportunity to tug her off the granite sidewalk and onto the crosswalk. “You’re going to get my truth soon whether you want it or not,” I told her.
“And why is that?”
“Because they can’t take my money from my arm chip, but they can find me, find out who I am. So I have to hurry and do what I need to do with it before they realize who they gave the money to for your reward. So.” I gave her my best smile. “Up for a trip?”
She squinted. “You’re serious?”
“As E. Coli.” She cracked a smile and it was a real, honest-to-God smile—the kind that opened her entire face and may as well have opened the heavens with it. I smiled back. “Wow. So that’s what that looks like.”
She knew what I was doing, and I expected a retreat back into the slave girl, but she surprised me again by rolling her eyes. “What?”
“Your teeth.”
She punched me in the gut a little harder than I thought was necessary, but we both held our smiles in place as she said, “Lead the way.”
“It’s a ways,” I warned. “And we can’t take public transportation because they’ll scan—”
“I know,” she sighed. “They’ll scan our chips.”
“As long as you’re up for it.”
“You came back for me.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you. You watch my back and I’ll watch yours.”
I held out my hand slowly and spoke low. “Deal, fy melys.”
“Fy what?” I shook my head, letting her know that I wasn’t going to say, but expected her deal anyway as I held my smirk in place. She smirked in return, shaking her head and my hand. “Deal, weirdo. Deal.”
**
As it always was on the planet, the summer month had ended and the winter month has begun overnight. We never knew when it was coming, we would just wake up freezing and you knew summer was over. Our planet rotated differently than other planets, I guess. When I was little and went to school, I remember them telling us about how Earth would have three different seasons in the same year. Or was it four? I can’t remember. Going to school only one day a week kind of nixed the whole learning and retaining thing for
most of us. The Elitist went to school almost every day, or had a private teacher come in and teach them almost every day anyway. I couldn’t imagine that. But for some reason, they thought they needed or deserved more education.
That night, Sophelia and I holed up in pretty much the same situation as the night before, but that wasn’t going to work tonight or any night after this. When I woke up to Sophelia’s teeth chattering against my neck, I wondered if she were sick at first, before I began to feel my own cold seep in. I immediately reached over to her jacket and turned on the built-in body warmer. Certain clothes, like her jacket, had warmers and coolers built-in to keep your body temperature the right degrees for when you’re walking to work or working outside, but if the degrees you were in got to be too low, it wouldn’t matter. For instance, you couldn’t sleep outside in just a jacket and be fine in freezing weather. But these first few night of winter, we should fine. After this…we might have to stay indoors at night. Or near a heat source, like the solar panels. It got too cold too fast.
I reached into my own long sleep shirt and pressed my tag to activate my warmer. As soon as I felt it, I sighed and settled back, letting Sophelia lean against me once again. I gripped her fingers to test them and got my answer. Her hands were freezing.
I checked to make sure she was still asleep before I lifted them to my mouth, putting them between my hands. I blew hot breath on them, knowing I was wasting oxygen, but knowing her hands were so cold just…made me ache for some reason when I knew that there was something I could do about it. I did it again and again and once more, looking up at her face one last time…completely surprised to find her watching me with hazy eyes and parted lips.
What the hell could I say?
“You were freezing. Go back to sleep.”
She hesitated. “You turned on my built-in?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I jerked my head to my shoulder. “Come on. Go back to sleep.”
When that smile cracked through…I cracked with it.
God save me from this girl if she ever smiled at me for real.
The next morning, we woke with a light dusting of red snow on our legs. I woke first and thought about checking to see what was in her satchel. It was right there, within reach. But I knew that this girl didn’t trust easily and we were already on shaky ground. I just hoped she would trust me soon. Besides, it wasn’t like I was supplying my own things freely. I was being dragged, kicking and screaming. Well, almost.
I wondered if she would ever show me or if she would leave for the Providence and I still wouldn’t know what was in that bag.
When she woke, the first thing she did was check her bag and I knew I’d been right to not mess with it. I asked to check her oxygen levels. She let me. On the front of everyone’s screen was an oxygen level for everyone to see if they wanted or needed to. She was low. So was I.
“We should be able to make it to about midday today until we need to take a pill. You all right with that?”
“I’m used to stretching it,” she said and stretched her back, moaning in a good way for once. “Rivers always made me wait ‘til the last second, saying it was a waste otherwise.” She twisted her back both ways. “Oh, my gosh, my back feels brand new.”
“Can I see it?” I said gently. “To make sure it’s healed.”
She nodded and turned. I lifted up just the bottom of her shirt and couldn’t believe that they were all gone. “Wow. We’ve used the salve on the ship before, but I’ve never personally used it or used it on anyone.”
“Thank you for getting it for me.” She turned, tucking in her shirt, not looking at me. “I’m sure it was expensive. You didn’t have to.”
“We needed you at your best.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And I wanted you to feel better.”
So,” she rushed on to change the subject as she stood, “where to today?”
I sighed. “Somewhere I haven’t been in a long time.” I lifted my hood from the hidden compartment out of my shirt and over my head. “Somewhere I thought I wouldn’t go back to for a very long time.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly enthralled with the words pouring from my lips.
“Because I had to keep it safe—from the world I had joined, from the person I had become.”
I started walking, knowing she would join me. “You’re not bad.” She spoke harder as she joined my side and spoke to my profile. “You want me to think you are, but you aren’t. I see you, even when you think I’m not looking.”
I chuckled, but found nothing funny about any of this. “Then you’re the one who’s—”
I didn’t get to tell her how naïve she was, how she needed to wise up to her new world if she wanted to survive it, because the Militia’s electromagnetic pulse went off near us, causing everyone to fly back from the wave of electric current that swept through the area. Our jacket’s built-in warmers turned off, all the building’s lights and fans, heaters and sounds of any kind hummed and slowed to a stop. Sophelia and I lay on our backs in the street where we had been knocked and I scrambled to get her up.
Everyone else was frozen in place in fear of what was coming next. Everyone knew they used their EMPs for militant strikes—to put everyone out of decommission while they performed certain tasks. The pulse only took out our electronics for thirty minutes at a time. And it took out theirs as well so they didn’t use them often because it left them at a disadvantage as well. But if they were looking for a girl in the slums of our planet, in the winter months, and thought that maybe she would be walking around, killing time, waiting for them to forget about her or to be flushed out and turned in? I guess that would be smart if they looked at it that way.
Like this, not only did our jackets not warm us, making us too cold in the freezing weather, but it also made us breathe more heavily because of the cold, wasting the little oxygen we had left in our blood.
And then the music began to play over the speakers, the eerie, disconcerting tunes that they claimed were supposed to keep us calm, to keep riots from breaking out, to keep the peace, but in my opinion, someone had watched one too many horror films back on Earth and decided to use it on us. It was Beethoven this time. Piano Romance No. 50. I knew this because they announced it before it began to play each time, like they wanted you to know the exact name and description of your torture device. I pulled Sophelia along with me, dragging her behind me was more like it, out of the street. I tripped over a messenger bot that had fallen in the street from the EMP, almost taking Sophelia with me.
The song wasn’t a long one and then they moved on to the next as I heard the heavy footsteps of the Militia coming to greet us a couple streets over. It was Chopin’s Nocturne.
“We’re going to have to hoof it, and fast. Hopefully we can get clear of them and maybe it’ll warm us up in the process.”
I looked back to her for confirmation and she nodded. We took off like a shot down the back alleys, running as fast as our feet and the slim place behind the buildings would allow. We’d been running non-stop at full speed, with Sophelia in the lead so I could keep an eye on her, so she could set the pace and I could keep the rear of us safe and no one snuck up on us, for about twenty minutes when Sophelia practically crashed, letting me crash into her and have to catch her so we didn’t land in a heap on the ground.
“I have to slow down,” Sophelia whispered, her breaths so fast it hurt to watch.
“We can’t,” I hissed back as I checked around the corner of the building to see how much time we had. “You know that charade out there is all for you, right?”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I…” She breathed in deeply, her breaths catching, and I looked at her over my shoulder. She was getting paler by the second.
“Ah, no.” I grabbed her around her waist, holding her up. “I thought you said you could last ‘til midday.”
“I thought I could.” She glared up at me as best as she could, but she was about to seriously pass out. Her fingers could
barely hang on to my shirt as she tried to cling to me. “You were the one…who made me run…around everywhere…in the cold, wasting my ox—”
Hell. “I didn’t think about the cold and the running. It burned our oxygen up. Here.” I pushed her back to the nearest wall, holding her up with my arm around her waist and my hip pressed against hers. She was so bad off she didn’t even protest. I had to let her go with my arms for a second so I could dig around in my bag. I found the pills and took two out, giving her one and taking one for myself.
She eyed me. Oxygen pills were a sacred, personal thing. It wasn’t a pretty thing to watch or feel. It sucked. I hated doing it, but you had to do it to live, so. The Elites didn’t have to take pills. They had procedures done somehow that let them have these gills on their wrists that oxygenated their blood for them. But we weren’t good enough for that apparently.
“I’m not leaving you, so you can just forget that,” I told her in my hardest voice so she’d know I was being serious. “No one has ever watched me take mine either,” I finished softly and kept my eyes right on hers as I sighed. “So we’ll both be experiencing something new together. Come on. Take it.”
“I don’t want…to.” Her head swayed a little. “You’ve already seen me weak enough. It’s not fair that you should see me at my absolute…weakest.”
“You’ll see me at my weakest, too. Besides, don’t think of it like that. Think of it as being vulnerable. Opening up to your new friend, just like I’ll be doing with you. Just getting to know each other.” She continued to look at me, like she was waiting for something from me and I just wasn’t giving it to her. “Come on, I’m beginning to feel offended here.” I smiled at her and that seemed to be the catalyst. She softened considerably, taking a deep breath, preparing herself, but that was a mistake.
Her eyes began to flutter a little and it wasn’t from swooning.
“Sophelia?” I said loudly. “No,” I growled and opened her mouth, dropping the pill under her tongue. I pulled her closer to me, her head tucking just under my chin, waiting for the pill to start, for it to begin the jerking and pulling inside her veins.