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Act VIII
She was very tall, easily over six feet. Her skin was very pale and she had thick blonde hair cascading down her back and over her shoulders. She was dressed all in soft, black velvet. Her feet were bare.
She studied him for a moment, and then The Lady took a seat in the large leather chair. “Don't try to see too much right away. It'll probably take your eyes some time to adjust.” She crossed her legs in the chair and shifted to make herself more comfortable.
“Your name is Steven Hazleton,” she began. “You work for Advanced Cosmetic Micro Systems as a consumer analyst. Your boss recently told you that you needed to take a long vacation or lose all of your built up paid time – a change in company policy, I believe. So, you announced this week that you would be gone for the next month. You have no close friends or family, so you will not be missed for at least that amount of time.”
The Lady looked up and saw the boy's wide, horrified eyes. Doubtless he was frantically trying to figure out where she had gotten her information.
She reached over to a side table and picked up a thick notebook that appeared to have been filled to capacity with papers. Opening the notebook, she began to read aloud. The first document in the folder was his birth certificate. After that followed his social security number and tax records. The notebook also held his employment history, his criminal record (empty save for a few parking and speeding tickets), and his old school transcripts. On and on it went until she had read through each page of the folder.
“Do you realize what this is?” she asked pointedly. “It is everything in this world that proves that you ever existed.”
He nodded numbly. He couldn't deny that she was right.
“Do you know what I could do to you with the stroke of a key? I could make you disappear. I could make it as though you had never been.” She paused for a moment, one long painted nail tapping her lips. “No one would look for you, you know. No one would miss you. Well, no one but a bunch of loonies trying to pull a hoax on the cops by reporting someone missing who doesn't even exist” she mused.
~~~~~~~~~~
Steven sat in stunned silence. His mind was reeling with what she had just told him. How could she have gotten that much information on him? How could she have access to those computer systems? Could she really erase him? And if she did, what would she do with him instead?
~~~~~~~~~~
There was a long silence as The Lady let what she had just told the boy sink in. There was always that stunned moment when they tried to decide if she was serious or not. It was always so hard for them to believe that she could erase them from the world with the touch of a few buttons. And she loved that about this world. Everything was so accessible.
“I'm going to be brutally honest with you now.” She said. “You have already been removed from all of these systems. It was done last night, just about the time my men were picking you up from work.”
His head snapped up, his eyes wide in horror and his mouth open as though he was trying to speak.
“We used to fake our quarry's death, but that became bothersome. We could only count on so many natural disasters, and it gets more and more difficult to fake a murder on this world. So, now we just erase them the night they are captured. It saves us so much time and needless work.” She explained to him.
“S – So, what's going to happen to me? Why the hell did you kidnap me if you're not going to kill me?” She could tell he was trying to sound angry, but the slight tremor in his voice gave him away. He was terrified of her answer. And she liked it that way.
“I'm going to sell you, of course.” She answered as if she were explaining this to a two-year-old who should already know better. “This afternoon you will be sent to the auction house and sold to the highest bidder. I'll get a commission for my hard work and research. My men will get paid. And you will begin a whole new life as a slave.”
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