by Brandon Hill
“Ah, look,” I began, though I was fairly certain that she was unable to understand me. “I appreciate your kindness and such, but … um …”
She gestured further down the hall.
“Look, you don’t understand,” I said despite the obvious language barrier. “I don’t do brothels; I’ve got a …”
She moved a few paces down the hall, and opened a door. With the same inviting smile, she gestured inside.
Groaning, I shuffled over to the door, and, decided that a peek would not hurt. I wanted to at least know what I would be chewing Chester out over the next day.
What I saw was a nightmare.
I expected some exotic women, perhaps scantily dressed at the most, naked at worst, but no. This was much, much worse, as what I saw within was not even human.
They were Felyans.
Two An’Kya Felyans and a red-furred Re’Kya Felyan lay supine and naked on the luxurious crimson silks of the king size bed, their eyes half-lidded and glassy-looking as they cast vacant, wanton smiles in my direction. One whiff was all the explanation I needed. The room smelled strongly of riss, a dried herb that Sar’vana had brought from her ship, and once burned as incense when we made love. It was something like Felyan catnip: an aphrodisiac that enhanced the experience of sex for them, but also clouded their minds somewhat. I saw through the filmy drapes that surrounded the bed that each of them wore a steel collar, and that upon each collar was the same tiny ornate “Z” that had been posted beside the brothel’s entrance door, unmistakably marking them as Zadian slaves.
I could not, would not hide my revulsion. The Zadians had been trafficking in Felyan slaves … and sex slaves at that! I was no lawyer, but I did know some interplanetary laws, and Zynj was an Alliance world, despite its remoteness and reputation. This was illegal, even here. Felyans were a sovereign race, and abhorred slavery. I’d even heard that the dreaded Second Imperium was loath to incur their wrath by enslaving them. I staggered back, my face a mask of the horror I felt in every fiber of my being. How could Chester have even thought that I’d appreciate this? I took no pleasure in corralling the slaves that we allowed on Zynj, but accepted it as a part of life. And the slaves we used were either indentured servants or convicts. This was different. There was no way that the Felyans could have possibly known about, let alone sanctioned, this.
The woman who had led Chester and me into the house questioned me in a reproachful tone, but I was at a loss to say anything, not that she would have understood me anyway. My steps were ungainly; I was still reeling from my own shock and disgust, but I managed to turn myself around just short of knocking over what looked like a very expensive miniature grandfather clock that rested upon a fancy table. Sidling awkwardly about it, I made my exit, coming just short breaking into a full-on run. This I saved for when I exited the building.
My thoughts were so overwhelmed with terror and shock over what I’d seen that I remembered nothing of my run, save the complaints of the people I’d bumped into on the way back to the train station. The only thing on my mind was that I had to get as far away from that place as I could. I felt my heart pound, and my thoughts overflow when I finally had a moment to myself in the train, where I’d sought out one of the empty cars.
“God, why?” I croaked, resting my head in my hands. Felyans were normally so lively; to see them like I had, degraded to pleasure toys and kept under the mind-fuddling effects of riss and whatever other drugs the Zadians had used made me sick to my stomach. Using humans for that kind of work was bad enough; even worse was how the Elders tolerated it only because the Zadians tithed their income from their trade to our government. But they had no right to do this to Felyans.
“Damn you, Chester ... “ I whispered so silent, it only seemed to have sound in my mind. “Why did you let me see that?”
I had to know; I had to ask Sar’vana. She deserved to know this, or at least let me know if her people knew … if she knew. If she did, then I had nothing to worry about, and I just embarrassed myself severely, if only to avoid being unfaithful to the only girl I had ever loved. But if they didn’t, then at least I could help right a terrible wrong before Sar’vana and I would be separated. She had no phone, but I knew that I could contact the ship from my computer. And if not her, I could at least get the word out to someone aboard who would at least hear out the ranting of some random human. I had nothing to lose either way.
If I could have done it, I would have ripped the door to my home off of its hinges, rather than slot the code key. I hurried over to my computer and brought up the ShipComm app.
No sooner had the app opened up than there came a knock at the door. I froze as fright struck me like a right cross to my sternum.
I forced control upon myself, fighting doggedly against fear as I moved with great trepidation towards the door. I unsheathed my knife from my belt, not knowing what to expect.
I pressed the comm button beside the door. “Who is it,” I asked, my strained voice making the question sound terse.
“The police. Open up!”
Almost simultaneously an initial fright and then subsequent relief shot through me, mixed with annoyed chagrin, as I at first thought that it really had been the police, then realized that the voice was just a playful affectation of a bass … and finally, recognized whose voice it was.
I opened the door, and Keisha leaped into my arms. Her lips were quick to press against mine, extinguishing any protests.
“Happy to see me, lover?” She whispered in my ear.
“K … Keisha … ?” I sputtered in surprise at both her unexpected presence and her equally unexpected lack of anger. “Chester told me that you …”
“Yeah, about that,” Keisha was confused that I had not returned her affections, but was undaunted. “I did a little thinking and realized that I was just being selfish. After all, we did it for almost a full month. You’d want some breathing space. It’s only natural. And I wasn’t being fair to you. I guess it was just my bitchiness that got through. After all, people carry at least a little baggage into relationships, right?”
I stared at her with momentary astonishment. She was presuming a lot to think that we had any kind of relationship; at best, our rendezvous over this past month had been little more than a series of booty calls, but perhaps she was into wishful thinking. Either way, I didn’t have time for this. She could not have picked a worse time to forgive me and attempt to pick up where we left off. I needed to get rid of her, and fast, but was at a loss of how to let her off easy. I could procrastinate, but she didn’t look like she would have accepted something so half-assed. More than anything, her leading me to the bedroom made me realize that she would not take “no” for an answer. I think that my lack of action as she did this was only because I was amazed at how quickly she moved. Until now, I had no idea of how “high pressure” she was when it came to relationships, but as she plopped herself onto the edge of the bed, I was getting a front row seat to it.
“Wait a sec; what are you doing?” I asked, as if I didn’t know what Keisha’s removing her blouse meant.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Keisha laughed. “It’s been a week. I know you needed some ‘you’ time, but I wasn’t tired at all.” She grabbed my wrist and pressed my hand urgently to her breast. Come on, Jules, take me!”
“Look, Keisha,” I began, my mind racing with frantic desperation as to what I could say, “I think we need to talk about some things before we…”
“Less talk; sex now,” Keisha said, and used my tenuous footing borne of my nervousness to pull me into her grasp. My protests were suppressed by both her lips and her tongue.
“Still want to talk?” She breathed in my ear when she at last released my mouth from her own. You’ve gotta want it after…”
I said nothing to stop her. Rather, she paused, mid sentence of her own volition as she sniffed the air. A strange expression was on her face.
“What the…?” She said with a sudden incredulity that I
did not comprehend.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, at the same time confused and thankful for the reprieve.
She sniffed again. “I know that smell,” she said, her expression at first distant and blank. This time, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Ugh! That nasty powdery smell … It smells like…”
Her eyes went to my pillow, where I had placed Sar’vana’s note after I made my bed. My eyes followed, and locked onto the paper with Keisha’s. My momentary relief evaporated in a wordless scream of terror as my mind conjured up the loudest and most profane curse I could muster.
Keisha grabbed the paper and read it. In a flash, her eyes widened, and I knew that I was buggered perhaps fifty ways until Friday, as the saying went. In contempt, she tossed the paper aside, and eyed me with a gaze that was filled with more rage than I had ever seen on any of the worst drunks in the pleasure house.
“Good, God, Jules! You mean to tell me that you’ve been skipping me to spend the last week playing hide-the-sausage with a … a catdog?” She spat the last, vulgar word out in a shrill voice that made me jump. “No wonder why it stinks like one of them in here!”
She stopped, and her eyes fell upon her hand. Some of the ointment that had been on the covers had not yet completely dried, I supposed, and she picked the bits of fur that had stuck onto her hand. As if she’d touched a cockroach she reacted with a flurry of disgusted shrieks, shaking the fibers from of her hand as she launched herself off of my bed.
“Eeew, it’s everywhere!” she exclaimed, brushing the fur off of her clothes as if someone had set them on fire. “What was she, a Re’Kya Felyan, or something?
“Yes, she was,” I said, at last given a chance to get a word in edgewise. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Keisha’s look of disgusted shock intensified, and her fist clipped me smartly against my chest, the pain of that blow and my racing mind causing me to step awkwardly back to avoid another strike. “Are you into animals or something?”
I grasped at my throbbing chest, completely without word or actions, caught in Keisha’s tirade. I could do nothing but step backwards with every step she took towards me. “What was the matter with me?” She shrieked, her voice now breaking with tears that would not be long in coming. “Was I not good enough? Are humans not good enough for you? Why would you do something like that to me?”
I tripped backwards over a chair beside my breakfast table, and fell, backside first, on the floor. I twisted my ankle slightly, and tried to stand, but the stabbing pain radiating from my injured ankle kept knocking me off-balance. I scuttled across the floor, half-dragging myself as Keisha stalked ever closer. To my horror, consternation, and grief, she went to my artwork shelves, and, one by one, yanked them from where they stood.
“I can’t …
“… believe …
“… I let …
“… you. …
“… touch …
“… me!”
With each screeching cadence, a piece of art flew across the room: a figurine shattering the glass vase my sister got me for my 18th birthday; an anklet knocking down a book off of the bookshelf; a sculpture chipping the vitriplas of the tank in the center of the living room. It was all I could do to shield myself from Keisha’s enraged barrage.
I felt my back hit the door, and I frantically reached up towards the unlock button. A flying glass sculpture barely missed my fingers as it struck the wall, but a tiny shard grazed my hand. I yanked the injured limb back, but the wound did not hurt. Hurriedly, I reached up again and pressed the button before Keisha got lucky.
I should have figured that amidst the screaming, the neighbors would have noticed that something was amiss, and called the police. I stumbled outside and managed to right myself. People were standing around, attracted to the commotion from my home, staring at me, and turning their heads sharply towards the door, from which Keisha’s screaming tirade could still be heard coming closer.
“What’s her problem?” I heard someone say beside me. “What did you do?”
“She’s crazy,” I answered plainly, I was too busy gathering the shattered remains of my dignity to search out who said it.
“Look out!” I heard someone shout, and I saw several people scatter in my peripheral vision.
I never saw what hit me.
I was dazed, in a flood of garbled voices. I felt hands grasp me harshly, and a screaming, incomprehensible voice shouting at me as I was shaken violently.
Then I was dropped to the ground, and the voices became clearer.
“…can’t do anything with him unconscious, lady. Now can you calm down and tell me what happened?” It was a man’s voice. I looked towards its source and saw the unmistakable polished leather boots of a policeman several feet away.
“He’s been sleeping with some alien bitch!” Keisha shrieked. “I told you that already!”
“Hey, he’s coming around,” I heard someone else say in a voice several octaves higher. I noticed another set of boots approaching, and I pushed myself off of the ground. Pain shot through me from scratches and bruises that I did not have before, and my head was pounding.
“Are you okay?” One of the officers helped me to my feet and steadied me. He looked a little bit like Chester, except there were no freckles, and his hair was mostly gone. “The girl was whaling on you when we got here. We had to pry her off of you. You need a medic?”
“No…” I answered, my words coming out in a mumble.. “No, I’m … I’m fine. I just was dazed that’s all. I got hit by something.”
“You got hit by a lot of things, actually,” the officer said. with a touch of morose humor.
“Is he okay, Cole?” the other officer asked from where Keisha was, now handcuffed. “Do we still need the medic team?”
“No,” I told the officer beside me. “I’m fine. Really.”
“He says he’s fine,” the officer called out to his partner, and then spoke into the comm unit on his wrist. “Cancel previous med team dispatch to alpha res sector.”
“Acknowledged,” came the voice on the other end in a crackle of static.
“Then get him over here,” the other officer called out. “I’ve got to scan him.”
“Can you walk?” the almost-Chester-looking officer asked me.
“Yeah.” I was a bit less than certain of it, but walking turned out to be easier than I thought. Still, my legs felt like lead weights. This wasn’t because of anything from the previous blow to my head, or to my body, however. I just heard the words that I’d dreaded. It was a known fact that Felyans, after sex with a human, left a residual genetic trace on and in the bodies of their mates, making subtle changes to their DNA. There was no way to mask it, and I had been with Sar’vana for a week. The bed was evidence that was damning enough. Scanning me would confirm everything.
The officer stayed at my side until I approached his partner, a stern-faced, dark-haired man almost as thickly built as I was.
“You’re Julius Galway?” He said.
“Yeah.” I turned, and saw that Keisha was handcuffed to a nearby post. She said nothing, only glowered at me, as most of her rage had boiled down to a simmer.
“You’ve been accused of genetic crimes,” the officer said. “We checked your home, and found traces of Felyan DNA and human DNA from hair and various bodily fluids. I’m required by law to inform you that an unsterilized human breeding outside his species is a first order genetic offense. If found guilty, the penalty is mandatory sterilization, and forfeiture of your property rights, to be carried out immediately.” He held up a flat, white plastic wand in front of me; a blue light shone at its end. “I’m also required to perform a residual genetic scan to confirm suspicions. Do you understand this?”
I nodded silently. I felt completely numb all over. Everything had gone south in a proverbial heartbeat. Why did Keisha have to make such a commotion to the point where the police could not help but be involved? Hell, why did I even
open that door? Now, my fate was sealed. I would never see Sar’vana again. The only emotion that broke through my wall of numbness was the pain I felt at what she would think of me for standing her up tonight, especially after such a long time together.
I’m not ashamed at what we did, my li-ah, I thought as the wand’s blue became red, telling the officer all he needed to know. I’d do it a million times for you.
I barely felt the handcuffs upon me, or heard the officer reading me my rights.
I love you so much, Vani … my li-ah. I hope you can someday forgive me for vanishing like I did.
Keisha was seated beside me in the police car’s back seat, but she scooted away into her corner once I was secured. Once we arrived at the precinct, we were separated, and she was taken to a different holding area. I wasn’t processed like she, or the other suspects were. Instead, I was led to a separate room, sterile and white, with a single chair in its center. A voice from speakers in the walls ordered me to sit down in the chair, and when I did, I felt a stinging cold sensation upon my neck.
Everything went black.
8
I awoke to a cluster of bright lights in my face. I squinted in discomfort and tried to shield my eyes, but my hand stopped just short of chest height. I struggled for a moment, still disoriented and not knowing what impeded my movement, but then I looked to my left and my right and saw that my arms were bound in thick leather restraints. The bed on which I lay was situated at an angle, and I could see that the same restraints were wrapped about my ankles as well.
The room was a sterile, antiseptic white, like the room that the police had led me into before I was put out. Even my bed was covered by a thin sheet of white paper, the same as an examination table in a clinic. There was an actual table across from the bed, white as the rest of the room. I saw that my clothes were folded in a small pile atop a nearby chair, providing a glaring source of color amidst uniform white. Even the hospital gown I wore was white. They had removed my underwear, I soon discovered by way of the sudden, distinctively cold breeze that permeated my lower parts.
