Prison Princess

by Huss, JA

  “Open your eyes, Brigit,” the voice says. “Please. We don’t have much time.”

  “They are open,” I say.

  “No. They’re not. You’re asleep, Brigit. You’re still asleep. But you can wake up now. It’s OK. I’m here.”

  There is a tug of war going on inside me as I process what he just said. I’m asleep. That’s why I feel like my eyes are closed. I’m dreaming—

  And then I’m awake.

  The world is blurry and moving weird. Out of focus and swaying back and forth.

  A shape in front of me. A man, I realize. The man who owns that voice.

  For a moment I can’t quite figure out if I’m lying down or standing up. Because he’s bending over me. Or leaning in close to me, one of the two. And he’s blocking out everything else, which might be a ceiling or the inside of a ship.

  I shake my head. Try to bring my hand up to my eyes to rub them, but I am unable to move and then a sharp pain fills my body, making me jerk and stutter.

  “You have restraints,” the man says. “For your own protection.”

  My mind floods with questions. So many questions. Who are you? Where am I?

  And even… Who am I?

  Because I don’t know. Brigit. OK. Yes. I know I’m Brigit. But… there’s a big, empty black hole where all the other information should be.

  “I need to ask you some questions,” the man says.

  “I don’t know.”

  There’s a pause. Then he says, “I haven’t asked you anything yet, Brigit.”

  “I know, but… there’s just a big gray nothing inside me.”

  “That’s normal. I’ve given you some…” He pauses to think. Like he’s trying to find the right word to explain what he’s given me. But he must decide not to bother, because the next thing he says is, “You won’t be able to think clearly until I ask you things. Then it should come back.”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “I’m sorry to wake you up like this. I wish I didn’t have to, but… it’s a necessary precaution. You’ve been… missing. For a very long time. And I need to know where you’ve been and who you were with.”

  “No one,” I say.

  “Shhhh,” he says. “Only talk when I ask you a question. Once I get the answers I need, we’ll start the real wake-up procedure.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Where have you been, Brigit?” He doesn’t even acknowledge my question. Just starts the… interrogation. That’s what this is. I’m being questioned. “Answer me, please.”

  “I’ve been… at home.”

  “No, Brigit. You were inside a virtual reality. But how did you get there?”

  Get there? I’m so confused. “Was I ever anywhere else?”

  He sighs. Like he’s frustrated.

  I blink my eyes a few more times, trying to make the blurriness go away. And it does, a little.

  His shadowy shape changes form slightly. At first his limbs were all elongated and spindly, like I was looking through a weirdly focused lens. But a few more blinks and his limbs shorten into a regular length and his face begins to resolve.

  He’s young-ish. Not a boy, not an older man. Blond hair, violet eyes, and a crooked mouth that shows no teeth. The corners of his lips are turned up just a little bit, but I’m not sure I would call that a smile.

  But here’s the weird part. He’s standing up. Kind of bending at the waist. And he’s leaning in towards me so his face takes up most of my field of vision.

  I am upright, I decide. Not lying down.

  “Well… there you are.” His lips form a more pleasant smile as he reaches for my face and there’s a weird, cold sensation as he drags his fingertips down my… cheek? “Can you feel that?”

  I want to shudder from the way he just made me feel. But I don’t seem to be able to move.

  He snaps his fingers. “Pay attention to me. I need you to focus, Brigit. Things have gone terribly wrong with the plan. I didn’t know you were in there. I swear, I didn’t know. And I have no idea how it happened. But it’s OK now. I’ve got you back and you’re going to be OK.”

  “What are you talking about?” I jerk again, trying to get free of the restraints. But they are total and complete. I can’t move at all.

  “Just tell me who put you there.”

  “Where?”

  “The virtual, Brigit. You were inside some virtual. And it’s gone now. Where did it go? Who has it? What were you doing?”

  “Who are you?” I ask. And now everything inside me is going wrong. I feel… wrong. Off. Like… I don’t know. Like…

  “I’m Draden, Brigit. Don’t you remember me?”

  “Draden?” I ask. I know that name. It feels so familiar. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Please,” he says. And he’s leaning so close to me I want to pull away. Move backwards. But I can’t. I can’t move at all. And then I try to look down, but there’s nothing there. Well, there are things there. But… no body. There’s a console, and a screen table with lots of flashing lights and animations of gate maps.

  I gasp. “Where am I? Where’s my body? What the fuck? What the fuck am I?”

  He pulls away from me, grabbing his head of blond hair and turns around. “What did they do?” he asks. “What the fuck did they do to you?”

  “Who?” I’m so desperate to know the answer to this. “Who are you talking about? What the fuck is—”

  But then he turns again, reaching for my face. Or… no. Off to the side and then…

  And then I go dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - TRAY

  “I have to tell you something.”

  We’re waiting on Brigit to thaw out. Such a crude, disgusting way to put it. Like she’s some bag of autocook nutrients that needs to be taken out of the freezer.

  “What?” Valor asks, looking over his shoulder.

  I’m sitting at the console he was at previously and now he’s leaning over the pod, both hands flat, just staring down at her faceplate readout.

  I look down at my hands in my lap, each making a fist, then opening, then making a fist again. I take a deep breath and say, “I saw Draden inside the virtual. When I first went in and got lost in the old world, I saw Draden. And he was”—Valor has turned all the way around when I look back up, his face unreadable—“he was confused.”

  “Draden is dead, Tray.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, yeah. He is. That body is gone. But he’s like… me.”

  “Like you?”

  I nod.

  “Like… just a mind?” Valor asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, feeling relief. “Yeah,” I say again. “That’s what I am. I’m a mind. You know, everyone knows, that I was changed back on Wayward. My father did that to me. And I kinda thought I understood it all these years. I kinda thought I did.”

  Valor walks over to me and takes a seat at a console nearby.

  “But I’m not sure I really do, Valor. I’m not really sure what I am anymore. I think I’m something different now. Something has changed and I don’t know what it is. Worse, I don’t know… if it’s right anymore.”

  When I finally get those last few words out I have an almost overwhelming feeling of vulnerability.

  “Because,” I continue. “Because this…” I wave my hand in the air, trying to convey what I’m referring to. But the problem is, I’m not really sure what I’m referring to. “This doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel as real as the virtual.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t doubt yourself now, Tray. It’s a waste of energy. I know, because I spent most of my youth filled with doubts. And you know I love Luck. I love him more than anyone in this entire universe. But being around Luck was hard. You know? He was always in charge. Not like my boss or anything like that. Just in charge of himself. And our goals. And he always knew what he wanted. Leaving him behind was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done some pretty diffic
ult things for ALCOR over the years. All of them scary, all of them dangerous, all of them required me to rise up and push harder. But letting go of Luck was harder than all of that. I’m not going to lie and say I’m over it. Because I’m not. I will always crave him, but it was time to be myself for once, you know? And now it’s time for you to just be you too.”

  This is my problem, I think. I’m not sure I want to be me. I want Brigit and now I want Valor too. But… something is wrong.

  What’s that? What is it?

  I don’t know.

  “So just be you, dude,” Valor says. “Just embrace it. You can’t change who you are. And you’re good at being you. There is no other you, Tray. One in a fuckin’ million. Am I making sense?”

  “You are.” I sigh. I have always known that Valor struggles with self-doubt. And I could tell that something was going on with him and Luck when he started hanging out with me back on Harem. I didn’t understand it back then.

  But I should have.

  This is also part of my problem right now.

  I am undoubtedly the smartest of all of us. I was the one who got ALCOR connected to the galactic web. I got the Pleasure Prison up and running. And the air screens. I’m the one who figured out that the disconnect between virtual time and real time isn’t really two different things, they just appear to be. I’m the one who came up with this plan to save Brigit. I got Valor to go along with it.

  Except… that plan I had. It’s all fuzzy now. Like that hazy gray fog when I first went inside the virtual to find them.

  Something is missing.

  This has also been a problem for me. For a very long time now. So long, I don’t think I realized how big of a problem until this very moment.

  Something has changed and even though my only real job in this life is to figure shit out, I can’t figure it out.

  I miss things. Like… miss things as if they’re not there. Not happening. Like the stock characters inside the old virtual world I made for Brigit. Most of them couldn’t even see me. I wasn’t there. And the ones who could weren’t able to think too hard about me.

  I did that on purpose to make sure Brigit’s world didn’t have too many bumps. It was smooth and easy for her.

  And now that I’m thinking about it, that’s how my life has felt up until now. I only saw certain things and others I missed completely.

  Big things, like… two of my brothers by choice were in love and then a soulmate princess comes along, out of nowhere, and everything about them changes.

  How did I not see it?

  I didn’t miss this kind of stuff inside our virtual. I saw it all. Everything made sense. I felt connected to Valor in a way I’m not sure I do out here.

  I knew when he was down. I knew when he was up. I knew when he wanted me to touch him, or kiss him, or just… look at him. And I told myself that this was because we’d been together so long. This was just the product of experience. Of being together. Of existing in our own private world, and building it up from almost nothing, and making it work with Brigit.

  I just knew Valor. Every part of him. And the reason I feel different on the outside is maybe just because of stress. The war. The people we left behind. The things that have yet to come.

  But I don’t think that’s it.

  There’s something wrong with me out here. I’m not right.

  “Can I tell you something?” Valor asks.

  When I look up and we lock eyes, his are that brilliant, bright violet color that only he has. They crackle a little with emotions. All the colors of purple are in there and a little bit of white too. I know those eyes so well. I can look at him and feel what he feels.

  Or I could. I thought I could. But now I don’t know.

  What is he feeling? Excitement, maybe? Or fear?

  “Sure,” I say. “You can tell me anything. You know that.”

  “I feel weird out here too.”

  “You do?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s almost… too much. You know?”

  I nod my head, agreeing.

  “It’s overwhelming and my first instinct is that I want to go back in.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I feel that way too.”

  “We feel that way because we were in control in there. Every bit of it was under our control. And out here?” He waves his hand in the air. “Out here we’re just not, dude. We have no control over any of it. And even though it was pretty easy to forget what the fuck was happening out here, and we surely didn’t miss much since it’s only been four actual days since we left Harem, it feels very far away and inconsequential.”

  I nod my agreement.

  “But it’s not, Tray. It’s not. It’s very up close and personal. It matters. Out here… everything matters.”

  “I know that,” I say. “I fucking know that. But inside there matters too. And Draden—”

  “There is no Draden, Tray.” He squeezes my leg and this makes me look down at his hand. And when I look back up and meet his gaze, he whispers, “He’s gone. You’re just afraid right now.”

  “That’s true,” I say. “I’m not going to lie. I am afraid. I think I’ve been afraid this whole time. Because I didn’t want to admit that… that… I’m gone too. I’ve been gone a long time, Valor. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “That’s OK,” he says, leaning forward. I cannot take my eyes off him as he does this. I cannot not see him. “Because I do. I know exactly who you are.”

  He kisses me. And then I can’t keep my eyes open. I can’t hold his gaze. Not because I don’t want to, but because he feels so good. So right. So much a part of me. I just want to blind myself to everything that’s happening, everything that’s coming, and all the ways we’re going to lose.

  Because we are going to lose. There’s always a tradeoff. Coming out here means we accept that. He’s a lot like Luck in this regard because Luck wanted to pretend that Nyleena wasn’t his future.

  And she is.

  Veila is Valor’s future. Not Brigit and me. Her.

  This is the real problem. This is my real fear.

  I’m going to lose Valor. It’s been predetermined. It’s a fact.

  And I don’t want to accept it. I just want to forget about everything, and everyone, and just… kiss him back.

  He stands up and I stand with him, unable and unwilling to break our connection. His tongue twists up with mine and when he pushes me back against the console and presses his chest up against me, my cock grows hard and thick.

  His hand reaches for it. Like he knows me so well, he understand what his touch can do to me. He can predict me and what I want.

  This isn’t the first time we’ve been together without Brigit, but it could be the last. So I reach for his cock too. I unbuckle his belt and pull on his pants until I have his thick, hard shaft in the palm of my hand. He’s working my belt now too. We’re still kissing, my eyes still closed, and when he finally frees my cock and has it in his hand, I sigh into that kiss.

  I think that sigh says everything.

  “We’re going to be OK,” Valor promises.

  But he can’t really promise that. And we both know it’s a lie.

  Valor pulls back, sensing my conflicting emotions.

  I’m gonna lose that too. And suddenly I’m filled with feelings. They flood through my body and make everything charged and on edge. It’s something new for me. Something more real than the real.

  Fear. This new feeling is fear.

  I open my eyes to find him staring at me, small, sad smile on his face. We don’t say anything, our hands still working each other’s cocks. His thumb plays with the tip of my head, drawing out small beads of liquid that get smeared around with just a few caresses of the side of his thumb.

  I close my eyes again, enjoying the way he feels and the way he makes me feel, my hand working his dick just the way he likes it. Reaching down for his balls, my fingers playing with his hidden second cock just above them. Before I started having sex with Valor I didn’
t even know that this was an erotic zone for Akeelian males. I had no clue that just the right amount of pressure in just the right spot over the top of the second cock while it was still inside me could ignite a flame of lust inside me.

  He taught me that. He understood my body and my desires better than I did.

  My thumb keeps pressure on that sweet spot of his as my fingers find his balls and rub the soft skin in front of his asshole.

  Valor moans, kissing me as I explore between his legs. My other hand is still jerking his cock and my rhythm quickens. Pumping faster, squeezing harder, rubbing his pre-release all over the round, swollen tip of his cock.

  He bites my lip and in the same instant his other hand reaches up and grabs my hair. I open my eyes to look at him. To see what’s behind this unexpected new twist. And for the first time, maybe, I see not what Valor was before this moment. But who he is right now.

  Who he has become since we left Harem Station four days ago.

  Powerful. In control. Absolutely certain of his place in the world.

  Absolutely certain that we belong together.

  And I’m jealous. I’m so fucking jealous of him. Because that was me, before… this. Before him. Before we stacked lives, upon lives, upon lives inside the safe world we created only for ourselves. Before we checked out of the real world and made a virtual fantasy our real home.

  “I don’t know if I can handle it,” I whisper into our kiss.

  His mouth punishes me for this. His kiss turns hard and demanding. His grip on my hair, tighter. “Come in my hand,” he demands. “Come in my hand and give me that second cock.”

  There’s no way I can’t come. I would do anything he asks. Hot semen fills his hand and mine at the exact same moment. And then we both pause. We go still and stiff as our second cocks emerge from hiding.

  There is no way to describe the feeling of a quickly hardening second cock. My whole body floods with pleasure. Because in one fleeting moment I am coming and getting hard and ready again.

  It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt. So many feelings…

  Valor’s hand instantaneously adjusts. He fists them both and I break off the punishing kiss to glance down, my two fat cocks in his hand as he jerks and tugs on them, his chest rising and falling with a ragged, shallow rhythm.