CHAPTER TEN
JAI
By the middle of the morning the following day, I was beginning to regret my flagrant disobedience.
I’d slept poorly last night, then been woken once again by the yellow and black lady presenting me with breakfast and telling me to sit down and eat.
But in contrast to the other days here, this time, I was eating alone.
Yesterday, the rest of the dimari here had gradually been called away to meet their masters.
Each time, I’d wanted to warn them not to hope for anything good.
Their masters would use them and discard them, just as mine was going to.
Our trainers had promised us that we would be loved.
But my training had taught me that nothing but the opposite could possibly be true.
I was a machine to be used, not a person to be loved.
But of course, I’d been unable to say anything. My mind was too foggy to put the words together, my thoughts too jumbled to make any real sense of them. But I had the distinct feeling that each of those poor souls had been walking towards their own doom, rather than towards a joyful future.
But the problem now was that I was still here, waiting for my own master, while they had all gone off to places unknown.
I’d wanted to upset my master by refusing to perform the proper routines.
And it seemed I had succeeded, since he had so far neglected to come and collect me.
I tried to cling onto the pale thrill of having displeased him, but as the morning wore on, the cold truth settled deep in my gut.
I wanted my master to come and claim me. I wanted to go home.
Not that I had a clue what ‘home’ was going to look like. Home was not the training centre. Home was a nebulous idea in which I had a master who loved me, who cared for me, who valued me. But it had been a long time since I’d believed such a place existed.
I’d returned to standing at the end of my bed, like a good dimari should, in the vain hope that I might be able to redeem myself a little in my master’s eyes, so that he might decide to come and collect me after all.
Or was I simply to live out the rest of my days in this dull room, alone, useless, abandoned? For all my last ditch attempt at obedience, I noticed that I hadn’t changed my scales from black back to my natural dark blue. So apparently, my obedience only went so far.
The door opened and the yellow and black lady came inside again, and despite my insistent desire for my master to claim me, I tensed at her arrival. I had no clear indication of time, but I sensed it was too early for it to be lunchtime.
“Jai? Please come with me,” the lady said, just the same as she’d done each time she’d come to collect the other dimari. “Your master has arrived.”
I felt my heart rate triple at the cool announcement. He’d come. My master was here to claim me. I was immediately filled with both relief and dread. Walking stiffly, like my legs were made of wood, I followed her out of the room.
We didn’t go far – only into the room next door, and she instructed me to stand with my back to the wall. There was a table in this room as well, though that was the only detail I managed to pick up on. My mind was still too fuzzy, and I was too busy being filled with dread.
I waited, feeling my heart thump in my chest and the cool drift of air over my scales from the ventilation system. It was quiet, and I could hear the far off drone of engines. Then a voice spoke, and every nerve in my body instantly came to life.
“Your name is Jai,” the voice said. “Activation sequence Kavius Rontolan Zinda Moba. Be awakened. Be bonded. Your reason for drawing breath will walk through the door, and your soul will know them as Master.”
No sooner had the voice finished speaking than my senses cleared, my mind woke up, like a switch had been flipped, and I felt myself snap back into reality.
I remembered the last few days with perfect clarity – being loaded into the crate with the other dimari, the rough landing, being herded into that large, white room.
I ground my teeth at the realisation that the Eumadians had deliberately disabled us with their cursed machines.
My mind had been reduced to such a level that I’d barely been able to figure out how to sit on a fucking chair!
And now my master was about to walk through that door, and my fate as a machine built for nothing more than killing and sex would be sealed. I hated the Eumadians. I hated the Vangravians. I hated my master-
The door opened, and my entire body froze as the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life walked through the door.
I didn’t recognise his species. He was of moderate height – a little shorter than me – and his skin was a medium brown.
He had short-cropped hair and was wearing a military uniform. And he had a smile on his face.
My mind glitched out, unable to come up with a single thought or thing to say.
This could not be my master. He was too beautiful, too perfect.
My proper master, I knew, would have to be an ugly man, a sneering man, with cruel eyes and violent intentions.
The only thing that matched the image in my head to this man was the military uniform.
But he had to be my master. There was no one else here that it could possibly be.
“Hello,” the man said. “My name is Aiden. I’m going to be your master.”
“Yes, master,” I breathed, my voice a husky rasp. I raged at the vibrant joy running through my veins, at the same time as I scolded myself for even the idea of rejecting him. None of this made any sense.
“I’m so very glad to finally meet you,” my master continued. “Please, come and sit down, and I’ll tell you a bit about where you are and who I am.”
I moved to sit in the seat he indicated, without even considering why I was doing it. My master sat down opposite me. “My full name is Commander Aiden Hill,” he told me, and I swayed towards him as his deep, rumbling voice washed over me like satin. “I’m a human. Do you know what that is?”
“No, master,” I replied, suddenly disappointed that I’d already failed this very first test of my knowledge.
“That’s okay,” he said calmly. “Not a lot of humans buy dimari, so it’s not uncommon for dimari who come here not to know much about us. You’re on a planet called Rendol 4, which is part of the Denzogal Alliance. Have you heard of the Alliance?”
“Yes, master,” I said. “It’s the prevailing power in the Koral sector. An alliance of seven species, though I unfortunately don’t know much about what those species are,” I admitted.
He nodded. “I’ll give you a more thorough rundown on who we all are a bit later, but first, let me show you exactly where we are. This is the Koral sector,” he said, activating his comm to show me a three-dimensional image of the galaxy. The Koral sector was highlighted in yellow.
“And this is where the Rendol system is, within that sector. We’re on Rendol 4, the fourth planet from the Rendol star, obviously…
” The map zoomed in again… but then the image cut out as my master’s comm began to beep loudly.
He checked the small screen on the top, then shook his head and silenced the incoming call.
“We’re in a city called Hon,” he resumed his explanation, “which is on the east coast of one of the two northern continents.” The map went through a slow zoom, focusing on the planet, then the continent, and finally all the way down to the city.
“We have a population of about a hundred million people on the planet-”
The image cut out again as the beeping resumed. My master silenced the call a second time.
“We’re currently at the Hon military base, on the eastern side of the city.
I live in a villa over here,” he said, pointing to a different part of the map.
“And when we’re not travelling on military business, we usually go by train.
There’s a very good transport system all across the city, so over the next week or so, I’ll get you to familiarise yourself with the train networks. I’ll get you a comm so you can-”
The beeping started up for a third time.
And all at once, my master’s patience seemed to run out.
A look of fiery rage settled on his face, and he answered the call.
An image appeared on the holographic screen, of what appeared to be a young human male.
I was making a few assumptions about their species, since this was only the second individual I’d ever seen, but he didn’t look all that dissimilar to my master.
My master opened his mouth to speak, but the young man on the screen beat him to it. “There’s a Vangravian female hiding in my barn who wants to apply for political asylum for herself and her infant son.”
All of the fire went out of my master in a split second. “I’m sorry, say that again?” he said, sounding thoroughly stunned. I supposed the news was fairly important. To my knowledge, Vangravian females did not leave their home planet.
I listened with half an ear as the man gave a rapid-fire explanation for what was going on, and my master threw a hasty plan together.
I didn’t follow everything that was being said, but at one point, my master referred to someone called Kade, and then made a reference to him understanding other dimari.
Other dimari; the implication being that Kade was a dimari himself.
But aside from that, I was still feeling too off-balance to pay too much attention.
I knew where in the galaxy I was, but my master was having rapid and extreme mood swings, he hadn’t yet told me anything about my role here, and I was potentially going to have to navigate around another dimari who, from the few brief snippets I’d heard, was probably well entrenched in my master’s life already.
Abruptly, my master stood up, ending the call. “Jai, I have to go and take care of a very urgent assignment. You’re to wait here until I get back. I’ll probably be a couple of hours. And do not repeat anything from that phone call to anyone else. Is that clear?”
“Yes, master,” I replied, dropping my gaze to stare at the floor in the face of his almost angry instructions.
“Good,” he said, then swiftly marched for the door.
He flung it open, then suddenly halted and said “Fuck!” Then he swung back to face me.
“When I said you’re to stay here, I meant here in the base, not here in this particular room.
But at the same time, do not go wandering around by yourself.
Wait for someone to escort you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
” With that, the door slammed shut and I heard my master yelling for someone called ‘Henderson’, and then a flurry of booted feet pounding up and down the hallway.
After a minute or two, the noise faded out, and I took a deep breath and tried to get my body to relax.
That was not the way I’d expected my first meeting with my master to go.
On first impressions, he’d seemed far from the brutish tyrant I’d been expecting.
But anyone could pretend to be nice for five minutes.
His anger at the phone call, and then his abrupt departure, told me more about his true nature.
I was his dimari. I had just bonded to him and I would have followed any order he gave me without argument.
And yet he’d run off and left me here, apparently having decided I would be more of a hinderance than a help.
But he’d already said he would be taking Kade, his other dimari, with him. Was I just a spare then, a backup for less important tasks?
Or perhaps he was just abandoning me, as I’d already predicted he would.