by Aya DeAniege
Books By Aya DeAniege
Contracted
Contract Taken
Contract Broken
Contract Renewed
Coming Soon:
Masked Intentions
Coming Next Year:
Prototype*
At Death's Door
Unmasked
Contract Renewed
Aya DeAniege
Copyright 2016 Aya DeAniege
Front Cover Design by Christina Quinn
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Introduction/Preface
I have had many younger people ask me as to whether or not the contract was real, and for those who knew that it was, what it actually said. There seems to be a belief that this particular contract could never have existed. It's true that in the modern day and age, it couldn't exist. However, the reason why it cannot exist is because the Program helped bring about laws which protect the poor from the rich.
We were never quite the serfdom that many countries reverted to, the rich were not able to own the poor for life, but the government was made up of rich folk and one of them, surely had a need for odd contracts. So long as a poor person was involved and signed the contract, a rich person could do whatever the poor person agreed to, even if the poor person had been tricked into signing.
The contract was very real, and Albert could do all those things to Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth, if they disobeyed, they would forfeit their lives. The lives of those around them would be shattered by association.
Albert couldn't attack anyone in the lives of Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth, which was why the first time he caught Nathaniel with a sub, he had sent the woman home and taken Nathaniel instead.
The Program changed the laws to prevent new contracts like that from being made. They were a regulatory body, not the first and only ones to bring up contracts. From the perspective of the the slums, however, they were. Unless a rich person forced you to sign a contract before the Program, you had no idea that such contracts could exist.
All the old contracts were grandfathered in. As in, because they existed before the laws, they were allowed to continue to exist, despite the harm they caused to poor folk.
Many have even suggested that due to the nature of the contract—which kept Mr. Wrightworth or Nathaniel from mentioning the event at Mayfair's to anyone—and the seclusion of the community that there were no repercussions to my being beaten and almost killed, or to her being arrested for assault.
There were repercussions, of course.
Mayfair wasn't just some rich woman. She was the heiress of the largest manufacturer of parts that every vehicle needed to run. They dabbled in other things as well, but her family was known as automobile royalty.
Paparazzi were not what they are now, the vultures circling anyone of notoriety at all times. It took them three days to publish the story, but it hit all newspapers and even some of the rich peoples' news broadcasts. By Friday every rich person knew who Isabella Martin was—that she was a part of the community and a poor person from the slums. They even got a hold of some of the videos from Mayfair's estate, which I'm pretty confident she leaked.
She was painted as both victim and aggressor. She was the awkward woman put in a position by a damaged and deluded person.
Politicians—Oberon and so many others—were seen on the broadcasts and even stepped up at the Capital to both condemn and defend those involved. Someone from the Capital called for all those law enforcement officers to be disciplined. Another called for the Program to be shut down, for Mr. Wrightworth to be stripped of his duties and returned to the slums where he belonged.
The politician caught saying that suffered backlash like no one could believe. He had to resign in disgrace. When those in the slums heard, they rioted. His servants, even those under contract, quit. No one would work for the man because he was, in the eyes of poor people, everything that was wrong with rich folk.
He wasn't everything wrong with rich people, but he was pretty damned close. The division of class should never have been pointed out in such a way. Most politicians knew that, and knew that the debtees didn't outnumber them, but those straddling that line and the poor commoners did outnumber the fabulously wealthy.
Debtees didn't have a vote, but those others did. They were the deciding factor for the Progam's funding and the laws that protected poor folk.
Those words from that moron started the first riots, though the debtees didn't know who Isabella Martin was. Those poor folk involved in the first fights only heard rich people denouncing slum folk. They worried that the rich would take everything from them, would take the way out.
Some even worried they would shut down the Program in its entirety. I'm guessing that was the goal of making that announcement, as the man and those who he worked with were a driving force behind the laws which attempted just that. He and his were paid by rich folk who wanted to drive the wedge between the classes, to raise themselves to a position that lords of old held over their fiefdoms.
The riots resulted in violence, of course. Several people died. A debt was added to the slums involved, to pay for the policing.
When all was said and done, it was decided. There would be a moratorium on Program contracts from anyone who participated in the riots. Nearly an entire slum was cut off from the very thing they wanted to keep.
Other slums grumbled in protest but were too afraid of costing their families the bounty that was a Program contract. A few didn't care, but their family set them to rights pretty quickly.
In the slums, you stood with your family, or you suffered slum justice. I don't think a single one of those who were strung up ever received more than a casual glance from the police forces. The troublemakers were dealt with, and the officers didn't have to do anything. Slum justice caused more fear than the government proclamations and new laws.
The government wasn't there, after all. The poor folk didn't think they'd ever set foot in the slums, didn't think life could get worse. Family members were there, however. They were there as you slept, there as you showered, there when you thought you were alone.
As for myself, I was painted the whore.
Or the virgin twisted by rich people.
I was the black sheep. My history was paraded across the screen for rich people to judge and pick apart. My face on every screen.
They talked about my family, my history, my work in the slum and their supposed reasoning for why I went to the Program building. The Program itself released absolutely no information, they believed in full confidentiality except when participating with law enforcement. An officer once leaked information. They charged him with everything they could come up with, and then the prosecution added on endangerment.
The first of the riots were subdued.
And then Albert Edwards was found and arrested.
Let me be clear. The warrant was issued before I went to Mayfair's place. Officers were told first and foremost to catch Albert and bring him in. They weren't to waste time searching his estates or lands. Every house was under surveillance, but the man was slippery.
The police made it seem like they weren't interested in searching his home because th
ey wanted to catch him walking in.
When they did catch him, it was as he was headed to his private plane. That plane was bound to the only free country left on the planet, the last of the old nations to still be alive and well. The only place to never extradite to another country, who had never lost the technological advances that the rest of the world had lost and recovered.
He was charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon—eight counts—and premeditated murder—seven counts—amongst a plethora of others which I don't rightly recall.
Why, you might ask, were there so many counts against him? Remember when I said karma is a bitch?
Well...
Seven bodies were found buried on the grounds of estate Albert had taken me. Bodies that were found because the prosecution reviewed the tapes with a psychologist, who said that Albert was ritualizing what he did to me.
With that and a second opinion, they had all the evidence they required to search the other tapes.
There were none. Albert had erased them. The act of erasing surveillance tapes over two years old is not, nor has it ever been, illegal. At some point, room has to be made in storage for other tapes. The only reason he hadn't deleted the videos of his time with me was the fact that the moment they went in to rescue me, they took control of the systems.
He always kept the tapes. His usual ritual was to show the tapes to the next one. It was just that no one knew where he kept the copies, and I didn't remember that. Perhaps he was evolving with me. That is what the psychiatrists call it, I think. Evolution of a serial killer.
Upon finding everything erased up to the moment I was taken into the building, the prosecution approached a judge. It didn't take much to get a hold of a search warrant. The building was searched, everything was stripped apart, trophies were found. He hadn't just cut my hair to make a point. He had done it to keep the hair. That was his trophy.
Suppose it could have been worse, and bloody. He could have removed all my teeth, or taken a finger.
They tore apart the grounds and found seven bodies and one hand.
We never did find out the history, or owner, of the hand.
He was given no bail and was kept in solitary confinement, for the safety of all. He was assigned a team of psychiatrists, to keep him from manipulating one.
You have to understand; he was the first serial murderer of the modern era. The courts were well aware of the serial killers of the past and were afraid that they were somehow super-human. They took necessary precautions and unnecessary ones.
From Mayfair's I was taken back to the Program building and left the car naked. Those in the building kept their eyes to themselves and never brought it up again. Except for Nicole, who would never let me forget that walk, the baring of my skin and the physical damage from the hour I had spent at Mayfair's.
They made me stay in medical until I was fully healed. After that, I received a full psych evaluation. So many problems, I'm sure, but it was determined that I had gone in of my own free will and that I was a willing participant.
Outside the building the riots began again as the names of Albert's victims were slowly released.
I watched them with Mr. Wrightworth and Nicole, afraid of what would happen to all of us if the riots broke out in the nearby slum. The government couldn't trace the information or how people in the slums were all finding out about the riots. They kept strict control, and these incidents showed them that something was very, very wrong.
The slums where Albert's victims came from did riot, and that was understandable. After the first two names, police enforcement changed their approach and the riots weren't as bad. A few were entirely avoided. But then slums not involved in Albert's case began rioting over the victims, having never known that the victims were women from the slums.
We worried then. The power went out more than once. There was the sound of explosions in the parking lot. Program buildings were both a sanctuary and the enemy. The slums involved in the riots might have been far off, but the poor folk weren't contained by walls, not then. We stayed in the slums because we knew there was nothing for us outside of them.
Poor people were free to come and go as they pleased, and they did.
All the buildings were targeted. Each slum had a small outpost building. For some that saw few contracts, the building was small, little more than a rented office space.
We were in the main building, which had high fences and security. The main building had the mainframe, the original paper contracts, the controllers—who had access to all the buildings that had been upgraded to their standards—and the recovered contractees who had to be protected at all costs. Our security was doubled, special procedures were brought in, no one was allowed in or out without special permission.
I couldn't even go to church most Sundays because they were afraid that I would be attacked either by protestors from the slums, or Albert sympathizers.
Despite all the precautions, we had plenty of reason to worry as well.
Being in the main building made us the primary target of a group of terrorists that chose the riots as the time to strike.
Funded and founded by rich people, but hiring poor people to do their dirty work, these terrorists wanted to destroy the Program in its entirety.
The Program offered contracts to the poor, raised them up and delivered up to three emancipations a year.
Their reasoning was simple: rich people were born rich, poor people were born poor. Both should remain separate.
They didn't just view themselves as better than poor people, but honestly believed that they were above poor people, that those in the slums were content with their lot in life and that not everyone can be rich. They didn't see the long-term view that Nathaniel had shared with me, or if they did, they didn't believe it was the way the world should go.
They wanted to retain control.
Of course, they didn't just attack us.
They had spent years undermining everything we did. None of them held contracts, so it was easy for law enforcement to find them, once they stopped a poor person who had been sent to bomb the building.
Morons.
But they did a lot of damage, and they started the whisperings amongst the slums, which put a black mark on the Program.
It's important to note that history does not recall Mayfair's arrest as the cause. Nor do they mention Albert Edwards being arrested as the reason why the riots began again. The books don't say, "So Isabella Martin took a beating, and then Elaina Mayfair violated consent, and the whole world lost their fucking minds."
Which from my point of view, was basically how the events happened.
History tends to say something more like:
“Robert Cavell was recorded, on national television, as saying that the head of the Program, a man who had been born in the slums and had been raised up by the very contracts he was overseeing, should be stripped of all he had earned and be returned to the slums. Where Cavell believed all slum people belonged, no matter their hard work or skills. The tenuous trust between the upper and lower class was broken in a moment, and those from the slums nearest the capital rioted.
“Sixteen hundred people lost their lives. Numerous were wounded in the first riots. The cost of putting down the riots was in the millions, but the cost of the rebellion it would birth in later years is still being felt.
“Cavell resigned in disgrace after the first riots ended. He would later take his life in a motel room on the outer edges of a slum, having lost his family's fortune trying to regain his position at the capital."
The rebellion took place years later, but those who rebelled claimed the riots as when they began planning. The government cracking down on surveillance, going public with the fact that we were always watched at all times, didn't help matters. Building walls around the slums was just a stupid idea, but politicians weren't exactly known for being intelligent in their decisions.
A week into the riots, martial law was enacted.
For the poor people, realizing that there was a third class was surprising. The military was made up of men and women who were taken as children. Orphans, mainly. Unwanted children whose mothers were convinced to carry to term and give up for adoption. There were some few poor rich who sold a younger child to the government to get our of debt, or to give an older child the education they needed to bring in wealth.
Those in the military didn't carry debt, per say.
But they knew how and from where they came.
They held no love for the slums.
They were mainly reserves, trainees who hadn't seen fighting yet. We were fighting wars overseas for control of black lands, but no one in the slums knew that.
None of us were told how badly the collapse hit other countries or the fact that we were waging a war over what was once France.
I was terrified.
There was no way for me to know how my family was doing because no one was allowed access to what was going on inside the slums. My previous contract with Nathaniel had stated that I couldn't contact my family. It had ended and then the whole problem began. No one had ever taught me how to use the surveillance system. I couldn't look into it myself. Mr. Wrightworth was far too busy for me to bother with such a silly request. So I just never saw them.
The Program didn't know, the other slums didn't know, the rich people didn't. Everyone just lived their lives and was either happy nothing was trying to kill them, or just trying to survive until the next day. The news stations would have snippets, but didn't report the whole story, just vague generalizations as to what was going on. Military officials would give statements and talk about a successful operation like they were doctors excising cancerous tissue.
No one talks about what did happen. Like it never did happen.
Rape and war crimes are what happened.
Each slum was brought to heel. Even those who had no involvement in the first riots saw military on their streets. Starting a fight, even protecting a wife or sister, resulted in debt being added to one's genetic profile. It became a crime to protect your family. Protesting rape? Well, fuck you. And your sister and your mother and your aunts, any daughters you might have as well.
