Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
My stomach rumbles, but I’ve got at least another few hours before I’ll eat again. I don’t even get a hint of light during mealtime, as some kind of pneumatic tube in the ceiling just drops my mylar-wrapped protein bar down a chute and onto the metal floor.
Even though the food ration is bland and mealy, it cuts the hunger pangs. But my stomach growls, and it seems so loud in the dark.
I quickly realize that my hand on the floor is vibrating. It's not my stomach at all, it's the hum of jets engaging.
I brace myself as the engines of our ship do whatever sci-fi shit they do to prepare for landing.
The familiar whirl and crunching noises that always happen before we enter another planet or station’s atmosphere fill my dark cell.
I don’t know if it’s louder than usual, or if my other senses have heightened after being deprived of sight.
I cover my ears as I cower in the corner and push my back up against the wall.
The room jostles, and I brace myself against the wall to keep from being bounced around like a pinball. Despite my best efforts, I crack the back of my head against metal and wince.
Finally, a hush spreads as the space ceases its quaking.
I reach back to the base of my skull and breathe a sigh of relief as I feel no blood there.
What I will have is one helluva of a knot.
But at least I don’t have to worry about getting an infection, or worse yet, needing to go into the Deenz’s terrifying medpod.
I’m still rubbing the bump when the door panel to my cell whooshes open, flooding the room with bright, yellow-toned light. My eyes reflexively snap shut. I force my lids to open, just barely slits, as my heart beats wildly in my chest.
Two Deenz figures come into my field of vision, scaled and slimy. They grip my biceps with their clawed hands and hoist me to my knees.
“Up, we have little time,” they say in unison.
The aliens drag me into the hall, my skin scraping on the door frame, before I’m able to get my feet under myself.
“I’m coming,” I stammer.
“Hurry,” they groan, their pace so much faster than I’ve seen them move.
“What’s the rush?” I ask sweetly, trying to smooth their rough edges with a little sugar.
I’m given no answers but only guided into a room I’ve never been in before.
It’s small, no bigger than a coat closet.
They turn me so that I’m facing the pair standing in the hallway.
Before I can even open my mouth to ask what’s going on again, a clear panel slides down in front of me, and straps automatically lock and ratchet around my body.
“What the fuck—” I yelp as my ears pop and the glass in front of me fogs.
“You will obey Warlord Mekkra,” one body says as he types something into his datapad.
“We’ve already advised him that there are no returns once he’s accepted the delivery, and if he’s unsatisfied, he’s free to do as he sees fit.
Given his reputation, I don’t think angering him is the wisest course of action. ”
Bile rises in my throat, and I hold my breath to calm my racing heart. I’m being sold to an alien who will fuck me just as easily as he would kill me. I gulp down the bitter taste welling around my tongue and muster every bit of charm I’ve got left in an attempt not to puke from the anxiety.
“Baby! Come on, we’ve had such good times together—haven’t we?
” I coo, dissociating so I can default to that sweet, good-time girl persona I’ve relied on so much these past few years.
“I know I make y’all fat stacks of credits.
We don’t have to do this. I’m your biggest earner…
send this warlord someone who doesn’t make you any money.
Let’s keep this business going while the getting’s good!
” I smile but hate myself for trying to offer another Bubble Babe to this warlord in my place.
But fuck, if one of my worst faults isn’t my self-preservation.
“Your reputation, much like Mekkra, precedes you. You were a special request…and the trade routes at stake are worth more credits than you could imagine. We’ll be working with a whole new audience, untainted by overexposure.
This side of the universe is an untapped market, and I promise losing you is worth the risk.
” It cocks its head as my mask drops, and I can’t help it when the hot tears streak down my cheeks.
“None of that. Can’t make a bad first impression, can we? ”
With a push of his datapad, something sharp pokes the meat of my thigh, and I know exactly what it is as that familiar burn hits my veins.
“No!” I gasp, trying to wiggle my fingers to the injection site.
“I don’t need that, you know I can deliver!
” But the Deenz says nothing as the aphrodisiac floods my system.
The itch, small but growing, starts at my center, and I tighten my abdominal muscles together as if that would stop the drug’s assault.
“Let’s not leave it to chance,” the alien says coldly.
It pulls a kind of crank on the wall, and I’m sucked down.
The room I’m in is some kind of pod. I feel like a stack of dollar bills being sent to the teller at the drive-through window.
My head aches, and I curse as the tickle between my legs turns to a throb.
Even though I’m strapped down, I squeeze my thighs together, hating how good it feels.
The inertia rips my sense of balance to shreds. My body spins in the dark, weightless and wrong, as I rocket through the tube with nothing to grab, nothing to stop it.
I slow for a moment and then I pop from the Deenz ship hard. The vibrations of the pod shake me so deeply that I can feel it in the roots of my teeth.
My stomach drops as I realize I’m jettisoned and uncontained. I’m in open space, utterly alone.
Panic claws at my throat as I look up at the emptiness above me.
But just then, a pair of rusted metal claws clamp around me, like I'm part of some sick, giant claw machine. It drags me quickly through what I now realize is the gap between the Deenz ship and some kind of space station.
I'm positioned at some kind of open port, an honest to god pod bay door.
This tube is just as fast, but red lights line its metallic length. They flash by, and I wonder if maybe Stanley Kubrick might know more about aliens than the rest of Earth when their colors flash and fade like that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I slide inside my restraints, like a poorly maintained carnival ride, when the pod suddenly stops. The soles of my feet slam against the bottom of the vessel and my forehead cracks against the glass in front of me.
I crane my neck and look around the large room I’m in.
It’s some kind of station alive with signal lights and duct-work.
The space seems impossibly tall, almost cathedral-like.
Tubing snakes through every available space on the wall.
Some of it is filled with green liquid; others look as though they contain inky black oil.
I don’t focus on the wetness seeping through my Bubble Babes uniform; its plastic straps put pressure on my mound in a way that feels so fucking good.
I can feel myself slipping, succumbing to the drug the Deenz gave me.
It’s utter fucking torture not being able to touch the needy parts of myself.
To have to clench and grind in this confined space, unable to use my hands to find relief.
I'm so sensitive that even my gasps fanning over my chest are making my nipples pebble beneath their wrappings.
When a dark figure looms over my pod, I know I’m fucked. But I’m not scared.
I want its help—whatever it is. The situation’s so far out of my control it’s almost funny. The pod hums around me, and the air tastes like ozone and fear, thick and stale from my own recycled breath.
“Please,” I plead, writhing as much as my straps will allow. “Help. Touch me. Let me out…please.”
My chest rises and falls too fast; I’m gasping now, short and uneven, like my lungs forgot how to work. Every movement of the figure above me ripples through the dim red light, distorted by the curved pod window.
For a heartbeat, it just stares. I can’t see its face backlit by red, only a faint shimmer where its eyes might be. Then, slow as a planet turning, the creature moves.
My eyes follow its hand—dark brown, massive, each finger longer than my hand—to the control panel beside me. I don’t breathe. The glass hums as something inside the pod disengages. Then—
A sharp click. A hiss.
Cold air rushes in as the seals release, snapping open like a breaking wave. The top slides back with a heavy groan, and the straps retract all at once, coiling into the sides like startled snakes.
The figure inhales sharply—a sound of utter surprise—and I realize it’s the first actual noise I've heard it make.
“Human,” the shadow murmurs, the word rolling out low and awed, like a curse.
The air between us hums with static. I can finally see the shape of him—broad shoulders, a glint of the spikes that run down his back, and eyes catching the light like burning copper.
I don’t waste any time, a slave to the chemicals in my system. My hands fly between my legs, and I pull the synthetic material off my weeping crotch and furiously run three wide fingers up and down my clit.