CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
Another silence followed. In an odd way, I was almost starting to like Aiden Hill.
He was patient, and insightful, and analytical.
Those were all qualities I admired. But at the same time, he was the one who had requested that I be trained in this quagmire of skills, and he was also the one who was going to abandon me once my usefulness had worn out.
I hated myself for admiring a man who was so loathsome.
“I have just one more question on that subject,” he said, after a while. “Did your trainers ever hurt you during your sexual training?”
I thought back to the long hours in the training suite, the shelves full of toys, the other dimari watching on as I pushed my body to the limit, over and over again-
“Stop. Jai! Stop. You don’t have to answer that,” my master barked at me, and I snapped my head up to look at him.
It was only then that I realised my fists were clenched and my breathing was coming in rapid pants.
My entire body was rigid and my heart was racing to the point that I felt lightheaded.
My master looked me in the eye. “Take three deep breaths and then let your body relax.”
I did, slowly in, then out, in, then out, and then I forced my muscles to release their tension, my thighs sinking deeper into the sofa as I did so.
My master looked angry, and that wasn’t at all surprising.
He'd asked me a simple question, and I hadn’t been able to answer it.
He must be terribly disappointed to have spent so much money on someone so worthless.
“Okay, let’s talk about something else,” he said, a few minutes later. Kade, so far, still hadn’t said anything. “I would like you to show me your natural colouring. The Vangravians are all some shade of blue. Or in a few cases, closer to green. So show me what your colour is.”
I fought the urge to glare at him over that order.
I’d been wearing my scales as black for months now, ever since one of my trainers had let slip that the deep, inky black was terrifying as all hell to look at.
I’d revelled in the idea of scaring the people who were inflicting such perverse expectations on me, and at every moment that I hadn’t been specifically ordered to be another colour, I’d reverted to black.
By now, it felt like armour; a defence against a world that wanted to kill me slowly.
But an order was an order, and I felt the buzzing in my head that compelled me to obey. I let the pigments fade, revealing a deep, ocean blue, just slightly darker than the colour of Kade’s scales.
My master nodded, but said nothing, and I was privately grateful for that.
If he’d said I was beautiful, I think I might have thrown up.
“There are relatively few dimari on Rendol 4,” my master said.
“So people aren’t generally used to seeing people with blue colouring.
Whenever we’re out in public, Kade generally turns his scales brown.
I'd like you to try matching the colour of my skin. I know some Vangravians have difficulty with brown, so don’t worry if you can’t quite do it. I’d just like to see what you can do.”
There was no buzzing in my head. That hadn’t been a direct order.
My master had expressed a desire to see something, but had not ordered me to show it to him.
But given that he’d owned Kade for a couple of years, I could only assume he knew how orders worked, in comparison to suggestions.
I felt nauseous all over again, knowing that he was trying to manipulate me.
He wanted me to cooperate with him willingly, rather than being ordered.
On a different day, I might have defied him. Tonight, I was too tired. I attempted to match the colour of his skin – a medium sort of brown, like sandy soil. My first attempt was too blue. Then my second attempt was too red. I tried combining the two, and ended up with a deep, muddy purple…
“It’s okay, you can stop now,” my master said, when I gritted my teeth and winced.
The best I could do was a murky sort of swamp brown, and that wasn’t close enough to my master’s colouring to pass as a human.
“Try purple instead. Here, look…” He pulled up an image on his comm, which displayed a number of different purple-skinned people.
“The Solofs are one of the species in the Alliance. They can have a range of different purple tones. Are you able to match any one of these?”
There was one person in the image with skin that was on the darker end of the spectrum – indigo, perhaps – and I tried that. Unsurprisingly, I managed that colour with little difficulty.
“Perfect,” my master said, and I simultaneously preened and cringed under the praise.
“When we go out in public, you are to wear that shade of purple. Most people will assume you’re a Solof, which will make life easier for both of us.
When we’re in private, either here at home, or in my office or the barracks at the base, you may wear your scales whichever colour you prefer.
When we’re in combat, you are to wear whichever colour you can create which is most likely to provide useful camouflage. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. I immediately returned my scales to their habitual black. My master didn’t react, though Kade glanced sideways at me, a disapproving frown on his face.
“I have one final question,” my master went on.
“When Kade was being trained, the Eumadians used their neuro-engineering technology to program him to protect me, first and foremost, regardless of any other orders I might give him. He has, in fact, disobeyed a direct order I gave him, because my life was in danger and his programming was to save my life first, and obey my orders second. So I’d like to know whether you’ve been…
” He paused mid-sentence, then leaned forward, meeting my eyes.
“You are to answer me with absolute honesty, to the best of your knowledge,” he said firmly, and I felt the buzzing in my brain take hold.
“Were you programmed to do anything other than bond with your master?”
“No, sir,” I answered, before I’d even thought about it.
The reply had simply slipped out automatically, a response to the ingrained need to obey my master.
Once the words were out, though, I frowned as I considered the question seriously.
“I hadn’t actually been aware that a dimari could be programmed to do something else. ”
“Yeah, me neither,” my master said. “But Kade was aware of it. Even if I wasn’t particularly good at listening when he told me that.”
My master was not good at listening? Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
“I have a couple of other important instructions for you, and both of these are long-term issues, so what I’m about to say remains in place until or unless I tell you otherwise.
First, your physical safety is very important to me.
That safety is necessarily going to be put at risk during military operations, but outside of that, you have my permission to disregard any short-term order if doing so is necessary to prevent yourself from suffering serious harm.
Exactly what that means will ultimately come down to your judgement, but the sort of situation I’d imagine is if I told you to wait for me at home while I went out, and then the house caught fire.
In that type of situation, you have my permission to disregard the instruction to stay at home; you can leave the house to avoid being injured in the fire.
I can’t give you an exact list of situations that this would cover, but the overall purpose is to give you enough leeway to avoid serious and unnecessary injury.
Do you have any questions about that sort of scenario? ”
“Actually, I do,” I said, somewhat wary about questioning my master. “What if it was necessary to disobey a short-term order to save someone else from serious harm? Let’s take the same situation, but it was the house next door that was on fire. Would I be allowed to go and assist them?”
My master looked surprised, but not angry. “That’s actually a really good question. Um… Yes, you would also be allowed to go and assist someone else who was in urgent need of help. Kade, the same applies to you. I don’t think I included that when I made your original orders.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kade said, with a meek smile. “And thank you, Jai,” he added, peering at me shyly. “That is a good idea.”
I ignored him. My time here was going to be limited, and I didn’t need to start getting my hopes up by making friends with someone who would abandon me just as quickly as his master ordered him to.
“My second instruction is once again giving you permission to do something, but absolutely not ordering you to do it. You have my permission to masturbate, up to and including climaxing, whenever you would like to, provided that you do so somewhere private, and that it’s not interfering with any more urgent duties.
I know that’s a very unusual instruction to be given to a dimari, but given our line of work, there’s an inherent risk that I might not be around all the time, if I’m sent on a mission without you, for example, or if I’m seriously injured, then I could end up in hospital.
I don’t like the idea of you being frustrated because I’m not around to give you permission to climax. ”
“Yes, sir,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say.
“Okay, I think we’ve made enough progress for today.
I’m going to send a few messages, check up on the other dimari who arrived with you, and then I’m going to bed.
Tonight, I’d like you to sleep in my bed, with me.
Kade will sleep in the spare bedroom. Kade, could you please help Jai set up his comm to display the Eumadian script and show him how to run basic searches on the grid, and in the morning, show him how to use the washing machine.
Jai, if you need anything in particular, please ask either me or Kade. ”
“Yes, sir,” Kade and I both replied, then set about following his orders.
After my comm was set up, I spent the next hour dithering over various options for something to do.
I tried to learn more about the Denzogal Alliance, and quickly gave up, as I was too exhausted to read the articles.
I looked for some music to listen to, but I was sick to death of Eumadian music, and the Solof and Denzogal music I found just sounded odd.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to listen to, but that wasn’t it.
I tried to find a book to read, but nothing managed to hold my attention.
But at the same time, I was desperately trying to put off going to bed.
Lying down beside my master, feeling my skin crawl every time he accidentally touched me, would be like slow torture.
Eventually, though, I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
It was a choice between going to bed or falling asleep on the sofa, and while my master had not technically ordered me to sleep with him, I knew that failing to do so would get his attention in a way I would not enjoy.
I got up and headed into the bedroom, deciding to leave my shorts and t-shirt on.
Kade hadn’t ordered any specific nightwear for me, but these clothes were comfortable enough to sleep in, and they would provide a slight barrier between me and my master.
My master was already sitting in bed, his eyes drooping as he entered a last few notes on his comm.
He gave me a welcoming sort of smile, nothing overly enthusiastic, but enough to let me know he was pleased to see me.
Once upon a time, I’d longed to see such an expression on my master’s face.
Now, it just left me cold. I slid into bed beside him and lay down, not expecting to get much sleep.
His attempt to have sex with me in the shower had been abandoned, but I knew I couldn’t put him off forever.
Would he try again tonight? Now that he understood more about my training, perhaps he knew he would need to give me more specific orders to gain my cooperation.
My master switched off his comm and unstrapped it from his wrist, setting it on the nightstand. Then he turned off the light, lay down, and settled himself comfortably into bed. “Goodnight, Jai,” he said softly.
This time, I chose not to reply.