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“For how long?”
He takes me by the chin and makes my eyes meet his. “Forever.”
Shah
She looks stunned, poor thing. She thinks she’s nothing, but I know better. She’s everything. There aren’t many workers who break their programming. It’s drummed into them from a very young age. My mother was a worker back when the Colony was first founded, before the so-called worker education programs were instituted. It was more than training. It was brainwashing. Overnight, my mom went from being a genuinely hard-working woman to someone I didn’t know.
I went out on the streets of the Colony to avoid becoming a drone. Dreamy’s younger than I am. She never knew any different. I was given a precious gift - the chance to know what it is like to actually live free. Dreamy has never had that before. I want to give it to her now.
She thinks she’s just another worker drone, and in many ways, she is. She was raised to perform menial, low-level tasks for the duration of her working life, to be grateful for her allowance, and never to complain. But she wasn’t a good little worker drone last night. She was a bad girl for just a moment, and now she’s mine.
“Shah…”
She trails off, uncertain as to what to say.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ve got you. Now. First things first, we’re getting rid of those drone clothes. I’ll get Zeki to dress you. She knows fashion and she sells every style you can imagine.”
Dreamy gives me a blank look, as if there are basically no styles she can imagine. This is going to be a real culture shock for her.
Dreamy
Zeki has two plumes of bright green hair escaping her head, a tattoo of a bird’s skull on the side of her neck, a strappy dress that barely covers, well, anything, and a gigaton of attitude. Her makeup is aggressive and so is her demeanor.
We meet her in Shah’s living room, where I am wearing nothing but a towel after showering off the filth of the night and the hot grime of the sex. I feel very vulnerable in her presence. She’s looking at me in a way that makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.
“This is Dreamy,” Shah introduces me. “She needs something to wear around the ship.”
“What do you want her to look like?” Zeki gives me a critical look. “She’s kind of… blah.”
“Something appropriate formygirl.” Shah enunciates themysuggestively.
“Could I just have a nice dress or something?” I don’t want to look like Zeki, but I don’t want to tell her that to her face. I’m trying not to make enemies on this ship of violent criminals.
“Could I just have a nice dress or something,” Zeki mocks me. Shah smacks her around the head and not gently either. He sends her spinning across the room like a top, clutching at her face.
“You’ll talk to Dreamy with respect,” he says. “Or I’ll have you whipped and put off the ship.”
“Fucking asshole,” Zeki curses. I’m surprised she has the nerve given how hard he just cuffed her. If he hit me like that, I’m not sure I’d survive it, emotionally or physically.
He stands over her, open palm casually hanging at his waist, ready to deploy again.
“You going to behave yourself? Or not?”
“Yeah. God. Fuck,” she curses. “Fucking… I’ll go pull some items.”
She gets up and leaves the room, not looking either one of us in the eye, and with a lot less sass than she strutted in with. I vacillate between feeling sorry for her and being pretty sure she got exactly what she deserved.
“She’s a good girl,” he says. “Just needs a firm hand.”
“Is that your thing, giving women firm… whatever.”
Shah smirks at me. “You almost sound jealous, Dreamy,” he purrs. “You want all the smacks reserved for you?”
“No!” I deny it hotly. But I don’t like seeing him touch anyone else, even though he was really only teaching her a lesson about disrespecting me. Shah’s not mine to be possessive about. He’s the violent criminal who abducted me, ravaged me, and took me hostage. He’s someone I should want to escape.
I do want to escape, right?
* * *
