by Sean Danker
Buying and selling real people was a terribly inefficient way to go about getting a sexual experience, even a particularly specific one.
Salmagard could see it now. This industry wasn’t really about sex; it was about ego. Ownership was just the ultimate way for people to assert themselves over others. And nothing showcased domination like absolute control.
None of this was actually about sex; sex just seemed to be the form it took. Salmagard had believed she understood what Alice Everly had tried to tell her. She’d been wrong. Comprehension was only now beginning to dawn on her.
“We’d like to see both,” Salmagard said.
“Good decision,” Steph said. “You can always negotiate. If you find someone you want who’s tier one, you can talk to him before you buy and work something out. Then you just submit a proposal to his broker with the new terms. You know, same drill. Cut his time down, and he’ll agree to go to tier two. Then you’ve got him. Most of them are willing to negotiate. Very rare that you have a tier one who won’t go to tier two for the right price, especially for buyers like you two. You have preferences for your Evagardian men? Age?”
“Twenties,” Diana said.
“All right. See? Only a few dozen of them in the system right now—half of them are gone already. These are locked for VIP bidders with line priority. Okay.” Steph spun the hologram. “See anything you like?”
Together, Diana and Salmagard looked up at the grid of faces in front of them.
They leapt to their feet at the same instant. Relief flooded through Salmagard as Diana threw her arms around her, squeezing her much more tightly than was comfortable.
“Oh, Empress!” Diana said.
“Those two.” Salmagard gasped, pointing. “We need those two. How much?”
Steph, obviously taken aback by their exuberance, leaned across the desk to look.
“Aw,” she said. “Too bad. Those two have already sold.”
Diana and Salmagard froze.
“What?”
“See that symbol? They’re already bought and paid for. Maybe you can place a bid with their new owner,” she said quickly, seeing their faces fall.
“Yes,” Salmagard said, mouth suddenly dry. “Yes, we’d like to do that.”
“Let me see.” Steph dissolved the hologram and sat down, pulling her chair to the desk and turning to her console. “No. Sorry. They’re already off the station, and the buyer’s anonymous. It usually is. But don’t worry,” she added. “There’s plenty more where they came from.”
A sudden pounding on the door startled all three of them. It was pretty fierce to get through the sound buffering.
There wasn’t time to do or say anything. Steph just hit a release on the desk, and the door opened. Men and women in armor flooded into the small room so quickly that even if Salmagard had wanted to fight back, there wouldn’t have been much she could do. They all had weapons drawn. Gloved hands roughly seized Diana and Salmagard, hauling them to their feet. Salmagard’s arms were pulled back, and she felt control cuffs lock into place to restrain her.
“Station security. You’re under arrest,” the lead officer said, jamming a stunner into Salmagard’s neck.
15
I felt my body jolt, and I instinctively put my hands out as the hiss of the breaking seal filled my ears. The canopy was opening, but too slowly. I pushed against it, tasting blood in my mouth and choking.
I toppled out of the sleeper, and the deck beneath me wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t deck at all. It was ground. It wasn’t metal or polymer; it was something else, and it was freezing. I rolled onto my back, my head pounding.
My wrist blurred and doubled in front of my eyes. I didn’t feel up to this, but if I didn’t go through with it, I had about thirty seconds to live.
I brought my wrist to my mouth, tested, then bit. The capsule embedded beneath the skin came free, and I used the last of my strength to throw my head back and swallow it.
Then I sagged to the ground. That was the best I could do. My wrist was bleeding, but that was the least of my problems. I kept my eyes shut, content just to lie there. I didn’t know where I was, and though I was completely helpless to anyone who might come along, that just wasn’t the issue.
When I’d seen that our new owners intended to put us in sleepers, I’d used my implanted suicide capsule. Its effects were slowed by forced sleep, but not halted. Just as planned, the sleeper noticed the medical emergency and spit me out, leaving me free to take the reversal pill in my wrist. This was my chance.
But the sleeper would also notify my captors that I needed medical attention, so I couldn’t just lie around. The last thing my body needed was more poison, but I hadn’t seen another option.
The strategy of playing along and building trust as an escape plan was potentially workable, but it was also the one any illegal buyer would be looking for. It wasn’t a sure thing, and I didn’t have the luxury of time. I preferred to strike first, and ideally I wanted to hit hard enough that I wouldn’t have to hit a second time.
I was no longer wearing control cuffs. I couldn’t feel my fingertips, but I had the use of my hands. It was a start.
I sat up and looked around. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Stone walls? No. Not stone, stones. Stones held together with mortar. The floor was wood. Real wood, by the feel of it.
There was Sei’s sleeper, standing beside mine.
There was nothing else to see. The chamber was small and bare, lit only by a fixture on the wall that was trying to simulate an actual flame.
I picked myself up. There was no sign of my clothes. Obviously being weak, sick, and captive in a strange place wasn’t enough. I had to be naked too. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I considered the sleeper models. It was perfectly safe to let people wear undergarments in these. I wondered what our new owners were thinking.
I went to Sei’s sleeper and initiated his wake-up, then staggered to the door and pressed my ear to it, listening. I couldn’t hear anything, but the door looked like serious, very heavy wood. It had a big metal handle and several locks, all accessible from this side.
Sei’s seal broke, and I hurried back to catch him before he fell out. Sleepers were designed to be kept upright so people wouldn’t suffocate if something was out of balance and there was gravity in play. They were also designed to keep you from falling out, but people were always too keen as they awoke, and they’d fall out despite the unit’s best efforts. That was just a fact of life, and the main reason that proper, respectable sleeper bays had padded floors and safety straps.
Sei pulled in a long, shuddering breath, clinging to me. He wasn’t sick, but he was having a bad wake-up. I held him up until he was strong enough to stand.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking around blearily.
“We’re making our move,” I told him, watching the door.
“We are?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we?”
“That’s what I want to know,” I said, reaching out to touch the door. Sei pulled free of me to stand on his own.
I tested the first lock curiously, twisting the knob. I’d never actually touched anything like this before. I’d seen dramas. I’d studied history. I understood the concept.
Something slid out of place. I tried the next lock, then undid the chain.
“Are we planetside?” Sei asked, reaching out toward the artificial flame. He drew his hand back quickly. “That’s real,” he said.
“What?”
“I said it’s real. Empress, that’s hot.”
“Feels like planet gravity,” I told him, closing my eyes and thinking about it. “Can’t say which, though.”
Sei rubbed the stones of the wall. “I’ve never seen anything like this, except in dramas.”
“Me neither.” I opened t
he door, revealing a short corridor leading to a staircase. It wasn’t lost on me that no one had come running when we awoke unscheduled, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Considering the location of our storage, the most likely explanation was that the sleepers weren’t set up to report to anyone in the case of a malfunction.
Our new owners were counting on us sleeping peacefully.
There was also the detail that this didn’t feel like normal ship or station gravity. I was running down the list of planets we could be on. Old Earth sprang to mind, not because of the gravity, but because of the materials on display around us.
But how could we be there? That would mean we’d been bought by imperials. Imperials who, rather than set us free, put us to sleep. I wondered how much time had passed and recalled the moment in that hotel room when I realized I’d been recognized.
Who would recognize me? I resembled Dalton, but right now I was wearing my own face—or my face as it would look at my current age. The last time I’d seen my own face I’d still been a teenager. Records of my old face were mostly gone by now, purged by people trying to control the narrative of what had happened to the Ganraen capital station.
Who knew me? There were people from my life before the war, but they didn’t know what I’d been up to. They all thought I was dead.
Who knew the whole truth? Not very many people. But there were a few people left in Evagardian Intelligence who thought they did. Perhaps a few in the government as well.
People who liked to shop for humans through proxies at the Bazaar? Well, corruption had been around for a long time. No reason to think it was going anywhere.
I thought it over. It wasn’t implausible. Evagardians loved their deniability. Turning their own people into tools was common practice. Imperials liked to keep things clean when they could.
I knew all about that.
But Old Earth wasn’t the only option, and that meant that we hadn’t necessarily been bought by imperials. There were lots of small colonies, and some not so small, that had settled on Earth-like planets but forsaken modern technology. There were dozens of them, all living in the past to different degrees for their own reasons.
Looking at the stone walls and floor, and the actual fire being used to light the space, I couldn’t help but think about those sorts of places. I’d heard that Evagardians regularly joined such colonies and communes. A few of them had even been founded by imperials out of a desire to get back to a simpler time.
I’d always thought that sort of thing sounded interesting, even appealing. But only for a holiday. I would always want to be able to get back to civilization. A romantic weekend in a rustic little novelty colony? I could think of worse things.
Sei and I reached the top of the stairs, where another door was closed and locked.
I listened again, but there was nothing to hear. I looked at Sei.
“Can you think of a reason we shouldn’t just go for it?” I asked.
“Might be better to wait and get the jump on someone,” he said. “We’re going out there blind.”
He was right. I rubbed at my temples, but I knew this headache wasn’t going away until I could get my antidote. “But who knows how long they were going to keep us down there? Could be a long time before anyone shows up. If they show up.”
“How’d you wake us?”
“I’m detoxing. Don’t ask. The sleeper picked it up and spat me out.”
Sei nodded. “That’s a stroke of luck.”
“But I’m not healthy. If we do run into trouble and get physical, I’m looking at you. I’m not big on fighting.”
“No problem.” Sei cracked his knuckles. “I’ve got you covered. So we’re doing it?”
“I think so. Maybe we can find some clothes.”
“That wouldn’t hurt.”
I undid the locks and eased the door open, pulling back and wincing from the bright light. It took me a moment to realize it was sunlight.
Incredulous, I pushed the door wide open, staring. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was seeing; it was that I was having some trouble accepting it.
We were in the countryside. There was no other way to look at it. Green grass. Blue sky.
Gravestones.
Here was something else I’d seen only in dramas: burying the dead in the ground and marking the site. It had been centuries since that had been a common practice in the Empire. There were probably some people out there who still did it—well, there obviously were. They were right in front of us.
There was no one in sight. I took in the rolling hills, dotted with trees. There was a nice breeze, and it was warm, though not so warm that I didn’t want clothes.
“Empress,” Sei murmured beside me.
I looked around for a moment, then emerged from the doorway, turning to look up at the structure we’d be placed in.
It was a mausoleum. How appropriate.
“That’s supposed to be a place for the dead, right?” Sei asked, squinting at it. It wasn’t elaborate, but there were some artistic touches, including a stone carving of a winged child decorating the crest of the roof.
“I think so,” I replied.
Sort of an odd place to leave a pair of sleepers containing living men unattended, wasn’t it? I turned in a circle, looking around suspiciously. Fluffy white clouds drifted overhead, and a breeze blew just hard enough to make me break out in gooseflesh.
Sei padded over to the nearest headstone and took a look.
“Edward Softly,” he read aloud. “AD 1890 to 1937. Before the calendar changed. Before the Unification?”
“Quite a bit before.” I took a look at the grave marker closest to me. “Humphrey Littlewit. AD 1890 to 1937. Same as yours.”
“You heard of these guys?”
I shook my head. “No. I only know the Old Earth people that everyone else does. Shakespeare. Jesus. The Duchess. That’s about it. And who’s to say these guys are important? They could just be locals.”
“Yeah.” Sei ran his hand through his hair, gazing around him. “But the dates are the same. Why are they the same? Where is everybody?”
“Good question.” I didn’t mind that we were alone. We were two naked men standing around, looking confused in an archaic graveyard. This wasn’t something people needed to see.
“So where are we?” Sei asked.
I didn’t even have a guess.
16
THE room was rectangular and cramped. Four meters by three. There were a table and three chairs. The walls and floor were smooth carbon. There was a mirrored strip at eye level that ringed the chamber. Surveillance. A biohazard sensor and a decon cream dispenser.
“I’m hungry,” Diana complained, pacing restlessly. It was about the fourth time she’d said that.
Salmagard sat at the table with her face in her hands. Every minute was crucial, and they’d been there for hours already.
The Admiral was off the station, in transit; maybe he’d already reached wherever his buyer was taking him. Now the GRs really were his best hope.
Salmagard had her breath back, but that was all. She had nothing to fall back on. All her good sense, everything she was supposed to know, had been pushed aside—all to get him back. If she just could have done that, she wouldn’t have cared what the consequences were.
The door opened, and a lean man around forty entered, wearing business clothes with an armored vest. The holster at his hip was empty, and he had a big reader under his arm.
“Ladies,” he said, sealing the door behind him. “You look like you’ve had a long one. I’m here to tell you where you stand.” He loosened his collar, gesturing for Diana to sit.
She took the seat beside Salmagard, looking nervous. The man in the vest sat down across from them.
“We’ve positively identified you as imperial citizens, so don’t worry. We’re
going to keep you comfortable. As things are right now, you’re guilty of being here without codes, and also of crashing a shuttle into a maintenance bay. I’m not actually sure what regulations that breaks . . . I guess it depends how we spin it.” He shrugged. “We could call it criminal trespass, maybe even an attempted terrorist attack, but we do know that you were being pursued and fired on, so I don’t think that’s likely. We could just call it an accident. Either way, you’re looking at some fines and maybe even some confinement. They aren’t the most serious charges, but it’s not a joke. I know you imperials think everyone outside your systems are lawless savages, but that’s not the case. We do have laws. And there are consequences for breaking them.”
He leaned back and folded his arms. “And what I mean to say is that’s what you would be looking at if the patrollers weren’t so interested in you. Apparently, you’re wanted in connection to an incident at a gaming establishment just outside Bazaar space, and that, if I’m reading this correctly, involved some small-arms fire and serious property damage. To the effect of . . . ten million credits.”
Diana balked, and Salmagard nudged her in the ribs before she could say anything.
The man watched them.
“That probably includes anticipated legal fees. I foresee some litigation. Anything to say?” he prodded.
“We’ve been the victims of a crime,” Salmagard stated flatly. “We were abducted and separated from our friends. Everything we’ve done has been to find them and get them back.”
She didn’t know how else to say it. It sounded ridiculous. There was nothing to do but try to be succinct. Salmagard felt her temper start to rise, and she stared at the officer, silently challenging him not to believe her.
His brows rose. He looked at his reader, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t reply to that,” he said. “I’m just here to tell you what’s going on. We don’t want you thinking we’re just leaving you in here to sweat, because we’re not. The Bazaar isn’t going to charge you or fine you, because FT Patrol wants you in relation to this other ruckus you caused. So we’re just going to detain you until their guys get here. I’m not interested in a jurisdictional dispute over you. They’re going to take you into custody officially. Right now you’re in an investigatory detention period; we’ve got another six hours before we’re required to charge you. Once Free Trade has custody of you, you’ll be able to properly report anything you believe has happened to you. You’ll also be able to contact the imperial consulate, but by then you’re no longer my problem. If you really were kidnapped, I imagine that’ll help you, but you’re still going to be facing a lot of fines no matter how this shakes out. Damages have to be paid for, and nobody wants to hear excuses.” He didn’t look terribly sympathetic. “That’s where we’re at. I think we’re all just glad no one’s been killed, though apparently you did put some people into care. Do you both understand?”