Page 11 of Meteor Storm

I gave him one last hateful glare, swearing to the old gods that I would shred him with my bare hands at the first chance I got.

Soon. It will be soon.

Turning, I stepped toward the woman. Her eyes met mine and within seconds, she seemed to understand the situation.

“D’you ndrstand me?” she asked softly.

I hesitated, wishing I knew what she was saying. Alas, I only knew a sparse number of human words and none of them would do me any good in that situation. The woman’s gaze passed over the onlookers and then returned to me.

“They wanyou t’fck m’brains out, donthey,” she spoke. “In fronofthm.”

Reading her body language and the way she glared at our audience, I had a hunch she was aware of the predicament she was in. She was smart. She was able to read the room despite everyone in it being alien to her. That much was clear.

Regrettably, I couldn’t offer any comfort.

If she fought, she’d be shocked. If I fought it, she would be shocked.

Her shoulders slumped for a moment and then she took a deep breath as if to center herself. Her neck was no longer just red, but raw and burnt and her body was covered in small scrapes and bruises. Soft skin. She was physically vulnerable. She groaned and shook her head before pushing to her feet.

“Maki fas, wilyu,” she said. “Imnot fuckin’ dying t’day.”

I narrowed my eyes, doing everything to understand her body since I could not understand her words. There wasn’t much time to confirm what I suspected she was saying. Pek-Tol's finger was on the trigger for her collar, waiting.

At my hesitation, the woman shoved her hands into my chest.

“Jst do it!” she snarled.

Pek-Tol, the sadistic bastard, was quick to immobilize her once more with yet another assault from her collar.

The female collapsed to the ground and convulsed for a couple seconds of undeserved misery. It was too much. She was teetering on her last shreds of consciousness when I grabbed her slender ankle and dragged her across the ground and out of the path of a swinging shock stick.

They were going to kill her.

My hand flew up and collided with the guard’s head, sending him flying into the wall. The onlookers clapped as if it was all just theatre.

The remaining guard slammed his shock stick into my back, triggering a fury I hadn’t felt in a long time. My hands balled into fists and I spun, driving my knuckles against the shikari’s ribs. A loud crack and the feeling of his chest caving in said I’d hit him in the right place. He doubled over, dropping his stick, and as soon as his head stooped, I lifted my knee, thrusting it into his skull and snapping two of the hard spikes off the top of his head.

Pek-Tol sent a jolt through my collar, and I growled my way through the pain, kicking the stick across the room and out of the guard’s reach. Just then, two more guards rushed through the door, shock sticks in their holsters and dart guns primed and aimed right at me. I turned to face them, body tensed for a fight, when they fired on me, launching four barbed darts into my chest and abdomen.

The electrical pulse radiating from the darts was nothing like the collar or even the sticks. It was overwhelming, designed for creatures much bigger than I was. Electricity coiled through me and suffocated my muscular control, sending my vision spinning and my body careening to the floor. I hit the stone hard enough to shatter bones and almost immediately, my vision faded into an unwelcome blackness.

6: Penny

The moment I understood what was happening, I knew there was no getting out of that cell without allowing things to happen the way the bastards meant it to.

I wanted to fight. I really did.

With every pulse from that collar, my resolve deteriorated, though. At the very least, the other prisoner seemed unwilling to do what was being demanded of him. It made things marginally easier to accept when I imagined we were both in the same dilemma. I saw him endure multiple hits from his collar as he spoke to the spike-headed creature on the other side of the glass. They were disagreeing. Though I couldn’t understand their language, their mannerisms suggested as much. I watched them trade tense words until finally, my own collar delivered a blow that took me by surprise.

It’s just pain, I used to tell Natascha when we were little.

“They want you to fuck my brains out, don’t they?” I asked, fairly certain I’d hit the nail on the head. “In front of them.”

He didn’t answer, but I didn’t need him to. Sex and violence sold everywhere, apparently. Not just on Earth. Though most of the Earth sex was virtual, there were plenty of underground organizations that weren’t. But I could endure a lot more than people gave me credit for. Looking the man up and down, I trembled at his size, but if death or worse was my only other option, I could power through.

“Make it fast, will you?” I told him, full well knowing he didn’t understand me. “I’m not fucking dying today. Just do it!”

I shoved him, partly to put on a show and partly because I was pissed, but the action was immediately met with punishment. My collar went off and I seized up.