“Yeah. I set the camera feed on a loop.”
I could try and overpower him and take his key card. I could probably manage that. But without knowing more, I’d be playing my only card and, if I get recaptured, I’m screwed.
“Lawrence, what am I doing here? What are they planning on doing with me?” Kait did not have to feign the anxiety in her voice.
Lawrence looked down at the floor. “They uh, they bring women here. About every three or four months. For the passengers.”
“Do you mean they use these women as sex workers?”
“Yeah,” Lawrence said quietly.
“And these women, they aren’t here willingly,” prompted Kait.
“They are at first,” he answered. “They think they’re here as part of their training, to be Pleasure Consorts. They think it’s some special program with the House, for like uh, extra credit or something.” His voice dropped. “But the women, they’re being tricked. They never actually passed the Rites of Admission. They’re just being used, and, when they find out…things get really nasty.”
“How do you know all this?”
“People, they, uh, talk. They talk around me sometimes like I’m not even there. So I hear things.” He paused. “And I had uh, I had a friend before I met you,” he said, blushing. “Another girl.”
“Tell me about this other girl,” Kait encouraged.
Lawrence’s blush deepened. “Her name was Noomi,” he said. “She wanted to be a Pleasure Consort, thought she was training to be a novice. Got sent up here and realized they had lied to her. She was really angry and stopped doing…what they wanted her to, uh, do.”
He shook his head. “Then things got bad. Uh, really bad. She was so nice, and they hurt her.”
“Lawrence,” asked Kait, “where is Noomi now?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “She’s gone, Kait.”
“Dead?” Kait whispered in horror.
Lawrence nodded. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I miss her,” he said softly. “They didn’t have to do that.”
Kait tried to maintain her self-control as she began, “Lawrence?”
He looked up at her.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t want to die,” she said, simply.
“I don’t want you, uh, to die, either, Kait,” he answered.
She locked eyes with him. “If I ask you to help me escape…will you help me?”
Lawrence swallowed. Then, he nodded. “Yes, Kait,” he answered. “Yes, I will,” he repeated, a growing conviction in his voice.
She hugged him fiercely. “Thank you, Lawrence,” she said, crying a little. “Thank you so much.”
He patted her back, a little surer of himself this time. “It’s, uh, gonna be okay, Kait. It’s gonna be okay.”
