by TylerRose.
Well…the change of scenery was nice. She wondered idly if she was becoming stronger and overcoming the chain, if there would come a point when she could shrug it off like the doctor had suggested.
Back to her puzzle. She had to get herself living inside Jerome’s warehouse before the battle. Probably not before the aliens arrived. He wouldn’t believe her before they arrived. He needed to do whatever genetic stuff they had done to him, but more so.
Still the problem of how to remain a cohesive conscience. She could practice and exercise her focus all she wanted and fail to maintain it after the body died. She could start like an out of body experience and simply not go back. Would that work?
The shuttle outside on the lawn started up. She heard and felt its hum. Solomon breezed in to unlock the chains from the metal loop and held onto them to drag her to her feet. Ankles chained together, she hurried with half-size steps to keep up with him. The shuttle took off, left the layers of atmosphere, approached the ship. It had been in orbit all this time. As soon the shuttle was on board and the outer door closed, the ship slid forward at slow speed.
Two weeks more of thistight control and fighting, and she learned the doctor had raised one too many objections over Solomon’s treatment of her. He had been left on a station outpost as a warning to the rest of the small crew. The new doctor had no such compunctions and treated her more like a head of cattle and minded his own business.
She had been keeping track of days to the best of her ability. Several long stretches under a very harsh level of the mental chain and she had lost her count. Five weeks backwards to that day she ate the sandwich. Then she’d slept, but didn’t know how long she had slept. A couple days, probably, if fuckhead twatface had been annoyed about it. Then a couple weeks in the country on that planet. Then the time since leaving. That was at least nine weeks.
She was capable of conceiving again. She had to get out of here before he put a baby in her belly.
If she’d still been pregnant, she’d be only a few weeks from delivering. A sad thought, but not as debilitating as it had been. She had taken those emotions and boxed them up and set them aside while dealing with her puzzles.
She was making progress, even in this short time span.
The door opened and fuckhead twatface came into view. He left her ankles clipped together, reaching instead for the clip on the bar between her wrist cuffs.
“Ready for tonight’s beating?” he asked, letting her arms down from the loop.
Her legs were already pulled up. She turned and kicked him in the gut with both heels, getting a hard smack across the face in return. She kicked again and the wrestling match was on. She was at a severe disadvantage with her ankles clipped together and her wrists held apart by a stiff bar, but she put up as much of a fight as possible. It ended abruptly when he flipped her onto her belly and pinned her down. Pants open to fuck her ass hard and sharp right there on the floor, he declared himself the winner.
She added several more rug burns to her collection; but at least he didn’t use the hip zapper this time—until he was getting up. Zap it went and she screeched with the ripping, slicing pain of it.
“I like watching you crawl,” he said.
Not really crawl but clutch and pull herself. Her leg would be dead for half the hour or more. If she wanted to go anywhere, she had to reach out with her arms, lift onto her elbows while pushing with her left knee or foot, and drag the dead leg forward.
She didn’t do it this time, however, remaining on the spot and not caring that she was in the middle of the room. She indulged in a fantasy of putting that thing around his neck and severing the connection between his brain and his body. She suspected it would be enough to kill him.
He pushed her over onto her back to look down at her. “I’m beginning to wonder if you want me to kill you this time. I killed your husband and baby, so you’re ready to die yourself? Hmmm? Did they mean that much to you?”
Would certainly speed things up for her if he killed her now rather than years from now. She wouldn’t have time to get rid of those other emotions, however. That was going to be key to her success. She knew it.
She stared up at him, not answering. He didn’t try to make her answer. In all this time, he’d not tried to make her speak. Hadn’t tried to make her call him Master or acknowledge his superiority, or any of the other stupid games he’d played in the past. He didn’t seem to care that she wouldn’t speak to anyone.
He caught an ankle ring with a screw-closure carabiner and spun it closed. She was stuck in the middle of the floor until he wanted to drag her somewhere else. He stepped away from her. Sounds of clothing and furniture told her he’d only gone as far as his favorite chair. Clicks and beeps said he was reading a vidpad.
After a while, the door chimed. He beckoned in whoever was there, not caring that she was naked in chains on the floor. None of them cared.
“You sent for me?” the new doctor said.
“I want to know if she’s ready to carry another baby.”
“How long has it been since she lost the other?” the doctor asked.
“About fourteen Sistarian weeks, give or take,” Solomon replied.
“Then yes, she should be. If your species are compatible, that is. There is no guarantee.”
“Sistarians can breed with almost any other species,” Solomon dismissed, waving the doctor out. “You can go.”
Solomon looked down to her from his chair, gave her a nudge with a booted foot.
“So that’s that. It’s time for you to start giving birth to little demi-gods, and they’ll all be mine.”
Mental chain or not, she saw her future. Being bred to create his little minions that would use their abilities to steal whatever he told them to, or perpetrate whatever crimes he wanted. Fear for them stabbed down through her like a bolt. She felt physical pain with it.
She’d fucked around with it enough, taking her hurt and anger out on him at every opening. It was time to kill him and go—and she would take the first half-assed opportunity she saw. She couldn’t count on getting the mental chain off her this time.
It was different from the last one. A thin, flexible metal band around her neck that she couldn’t get a fingernail under. If they were longer maybe; but he’d taken to filing them short like Shestna had done. She couldn’t find a control disc on this one, guessed it all must be inside the band itself.
Either the technology had advanced or his wallet had gotten fatter. She’d been learning a bit about what he did. He liked to be the middle man. He acquired something and took it to the person who wanted to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. Running a space ship was expensive, so he had to keep hustling.
The in-room communication system beeped.
“Yes?” he said, not looking up from the vidpad.
“We’ve arrived.”
“I’ll be right there,” he said, pressing a couple buttons.
Standing, looking down at her, he got the control box out of his pocket.
“I’d love to take you with me to this exchange, but I can’t trust you to behave.”
The intensity increased until she blacked out. When she woke, she was attached wrist and ankle in the bed. Within a minute, he had pulled her to the middle of the bed and was on top of her. She spoke her first words to him.
“I gotta pee!”
“I don’t care.”
Then neither did she. Her bladder let go and emptied before he managed to get his cock inside her. He all but leapt off of her, was so furious he could barely open the carabiners to throw her onto the floor. She fought as hard as she could, and got the worst beating yet for her efforts. He kicked and punched like he’d not done before, leaving her a bleeding, crying heap on the floor. Split lip, blackened eyes, at least a few broken ribs, tears incessant from the pain and her own anger.
He dragged her by the hair out the door and into a cell down the corridor and threw her inside. She lay on the floor crying from the pain. She ma
naged to stop and gain control over her breathing just before the doctor came in to get a look at her.
He put a healing bandage along her bottom lip and wiped a cool gel around her eyes. He laid a warm, gummy pad over her broken ribs, not apologizing for how much it hurt at first. Next, he gave her something to make her sleep for a while.
“When you wake, they won’t be completely healed, but you won’t be in danger of a punctured lung. I suggest you stop making him angry.”
She made no reply. Her last sight before falling unconscious was the guard Arbo standing in the doorway looking at her with a different sort of expression on his face. Blankness worn carefully when anyone else was around had become, in this moment, regret for his recent life choices.
Over the course of the next two days, he brought her several meals. Other than that, she was alone. The doctor came to peel the pad from her ribs, which was a pain all its own, and she was taken at once back to Solomon’s room.
The bed had been completely replaced by a metal framed outfit that was taller than the old bed. At the foot was a short twin-size bed. She was put on it on her belly, bar between her wrists clanked into a tight-fitting clip. Her ankles were secured to the corners. Solomon had her there with all the force he could muster, and came inside her with violently hard thrusts.
“You want to be a bitch that pisses on furniture? I’ll treat you like a bitchdog,” he said, and put a muzzle on her and backed away.
She didn’t see a button pushed, but the end of the bed slid down to reveal the empty space underneath. He pushed her bed into it and the foot closed again. The skirt of the bed was just sheer enough that she could see shapes on the other side. He went about his business for a time, looking for that next thing he would purchase to resell. He had his supper and took a shower. The bed mechanism activated to open the end. He reached in and pulled the trundle out and had her again. He whipped her with a belt and put her back.
Lights turned off, he went to bed.
This was the position she had to sleep in, fully restrained with no pillow or blanket, able to turn only her head. At some point, she did fall asleep.
The lights came on, the foot mechanism lifted, she was pulled out. Released from the tie-down points, Arbo took her to the toilet. He took the muzzle off and put her under a shower to rinse her down, dried her off and combed her hair. Muzzle on, taken back into the bedroom, he sat her on the floor and locked the wrist bar into a tie down on the floor. Legs bent, he clipped the ankle cuffs into the same mechanism.
He brought a plate of food and took the muzzle off her. She glared hard at him, at the notion of being fed by hand.
“I know; but what else can I do?” he whispered. “Fight him all you want but please cooperate with me. I’m doing what I can to make it as easy for you as possible. He wanted me to beat you with the belt before and after the shower. I refused.”
Truth or not, she didn’t care, and remained obstinate.
“I may be able to help you get out of here,” he whispered. “But you have to survive the next week until we get there.”
Okay, that had her interest.
“The final sale of the torpedo we picked up the other day. If you work with me, I might be able to get you onto the other ship. I know the ship. One of my former shipmates is on it. So please eat.”
His eyes spoke the truth of it. He held real hope. She opened her mouth to take the first speared bite. She consumed most of the meal. He took her to the toilet once more then secured her on the trundle bed. On her back this time, with arms overhead and pulled taut and knees bent to clip her ankles to the corners. A band slipped around each thigh to clip them to her ankles and keep her from worming her way out of position.
She was there for only a few minutes before Solomon came in. Arbo was dismissed and the belt came off Solomon’s waist. He wailed on her breasts and the insides of her thighs before taking position to have her . When he was done, he turned her over to clip down and ignore her until he wanted to fuck her again.
When he was almost ready for bed, Arbo came back to take her to the toilet. Then she was clipped down and slid into the cage bed.
The next day was much the same, but she was fed twice. That became the routine. Pulled out of the bed, taken to toilet and fed. Put back onto the bed to wait. Whipped and used at various points through the day. Taken to toilet. Fed. Used. Taken to toilet, put back inside the bed.
She wasn’t given the opportunity to fight with Solomon. She lived in the muzzle except when she ate. Arbo was the only one to feed her. The doctor did not come to see her.
Tyler had plenty of time to sleep and to think about her future, to meditate and find her space of inner peace.
She was pulled out of the cage and let up, Arbo more rushed than he usually was.
“We have no time. Go pee.”
She performed the function and wiped as best as she could, as always. He unlocked the ankle cuffs to remove them, then the wrist cuffs. Last, the muzzle. He put one of Solomon’s shirts on her and took her out into the other room. At the door to the corridor, he paused to take a breath.
“I’m going to die for this, so make your future worth my life.”
She nodded.
Door opened, he looked to be sure no one was there. Everyone else in the small crew was focused on the trade. He took her in the opposite direction, to the tiny emergency teleporter room. He put her into the tube and operated the controls. A flash of light and she appeared in a similar tube on a different ship. The man at the controls took her by the arm and a similar dash through the corridors brought her to a tiny cabin with no windows. He went in with her, closing the door for privacy.
“No one can know you are here, so don’t make noise. There is food within the cabinet,” he said, showing her where. “Enough for two days. I will check on you when I can but don’t be surprised if you don’t see me for a whole day. We must be careful.”
She only nodded.
“There is a small lamp on the bed. Use it rather than the full light, just to be safe. I will turn off the overhead light and lock the door. It is supposed to be locked, so if anyone gives the door a push and it beeps that it’s locked, don’t be afraid.”
He turned off the light before opening the door. Looking first, he exited and closed it. The beeps of locking sounded and he gave it a push. The beeps of being locked sounded.
She was alone.
She wept.
She slept.
Chapter Eighteen
When she woke, and was awake enough to care, she turned on the light to inspect her wrists and ankles. The tight wrist cuffs had marked her with bumpy callous lines that would take months to wear away to normal. Same with her ankles. She had rough patches on her cheeks and under her chin from the edges of the muzzle.
She went to the toilet by herself for the first time in however many days it had been. She hadn’t been able to keep track, being put into and taken out of the bed so often.
Hunger made itself known and she fed herself for the first time in far too long. There was a bag of bread, pieces of fruit, bottles of water. No frills, but that bread was the best tasting thing she’d ever had in her life.
Two knocks on the door, then the beeps, and it opened. He came in, shut the door and turned on the overhead light. She shaded her eyes until he dimmed it halfway. He’d brought more food and water, and stored them for her.
“What’s this on your neck?” he pointed.
“A mental chain. It dampens my psionic abilities,” she replied barely above a whisper, her own voice a strange sound to her ears.
He took a look all around her neck. “I can’t see how to get it off, but I do see some numbers back here. It might be a model number. They use these in some prison systems. I’ll look it up and see if we can get it off you.”
“If you can, it will be a few minutes before I can teleport.”
“Maybe,” he said. “How long have you been wearing it?”
“Months,” she had to admit.
“It could take days for any abilities to come back. They’re meant for shorter periods of times.”
“Can you call Julian on the Celestial Congress? Or Baener the Councilman from Deek’Trai? Let them know I’m safe?”
“I cannot risk any such transmissions at this time. If I can’t get this thing off you, we’re going to have to take a drastic action.”
“Meaning?” she prompted.
“The torpedo is a new and very powerful design. We’ve bought it to pass off to another of our own ships for study and possible reproduction. I can hide you in it before launch. You’ll be inside it for a few hours before they pick you up. You’ll be something of a surprise, but you’ll be safe with them and can make your contacts from there.”
“When is this?” she asked.
“They are studying the torpedo today and we will launch tomorrow or the next day. We have to hear back from the receiving ship that they are in position first. We will launch and they will close in to shorten the distance. We are really far out of the shipping lanes and have done this many times. Can you handle being in a torpedo tube for a day or so?”
“I’ve been kept chained down to a bed and inside a cage for the last however long it’s been. I’ll live.”
He eyes showed his concern and his acceptance both. “I must be going. I’ll try to come back later.”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t mind the solitude. I need it.”
He left and she realized that she didn’t know his name and he hadn’t asked hers. Sitting alone with her lamp, she wished for her journals. Even if she didn’t write a word, she craved the feeling of the open book on her leg and pen in her hand. She would have a great deal to write when she got to it.
Having nothing to occupy her time, she began to exercise. Nothing strenuous. One-person Orani routines Pisod had taught her, plus pushups, squats and sit ups. She hadn’t been able to get in any real exercise since Solomon had taken her. She had lost quite a bit of weight. Sure, she had already been rather on the thin side, but she felt her ribs a lot more now. The space between collar bone and trapezoid muscle was a much deeper hollow. Her face was not as full as it had been.