Tremble in the Dark: A Gwen Farris Novel

by P. S. Power

  Peter winced, then straightened.

  "Oh, that... well, it isn't fun, but it's more annoying, than really painful. Like stubbing my toe or about like that. I do feel sort of ill too. That and a little sad." It was all built in to the device he had on, one of them.

  Manly looked at her and grimaced, clearly not thinking that their project would work with that little negative reinforcement.

  "This is the new part, this other thing here." He hoisted the other, nearly identical, plain metal box, letting his finger hover over the button there. "If you do what you're asked, you get a reward."

  When he touched the tab, the kid stiffened, but just stood there, not making any sort of movement at all. Frozen in place.

  Right until Manly let go of the button.

  Peter took a deep breath and smiled. "That's incredible! I've never felt anything like that before. Not even close. I, can I do that again?"

  It was Gwen's turn then to smile. Even though she wasn't feeling it. That pleasure device was wicked. She'd tried it the night before and had instantly told Manly that he had to lock all the units down from then on. She'd had to fight to keep herself from demanding one, right then and there. As it was, twelve hours later, she wanted to take the one that Peter had on and just leave the thing on, forever.

  Even knowing that she'd probably end up starving to death if she did. Or dying of thirst, not even noticing that it was happening.

  "You can try it again, but you have to earn the reward. It will only be a reward for accomplishing new tasks, so you'll have to keep in training, if you want to experience it again."

  That was the hard part, because she was addicting a small boy to something that was better than any drug. Better than sex, or food. Then she was telling him that the only way to get it was to please his masters. It wasn't horrible torture and pain, but it was an even stronger chain. It was still slavery.

  Worse, it was so strong that, after one ten second blast of the thing, she was more than willing to do that same training herself. Any training that they wanted her to do. If they'd promised her more of that, she would have cleaned the toilets of the house with her tongue. That wasn't even a joke, she realized, which was... horrible. It probably meant she was the worst person in the world.

  It worked though. Incredibly. Peter went from a person that had about half an hour of combat instruction, to a near master of the martial arts, at least the unarmed ones, in ten hours. In the end she had to promise him more of that "reward" if he'd relax for eight hours. The young man didn't go and find a bed, just dropping in place, out on the back lawn, in a seemingly boneless heap.

  Manly was pleased. He even smiled and seemed to mean it.

  "If the learning sticks, I think we have a new technique. Next time you should have him go to a bed first."

  That was going to be the problem at first. They'd gotten through at least a week's worth of things in a few hours and left the boy hungry for more, so he could get that reward. They'd been doing it carefully too. They'd only had to use the negative reinforcement twice during the whole thing.

  Gwen felt dirty inside. It was better than pain, the way that the Westmorlands had used it, but it was still a dark and nearly evil thing. Worse, once they got used to it, the trainers would probably be able to use this to push their people into even more complex and high level achievements than pain itself would allow for.

  She felt herself grow more and more aware of that, as the next two days passed. Finally, Manly had the top three Westmorland fighters come in, wearing padded outfits, and put little Pete in a similar get up, so that they could all use full force movements.

  Then, with all of them standing out in the back yard, he addressed Darrick Westmorland, who was the head of her Special Service section, and she realized suddenly, pretty much in charge of the whole thing. It was hard to remember things like that, but the Special Service wasn't that big and the man had been part of her personal training, in regards to the powered armor. He had two others with them, both men and both looking lean and hard.

  Manly nodded at each of them.

  "Peter here has been learning to fight. We'll need you gentlemen to test him at the highest level possible. When we begin, you can't hold back at all. It will be your job, working as a team, to try and take him out as fast as possible. Peter, if you knock them all out, you'll receive half an hour of reward time." He looked at the men, who seemed a little baffled, but didn't go over exactly what they were about to face.

  Peter was just a boy, so that warning might not help at all anyway. Then again, they were Westmorlands, and knew that even a small or weak seeming person could be a threat. They didn't treat women any differently than men, when on duty, at least.

  Darrick looked at Manly however, his face slightly dour. The Special Service head did that expression pretty well. Gwen tried to memorize it, to practice later, when she had a mirror.

  "Knock us out?" The man seemed doubtful, which Gwen could see. After all, they were three adult men, and wearing a lot of padding, including helmets. It would make it a lot harder to do than if it were a normal fight.

  Manly didn't respond, not directly. He was in charge of this part, so Gwen didn't say anything either.

  "Ready? Good. Gentlemen... Go!"

  They did. It wasn't a fair fight at all, and the early parts went to the three larger men, working together. The thing there was that, using perfect form, little Peter just didn't give up. Even when hit hard enough to make Gwen's teeth hurt in response, he just kept going. So did the others, but there was a qualitative difference to the work. The men were more powerful, and Peter was better. He moved more efficiently, and as everyone got tired and more ragged, he did it less than the others.

  Finally, after about ten minutes of brutal blows, all delivered in silence, except for heavy breathing, one of the adult men went down. Then things got interesting. Darrick and the other man tried to regroup, pulling back, as if on some unspoken signal, which, Gwen realized, they were actually using. They'd been told to work together, so they were coordinating using telepathy, it seemed. The kid moved in on them without hesitation, not giving them a chance to rest, even though his own breathing was ragged and helmet or not, blood poured from his young face.

  It wasn't enough, really, and Darrick managed to snag his arm, breaking it at the elbow with a sickening sound that meant real damage had been done. Peter just used that as an excuse to stabilize the larger man, and hit him until he went down too. The last man, who was the biggest of them, moved to grappling, which was smart of him, because it let the others start to recover as Pete desperately pummeled the man, or tried to, not able to generate enough power with the bigger man on top of him. He only had one good arm, but used both for it.

  Darrick got up and started to try and kick the boy in the head, brutally, while he was being held down. It took a lot of work and all three of the adult men to do it, but they eventually managed to knock the kid out. For about ten seconds. He came to fighting, and Manly called out to him.

  "Done!" Which got an instant response.

  All the men just stood there, gasping and panting for about five minutes. The youngest one was the bloodiest, but they all looked like something horrible had happened to them. Manly looked at the boy and shook his head, sadly.

  "Not good enough for your reward. Next time you'll have to fight five at once too, so I want you to use all of your ingenuity to come up with ways to win. We'll get a healer in. You have twenty-four hours to heal, rest and get ready for the next event. On the good side, if you win, you get a full hour reward. It's worth doing."

  Then he led the young Westmorland into Park Street, with just a hint of tears in the boy's eyes. Because, Gwen knew, he'd failed to get what he wanted. It wasn't about the pain at all.

  As soon as they were in the house, Darrick gasped in pain and rubbed his head. He'd been holding himself in a very tough seeming fashion before that. After a second the other men did similar things.

  Her boss looked a
t her and sighed a little then winced in pain. "So, that works. I imagine the boy can stand against anyone in the world, right now. I may not be the top fighter in the world, but I have years of training and practice as do Bard and Tabis here. If Peter had another fifty pounds of muscle on him, I imagine that we would have lost. Very good. This is only half way through the training too?" He sounded intrigued rather than humbled. Then he wouldn't worry about the kid beating him, or them, at all. It was, as far as he was concerned, a win for the Kingdom, no matter how it came out.

  "Right, probably a bit past that. It will be interesting to see what he does for the next one. You'll need more people."

  "On it. I know who to get. You'll need to have some padding as well, of course. Very good. We'll return in twenty-three hours then." The men limped away, all of them seeming oddly pleased, considering the beating that they'd taken.

  Gwen nodded, and went running, still craving another hit of that pleasure again. One exposure and she wanted it, as badly as anything she'd ever desired. More so really. It was right there inside the building. All she had to do was reach out and take it. She could do that, she was willing to bet. Sneak in and get it. That or reach out with her mind and remove the coin sized contact point from Peter, teleporting that and the box that Manly had away. She'd never done that, but it was a thing that could work, she knew. It was so tempting to try.

  "Of course, I bet I'd have to fight Peter for it and right now, I don't think I could beat him." Not unless she got to him before the advanced healer that came in could. She ran faster, trying to forget about the feeling of the thing. It was...

  Exactly what she'd requested, really. It wasn't just feeling good, but perfect in every way. It wasn't like sex, though that was part of it. Or tickling, which was in there too, but everything. It was like that, plus being totally loved, warm and cool, full and just hungry enough that she could eat, but didn't need to. That and a thousand other things, all at once. It was what, she knew, she was supposed to be like, all the time. If she lived in a best of all possible worlds.

  She'd been on some really good pain meds before, and knew what that was like, opiates, the good kind, that were tempting as far as drugs went. They didn't hold a candle to the device that Peter had on his back right at that moment. She shook a bit, thinking about it, and knowing that, even from the one use, she was addicted. Already.

  Poor Peter.

  Lucky kid.

  She was so torn for a bit that she didn't realize that she'd been running full out for a long time, heading back into the house. The heavy boots were uncomfortable for things like that. They weren't too bad for a slow trudge, but she should have gotten her all leather running slippers on, if she wanted to go faster.

  That or get with Cordell about running shoes. At dinner that night she was quiet, but not depressed at all. Her brain was too busy working out ways to get her another hit of pleasure, knowing the whole time that she could just go and do some training with Manly and he'd let her earn some of it. At the table he was his normal self, having not used the thing, even as a test, being a wise and sensible person. Peter was normal seeming too. Healed already and everything.

  That made sense. Healing was the strongest magical talent, after all. Beth had said so, many times. It made sense that the Westmorlands would have some of their numbers well trained just for that purpose. She'd gotten some healing like that before herself and knew that it worked.

  It was just expensive and hard to come by, since the best healers had to devote a lot of their time and energy early on to the practice. You couldn't train them the same way that you did an orphan, after all.

  "Gwen, I hear that you're paying for a cargo of spices and goods coming in from the South?" This got her attention, coming from Robert at the head of the table. She smiled and nodded.

  "Yeah, I have a shipment of natural rubber coming in as well. I need it for the soles on the new shoes. It would be cheaper to have it all sent by boat, but we want the spices for the party. The Marduk and I both apparently like them." She winked and tried to seem normal, and not like she was craving the sweet, sweet sensation of pure pleasure.

  The man nodded, his face flat. Probably because that wink was a bit flirtatious and Gwen was in his daughter's body. He didn't comment on it at least.

  "I was wondering what the draw was. Still, you can have the herbs and spices packaged and sell them, in small amounts. They're exotic after all. Most don't bring them in, but there is a small potential market. You understand, to restaurants and such?"

  She returned the business like nod and tried to look considering.

  "That would be good. I ended up paying more for all of it than I'd expected. It would be good if I can make enough on it all so that the crew of the Peregrine gets a decent ship's portion." She tilted her head. "That reminds me, I'm planning to work a rotation with them, in Engineering? I worked it out with Gloria. In about three weeks or so." Looking down the table she realized that Clara was still there. She'd been around, but not really there, just kind of hanging in the background. Trying not to be noticed.

  Trying not to be sent away, back to the whore house. Or possibly just grateful for the time spent in opulence? The house was about as nice as anywhere in the world, Gwen figured. Maybe nicer than some of the royal palaces. Probably not, but it wouldn't shock her if it was close. On the good side, Clara wasn't really Gwen's responsibility. She was, while slow, also an adult and responsible for herself. Still, it was a good idea to get her moving in the world, in one direction or another.

  Though not at the table.

  The Vernor's both seemed pleased enough that she was planning on staying busy, and the Westmorlands at the table, all three of them looked just a little blank. She didn't get it for a while, until Beth spoke, her voice sounding a little lost.

  "Are you going to be gone long? I might need to get another assistant if that's the case. You're up to date on your rotation as for Special Service. I don't know what I'll be doing next however."

  She shrugged.

  "Well, they don't really need me on the Peregrine. If we have to work, then I'll be doing that with you, of course. Otherwise, well, you can probably get on as a relief pilot. I mean, if you don't have another duty at the time. I was just thinking that it would be nice to travel around a little." She said it without thinking and Ethyl covered her mouth, as if to hide the smile that blossomed there.

  "You can simply travel, dear. You don't have to fill every moment with work. That seems to be part of you, doesn't it? Always filling your time with something. Not that it's a poor trait, but don't your people ever relax?" Then, because she was a nice woman, she blushed a bit. That, Gwen knew, would be about the fact that her daughter had, in a very real way, killed her. As in caused the physical death of her body.

  Gwen decided to go with being brutally honest, but didn't let herself seem shy about it. She wasn't looking for the others to prop her up, just to explain herself.

  "I keep feeling like I have to earn my keep and make my own way. One day you're all going to wake up and realize that I'm a monster and not someone you want around, and I need to have the skills to survive in this place." She held up her right hand and smiled a bit. "I know, I'm not that at all, and you won't forget me, but..."

  Bethany sighed, it was enough that everyone at the table except Peter, looked at her. For his part, well, if she was the kid, Gwen would have been working furiously to try and figure out how to win the next fight, so that she could get her fix.

  Her Westmorland buddy just paid attention to her, however.

  "It's the way you were treated, where you came from, isn't it? You feel that you have to do everything yourself, because you had to, for so long. A life of learning that no one was there for you, when you really needed them. It's sad."

  Except of course, that it had just been her life, and while she was sometimes depressed, she'd mainly gotten used to it. Those things had shaped her though.

  So she nodded.

  "So now
I work and try to keep myself ready for anything. Still, Ethyl isn't wrong. My whole world is a lot faster and more driven than this place is. So that part is there too."

  Then, thankfully, the discussion turned to the party, which was in two days. She really needed to get a second call in to her fiancé. Before the fight the next day. If she ended up in the hospital, she didn't want him to be worried about her, after all.

  There was other stuff to check on too. She'd been distracted, she realized, because of her desire to get to the new pleasure device.

  Shaking her head, almost imperceptibly, she listened to Ethyl go on about things. She had a whole team of people, some eighty strong, coming in to work on the thing, starting the next day. That meant there would be a whole lot of new faces around. The idea made her feel very uneasy, but no one else seemed to be all that worried. It wasn't very specific, but when she focused, she realized that it was prescient. Just a feeling of unease however.

  That meant...

  Really, if she had it right, from what she'd read, that's what happened when you either didn't want to face a situation, but had to know about it, or when it was just something that was bad, but not known to you. Like how she'd heard of people that had been anxious on September tenth, before the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. She'd always written those off as people just misremembering things, but here that was a thing that could work, so she needed to pay attention. It felt vaguely as if it had to do with Christophe however.

  That probably meant he was going to break up with her again, or, really, she didn't know what it would mean, did she? That was the point. It wasn't a normal fight or attack, since she'd understand that, wouldn't she? Maybe it was that he'd do or say the wrong thing? Insult the Marduk or something? She doubted that however. From what she'd seen if that happened, the Marduk would just suck it up like a big boy and pretend it hadn't happened, getting that Chris wouldn't have meant it. When she'd last seen the man he'd been going around and using first aid on injured people, so that the rest of them could close the gate.