Chapter 19

His reaction had been surprising. She was not entirely sure what she had expected, but the total loss of control was out of character for him - even in the beginning when he had hurt her, it had been controlled and precisely calculated. When she had woken to find him snarling above, she had been certain that she had wrought her own death, but then he had fallen on her, and what should have been brutal and horrifying, had been breathtakingly passionate instead. He had spent hours afterwards lying and just stroking her, running his fingers through her hair and his palms along her skin, as if reassuring himself of his ownership. He had brought her clothing the following day, more changes than there were days, along with shoes and cardigans, things for her hair, cosmetics, and jewellery – so many things that she had been overwhelmed after the deprivation she had grown accustomed to. There was a purpose behind these gifts, she knew. He had used clothing as a punishment, and as a reward, so she knew that this excess had meaning. Two days after the lead, he selected clothing for her to wear, something he did not normally do. He had just finished feeding her when there was a chime from the door. The sound was so unexpected that she jumped, alarmed by it and then caught up in hope. The last time someone had some into the apartment, it had been the green-eyed man. Her owner did not look up from the tablet device but called out something in his language that sounded like a sharp bark. A group of men entered carrying crates. He pointed to the bedroom and spoke without interest, but she watched them with avid curiosity over the edge of the couch. Other than the doctor and the green-eyed man, these were the only people she had seen since Arken Rikash had bought her from the slave market. They did not look at her. In fact, they almost strained their eyeballs avoiding looking anywhere near her, she thought. They were not permitted to look at Arken Rikash s slave, she concluded. Rikash growled, and jerked his head at her with a scowl, and she dropped her head back onto his lap. She was not permitted to look at them either, apparently. Rikash stroked his fingers through her hair, with a low croon. After a short amount of time, the men left the bedroom, and she heard them make their way across the living room and out of the door which was no longer guarded by a lead. Her curiosity was like an itch, the unexpected break in routine causing a spike of nervous excitement and anxiety. What had the men been doing with the crates in the bedroom? Rikash shut down his device, and set it to the side, something that normally signalled that he wanted sex, however instead he rose, collected the various articles and the tablet, and took them into the bedroom, leaving her on the couch without instructions. She waited to see what would happen next, uncertainly. He returned wearing his armour, and a type of cloak over his shoulders, holding the tablet in one hand and a lead in the other. He put the tablet down on the table and held the lead out before her so that she had to acknowledge what it was before he wrapped it around his metal cuff. She saw a light change, glowing blue around the connection, and remembered seeing the same when the lead had been connected to the collars of the women at the slave market. He had activated the lead. "You will walk one step behind me," he told her sternly in her language. "If you go more than an arm length from this," he held out his cuff. "You will receive a shock. If a shock is administered, you will also anger me. Do you understand?" "Yes," she barely breathed it. They were going somewhere. She had not known how tired she was of the apartment until the prospect of leaving it was offered. "Hmm," he picked up the tablet and jerked his head. She hurried off the couch and followed just behind him. He led the way to the door and left it open behind them. As they waited for the elevator, she looked at the open door, trying to interpret what it being left open meant. In the elevator she edged closer to him uneasily. He glanced down at her and crooned reassuringly. "You are not being punished. We are relocating," he said, offering a rare explanation. Relocating? The doors opened into the foyer, and there were a great many of his people there, all clad in black and armour, tall, and busy. She saw a ripple pass through them as they reacted to some unspoken signal, turning their heads towards the elevator, and then saluting Arken Rikash, eyes dropping to the ground. A path through the crowd appeared like magic, and as Arken Rikash moved forward, she danced at his heels, his stride taking three of her steps to keep up. Although she wanted to look at the men they passed, she remembered the warning growl Arken Rikash had given on the couch – she was not allowed to look. She kept her eyes on the cuff around Arken Rikash s wrist, instead. There was a smell that was gradually growing stronger as they approached the door, a foul smell, that clung wetly to the back of her throat and seemed accompanied by a sour taste. Refuse, she thought, and rotten things. Her eyes watered from the fetid stink, it made her stomach roll uneasily, and her tongue feel thick. They stepped out into a weak winter sun, and she gagged, recoiling against the wall. Arken Rikash paused and looked down at her. He jerked his head impatiently, indicating that she was to follow. She peeled herself away from the wall, feeling as if he had wrapped his fingers around her heart and was slowly squeezing. Corpses, faces and extremities blackened, and fingers and bellies swollen with bloat, hung from every streetlight in every direction. The ground beneath them writhed with squirming maggots and was riddled with lines of larvae crawling where-ever it was that maggots crawled to. The concrete was discoloured from the fall of blood, excrement, and, in some cases, the explosion of putrefied flesh when gasses stretched fragile tissue too far. The day that Arken Rikash had purchased her, she had seen a street hung with corpses. It had been a terrifying sight, and it was an image that haunted her darkest moments. No matter what else, she would tell herself, she wasn t one of those hanging corpses. These bodies had been hanging for weeks, perhaps some of them were those that she had seen that very first day. Left to rot and decay and fester. Why would Arken Rikash s people do such a thing? The answer was obvious, she realized as she followed Arken Rikash, feeling her skin prick with terror-sweat. Fear. They had hung and left the dead so that the people who lived in these buildings, or walked through these streets, knew that Arken Rikash s people were in control, and that they were to be feared. Arken Rikash's people walked amongst the forest of bodies, steering floating devices loaded with crates, walking in pairs or marching with loud steps in orderly lines. They all saluted Arkane Rikash as he walked by. If he responded, it was only ever with the slightest incline of his head. Whoever Arken Rikash was, he was important, which did not bode well for any escape plans. A man of importance was more likely to have the resources to pursue a runaway slave, than one without. If Arken Rikash was a man of importance, did that mean that he was responsible for the grotesque display of bodies that surrounded them? The thought was horrifying, not just for its implication as to what he might do to her if she angered him enough, but that her self-interest was primary in her thoughts, over the obvious suffering of the people whose corpses swung around her. They passed out of the sky-scrapers into the business district of the city, onto a large allotment with a squat, industrial style building. There were many of Arken Rikash's peoples' vessels parked, and orderly lines of black-clad, armoured men boarding. She recognized these vehicles – they were the ones that had blackened the skies like a swarm of vicious insects on the day of the invasion. Arken Rikash led her to one of the vehicles and lifted her onboard before stepping up behind her. He closed his fingers in a ring around her wrist and tugged her past an area where men stood, holding onto straps from the roof of the vehicle, to where the pilots sat. The volume within the vessel was overwhelming after so long hearing only Arken Rikash s voice, as the men talked amongst themselves, their sharp barks abrasive and aggressive to her ears, making her heart race and the hair along her arms stand on end. She felt as if Arken Rikash had taken her into a closed space with a pack of rabid dogs. There was a smell to them, too, that was strong because of the number of men and their tight arrangement. Adrenaline, hormones, and aggression, she thought, heightened by their excitement. The green-eyed man waited directly behind the pilots and met her eyes as she boarded. At his side was a blonde woman and they greeted Arkane Rikash by name as he wrapped one arm around Amelia s waist and seized a hand hold from the roof with the other. The green-eyed man looked at her, and then away, his gazes fleeting as if concerned that he might be seen looking, and yet his eyes were drawn back to hers, irresistibly. And every time their gaze met, she felt the connection that she had felt in the slave market, as if the world around them slipped away. It was wrong, she thought, for her to be caught up against Rikash s side. She did not belong there. He had stolen her, and stolen from her, from something he should not have interfered in. The blonde woman was dressed in armour like the men, her height and build similarly muscular and lean, and her blond hair was a mane hanging to her waist and braided as intricately as the green-eyed man s. She met Amelia s eyes on one of her cautious glances upwards. The woman's eyes did not hold malice, but pity. She drawled something to Arken Rikash, using only the second part of his name. Arken Rikash replied haughtily. If there was more to be said between them, it was cut off by the closing of the main doors. The engines started, a vibration beneath Amelia s feet that made her teeth chatter together. She clenched her jaw to still them. The engine noise changed pitch and volume, and Arken Rikash tightened his grip around her a moment before she felt the vehicle shift, the movement disorientating, her legs wanting to give and let her fall. She clutched at him in response, wrapping her arms around his waist, and hoped that she was not breaking some rule in doing so. He did not reprimand her. The combination of the men s voices and the engine meant that Arken Rikash and the woman did not speak during the journey. As Amelia grew more comfortable with the movement of the vehicle, she eased her grip on Arken Rikash, and relaxed. His hold on her, however, did not loosen. She looked up at him. His eyes were on the men, and the expression on his face was hostile, as if he expected their attack. The men did not look at him. They kept their eyes away from him all together, in fact, but they were not ignoring him, she noted, but rather they were wary of him, as if he might attack them. Were these not his men? The engines changed tone again, and there was a subtle shift in direction. The men reacted, their eyes focusing on the doors, their free hand going to their belts and releasing their weapons. There was a thud that almost knocked Amelia off her feet, and the doors dropped suddenly, forming a ramp. The men roared and snarled, a wave of sound that had her cringing against Arken Rikash in terror, and they exploded out of the vehicle. She heard screams, and gunshot, and saw sparks as a bullet struck the exterior of the vehicle. Arken Rikash and the woman resumed trading comments, their tone sharp and angry. The green-eyed man stood silent, listening, and not intervening. Amelia s eyes were drawn back to his, and her body ached. He knew, she thought. He knew what he did to her, he knew that he had been meant to buy her by whatever god or fate there was that dictated some things. She was meant to be his, and not Arken Rikash s. The connection of their eyes said as such, and she saw a muscle in his jaw twitch, and she knew that he fought every instinct to not seize her from Arken Rikash. The vehicle doors closed and Arken Rikash tightened his hold again as the vehicle lifted off almost unbalancing her. The flight this time was brief, and when it landed, the doors opened sideways rather than forming a ramp. Arken Rikash and his two companions released the handholds over their heads, and he led them out, lifting Amelia down. A different city, Amelia saw. Not one she had been in before, or at least not frequently enough to recognize it from its buildings. The streets were in chaos, thick with Arken Rikash s people in their black uniforms, her own people running and screaming, and falling and dying, their weapons no match for the aliens, and the city unprepared for the sudden invasion. She saw the uniforms of her people s military, and their war machines, but the alien forces were greater – not just the swarm of soldiers, but she saw also giant robots moving between the sky-scrapers, blasting away whole sections of the street with weapons that reduced the people to dust, and vehicles, like the one she had ridden in, shooting from the air. As it had been when they had invaded her city, the fight was brutal, and brief, the streets clearing of both her people and the invaders, leaving behind the bodies and the wounded. Arken Rikash and his companions snarled and growled amongst themselves, tossing their hair, and flexing their muscles. Their interaction fascinated and alarmed Amelia for its animalistic nature, and apparent discord, their barks hard and harsh sounding. All three began walking forward and Amelia hastened to maintain the required proximity to the cuff and lead on Arken Rikash s wrist. They walked down the center of the street, stepping over bodies as if they were litter. The bodies on the street were not military, but civilians. Elderly, women, children, babies… Anyone too slow to flee. Amelia tasted salt and realized that she was weeping, so shocked by what had occurred before her, by the indifference of the man who owned her and his companions, that her thoughts failed to form coherency and recognize her emotions. As if just realizing her distress as she did, Arken Rikash paused, and picked her up so that her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck and began to croon soothingly as he resumed walking, his hand on the back of her head encouraging her to bury her face into his neck. The woman said something incredulous, but Arken Rikash was indifferent, replying calmly and at length, in the tone of someone delivering a lecture to a hostile audience. Amelia did as he directed and pressed her face into his neck, breathing in his familiar scent, seeking comfort in the rise and fall of his voice. Seeking comfort in the enemy, she thought, or, like an addict, seeking succour in her addiction. The plight of the people who had died ached her heart, but the greater pain was her loss of hope. A man who could oversee a wholesale slaughter of innocents in such a way, would not hesitate in hunting down and seeking revenge on a runaway slave. She was trapped between the inevitable failure of an escape attempt, and what would happen to her if she didn't conceive Arken Rikash a child soon. Her only choice was to bear the monster a child, or endure what would happen if she did not.