Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I turned around, startled, and reflexively reached out, some part of me—my spirit, I guessed—needing to test the door.
“Don’t—” I heard Elder Harta say, but the electronic sound, two falling tones much louder than the one that had indicated the closing of the door, cut him off. I followed it with a cry of sudden agony, because before my fingers even touched the door my whole arm felt like it had caught fire and burned to a cinder in an instant.
I grabbed my elbow with my other hand and held my agonized hand against my ribs, looking down and finding to my amazement that nothing visible had happened to my body. The horrendous pain was still there, though. I let out a scream, and I turned my eyes to the elders, sure that unless they intervened my arm would never feel whole again. They looked back with pained expressions, neither of them moving a muscle.
Somewhere through the red fog of the pain I heard the lock let out another noise: two rising tones that I thought had to correspond to the falling ones it had made before. The pain vanished as suddenly as it had come.
I sank to the floor in relief, still cradling my right arm against my chest, tears flowing freely—pain, relief, surprise, and abject fear of what would happen to me now, when the Vionians didn’t even need to be physically present to inflict such terrible agony. Through the watery film in my eyes, I watched the elders turn, with a final look at me and then—god help them—with expressions of relief on their faces as they turned away again to ascend the stairs.
Back into the world that’s no longer mine, I thought, with a sob that wrenched itself from the depth of my chest. I gazed up at the lock. Reflexively I pushed myself back away from the door, my instinctive terror proving, to my dismay, just how effective had been the terrible warning the metal box had delivered.
I looked down, rubbing my right arm with my left hand, then flexing the arm, still not quite certain that everything had returned to something like normal inside my body. I looked out of the bars of the cage at the metal supports. The dim light in the basement room came from lamps set into the tops of those columns.
Electric light. We knew about electricity, of course: we even studied it in physics class at school. We weren’t allowed to use it, though. In a village like mine, without any contact with any of the mining villages, we barely ever saw it. The miners had to work by its light, I had been told, for safety reasons, but only their supervisors had permission to control it. I had only ever seen its strange, artificial glow on Great Vion day, when the company garrison drilled at night in the plaza, and the whole village came to watch.
The thought of those splendid drills, with the strange, grand marching music and the fascinating, frightening energy rifles on the company soldiers’ shoulders made my mind turn to the agent. I felt my forehead crease, and a deep shudder went through my limbs. I looked down again, one more time, at my arm, trying desperately not to think about the thing that was still amiss in my body, the fullness of my bladder.
I knew from experience that if I could just manage to distract myself somehow, I would forget about the pressure down there. The moment I attempted to think about something other than the terrible urge between my legs, though, my thoughts went straight to the company agent in his red uniform, and to his degrading instruction.
I remembered the threat with which he had delivered the command to remove my clothing. It had seemed vague at the time, but the horrible warning conveyed by the cage’s lock had given it far too much solidity for my comfort.
The jolt of fear that traveled through my system as I recalled the agent’s words pushed my mind back in the equally awful direction from which it had come. I couldn’t help it: I turned to look at the bucket, the sight of which I’d been trying so hard to avoid. Instantly the pressure between my thighs became so great that I had to squirm. To my horror, I felt the muscles down there yield a tiny bit, and some of my pee leak out into my panties. My face glowed like a furnace as I felt the dampness there.
Then it all got a billion times worse, because I heard the unseen door at the top of the stairs creak open, and then I heard the steps themselves creak under the weight of someone coming down into the basement room.
CHAPTER 3
Chalondra
I could do nothing but stare, wide-eyed, my lips parted as if I intended to make some excuse, as the company agent descended the stairs. He had his attention on something in his hand, as if he were reading it. It took me a moment in my panic to realize it must be a “handheld”—a communicator, a computer, and if our schoolbooks told us true, a device for doing practically anything.