“Good girl,” he uttered, slightly hoarse. His praise made her happier than she’d ever been in her life, and her heart soared. Never had she felt so protected and cared for. Beneath that, however, there was a sense of creeping doom.
Lita wasn’t stupid, regardless of her current memory loss. At the end of Sy’s task, she was almost certain neither of them would be permitted to live. It seemed so unfair. He was the only man she remembered meeting who had any human decency. If they were doomed in a few days, what was the point of shutting down the feeling in her heart?
* * *
“Wake up.” Sy shook the slave girl until she stirred. When she awakened, she stared at him in horror then flipped off the bed as though it were electrified. What ridiculous rule had she broken this time? He waited to find out.
“I’m sorry, Master. Please forgive me! I didn’t mean to fall asleep on your bed!” she babbled, nose to the floor again. He didn’t like the idea of anyone putting their face on his floor. Cleaning wasn’t one of his hobbies.
“Cool your cheese. And get up off the floor. If you have to keep apologizing for everything, at least do it without getting hepatitis,” he grumbled.
She stood up, looking pale.
“I was only joking about the hepatitis. I think. Look, I know I’m stuck with you for the time being but would you stop acting like I’m some stern evil overlord who’s going to dump you in a pit of shark-infested lava if you sneeze at the wrong moment?”
Her eyes widened, then she caught herself and stared at the floor. “I’m sorry, Master. I don’t know how else to be.”
He softened when he saw the tears forming around her eyes. The silver iris was disconcerting, especially beside her good eye. And it was a good eye. Soul-rendingly beautiful. If she had two of them, he might lose himself forever in the glacier blue depths. It was a crime against beauty that someone had taken the other one, and every time he looked at the silver eye, it made him angry. If Sy got through this, he would have some hard words for the damn priest.
“Where are your clothes?” He looked around his tiny studio apartment and realized she’d been naked from the moment he first saw her.
“I don’t have any, Master.”
He groaned. She couldn’t walk down the street naked. Mars was a cesspool of iniquity, and there was too much inequity, too, so unless he found her some clothes, he’d probably have to fight someone to stop them making off with her.
He looked around his room, then grabbed one of his sleeveless undershirts from a pile of fresh laundry.
“Put this on.”
She dragged it hastily over her head. The neckline came so low on her that her breasts weren’t covered at all, and the shoulder straps were so far apart that one slid down her arm almost at once. Sy tried not to laugh as her nipples proudly pointed toward the ceiling.
“That might just be the most adorable sight I’ve ever seen. Take it off.” He looked again, and came to the conclusion the only other wearable things were his spare leather jacket or the bedsheet. He plucked the heavy leather from the coat hook on the back of his door, and passed it to her. Lita’s hands dropped for a moment under the weight of the black leather embellished with silver spiky studs, then she put it on. With no underwear, the open zipper pressed against her pink areolas, leaving a rectangle that went from her chest down to her sex, showing all the parts of her that most needed covering up before they went out. Sy would get hard again very fast if the girl wasn’t careful. She chewed her lower lip and looked up at him, her devastating blue eye meeting his darker ones.
“Is this all right, Master?” she asked, fidgeting nervously.
“Zip it up,” he growled, then donned his other jacket. His had scrapes across the shiny leather on one shoulder, where the rougher texture beneath was visible, from the most recent time he’d come off his motorbike. With the inconsiderate traffic on Mars, it happened too regularly to replace his gear every time he wiped out.
He led her out of the building and got her some underwear from one of the coin-operated fresh panty machines. She put them on in the street.
“You got some nerve,” he observed.
She said nothing. Perhaps she simply wasn’t allowed to have any shame.
“I’m going to pick up the weapon for this job, then we’re going to eat something before we go and set up our kill spot.”
He wondered if she approved of his actions, assassinating the Earth president. Then he tried to figure out why he cared. She had a soft vulnerability that implied she hadn’t been a slave for long. Other than that, she was a mystery.
“What do you want to eat? Something from Saturn? Or there’s the new Neptunian restaurant on Main Street.”
“Master, may I ask a question?”
“Go on,” he said.
“What’s different about the different food places? Who lives on Saturn and Neptune?”
“When my species discovered the Solar System, we used special technology to make the atmosphere of Saturn, Neptune, and Mars breathable. People from different countries on my species’ home world settled on different planets. I thought everyone knew. Aren’t you a Martian?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what I am, but I don’t think I’m from here. I wish I remembered.”
“What’s the first thing you remember?” Sy asked.
She stared at him as though frozen for a moment, then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Master, I can’t tell you,” she said, and Sy listened to the hint of panic in her voice. What had gotten her so rattled?
“Fine, don’t talk then,” he growled, then led the way to a backstreet arms dealer where he collected the gun he was supposed to use to kill Earth’s president. This day simply could not get any more weird.
Chapter Two
Lita wished she could tell Sy about her past. He seemed to think she was purposely keeping things from him. She didn’t blame him for that. There was no way she could tell him about the implant in the back of her neck without her captors overhearing and activating it. If only that camera in her eye didn’t work. She sometimes feared they could hear her thoughts with it. Then, she had to try to think things she didn’t even believe, to try to drown out what she actually thought about her situation. She knew technology didn’t really work like that, but the priest was so powerful, and he always seemed able to read her emotions even when she was a blank slate, that she wondered if he had some special ability to read her mind.
It didn’t take long for them to get the weapon from the shop. Once Sy had the gun, they walked to a concourse that had plenty of garishly lit vendors in stalls, all of whom sold different types of food. Lita didn’t like looking at some of it, but she tried not to show it.
She had learned that the best way to avoid being punished by Father Croxden was to never dislike anything unless he told her to. Disliking things only meant he’d force them down her throat. He found it funny. So she learned to not have opinions, even when he was feeding her hot sauce or heaped spoons of cinnamon. He loved to mess with her like that... or worse.
That was when Lita realized what this whole situation was. A test. Sy was probably in league with Father Croxden and reporting back to him. If this was real, and they activated her implant, she was doomed. But if this was a test, if she showed them that she wouldn’t waver, there was a chance they wouldn’t kill her tonight or tomorrow. The priest was always testing her.
Sy had seemed so nice, but nobody would genuinely treat a slave with the consideration he had shown. It was far more likely that he was pushing her to fall in love with him, to find out if she would still be loyal to Father Croxden.
Lita resolved to be very careful with her feelings. The last thing she needed was for the priest to devise some horrific punishment for her. Perhaps he’d send her to the doctor again. She flinched as she remembered the last time that had happened. No. She had to protect herself. It wasn’t like anyone else would.
Sy stopped abruptly at a concessions stand. It was bedeck
ed in multicolored fairy lights and a sign at the top said, “Europa.”
Lita smelled something soulful and delicious. It buoyed her heart up from the melancholy, and she smiled. Sy seemed to be getting better at figuring out what to do with a slave, or maybe he’d just pretended not to understand, because he ordered for her, paid, and handed her a paper cup filled with some brown stuff that looked like stew.
“It’s from Saturn. Try it,” he encouraged, handing her a plastic spoon. She tentatively tasted it. Chicken. She liked chicken. He turned to buy his own food, and she stopped eating. Waited. When he turned back to her, he frowned in surprise.
“You don’t like your food?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “I like it, Master.”
“Then why aren’t you eating?”
“I had to wait for you to get yours, Master,” she replied.
He sighed. It was a lot of hard work to remember all the rules and protocol for being a slave, but Lita had always taken it for granted that masters would just know what she was supposed to do.
“All right, I’ve got mine now, so you should dig in. We’ve got a long night ahead of us and you’ll need your energy.” He probably meant all the boring stuff to do with killing the Earth president, but Lita’s pussy spasmed at his words, and her face filled with heat, as she imagined them spending all night together having sex.
When Sy gave her a sidelong glance, she hastily began shoveling the food down. It was gone far too soon. She rarely got fed properly. Often, the priest was too absorbed in his criminal enterprises to remember that she didn’t subsist on thin air, and the doctor enjoyed leaving her hungry.
“Here, let me take that for you.” His fingers closed over the top of hers, setting her skin ablaze with his heat, as he took her empty paper cup and spoon. The red and black tattoos on his fingers were diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades from playing cards. Butterflies filled Lita’s tummy. If this was a test, it was going to be hard to pass.
* * *
“You need to know how tomorrow is supposed to go,” Sy said, as they walked down Main Street. He didn’t want to tell her the details of what he was about to do, but she had to know so she didn’t get in the way. Partly, he wanted to protect her from knowing about the darker side of humanity. The side of him that watched himself, and commented on everything he did, simply laughed at him for that.
She was a slave to one of the most powerful organized crime overlords on the planet. There were probably entire chapters of darkness she could teach him. He wasn’t sure he could stomach knowing. She wasn’t marred on her body, but the deepest scars weren’t always visible. Despite her pliant demeanor, something inside her screamed, constantly, and begged him not to hurt her. He wondered if she even heard that side of herself anymore.
“Yes, Master,” she replied.
“We’re staying at the kill spot overnight because they’ll close off all the streets around this area tomorrow for the president’s parade. Only people selected to be crowd members will be allowed in and out after that.”
He led the way outside and to an underground parking lot. His pride and joy, his bike waited for him. He guided Lita onto the back of the silver machine then got on in front of her, his cock about three inches from the hydrogen tank at the front. He started the engine and savored the sound as it roared to life, then he moved the kickstand with his foot and turned one of the handlebars to accelerate out of the lot. Normally, he’d have them both wear helmets and leathers, but no one would stop him on Mars and they didn’t have far to go.
They traveled about ten minutes at a reasonable speed. No one else was on the road at this time, and it was tranquil. It was the sort of ride that reminded Sy about why he’d let his love of motorcycles get him into so much trouble in life. He loved the wind in his hair and the noise it made in his ears; the way the front wheel seemed to eat up the road; the incredible sensation of a hot girl pressed against his back with her legs apart. More than anything, however, he loved the freedom. It was potent and destructive to be able to go where he wanted and do whatever he wanted, but he couldn’t submit to a life of work, bills, and fixed addresses now that he’d seen the alternative.
They reached a nondescript set of buildings in an unassuming neighborhood. Sy cut the engine and parked his bike out of view. The heavy bike automatically locked the front wheel when the engine wasn’t running, so no one could steal it without a truck.
Sy led the way into an abandoned concrete building among many others. Concrete had been banned on Earth for at least fifty years, because of the environmental damage from quarrying. On all the other colonized planets, however, there was concrete aplenty. On Mars, all the rocks were very red from iron ore deposits, giving the concrete a Pepto-Bismol pink tint. It was the most depressing building material known to man, and on Mars, in the reddish light, it looked even worse. Sy had grown up in a house like this, with bare pink walls wherever he looked.
It was simultaneously reassuring to see it again and yet depressing that his life had come full circle like this. He was back to where he had begun life, in a mass-produced concrete box designed to hide the masses from sight while never helping them move forward. Every time a level of society got saturated, a new one sprang up beneath it, with more problems, less security, and worse housing.
He took the stairs. On the inside, this building was burnt out. The structure was probably not stable, and black scorch marks lined the walls. They reached the third floor when Lita screamed then stopped abruptly.
Sy turned and saw she’d silenced herself by putting her hand over her mouth, but she was staring at something in horror. He followed her gaze. The remains of a fire victim lay in one corner of the hallway. Lita was too quiet. When Sy looked at her again, he realized she wasn’t breathing.
“C’mon,” he growled, grabbing her free hand and leading her to the next flight of stairs. He walked her up them and stopped on the next landing. She still had her hand over her mouth, she hadn’t taken a breath. He shook her by the shoulders and she relaxed her hand, gasping for air like she’d just surfaced in some water.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Sorry, Master,” she replied.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’ll be fine, Master.”
Sy suspected that wasn’t a proper answer either, but he didn’t press the point. They continued through the building until they reached the roof access, which Sy propped open with a broken mop handle, then they were out in the fresh air again.
Lita was frowning, like she was trying to concentrate hard on something, and she looked so vulnerable and confused that he wrapped her up in a hug.
She stiffened and didn’t hug him back. He released her and pulled away, gazing into her good eye.
“Talk to me, sweet one. What’s the matter?” He spoke gently, hoping to coax her into a calmer state.
“I think I remembered something from my past, Master. Only, I’m not sure. How can you be uncertain about your past like that? How can you see something that makes you feel like someone walked over your grave, but not understand what it is you’re seeing? Why can’t I remember?” When she looked at him, her face was anguished.
“I suspect someone did a number on your brain. There’s plenty of different mind-wipe centers on Mars. Some of them will even dump a new personality on top.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “Father Croxden might have done it. Do you have any strong memories of a gambling debt or a drug addiction?”
“Father Croxden is a good master and I am pleased to serve him, Master,” she said in a dead voice. She sounded like she had practiced this same phrase, over and over, at some point. Sy shrugged.
“I’ll talk about him however I damn well please. Camera or no camera. Best find yourself a comfy spot, Lita, we’ll be here all night.” He busied himself making a small fire in an empty metal bucket, then they fell asleep on the roof while it burned and warmed them.
* * *
Sy had the president between the cros
shairs on his sight. His finger coiled around the trigger. Waiting for a clear shot.
His face and neck were soaked. Trying not to think about what he was doing, he observed the Earth president shaking hands with someone while photographers swarmed him. He wouldn’t kill any of them. It was bad enough that he had to shoot the president at all.
Why was he even doing it? First it had been to protect his sister, and to save his own neck from the Mother Theresas. But he might have just gone to Earth in the dead of night and separated his sister from her boyfriend, maybe taken her to Saturn for a year or two. They could both have started a new life. But Lita had made that impossible.
Aside from the fact that she was a living video feed showing Father Croxden what he was doing at all times, she was also at risk. If he abandoned her to save his sister before he killed the Earth president, Croxden would kill Lita somehow. Hell, she was so pliant and scared that she’d probably just stand there and let him do it.
He was losing his chance. Miraculously, the photographers backed away for a moment. Perhaps they sensed the international tragedy that was about to happen. It was now or never. He began to move his trigger finger to take the shot, then a thud from behind him made him spin around, releasing the gun. Lita had tripped over something and was falling toward the ground. She hit her head on the pink concrete.
Sy rushed to her side.
“I’m blind in my left eye! I think the camera got damaged when I hit my head!” she said fearfully.
“Are you all right other than that?” he asked. There was a cut to the side of her head.
“I think so. It hurts though.” She put her hand to her head. At that moment, a bleeping sound emanated from her neck. Sy saw all the color drain from Lita’s face, her eyes wide, mouth open in horror.
“What? What is it?” he demanded.
“Get back! Explosive. Implanted in my neck. It’s just been armed. It will explode thirty seconds after the bleep. Get away, Master!” she cried.
Alien Alphas: Twenty-Three Naughty Sci-Fi Romance Novellas Page 89
