“Where ya off to on this fine mornin’?”
“Work, constable.”
“Work?” Condescending surprise laced his chuckle. Gloves clattered to the metal desk. “What sort of work would that be?”
He patted her down, ostensibly searching for weapons.
“Dancing, constable, at the Bristol City Club.”
A bellicose laugh thundered over her from behind. “Titty City eh? Well then, I imagine you know the drill.”
“Yes, constable.” Overhead lights weakened and flashed as a wave of fear went through her, making him look up. “I don’t want no trouble.”
Last night’s zoomer was almost out of her system, only the knowledge of the spare in her jacket pocket staved off outright panic. She shifted as best she could to avoid him, which was not much at all. For a moment, hands pawed all over her. He pulled her skirt up; a rush of cold air made her gasp. Brown’s amusement at her lack of panties gave her a few seconds’ reprieve. One of the other dancers had stolen her last pair months ago.
Cold plastisteel around her wrists reminded her of Tommy. He’d been into that sort of thing. Somewhere in the fog of the past several years, she had gone from hating feeling helpless to using it as armor. The more pathetic she acted, the better people treated her. Silent tears ran down her face. Anna blushed, mortified at how the handcuffs excited her despite wanting no part of the slovenly constable’s attention. Her body was at odds with her mind. She tugged at the chain, a genuine effort to escape, which had the paradoxical effect of turning her on more. Warmth flushed her cheeks, her heartbeat quickened―she could not move. No matter how much she wished it, man sliding his hands down her arms and sides was not Tommy.
She felt like a deer hung for cleaning.
A shower of sparks burst from the corner of the room as any sense of titillation at her predicament gave way to repulsion and anger. The constable shifted toward the sound. She let all her weight hang on her wrists, trying to slip free.
“Constable, beggin’ your pardon, you shouldn’t. I ain’t clean.”
His armored potbelly brushed against her as he leaned in to kiss the back of her neck, leaving a sticky fruit-scented imprint of the most recent victim of his gluttony. “Neither am I, luv.”
Anna looked up past the cuffs at her reddening hands, wishing her payment of tax to be over as fast as possible. He fussed with his belt and she closed her eyes. Terror pierced the haze in her mind; images of men writhing in pain on the ground came back to her. The urge to do the same to the man behind her grew, but popped like a bubble. Wouldn’t help; his mates would kill me before I got loose.
Rough hands grasped her hips. The reality of what was about to happen banished calculated thought. She had no chemicals in her system to detach from reality; she whimpered, begged, and squirmed, but her protest only drew forth amused sounds from him. She stopped moving and tensed, waiting for it. Anna swallowed the urge to beg him not to; if he got the feeling she hated it, he’d make it worse. Heat drew close between her legs, an inch away. Without conscious thought, she lifted herself up to buy an extra fraction of a second before contact. Something on his uniform blew up in a shower of small arcs.
He let off a yelp.
“Constable Brown! What’s this then?” A loud man’s voice rang off metal walls.
Anna jumped at the sound, and strained to look at an older man in police armor standing in the doorway. Short silver hair gleamed, backlit from the outdoors, a military cut. He shot a dour frown at the pudgy constable racing to put himself back into his pants. She hung motionless; trembling as if she was the one caught doing something wrong. All she wanted to do was cover herself, but could not lower her trapped hands.
Despite her fear, she felt relief.
“Sergeant.” Constable Brown coughed. “Just doin’ a routine search of this scrubber for contraband.”
“With your John Thomas?” he barked. “I already told you twice, if I catch you at this again, I’ll have you shuttled off to the Orkneys. Get your slovenly arse out of here this instant. That’s the last straw for you, Brown. Out of my sight!”
The heavyset man scurried off like a hound with its tail betwixt its legs. Annabelle looked away, struggling for a way to keep her composure. The frown on the Sergeant’s face poked at a long-dead sense of dignity. He walked up to her. She cowered, expecting he wanted to take his turn with her first.
“You all right, luv?”
“Yes, guv’na. No complainin’ from me.” She pouted at the floor. Better a dishonest whore than a dead one.
“Don’t lie to me, girl.” He shook his head with a scowl. “Bugger all. These twats take advantage of you Covs so much you roll over for it. Well, s’pose I’d rather you play possum than shoot at us.”
The snap of a rubber glove made her jump.
“Calm yourself, lass. Since you’re already in the posture, I might as well check for illegals, unless you’d like to request a lady constable?”
“Beggin’ your pleasure, Sergeant. I ain’t hidin’ nothin.’ I got a zoomer in me coat, but that’s all.”
She felt his stare for a full minute before he spoke. “You’re not lyin’ ta me again, are ya?”
Her voice sank back to a pathetic squeak. “No, Sergeant.”
He took the plastic sheet from her jacket. A strip of light gleamed across it as he turned it over. Annabelle squirmed, trying to get her hand on it. He glanced between her desperate eyes and the small, pliant patch.
“This ‘ere is why you’re stuck in the dustbin.” He flapped it at her. “Never understood what drove you young people to this crap. Most of you are on the tit, and you spend it on this. Are you on the tit, Miss Morgan?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Well then, this bit of illegality belongs to the taxpayers.”
He made a sharp heel turn and walked around the desk, slapping the sheet down at the corner. Anna jumped at the hollow metallic slam. Her lifeline was too far away to grasp with her toes, even if she didn’t have boots in the way. Without the zoom, her mind would run away.
Things she could not control would happen, and they would find her again.
The Sergeant fell into a chair and waved a hand over the terminal. A rectangular panel of hologram appeared in midair. The part facing her looked opaque black, while reflected amber light crawled over his face from whatever was on the display.
“Please guv’na, that’s me last one and I don’t have the money for treatment to be off it.”
He didn’t look up, continuing work at the terminal. A Cov speaking to the police out of turn was a risk; one wrong word could bring disastrous consequences, and she’d wasted them begging for drugs rather than dignity. She frowned at the tight, clingy skirt wrapped around her stomach and lifted a leg in an attempt to cover herself.
At least he’s not staring at me. Her head sank. Prob’ly thinks I’m dirty.
Anna stretched, trying to will her arms longer to allow more of her weight onto toes that barely reached the floor. Shifting, she hoped a plaintive mewl of discomfort would send him a hint she’d had enough of being chained to the roof, but it had no effect.
Minutes passed in silence. Again, she glanced up at the shiny metal around her wrists, twisting and pulling in a futile effort to get her crimson hands out. The sound of the latex glove peeling from his fingers scared her motionless.
He asked her name again; she recited it. The panels of light on his face shifted, brightening. She imagined a picture of her in front of him.
“Says ‘ere you’re twenty-three?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Looks like your father died eleven years ago…” His voice trailed off as he read, an eyebrow lifted. “Faulty food reassembler?”
The drugs could not suppress the shiver that time. The Sergeant’s terminal erupted in a flurry of blue sparks, making him swat it twice. Anna looked away, muttering at the wall. “Yes gov’na. He got a right nasty zap from the thing.”
His chair squea
ked when his weight left it. She struggled, pedaling her legs, as he swiped the derm from the corner of the desk and carried it toward a trash disintegrator.
“Gov’na, beggin’ your pardon, please don’t. I’ve been on it too long, comedown could kill me.”
“Zoom withdrawal can’t kill, though you’ll be wishin’ it did. You’re better off without it, girl.”
At a wave of his hand, a panel slid open in the wall. Beyond it, the steel interior of a chute glowed yellow from light deep within. In slow motion, the plasfilm flew through his fingers, drifting like a snowflake toward its conversion to a lump of beige matter. Her mind’s voice screamed inside as if he had taken a kitten away from her and murdered it before her eyes. The thing in the back of her head rose up, but she clamped her eyes shut and focused on staying calm. A police checkpoint was the last place a display of her talent needed to happen.
He was behind her before she realized she was crying. With no strength left in her legs, her body jerked about as he fixed her skirt back into place. Beeping above her head signaled her imminent release from the restraints, but even with warning, she fell when they no longer supported her. The Sergeant caught her and carried her over to a chair by the wall, folding her arms in her lap and shining a small light in one eye and then the other.
“Shall I call for an ambulance?”
Annabelle glanced at the red marks on her wrists, thankful her ‘gate tax’ had taken the mild form of sore arms and lost time. That’s what you get for storming off alone. The nicety of this policeman seemed unusual, exacerbating her sense of being cheap and dirty. She considered the blame for the shamble of her life was as much hers as it belonged to society. Most constables thought of people in her social strata as meat puppets for their personal amusement. The men became occasional victims of police combat training and the girls… well, the girls did whatever the constables wanted. Anna had no idea how to handle a cop who treated her like a person.
It hadn’t much happened since she was twelve.
She ventured a dazed smile and shook her head. “I’m all right.”
“Are ya then? You look ‘orrible.”
“I just got out of bed, and…” She shivered. “The zoom’s wearin’ off.”
He made a face of condescension and disapproval. “Cannae hide forever, girl. Sooner or later, you’ll need to confront your demons. I’ll git started on the incident report then.”
“Incident?” She looked up, wide-eyed.
“That berk, Brown.”
She swallowed hard. “It’s no bother, Sergeant. I don’t want trouble. His mates’ll give it to us twice as bad.”
“Aye, suppose’n they would at that. I’ll deal with ‘im then, an’ leave your name out of it. G’won, yer free ta go.”
He walked her to the door. Anna hesitated, glancing down at the portable metal steps between her and the rain-soaked street.
“Sergeant?”
“Go on.”
Anna shivered, grasping the doorframe for support. “Thank you.”
He nodded, a motion she caught from the corner of her eye. Wind whistled past as she gathered her jacket tight and walked away. The Sergeant leaned against the opening with folded arms, watching her leave the puddle-laden mud of The Ruin behind for the intactness of London. Half a block away, she glanced back to smile at him, but he had gone back inside. In the distant grey, the dull shadow of Coventry tower traced a smudge through the sky.
Annabelle continued through a bustling crowd that scarcely noticed her. More people were out and about today, drawn by the rare lack of rain. A world apart from the tower, London brimmed with jostling bodies, flashing lights, whizzing advert bots dancing through the sky, and random smells of food.
A young man collided with her. His hand swiped through her pocket, but there was nothing to take. She offered a disbelieving glare at the astounded look he gave her, as if she was being rude by having nothing to steal. The crowds thinned as she got farther away from the nicer areas, toward where people closer to her level congregated.
She sped up to an uninspired jog past the tramps and street gangers who shifted out of their lazy rest to get a better look at her. Anna did not glance back until the glow of a giant pair of holographic breasts came into view above a black-painted door. It looked so old and battered she often wondered if it was real wood. Each time she would knock on it, the same thought waltzed through her mind as if it was the first time she had laid eyes on it. Today the zoom was weak; the texture of bubbled plastic looked obvious in one of the gouges.
The door was as fake as most of the tits behind it.
Her trembling hand reached up and knocked again. A panel, eight inches by two, shimmered away from the appearance of paint to a pass-through screen. The club manager’s bushy black eyebrows scrunched together as beady grey eyes glared at her.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, Mr. Blake. Old Bill kept me for a minute at the border.”
lashing lights thrummed in time with the oppressive music vibrating through Anna’s body. With each twist of her figure, the capsule-shaped cage jostled on the three chains holding it off the ground. The six-foot enclosure of polished plastisteel weighed less than she did, bucking and swaying as she went through her routine. Faces massed into an ocean of lustful eyes at the level of her feet. Men stared at her with alcohol on their breath and sex on their thoughts.
She danced wearing only a dark metal choker connected to a thin band encircling her chest an inch below her breasts. Made to resemble leafy vines, the harness held a device the size of an egg tight against her back from which long filament wings sprouted five feet to either side. Her alabaster skin glowed blue from the holographic appendages that fluttered, waved, or extended in concert with every motion or change in posture. A headband of false flowers projected shimmering antennae of light up from her hair, a dangling pair of orbs at their tips.
Anna clasped the bars above her head, fingers circling about the gentle curve of the metal where it came together. She swung herself about in time with the music pounding into her head; so loud, she imagined her brain compressing with each beat. Her feet landed with the precision of practice. It took more concentration than usual today; anxious sweat came from knowing one misstep would result in a painful fall. The lack of chems in her system made everything tedious, every motion slower, each piece of her act necessitated deliberate thought about what she did. To the room around her, she flashed a smile as insubstantial as her wings.
She could not remember the last time she danced while sober enough to realize she was naked in a room full of strangers. Aside from suppressing her out of control brain, the chems mitigated her embarrassment. At least six men had commented on how red her face was. Concentration spread between containing the thing and not breaking her ankle. Whenever a slip happened, she chose not to fall and it got loose. Few noticed the random spark overhead or a NetMini here and there blowing out. Anna forced herself to move with the beat the way she had always done. Each time her bare skin brushed metal, the nightmare of being hunted down and killed seemed less unwelcome―at least she’d be dressed for that.
Under the haze of zoom, the pixie persona often became real. Sometimes the room full of perverts would melt away to a sylvan forest. Instead of being a whore in a cage, she became a real fey flying through the trees. She could forget who and where she was. Today, she had no such shield. Leering eyes and wild howls hit her without the armor of drugs. The way these men looked at her made her glad for once Blake locked the cages.
He had ignored her plea for a half hour delay. A guy she could score from lived only a few blocks away from the club; she could have been there and back in less than fifteen minutes. He gave her a hard time about being late already and seemed in no mood to suffer a request for even more time. He’d all but dragged her into the changing room and ripped her clothes off.
Working for Blake was one small step above being a slave, not that the police cared one whit about what people did to Co
v girls. If she had the gall to go to complain to them, Blake would say she had only made the lot of it up to cover her stealing from him, and they would put her in jail.
At least she made a little cred working here; what need did a Cov have of dignity?
The music shifted: lighter, faster, with a thrumming beat. She altered her routine, moving her body in waves against the cold enclosure as the virtual pixie wings buzzed. Reacting to the pace of the music, the somber blue holograms burst into a frenetic lime green before it cycled through pinks and reds. She stared at them, wishing them real, wishing she could fly out of this cage and disappear into the place she so often dreamed about.
A hand stuffed an orange plastic ticket in a box hanging below her enclosure; a tip, physical tokens exchanged for credits at a booth near the door. On autopilot, she squatted low near the man who dropped the trinket, giving him a closer look. His gaze locked upon her flesh and he touched her breasts where they protruded through the bars. She acted as though she enjoyed the attention, smiling on the outside while she wanted to run off to a dark place and hide. A loud bang erupted somewhere overhead; an electronic element paid the price for her spike of shame. Anna bit her lip as his hand yanked away. One of the enormous bouncers hauled him around by the collar, holding him on his tiptoes.
“No touchin.’ You wanna take her in back for half an hour, it’ll be six hundred. In advance. Backdoor’s another hundred. Kink another two.”
As people who exploited Covs went, Blake was on the more generous side. At least forty credits of that, she’d get to keep.
Anna stared at the latch. Hearing this man sell her body regardless of her say in the matter filled her with shame, though far more than a simple locked door trapped her here. She fantasized, imagining him paying for her. She pictured the door unlocked, opening, the bouncer reaching for her. A knee to the groin would catch him off guard. Anna would let her panic out, let the thing go crazy. The chaos would give her the chance. In her mind, she sprinted through a shower of falling sparks and confused perverts. She would run. As soon as the door was open, she would get out of there. It no longer mattered how little she wore. The cage had become intolerable. She had to escape. Anna gripped the bars of the door with both hands, flashing an eager smile the prospective John would misinterpret.
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