Yorika
ONE HOUR EARLIER...
The antechamber stinks of desperation and cheap perfume. Fifteen women wait on stone benches, backs straight, hands folded. We're not supposed to speak, but the silence is its own conversation: shallow breathing, rustling fabric, the quiet sob someone's trying to swallow.
A scrying mirror dominates the far wall, black obsidian polished to impossible smoothness.
It shows the auction floor in real-time, no sound, just images.
A girl stands on the platform now, maybe twenty, wearing a yellow dress that washes out her complexion.
The dress was probably her best. Now it looks like surrender.
The bidding must be active. Shapes in the crowd raise hands, tentacles, whatever passes for agreement in their species.
A Vorn steps forward when the auctioneer gestures.
The girl nods quickly, desperately. A murmur runs through our antechamber.
Vorns have reputations for being gentle.
Sometimes the stories about lucky brides are even true.
The woman beside me has been smoothing the same wrinkle in her dress for ten minutes. Brown hair, calloused hands, the kind of worn-down tired that comes from years of factory work. She introduced herself earlier, Lessa, though I didn't ask.
"Three thousand credits," she whispers, watching the mirror. "That's what they said I could get. Three thousand would get my brothers out of the textile district. Maybe apprentice them somewhere clean."
Her brothers. Always someone's brothers, sisters, parents. The Shift left humans at the bottom of everybody's food chain, and we've been selling pieces of ourselves ever since. At least she has people worth selling herself for.
I had a sister once.
"You know about the thirty-day clause?" I ask.
She jerks, surprised I spoke. "What?"
"Thirty days. That's the trial period. If your buyer is cruel, if you can't survive it, you can terminate. You lose the payment, but you walk away." I shift my ankle, feeling the knife in my boot. "Always have an exit strategy."
"But the credits."
"Are worthless if you're dead."
She studies me then, really looks. Takes in the scars on my knuckles, the way I sit (back to the wall, clear view of the door), the silver dress that costs more than she's ever seen. "You're not here for credits."
"No."
"Then why?"
I could lie. Tell her about fictional debts or dying relatives. Instead, I watch the mirror as they remove the girl in yellow, as they prepare the platform for the next offering. "I'm here for a specific buyer."
Her forehead creases. "You can't know who'll bid."
"I can if I've done my research."
The Vorthan broker's gills had fluttered with excitement when she'd finally given me the name, after three years of dead ends and false leads. Nezavek.
Void Walker. The three-pronged scorch mark burned into the floor where Melara died matched old records of void energy signatures. Multiple incidents, but the broker swore this one was recent, was him.
"He always bids on the memorable ones," she'd said, webbed fingers counting my credits. "Silver hair like yours? Rare enough to catch attention. He'll be curious."
Curious. Good. I need him curious enough to take me home, comfortable enough to let his guard down.
The guard by the door, with four arms and an expression of terminal boredom, straightens. "Lessa. You're up."
She stands on shaking legs. Smooths that same wrinkle one last time. "What if no one bids?"
"Someone always bids." I keep my voice neutral. "That's the problem."
She walks out, and I don't watch her auction. I've seen enough frightened women sold to know how it ends.
My fingers find the thin scar along my ribs, the one that never healed right after Jakarta.
The medic said I was lucky: another inch and the blade would have hit something important.
I told him luck had nothing to do with it.
The merc who put it there had aimed for center mass. I'd just moved faster.
I'll need to move faster today too.
"Yorika."
The guard's voice is flat. Bored. To him, I'm just another product to move.
The walk to the platform is twenty-three steps.
I count them. The warehouse opens up around me, a soaring ceiling lost in shadows, crowds of buyers pressed against barriers.
The smell hits harder here. Ozone from the portal station.
Sweat from a hundred different species. Something else, too.
Something cold that makes my teeth ache.
The platform is simple wood, worn smooth by thousands of feet. The auctioneer is human, which surprises me. Elderly, bent, survived the post-Shift world by making himself useful to the new order. He doesn't meet my eyes as he reads from his tablet.
"Lot 49. Yorika. Human female, twenty-seven years. Physical training background. Verified intact. Starting bid at five hundred credits."
The lies cost extra, but they're necessary. Virgin stock brings higher prices, attracts different buyers. The kind who collect rare things.
A Zelthani raises a webbed hand immediately. "One thousand."
"Fifteen hundred." A Korthani, his four mechanical eyes clicking as they focus on me.
"Two thousand."
"Three thousand."
The numbers climb. I keep my expression neutral, bored even, while my pulse counts the seconds. Where is he? The broker swore he'd be here. The intel said.
The temperature drops.
Not gradually. Between one heartbeat and the next, the warehouse becomes a freezer. My breath fogs. Frost spreads across the platform's wood in fractal patterns.
He doesn't step out of the shadows. He condenses from them. Seven feet of something that shouldn't exist, edges that won't quite settle into solid form. The crowd pulls back without seeming to move, reality itself making room for him.
His eyes burn orange-gold in a face carved from void.
Nezavek.
"Fifty thousand credits."
The warehouse goes silent. Even the air seems to stop moving.
The auctioneer's tablet shakes in his hands. He clears his throat once, twice. "Fifty thousand. The bid stands at fifty thousand." A pause. "Going once. Twice." Another pause. "As per tradition, the final choice of patron falls to the asset."
Every eye turns to me. The Zelthani leans forward, poison sacs pulsing hopefully. The Korthani's mechanical eyes whir, calculating odds. Others lean in, wondering who the expensive human will choose.
I look at each of them, pretending to consider. The Zelthani would keep me as decoration until he got bored. The Korthani would use me for calculations I'd fail, then discard me. Safe, boring fates that would keep me alive and miserable.
Then I look at the shadow with burning eyes. At the thing that killed my sister.
I raise my hand and point. "Him."
Gasps. Actual gasps. Someone in the crowd mutters a prayer in a language I don't recognize.
The auctioneer takes an involuntary step back. "Are you certain? The choice is yours, but perhaps..."
"I'm certain."
What I don't say: I'm certain about the knife in my boot. About the poison in my bracelet. About the dozen different ways I've planned his death. About the promise I made over Melara's empty coffin.
"Very well." The auctioneer's relief at getting me off his platform is obvious. "Buyer and asset to settlement room three."
The walk off the platform is steadier than the walk on. I have what I came for. The guard escorts me to a small room: table, two chairs, standard processing terminal. I sit and wait.
The air chills, and he condenses from the shadows, bringing winter with him. This close, details emerge. His form isn't solid, it's shadow pretending to be flesh, void shaped into something almost human. His clothes are part of him, or he's part of them. The distinction doesn't seem to matter.
"You chose me." His voice is a physical thing, resonating in my chest cavity.
"You bid highest."
"Others would have gone higher."
He's right. I know he's right. But I keep my expression flat. "I liked the look of you."
Something moves across his face. Amusement? Suspicion? It's hard to read expressions on a face made of shadow.
He extends one hand. The fingers are too long, too sharp, ending in points that could pierce steel. "Come."
I stand and take his hand. The cold burns, but I don't flinch. His grip is careful, controlled, like someone handling glass they don't want to break. Yet I'm aware of his size, how his hand engulfs mine completely, how he towers over me, how easily those sharp fingers could tear through flesh.
"Where are we going?"
"My realm."
Before I can respond, reality tears. We fall through nothing, through the spaces between spaces. My stomach inverts. My lungs forget their purpose. Every cell in my body screams that this is wrong, that humans weren't meant to travel like this.
Then.
Solid ground. A vast hall that belongs in no sane architecture. Pillars twist up into darkness, defying physics. The floor reflects stars that shouldn't exist. The air tastes purple and sounds like midnight.
I land on my feet, barely. My hand moves toward my boot, toward the knife, but I stop myself. Not yet. Too soon.
"Welcome to my realm," he says, releasing my hand. The absence of cold leaves my skin burning. "Your new home."
Home. The word sits like ash in my mouth.
I straighten my spine, square my shoulders, and meet those burning eyes. Let him think he's won. Let him think I'm just another desperate human who sold herself for survival.
I sold myself for something much simpler.
Revenge.