Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Bright glanced at the door.
Don’t be an idiot, he told himself. Just look for the key. No time to be curious.
But curiosity had always been his worst vice—he just couldn’t help himself.
He grabbed the top disk and slid it into the reader. The screen flared to life with a faint buzz of static, and then…
The moans started.
Loud and enthusiastic, they echoed from the small speakers like a chorus of sweaty desperation. The camera angle swung wide, revealing two green-scaled Saurians on what looked like a fur-covered floor. One was on all fours, tail lifted, and the other—a male—was thrusting into her from behind, his long reptilian tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
And in the background, someone was urging them on.
“That’s right—fill her egg sack with your seed,” Thune’s gravelly voice barked. “Do it harder—fuck her egg hole!”
Bright reeled back instinctively.
“Gods,” he whispered, reaching for the fast-forward. But the next scene was just as bad.
It was another species—blue-skinned bipeds this time—with enormous black eyes and glistening skin that seemed to ripple under the lights. The male had four arms and two shafts. The female—assuming that’s what she was—was bent double, crying out in a high-pitched trill as Thune’s voice coached again from offscreen.
“You call that rutting? Pound her harder—you think anyone’s gonna pay for that weak-ass thrusting?”
What the actual fuck? Bright wondered.
He tried another disk.
This time, it was a set of hairy humanoids—possibly from the Jurnak system, judging by their fur and facial ridges. The female was strapped to a vertical rotating wheel. The male was growling as he mounted her from behind, and again, Thune was directing.
“Fill her furry hole with your seed! Come on—do it right!”
Bright yanked the disk out with a trembling hand and shoved it back onto the stack. He was nauseated.
He’s filming them. Recording all of it. Selling it.
That explained the unmarked credit deposits. The massive incoming transactions. And the huge amounts of credit going out must be from when the Trollox bought more “breeders.”
Just like he had bought the three of them—Bright, Burn, and Noelle.
It explained what the other “breeders” had been doing here before they vanished. And it explained why Thune was so interested in them.
Bright slumped into the too-large chair and buried his head in his hands.
Gods. Noelle. He’s going to try and put her in one of those videos—probably with both of us fucking her. That sick bastard!
Bright stood again, scanning the desk, the cabinet, the wall—anywhere a key might be hidden. But there was nothing in the office—not a damn thing.
If we can’t find that biometric key, he thought grimly, we’re never getting out of here.
And if they didn’t get out…
He didn’t finish the thought. He couldn’t. Not with the image of that Saurian female howling in his ears and Thune’s voice barking orders over the sounds of grunting and pain.
He turned off the screen and stepped back, breathing heavily, hands clenched at his sides.
Get it together, Bright. You’ve got a job to do. You need to protect her—protect both of them. You and Burn are the only things standing between Noelle and whatever happened to those poor bastards who came before you.
He headed for the door.
It was time to find the others. One of them had to have found something—anything—to get them the fuck out of here.
Because if they didn’t escape soon…
Thune would make them the stars of his next fucking film.
52
NOELLE
Noelle stood in the doorway of the Trollox’s bedroom, feeling like she’d just walked into the lair of some lazy, smelly beast. Which, she supposed, wasn’t far from the truth.
The space was massive—easily the size of her old high school gymnasium, with ceilings tall enough to accommodate the enormous alien who lived there. The walls were an unpleasant shade of muddy yellow, and the floor was covered in thick, dark fur rugs that looked like they might still be alive.
The stench hit her immediately—a musky, sour odor that clung to the air like mildew in a closed-up locker room. It was part body odor, part wet fur, and part something else—something animal.
“Dios,” she muttered, waving a hand in front of her face. “How can anyone live like this?”
Trash littered the floor—wrappers, half-eaten food in foil packets, some kind of weird crunchy shells that looked like insect exoskeletons, and what appeared to be the fragment of a bone gnawed down to splinters. A waste bin the size of a city dumpster sat ignored in the corner.
Muttering under her breath, Noelle began gathering handfuls of trash and tossing them into the bin. The wrappers crinkled and crunched as she moved, and the floor squelched underfoot in some places. She tried not to think too hard about what she might be stepping in.
Once the floor was mostly clear, she turned to face the bed.
It was gargantuan.
Twice the size of any California King she’d ever seen, the bed was covered in tangled blankets, thick and scratchy, woven from what looked like animal pelts. There were six massive pillows, each the size of a twin mattress, and they were all flattened or bunched up like someone had punched them repeatedly in their sleep.