Ghetto

Ghetto 2.

By ninja5

She walked the unmade road past the mud brick houses, tiny in interior, but housing entire families.  Here there was a real sense of community.  The buildings matched the claustrophobia of the Adelaide, her old freighter.  It was already seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit and the sun was just waking up.  Tail hated the metric system, but couldn’t shack the habit of conversions in her head.  Inch, foot, chain, yard, furlong… Mile – and most appropriate of all, leagues.  It was 47.017 leagues to Tahiti and her shipment was due to arrive at her home of the Commune of Bora Bora.

As she headed to her bar in the cove as far away from the resort as it could be a couple of small children ran out in front of her kicking a worn soccer ball.  Tail had always hated children, but the ‘natives’, if you wanted to use the term the minor Corp that ran the last surviving resort used, were like junior versions of the adults.  Ever polite and eager to become the friendly islander giants that their parents were.  She allowed herself a smile as one of the boys attempted a tackle only to fall on his ass.  Bora Bora had no resource other than its beauty.  The big Corps could find nothing to exploit and sell off to the Centuri.  Only Neptune, a minor company that invested solely in tourism, settled on Tahiti AND Bora Bora and built the resorts.  Cyanide, Toyota, Sinopec and alike didn’t bother crushing the niche Corps.  They’d just wait till they were tender enough to buy out and gut.  That’s how the minor Corps and start-ups operated.  Get big enough for a payout and then live the cosy life… Just like she had.

The sun-dried timber of her bar welcomed her.  As she stepped up the veranda she leant over and lifted the mat to reveal the key.  She didn’t have to worry about burglary.  Theft just didn’t occur to the locals and the tourists all hid in the resort at night so they could enjoy incremental climate control.  Wankers were all hopped up on Soma anyway.  ‘Fuckers don’t even know they’re addicted’, Tail thought as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.  She took of her baseball cap and pulled away her leather jacket.  She still wore her freighter pilot’s uniform.  Cargo pants, despite the heat, and a singlet – only instead of the military surplus singlet this one had more fabric on the shoulders.  It was more blouse like, gave her a feminine look so the Chinese, Japanese and handful of Australasians didn’t back out of the bar upon looking at her.  She flicked the switch lighting up the antique neon open light and stepped into the bar.  Her bar.

***

When she was a kid in the immigration camp on Christmas Island the steroid hopped ‘orderlies’ had made the children do the cleaning.  There were only two things Tail had ever been able to clean without remembering the desire to break the mop over the pseudo securities guards heads and they were the freighter she’d jockeyed and her bar.  The bar was made from pine, cheap timber, as anything else had been harvested to near extinction, but the countless layers of varnish and polish she layered on it gave it a rich, worn look.

The entrance bobbed open.  “Good morning bro.”  It was Khutoot.  Khutoot was the friendly islander and human forklift who made the alcohol delivery from Tahiti.  He called her bro, the Islander equivalent of ‘mate’, because, as Tail had found, she wasn’t in the least bit sexualised to him.  “Record time, hey bro.  Water was as flat as your bar.”

Tail gave a rare smile.  “How’s Rhonda Khutoot?”  Tail asked and put her cloth down.  She started walking around the bar.  Khutoot had three cases of Hangzhou beer and was placing it by the door – human forklift.

“Ah, she’s all good bro.  Hey Tail…”  As Khutoot tried to impart a piece of information when a middle aged man wearing a straw fedora, bright Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and black leather suedes stepped into the bar.  It was the suedes that gave him away, and the dark opaque sunglass covering the methodical and cold eyes gave him away immediately as a Corp in the guise of a tourist.    Tail stopped walking around the bar and stood defensively.  Khutoot picked up on the tension instantly.  “This guy says he’s been island hopping looking for ya.  Say’s he owes you some money.”

Simple Khutoot – simple, friendly Khutoot had lived on the island all his life.  Like an animal on an island with no predators he hadn’t even sniffed the man for the stench of one of the big three.  Tail’s eyes narrowed and she remembered the baseball bat taped under the bar.  She’d put it there when she’d first opened, but sedate tourists and harmless islander meant she had never had to pull it out.  Her eyes glance to Khutoot.  Last thing she wanted to do was get him caught up in Corp business.  “How much more Khutoot?” She asked, not taking her eyes of the Corp lackey.  He stood in a rigid stance.  It was a fault of these Corp negotiators.  They thought they were Samurai facing battle.

Khutoot, never having seen Tail’s antagonised face before answered innocently.  “’Bout a dozen bro.”  He turned to fetch the rest.  “Business is good, hey!”  He left the bar to carry the rest in.

The stoic faced Corp spoke up.  His skin was oily from the heat, which meant he was used to climate control.  “If it’s not too early, mind if I have a beer.”  He remained where he was standing.

“Sure.”, Tail said watching the tone of her voice least Khutoot should overhear.  She turned her back and pulled a Hangzhou from the fridge beneath the spirits.  She popped the top on the stainless steel opener and placed it on the bar.  The Corp stepped forward.  He seemed to relax a little and Tail wondered what he had been told about her.  A dossier file existed on her she was sure – both with Kincaid and Cyanide.  Did it label her aggressive?  The fact dealings with Kincaid were clandestine, and her brief service to Cyanide resulted in her leaving Ghetto with her head down traumatised from…

Tail had dealt with the anger from her time on Ghetto.  Even out of contract she’d spent a good year getting drunk to blur that memory.

Khutoot came in with another three cases of beer and stacked them next to the others.  The Corp lackey was playing the game, staring forward through his shades.  He was keeping Khutoot out of the pending conversation.  Tail too wanted Khutoot to think everything was natural.  She picked up her cloth and methodically started wiping down the bar top again.  The Corp couldn’t have known, but she concentrated on the area above the baseball bat.

Finally Khutoot finished.  With only a mild huff he exhaled as he dropped of a box of spirits to replenish the top bar.  “All good then bro?”  He asked.

Tail gave a nod of her head.  “All good Khutoot.  You want a credstick or transfer?”  She stopped wiping down the bar and tried to smile, her hands on the counter.

“Ah, transfer bro.  Rhonda’s terrified I’ll drop it over the side of the boat again.”  Khutoot smiled and turned to leave.

As he stepped out of the bar, not at all concerned that Tail might stiff him his fee, Tail called out.  “I’ll put it through tonight.”  Khutoot gave a wave of his arm as the door closed behind him.  Tail’s transformation was instantaneous.  She reached out and grabbed the Corp lackey’s beer.  Bringing the next to her mouth she spat mucus into the bottle and placed it back.  The Corp’s eyes could be seen at the edge of the shades narrowing.  Tail turned to him, discretely dropping one arm below the bar within reach of the bat.  Slowly and in an unmistakable tone of unwelcome she stated, “What. The. Fuck. Do. You. Want?”  The F word had a particular resonance.

“Baby doll” the man said unphased in a Brooklyn accent.  “I’m just a messenger.”  He reached forward and took up the tainted bottle of Hangzhou and drank from it.  He was all smugness, not a negotiator.  If he was making an offer, it was an ultimatum.

Tail felt a pang like a stitch forming in her abdomen.  The hand below the bar grasped the handle of the bat.  She waited the Corp out.

“Not much tech here.”  He seemed to muse.  “I bet that’s why this place makes such a steady profit.”  He was referring to the island as casually as he might the bar.  “The plebeians come, they soak in the sun – get a tan.  A real tanned, not one of those salon jobs.  Have you ever seen one of the salon jobs?”  He waved his hands around to act casual about the intensity his visit must be imparting on Tail.  “It’s like they air brush you with UV – paint you show your body; muscle is highlighted.”  He took another sip of Tail’s special brew beer and seemed to enjoy it.  “You know who I represent?”

At least the mandatory Corp bullshit had been kept to a minimum.  From the experiences Tail had had with them it could go on for hours.  Each Corp lackey believing he alone had the observational perspective to explain the chaos that was the post-neo world.  “I’m guessing Cyanide.”  She spoke through rigid lips.

“Not Kincaid.  You know it wouldn’t surprise me if Kincaid came looking for you.  You do know their dirty little secret after all.  What was it you used to list as your manifest…? Livestock!”  He finished the beer.  “Now you seem pretty happy here.  I’m just wondering what these carefree Islander’s would think if they found out you used to transport abducted girls to Ghetto for the Centuri.”  He was getting into his drawn out threat.  “I mean, they’re not wasteful bastards like we are.  They harvest their drugs, they modify them – I mean they completely drain them dry.  And when they’re finished with them, they don’t let them die.  They pass them down to poor cousin Joey so he’s got something to eat – regenerate them – eat again.”  The Corps body was rigid but his head body freely and the accent added to the account making it seem all the more emotive.  “I bet not one of the women you took up there is dead yet.  Sure, they all wish they were, but they’re not.”

The discovered happiness of the last two years was soiled by the recanting of things buries under alcohol and the tranquilizing effect of Bora Bora.  Tail was breathing heavily though her nose, her lips pursed tight.  Beneath the counter her knuckles were white as she squeezed the bat.  Already the thin tap that held it in place was coming lose as her hand shook.

“I am here to firstly remind you that we own you.  Secondly, to explain…”

The bat swung down with a crack.  The Corp lackey’s arm was crushed between the bar top and the solid wooden shaft.  The man screamed as his forearm bent the bones splintering into his flesh.  His shades half came off and now the man’s eyes could be seen, not in the smarmy glint of authority, but in the panic of trauma.  Tail was around the bar as them man hunched forward and clutched at his arm with his good one.  Tail didn’t stop.  As she rounded in on the crumpled figure she drew back and swung the bat again.  The cry turned to another scream as the Corps hat flew off and his kneecap shattered.  The stool toppled to one side and the man fell to the floor.

Tail wasn’t finished yet.  Two years of happiness, but she was still an angry bitch.  As the man gasped for air to fight his agony Tail jammed the end of the bat into his mouth and pushed down cutting of his air and forcing his mouth open.  There was a chorus of snapping sounds as his teeth snapped one by one and the confident eyes of an all-powerful Corp agent suddenly realised they were very close to being beaten to death.  Tail held him this way long enough for any trace of power to be stripped away and then lifted the bat out again.  The man started crying and spat blood onto his chin as he lay on the floor suffering.

“Say it again Yankee… Who owns me?”  Tail steadied than man’s rocking face with the side of the bat.  She stood above him.  There was no mistaking that long term advantage meant nothing in this instance.  She would kill him if he didn’t submit.

“We…”  The man was distort.  His ego had been shattered along with his bones.  “We need you for a deal.”

“Ok.”  Tail calmed slightly, but didn’t let it show too much.  “What deal?  Give details.”

“A man you know as Hemmingway and a Centuri made a killer deal.”  He gasped for air, spraying blood on Tail’s steel capped boots.  “We got drones – really good drones.  They got Helium 3 – lots of it.  We both won.”

“I know this already punk.”  Tail drew the bat back as if she was about to pile drive the Corps head.  His good arm came up defensively and he squealed.

“The Centuri liked you.  He’s obsessed.  We tried to get women like you – even tried to replicate your tattoo, but he’s…”  Now the Corps eyes pleaded innocent, like he wasn’t a monster.  “He’s like a connoisseur.  None of them are what he wants and now he’s shutting down deals unless we get you.”

Tail relaxed her stance.  Knowing the score put her an ease for a moment, but slowly the sickening realisation that if Cyanide needed her that badly and that this agent was the polite way of asking.  The follow up would be a stun pistol in the back from the shadows and waking up on Steve’s dinner plate.  She lost all interest in the man and dropped the bat, walking to the bar to get a drink.

As she poured herself a triple of her best whiskey the crippled Corp bleeding on her bar floor panted out his compromise out of relief.  “You’re leverage.  Hemmingway doesn’t want to give you up.  He wants to dish you out in doses and cash in.  We’re taking you anyway, at least with him you’ll get out - he says he’ll get you out.”  Desperation came over the man’s voices.  “He says you know he’ll get you out.”

Tail sunk half the whiskey and looked around the timber bar.  The sensation of being on Ghetto was coming back to her.  Already the tropical island seemed the wrong type of claustrophobic.  Her pine walls seemed like the tin and tungsten of the station; the light through the windows seemed to flicker as if from neon bulbs.  Cyanide would take her one way or another.  The obnoxious Corp on the flaw suddenly seemed like a curtesy compared to how the girls Tail had transport must have been picked up.  The deal did seem like Hemmingway’s kind and going along with it gave her best – no, her only way through.

The door to her bar swung open.  The first batch of Chinese tourists stepped into the bar.  Their eyes immediately went to the crippled man, bleeding and crying on the timber floor.  Tail finished her whiskey.  “Sorry folks” she said calmly.  “We’re closed today.”

***

“I love me the sexy bitches.”

Tail stirred but she was coming out of an incubation sleep, not waking from a restful night.  Her eyes fluttered but they were heavy.  As they opened briefly she saw a white and bright room.  The overhead lights with alien filaments made the whitewalls look sterile and the rays bounced of them and stainless steel making giving the impression of an afterlife.

“I mean check out that tatt.  She totally scarred herself just to look the part for her twenties.”  The voice was young and immature.  Behind it Tail could hear the tell-tale beep of a heart monitor it’s pace picking up.  As Tail managed to open her heavy eyes and take in the surrounding room she saw a spectacled young man in a lab coat with scruffy hair turning away from her.  She blinked and went to raise her hand to rub her eyes.  The leather restraints held her done and she stirred, adrenaline suddenly making her more awake.  The heart rate monitors tempo increased.

From the back of the room a brown haired figure also wearing glasses and a lab coat turn.  “Christ Josh you retard she can hear you.”  The woman started walking briskly towards Tail.  She was slowly becoming aware she was strapped to a table in an almost upright position.  She was naked and her wrists, head and… and yes her ankles were strapped to a cushioned tray.  Tail started to become agitated.  The last thing she remember after meeting the Ore transport crew in Karlgoolie was laying back in the cryo pod – the very kind she had transport her ‘livestock’ in.

“Cyanide policy.  All non-essentials have to be put into cryo”, the transports Jockey had said.  When she’d been put under she still had on her clothes.

Tail started to struggle against the restraints.  There was one around her head too.  Her eyes stung from the bright lights of the room.  “Miss.”  The brown-haired woman spoke in a calm but insistent voice.  Tail was slipping into panic.  This wasn’t the deal put forward by the Corp lackey as she stood over him in the Bora Bora hospital.  Another date with Hemmingway and Steve, that was the deal, only this time she would be unconscious and hopped up on pain meds.

“Fucking unstrapped me you four eyed cunt.”  Tail snarled.  Aggression was her way of dealing with helplessness.

The woman ignored her language.  The young scruffy man, Josh, was in the back ground grabbing something out of a pill jar and trying to open a sealed bottle of water at the same time.  “Miss, we’re going to give you something to stay calm.”  She was close to Tail’s face looking into her eyes.  “Do you have a headache?  Do either of your eyes feel funny?”  She pulled out an old fashioned pen-torch and shone a light in each of Tail’s eyes as if looking for something.  Josh appeared by her side with a pill in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.  The brunette reached over Tail’s eyes and released the strap holding her head back.  “Ok, lean forward and take the pill.”  The daze Tail felt in her head was subsiding and was replaced with anger.  She saw the pervert Josh hold out a little purple pill – a soma.  Tail’s eyes narrowed and the light in the room became tolerable.  She acted docile and opened her mouth.  As the fingers came with reach her eyes took in the pervert Josh.  He had a greasy film on his brow and his clothes smelled of a chemical laundry.  She knew she was somewhere in Cyanide Corps headquarters on Ghetto.

When the pill was just in front of her open mouth she darted her head forward and snapped her teeth on Josh’s finger and thumb.  She bit down hard – as hard as she could.  Josh screamed and dropped the bottle of water.  The brunette lady startled back and started fumbling on the stainless steel table for something.  As Josh screamed Tail let her anger out and tightened her jaw.  She could feel the flesh shear to the bone and held lab tech securely in agony.  He flailed and submitted afraid to pull back less the flesh and muscle be stripped from his bone.  Tail felt warm liquid pool in her mouth.  It ran down her chin and dripped onto her breasts.  Her anger subsided and she opened her mouth.

Josh fell backward and the Brunette still fumbling for the needles injector with sedative, any belief of a cool head under fire was stripped away from her.  Josh had far more serious injuries.  Blood flowed freely from his mangled fingers and Tail took a good look around, the outburst knocking the sedatives out of her head.  She spat the purple soma out with a spray of Josh’s blood and watched it bounce and roll across the lab floor.  The brown haired lab tech finally found the injector and turned to face Tail with held up as if she were a cop with a pistol about to shout ‘freeze’.  Though still restrained Tail had succeed in making the lab techs confinement in the room with her perilous.

“I want to talk to Hemmingway”, Tail snarled.  The brown haired woman gave a look of surprise and rightfully so.  Hemmingway was not his real name.  It was just what Tail called him.

The door to the lab slid open and a familiar figure in a pressed suit stepped in.  From a hidden camera or one way transparent wall he had seen the whole thing.  Hemmingway had an extra skip in his step since he’d made the big time.  His eyes were annoyed.  He stared directly at Tail, pinned to the upright lab table and completely naked.  He took no interest in her body, or the lab tech’s; one injured; the other terrified.  He stepped past Josh crumpled on the floor as he knelt clutching his fingers to stem the bleeding.  “Pleasant trip?”  He asked coldly.

“Fuck you” Tail spat back.  There last encounter had played out cordially.  Obscenities had been kept to a whisper, but Tail remembered wailing into him outside the Restaurant.  She’d spent the last two years dreaming she’d kept going.  She wanted to hear his skull crack against her knuckles – feel it cave inward as she kicked him with her boots.

Hemmingway walked over to the brunette lab tech and gently took the injector from her shacking hands.  “Hard life” he said explaining away the viscous assault Tail had just perpetrated and started walking towards her.  Tail crept her head forward as far as she could bearing her teeth.  They were stained pink from Josh’s blood.  “Relax Tail.  I mean it.  When this is over, I’ll get you out.”  He held the injector against her bare, flat belly.

“I fucking hate…”  As Tail spat the words Hemmingway pulled the trigger.  The sting in Tail’s belly was followed by a wave of warmth and her tense jaw relaxed. “…you, you cunt.”  Her voice became deeper.  The muscles in her neck relaxed.  Hemmingway stepped back.

“You check her eyes?”  He said to the Brunette as Josh finally started to pick himself up off the floor.

“No signs of surgery.”  The brown haired lab tech replied in a stutter, though she was calming now that Tail was sedated again.

“Take Josh to the infirmary.  I’ll unstrap her.”  As Hemmingway’s words the brunette’s eyes widened.  “It’ll be Ok.  I know how to talk to her.”

***

Tail was still naked.  Hemmingway didn’t know Tail half as well as he claimed if he thought it was wise to keep her that way, but the sedative dulled her.  Despite the cotton mouth and inability to move at any speed other than cold lizard slow she stared at him intently with drunk, hate filled eyes.

“I’m sorry” he opened with.

“Fuck you.”  Tail slurred the words.

“We had to do some things before dinner tonight.”  He causally explained away Tail’s captivity in the room; being taken dragged back into a world with Corps and Centuri in it; offering her up as an alien meal.  Hemmingway reached for a mirror.  Tail sat on a stainless steel bench.  The bottle of water Josh had tried to make her swallow the pill with was half empty by her side.  He held up the mirror for her to see.  Four metal stud and a ring had been added to Tail’s features.  Her lower lip had two; two where either side of her nose.  Only the ring through her right nostril broke the symmetry.  “And also…”  Hemmingway tilted the mirror show Tail her pubic region.  It had been shaved smooth and given a dose of UV.  She’d been given the very salon tan job the Corp lackey had spoken of in her bar.  They were trying to make her look as healthy and tasty as possible.  “The rings are a Centuri thing.  Claimed females are pierced along their trunks.  It’s a sensitive part of their body.  Probably more so than the male peni.”

Tail didn’t blink.  She was fighting to pay attention.  It would be so like a Corp to give her the details while she was drugged and leave her to navigate a risky situation.

“It’s good that you came willingly.  If we’d had to take you by force then we couldn’t let you go after.”  Hemmingway put the mirror away and slowly started unbuttoning his suit jacket.  He pulled a small comm pad from his pocket.  “I want you to look at that wall.”  He pointed to a wall.  Tail was beyond co-operating.  She continued to stare at him with stoned contempt.  Hemmingway sighed and tapped the comm pad.  Despite her resolve Tail jumped.  A heads-up display like she had in her freighter appeared before her eyes.  Texted danced across the left hand side of her peripheral vision and Tail recognised it as a boot sequence.  Hemmingway knew he held all the cards.

“What the fuck did you do to my eye” she slurred.

“Implants – both eyes.  We want to be able to see what you’re seeing.  Also if we need to give you instructions we can pass them onto to you without vocal queues.”  Hemmingway types something on the data pad.  There was less than a second delay as the signal transferred and the firm wear translated.  Text appeared before Tails vision.  A simple message.  ‘Smile.’

Tails pupils closed in anger despite the sedative.  Hemmingway got the point not to push any further.

“We wired them into your nervous system.  We you receive high thresholds of nociceptive pain a modified meso-opiate will be released.  IT’s short lived and won’t screw with your cognitive functions, but you won’t suffer.”  Hemmingway was becoming serious now.  They are going to wonder why you’re not in pain so try to pull an anguished expression… or something.” 

Even through the sedative Tail’s mind ran a dialogue – slower than usual, but it still ran.  ‘I’m gonna kill you.  I don’t know how, but I’m going to kill you.’  It was Hemmingway’s casualness about the scenario.  The pain of being cooked last time wasn’t what haunted Tail.  IT was watching Steve dip his fork into her cooked flesh and casually take bits.  The Centuri had savoured her.  Despite the resolve the question of Cyanide coming back her nagged at her mind.

“Tail” Hemmingway followed up with.  “Payment.  One million credits, already transferred into your account.  No contract.  Post-tax.  That’s twice what you made in the time you were freighting for Kincaid.”  Hemmingway truly believed he was being generous.  By paying Tail a small fortune he was clearing his conscious of forcing her into having to witness a Centuri pig have an orgasm driven meal from her live, witnessing body.

“Then I’m out?”  Tail had dabbled with uppers and downers; stims and barbiturates.  Part of being streetwise meant you still needed to be able to read the situation even when high, because that was when most people came at you.  When you were dosed.

Hemmingway’s reaction was practised, but the practise made it part of the sales pitched and Tail remembered he was a good salesman.  “We just need you for the next forty-eight hours Tail.”

“Then you’ll lose my file?”  She couldn’t act all co-operative.  “You’ll get these fucking eyes out?”  She put venom in and let the sedative slurred her words.  She didn’t want to be a surveillance platform for Cyanide post job.  See didn’t want to wake to surprise instructions printed before her eyes ten years from now.

“…Sure” Hemmingway replied.  With an immediate confirmation Hemmingway would have been able to suppress a giveaway gesture.  He’d gambled for the delayed response and a false tone of reassurance. 

Tail recognised it, not as a corporate promise, but as a street hustler buying time.  ‘Sure babe, I’ll get your money’.  Tail had all she needed to know about the deal. 

Hemmingway took her silence as a chance to move on.  “We’re going back to the Spire, but not the restaurant.”  Hemmingway seemed almost proud.  “Steve wants to…” Hemmingway almost said it.  “Steve wants to enjoy your company at his residence.  I’ll be there.  To them, you are mine.”

Despite the sedative Tail couldn’t help but go rigid slightly.  She was dimly aware of Hemmingway picking up the sedative injector and holding it in case she tried to get up… And it would be try.  Despite being able to concentrate more than they knew Tail was acutely aware her muscles were retarded in relaxation like an overdose of diazepam.

“You’ll spend the night, but I’ll be back again in the even to finalize a deal with Steve.  After, I’ll take you back down and you’ll be out.  The heads-up display will translate any text and you’ll be able to read anything they say like subtitles.  You’ll know what’s coming.”

Tail continued to sit there staring intently at Hemmingway.  The mark of hatred was still on her glare.  Hemmingway didn’t seem to mind.  Maybe that was what Steve liked about her – maybe bitches tasted better.  Hemmingway dipped his head and checked his watch.  It wasn’t uncommon for a man like him, one who read paper books and dressed up prostitutes, to still wear a watch.  He’d clearly risen up the ranks since Tail had made the deal to have dinner with him in exchange for a place to sleep on Ghetto.  Hemmingway was letting it be known he was taking his leave.

“A couple of people are going to come in and get you ready for tonight.  They’re just doing their job and you might not want to treat them the way you treated Josh.”  He reached forward with the injector.  Instead of the power play of injecting it into her belly this time he placed it against her shoulder.  There was a slight prick and the warmth came over her body again like a wave.  “Co-operate with them Tail.  No one, who doesn’t work for Cyanide, knows you’re here.  Try to show a little respect.  We’re about to become the biggest of the big three” He walked towards the door and touched his finger to a panel.  As the door slid open two people walked in carrying clothes and a silver case.  They were the barbers and tailors of Ghetto.  The ones who did the best they could with blunt razors and worn through clothes.  Today they were the guys in the kitchen, putting the finishing garnishes on an alien meal.

***

“That sedative had a half-life of fifteen minutes.  I know you’re putting on an act.”  Hemmingway stood by Tails side in the lift.  Hemmingway wore a tuxedo with a black bowtie.  The suit was pressed and had been cleaned in house.  The chlorine smell of a chemical laundry was absent.  The Centuri had sensitive noses and would easier take offence at the smell.  Hemmingway had stepped up his game with the aliens, so to had Cyanide.  Despite knowing she was on Ghetto she had yet to see the rust, coolant leaks, and tin of the hive level 191 the humans lived on.  Cyanide it now seemed had an elevator that travelled directly to the ground floor of the Spire.

Tail hadn’t so much been called out on acting stoned, but rather realised there was no advantage in acting docile if Hemmingway knew she wasn’t.  She stopped wobbling on the spot, stood up straight and prepared her eyes to look forward so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with any of the vulgar aliens.  The silence in the elevator spoke volumes.  Assaulting the Corp lackey in Bora Bora; nearly biting off Josh’s fingers, all this Tail could get away with.  What the Corp wanted from her involved her having dinner with Steve.  As long as she did that, she knew anything else she did was an acceptable irritation.  The lift slowed and came to a stop.

Despite having the status of their own lift to the Spire Tail soon realised Cyanide only was only pretending to have it in big with Centuri.  The lift opened onto the alien equivalent of a service corridor.  Planar white walls lead down a corridor.  Ahead of them a Drill with a data pad was entering a door.  The scene looked very much like a mall worker entering a staff restroom on their break.  Tail’s lip curled and she was about to take a notch off Hemmingway’s façade when he cut her off.  “Save it.  It’s more than the others have.”  He grabbed Tails wrist aggressively, probably worked up at the embarrassment and yanked on her to follow him out of the lift.  Tail went along with it, not giving a repeat performance of the last time she went to the Spire with Hemmingway. 

She did offer him a piece of her mind though.  “He’s going to be eating me, but you’re still sucking his cocks.”

Hemmingway acted as if he hadn’t lost composure.  “Not when we’re out in the open.”  He said as he led her down the maze of halls.  The smell of ammonia as the past the door the Drill worker had gone in confirmed it was in fact the Drill’s toilet.

Tail allowed herself and angry laugh.  “You’re not coming back for me.”  She knew the Centuri smacked down his ego.

“I will.”  Hemmingway seemed to need to hold onto the belief that he was a decent guy.  Maybe he was.  Tail, as he knew too well, was scum; a slaver – or at the very least the former Captain of a slave ship.

“Ass-wipe.  He’s going to offer you something for me if he likes me enough for you to fly me out past Neptune.”  Tail was no longer being dragged behind.  Her footfalls became that on a gladiator marching in to face its opponent.  She wasn’t really about to strike out at Hemmingway.  Not with her only way back a lift that led to the heart of Cyanide Corps headquarters.

“It doesn’t matter what you think.”  Hemmingway acted confident, but was wary of Tail now keeping pace by his side.  ‘A desperate person…’  “This is happening.  You know your only chance out is to play along.”  They exit the corridor into the open space of glinting allow and ceramic tiles that was Centuri Architecture.  Tail took a look back.  The humans, even the welcomed business partners, came from a service corridor where the Drill workers took a shit.  All the success Hemmingway had bought the Cyanide Corps and we were still the dregs of the Universe.  Nothing had changed in two years.

The strapless black dress that showed of her intricate tattoo and delicious tanned skin.  The immediate reaction to the work the barber and tailor had done would have turned heads on earth.  Men, if even as a cursory glance, would have noted her beauty.  It was a direct contrast to the image Tail tried to project herself, she wanted men to back the fuck off on earth.  Here it gave her an edge of appeal dressed up to the few business men heading to meetings with the Centuri.  To the Centuri instead of heads turning their nose immediately picked up her scent – delicious and arousing to them.  As their short snouts followed the particles of her pheromones their heads turned slowly.  They had a carnivorous curiosity to them – was she available for tricks like the whores on level 191.

“Might be a market for you to go into.”  Tail uttered in a disgusted tone.  “Take-Away bitches – free delivery.”  She’d been here before.  The Centuri equivalent border control to stop unsavoriness from entering the Spire.  Hemmingway still had a firm grasp on her wrist as if he wasn’t going to let her get away now.  It also told Tail he was more desperate than he let on, just like last time.

“The Centuri are like us.  They generally reserve their xenophilia for socially accepted settings.”  Hemming reached for his invitation to Steve’s with his free hand and continued to walk towards the Centuri at the security gate.  Several Drill wobbled around him scanning items, checking ID’s – generally all the work so the Centuri was just there as a figurehead.

“Like level 191?”  Tail said in reference to the Centuri coming down to sniff the working girls after a night of filth with the pilots and marines.

“Level 191 is a back alley of Sunshine Boulevard.  The classy ones never go there.  You should be proud – Steve’s upmarket.”

“Well fuck me”, Tail said sarcastically.  “You saying I’m a Five-thousand credit escort Hemmingway.”  It was a strange back and forth.  Tail was on edge because of what was about to happen.  If she broke away from Hemmingway here she would be a stray with no idea where she would end up.  Hemmingway was equally nervous.  If the implants in Tail’s eyes showed up on the scan he too was a corporate spy in Centuri territory.

“Baby”, he said out of character.  “You are Grade A USDA approved.  Nothing more to them.”  They had reached the checkpoint.  Hemmingway held out the invitation.  As the Centuri glanced at, then passed it onto a Drill for the real check.  Another Drill waved his short three fingered hand for Tail to move through the scanner.  Hemmingway let go of her wrist and she slowly stepped through.  Every human looked nervous so Tail didn’t seem out of sought to the Aliens.  They couldn’t have picked up on the tells anyway – wouldn’t have cared that Tail was under duress if they could.

Hemmingway followed through and they head straight to the elevator.  A Drill attendant stood inside and looked them up and down as they walked in.  Again Hemmingway showed his invitation and the Drill had to go up on the tip of his tiny feet to hit on of the highest buttons.  Tail felt no sympathy for the Drill and his servitude.  The Drill were completely incapable of any form of intimidation.  Perhaps that is why the Centuri had uplifted them and imbedded them into their society.  The Drill could never effectively revolt.  They were the perfect hoplites to their masters.

The elevator moved at velocity, but the Spire appeared taller than it was.  After only a short pause, not long enough to build up the appropriate level of nerves and low voltage inertial dampers dialled down and the smooth ride to Steve’s level was over.  The doors opened silently and Hemmingway against grabbed Tail’s wrist and pulled her out into a short walkway.  The hall had only two doors coming off it, one at each end.  Steve either lived in a penthouse, or so far up the cone shaped Spire that only two apartments could fit.  ‘He’s either rich or powerful’ Tail thought.  ‘Or both.’  Hemmingway lead her down the hall to the left to a frosted door made of a material that resembled glass.  He pressed a panel to the side.  After a short pause the frosted glass cleared, but no one was at the other side.  There was movement down low and Tail’s eyes dropped to a small brown figure.  Hemmingway bent over and showed the invitation.  Tail didn’t get a good look at the figure, but it was about the size of a Drill so she expected a butler of sought to open the door.

As the panel slide sideways a pigmy Centuri with brass like studs along her tiny trunk stood and chirped something in her native language.  Suddenly the boot sequence from her ocular implant ran as if triggered by the language.  Two, maybe three seconds of text and a as near to English translation appeared “Enter.  Expected, you” in digital text was artificially projected for an instant and then vanished.  Hemmingway entered - Tail pulled in aversely, momentarily distracted by the realisation that the pigmy Centuri was most likely the female of the species.  Her conclusion was derived by Hemmingway’s explanation of her new piercings.  It denoted being owned to the Centuri.  The chauvinism of the aliens suddenly made sense.  The females were so small, so fragile in comparison to the males that they probably lived off the scraps the males discarded.

‘Fucking ass-licker, cunt biscuit. I’m going to kill him!’  The door opened into an asymmetrical room.  The walls perpendicular to the entrance could best be described as Feudal Japanese Architecture, but with silver Chrome and polished ceramic tiles instead of wood and rice paper.  The joints in the tiles were seamless, only the way they reflected the bright lighting gave any indication of discontinuity.  The walls of whatever the Centuri called the ‘living room’ extended outward to a curved observation glass that was to exterior of the Spire.  Pluto and Charon could be seen as two giant spheres and one of the two lesser moons was visible setting behind Charon.  The sense that they were but a glass widths from space was not what made Tail flush angry enough to forget the dire predicament of rebellion.  It was that Steve, the giant ant-eater Centuri who had fed of her two years ago was not alone.  Two other Male Centuri turned and surveyed her as she walked into the Lion’s den.  She wasn’t dinner this time.  This time she was a banquet.  All three male Centuri’s pair of peni started to grow stiff as they caught her scent.  Tail’s anger made her smell even more delectable.

“Gentlemen, how are you?  Hemmingway said stepping forward.

Steve bounded forward on a direct course for Tail.  She stood her ground, but did not disguise the venom in her eyes.  As Steve past Hemmingway he gave him a shove and almost sent him toppling backward.  He towered of Tail breathing deeply through his nose, his twin peni erect.  Already the yellow seminal fluid flowed from then at a constant trickle.  He sniffed at her neckline making soft grunts tainted with hedonism.  The tip of his trunk was moist like a dogs.  With his meaty hand he grabbed at her blond hair pulling her neck back.  Tail’s gut reaction at the assault by human standards was to grab one of the long peni and bend it till the muscle made a snapping sound.  She grit her teeth as his snout touched her skin – traced a line along the low cut dress.  Once he’d identified her by smell he peered with his beady little eyes at her tattoo necklace.  He was checking she was the genuine article.  The strange thought that her face was indistinguishable to him came over her.  The tattoo was how he knew her.  He grunted loudly and chirped and whistled in a deep tone.  Again the start-up text flashed through Tail’s ocular implant and the translation appeared.  “Her good meat.  Much much good.”

The other two Centuri made the base filled giggling sound.  Steve released her hair and stepped back.  In a compromise as he walked back he slapped Hemmingway on the back.  Tail was immediately forgotten and grateful for that for a moment.  The tiny female came forward and pulled on the high hem of the black dress.  Tail looked down at her perplexed.  Her tiny chubby fingers had trouble grasping the smooth fabric but it became obvious she was trying to pull Tail somewhere.  Anxiety and apprehension tensed every muscle in Tail’s body as she realised she was to be guide to the Centuri equivalent of a kitchen.  The situation made her angry and the anger made her shake.  To someone who didn’t know Tail it would appear she was afraid.  It didn’t matter that she wasn’t, it was the same psychosomatic reaction.

There were seven tiny female Centuri in ‘kitchen’.  Not all of them belonged to Steve.  It was not like the restaurant.  One of the two longer walls was lined with perplex cages in which a variety of species of rodent like creatures ran back and forth.  The staple of the alien diet.  ‘At least we’re not one of the five fucking food groups yet’, Tail thought.  The prep table was only a couple feet of the floor so the tiny females could work on it.  The one who had guided her in by pulling on her dress started tugging on it more aggressively.  Tail realised she wanted her to take it off.  Out of sight of Hemmingway and the male Centuri Tail was less contained.  She reeled back her leg and gave the female a healthy kick in her… ribs she guessed.  The female yelped and tumbled backwards.  The six other females beady little eyes jumped.  “You little fuckers”, Tail said reaching around behind for the dress zipper, “are only still alive because I very much want to settle a score with some other cunt’s.”  The dress dropped to the floor revealing Tail’s naked body to the alien housewives.  Chirps and giggle like sounds, higher pitched than the males made chorused and Tail’s eye flashed through translations of the one word exclamations and short derogative remarks.  Tail needn’t have read the translations, but as the alien’s conversation continued the remarks started to turn ominous. 

Before the females set to work the final translation to appear on the head up display ominously remained without need to refresh.  ‘Let’s cook her underside extra tender.  The masters won’t think to turn her over.  Tail was jolted back to the reality of the situation.  The male Centuri would feast on her and talk business.  The females would pick at what was left of her.  They were subversive little submissives.

The Centuri female she had kicked pointed to the long lower table and Tail understood she was to lie on it.  She didn’t seem offended at the abuse.  With heavy ‘I could tear you apart’ movements Tail stepped onto the table; sat; lay down.  A familiar device was placed on her neck.  The simple ceramic plate adhere to her skin and Tail remember all too well soon she would be helpless to the situation.  She took a deep breath and the Centuri female tapped a button.  Tail’s feet flopped at ease and her hands dropped flat.  She blinked and tried to wriggle her toes.  Once more she was paralysed by the device on a Centuri cooking table.  She looked across with her eyes to see one carrying a device similar to the one she had seen in the restaurant kitchen.  ‘You fucking cunts better not be lying about the pain blockers in these implants’.

***

It was like reading the subtitles from a really bad Christmas special.  The females chattered about alien literature and the behaviour of their mates.  They victimised individuals of the group and it became obvious there was a pecking order.  Cyanide had been true to their word, Tail had felt a string as the ‘auto-human-cooking-thingy’, or whatever the aliens called it was placed over her body.  The females had obviously never cooked a human before because they didn’t seem surprised that Tail was not wailing in agony as the top inch of her muscle was microwaved and tenderized by the device.  Again, and totally lacking in originally one of the females tried to place a fruit in Tail’s mouth.  She bit into it and spat back at the female.  With what seemed a total lack of pride she fetched another and this time was faster on the paralytic device on Tail’s neck, fixing the garnish in place.  Tail was left staring at a shelf against one of the walls.  As the females cooked her marinated body, just right, she stared at a spherical container her head up display flashed a border around the alien text scanning it.  Tail had nothing else to do but read it whilst on of the alien commented she her cooked flesh smelt a little like… She guessed there wasn’t a translation for it.

A molecular formula flashed up.  Tail knew something of chemistry.  Enough to know what was a good high and what was a bad high.  Then text below the formula appeared. ‘Dextrose: D-Glucose.  Toxic highly’.  Tail contemplated the display.  Even for humans it was stupid to keep poisons in the kitchen.  One of the rodent creatures ran up and drank from a feeding tube.  They fed it to what they ate.  The ‘D’ before the molecules name denoted a chain of the molecule went off to the left instead of the right.  The distinction between organic and chemically produced.  Humans could metabolise both, and Tail guessed the rodent like animals could too, maybe the Centuri couldn’t.  That was why they ate live food, synthesized molecules were poison to them.

Tail felt a warmth spread over her left calf.  The warmth spread and grew to a sting, then a burning sensation.  Though she couldn’t move her head to see Tail realised the amount of meso-opiate in her implant was finite.  ‘Jesus, fucking, Christ’ She realised.  ‘The pain blockers had been exhausted.  Cyanide didn’t know Steve was going to invite friends for dinner.  Already her body had required too much of the pain blocker.  Her breathing became rapid as she fought back the urge to scream.  Now sooner had the sensation started than it subsided?  Tail had experienced the final pass of the cooking device.  The Centuri concubines had finished their cooking.  Tail calmed.  ‘Ok bitch”, she said to herself.  ‘Just shut you fucking eyes when they’re eating you.  Shut them until they put you back together.’  Tail squinted her eyes closed.  After a few minor adjustments to her resting position the females seemed happy and gathered together to pull the table out to the Centuri discussing business so they could eat.

Tail was blind to her movements, but not to the sounds.  The high-pitched chirps of the females was replaced with the deep giggles and barks of the males.  It seemed as if they didn’t regard Hemmingway high enough to speak English.  Tail was aware she was moving and then when she was in the centre of the male voices she was aware she was stationary. 

She tried to think of Bora Bora, her bar, the one Kuhtoot and Rhonda were working till she got back.

She heard Steve bark an order.  One of the females squawked and Tail felt an alien’s skin on her eye lids.  She squeezed her eyes harder, but the stubby fingers forced them open.  A couple of beeps from the paralytic device on her neck told she had been frozen again.  As the fingertip pulled away from her eyes she realised they were glued open.  Steve wanted her to watch them eating her.  His beady little black eyes seemed to be smiling at her.  Frantically Tail darted her eyes around.  The conversation amongst the males continued freely in Centuri.  The conversation ran across the head up display only she could see.

“Most succulent flesh ever I… (Emphasis boasting).”

“… as good as smell they? (Emphasis disbelieving).”

“Better, much. (Emphasis proud)”

“The belly, try.  Best part. (Emphasis Sincere)”

The alien body language was that of unmistakable excitement.  Steve was sharing a real treat with the two other male Centuri… and Hemmingway… Hemmingway sat beside Steve intentionally not making eye contact with Tail.

Nothing more was said.  The three aliens all held up their trident like forks and together pierced Tail’s skin.  They twisted the forks, curling them to detach portions of her butter like flesh.  Ceremonial all three collected their bite size portions and brought it to the circular mouths.  Moans and sighs of delight, in any language, escaped their pursed lips as they savoured her unique flavour. 

Steve broke the reflection of the aliens.  In a series of chirps and giggles he digressed to his two counterparts.  He spoke thinking only they could understand him, but Tail saw every last word in digital text scroll before her eyes.

“You can slice of the flesh – sear it, but nothing tastes as good as a living human female.  Watch the eyes as the euphoria sets in.  Her terror makes her all the more delicious.  This one is the finest bouquet I have tasted.”

Another of the Centuri interjected.  He was wavering slightly, Tail’s biology getting him high.  “But they have such simple biology.  How does a flavour so rich come from something so primitive?”  Tail was beyond noticing, but as the Centuri rode the high of her biology there language became more understandable to translation.

Steve was drunk.  One bight each and they were all tipsy.  Hemmingway was just sitting back waiting for them to become stupid.  “It’s the variety of their diet and the environments they move through.  That is why we will never be able clone them for production and why you cannot eat the young.  They take in particulates of what is around them.  Clones have staple diets and accelerated growth.”  Steve finished his auditory ejaculation and leant forward.  He ran his fingers over Tail’s tattoo.  Again he was fascinated by the pattern.  He dipped his fork in and sampled another piece.

Tail’s eyes began to water as she could not blink.  Her eyes darted between the three aliens around the table, all delighting in Tail’s intoxicating nourishment.  Still Hemmingway looked away or watched the three aliens.  He almost seemed unwelcome at the table.  It was obvious Steve wanted no business with him.  He was only there to deliver Tail.

And as if at that realisation, Tail saw him stand.  “Well Steve.  You, Justin and Gab seem to be enjoying yourselves.”  Only Steve looked up with dazed eyes as Hemmingway took a step away from human sacrifice.  “I’ve got to be going.  Why don’t you keep her overnight and I’ll pick her up tomorrow.”

“One of the aliens to Tail’s left abandoned his fork.  He picked up Tail’s forearm and brought it directly to his mouth.  The intimacy of Steve’s apartment not calling for the manners of the restaurant.  Tail tried to cry out in protest.  This didn’t make any sense.  Where was the deal?  Where was the purpose behind her being offered up?

Steve nodded dumbly at Hemmingway’s words.

“I’ll pick her up tomorrow evening.  That should give you a chance to have some breakfast and lunch.”  As Hemmingway casually passed off Tail’s consumption she realised that the meso-opiates in her implants had been depleted.  It was no longer a matter of merely having to endure the horror of being eaten, but she would feel the cooking again.  Tail tried to cry out through the alien produce locked into her mouth.  All three aliens giggled at Tail’s distress.  It seemed it was overdue.

***

What they lacked in size they made up in appetite.  The male Centuri had eaten their fill of Tail’s surface flesh, but the females… The females ate as if they didn’t know when they would get their next meal.  Tail was faint from hyperventilating.  ‘How many humans did these fucker dissect to know just how much they could consume without killing us?’ she thought.  The females ate in silence and it was a relief not to read detailed descriptions of how good she tasted.  One female, the one with the brass piercings abstained from eating.  After the entire front portion of Tail’s body had been stripped of skin and surface muscle she called out.  The Tec display on Tail’s ocular implant read “Enough.”  She was the matriarch of the subversive and servantile sex.  The drunk females stumbled away from the table, one taking one last chuck of her thigh, and parade out the room.  Tail couldn’t have comprehended, but three males were in the dining room luxuriating with erect alien peni that needed tending.

The final female came forward.  Tail’s breathing calmed when she saw she had abstained from eating so she was sober to regenerate Tail’s consumed flesh.  Eyes with superiority twisted repressed by her status as female regarded Tail with contempt.  She fetched a blade and found a portion of Tails anterior region.  She sliced a steak from Tail’s body.  She wasn’t going to miss out on a meal.

The process of regeneration took much longer than Tail was comfortable with.  The miracle gel, a slime of amino acids and proteins that could save every marine who fought under the Centuri banner, but was reserved for allowing second helpings of females, was applied in sections.  The same device used in the restaurant was placed over the ravaged regions.  This one was a different model.  It was translucent.  The beryllium gold allow wiring could be seen and three laser like beams of UV light intersected.  As it lay flat, just above her lower left leg, the stylus made of light  dated back and forth like at three-D printer and the cook and consumed flesh was laid out afresh.  It was less horrifying than being eaten, but still darkly surreal.  She had been dissected and was being put back together a layer of tissue at a time. Section by section Tail was being rebuilt… for breakfast.  To her side the Matriarchal female started consuming her fillet of earth woman and chirped delighted at the flavour.  Her reward for restraint.

The injury of consumption was purely visual trauma, what ached were her eyes.  Since being served, to being fully regenerated, Tail had laid with her eyes open for four hours.  When finally the Centuri female removed the tissue printer from Tail’s body and released the ceramic paralyser from her neck Tail chose to collapse onto the kitchen table.  Before she could revolt or recoil she felt something being placed around her neck.  She should have protested – resisted.  There was a beep and a new kind of restraint of unknown design was put on her.  She’d been collared like a dog.  She closed her eyes and tears finally lubricated her course eyes.  She panted and tried to steady her breathing.  The female who had healed her waddle out of the kitchen and Tail was left unpoliced in Steve’s home in the spire.  Tail realised she was like a pet cat.  She was to just wonder around and would be called upon when it was time to eat.  They gave her such little regard as to consider her a null threat.

When finally Tail rose the quest Centuri had gone along with the majority of the tiny females.  The crocodile like growls and despite high pitched squeaks from what Tail assumed was the bedroom told of the rumour of the Centuri marathon sex sections.  Tail was beyond sympathy for the females who had silently, and with utensil nibbled away at her flesh, but couldn’t help but understand that the two giant peni of the Centuri forcing their way into one of the tiny females meant the harem of claimed Centuri didn’t have happy nights.

She was exhausted and her heart rate was erratic.  She felt like she should investigate every ceramic panel that lined the now dim room for hidden wiring that could hotwire the door controls.  ‘Start with the basics’ she told herself.  She sat on the very couch Steve had sat on whilst her ate her.  She felt the collar around her neck.  It was lustrous like aluminium, but flexible.  Another alien allow the Centuri either didn’t share, or only leased out for earth Military.  With her finger nail she could feel a discontinuation in the band, a fine line were it connected.  She tried pulling on it to test for weakness.  As she flexed her neck to act as an anchor she pulled hard keeping her nail in the hairline join to feel for any give.  She thought she had some when a bolt of pain shot down her spine to her finger tips and toes like electricity searching for earth.  She cried out and crumpled onto the couch laying there panting.  It wasn’t that she thought she could escape, she just need to know she could get herself out if Hemmingway fucked her over any further.  As Tail caught her breath with her eyes closed laying on the couch she was aware of light through her closed eyes.

“Miss me?”  The text rolled along against the blackness a red dots fading after the shock.  Tail flushed angry.  Tail had read a Corp interrogation manifesto when she first signed with Kincaid and had access to their extranet.  Talk to the interrogated – establish repour… This was Hemmingway and his ‘repour.’ 

Tail spat a sequence of faint obscenities.  She knew it was one way communication and the last thing she wanted to do was make too much noise.  At the back of her mind she pictured an overt stoned Steve with no inhibitions becoming curious about inter species hanky panky.

“Get up.  Go to Steve’s console.”  The jaunt before the crux confirmed it was Hemmingway sending through the message.  Tail didn’t move.  Her fortitude was down and it seemed very reasonable that it should be.  There was a break in Hemmingway wiring her instructions, but his patience finally wavered.  “There was no deal with Steve, Tail”, the text was only up briefly.  “The deal is with you.”  Again the text quickly disappeared.  “Get up and go to his console.  I won’t collect you to you do.”

Tail wanted bite at Hemmingway.  She wanted to gnaw at his face and viscerally scar him...  Her entire personality was built around avoiding people and Corps placing her in positions where she had to do as they commanded.  She opened her eyes and sat up.

The noise was still coming from Steve sleeping quarters.  The pitch of the female’s distress had shifted telling of another recipient of the everlasting boner her scent and biology had given him.  She was an overdose of Viagra to a nymphomaniac.  She looked around the dim room.

“To your left”, the text prompted.  Tail turned and saw an asymmetrical curved platform like a sculpture.  Yellow and orange light was faintly glowing from its surface.  As she started walking towards it the sentence “Good girl” appeared.

“Fuck you.”  Tail vocalized softly and by coincident the female Centuri being torn into wailed at a particular high pitch.

Tail moved around to the console and stood over it.  The screen was tiny.  What was stranger was a thin piece of cloth like papyrus with Centuri text scribbled on it.  As Tail glanced at it the heads-up display highlighted the text and the translation rand across her eyes.  “Illustrious father so noble…”  Tail ignored the rest, but knew what it meant.  The Centuri still wrote on tangible surfaces for intimate letters.  A Chrome and bulbous shaft was to its side and Tail deduced they burnt the manuscript into the substrate.  Totally useless trivia… except.  She picked up the ‘pen’ and awkwardly, because of its size, wrote, “Opiate depleted.”  There was a pause.

“Touch the console.” 

Hemmingway was a cunt.  Tail shook the manuscript as a means of conveying urgency.

Again, “Touch the console.”

Tail closed her eyes signalling she wouldn’t co-operate.  She had what Hemmingway wanted right in front of him.  She knew despite being cool in negotiations he was always hungry for the deal to go through. 

There was another pause and then, “Later.  Touch the console.”  Tail’s exhausted face was furious.  She slapped her palm on the console.

An intricate hologram of a three dimensional interface projected upward.  Instantaneously the ocular implant highlighted the countless alien glyphs, translations steaming across her readout.  It had a disorientating effect Tails started to feel dizzy on top of the trauma.

“That one” the bolder text of Hemmingway read.  The green light of the readout turned read around a particular glyph.  The readout below it as translation read “Cyanide”.

“Cunt biscuit.”  Tail said under her breath.  This was all about corporate espionage all along, but she was more interested in getting back to the topic of getting out before breakfast.  She reached forward and the static from her finger mingled with the holographic glyph.

Flickers of streams of data cascaded, scrolling down from the holographic interface.  Tail felt a blunt spreading pain at the back of her eyes.  It seemed they were heating up.  She shut her eyes.

“Open your eye!”  Came the command from Hemmingway.

Tail tried.  For some reason she tried to give Hemmingway what he wanted, but she could stand the pain.  The cycle finished.  The display reset.

“Ok.”  She could almost hear the reasoning behind the text.  This fuck-whit had traumatised his personality unto her psyche.  “It’s too much bandwidth to not get flagged as it travels out of the spire, so we can’t get it remotely.  The processors in your eyes need to record the data.”  Tail caught her breath and looked at the interface again.  “This is how you know I’m getting you out.”  It was a sickly reassurance.  “We need to manually download from your implants.”  He gave Tail a few seconds.

Tail opened her eyes.  The same streaming of the interfaces start-up screen commenced.  “Ok” Hemmingway texted.  “Touch it again.  This time keep your eyes open.”  Tail complied, panting and gritting her teeth as the tech that Steve had banked up to trickle feed Cyanide poured into the memory of her implants.  Cyanide was accelerating their position – making Steve bring fresh tech to the table to get earth’s resources.  Cyanide would be the biggest of the big three.  The whole process only took two minutes, but seemed like longer.  “Good girl” flashed before her eyes when she was finished.  Tail hated being called a girl – it was derogative. 

From the sleeping chamber that Steve had retreated to ravage his female property Tail still heard alien grunts and cries.  They had retired for the evening – the sex would go on for hours.  Now more than ever Tail wanted to collapse, but there was one more pressing matter to attend to.  One survival dictated.  Again she held parchment with the message of having no opiates.  She held it waiting for a response.  Finally one came.

“Can’t come early.  Will look suspicious.  Just get through breakfast.”  Tail slowly scrunched the parchment up into a tiny ball and through it to an obscure corner of the room.  Her head burned against the trauma and adrenaline told her she was escalated beyond the point of reason to the point of searching for a weapon to use on Hemmingway.

The weapon was an idea.  She had something Cyanide wanted very badly, the data stored in her eyes.  Hemmingway was no longer necessary.

***

The Centuri woke like children on a school day.  They stumbled out of bed rubbing their tiny black eyes.  Steve bumped and knocked his three little females around with null regard.  The females seemed to be waddling extra wide.  Steve’s epic, and highly audible, performance last night on Tail’s biology had given them all an internal chafe.  She wondered if they harboured resentment to her for her passive part in Steve’s induced arousal, or the delight of eating her outweighed their discomfort.

All this Tail saw from the corner of her right ocular implant.  Steve had abandoned communication.  Tail felt sure someone from Cyanide was watching, but the grand cunt himself had retired to his deluxe apartment and his shower with water rations and, as comfortable as they got on Ghetto, bed.  Tail had spent a couple of hours familiarising herself with Steve’s console.  She was not mining for data to download but used the translate facility to load up Steve’s calendar.  The firmware of the console was like that of mobile phones companies of the early twenty-first millennium.  Everything was integrated.  It was inescapable on earth.  The devices your parents handed down to you dictated which of the big three you subscribed to and like a football team fan you were in for life.  Each upgrade, new device, linked in with the old in a seamless stream – the Corps capturing your whole life on a data stream, mined for patterns and weakness to exploit and capitalise on.  It seemed the Centuri civilization followed the same path, except long ago one group had risen and taken over everything.  With only one common firmware, Tail had tapped into the Centuri equivalent of a camera on the console unit.  She watched them from the kitchen.  The matriarchal female picked up a small tablet and pressed a button.

Tail felt a mild jolt of electricity shoot down her spin.  From her vantage on the kitchen table, that was rolled out to be dined off her, she spasmed, but was grateful she had the rubber handle of an alien utensil in her mouth to bite down on.  She now knew where her leash was at least.  She blinked twice, the camera display disappeared from view.  All that she need to know for timing was when the Centuri would rise.  She didn’t trust Steve’s calendar after a night of taking in a large dose of human biology.  She looked up at the spherical jar of Dextrose.  She didn’t care if it killed Steve or just made him sick, but she needed the onset to be delayed.  The old fashioned syringe she had found was hidden behind one of the alien rodent’s cages.  She’d injected about three point five fluid ounces into her thigh.  The sting a welling of the non-poisonous fluid to sapiens didn’t make her angry, what did was the fact the Centuri used a base ten measuring system like Europe.  At the point of Hemmingway going silent last night she had become so angry she could only escalate the situation and now that anger helped her. 

As another jolt coursed from the band on her neck, the Matriarch summoning her for their morning feed Tail gave a tell, gutheral yell from the kitchen.  She picked up the alien device, the one that had been used to tenderise and cook her flesh twice.  The Matriarch followed the Tails earlier vocalisation.  As she walked into the alien kitchen she startled at the sight of Tail placing it over her calf and pulling the trigger. 

It must have appeared to the female Centuri as a pig greasing itself and rolling onto the grill to be barbequed.

Tail’s body racked with pain, the opiate dose from her eyes depleted by Steve’s unexpected guests.  Her arms wavered and she almost dropped the device and collapsed.  Anger drove her to trace the device over her flesh that had been consumed only last night.  The nerves in her regenerate body were fresh, but Tail had to remain an active participant in her cooking.  If the paralytic plate was placed on her neck again and she were made helpless, the rest of her plan would fail.  Tail panted and screamed through teeth clenched on the utensil.

The Centuri female stepped back.  Tail made one pass, but realised she couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t draw the cooking device over her naked leg again.  Much to her surprise the suppressed female cried out almost musical and ran forward.  Her tiny hands caught the device as Tail was about to drop it from the pain.  The female with the brass piercing seemed to chirp a song.  Tail’s implants flashed a translation.  “Good meat. Good meat (Emphasis comfort).”  The female was encouraging Tail’s efforts at self-harm.  In the Centuri’s eyes this was the correct behaviour for Tail.  Tail felt sick from the pain and sheer hatred for every last Centuri, but it worked.  The Matriarch female with the brass piercing took over the task of cooking Tail’s upper leg, without applying the paralytic plate.  With each pass of the device, and as Tail’s leg turned to the consistency of butter, the pain became less as Tail’s flesh cooked and the nerves died.  She was aware of the female handling a silver fork, the one seemingly designed for dining on humans, and Tail limped out into the main room where Steve was at his console, seemingly puzzled at the something being out of order.

Tail’s smell was an immediate distraction.  She moved towards him in a mix between a limp and a hop, her head clouded with the trauma of being cooked.  Steve’s twin flaccid peni grew erect and Tail’s unwashed scent.  She continued forward as Steve made a puckering motion with his circular mouth flashing his teeth.  He was hungry.  He’d worked up an appetite last night.

Tail sat on his lap placing one arm around his giant neck.  With the other she pulled up her useless and poisoned other leg.  She handed him the fork, which he took gently, and waited for him to sample her flesh and her narcotic affect to kick in.  If she’d been trying to seduce him, she would have succeed.  Steve made a long chirping sound of a higher than usual pitch.  Her ocular implant merely displayed (Emphasis Happy).  He looked at Tail, willing serving herself up to him and seemed satisfied, as though this was what he expected from humans.  Tail played along with the scene and leant into him, touching her brow to his trunk, partly to show false submission and partly so she didn’t have to see Steve raise the fork and did it into her tender thigh.

“You can’t trust him Steve”, she whispered softly.  Steve was going back for his second bite when she broke the xenophile intimacy.  Steve was already taken in by her biology – her hormones, endorphins and amino acids binding to receptors in his alien physiology.  He huffed distracted, but Tail’s approach was such he didn’t object to Tail, a walking smorgasbord and meth lab, addressing him.  “He made me go onto your console.”  Tail stroked Steve’s trunk.  She remembered it was as sensitive as the peni, if not more.  The high pitch chirp came again and his peni dripped the yellowy seed in a steady stream.  “He’s playing you for a fool.”  Steve grunted and almost stood up.  Tail quickly realised he was like a drunk deciding whether to finish his beer or start a fight.  He took the junky trail and Tail realised the path of self-abuse was perhaps universal.  He feed on her, but faster.  He wanted to eat Tail quickly so as to investigate what files Hemmingway had gone through.  As he rapidly shovelled in chunks of Tail she knew he was consuming unmetabolised Dextrose.  Whether it would actually harm Steve, and to what extent she was guessing.  Her entire plan was based on chance, but she was angry enough to take it.  She leant back on Steve’s chair and closed her eyes as he finished his breakfast.

***

Appearing unsuspiciously early for Hemmingway meant coming about two hours past Steve had feast on Tail’s succulent right thigh.  When the chime of the door came the house of Steve, the Centuri, was in such chaos it sounded another two time before one of the lesser females ran to see who it was.  Tail sat on the sofa with her eyes closed.  She didn’t want the implants giving away the surprise.  By chance the symptoms of the poisonous Dextrose hadn’t hit Steve until the Matriarchal female had regenerated her leg.  When the female made the entrance door transparent to see the caller saw Hemmingway she made it opaque again and ran back to aid her Master, who was lying on his side, Tail’s regurgitated flesh oozing from him mouth as he choked and moaned in agony.  Tail took the initiative to open the door.  The ocular implant in her eye read the symbols and she tapped the one to open the door.  The females, scurrying about their sick, or dying, owner didn’t give her a second thought as she moved about the apartment – she was just meat after all.  Can a sheep kill a shepherd?  As the door slid open she greeted Hemmingway with eyes as cold as the vacuum of space.

“What the ..?” Hemmingway opened with.  Tail did a visual check of Hemmingway as he peered over at the gravely ill Steve and the females wobbling around him.  Her clothes had vanished upon striping in the kitchen.  Tail had a pretty good image of Hemmingway, but now she checked to see if the suit pants and jacket would suitably cover her.

“Problem”, she lied and took a hasty step into the apartment.

“What kind of fucking problem.  What have you done…?”  She only needed Hemmingway to step into the apartment.  Once is hind leg was through the door she rounded, fist curled tight.  There was a satisfying crack as her fist landed square on his jaw.  Hemmingway dropped to the ground.  Tail bought her heel up and crashed it down on his ribs; once; twice – the cracking noise gave way to a satisfying squash that told of internal injury.  Hemmingway cried out through his daze from the blow to his jaw.

It was already coming together.  The Matriarch had abandoned the control over her collar in favour of comforting her mate.  Tail retrieved it and again the ocular implant told which bottom released it.  Free from the apartment her neck step was to be free of the Spire.  As Hemmingway curled up into the foetal position protecting his damaged ribs she pulled at his jacket.  He wouldn’t roll to get it off.  Another healthy kick with her heel and he complied.  He’d given up struggling as she pulled at his pants.  The belt held up the slack on the pants around Tail’s slender waist and she buttoned the jacket.  Shoes she could do without.  Before she walked out of the apartment she checked Hemmingway’s jacket pocket for the invitation – the pass to get her through the checkpoint.  She took one last look at Hemmingway and Steve.  Both males were crumpled up on the floor and agony.  IT gave her some satisfaction, but her anger was still a sharp blade.  She left the apartment and walked towards the elevator.

If Steve lived he would have the crippled Hemmingway to take his anger out on.  Tail was out of here.

Unescorted Tail had finally turned some Alien heads.  She let the Centuri in charge of the check point have a sniff.  She let his trunk linger over her letting him know she was a good submissive creature how just needed to pass through.  The invitation checked out.  She marched towards the back corridor that led to Cyanides private lift.  She wasn’t about getting away from Cyanide.  She knew getting of Ghetto with the data she had in her eyes was near impossible.  So she marched straight to their elevator.  She figured about, now, one of the females would have called for whatever the Centuri had as an ambulance, or doctor on call, would be sent for.  Hemmingway would be largely ignored in his half naked and injured state.  He wasn’t getting out of the Spire anyway.  If he could have picked himself up the Centuri on guard wouldn’t let him past.  If Steve recovered he would be investigating what Tail had told him of instructions to go through his console.

Tail reached Cyanide’s lift.  A man in a black suit with a military haircut was waiting there - waiting for her.  He tapped his ear and sounded “She’s here” like an old fashioned secret service agent.  Tail didn’t hinder her step in any caution.  She marched up to the man who was holding the elevator for her.  IT would seem they wanted to get her back to level 191 before the trouble Hemmingway was in resulted Tail being detained on this level.  She knew the Corps too well.  They’d already written Hemmingway of as an unfortunate expenditure.  Tail entered the elevator and the man joined her, pressing the only button, the one that took them to Cyanide Corp headquarters on Ghetto.

***

Tail had surrendered the suit jacket and lose pants that had concealed her nudity.  She was back in the lab she had woken up in on Ghetto.  The familiar lab-techs were present; the brunette with the glasses; Josh with his bandaged fingers; and a new man, not like Hemmingway.  This man seemed more serious, less about working his way up and being the man, and more company buy-line.  ‘Market domination – at all costs’.

This new player both put Tail at ease and added some risk.  This man didn’t give a fuck about what had happened in the Spire, nor that she had returned without Hemmingway.  This man only gave a fuck about the data they were downloading from her ocular implants.  This was good, because once they had it he wouldn’t see her as a piece on a chess board to be manipulated.  Bad, because he could just terminate her – cheaper than freighting her back home.

“Data integrity?” he finally spoke.  The room had been a silent one.  The lab-techs hadn’t engaged Tail and Tail knew she had to not be a problem at this point in time.

“One-hundred percent integrity, but the software’s translation get some things wrong.”  Josh took the electrode from the side of Tail’s face.  “Transcription errors” Josh made a gesture that there was nothing they could do.  “Should be able to go over the log and correct for the software.  You know it’s an alien language, and I mean alien….”  The man in the room held up his hand for Josh to stop.  He made eye contact with Tail.

She sat naked on the operating table.  The tan job they had given her to make her look delicious was intact around her neckline and shoulders.  Steve had eaten from the artwork Tail was so proud of.  The front of her body was patch worked pale and tanned.  Fresh, newly generated tissue had been grown and was visible by distinguishing the tone.  He seemed to want to ask Tail something.  Tail didn’t like his eyes examining her naked body.  She was sick of being naked, helpless… Tail felt the desire to look around the room for a scalpel; needle; bone saw – something she could level the field with.  Attacking an employee in the Cyanide headquarters was suicide, but if they weren’t going to be on the level she believed she had established a pattern of behaviour to justify them holding up their end of the deal.

“Does it hurt?”  The man finally asked.

Tail remained mute.

“When they eat you, does it hurt?  Or is it just watching them dine on you that brings out such… distasteful behaviour.”  There was contained vexation in the man’s voice.  If Steve was alive he was obviously very angry and Tail knew Hemmingway would have made an appearance by now if he’d gotten out of the Spire.

Tail swallowed back the bile she should have spat at him.  She decided to say nothing.

“Get her, her clothes.”  The man finally said.  “Get her off this level.”  He turned and walked out of the room.  Tail was left with the two anxious lab-techs who seemed eager not to set Tail off again.  They fetched a marine cooler that contained her personal effects and left the room.

***

Dressed in the cargo pants, surplus boots and leather jacket Tail felt like she was wearing armour again.  These were clothes she liked because you charge through terrain evading something or take a minor assault without having to worry about exposed skin.  Her escort, two Cyanide Corp security guards stood behind her, like they were about to jump her, in the lift down to the hangers.  Cyanide wanted her gone before she could be used as a piece of evidence against them in the sticky situation with Hemmingway and Steve.  She tilted her head to the side and wondered.  Was Steve dead?  Are the Century using some alien technique to interrogate Hemmingway?  Did they just leave him on the floor of Steve’s apartment to bleed internally whilst they tried to save one of their own?  There was a nagging suggestion at the back of her mind that she might regret not knowing.

The ocular implants couldn’t be removed.  Something Josh whimpered out about bindings to the ocular nerve being a one way thing.  It didn’t really matter.  She was a nobody.  Who would bother to active the cameras at the back of her eyes and see what she was seeing – and this translation software might come in handy.

The lift was silent running.  It was only the cursory look at the panel that told her they were at the hanger’s level… but the light dropped down a level lower.  Tail tensed her body, but not noticeably.  She wasn’t being taken to the hangers.  Her mind raced.  ‘An airlock’.  No, if they were going to just throw her out an airlock, why not use the one on their level.  Tail didn’t know what, but she was being taken somewhere low in Ghetto’s levels.  Casually she scanned the labels next to the numbers on the lifts panel.  She could feel the guards tensing up behind her.  They were either expecting a fight, or were about to make their move.  The elevator stopped at level 19.  Tail had a distant memory of the first time she visited Ghetto, a Centuri at immigration warning her against going to level 19.

Tail curled her hands into fists as the door glided open.

A once freshly painted sign was stained with rust and the humid stench of human swe at met her as she read the sign – Kincaid Industries Pty Ltd.

“Shit.”  Tail said out loud.  Fuckers sold her to the company she used to slaver for. 

She took a step out casually as if nothing was wrong.  With room to turn she spun around and raised her fist.  Her eyes went dark.  She found herself stumbling forward blind.  They had switched her eyes off via the implants.  Tail cried out.  She felt two sets of hands grab her arms and pull them behind her back.  She kicked and threw her weight around, but it was pointless without the ability to see where she might make an exit.  Cold metal on her wrists told of shackles and now the two Corps guards pulled at her with direction.  She was being taken somewhere - blind and bound.

At least she was going to find out what happened to all those girls she had freighted.