A slow grin spread across his face. “I heard you had a hard edge. I’m glad they weren’t exaggerating. It will make things interesting.” He stepped back, sweeping his arm out behind him. “I think you might be familiar with my associate? This is Case. He has no need for a surname. In fact, I’m told Case is a nickname for suitcase, which is all he had on him when his dear old sustainers took him in.”
Associate?
I tried not to gape. I really did.
Case sat behind him, not bothering to stand. He reclined there, looking at ease with all these assholes. He didn’t even bother to hide it.
A loud snicker sounded behind me. “That was the best part!” Dill shrieked. “How did you not know you had an enemy in your bed all along?”
Furious didn’t come close.
Red rage threatened to overtake me.
I fought to gather myself. I took a few needed breaths. It was only fair after getting that kind of news. “He was never in my bed,” I bit out.
Case’s facial expression didn’t change as his eyes met mine.
Hutch clucked his tongue as he swung himself back toward me, his hands clapping together like he’d finalized a merger of some kind. “What a shame. Opportunities, it seems, were lost.” Then his face went dark. “You want to know how it felt to be had by a twelve-year-old? How did it feel to have the man sitting next to you in your craft detonate your residence right in front of your fucking eyes?” Hutch’s expression churned. I spotted rage and anger and, in the empty place where his soul should’ve been, desperation.
He was dangerous.
A barrage of old memories assaulted me without my permission, one after another. My eight-year-old self face-to-face with the man in charge of my demise, of ruining me, of committing acts so heinous there had been no words in my young vocabulary to describe them. He resembled the man in front of me—not physically, but the look in his eyes. They were dead. Soulless. Empty. This was a man capable of great harm, one who felt nothing when he extinguished the life of another.
I shrugged.
Then I leaned to the side, making sure I had Case’s full attention. “When this is over, I’m taking the barracks, too. Just so we’re clear.” Turning back to Hutch, I made my expression as bland as possible. “So how are we going to do this? I don’t have on me what you need. In order to get it, you’re going to have to let me go. We can arrange a swap at your earliest convenience.”
Instead of getting down to the business of negotiating, Hutch grabbed my arm painfully and wheeled me around, shoving me in front of him. “Business is such a boring topic. How about we go have a look inside the Emporium? We’ve made so many improvements already. I think you’ll enjoy what you see.”
He prodded me forward, and I had no choice but to go. “Yeah, I bet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hutch shepherded me into a long hallway that once upon a time might’ve held a set of massive double doors, probably made of glass, likely with the Bliss Corp logo etched on them in flowing script. Maybe the incoming patron, once they’d gone through those doors, had been greeted by a hologram of a beautifully augmented woman welcoming them with a beckoning finger, flirting with them about what was to come as she led them toward their destination.
Soft, seductive music might’ve played from hundreds of integrated speakers, pheromones likely wafting through vents to titillate and excite. Too bad it didn’t exist, because that would’ve been a much more enjoyable experience compared to the one that was in store for me now in this broken-down piece-of-shit building.
In its prime, it’d probably been elegantly appointed—with some of the richest fabrics and decor available in the world—because a multitrillion-dollar industry didn’t skimp. The floor beneath our feet held no remnants of anything marking it as grand. Hutch’s men had cleared the crap away, but the years of corrosion and degradation couldn’t be erased. It looked dead.
“What do you think so far?” Hutch asked with unmasked pride, a firm grip on my elbow. Several of his men followed, but I wasn’t about to look behind me to see who they were.
“I think you’re insane,” I answered bluntly.
He tossed his head back, his mane of hair swaying with each intake of breath as he laughed. It was a full-throated sound of pleasure. And phony as hell. I knew his anger lived right beneath the surface. It would rear its ugly head soon enough.
The flowing-hair thing was strange and unusual. Because most of us wore our protective headgear the majority of the time, when the helmets came off, the average head of hair was a hot, tangled mess, as mine was at the moment. Not many people had time to hole up at a Pleasure Emporium, planning their evil government overthrow while keeping their hair shiny and clean.
“Wait until you see this.” His voice was animated as he moved to open a door to our left.
“I’m fairly certain nothing you have in here will impress me.” I received a snort in response.
The room was dimly lit. A red glow encompassed us as we moved over the threshold. I didn’t have my chromes, which were in my vest, currently residing on Dill’s body, or my visor, so I had to squint to make out the shapes. It was a fairly large space. A raised platform took up most of one corner.
Hutch stubbornly maneuvered me farther into the room, my feet doing their best to resist, my movements chunky and wooden.
Surprised, I made out a human shape on top of the platform, which I now realized was a bed.
All of a sudden, the figure sat halfway up, screeching and growling, fists opening and recurling, arms and legs tethered in place with little room to move, head shaking from side to side.
“You have a seeker chained up here?” I turned to him.
“I prefer to call them givers. They are equipped to give ultimate pleasure.”
The woman thrashed, trying to free herself from her bindings. “More like takers. This woman looks like she would rip your dick off if you put it anywhere near her.” She began moaning, the words plush and need bubbling out. “Not exactly very forthright thinking to have someone capable of harming your most sensitive parts in bed with you.”
He glared at me, then held his hand up and snapped his fingers. “Bring me a dart.” After one of his henchmen handed him a small dart like the one I’d seen Dill use on the seeker he called Mary, Hutch walked purposely over to the woman, who was wearing next to nothing, a couple of thin undergarments barely covering her body, and plunged the dart into her neck.
I grimaced at the squishy sound it made.
Instantly, the seeker calmed, her body going limp. A few seconds later, she began to moan, but this time her words were different. I heard like it and more. Very slowly, she started undulating. Her hips rose off the bed, her fingers raking the blankets around her, her sounds becoming more punctuated and breathy.
Hutch turned to me, his head inclined toward the woman, like I was supposed to be impressed with her abrupt turnaround from a woman who would rip a dick off to a drug-addled seductress.
I didn’t care about that. I cared about what was in that dart. “Did you give her a cure?” I asked, my eyes continuing to track her movements, which were becoming more pronounced. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
He gave an exasperated sigh. “A full dose might give her some relief, but we’ve found that a half dose creates this state.” His wrist unfurled toward the woman, like he was unveiling a prize. All that was left unsaid was ta-da.
“The state of I’ll-kill-you-in-about-an-hour? Just stick around until I shake this crap and get back to my seeker ways?”
His eyes went dark. “No, the state of arousal.”
I tilted my head as I examined the poor woman, who was still undulating, her moans beginning to sound pained. “That’s arousal? Huh. It looks more like she has a bowel obstruction she’s trying to shake loose before she explodes.” I glanced around. “Is there a waste room nearby? Maybe we can help her relieve herself.”
Hutch grabbed me and spun me around. That was getting old
.
A crowd had gathered by the door. Once they saw the look in their leader’s eyes, they quickly dispersed. Once it was clear, he dragged me through. We were barely two steps out before he burst through another door and tossed me in, causing me to crash to my knees.
“This is your room.” His tone was steely as he stomped over to a wall and began to pluck things off. It was pretty impressive that items had been mounted there in the first place. These guys had a keen eye for getting the Pleasure Emporium ready for business. Clutching something in his fist, he stalked toward me. “Get up. See these?” He held out his hands. “We have working VR goggles and nodules. We have holograms and sensory nodes. For the first time in over sixty years, we can give a customer the complete erotic experience.”
I got to my feet, which was tricky since my hands were still bound in front of me. I was thoroughly puzzled. “You’re going to have to help me out here,” I told him. “I thought your end game was overthrowing the government and ruling this tiny, crappy broken mess of a city. How’d you manage to downgrade to sex slavery so quickly? Did my putting an end to Tandor’s life change your course?”
His big reveal into this new, twisted world wasn’t having the desired effect on me, and Hutch was getting visibly agitated. A tic formed in the crease of his forehead. He clutched a pair of VR goggles in one hand and what I assumed were the nodules in the other. I’d never seen a pair, but the nodules had wires and little clampy things at the ends, so that must be what connected to your sensitive parts to provide the appropriate stimulation in conjunction with what the viewer was seeing. Looked painful to me. With gritted teeth and shaking limbs, he answered, “This is how we take down the government.”
“You’re going to sex them to death?”
“Once we open our doors, they will come to us. One by one. We either kill them or make them our slaves. In the end, the city will be ours.”
I was going to have to revise my first impression. The man was confident, but the masterminding intelligence wasn’t there. I refrained from laughing outright, but it was close. “And if they don’t choose to come here for a sex-slavey adventure?”
Claire was a government worker, and she would never consider visiting a place like this, even if she hadn’t heard the rumors of people missing and all-around death and destruction, which she would’ve.
Everyone would’ve.
Word about this group was already spreading. People talked. Hell, Dill had already told the first person he saw—me. This would be no secret operation.
Hutch was completely delusional if he thought this plan would work.
He stalked forward, his face menacing, the tic now a full-blown twitch. It made his eyebrow jump. His black hair bounced above his shoulders. It would’ve been mesmerizing if the situation hadn’t been so painfully nauseating. “No need to worry yourself with the details,” he cooed. “A plan is in place, and it will work beautifully.”
I scanned the room. It was set up nearly identical to the last one, with a platform bed in the corner. I guessed that’s where all the action would take place. On one of the walls, the remnants of an integrated screen were still visible. No doubt for broadcasting explicit scenes. I glanced at the door.
Like the other room, an assemblage of people had gathered. I yawned. I would’ve lifted my arms to stretch if they hadn’t been cuffed in front of me. “I’m going to need a nap pretty soon.”
Hutch hauled me to his chest by the arm, tossing the coveted VR goggles and nodules at someone as we passed. “The last thing you’re going to be doing is sleeping.”
He dragged me back into the main room we’d started in, the contingency following like brainless children. The only one who hadn’t joined in the procession, Case, hadn’t even bothered to get up. He sat in the same position, legs crossed, a bland expression on his face, the fingertips of one hand all that were animated as he drummed them against the arm of the chair.
Disgust bubbled in my throat.
It was hard to admit that I’d actually begun to trust him. The seeds had been sown—almost without my permission—and trust had begun to sprout. Lucky for me, those seedlings could be dug up and tossed out a scraper window just as easily. “Too busy to join our little tour, asshole?” I spat as Hutch forced me into a seat across from him, pressing my shoulders down with force. I sat with a thump.
Case shrugged. “I’ve seen it already.”
“I’m sure you have. Did you help with all the cleaning and sweeping? Or possibly loaned them a sledge so they could arrange everything just so on the walls?”
He sat up abruptly, his elbows braced on his thighs, the skin around his eyes tight. “We all do what we have to do to survive.”
My gut roiled in disgust. I’d let this guy get close to me. “What did they offer you in exchange for your soul?” I jerked forward in my seat only to be shoved backward. “Whatever it was, I hope it rots you from the inside out.”
Hutch walked around my chair, followed by Dill, who was smirking. It was the only expression he knew how to make. “Such passion,” Hutch said, turning to address Case. “See, I told you. She will be our main draw. No one will be able to stay away once they know we have her.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dart, this one slightly bigger than the one he had just used on the seeker. “Once she’s injected, we will monitor her closely. If you like”—he inclined his head toward Case—“you can taste her first.”
Dill interrupted, “Hey, you said whoever brought her in got her first! That’s me.” He slapped an open palm against his chest. Then he began to cough. Through his racking hacks, he managed, “If you go back on your word”—cough, cough—“everybody’s going to think you’re full of shit.” He coughed again, spittle catching on his chin.
Hutch asked, “Is that blood?”
Dill halfheartedly swiped at his face. “I don’t know.” He brought his hand in front of his face. His eyes widened. “Why the fuck am I bleeding?” He coughed so hard he had to bend over. On the way up, more blood, mixed with spittle, dribbled down his neck. His eyes met mine, and he lunged toward me. “You did this to me, didn’t you?”
My face remained impassive as I leaned forward slowly. “To be fair,” I said, “I did tell you that if you took my vest, you’d die. I’m sorry, but did you think I was joking?” My bottom lip popped out as I made a sad face. “That’s really too bad, Dill. I rarely make jokes when it comes to death and dying. I was actually pretty impressed with myself for giving you a warning in the first place. It was kind of like a test”—I dropped my voice to a whisper—“which it seems you failed big-time.”
He bared his teeth, which were now covered in blood, as Hutch’s men held him back. I crossed my legs and sat back. “I wouldn’t get too close to him, fellas. That’s the funny thing about radium balls. They’re not too choosy about who they infect.”
Two of the guys immediately dropped their hands and backed away.
Hutch’s voice was feral as he addressed Dill. “Did you check the pockets before you put that thing on?”
Dill’s shocked expression was comical. Apparently, he was capable of making more than one face. “Well…I…” He jabbed a hand in my direction. “She did. She emptied them before she gave it to me.”
“It seems she didn’t, you moron,” Hutch hissed. “Take him out of here. Put him in a containment room and don’t go near it for the next forty-eight hours.”
“It might take a wee bit longer than that.” I brought up my cuffed wrists, pinching my thumb and index finger together. “The radium contained in that stone has a density of over one million units per gig. In forty-eight hours, he will be fairly charred, but the radium will be happy and active for far longer.” I was going to miss that vest.
The retreating men were forced to take a hands-on approach with Dill, who was struggling like a madman. “Bitch! You bitch!” he screamed as they dragged him away. “I’ll kill you for this!”
“Escort him out of the building,” Hutch called aft
er them. “I don’t care what you do with him, as long as he’s contained.” Within seconds, Hutch reached down and yanked me out of my seat, hoisting me to his chest, his eyes wild and dark. “Do you think this is a game?” I smirked, and he shook me. “You’re about to become my slave, and once you’re infected, you won’t be able to wreak any more havoc. I doubt you’ll be laughing then.”
“Isn’t everything just one big game?” I deadpanned. “Each of us making our calculated moves until our enemies die? And, just so you know, it’s about to get increasingly more hilarious, right NOW!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I kneed Hutch in the groin with more than enough force to make it hurt. Very satisfyingly, and with a whoosh of exhaled breath, he went down, crumpling like a champ, howling in pain.
At the same time, the door we’d originally come through from the roof blew inward, like I’d known it would.
Lockland and Bender entered, their weapons up.
Not only had I activated the radium ball before giving the vest to Dill—the outer shell took an hour to corrode, which I’d been fairly certain about, but not absolutely—but I’d also locked the tech phone on and muted it before Dill had swiped it out of my hands. There was a lot I could do inside my pockets.
My crew had heard everything from that moment forward.
Hutch continued to howl as Lockland and Bender began to fire on the remaining men. Surprisingly, I also heard shots out in the corridor, where they’d taken Dill. I turned, just in time to watch Daze scamper through the entrance carrying a laser gun almost as big as my Gem in shaky hands.
I called, “Easy there, Daze—”
Before I could finish, I was yanked to the ground, Hutch’s breath in my ear. I’d been so focused on Daze, I hadn’t been paying attention. “Even if you manage to eliminate us all,” he panted, “you are still going to pay the price.” His words were shaky and broken and filled with pain. His fists were like a pair of vises as they clutched me around the waist.
Danger’s Vice Page 17
