by Paige Tyler
The man took her arm and hustled her out of room without a word.
“Where are you taking me?” Laken demanded as led her down a set of steps. “What’s going on?”
The man didn’t answer but just forced her to move faster. At the bottom of the steps, he dragged her into a room and over to the wall. She watched in confusion as he placed his hand on the stone, but then gasped in surprise when a narrow door opened to reveal a small room. With a push, he shoved her inside.
Laken stumbled and fell to the floor. By the time she got to her feet and turned back, the guard had already slammed the door shut, cloaking the room in total darkness. She blindly made her way over to the door and pushed as hard as she could, but it didn’t open. She pounded on it with all her strength, but all that did was make her hand hurt. She wondered if she should scream, but decided that the room was probably meant to be soundproof. Even if it wasn’t, who would come anyway?
Turning around, she leaned back against the door and hugged her arms around herself. As her eyes got used to the darkness, she realized there was a dim light coming from one wall. She frowned, wondering if she was imagining it. No, it was most definitely a light.
Afraid to even hope, she slowly walked toward it, and almost squealed when she saw that the light was coming through a crack in the wall. She bent down and put her eye to it. She couldn’t see much, but she saw enough to know that it was sunlight.
Pulse racing, she probed the area around the crack with her fingers. She sagged with relief. The board was loose. If she could pry it off, she might be able to escape!
* * * * *
Though Rade had done his research on Huden Enak, he hadn’t known exactly what to expect when he and his crew got to the man’s house. Fortunately, Enak’s guards seemed to be used to dealing with unarmed slave girls and barely put up much of a fight when Rade and his crew stuck guns in their faces. One or two made a show of being tough, but when Vance put one down with a pulse-beam through the man’s leg, the others immediately gave up. Apparently, Enak didn’t pay his men well enough to stand up against someone who would actually fight back. The first one Rade had pointed his pistol at was more than willing to escort them into see Enak.
Enak was in a room upstairs, along with two guards and a pretty blond woman. She had that lost, despondent look of a slave, and Rade immediately dismissed her as a threat, instead training his weapon on Enak, while Keir and Vance dragged the two guards out of the room.
“Where is Laken Andara?” Rade demanded. “And don’t give me any bullshit about not knowing who she is because I know you bought her and brought her here.”
Enak’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your men are welcome to search, of course, but they won’t find nothing.”
Clenching his jaw, Rade backhanded Enak with the butt of the pistol. Enak went down, wiping blood from his face, but rather than looking cowed or even fearful, he seemed amused. Infuriated, Rade crouched down and rocked the man’s head back with several punches, demanding to know where Laken was with each blow.
But Enak just laughed. It was then Rade realized that beating the man was getting him nowhere. Though he would have enjoyed smacking the asshole around some more, he didn’t have the time. Enak was a psychopath who was obviously completely incapable of caring about anything, even his own life.
Stepping back, but keeping his weapon trained on Enak, Rade motioned through the door to Keir, who had finished tying up the guards. “Start searching. Tear this place apart if you have to.”
“That isn’t necessary,” the blond woman said quietly. “I can show you where Laken is.”
His eyes blazing, Enak took a menacing step toward her, and Rade leveled the gun at the man. Though he stopped in his tracks, Enak glared at the girl.
“Say anything, and I will cut out that lying tongue of yours, bitch!”
The woman blanched, but refused to be cowed by the big man. She looked up at Rade. “I’ll show you where she is, but you must promise to take me with you when you go.”
At his nod, she led him out of the room, followed by Keir, who kept his weapon trained on Enak. They walked along the hallway to a set of stone. At the bottom, she led him into a room, then stopped in front of the wall.
“There’s a secret room behind the wall,” she said. “I don’t know how it opens, but Enak threw me in it once.”
Rade quickly holstered his weapon, then pushed and shoved on the wall with his hands, looking for a hidden latch. It wasn’t that hard to find once he knew there was an entrance, and within a few moments, he pulled back a heavy door.
He expected Laken to run into his arms the moment he opened the door, but the room was empty. He frowned, about to ask the girl if she knew of anywhere else Laken could be when he spotted the opening in the wall. Although it was too small for a man his size to squeeze through, it was big enough for Laken to slip out easily.
Swearing under his breath, he turned on his heel and strode back to where Keir was standing with Enak.
“She pried off some boards and escaped, but she can’t have gotten far,” Rade told Keir. “Tell the others we’ll need to split up and start searching for her.”
Enak laughed. “It won’t help. You’ll never get her now. The moment she stepped out of this house, she became a runaway slave. And when she’s caught, the little bitch will be praying for the tender mercies I would have shown her.”
Chapter Seven
Rade shoved Enak up against the wall. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Enak gave him a smug smile, but didn’t say anything. Rade thrust his pistol into the man’s stomach.
“Talk or I’ll shoot you right now, so help me,” he growled.
But it was the blond girl who answered. “This entire planet was designed to support legal slavery,” she explained. “There are automated systems throughout the city that will identify Laken as a runaway. They implanted a chip under her skin the moment she got to the spaceport. In order to leave the master’s home, a slave’s chip has to be coded with an electronic permission. Because she went out without one, she will be discovered and picked up almost immediately, then taken to the Detention Center where she will be punished.”
Enak laughed. “And your girlfriend won’t be so pretty when they get done with her, I can assure you.”
The words made Rade’s gut clench and he swore under his breath. Couldn’t that girl ever make anything easy on him? If she had just stayed put for a few more minutes, he would have her and they’d be on their way. Even when she wasn’t trying, she was a pain in his ass.
Rade shoved Enak toward Keir, then reached for the com on his belt and opened a link to his ship. “Dev, I need you to get me a location on the city’s closest Detention Center.”
The blond-haired girl put a hand on his arm. “That will take too long and we have no time to waste. Detention Centers are notorious for dealing with runaways quickly. I can take you there, but we have to leave right now to get there in time. Do you still swear you will take me with you when you leave Yerel? If you do not, Enak will kill me for sure.”
Rade glanced at Enak and saw the truth of it in the man’s eyes. As much as he didn’t need another problem on board his ship right now, he knew he couldn’t leave the girl behind. He gave her a nod. “You have my word.”
She let out a sigh of relief. “First, we must get something from him,” she said, looking at Enak.
* * * * *
Laken couldn’t believe she had managed to escape from Enak. She had expected the guards to come after her the moment she’d slipped out, but they hadn’t. She hoped that meant they hadn’t discovered she was missing yet. Just to be on the safe side, though, she mostly kept to back streets and alleys. As uneasy as that made her, she was more frightened of Enak’s guards finding her than of anyone she met on the streets.
She wasn’t so sure of that when a man stepped out of the shadows to block her path a few minutes later. Deciding it would be best
to ignore him, she lowered her head and made as if to sidestep him, but he cut her off. Swallowing hard, she lifted her head to look at him. In the dim light of the street lantern, she couldn’t see the man very well, but she saw enough to make her afraid of him.
Heart hammering in her chest, she tried to step around him again, but again, he stepped in front of her. Laken nervously took a step back. There was no way she was going to be able to get around him. Eyeing him warily, she took another cautious step back, then turned to run. The man must have expected her to do just that because he was on her before she could take more than two steps. Grabbing her arm, he flung her back against the wall of a building and trapped her there with his body.
“Now, where you goin’ in such a hurry?”
His voice was raspy, his breath hot and sour smelling. Laken drew in a breath to scream, but he clamped a hand roughly over her mouth. Leaning in close, he brushed his lips against her cheek.
“Pretty girl like you walking down an alley like this in the middle of the night means you can only be looking for one of two things. Sex or drugs. And I’m just the man who can give you both.”
Laken struggled against him, but the man only forced her back against the stone wall again and pushed up her short skirt. She let out a muffled scream as his free hand found her bare leg.
Just then, she heard a loud wailing coming from the end of the alley. The man holding her tensed and lifted his head, indecision on his face. Then his grip loosened and he let her go. Whirling, he raced down the alley in the opposite direction.
Laken sagged against the wall, relief coursing through her as she saw two men in uniform running toward her.
“Thank you...” she began, only to stop in mid-sentence when she saw that they had their weapons pointed at her.
“Stop where you are!” one of them ordered. “You’re under arrest.”
Laken stared at them in confusion. “Me? That man just tried to attack me. He’s the one you should be arresting.”
But the officers didn’t even look in the direction the man had gone. Instead, one of them kept his gun aimed at her, while the other took a pair of handcuffs off his belt. She eyed him warily as he moved toward her.
“You can’t arrest me. I haven’t done anything.”
The man with the handcuffs continued to approach her. “According to our computers, you are not properly coded to be outside of your present domicile. Additionally, this is a restricted area that you would never have authority to be in. Those are two felony counts. In accordance with Section N of Codified Yerel Law, you will be taken to the Detention Center for punishment.”
Her eyes widened. Properly coded? Detention Center? Punishment? What was he talking about?
“Wait, you can’t...” she protested, but the officer was already securing her hands behind her back. “You can’t do this to me. I’m not a slave. I was kidnapped and brought here against my will.”
Neither officer paid any attention to her. The one who had handcuffed her dragged her to the security transport while his partner took out his com out and reported that they had picked up a runaway.
Laken felt tears start in her eyes and she blinked them away as they shoved her into the back of the transport and locked the door. She had to stay calm. She would simply prove to them who she was. But how was she going to do that? She had no ident-card. Even if Rade hadn’t taken it from her purse that first night on his ship, Enak certainly would have. Besides, she didn’t think anyone here would really care who she was. As Pammay had said, this was a slave planet. Everyone had been brought here against their will.
After a short trip, with several other stops in which more people were thrown into the vehicle with her, the transport came to a stop outside a huge, gray building. The security officer immediately dragged her and the others out of the transport and took them inside. The interior of the building was just as plain, with white walls and institutional-looking furniture. As the officers led them down a brightly-lit hallway, Laken felt her eyes burn with fresh tears. Dammit, why hadn’t she just stayed on Rade’s ship where she was safe?
Coming to a stop in front of a room, the officers opened the double doors, then herded her and the other prisoners inside. A black-robed man sat behind a huge desk at the front of the room. Armed guards stood to either side of him, eyeing the prisoners as if they were animals in a slaughterhouse.
Laken turned to the security officer who had handcuffed her earlier. “You’re making a mistake. I’m not a runaway slave. I’m the daughter of a Federation merchant…”
The man turned hard eyes on her. “One more word out of you and you will be beaten. Is that understood?”
Laken opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it again as the man’s brows drew together. Something told her that he would make good on his threat if she disobeyed his order.
“Next!”
She jumped, startled by the gruff-sounding voice. Craning her neck to see around the man ahead of her, she watched as the other security officer dragged one of the prisoners forward to stand before the black-robed man.
“I found him in Sector 2A,” the officer said, referring to the handcuffed slave. “Improper code.”
The man seated at the desk regarded the slave impassively for a moment, then look at the handful of people sitting before him. “Do any of you lay claim to this slave?”
No one answered.
Laken held her breath, waiting to see if the magistrate would ask the slave if he had anything to say in his own defense. Seeing the way things were run there, though, she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t.
“Then in accordance with Section N, subparagraph 2.a, you will be punished for your crime in the manner prescribed and marked as a runaway for everyone to see. Let us hope you learn from this and change your unlawful ways.” The magistrate nodded to the officer. “Take him away.”
Laken watched as the security officer dragged the protesting slave across the room to where two more officers stood. The man who had been escorting the slave forced him to his knees and held him there while one of the others grasped the man’s hair and forced his head back. The third officer came around to stand in front of the slave. He held a metal rod in his hand with some sort of symbol on the end that glowed orange with the flick of a switch. She stared at in confusion, wondering what they were going to do to the slave, only to gasp in horror as the officer pressed the heated metal to the slave’s cheek.
The slave didn’t cry out, or even flinch. Instead, he clenched his jaw and glared up at the officers with hate in his eyes as the brand seared his skin.
When it was over, and the security officer dragged the man out the side door.
“Next!” the black-robed man called.
Laken stared down at the floor, her stomach churning as they dragged another slave forward. So, this was what Pammay had meant when she’d said that what would happen to them if they escaped from Enak would be worse than what he would do.
Unlike the first slave, the second one screamed when they branded him. This time, Laken didn’t watch.
“Next!”
One by one, the officers dragged each slave forward to stand before the man in the black robes. Some of the slaves were stoic like the first one had been, while others screamed and fought with everything in them. But it did no good. They all got branded.
“Next!”
The security officer beside Laken grabbed her arm gave it a sharp tug, jerking her forward so fast she almost fell.
“I found her in an alley in Sector B5,” the officer said. “In addition to being in an off-limits area, she had no permission code.”
Laken swallowed hard and lifted her head to look at the man behind the desk. If she tried to tell him she wasn’t a slave, her words would only fall on deaf ears. So, she said the first thing that came to mind. “It’s not my fault,” she said, ignoring the officer beside her as he tried to shush her. “M-my master asked me to run an errand for him. I-I am new and didn’t know I needed a per
mission code. I just wanted to serve him quickly, so I went without question.”
She felt sick just saying the words, She only hoped they sounded obsequious enough.
The man regarded her shrewdly. “Who is your master, slave? If he corroborates your story and tells us you were running an errand for him, then I will certainly take that into account.”
Laken hesitated. Enak would never back up her story. On the contrary, he would probably take great pleasure in seeing her get branded.
“Slave?” the man prompted when she didn’t answer.
She chewed on her lower lip, wondering if she should make up a name.
“You try my patience, slave!” the black-robed man said. “In accordance with Section N, subparagraph 2.a, you will be punished for your crime in the manner prescribed and marked as a runaway for everyone to see. Let us hope you will learn from this and change your unlawful ways. Take her away.”