“A kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being, nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”
-Sun Tzu

It wasn't much of a trial. No one made any mention of Majestic Thirteen, if only because their existence was still hypothetically a secret. “Majestic Thirteen” was, most of the time, any of the Dominion's supranational agencies who didn't want to take responsibility for actions that had reached the public.

But it's not like they needed to come out and admit that demons were real to have Cassandra sentenced under blasphemy laws. Her room was stuffed with supernatural paraphernalia, much of it demonic in nature, including no small number of books openly hateful of Christians. Also: Humanity. But it was the alleged hatred for Christians that was relevant to the trial.

Cassie's stunned patrons withdrew their support and, because she had no independent wealth, she was forced to represent herself in court. Her knowledge of the law was pretty fuzzy. The defense she ended up mounting was that she never intended any harm nor performed any rituals, that she thought of the books as curiosities only, and that she most certainly bore no ill will towards Christianity or any other religion. Just because she owned a book didn't mean she agreed with its contents, right?

It was never a defense that was going to get her off completely, even if they accepted everything she said as absolutely true, because owning all this stuff was still illegal. Really what she was playing for here was to get the charges of criminal conspiracy and hate speech dropped and to put the judge in a lenient mood when it came to the sentencing on the blasphemy charge.

That was not what happened, and instead the judge ended up sentencing her to a total of twelve years. And that was way over the point where someone could get sold, taken out of the Rho Geminorum system, and then forgotten about. Nobody ever wasted Alcu on letting nearby systems know the sentence of a prisoner, nor bothered using the kind of electricity needed to send luminal messages strong enough to be readable from neighboring star systems by the time they arrived. So if a slave owner swapped out “twelve years” for “life,” no one outside the star system where the sentencing took place was in any position to correct them.

According to official government figures, this happened in a negligibly small number of cases. Underground sources put the amount of slaves actually released at the end of their sentence at less than 10%. Plus, there were rumors that Majestic Thirteen guarantees that sentences get extended indefinitely, regardless of behavior, for people who've caused supernatural trouble, if they don't just arrange a prison murder.

Cassie's sentence wasn't yet official when two men in black sat down across from her in an interrogation room. She was still in the white, color-dappled t-shirt and black skinny jeans she was arrested in. She never had the chance to pull on shoes and socks before they slapped the cuffs on. Nor did she have the chance to wash off the ritual blood, which did not do her any favors in the trial. She'd washed it off as soon as she arrived at the jail where she was held during the trial. There was never any photographic evidence and she tried to play it off as a makeup disaster. No one bought it.

“A lot can happen in twelve years, Miss Heart,” one of the men in black said. “You could be very far from home when that sentence is up.”

“I guess,” she said.

“People in your positions have adjustment difficulties. Often leads to unruly behavior, which can extend sentences even longer. Try not to let that happen,” he continued.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“We could make an arrangement with the judge,” he said, “could get that sentence knocked down to five years and add in a clause about extrasolar transportation.”

“And in exchange?” she asked.

“The names of your accomplices,” he said, “even a basic Hellmouth requires three ritualists acting in concert. You must have at least two accomplices. Give us their names and we'll see about the extrasolar clause. Give us more and we might reduce the years on that sentence.”

Cassie looked back and forth between the two and swallowed. There were three ritualists total, Jack and Jeanette had worked with her to channel the energies of the planet's leylines into opening up a Naraka connection across most of Toluca County. The other two were at other points of the triangle, and Cassie had no idea if one or both of them had already been caught. She could just keep her mouth shut, and one or both of them might get away clean. But she needed that extrasolar clause, and she needed it desperately. Without it, she might never walk free again. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth. “I only know one of the others,” she said, “he kept the other ritualist from me, and kept me from him. Said it was safer that way.”

“Awful lot of coordination,” he said.

“He seemed like he knew what he was doing. Our leader, I mean,” Cassie said. Jack had evaded the law for years. If Cassie gave them Jack, he'd probably get away anyway. All she had to do was convince them to give her the extrasolar clause on her sentence for one name.

The agents just stared at her. “It's one or nothing, I can't give you any more,” she said, “I literally can't, I don't know.” What if one of them was a mesmer? It was really rare, but if they were, then they'd be reading her mind. But then wouldn't they already know everything they needed from her? Maybe they were hoping she would think about some specific crimes for the trials of Jack or Jeanette? Cassie pointedly avoided thinking about any actual rituals she'd performed, instead focusing on the two agents in front of her.

But her resolve was starting to crack. “Please, I really only know one name.” They got up and started heading towards the door. She half opened her mouth when they reached the door, but then closed it again and let them leave. She wasn't going to sell out both of her friends. She wished she hadn't offered them even one, and she felt the familiar workings of memory revision in the back of her head, she wasn't going to give them a real name, she was going to pin it on that one shop owner she'd already sold out for being a child-kidnapping psychopath, but she squelched the thoughts. She was going to give them Jack's name in exchange for the extrasolar clause, and hope he was savvy enough to avoid them. That he would be able to dodge Majestic Thirteen the same as the Toluca County Police. But she dodged that bullet when they refused her offer, and she had the guts not to give them both, at least, and if they asked again she resolved not to offer them anything.

The judge's sentences were finalized at the end of the day. The guards took Cassie to the station's imaging room, used for evidence collection and...Advertising. A pair of rotating pillars mounted with cameras provided a complete 3D image of whoever stood inside. The guard told her to remove her clothes, stand in the middle of the room, and hold still. She took a deep breath, and then slid her shirt over her head and jeans off. Goosebumps broke out over her naked skin and she turned away from the guard, who demanded that she hurry up.

She placed her feet on the marked spot of the floor, spaced at shoulder width. “Stand with your back straight and arms at your sides,” the guard said. Cassie sucked in a breath and glued her arms to her hips, fingers splayed tight across them and gripping the skin hard. The guard never said anything about her head. She closed her eyes and bowed her head forward until her dark, shoulder length hair gathered around her face, and the machine spun slowly around her. An image appeared on the technician's screen, a perfect photorealistic shot of Cassie's naked body. The technician rotated it around a few different angles to make sure it'd worked and then submitted it to the network, before waving to the guard, who cuffed Cassie's hands behind her back and dragged her out of the room and back to her holding cell.

Cassie's clothes were slid into a tiny lockbox, theoretically along with other personal effects, but given the conditions of her arrest she didn't have any. This was supposed to follow her until release. In practice she'd heard these go missing a lot, sold off by whoever buys the slave. But would anyone bother selling a t-shirt and jeans?

There were a few glances from the other police as she was escorted through the station, and a few lecherous glares. Cassie shrank back away from them, hunching her shoulders, bowing her head, trying to make herself as small as possible. At least the holding cells were empty. Toluca County was a sparsely populated place, it didn't get a whole lot of crime.

The very next day, Cassie was taken from the county jail, which was no surprise as it only held people temporarily, to the ferry out on the center of Toluca Lake, which was rather more of a surprise as that was the location of the space elevator. Cassie wasn't entirely certain where the prison for longterm detention was, but she was reasonably certain that it was something like two counties over, not in space. So presumably she'd been bought.

Cassie was loaded into a small shuttle, her hands cuffed to a tiny plastic seat while other slaves were loaded on in zero gravity. There were three other naked slaves already inside, one brown haired and olive skinned, floating bored in her cuffs. Another short, purple haired, and with at least enough sense of modesty to fold her cuffed hands over her pussy. The last an amazon, tall and physically toned, with blonde hair and staring straight ahead.

“Hey,” Cassie said to the brunette. She didn't turn to look, just sat floating in zero-g, attached to the bench by her cuffs. “I'm Cassie,” Cassie said.

Now the brunette did look at Cassie, just barely interested, sizing her up. She shrank back a little and was reminded for the hundredth time today that she was naked. “Giovanna,” she said, finally.

“How long have you been here?” Cassie asked, “I mean, in prison or owned or...Whatever.”

“Just today this time,” she said, “been inside before, though.”

Cassie almost asked what it's like, but if she wasn't bleeding 'fresh meat' all over the place already, she didn't want to start now. How else could she keep this conversation going? “What did you do?” she asked, and immediately kicked herself. 'What're you in for,' really? Was she going to get prison tats, join a gang, and shank someone for a cigarette next?

“Sold something,” Giovanna said, “would've been for a lot of money if I'd ever gotten it. Still don't know how I got caught. Maybe it was Cato.”

“Bernard Cato?” the purple-haired girl asked.

“Yeah, that's him,” Giovanna asked, “you know him?”

“I took a job from him, it's the one I was caught on,” purple hair said, “something happened to my tech support guy, still don't know what.”

“Oh, that can't be a coincidence,” Giovanna said, “I'll fucking kill that bastard.”

The door slid open and a guard floated in dragging a grinning redhead by the arm, caught himself on one of the straps that dangled from the ceiling. The redhead's hands were cuffed behind her back and attached to a chain around her waist. The guard chained her ankles to the floor, but attached her cuffs to the bench still behind her back instead of bringing them in front like Cassie and the others. “Call me!” the redhead said as the guard left and the door slammed shut behind him.

“Who're you?” Cassie asked.

“You don't recognize me? They said I was all over the news, planetwide. Maybe it's 'cause I don't have my paint on?” the redhead said.

“I've been out of the loop since I was arrested a couple of days ago,” Cassie said.

“I'm Andraste,” she said, “the girl who set Sacrum on fire.” Sacrum? Then what was she doing at the top of the Toluca elevator?

“More like the girl who got her ass kicked while her gang set Sacrum on fire,” Giovanna said.

Andraste jumped out of her seat and snapped her teeth in Giovanna's direction, her wrists and ankles caught in their cuffs. Giovanna, a solid two feet out of Andraste's reach, didn't even flinch, but purple hair, sitting across from Giovanna, pushed herself back a bit. Andraste giggled at her.

“I didn't catch your name,” Cassie said to purple hair, who seemed the most stable of any of them.

“I'm Lily,” she said, and a buzzer sounded throughout the cabin. The five of them were pressed into their seats by the acceleration to 1G.

“What was your name?” Cassie asked the blonde, and if Lily wasn't the most stable of them, the silent blonde probably was. On the other hand, the guards felt the need to put her in heavy restraints like Andraste's for some reason or another.

“Tanirt,” she said.

“Nice to meet you,” Cassie said.

Tanirt did not respond.

“Where are you from?” Cassie asked.

“Tuscan,” Tanirt said. That place in the middle of the desert on the big island/small continent of the Nova Byzantum archipelago.

“What's it like?”

“Hot,” Tanirt said.

Cassie decided against talking with her further.

It was another hour or so before the shuttle arrived. The others made intermittent conversation with one another. The shuttle began to bank, Cassie grabbed onto her chains to keep the cuffs from digging into her wrists. Then gravity returned, she was taken into some kind of infirmary, and with no further explanation, put under with anesthesia. When she woke up, a cold steel collar was locked around her neck, and she could feel...Something at the nape. She reached back to feel, and she could feel the steel going beneath her skin. It was attached to her. Went inside her.

It was several more hours before she arrived at...Wherever it was they were going. She filed out into a large docking bay. The guards wore mostly black armor with white plates. Most of them had their heads concealed by helmets. Cassie folded her arms over her breasts and looked away from them. They probably saw bare breasts on a daily basis and didn't particularly care about Cassie's, but it didn't feel that way. As she was led from the docking bay and into processing for her mug shots, she noticed the lights flickering. Some of them were exposed and sparking. The floors were metal grated tiles each five feet across, and one of them was ripped up at the corner. What the Hell happened here?

Finally she was led into a room fit for thirty people, sparse and empty with only the five of them standing there, one guard near an entrance, and another stepping in front of the slaves. “I'm Lieutenant Mira. I'm in charge of keeping you in line. You'll call me 'ma'am' or 'lieutenant.'" She began to pace back and forth in front of them. “I'm not going to lie to you. We're running on a skeleton crew. Without the guard power we'd like to have, the gangs have asserted themselves. They control territory. They perpetrate crimes. And when they're feeling up to it, they riot. They are going to want you to join them. They are going to make promises. Most likely they are going to promise you that the next riot will storm the bridge and take control of the ship. The bridge is a detachable module. If you ever get within two decks of it, it's going to leave. All you're accomplishing is tearing up the parts of the ship you have to live in.” She gestured to one of the lights up above, ripped from its mooring, sparks falling onto the ground. “I live three decks up from here. I don't have to care.”

“I'm not going to try and convince you to remember the consequences of disobedience, although you should. But when it comes to riots there is something else that should stick even deeper in your heads: We are in space. When you tamper with our wiring, wreck our generators, and tear up our ship, you are not a badass who's going to show all the guards not to fuck with you. You're a dumbass who's going to kill our life support and boil your own eyes. This,” she taps her armored suit, “is not standard issue. It's in case you decide to riot again and manage to take out another generator and black the ship out. You do not get one.”

“I mentioned the consequences for disobedience. You're slaves. If you don't do as you're told, you'll be punished,” she draws a cane from her side and begins walking up and down the line. “This place doesn't have to be miserable for you, but believe me, it can be. So.” She stopped in front of Giovanna and slapped the cane lightly against one of her nipples, and Giovanna winced, but was silent. “Are you going to be trouble?”

“No, ma'am,” Giovanna's voice was flat, robotic.

The lieutenant stepped in front of Tanirt. She'd had her hands cuffed behind her back and to a waist chain like Andraste, although Cassie wasn't sure why. She seemed cooperative enough. Granted, they had a gun pointed at her head when they uncuffed her from the shuttle. “What about you?” Mira asked, tapping the cane against Tanirt's bared nipple.

“Don't,” she started, but then the cane came down, just hard enough to sting, and she winced. “Don't do that,” she said, “I won't give you trouble if you don't give me any.”

“Beg for it, slave,” the lieutenant said.

“What?” Tanirt asked.

“I didn't stutter. Show me you know exactly how much bargaining power you have.”

Tanirt glared at her a moment, but then her head fell. “Please, lieutenant,” she said, “don't hurt me.”

“Good girl,” the lieutenant said and stepped to Lily. “You going to give me trouble?”

Lily moaned with pain as the cane slapped across one of her stiffened nipples, leaving a soft red mark across it. “No, ma'am,” she gasped, “please.”

“Good girl,” Mira said again, and now it was Cassie's turn. “And you?” the lieutenant asked, tapping the cane softly against Cassie's bare skin, and she screwed her eyes shut.

She moaned and whimpered as the cane struck her, goosebumps all across her naked body. “N-no, no ma'am,” she said, and swallowed hard.

“Good girl,” Mira said.

Andraste didn't even give her time to ask. As soon as the lieutenant stopped in front of her, Andraste spat in her face. With a sigh, the lieutenant brought the cane down hard against Andraste's breast, and Andraste turned the moan into a snarl and tried to tackle her. Andraste's hands were still cuffed to her waist chain, her legs were still locked in ankle shackles. It wasn't hard for the lieutenant to sidestep her, and unable to recover her balance or even break her fall, Andraste face planted. The lieutenant whipped Andraste's ass, and Andraste crawled forward, trying to get to her feet or get distance or get something, but all she got was whipped. “I really don't have time to play this game for an hour until you get over yourself,” the lieutenant said, “so I'm just going to send you with the others down to your cell and strongly encourage you to think about what exactly you're going to prove and to who by giving the wrong answer next time I ask that question.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” Andraste said from the ground.

Then she winced as the cane struck her again. “Think about it,” the lieutenant said, “corporal, escort the slaves to their cell.”

“Yes, lieutenant,” the armored guard near the entrance said, his voice tinny and synthesized through his helmet, and he grabbed Andraste by the arm and pulled her to her feet while the lieutenant left the room. “Your pride makes you about as menacing as a broken coffee machine, and I don't think it's worth the pain. That cane looked like it hurt,” the corporal said to Andraste, “the lieutenant will work with you if you pay your dues.”

“I don't owe you anything,” Andraste hissed.

“Your funeral,” the guard said, and gave Andraste a shove just hard enough to get her moving towards one of the exits, but not hard enough to send her off-balance on her shackled feet.

Cassie knew the construction of this ship. She was a rather incorrigible dilettante and knew a little bit of everything. The construction looked like a Warsaw build, probably one of the Old Federation miner hulks that'd been retrofitted eighteen times. The ship was a tower ship, using constant 1G acceleration to simulate gravity, but it could convert to a ring ship that spun in place using centrifugal forces when it was docked to an asteroid. The lift that took her down to the bottom most deck of the ship said it had got seven decks. Looked like a Volov class miner. On the one hand, that meant she knew the basic construction. Very modular, each deck had four segments except for the top deck, which was just the bridge. On the other hand, the fact that it was nearly two centuries old and had undoubtedly been retrofitted again and again and again meant that she couldn't have any idea what those modules were now. Except for the bridge, anyway, safe bet that was still located at the top of the tower.

But why was she thinking about this? Escape? The lieutenant wasn't wrong. She was in fucking space. Escape to where? The corporal said the lieutenant would 'work with her' if she paid her dues. What did that mean?

The corporal was talking again. “The rules here are pretty simple. Number one, do as you're told. Second, no fighting, no gambling, no drugs. Do not get involved with gangs or other slave organizations in any capacity. Don't join them, don't participate in their courts, don't do them any favors, just leave them alone. And don't masturbate yourselves or each other. Your cunts belong to the commander, now, and by proxy the lieutenant, she'll let you know when you're allowed to touch. There's a schedule in your cell. Starting tomorrow you'll be following it. When the lights come on in the morning, get up and get moving. This whole place is wired with cameras and we can track your collars. We'll know if you're slacking off. Any questions?”

Cassie swallowed, finding her courage. “What exactly are we here for?” she asked, and then hastily appended “sir.”

“The ship mines out asteroids. Ore gets brought in through the lower deck, refined, and turned into finished parts by slave labor. Hydroponics keep us fed, there's janitor and laundry positions, some slaves get assigned to medical, maintenance, or administration once they start moving up to higher class. Don't worry about that right now,” the corporal said.

“You bought an AI hacker, a witch, a terrorist, and God knows what else to stamp ore into license plates?” Cassie asked.

“Mostly motor parts, actually,” the corporal said.

“Not what I meant, sir,” Cassie said.

“I don't work in administration, I don't know who bought you or what for. My job is just to get you in your cell and keep you in line,” the corporal said, stopping as they arrived at said cell. They'd walked past a dozen just like it. It was a semicircular cell with five slabs of steel jutting out from the wall, each one covered with a pair of blankets and a thin pillow resting on top. There was a sink and a toilet at the far end, a pipe running out from the back of both across the ceiling, a shower spigot coming down from it in the center of the room, and a grated drain underneath. “Don't get caught outside after lockdown,” he said. He turned to leave, but after two steps he turned back and said “you know, between you and me, the lieutenant mentioned we're operating on a skeleton crew right now? No one's ever been off duty from riot injuries longer than three weeks. I don't know where all the guards go.” He glances around. “You didn't hear that from me, though.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said. The corporal nodded his head towards her and then turned to leave. “Was anyone here not convicted in the past couple of days? Lily? Tanirt?” Cassie asked. Andraste ignored Cassie completely to go throw herself face first into one of the beds.

“Not me,” Tanirt said, sitting down on one of the beds and giving her cuffs a resigned tug. When exactly were they planning on letting her out of those?

“Me either,” Lily said.

“And you and Giovanna were possibly set up by the same guy,” Cassie said.

“Don't even talk to me about that shit,” Giovanna said, walking down the hall, “I'll deal with him when I get out, fuck, if they take me to another system and keep me in here forever I'll still find a way to get back at him. I'll find a way.”

“Bernard Cato has a good reputation,” Lily said, “he's halfway from criminal to revolutionary. It's weird that he'd be working with the authorities.”

“Maybe they had something on him,” Cassie said. She'd nearly sold her friends out to get a shorter sentence, she remembered with an internal wince.

Lily shook her head. “Wouldn't be the first time. That man's been to prison plenty. He's never snitched or anything before.”

“How'd he go to prison so often without getting sold?” Cassie asked. Did he have connections with the slave market? Maybe he cooperated more than people think and was just good at hiding it.

“No one wants to buy a slave who's really dangerous,” Lily said.

“Well someone just bought lots of slaves who're really dangerous,” Cassie said.

“Yeah, it's, uh...Really weird,” Lily said, “I'm...I'm an assassin. I was sure I'd never get bought by anyone. I am the worst person to ever have as a slave.”

“If you're the worst, I'm a close second,” Cassie said, “I'm a mesmer.”

Lily's eyes widened for a split second. “You can read minds?” she asked. To her credit, her tone was perfectly casual, but Cassie saw the look of shock cross her face for just half a second. There was something she was thinking that she didn't want Cassie to know about.

“I'm not that good at it. I can tell the difference between someone's thoughts, sleep, dreams, stuff like that, but I can't pick out individual thoughts,” Cassie said.

“Too bad. How long would it take you to learn?” Lily asked.

“I dunno, I was always focused on other things,” Cassie said, declining to mention that those other things were such hard bitten criminal pursuits as photography and ethical philosophy. “It only takes a couple of years to get good at it, though. And then I can read thoughts, or make people think what I want them to, or make them never think again, and for every slave on the market who can do that kind of thing there are literally a million who can't. It's not like it isn't on my record. So why buy me and you?”

Lily pulled her hands away from shielding her sex from prying eyes to rest her chin on one hand and that hand's elbow on the other hand. “Maybe he just gets off on the thrill?” she asked.

“I guess it's possible,” Cassie said, “but he hasn't even bothered to come and talk to us yet. Seems to me...I know this sounds weird, but it seems to me like he's trying to put together a team. Like, some kind of commando or superspy thing.”

“Sounds like a vid,” Lily said, “there are way easier ways to make that happen. For example, instead of using Bernard Cato as some kind of incredibly deep sleeper agent to set me up on a fake assassination contract, he could've just sent me a real assassination contract.”

“This way he has us under his thumb indefinitely,” Cassie said.

“Only if we're on the ship. You think he'll send us after those gangs? The lieutenant mentioned they were having problems with them,” Lily said.

“Possibly,” Cassie said “but I don't think his influence is limited to the ship. You haven't noticed our collars are plugged into our spines?”

“I noticed they were plugged into something,” Lily said, rubbing a hand over where the collar is buried in the nape of her neck.

“That's our nervous system. Deliver enough volts to that and we're dead, and that's easy to do from a distance. And that's assuming he isn't just going to neurohack us,” Cassie said.

“Neurohack?” Lily asked.

“Yeah. Have you never heard of it?” Lily shook her head. Cassie had been trying to avoid thinking about it herself, but she took a deep breath now. Just explain it like it's an interesting bit of trivia, she thought, don't imagine it actually happening. “The human brain can be rewritten just like a computer, a computer just needs a point of access. Like plugging a transceiver into the spine,” she tapped the back of her collar for effect. “The brain is way too complex to try and manipulate in real time using computer code, but he could adjust chemical levels and fire or selectively fry neurons to rewrite and eliminate personality traits or memories he doesn't like.”

“He can really do that?” Lily asked, tugging slightly at the collar.

“If it's a transceiver he plugged into us, yeah,” Cassie said. She wasn't actually sure 'transceiver' was the right word, she was no hacker, but she knew that this kind of thing could be done.

“I wanna be me,” Lily said.

“Me too,” Cassie said, “I guess...I mean, we don't know for sure that's what he's up to.” She looked down the empty corridor lined with cells from one end to another. “So...Can we just wander around?” Cassie asked.

“Giovanna seemed to think so,” Lily said.

“Let's look around,” Cassie said, “probably if they don't want us somewhere the door will be locked.”

Three of the four modules on the bottom deck were open. The first was the cell block Cassie and Lily were in, with about two dozen of those five bed cells. In this module were also two rooms that don't seem to be in use at all. One of them was split in half into two sub-rooms by a long wall with an empty frame where you might put a door. Next to the door was a long gap where you might put a window, but this window was much longer than it was tall. Cassie had no idea what this thing was for. There was no furniture in the room, no labels on anything.

The next module was a massive docking bay, the far walls dominated by heavy, sealed airlocks, each one over fifty feet across, big enough for a freighter shuttle to pass through. This wasn't the bay Cassie was brought onto the ship from, it was bigger, both in its total size and the size of the ships it could dock with. It was also totally deserted except for a lone guard standing watch over a small stack of crates, taking up maybe one percent of the massive bay's total capacity. Unlike most of the guards, he was carrying an assault rifle, and he watched Cassie and Lily from the moment they entered. Most of the bay was occupied by gigantic drill pods, some on treads, some hooked up to thrusters, and other earthmoving machinery. The door wouldn't let them out until they placed their hands behind their head for a scan, the scanner sweeping up and down before a tinny chime unlocked the door for them.

The last module they could reach was the workshop. This place was bustling with activity. Naked slaves operated hydraulic presses to stamp out the basic molds of various machine parts, while others carved the molds into specific parts, exactly wide enough and long enough to fit with their counterparts in whatever machine they'll ultimately be assembled into. Each of a dozen different assembly lines seemed to be working on different parts and Cassie couldn't make heads or tails of how they fit into one another, or if they fit into one another. A pair of guards patrolled along the shop floor with crops, occasionally whipping one of the slaves.

Cassie could see a girl in a blue jumpsuit, the first person she'd seen wearing anything but the armored support suits, tinkering with the machines on an assembly line that was otherwise deserted, and across the clamor and heat of the workshop Cassie could also see two more similarly dressed operating control terminals on some kind of refinery, liquid being stirred in vats and sloshed through pipes and sluices. It was difficult to tell from this distance, but it looked like the girls were collared.

Cassie walked up to one of the slaves in jumpsuits working on the refinery at the far end of the work floor. “Excuse me,” she said, raising her voice a little to be heard over the din of the workshop.

“What's up?” the girl asked, not looking away from the readout on her terminal, occasionally adjusting a dial.

“You have a collar, and that jumpsuit. How did...?” Cassie asked.

“If you don't know, you're not supposed to be thinking about it,” the girl said.

“Um, sorry,” Cassie said, and started groping around for something to say to make her open up.

“But, hey, maybe if you knew you'd think about it less,” she pulled a lever down and the vats stopped circling and the mystery fluid in them began to drain. “I could tell you. If you make it worth my while.”

“What do you want?” Cassie asked.

The jumpsuit slave glanced over her shoulder. “I want your tongue in my cunt,” she said.

The bluntness of the request stunned Cassie for a moment. “I take it that's not allowed for you anymore than me,” Cassie said, still not sure if she was making an excuse not to do it or just trying to figure out details. It wasn't like she didn't swing both ways, but this was uncomfortably close to prostitution.

“The mining bay has plenty of places to hide,” the jumpsuit slave said, “lunch is in a few minutes.”

The other jumpsuit slave spoke up now. “You're gonna skip lunch?”

“Nah, I'll take hers,” the first jumpsuit said with a quick gesture to Cassie, “gonna need that too, by the way. Bring it with you when you meet me in the bay. If you lick as good as your tits bounce, you can probably get half a meal off someone else anyway.”

“I'll do it,” Lily said, and Cassie breathed a sigh of relief.

The jumpsuit looked Lily over and shrugged. “Good enough for me. Lunch is in a couple of minutes, just wait between the equipment in the mining bay.”

“Where do they serve lunch?” Cassie asked. She didn't find any sort of cafeteria down here, “if we're first in line there should be plenty of time left for, uh...”

“They send it down in the elevator and give it out there,” the jumpsuit slave said. Give it out? And then you, what, wander off and eat it on your own? Cassie wasn't looking forward to finding out how lunch works around here, although having missed breakfast she wasn't really in a mood to be turning it down, either.

Cassie and Lily headed to the elevator and waited a few minutes until a buzzer sounded throughout the deck. Other slaves filed into line behind them. A half-dozen dragon-tattooed girls walked in front to take their spot at the front of the line while the elevator trundled downwards. An objection on autopilot got halfway out of Cassie's throat before she caught it and swallowed it back down. If this were a vid, making an enemy of the local gang would be visual shorthand for a clueless courtier way out of her depth.

The elevator arrived with a crate marked “SLAVE RATIONS - 5TH CLASS” in big block letters, a guard swinging his stun baton idly, and a pair of slaves in skirts barely covering their groin in front but dropping down to their knees in back, and dancer tops covered in jangling coins held up by straps looped behind the neck. The slaves opened up the crate and began handing out what appeared to be some kind of food bar. Like a candy bar or a power bar or...Something. Cassie examined hers while walking away from the line. Plain white wrapper, no label, no nutritional information.

Cassie opened it up. It was a mottled, reddish-brown, grainy bar of what she could only hope was all the nutrients she'd need to survive. She ripped it in half and asked Lily which half she wanted. The thing was tough as leather so Cassie's rip job ended up less halves and more two-thirds to one-third. Cassie was wondering if maybe she should've let Lily divide, but Lily took the smaller piece.

“Are you sure?” Cassie asked while walking towards the mining bay.

“Yeah,” Lily chirped.

“I mean, mine's bigger,” Cassie said.

“I guess,” Lily said.

Sure, the tear was jagged and slanted but even so she'd have to be blind not to see it. But pushing the point any further would just be rude. “Thanks,” Cassie said.

“No problem,” Lily said, and with a bit of a grin, “besides, I'm gonna get something extra to eat anyway.” Cassie blushed, and Lily giggled. “Oh my God, Cassie are you still a virgin or something?”

“No,” Cassie said, “I just...People in Toluca just aren't that open about this kind of thing, I guess.” Cassie wondered if it was a class difference, but she didn't want to admit she was brought up rich. Ish. Sucking on the teat of the rich, anyway.

The two poked around behind the mining equipment for a minute or two before finding the jumpsuit slave, sitting with her back against one massive tire of one of the ground bound mining machines. Lily handed her the food bar...Thing, and the jumpsuit slave smiled and pulled down the zipper of her jumpsuit, easing it down to expose an already damp slit. Silently, Lily bent over and pressed her face into the mechanic's sex, and Cassie could tell from the mechanic's expression that Lily knew her way around inside the pink hole. The mechanic's breath started growing heavier, her ample chest rising and falling while Lily licked, rubbing at her own pussy.

Cassie sighed, cupped her hand over Lily's, then threaded her fingers through Lily's to stroke at her pussy. Lily pulled her hand away to let Cassie attend to her, her own breath growing heavier while Cassie rubbed at her. The jumpsuit slave (she never even gave her name) was holding Lily by the hair, pressing her deeper inside of herself. Cassie swallowed down the awkwardness. She'd been with a woman before, and she was doing this as a favor for Lily, not herself. She began rubbing at Lily's clit, Lily let out a soft moan, and Cassie pulled her hand away, fearfully looking around. There was still that guard in here. He couldn't see them, but he still had ears.

After a few more moments of licking, Lily squeaked quietly in protest, and Cassie returned her hand to Lily's pussy, rubbing her gently. After a while Cassie cautiously caressed her clit and could hear Lily, just barely, draw in a sharp breath, smothering her moans of pleasure. The jumpsuit slave was covered in a thin sheen of sweat by now, hips bucking into Lily. Cassie slipped a trepidatious finger into Lily's slit, and she took it silently, so Cassie added another.

The jumpsuit slave began to cum. Her moans seemed to come through her nose more than anything else, and after a moment she pulled herself away from Lily. Cassie turned Lily onto her back, pressed her hand over Lily's mouth, and started pumping her fingers in and out of Lily at high speed. Lily's chest heaved and her own hips started to buck until, moments later, she came too, her moan muffled both by Cassie's hand and her own struggle to remain silent.

The mechanic pulled out an oil rag and mopped up the cum from the ground and herself, then handed it to Lily and Cassie to clean up. She gestured for the two of them to follow and left the mining bay, leading them back into the workshop, now deserted except for the two guards and silent except for their conversation. After arriving back at the refinery, the jumpsuit slave turned a few of the machines on. Fluids began to flow through pipes and the pumps that circulate them filled the air with enough noise to provide cover for conversation.

“Alright, here's how it works,” she said, “different jobs come with different uniforms, except the real shit end hard labor jobs down here in the workshop, which are naked. You might've heard or noticed that you're fifth class slaves. The hard labor is all that's available to fifth class, so if you want better jobs, better food, and something to wear, you have to get promoted up the classes. But the criteria for that are totally secret, they don't want people gaming the system or something. I'm fourth class, and I work in Maintenance. We do all the grunt work for Engineering. Agricultural and Mining are fourth-class jobs, too, and I know Administrative, Medical, and Engineering departments take slaves, too. Those girls who deliver the food on the elevators? They're Administrative.”

“So how do we get to be fourth class?” Cassie asked.

“They don't tell us for sure even after we're promoted, but from the pattern I've picked up, just be good, work hard, and don't get caught breaking any rules,” jumpsuit said.

“Any idea what gets you promoted from fourth to third?” Cassie asked.

“I think it's just more of the same, but only real guards' pets get promoted past fourth,” jumpsuit said, “and I think there might be more to it than just obedience, because some real bootlickers never get bumped up, and anyway if higher class was supposed to be a carrot you'd think they'd tell us.”

“What do you know about higher classes? Anything?” Cassie asked.

“I know Engineering is a second class post, and Administrative is probably at least that high, 'cause the Engineering department gets to make real decisions that affect the whole ship. I know the other departments are Medical, Communication, Navigation, Military, and Command. I don't know which classes get which jobs and I'm pretty positive that even first class slaves can't be Military or Command.”

“What kind of slaves show up around here? Any common denominators, any kinds of slaves you'd expect to see but never do?” Cassie asked.

Jumpsuit shrugged. “Most people don't like to talk about their past,” she said. “Not any men, but that's not weird. Monosex slave colonies don't have to deal with pregnancies.”

“Do you know if anyone's, I dunno, common? Pickpocket, drug dealer, the kind of person you'd expect to see on the slave market?” Cassie asked.

“I'm a dealer,” jumpsuit said, “half the gangers joined up outside, and if they had anything unusual under their belt we'd all never hear the end of it. Most of 'em don't brag, so can't be anything special.”

“You are a drug dealer? Presently?” Lily asked.

“Was,” jumpsuit said.

“You sure?” Lily asked.

“You didn't pay for that kind of information, newbie,” jumpsuit said.

The buzzer was sounding and the workers were filing back into the workshop. “Thanks for your help,” Cassie said.

“You ever find you need something from the Engineering Deck, ask one of the mechanics to send a message to Case,” jumpsuit said, pointing to herself with a thumb, “you lick good enough for small favors.”

“Thanks, I will,” Lily said with a smile. But as she and Cassie walked away, she whispered “only small favors? What's it take to get a big one, the tongue of Aphrodite?”

Cassie and Lily still hadn't eaten, so they returned to their cell for lunch. Tanirt had left and Giovanna hadn't come back, but Andraste was still lying facedown on the bed, unmoving. Seeing as how she could neither run nor adequately defend herself, Cassie didn't think she'd do much different in her position.

“Hey, there was lunch. Did you catch it?” Cassie asked.

“Fuck off, I'm sleeping,” Andraste said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“Okay, but you can have some of mine if you missed it,” Cassie said, “I'll just leave you a piece.”

Andraste turned to face Cassie, now. “Do you not get jet lag, freak?”

“Uh...I know that Sacrum and Toluca are in the same time zone,” Cassie said.

This was apparently not the answer Andraste was looking for, judging by how she'd leapt from her bed (with surprising grace, given her shackles) and directly towards Cassie.

Cassie spun out of the way and with no hands to catch herself, Andraste crashed face first on the floor. Cassie's mind bounced back and forth between running away and trying to pin Andraste with her knee for a half-second, and then Andraste began to pull herself upright and Cassie settled on the second. She was really just imitating what she'd seen on the vids (Majestic Thirteen was pretty cordial so far as arresting officers go), and she nearly lost her mooring as Andraste bucked underneath her, but then Lily placed a foot on Andraste's neck to keep her in place. “Stop it!” Lily said, “they've got cameras, you're going to get all of us in trouble!”

“Bring it the fuck on!” Andraste said, still wriggling under her.

“What the Hell is wrong with you?” Cassie asked, but sure enough a guard was already rushing into the cell, stun baton drawn. Cassie and Lily backed away from him, Lily raised her hands and Cassie followed suit. “I didn't start it,” Cassie said, “please don't hurt me, I wasn't trying to make trouble.”

Andraste got to her knees and snapped her teeth towards the guard. He smacked her across the face with his stun baton. She dropped to the ground, and the guard dragged her up by an arm, Andraste limp, her legs struggling to get her on her feet through the paralyzing pulse of electricity, blood dribbling from her nose. “You two wait here,” he said, pulling Andraste away, her feet dragging on the floor. Cassie winced in sympathetic pain for the burn that would cause on Andraste's bare skin, but it didn't take her long to figure out why leaving someone that crazy on their feet is a bad idea.

Cassie sat down on a bed. Lily sat down on another. “Are we going to be punished?” Lily asked.

“We shouldn't be,” Cassie said, “we didn't do anything, she just attacked me for no reason. Maniac!”

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes more, before the guard came back. “Come with me,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Lily said, glanced to Cassie, and then got up to follow him. Cassie hadn't noticed before now, but there were small rings spaced fairly evenly along the walls, about eighteen inches above head height. Producing a set of shackles, the guard gestured to Lily, who swallowed and stepped forward, offering her hands out for them. The guard cuffed one of her hands, threaded the shackles through the ring, and then cuffed the other, the chain short enough to hitch her hands above her head.

The guard pulled a tightly coiled bullwhip from his belt, and stepped in close to Lily. “Slaves will not fight on this ship, understood?” he said.

“Please, sir, I was trying to stop the fight,” Lily said.

“This isn't a trial, we don't want to hear you play lawyer, slave,” the guard said, “you will not fight with other slaves, understood?”

Lily closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“She really didn't do anything,” Cassie said, “she barely even touched Andraste. Please...” the guard had stepped back now, to put Lily's back in striking distance. “Punish me for both of us,” Cassie said, “please, sir, Lily wasn't in that fight, she was just next to it. I was the one actually in it. I'll take both punishments, no one can say you were lenient.”

“Cassie, you don't have to,” Lily said, but the guard only took a moment to think about it before unchaining her.

He tugged Cassie towards the hitch and she stepped forward so he could cuff her into it. “Slaves will not fight on this ship, understood?” he said again. Almost the same as before. It was a script.

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said, swallowed, and closed her eyes tight. The whip bit into her back a moment later, pain arced through her entire body. She couldn't feel any trickle across her skin, but she was sure she must be bleeding.

“Punished slaves count their blows,” the guard said.

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said. The whip cut into her again.

“One, sir,” she said.

“That's two, slave. This one's three,” the guard said.

The whip dug into Cassie's bare back again. “Three, sir,” she whimpered. And then “four” and “five,” and she was wondering just what she'd got herself into, how many were left, even starting to wonder if it was too late to back out and let Lily take half. It'd be cruel to give her false hope like that, but Cassie wasn't sure how much of this she could take.

But the guard was already undoing Cassie's shackles. She leaned one hand on the wall for support, her breath shaking slightly from pain, her knees weak. The guard grabbed her arm to keep her upright. Cassie clung to one of his armored plates. She had very mixed feelings about this man right now, but physically speaking he was stable. “You're an autodidactic chemist,” the guard said, “do you know how to use this?”

Cassie's stunned mind got a confused response halfway to her mouth when Lily said “yes, sir.” The guard handed Lily a tube of something, and Cassie wasn't sure what it was. She was mostly trying to get her focus to stop swimming. She said she'd get through this. And this was not going to be the last time she would be whipped. So she needed to get through it.

“Get her to her bed,” the guard said, leading Cassie from holding onto him to holding onto Lily. Lily's skin was soft and warm and she seemed about as stable, and Cassie felt a lot better about burying her face in Lily's shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” Lily said, and by now the strength had mostly returned to Cassie's knees. The impact was over, and even if the stinging was getting worse, it wasn't the sort of pain that made her weaker. Just one that ate at the edges of her mind constantly. How long was it going to be before that healed? Maybe Cassie could walk on her own (maybe), but she still appreciated Lily's arm threaded around her waist, underneath the raw whip marks that covered her shoulders and back.

When they reached the cell, Lily laid Cassie stomach down on one of the beds and began applying some kind of ointment to the marks. At first it stung horribly and Cassie moaned with pain, but then cold relief began to spread. By the time Lily was done, Cassie's back was a dull, thudding pain instead of a sharp sting.

Cassie was sobbing a little bit. Lily was stroking the side of her face gently now, following her hair down to the bottom of her cheek and then back up again. Cassie's mind cast around for someone to blame. Someone whose fault this injustice was. “That crazy bitch,” she said.  “I wanted to help her. Why would she do that? I hope they throw her out an airlock!” Every second that last sentence hung in the air felt more poisonous. “That's not true,” Cassie said. “I don't want her to die.” Truth be told, Cassie didn't even want her to suffer. What she wanted was for Andraste to apologize. Cassie was pretty sure she had better odds of being struck by lightning. In space.

“I understand,” Lily said, “and thank you, Cassie. I'll find a way to make this up to you.”

“You don't have to,” Cassie said, “you didn't deserve to be punished in the first place. Besides, you've been doing me favors all day.”

“Not like this I haven't,” Lily said, “I'll find a way to repay you, Cassie. I promise.”

“Thanks,” Cassie said, “thanks for being my friend, Lily.”

Lily smiled wide. “Sure thing. Oh, and we still haven't had lunch,” she reached over to grab the larger piece of the meal bar. Cassie had dropped it when she dodged Andraste's tackle, but fortunately it wound up on the bed. Lily's smaller piece wound up on the floor, and for half a moment Cassie considered protesting her taking that portion again, but she couldn't find the strength to push the thoughts out her mouth. Cassie could now confidently say that she'd earned this two-thirds of a nutrient bar that hadn't fallen on the riot-blackened floor. Luncheon of champions. She ripped off a bit of the thick, leathery stuff. It sure felt like it was packed absurdly dense with something, but it tasted like that something was cardboard and sadness. She was going to give this place a scathing Yelp review when she got out.

Tanirt wandered back in soon afterwards.

“Where've you been?” Cassie asked Tanirt.

“Walking,” Tanirt said.

“Find anything interesting?” Cassie asked.

“No,” Tanirt said.

This must be what it's like to have a teenager.

When Giovanna came back, hours later, she was a bit more talkative. “What've you been up to?” Cassie asked.

“Making friends and influencing people,” Giovanna said.

“Learn anything useful?” Cassie asked.

“Maybe I have,” Giovanna said.

“Me and Lily certainly did,” Cassie said, “we should compare notes.”

“I'm guessing if you learned it, I probably picked up on it, too,” Giovanna said.

Cassie turned over in her head a couple of times the conundrum of how to demonstrate the value of the information she knew without revealing it. “Look,” she said, “we're both trying to learn more about this place. Instead of trying to put a price tag on goods we can't describe without giving away, how about we just agree to share information? We're cellmates, we may as well get along.”

“A deal without an expiration date is never worth it,” Giovanna said.

“How about just today, then,” Cassie said, “can we at least agree to swap the information we learned today without trying to haggle over mystery boxes?”

Giovanna considered for a few seconds. “Yeah, alright,” she said, “so the screws up here try to maintain control by controlling access to the basic animal needs, food, comfort, and sex, right? That means food, drugs, and sex are the commodities of the black market. The market's run by the Marked, a gang who have these crazy spike tattoos all over their faces. They run most of the ag and med decks, so they have access to the fresh food supply and the drugs. And they've found some way to get through the maintenance shafts without letting the system know, so they can go anywhere they like on the whole damn ship so long as they stay out of sight.”

“The slaves on the ship are divided up by class,” Cassie said, “different classes qualify for different jobs and different standards of living. How you advance from one class to another is a huge secret, for some reason. People seem pretty certain that getting to fourth class is just a matter of being cooperative, but past that it's anyone's guess. People get promoted up to third and above sometimes, but no one really knows how. Even really obedient slaves stay stuck at fourth class, other times they're promoted. I think there's some kind of second criteria, but I don't know what it is.” Cassie wondered if all slave ships were this mysterious.

“Makes sense,” Giovanna said, “there's a cell block on the staff deck, but no one I've talked to has heard of anyone who's actually been kept there. Those top decks are hard to sneak around 'cause you're not allowed to even be on those decks, so the Marked haven't been able to get a good look, but they said from what they can tell when dodging cameras, the cell block up there looks like a ghost town. A really nice ghost town.”

“Maybe there's no slaves who meet the criteria,” Cassie said. “So, you do AI, right? Cyber stuff? And you've probably noticed that these collars go inside our bodies at exactly the right position to plug into our spines? Do you think these things might be neurohackers?”

“Yeah, thought of that,” Giovanna said, “asked around. If the riots are anything to go by, they aren't doing a bang up job of rewriting personality traits. And I've spoken with people who've been here a couple of years, their memories don't sound very helpful for whatever asshole runs this place. Plus, if they were neurohacking you'd expect someone to drop dead from a missing close-paren in exactly the wrong place often enough for there to be stories, and there aren't.”

“Well, that's a comfort,” Cassie said, fingering the spot where the collar drove into her neck. “Seems to me like that leaves two main explanations, killswitch or just making sure the tracker can't ever come off.”

“Trackers can be built into a nanite injection. And if that's too much hassle, then a surgically attached collar probably would be too. It's a real weird budget that allows for spinal surgery but draws the line at buying nanites,” Giovanna said.

“Have you heard of anyone actually getting fried by the killswitch?” Cassie asked. “I mean, there's been full-on riots lately, ones that apparently threatened the ship.”

“Not enough, 'cause no one got fried during them,” Giovanna said, “or if they did, no one noticed it was the collar that killed them. Weren't a whole lot of fatalities in the riots to begin with, and most of the slaves that did get killed were vented into space. Official story is that they breached an exterior wall with some improvised explosives, rumor is the screws opened up the airlock to thin out the numbers.” Giovanna shrugs. “Maybe the killswitch is a last resort thing, fry us all if they're ever forced to jettison the command deck. We are worth like two hundred thousand each.”

The guards dragged Andraste back into the cell just before lockdown. She'd missed dinner. Cassie wasn't sure if they'd fed her. Even if she hadn't ravenously wolfed down her dinner bar, which seemed a lot more palatable than the lunch bar and still left her hungry (though perhaps not quite hungry enough to tear into another one of those things), she sure as Hell wouldn't be offering hers to Andraste again.

Cassie also wasn't sure exactly what condition her back was in, since the toilet and sink didn't come with a mirror. Lily told her that there were definitely some welts but it looked okay. Andraste did not look okay. There were welts, and some of them had been sliced open. Other injuries looked more like her skin was ripped open. Cassie's fears about bleeding were, it turned out, ultimately an overreaction. Her skin never broke, although Lily told her it looked quite painfully red. Andraste's skin had definitely been broken, though all the injuries were quite shallow. The drying blood mixed with the latticework of red cut into her back. Her front didn't look much better, with a few red stripes across her stomach and her breasts completely covered in tortured red skin. She could barely stand, and she winced and sucked in a sharp breath when she lay down on her bed to sleep.

Come morning, they were officially on the clock. Light flooded into the cell at wakeup, and she pulled herself out of bed, wincing with pain as she twisted her back in just the wrong way to agitate the healing whip marks. The shower turned on, Giovanna grabbed the shampoo from the sink and began washing herself, Cassie pulled herself to the sink and began brushing her teeth, wondering how she was gonna play the day's work. Try to impress the leadership and hope for speedy promotion? Quiet rebellion by way of intentional sloppy work? Would she even have enough spare energy and focus to commit to a strategy? She didn't know exactly what job on which assembly line they would give her, but none of them looked easy.

After shuffling through breakfast, she was led to a machine that made chains by one of the other slaves. Cassie guessed they probably tried to avoid importing anything besides slaves, given the remote location. Her specific job was on something called a breakdown mill. The mill was a pair of vaguely-drill shaped spinning wheels, each curve of the drill from left to right slightly larger than the last. In the negative space between where the curves met wasl a gap that grew smaller from left to right. Cassie would feed an iron rod through, another slave on the opposite end fed it through the next gap over, then Cassie returned it, until it had reached the proper size for whatever specific type of chain they were making. While the rod was on the other slave's side, Cassie would step to the next mill over, grab the rod from the slave who'd fed it through, and immediately feed it back, so that when the other slave was working the rod, she was at the next mill over, working another one.

Cassie traded off every ten minutes or so between producing a rod that's about a millimeter thick to one that's a bit smaller, using the farthest ends of the breakdown mill. Since the other slave had to wait for Cassie to grab her end before they let go, and Cassie had to wait for them to grab hers, she knew how much faster or slower she was going compared to the other slaves (the two who worked on the same mills as Cassie, anyway). This also meant, since a slave waiting on Cassie wasn't working, an issue that will propagate down the line and slow down the entire production, the entire assembly line was constantly being patrolled by one of the two guards, regularly lashing out with their riding crop to maintain pace.

Cassie was pretty sure the guard would save more time if she just sat directly behind Cassie and whipped her all the time. Because every time there was ever a slowdown, it was always Cassie's fault. She wasn't even trying to slow things down, she hadn't made any decisions one way or another and was defaulting to just trying to match pace with everyone else, but it wasn't working. Every few minutes the guard checked the quota, noticed that the line was even further behind than they were a few minutes ago, and walked down the line, whipping everyone who wasn't holding a rod, waiting on another slave to hurry up and grab their end. Cassie was never waiting, never resting, and when the guard came down the line it was always her ass that turned bright red from the next blow. She took it quietly at first, as she was pretty sure it was unwise to show weakness, but after a while she began to yelp and moan with pain.

Finally, the lunch buzzer sounded, and exhausted from the work and the whipping both, she began shuffling with the rest towards the exit. But the guard stopped her and a handful of others on the way out. “Back to work, cunts,” she says, “you've been holding up the line and you're going to make up time now.”

For about a second and a half, protests swam around in Cassie's head, but she swallowed them before they got to her lips. She'd seen the guard's reaction to Lily's protests against her whipping yesterday, and he seemed like he was trying to be nice. “Yes, ma'am,” Cassie said, and walked back to her place on the line. There were huge gaps, now, so with a few swats from her crop the guard rearranged the slaves. Cassie had already learned to tell the difference between the 'you fucked up' and the 'you need to do what I say right now' blows. The former stung across her exposed skin and usually drew a yelp of pain out of her. The latter were flat and thuddy against her skin, the pain from them faded within a few seconds, and she jumped a little, but more from fear of the whip than real pain.

Once the slaves were properly arranged Cassie began feeding the rods again. Now the guard had a smaller section to patrol, and it was made up of all the slowest slaves. Even among them, Cassie was the slowest at first. It's not fair, she thought, it's not fair that she was taken from an academic life to one of labor. She was trying her best, it just so happened that her best was a little bit worse than everyone else's average.

But the more the crop bit into her ass and looped around her chest to hit the sides of her breasts the more she started to keep up with the others. And the more she kept up with the others, the more the hurt was spread around the rest of the crew. And something in Cassie, that rational academic part of her brain that looks for things that make sense even if they're uncomfortable, decided that maybe she hadn't been doing her best. Like, the whipping didn't magically lend more strength to her muscles. So clearly she had more to give and she just couldn't give it without an incentive.

This is why poor people aren't academics, Cassie concluded as she packed the academic part of her brain away for now and reasserted to herself that this is not fair. She wasn't entirely sure why it wasn't fair, but it definitely wasn't. By the end of the lunch break, when the rest of the slaves came filing in, they were back on quota, but just barely.

The line formed again. No one had a particular assigned place, and the guard kept the slower slaves next to each other so she could keep an eye on them. This meant that Cassie wasn't in direct competition with the slaves who just ate and rested, but she still needed to match pace with the quota. The guard's whip remained a constant companion, even when the slave on the other side wasn't waiting on Cassie and they were on schedule for the quota. But the guard was spreading it around more now, whipping at the other slaves as much as Cassie. Sometimes Cassie even got a few moments of rest when one of the other slaves fell behind her.

It wasn't quite dinner when Cassie hit the quota, the new rods stopped coming, and a mechanic came by to wind the machine down. The next machine down the line kept humming, bending the molded bars into links of the chain, fully automated work that no human could ever hope to do. The guard went down the line and gave the first few slaves, including Cassie, a few guiding swats, pointing them towards a work table where they began screwing a thing into another thing, over and over again, the table filled with two kinds of parts, one type that screwed into another. Cassie had no idea what this was actually for, but she didn't care. Her muscles felt like soup, and while the table had no seats for her aching feet, she wasn't sure her ass would handle the seats very well anyway. There didn't seem to be any quota to meet here, and there wasn't even a guard watching over them.

For the first time today, Cassie could get a proper look at the other slaves working. She could see Lily among them, but not Giovanna, and several slaves that Cassie didn't recognize, two of them with serpentine tattoos snaking up their bare arms. If the whip marks are anything to go by, most of the slaves were from the group who missed lunch and bore the brunt of the guard's attentions that morning.

“Does anyone know what these things actually do?” Cassie asked.

One of the nearby slaves, a dark-haired wiry one, shrugged. “Looks like some kind of socket, maybe?”

“I think the clamp looking piece is just used for distance, they drill the screw in, then take the clamp off so there's an air gap,” another slave, this one a short-ish blonde, offered.

“Drill the screw into what?” the wiry slave asked.

Now the blonde slave shrugged. “I dunno, some machine or something.”

“All I care about is, it's easy,” another slave said, this one tall and skinny like a beanpole, and half-whispering as though a guard might overhear and reassign them to something harder.

“So, I'm Cassie, by the way,” Cassie said, “I'm, uh,” it suddenly occurred to her that saying 'I'm new' would be a very bad idea, “I just got to this station yesterday.”

“I'm Jackie,” the wiry slave said, extending a hand across the table to give Cassie's a quick shake before returning to her work, and throwing a quick glance over her shoulder for guards. She didn't seem like she'd received nearly as much attention from the whip as the others, her mid-size breasts mostly unblemished, though she hadn't escaped the occasional red streak.

“How long have you been here?” Cassie asked.

“Couple of months,” Jackie said.

A few other slaves introduced themselves – Geneva, Joan, Leona – and Cassie tried to keep track of them all. Was forgetting someone's name a faux pas on a slave ship the way it was on the surface? Would it get you shivved? Cassie didn't want to find out. Leona, the skinny slave, reached out to shake Cassie's hand when she introduced herself. Her breasts seemed to have taken more punishment than most of the others. Cassie wondered if there was a connection.

“I'm Lily,” Cassie's friend said, as badly whipped as Cassie was, “I came in with Cassie.”

Cassie looked to the blonde slave expectantly. “Are we supposed to be introducing ourselves? Is this kindergarten?” she asked.

“That'd be Kelly,” the wiry slave Jackie said, “don't mind her, she's always having a bad day.”

“We're all always having a bad day, I'm just the only one who 'fesses up to it,” Kelly said. Jackie just gestured to Kelly as if to say 'there you go: Always having a bad day.'

“Have all of you been down on this deck the whole time?” Cassie asked.

They all nodded, and the buzzer for dinner sounded soon after, the workshop emptying out towards the elevator. Cassie and the other slaves who'd been working the table ended up next to one another, about two dozen slaves back, but even from here Cassie could see the elevator grind down. A pair of naked workshop slaves pushed a crate into the elevator and the admin slaves opened it up along with the food crate. Cassie's curiosity as to what was going on didn't last long. Before receiving dinner, each slave was fitted with a waist chain with attached cuffs and a pair of ankle shackles. It was the same set they'd put Andraste in, except that at least they weren't actually cuffing everyone's hands in. The cuffs just dangled from the chain behind. So that's why they were making chains today.

“What's up with this?” Cassie asked while the guards put the slaves ahead into their chains.

“No idea,” Jackie said, “it's never happened before.”

“Joan?” Cassie asked. She'd been here longest, but she just shrugged.

There didn't seem to be any exceptions. As Cassie got closer to the front of the line, the crowd ahead grew thin enough that she could see even the admin slaves were in chains. And they were supposed to be at least third class. “Maybe it's because of the riots,” Cassie said.

Whatever the reason for the chains, the guard had a set waiting for Cassie when she reached the front of the line. “Turn around,” the guard said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Cassie said, already responding mostly on autopilot to the commands. She locked the waist chain around Cassie, then cuffed her loosely in the ankle shackles, before tugging on Cassie's shoulder to turn her back around so the admin slave could hand her dinner.

When Cassie got back to her cell, she found Tanirt's hands were still cuffed behind her back. Cassie wasn't sure why, or how long that was going to last, but it meant that she couldn't feed herself, or at least not easily. Lily took Tanirt's dinner bar from her cuffed hands, opened it up, and fed it to her a bite at a time. Tanirt's expression was...Not one of pure joy. “They sent you to the shop today?” Cassie asked Giovanna.

“Yeah, stamping out grates, probably to replace the ones that got ripped up in the riot,” Giovanna said, ripping off a chunk of her own dinner, and running the sink into a cupped hand for something to wash it down with.

“You learn anything else helpful today?” Cassie asked.

“Did you?” Giovanna asked.

“No,” Cassie was forced to admit. Lying to Giovanna would come back to bite her in a hurry.

“Then come talk to me when you have something to trade,” Giovanna said. It occurred to Cassie that she could offer her body, and to a somewhat darker portion of her that she could offer her Lily's body and Lily would probably be okay with it. There wasn't going to be any opportunity for that until tomorrow, though. Lockdown was any minute and it was easy for the cameras to see everything going on in the cell. Cassie could talk to Lily about it later and maybe arrange something at lunch, if Giovanna even cared. She'd only been here for two days, she probably wasn't desperate for sex already, and Cassie didn't even know if Giovanna liked girls. Maybe they could trade sex for food and then food to Giovanna for information?

God, Cassie had to find some way to get her hands on something tradeable other than sex. She could grapple with the idea of trading sex for favors now and again, but she didn't want to be a full time whore. And she didn't want to rely on Lily doing something she wouldn't.

A guard came by in the last few minutes of the dinner half-hour, lashing out a crop at Lily's breasts, who had the misfortune of being the closest to him when he arrived, and shouted “on your knees!” The four of them (Cassie didn't know and honestly didn't care where Andraste had got to) complied, kneeling on the ground, and the guard went around one by one, bending their heads forward until they were pressed to the ground, cuffing their hands behind their back, and then tugging them up until they were kneeling upright again. Once he'd finished and left, the cell door slid down from the ceiling, bars sealing them in for the night. So this was apparently a part of lockdown now.

It was lockdown, but it wasn't lightsout for another hour. Still, Cassie's bed had never called to her more than it did now. Even with the harsh glare of the lights above and the cuffs on her wrists and ankles, she was asleep almost instantly.

The light only half woke Cassie up. She struggled to pierce the veil of slumber, but it was useless. After a few minutes of trying to find the will to pull herself off of her bed, she sank back into it, admitting defeat. Lily tried to shake her awake. “Cassie, come on, you're gonna get in trouble,” she said. Cassie knew she was right. She had to get out of bed. Cassie moaned noncommittally. “Cassie, I'm not leaving without you, so get up!”

Cassie knew what Lily was doing, and it was working. She could shove the thought of her own punishment out of her mind, convince herself that it'd be worth it to just have a few more minutes. But the thought of getting her friend punished was not so easily squelched. Cassie got to her feet. “My hands,” she said, noticing they'd been uncuffed, “when did they...?”

“A guard came by when the cell door opened, you slept right through it,” Lily said, tugging Cassie by the arm out of the cell, “come on.” They hadn't removed the waist chain or the shackles on Cassie's legs, so she couldn't run. The cell was deserted except for Cassie and Lily, but Cassie could see the crowd of slaves at the end of the hall towards the workshop and there were a few other stragglers.

“Thanks for waking me,” Cassie said.

“Don't mention it,” Lily said.

The two of them were the last into the workshop, but only by about five seconds. They still both got a crop on the ass for their trouble, but it was closer to the guidance swat than punishment. “Don't drag your feet,” the guard said, and both of them chirped “yes, sir.”

Today, Cassie was cleaning pipes. Pipes caked with some kind of viscous ooze of industry. The first and ooziest layer was easily cleaned off with a quick swipe of the rag, but to actually properly clean the thing Cassie had to scrub it down hard. At first she thought it'd be an easy job, and at the very least it'd certainly be quieter, the din of the presses, mills, and other machinery a solid fifty feet distant, but just like the breakdown mill, she could soon tell that this would wear her down over time. And her muscles were still stiff and sore from yesterday. Cassie committed to working as hard as she could, getting a strong lead on the quota, and trying to work past it before lunch to give herself more breathing room. The faster she got promoted up to fourth class, the faster she could get some work that more suited her prior experience. Or at least was less completely unrelated to her prior experience. “Ghost whisperer” and “photographer” were probably not available jobs at any class.

Her plan worked great. For about thirty minutes. Then her limbs start to get tired, like, really tired, less stiff and more noodle-y. Her early and encouraging lead on the quota only lasted her through about half the morning, and by the time lunch was drawing near she'd begun to fall behind. The guard was mostly patrolling the assembly lines, but when he did come by, once every thirty or forty minutes, Cassie was invariably the target of his wrath. “Faster, cunt!” he'd say, whipping at her breasts, her ass unavailable as she knelt on the workshop floor. “Yes, sir!” Cassie whimpered back, but it was an empty promise in the end.

Just like the day before, Cassie took the punishment silently at first, but within a few hours her will was exhausted and she began to yelp and moan when she was whipped. By the time lunch rolled around, she was covered in grime, her breasts stung with every stray breeze of the circulating air, and she had fallen behind the quota.

It was Sunday, which meant she had three hours of free time to meet quota if she couldn't do it during the main shift, which meant she wasn't necessarily required to skip lunch even if she was behind. And she slept through breakfast, so there was no way she was missing lunch. She'd been operating on about two meals a day as it was. Instead, she waited in line for her meal bar and started heading back towards the workshop as soon as she got it, barely chewing each piece before swallowing. She was about halfway through it when she got back, wrapped it back up as best she could, and stuck it in her waist chain. She'd have time to finish it later.

Half of lunch only re-energized her so much. It was still only half of lunch, she was exhausted from the previous days' work, and...Well, never mind the third reason. She just wasn't doing very good work was the bottom line, and an extra ten minutes wasn't enough to fix it. She was going to have to work through at least part of the free shift. She sped up again whenever the guard came by and gave her breasts another thrashing. It was the same every time. “You're falling behind, bitch! Faster!” Thwap! “Yes, sir!” And for a few minutes, she would.

Finally, towards the end of the abbreviated shift, the guard began hovering over her exclusively. Most of the others had already met quota. And now the truth that she'd been avoiding earlier was unavoidable. She'd had only half of lunch, she was exhausted, and for the most part, she was free from the whip. Or at least, she had been before. And now that it was back, she was digging into energy reserves she didn't know she had. She was still way slower than when she was well-rested, but much faster than when she didn't have the whip to urge her on.

It was partly the stinging and partly the realization that it's not going to be enough and she was going to miss at least part of her weekly three hours of spare time, but a large part of the reason why she was sobbing by the end was because of the realization that the whip was what made her work harder. That they were beating her because it worked, even if only to squeeze the last bit of effort from her once the exhaustion set in. The exhaustion set in after like two hours, there was plenty of time when squeezing was efficient.

The guard came over when the buzzer sounded for the end of the shift. “Keep working, slut,” he said, “keep on until you've finished the pile.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said, miserably.

If Cassie could finish her work in one hour, she'd have two hours left before dinner. All the official functions would have closed their doors except the church service, but she'd be able to explore more or poke around for the black market or other things just so long as she could get this over with quickly.

Cassie took a deep breath and tried to pace herself this time. She had about a dozen pipes left in the pile. If she could go at a rate of one pipe every five minutes, she should get through it in an hour. Just go slow and get it done. It occurred to her, as the guard posted himself nearby, that she would work faster under his attentions.

But she was not going to be a slave. Okay, she was literally, legally going to be a slave. That's...Just kind of something she had to deal with. And it's not like she was going to start a riot or anything. The guards didn't seem that bad and she didn't know what to think about the shadowy commander who presumably made all the rules they were enforcing, but she definitely didn't want to hurt anyone. Okay, maybe see someone get whipped a little, see how they like it, but not, like, permanently. But that didn't mean she was okay with being a slave. She wasn't, and she wasn't going to be okay with it. She was going to quietly condemn the entire institution of slavery while doing exactly what it told her to. Because she was a rebel.

Cassie's slow and steady pace worked. She'd got about two hours left on the clock when she finished and went to the guard. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “I finished my pile. May I go?”

He looked at her stack, examined a few pipes at random. “Good girl,” he said, “get going.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cassie said, and scurried out of the room as fast as her manacled feet could carry her.

She found Lily in their cell, chatting idly with Tanirt. Well, Lily was chatting, Tanirt was just kind of there. “Like, really. You are toned. I can't understand why they wouldn't put you to work first chance they get. You can probably bench like three hundred or something, right?”

“Something like,” Tanirt said.

“I mean, I know it's gotta be boring having nothing to do all day and not having your hands is probably not even worth the rest. Like, I don't wanna sound like I think you have it cushy or anything. But man, they don't call it slave labor for nothing. They push us hard in that workshop. I wouldn't mind being in cuffs all day instead, just for one day, you know?”

“Not really,” Tanirt said.

“Maybe it's just a 'grass is always greener' thing,” Lily said, “I really don't wanna sound like you're having a party or anything. I'm not being a jerk am I? Should I shut up?”

“Doesn't matter,” Tanirt said.

Cassie had to admire Lily's persistence. She'd gotten Tanirt up to two word responses. And Cassie was glad someone was talking to Tanirt, because even if she was a terrible conversationalist everyone on the ship needed a friend. Evidently Lily was determined to be that friend.

Hopefully Tanirt had enough conversation for one day, though, because Cassie only had two hours and she needed to start by discussing options with Lily. “Hey, Lily, can I talk to you?” Cassie asked.

“Sure thing!” Lily said, bouncing up from the bed.

Cassie started walking towards the mining bay, mostly because the only other place to walk was the workshop. Her muscles ached just thinking about that place, and from the walking, but the alternative was to talk with Tanirt right there. Or, Cassie supposed, stop in someone else's cell, but it would be kind of awkward if they walked in on them.

“Okay. So, uh...” Somehow this was even more awkward than Cassie pictured. “Look, we're a team, right?”

“Yes,” Lily said, clearly worried.

“What I mean is, we need to talk about options. And we need to do it frankly and like adults,” Cassie said.

“Okay, so this is a sex thing,” Lily said, relieved.

“What? No. I mean, yes, but, what makes you so sure?” Cassie asked.

“I've seen you get whipped, starved, and assaulted by a maniac, and so far the only thing that rattles you like this is sex,” Lily said.

“Right. Well, okay, yes. But...I wanna make sure you know in advance that I'm not saying you owe this to me, and, uh, that sounds like I'm asking you to have sex with me, but I'm not. Not that you aren't pretty, but we just have more important things to worry about,” Cassie said. The sex thing is part of why she was stumbling over this, sure, but she also really badly didn't want to turn around and do to someone else what'd been done to her. She didn't want to coerce someone into doing something they didn't want to. And Lily was super easy to coerce. Cassie tried to pool information and Lily immediately latched onto her and started taking bullets like they were sisters.

“Cassie, it's okay. Just say it,” Lily said, but Cassie hesitated, partly out of ongoing awkwardness but also because she was now passing beneath the watchful eyes of the sensors at the mining bay doors and she didn't know if those had microphones.

Once a good twenty feet past the doors, Cassie took a deep breath and said “okay, you know how we learned about the slave classes and jobs and stuff? We can get a lot done by doing more of that. It's about the only resource we have, except for food, but we can only trade so much of that.”

“Please don't,” Lily said, “you pass up enough meals already. I'm worried.” The way Cassie's stomach went between a distracting pinch and a gnawing hunger certainly agreed.

“Okay, yes. You're right,” Cassie said, “don't worry, Lily, I'm just getting used to this place, I'm not skipping them on purpose or anything. We shouldn't trade food. Or not very often at all. I agree. And that leaves...”

“Fucking,” Lily said.

“Yes. That. Fucking,” Cassie said.

“I don't know about Toluca, but in Tungsten people are pretty okay with having that option available. We get nervous when they threaten to outlaw it,” Lily said, "'whore' is not a dream job but it's not that bad. I'm game for it.”

“I just...I don't know if I am,” Cassie said.

“Ah, so you want to pimp me out is where this is going,” Lily said.

“Not like that,” Cassie said. Lily sat down and tugged Cassie's arm downward for her to follow suit. She did so, looking around to see whether anyone was coming. Coast seemed clear. “It wouldn't be right for me to ask you to do anything I wouldn't,” Cassie said. Lily had leaned forward now and the question was only half-formed in Cassie's mouth when Lily licked up the length of Cassie's slit, her tongue flickering across Cassie's clit briefly. Cassie sucked in a deep breath. Lily licked again, and then she pressed her tongue between Cassie's folds. “Lily, what...Why are you...?”

“You want me to stop?” she asked.

“I...No, but-" she immediately returned her tongue to Cassie's sex, her nimble tongue dancing inside Cassie's tight pink hole, the rest of Cassie's protest was swallowed by the quickening of her breath. Lily placed one hand on Cassie's hip for balance, the other toying with Cassie's clit while she licked. Cassie curled her shackled legs around her as best she could, pulling Lily closer. Something in Cassie wondered if she should, another part wondered back why she should stop her, and that is as far as her thoughts could get with Lily's tongue working inside her, so she forgot about it. Forgot about everything except Lily's tongue licking inside her.

As Cassie's body began to tense up, one of Lily's hands traveled up her naked skin, briefly caressed one of her bared breasts, and then she shoved her fingers into Cassie's mouth, muffling her moan of pleasure as she came. Cassie's chest rattled coming down as Lily licked up the mess.

Cassie's thoughts swam slowly back into place as she lay back on the ground. Lily got up to check on the guard. Sound carried easy in a place as open as the mining bay, but it was pretty big and the guard was across the room. He hadn't heard anything, or at least, not enough to bother investigating. Cassie glanced at Lily, placed a hand on her thigh, and began guiding it gently up towards her sex. Soft and slow. “Let me do you,” Cassie said.

Lily stopped her. Her hand sitting atop Cassie's, stopping her from getting any nearer. “Was it good?” Lily asked.

“Yes,” Cassie said.

“Then I'm happy,” Lily said, “that's all I need.”

“Okay, but let me do you,” Cassie said.

“Cassie, I don't want this to be a trade,” Lily said. “I'm not Giovanna and I don't want to be Giovanna. I want to be someone who makes you happy. That makes me happy. Knowing that your day was easier because of me. And if you're always bean counting favors and tripping over yourself to repay them, I can't have that. If you need a whore, I'm your whore. And if you're not comfortable joining me, then don't worry about it. I know you want me to be happy, too, and I don't care if you aren't doing exactly as much for me as I am for you.”

Cassie pulled her hand away, and tried to find words to tell Lily how much she wanted to thank her. But instead she just wrapped her arms around Lily's neck and pressed Lily tight against herself. “Thank you so much,” she whispered into Lily's ear.

“You're welcome, Cassie,” Lily whispered back.

A few minutes later, while walking back, Cassie told her “listen, don't take this the wrong way, I get what you said back in the mining bay. But I want to help.”

“Just so long as you know you don't have to,” Lily said, “and promise me you aren't going to count up who's done more.”

“I promise,” Cassie said, “you'll probably do more than me,” Cassie really didn't like saying it, but it was true and Lily wanted it to be true, so there was no reason she should be so reluctant. “I just have to do it once. Now and again. To know what it's like. I don't wanna be someone who lets other people do something for me that I wouldn't do myself.”

“I get it,” Lily said, “I really wish you'd just relax, though.”

“Sorry,” Cassie said, “I guess I'm a worrier.”

The two of them found Giovanna in the workshop, finishing up a class. They walked with her on the way out and waited for the other slaves in the class to disperse. “So what's up?” Giovanna asked.

“We have a proposal for you,” Cassie said.

"'We.' Why are you two so joined at the hip?” Giovanna asked.

“How much are you willing to pay for that information?” Cassie asked.

Giovanna rolled her eyes. “Just give me this proposal of yours.”

Cassie decided against making a quip about how much she was willing to pay for the proposal. “Lily and I have had a bit of success getting information for sex. It's a marketable skill. We just can't bring it to market.” Well, except to Case, but she only offered them stuff from one deck, and reading between the lines probably only stuff that happened to be easy for her, personally, to get her hands on. They needed a general market. “You know where the market is, or who it is, or whatever. Tell us where, and the first job's for whoever you want. You or anyone you want something from.”

“You're both offering yourselves?” she asks.

“Yes,” Cassie said, “one client, but she can have...She can have either or both of us.” She was still stumbling a bit, but it was easier to talk about it in this kind of detached way. Like it's just a resource she had to give away. It still wasn't how she wanted to think of her sex, but it was easier.

“Just once. But once you know where the black market is, you know forever,” Giovanna said.

“One job for one piece of information,” Cassie said.

“I don't see why I have to bargain with you,” Giovanna said, “I can find other things to trade on the market. You can't find another market.”

“What are you asking for?” Cassie asked.

“A permanent deal,” Giovanna said.

“No,” Cassie said, without even thinking. Her thoughts were a bit more conflicted, but really, she just couldn't. Prostitution was uncomfortable enough, doing it from under someone's thumb would crush her. “You said something about indefinite deals once, right? Not doing that.”

“Three jobs, then. You service three clients for me and then I'll give you the information,” Giovanna said.

Cassie looked to Lily. Lily shrugged. “Alright, fine,” Cassie said. Giovanna extended a hand to shake and Cassie took it.

Only a few minutes later the guard appeared, and Cassie knelt for him while he cuffed her. She still didn't know why they had started doing that. One more mystery to solve. As she lay on her bed, struggling to get comfortable with the chains and the whip marks, she tried to think. She needed a strategy. Some kind of plan to work towards. And much as her head was filled with visions of becoming a cunning black marketeer, overflowing with illicit goods in clever stashes and head stuffed with valuable information, the fact was that insofar as she was a criminal at all, she was a white collar criminal who had no idea how to network or haggle with the real thing and only ever made transactions with and for occult texts and artifacts that couldn't possibly have standard prices. She had no idea how regular markets worked, and she'd be competing with very dangerous people with a lot more skill than her. With a sigh, she resigned herself to trying to impress the overseers and advance in class while drawing as little attention as possible from the guards or the other slaves.

She got cycled through a couple of different jobs over the next week. Using tongs to pull a molten hot template out of a furnace, place it in a press, stamp it into a half-formed tool head, turn it over with the tongs into a different press, stamp it into a fully formed tool head, and then drop it in water. Once she got over her fear of the fire (they gave her gloves while working with the furnace, but no other protective clothing), she did well. Another day she was working a press that stamped molten metal into grates for the floor, pulling the heavy press upwards and then bringing it down on the molten steel. She did less well here, as the press was heavy enough to exhaust her arms by lunch. For most of the days, though, she was making parts for some machine she couldn't identify at all. She guessed they were probably parts either for the ship or for sale, but once she finished stamping them out, they were placed into a crate and wheeled out into some other part of the ship. She never saw them again.

The weight of the presses, the materials fed into mills, all of them wore her arms down, and then her legs would get sore from standing and holding up the heavy weights all day. Some jobs, like the furnace where they made the tools and falling behind ruined the end product which could earn a severe whipping at the quality check at the end of the day, had very little guard oversight, and she walked out of the workshop at the end of the day with only a few whip marks. With the assembly lines that Cassie usually worked on, it depended on luck as much as anything. If there happened to be a guard patrolling that assembly line in particular, she usually wound up whipped by the crop every time they passed by her after the first few hours when her strength began to fail. If the assembly line was under patrolled, then much like the furnace, she was hardly touched.

Unfortunately, she seemed to end up on high priority assembly lines a lot. Although she still often lagged ten to twenty minutes into a lunch break that was only half an hour long to begin with when she wasn't under direct supervision, she'd really rather grab her meal just as they were packing up to go back, wolf it down, maybe have to stick the last half in her waist chain for later (and possibly drop it on the workshop floor and lose it, since God knows she couldn't interrupt her work to pick it up and it'd be filthy by the time the shift was done, even if the chained feet of a dozen slaves working the line hasn't shuffled it to some dark corner where she'd never find it), rather than suffer under the whip. It wasn't the sting that hurt so much as the humiliation of knowing that it worked. Each day she was determined not to draw the guards' attention, and her muscles began to harden up. By the end of the week, she was at least getting whipped less.

She also managed to avoid anything but the crop, as opposed to the cane and bullwhip used to punish direct disobedience or chronic failure. Once every two or three days, one of the girls wasn't quite so lucky. Lily was the victim the first time Cassie saw it happen. Pulled out of the line at the end of the day, she was hitched up to a whipping post in the middle of the workshop floor. The hitch had a set of special manacles attached to a pulley that could be pulled back so that the slave attached was always standing on her tiptoes when the whipping starts. After hitching up Lily, Lt. Mira shouted out “slaves, what was today's quota?”

“Four sheets, ma'am,” they all replied. They'd been shaping sheets of metal to attach to a pair of some kind of atmospheric wing. Cassie didn't know what for, but probably transcontinental transit. Or, hey, maybe an ICBM, you never know.

“And how many sheets did you shape today, slave?” Mira asked Lily.

“Three and a half, ma'am,” Lily said.

Mira spat on Lily's face. “Don't hedge on me, cunt. Do you think our buyers are going to put a half-shaped sheet of metal on their aircraft?”

“No ma'am,” Lily said.

“So how many sheets did you shape today?”

“Three, ma'am,” Lily said.

“And how many yesterday?” she asked.

“Two, ma'am,” Lily said.

“But you still produced two wings a day, didn't you?” Mira asked, turning back to the gathered slaves.

“Yes, ma'am,” they all said in unison. Even if it took Cassie, personally, her entire lunch break to stay on quota the first day. Lily had worked through lunch that day, too. Lily hadn't told Cassie she was still behind. Maybe Cassie could've given her an extra sheet or something? But there's no way she could've switched a sheet from her own line to Lily's without anyone noticing. And besides, she could barely make four. Even skipping lunch she wouldn't have made it to five.

“You work together,” Mira said, pointing out to the gathered slaves, “and when one of you slacks off, someone else has to pick up that slack.” Mira uncoiled her bullwhip and snapped it an inch away from the soles of Lily's feet, and she yelped in fear. “And what do they get? They don't get to leave early, not when there's still work to do.” Mira turned back to Lily, though still speaking loud enough for the gathered slaves to hear. “You are not going to shove your work onto other slaves. You are going to keep quota. Understood, bitch?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Lily said.

Mira cracked the whip across Lily's back, and she yelped now from pain instead of fear. Cassie winced and remembered the whip across her own skin her first day. “One, ma'am,” Lily said. The whip cracked across Lily again. It left bright, angry red marks behind immediately, without the slow pinking-to-red of the skin that the crop brought. “Two, ma'am,” Lily said. Cassie wasn't sure if it would be better to turn away and not be part of the spectacle Mira was making of this or to be there for Lily in spirit, but she couldn't pull her eyes away regardless. Another lash cracked across Lily's back, and she whimpered out “three, ma'am.” She was struggling to stay on balance on her tiptoes, and the fourth lash made her legs shake and nearly buckle. “Four, ma'am!” she shouted through the pain, clutching the chains on her wrists for support. Another lash fell across her back. “Five, ma'am!” she said. Mira cracked the whip in the air near Lily's head one more time, and Lily yelped and said “six, ma'am!”

“Just five, slut,” Mira said, stepping closer to undo Lily's manacles, “and if you don't improve your performance it's going to be ten next time.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Lily said, leaning against the post for support after her wrists were freed from the shackles.

“Dismissed,” Mira said, and the slaves all shuffled off towards dinner. They'd already had a few minutes shaved off by the display and they weren't eager to wait any longer.

Cassie went to Lily as fast as her shackled feet could manage. “Are you okay?” she asked, helping her to her feet.

“I'm fine,” Lily said, and then winced as her back twisted in just the wrong way to agitate the whip marks, “I mean, I will be. You were whipped just as bad last week and you're all healed, right? It's not that bad.”

“How does that salve work? The one you used on me? We still have most of the tube in our cell,” Cassie said, helping Lily walk out of the workshop and towards the dinner line.

“Yeah, it's...It's not that hard, I'll tell you how when we get there. Let's get dinner first,” Lily said.

After returning to their cell from dinner, Lily showed Cassie how to apply the salve. Apparently you had to avoid using it anywhere where the skin is broken but you wanted to get it on as much of the agitated skin as possible. Breaking skin open tends to agitate it, so Cassie very carefully applied the salve to Lily's back. It took Cassie longer than it took Lily, but Lily said that from what she could feel, Cassie did it right.

It was only a few minutes later when a crowd of a half-dozen or so of those slaves with serpentine tattoos snaking up their arms gathered at the entrance to their cell. No one else was inside but Cassie, Lily, and Tanirt, Tanirt still in her cuffs. Giovanna was off doing something mysterious, and Andraste was...Cassie hadn't seen her in days. She didn't really care that much, but she made a mental note to investigate that once she pared down the list of mysteries.

In any case, the tattooed slaves seemed like a more immediate problem, even if all they'd done so far was glower in large numbers. “What do you want?” Cassie asked.

“Stay out of this, newbie,” one of the tattooed slaves, a pale blonde, said, grabbing Cassie and shoving her aside. It took her by surprise and she fell to the ground on shackled legs, but immediately got up again. Tanirt bolted up and towered over everyone else, but Cassie wasn't sure what she could possibly plan on doing with shackled feet and cuffed hands. Headbutt? The tattooed slaves had encircled Lily, who'd gotten to her feet, staring down the tattooed slaves. “The boss has been wondering who's been cutting our lunch breaks down the past couple of days,” one of them said.

“Wait,” Cassie said, stepping in between Lily and the other girls, “this isn't going to help.”

“Shut up,” the blonde tattooed slave said, trying to shove Cassie aside.

But she was ready for it this time, and swung one foot while keeping the other planted, so that she didn't shift position much. “You think she's gonna work harder with a broken leg? Or if you take her out of the line completely, you think they're gonna drop the quota because we've got one less slave?”

“I told you to stay out of this, newbie,” the blonde slave said, placing a hand on Cassie's collar bone and pushing her against a wall.

“I'll make sure she keeps on quota, alright?” Cassie said, “I can get her working full speed again, broken bones aren't going to do that.”

The blonde slave glared at Cassie, the others apparently waiting on her to make a move. Cassie guessed she was probably in charge here. “You'd better keep that promise, newbie,” she said, and then punched Cassie hard in the gut, “or next time we're gonna grind you up.”

By now a pair of guards had arrived, stun batons drawn. “Get out of the cell!” one of them demanded. Cassie, Lily, and the tattoos started to leave, Cassie keeping her distance from the others, but the guard stopped Cassie and Lily on their way out, pushing them back to the cell. “Stay here,” he commanded.

It was right around lockdown anyway. Giovanna walked up behind the guards while they were still putting all the tattoos into their cuffs. “Take a detour, slave,” the guard said

“That's my cell,” Giovanna gestured, “where'm I supposed to sleep?”

“Get inside,” the guard said, and Giovanna walked in. A few minutes later, Cassie could hear the crack of a whip and the muted grunts of pain from the blonde slave while bars came down, locking her in for the night.

“Thanks,” Lily said.

“Don't mention it,” Cassie said.

“What was that?” Giovanna asked.

“What're you willing to pay for that information?” Cassie asked.

“That joke's gettin' old,” Giovanna said.

“Just now? I thought it was old the first time I heard it,” Cassie said.

“You gonna tell me or not?” Giovanna asked.

“Some slaves with tattoos were angry at Lily for holding up the work, I talked them down long enough for the guards to come and get rid of them,” Cassie said.

“You mean the Dragons? Those punks are making threats to you?” Giovanna said.

“Yeah, I guess? There were a lot of them,” Cassie said.

“That's still pretty bad,” Giovanna said, “that problem's gonna need fixing.”

“For a price?” Cassie asked.

“For as long as you two still owe me whore jobs,” Giovanna said, “broken kneecaps make it hard to lick.”

“I don't want to be involved in this. Your power plays, I mean, the sex deal is still on,” Cassie said.

“Hey, I didn't offer you shit. I just said the problem needs fixing. If a solution happens along, great. You aren't involved in that. I'm not even involved in that, yeah?” Giovanna said.

“Okay,” Cassie said, “thanks.”

“For what?” Giovanna said. Cassie shrugged. Eventually a guard came by and they all lined up to put their hands through the bars so he could cuff them to their waist chains, and lightsoff was soon after.

The end of the week was approaching. Giovanna said she wanted Cassie and Lily on standby in the last hour of the free period to hold up their end of their bargain with her. She had no particular clients lined up but thought she might by the end of the day. That last hour was after the workshop classes let out anyway. That left the first two hours of the free period, when the classes and religious services ran, free for Cassie and Lily to do what they liked.

Cassie and Lily walked through the deserted workshop, doing their best to look like they were inconspicuously wandering to avoid the suspicions of the guard. Lily was jumpy, looking over her shoulder, hugging herself tight. Cassie had tried asking her what was wrong a couple of times and she'd been pretty adamant that everything was fine and okay and nothing was wrong at all. Cassie wondered if this place might be getting to her. If that was the case, maybe breaking into some place they weren't supposed to be would cheer her up.

Lily had grabbed an unused pair of tongs on the way in. The door wouldn't let them leave with contraband, but it'd let Lily fiddle with its control panel with contraband, so long as Cassie was pacing in front of it to keep the motion sensor camera distracted while Lily's comparatively small motions went ignored. Lily got the panel open, then used the rough end of the open panel to slowly saw the wires apart and rewire them. “Got it!” she whispered as the panel lit up green, and then the massive door ground open loud enough to be heard across the entire workshop. “Oh, right,” Lily added, looking over her shoulder.

Cassie spun around away from the module, looking behind her to try and see what was inside. Tall, vague shapes loomed in the shadows, but before Cassie could pick out any details, the guard came sprinting their way. Cassie's legs tensed to try and run and hide, but she abandoned the plan before she even started moving. She'd been occupying the camera's attention for several minutes. Making this harder on the guards would only get them hurt worse when they were inevitably caught. Lily seemed to have come to a similar conclusion, or else she just didn't want to leave Cassie. The guard rounded the corner with his pistol drawn and pointed at the two of them. Cassie put her hands up and said “no, don't shoot!”

“Stay there!” the guard shouted.

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said, thinking please, God, don't let me die here, I'll take the punishment just please don't let him shoot me.

He holstered his pistol as he drew near and pulled Cassie's and Lily's hands behind their backs, cuffing them to their waist chains. With his stun baton, he tapped their asses to get them moving. As soon as the electric club drew near Cassie's skin, an arc shot out to zap her unprotected ass, and she moaned and began walking. “I'm sorry, Cassie,” Lily whispered as they walked.

Then she yelped as the stun baton was drawn near one of her breasts, zapping her nipple. “Shut up, slut,” the guard said.

“Yes, sir,” Lily said.

And this was how Cassie learned that the whipping post could have a slave hitched to it from either end. The guard stood behind Lily. Her previous whipping had only just healed. Cassie stood on tiptoe, wrists pulled high above her by her shackles, feet already aching from the strain.

“Do I even have to bother explaining to you what you've done wrong?” the guard asked.

“No, sir,” Lily said. The next instant the whip cracked. “One, sir!” she shouted, barely swallowing a moan. Cassie winced with each blow as Lily gasped and moaned out the count. Three...Four...Five...Six. Willful disobedience like this carried a higher price than just being sloppy. Seven...Eight...Nine. Lily had gone past sobbing and was crying by now. “Ten, sir!” she whimpered, and the guard moved away from her to stand behind Cassie.

Cassie screwed her eyes shut and waited for it to begin. The whip stung across her back. “One, sir!” she shouted. She was never going to get used to this much pain. She wriggled naked in her binds as it lashed across her again. “Two, sir!” She could barely make it to five before she was desperate for it to stop last time, but she'd toughened up since then. As the lashes wore on, she tensed and writhed beneath them, but she could go further than before. “Five, sir!” she said, and then another crack drew the first sob from her as she whimpered out “six, sir!” She'd get through this.

The whip cracked again, “seven, sir,” and she fought down thoughts about how she'd only been here one week out of twelve years, and that's if they didn't take her out of the system and neglect to inform the local authorities when she was due for release. She focused on nothing else but the count and how much closer she was to the end while the whip continued to dig into her. “Nine, sir!” Almost there. One more splash of pain playing through her vulnerable body. “Ten, sir!”

The guard unchained the both of them. “Unless you want more, you'll tell me what you were doing trying to get in there and you won't try to bullshit me.”

“We were just exploring,” Cassie said, “I know that sounds like a stupid lie, but please, sir, it's true. We know there's places where slaves meet out of sight and none of the others will tell us where it is, so we were trying to find it.” The guard brought the haft of the whip up to push Cassie's chin up until her eyes were looking directly into his. Just feeling the whip, even unmoving, against her skin made her shaking knees nearly give way beneath her. “Please, sir, don't hurt me, it's the truth,” Cassie said.

“From now on, you're to report to manufacturing classes when you have free time,” the guard said, coiling up his whip at his belt and pulling out a palm tablet. He pointed it at first Cassie's, and then Lily's collars and this, Cassie assumed, did something. “Any guard who catches you out of classes will know to punish you.”

“Yes, sir,” the two said, and the guard walked off.

It was too late to go to any classes now, so they went back to their cell. Tanirt was still there, but it was otherwise empty. Lily was still kind of jumpy. Cassie could see her hands shaking a bit, remembered how she wasn't supposed to get the salve in any place the skin had broken, and told Lily she'd do her back first. Once Cassie finished salving Lily's back, she told Lily that she was fine, she didn't need the salve, better to conserve it.

“It's 'cause I'm shaking, isn't it?” Lily said. “I can't...Keep it steady anymore,” she continued, holding a hand in front of her. It steadied for a second, but then started jittering again.

“Lily, what's wrong?” Cassie asked.

“Nothing!” Lily shouted, standing up from the bed, “there is nothing wrong with me, stop asking!”

Cassie shrank back from the sudden outburst. She'd learned not to flinch from this kind of thing in general, but this was her friend. “I'm sorry, Lily, I'm just worried. I didn't mean to pry.”

“Cassie...” Lily said, remembering herself. “Don't be sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled.”

Cassie got up and wrapped her arms around Lily's waist, hugging her tight without touching the wounds on her back. She crumpled a little into Cassie's shoulder. “I don't know what I'm gonna do, Cassie,” she says.

“Remember what you said to me, about how you wanted to make me happy?” Cassie said. Lily nodded her head into Cassie's shoulder. “I wanna make you happy too, Lily. If you ever need help, please tell me. I'll be here for you.” Lily sobbed and nodded again.

Cassie held her like that for a while, until finally Lily tugged herself a few inches away, still standing just a few inches from Cassie, Cassie's arms still around her waist. “Cassie, I...I'm...”

“Whatever it is, Lily, I won't be angry or judge you for it,” Cassie said.

"...I'm an addict,” Lily said, “drugs. And it's fucking me up and I've tried to kick it before but it's never worked and...” Lily took a deep breath and steadied herself. “If I could just have a few months not to worry about anything but breaking the habit I could make it,” Lily said, “but in here, I just...I can't. I need a hit, Cassie. It's the only way I'll ever get through this.”

“I'm here for you,” Cassie said, but it was just kind of a placeholder while she tried to figure out what to do. Was encouraging Lily's addiction a good idea, given the circumstances? Was this a good thing for her, ultimately?

“They've gotta have drugs on the black market. But if Giovanna knows I need them she can hold that over me forever,” Lily whispered, “I don't know if I can make it 'till we've fucked three people, Cassie. How long's it going to take for her to set up that many deals? I'm already dying!”

“Lily, you can't let anyone know you're an addict,” Cassie said, “they'll use it to control you.”

“I know,” Lily moaned.

“This is the best chance you'll get to kick the habit,” Cassie said.

“Cassie, no,” Lily said.

“It's gonna hurt a lot, but they won't let you die, we're worth too much for them,” Cassie said.

“No, shut up!” Lily said, and shoved Cassie away. She struggled to keep her balance on shackled feet.

“Lily, I'm trying to help,” Cassie said.

“You're quoting fucking Dominion crime propaganda!” Lily shouted, “you don't have a goddamn clue how this works!”

“Then explain it to me,” Cassie said.

“I need it,” Lily said, “I can't quit like this, it's too hard, I need a few months to just deal with it and nothing else.”

“Lily, that's an excuse and you know it,” Cassie said.

“No it isn't,” Lily spat the words at Cassie, and the depth and nuance of her counterargument spoke to how well she'd thought this through.

“You want to break the habit,” Cassie said, “and they're going to break the habit, Lily. They're going to hurt you because that's all they ever do here, they hurt us until they get what they want from us,” Cassie's face contorted with a growing pain that she'd been quietly ignoring, a hate brought to the surface by the bald-faced acknowledgment of what they did to people, to her and to Lily, “but at least this time you'll get something from it.” Her face straightened, she'd buried her poisonous feelings again.

“No, I can't, I just can't,” Lily said, “are you my friend or not, Cassie?”

“Of course I am,” Cassie said, “don't say that, Lily.”

“Then help me! Just help me get through this and I'll quit when I get out,” Lily said.

“Lily, I'm not helping you by enabling you,” Cassie said, deciding to ignore the 'we're probably never getting out' issue.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Lily said, “you really, completely don't. Everything you say about this is pulled from a commercial.”

“We've been through this circle before, Lily,” Cassie said, “you don't have any kind of plan or reason to want another hit, you just want it. I'm not gonna pretend I know what you're going through because I don't, but I damn well understand the science. You need to get the drugs out of your system and it really doesn't make a difference to your biology how painful the process is. I wish I could give you an ideal detox but I can't.”

“Fuck you,” Lily said, and did her best job of storming out of the cell in her shackles.

“Lily, we're not allowed to wander anymore, remember? Just come back where it's safe, we don't have to talk!” Cassie called after her, but Lily ignored her. Cassie got that she didn't want to be with her right now, but Cassie would rather occupy opposite ends of the cell and ignore each other than see Lily get whipped twice in one day. Cassie briefly considered following her, but following her to do what? Follow this argument around a couple more times? Get whipped with her? The guards were extremely sparse, so hopefully Lily would be lucky enough to avoid a run-in with one of them.

Giovanna came in a few minutes after Lily left. “Where's Lily?” she asked.

“She ran into some trouble with the guards. They let me go but I haven't seen her. I'll hold up the deal alone today,” Cassie said.

“Good thing the client I lined up isn't picky. Go to the empty room in the cellblock, the one that's divided in half for whatever reason. The back room's camera has a huge blind spot near the window in the divider wall, the front room's camera is pointed straight at it but if you stay below the wall it can't see you. Just walk in and sit down, camera doesn't need to know if you change positions after that,” Giovanna said.

Cassie followed her instructions. A pair of the tattoo slaves – Dragons, apparently – were waiting there. They watched Cassie from the moment she entered until she sat down beneath the camera in the backroom, then they ignored her.

Cassie sat there, fidgeting intermittently, until one of the Dragons walked past her and sat down about a dozen feet down the window. She looked over to Cassie and said “over here, whore.” Cassie crawled over, keeping out of sight of the front room camera, took in a deep breath for resolve, and then bent over and began licking at the Dragon's slit. The Dragon didn't change position, evidently enjoying having the wall to rest against, and Cassie couldn't get directly in front of her without her legs showing up very obviously intertwined with the Dragon's through the window, so she twisted her neck, playing with the Dragon's clit while her tongue dipped inside the Dragon's folds, licking at her hole. The Dragon sucked in a sharp breath, her chest rising and falling, one hand gripping Cassie's hair tight and keeping her in place. Cassie wriggled a bit beneath the rough grip, but didn't let up. “That's it, slut, keep going...Keep going...” the Dragon said, and Cassie moaned softly and went on licking while the Dragon's spare hand moved to Cassie's tits, roughly groping them and giving her nipple the occasional twist, which elicited a soft moan of pain from her.

Finally, the Dragon came. Cassie wasn't really sure if licking up the mess was part of the agreement, but she didn't want to antagonize the Dragons, so she licked the Dragon's pussy clean. The Dragon stood up and stretched, pointing to the bit of cum left on the ground. “Clean the floor, too, whore,” she said, and with a grimace Cassie leaned over and licked it clean before crawling back to where she sat down originally to stand up again and walk out.

When Cassie arrived back at her cell, she asked Giovanna “was that part of your solution?”

“What solution?” Giovanna asked. Cassie sighed. It didn't really matter. If they were leaving her alone, they were leaving her alone, and she was one down, two to go. And then Giovanna would give up the secret of the black market. To Cassie and also to Lily. Her drug addicted friend who's desperate for a hit.

Lily came back just before lockdown sporting a fresh set of whip marks on her back, sobbing. She ignored Cassie and lay facedown on her bed, burying her face in the pillow. Cassie grabbed the tube of salve, already about a third of the way empty, and silently and carefully applied it to her wounds. Her sobbing eased a bit underneath her touch. The guard came by a few moments later, and the four of them knelt, Lily reluctantly dragging herself from the darkness of her pillow, and the guard cuffed each of their hands to their waist chains. Except for Tanirt who was, still, in them already, though for whatever reason she was required to kneel with the rest of them while the guard cuffed them. Andraste had been missing a week. What were they doing to her?

By now Cassie had gotten used to waking up with lightson and the guard coming by to unlock her cuffs. She was washing herself while the shower was still on, head bent forward so that the shampoo in her hair, cheap stuff full of unidentifiable grit, didn't flow down and agitate the healing whip marks on her back. Lily was standing awkwardly in front of her. “How's your back?” Cassie asked between strands of her wet hair.

“Better,” Lily said. “Cassie...I...”

“It's okay, Lily,” Cassie said, “I get it. You don't have to say it out loud.”

“I haven't changed my mind,” Lily said, “I just don't want to fight about it. Can we still be friends?”

“Of course,” Cassie said.

“I'm sorry, Cassie. I...I have to say it out loud. I'm sorry,” Lily said.

“It's alright,” Cassie said. Which was mostly true, because she wasn't going to hold Lily's addiction against her. But it was not true in that Lily was still addicted to drugs, and Cassie was not okay with that.

Cassie wasn't sure if her muscles were getting tougher or if she'd just gotten used to the permanently tired feeling she had. She began to let the analytical portion of her brain back out again, now that the facts were a bit more comfortable. Maybe the reason the whip pulled so much extra effort out of her early on was just because she never knew what her limits actually were before? She was still whipped, of course, but it didn't happen so often anymore, and only with the crop.

When the lunch elevator arrived that day, the admin slaves didn't open up the crate immediately, and they'd arrived with no less than four guards. There was a second crate with them containing dozens of sets of manacles. Were they stepping up the restraints again? Had there been a riot on the upper decks?

The guards took each of the slaves from the line and chained their wrists to the whipping rings, and attached their ankle chains to rings lining the edge of the floor. Cassie was silent as the guards chained her wrists and ankles to the corridor, and fidgeted in the chains as they went on down the line, chaining up everyone. Her arms were beginning to get sore from the strain, on top of the sort of perpetual soreness they suffered from her labor, when the guards started coming back up the line, tugging the chains to make sure they're tight. When they got back to the elevator, they finished by chaining up the two admin slaves to the last pair of rings in the corridor, then strapped down the crates. Something in their suits hummed to life and Cassie heard one of them call in “all secure.”

Cassie felt a rising lightness in her stomach, like moving in an elevator. She nearly giggled as her body grew lighter and finally came off the ground entirely. Somewhere down the line one of the other slaves actually did giggle, and that nearly set Cassie off, but she swallowed it for fear of showing weakness. The hallway began to shift, tugging her along by her chains, the guards rooted into place by magnetic boots. With a thunderous noise, the ship locked itself into some new configuration which seemed, to Cassie, mostly the same as the old one, but she was familiar enough with the Volov class to know what was happening. It was locking itself into ring mode, to maintain gravity while docked to an asteroid. And once the ring started spinning, she slid back down to the ground. Held in place by her chains, she only had a few inches to fall.

After the gravity returned to normal, the guards unlocked their boots, and then went down the corridor, unlocking all the slaves from their chains, starting with the admin slaves, who unstrapped the crate from the ground and began handing out food.

Cassie took her meal bar to her cell to eat like normal. All three of her cellmates, sans the perpetually absent Andraste, were there. Lily was opening up Tanirt's meal bar to apologetically feed it to her, but Tanirt flinched away and manically tugged at her shackles and cuffs, moaning with frustration. Lily backed away from her as she thrashed. After a few seconds, Tanirt finally stopped, halfway curling into a ball on her bed, eyes squeezed shut. Cassie suspected she was trying not to cry.

“Are you okay?” Cassie asked.

“No!” Tanirt said, giving her cuffs another tug, “I just...It's nothing. I'm fine.” She pulled herself back to sit up, taking in a deep breath.

Cassie glanced towards Giovanna, who was watching with what barely qualified as interest. Turning back to Tanirt, Cassie crossed the cell to sit on the bed next to her and whisper “are you sure? If you need to talk, I swear I won't tell a soul what you tell me. No matter what it is.” Tanirt looked to Cassie, opened her mouth to say something, closed it, looked away, looked back to Cassie. “Not the guards, not even Lily,” Cassie said, “if it's a secret, I'll keep it. I'm a witch. I'm good at keeping secrets.”

“Why won't they let me out?” Tanirt asked quietly, “what did they buy me for if they don't want me to work?”

“I don't know,” Cassie said, “I can try to find out.”

“How?” Tanirt asked.

“The guards know,” Cassie said, and then thought about it. The first time she was whipped, the guard knew Lily was a chemist. When she and Lily were caught sneaking into the locked module, the guard put out some kind of bulletin. The guards knew, and they knew because the information was stored on a network and delivered, probably to their helmets. Maybe Cassie could convince a guard to tell her what the network had on Tanirt. Failing that, Giovanna could hack into that network if Cassie could find something she wanted badly enough to justify the risk. “I can at least try.”

It took Tanirt about five seconds solid to figure out what to say next. “Thanks,” she said, finally. “Can...Can you tell Lily I...Like it when she talks to me. It helps, a little. And, that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to freak out on her.” Cassie glanced across the cell. Lily was still there, watching the two. She might have even overheard already. But Cassie guessed it was easier for Tanirt to relay the message to someone she was already talking to than start a conversation.

“I'll tell her,” Cassie said.

She got up from the bed, walked to Lily, and whispered the information to her. Lily nodded. “I heard,” she whispered back, “I hope they let her out soon.”

At the end of lunch, Cassie and Lily headed back towards the workshop with the other slaves. The workshop was adjacent to their cellblock, now, whereas before they'd had to walk through the mining bay to reach it. Cassie made a mental note to check if they could still reach the mining bay, and also to absolutely not open any more locked doors, since the mining bay's airlocks could be open to the void now. In retrospect they should've thought about that when opening the sealed door with Lily the other day.

Lt. Mira picked Cassie out of the crowd at the entrance to the workshop. “Come with me, cunt,” she said, grabbing her by the shoulder.

“Yes, ma'am,” Cassie said. Once Mira had pulled Cassie from the line, she cuffed her hands to her chain. Cassie's first assumption was that she was going to be punished, but she wasn't sure why. Did they find out about her illicit sex? But Mira was leading Cassie out of the workshop and down the cellblock, not to the whipping post.

Question and objections swam through Cassie's head, but she kept quiet as Mira tugged her inside the elevator and it started to life, moving up the side of the ring. She watched the floor indicator blink upwards until it reached the third highest deck. The doors slid open. This part of the ship was much nicer. The floors weren't pristine, but they suffered only from scuff marks upon their otherwise white and rounded surfaces, rather than harsh grates that were torn and blackened. The lights didn't flicker or spark and none of them were torn from their berths, still awaiting replacement.

Everyone here also had clothes, mostly what looked like officers' uniforms and lots of the armored support suits, but usually with the helmet popped off. Occasionally Cassie saw an admin slave and once she even saw what looked like a mechanical slave, but for the most part the halls were occupied by guards and other staff. Cassie's shame over her naked body was renewed now that she was alone in her exposure. The others' eyes slid right over her, but she shrank back and tried to make herself as small as possible while Mira dragged her along the corridor by her arm.

This module was centered on a large meeting room, surrounded on all sides by windows that faced out into a corridor. The corridor that encircled the room was a hub, with couches in front of large screens where staff watched television or played games, and corridors branching off in all directions with those on duty walking through, alone or in groups, on their way from one section of the office to another. Mira took Cassie inside the office, which was dominated by a large, circular table surrounded by tall, dark chairs, and a few low-backed couches at the edges. Mira uncuffed Cassie's hands just long enough to chain them to a ring over her head, just back and to the left of one of the large, leather chairs surrounding the table. When Mira closed the door behind her, the sound was cut out entirely. Cassie could see the people outside, and they could see her, but she could hear nothing.

Cassie closed her eyes and tried to pretend she wasn't here, not where two dozen people could see her, tried to forget what she'd just seen. All those people, watching shows like she used to. Playing games like she used to. If she weren't chained to the ceiling she thought she might run out and demand they all stop, stop doing it just while Cassie was here, stop reminding her of everything she'd lost. It wasn't so bad when she didn't think about how her life used to be. With her eyes squeezed shut, she could imagine she was still on the bottom deck, that the entire world was the bottom deck and her entire life had been on the bottom deck. Down there where there were just a dozen or so guards who stood watch and a hundred naked slaves. Where even if it was hard, at least everyone was treated the same. All she had to do was ignore the soft, dark blue carpet under her feet and it was almost like she was back down there, where it wasn't so bad.

Cassie could hear the door open again, and the bustle was audible for just a second before it was cut off. She didn't open her eyes. She wasn't sure who'd come in, but she hoped that whoever it was, they just wanted to talk to her, or show her off, or something else that didn't require her to open her eyes and see all those people again.

“I've shut the blinds,” a deep voice said, “you can open your eyes now, Cassie.” Cassie opened one eye a crack. The windows were blackened, the table lit from above, the edges of the room now covered in shadows. The owner of the voice was a man who would tower over Tanirt the way she towered over Cassie, wearing an officer's uniform and carrying a lockbox about the size of a briefcase, slanted in front. The same sort they used to lock up Cassie's clothes, possibly the exact same one. The man walked over to Cassie and released her from her cuffs. She rubbed her wrists and looked at the floor.

“I am Commander Enlil,” the man said, placing the lockbox on the table and taking a seat, “this is my ship.”

“It's nice to meet you, sir,” Cassie said. She didn't know what else to say.

“No it isn't,” Enlil said, “you're angry and upset. Get it out of your system.”

Cassie's mind swam for a few moments. Should she speak? Should she pretend she wasn't angry, or even hateful? Was this some sort of test, and if so, how was she supposed to pass it? But after a few moments of opening and closing her mouth without saying anything, mind racing, her thoughts were drowned by the rising tide of her emotions. “I didn't do anything wrong,” she said. “I should be back home. I should be watching television and playing games and going to class and living a life. No one ever got hurt because of me!”

Cassie took a step towards an empty chair and gripped the leather. Everything she'd tried to ignore was coming up like vomit. “The food here is barely edible and if I work myself to the bone every day all I get is less whippings. Less, not even none. And every time I stick a toe out of line you rip my back apart with the big whip and the guards treat me like dirt and it's never going to end, for what? So you can line your pockets? Because you can't be fucked to pay the startup capital to convert to full automation? Because the red tape for a Bradbury to run it all is thicker than for the slave market? You make me and hundreds of others suffer for years because automating is a fucking inconvenience?”

She shoved the chair away. “Why don't you and your guards take a whipping and see what it feels like? Why don't you try a few days of slave labor? I hope someday you get worked to death in a grime-covered pit wondering if today's gonna be the day some psycho tries to rip your head off and how badly you'll get whipped for fighting back while I sip lattes four decks above! That'd be real justice, not this fucked up atrocity you built your entire fucking life on!”

She took in a few deep breaths, and then finally sank to her knees, exhausted. With the rage expelled, her fear set back in. Cassie wondered if Enlil was going to punish her. “I wanna go home,” she said with a sob.

“I'm sorry for what you've been through,” Enlil said.

“Sorry? You're sorry?” Cassie said, looking up towards him, her voice low and bitter, “you're the one who did this to me.”

Cassie glared at him, and he looked back, neutral-faced. Waiting. When she didn't continue for a few seconds, he said “yes, I'm sorry for what's happened to you, Cassie. This meeting should've happened two weeks ago, when you first arrived. Unfortunately, I and my entire command staff were busy on the planet's surface tending to urgent matters. Please trust me when I say they were more urgent than the suffering of just one person.”

Cassie spent another few seconds opening and closing her mouth without saying anything, grappling with an entirely new set of questions. “What's this meeting for?” she asked, too scared to be hopeful.

“I'll start by offering an explanation,” Enlil said, “you deserve one. There are people who are dangerous to those around them. They are manipulative or physically violent. It's never been controversial to say that something must be done to prevent these people from hurting the innocent. It's not even very controversial to say they should be prevented from hurting each other. But for millennia there has been debate about what to do with these people. I think they need to be reformed. Remolded. That they can be built into better people.”

“You believe in rehabilitative justice,” Cassie said, returning to her feet, eyes still locked on the floor, and she caught a sarcastic retort in her throat. Enlil was being at least a little kind. Rebuking that kindness could anger him.

But Enlil said “say it.”

So Cassie sucked in a breath and raised her eyes to look at his. “You could've fooled me,” she said.

“People rarely change their minds about anything after a chat over coffee, let alone accept culpability for being an accessory to murder or worse. In order to build a new worldview the old one must be broken down, and yes, that breaking down process is ugly, but that doesn't mean it is never justified,” Enlil said.

“Do you really think that forced labor is going to reform people?” Cassie said, trying to thread the needle between speaking her objections and not provoking Enlil to anger. “I just...It doesn't have a very good track record,” she finished.

“Breaking people down is only the first step of the process,” Enlil said, “the first thing I do is teach them obedience. The last thing I do is teach them to forget the first thing. In the meantime, I'd like to be able to give them a dinner fork without worrying they'll stab someone with it. Unfortunately, my resources are limited, and recently they've been stretched past their breaking point. You've seen how damaged the lower decks are compared to this one, and I believe Lt. Mira has explained to you the reason. Lately I do not even have enough resources to keep the slaves safe from each other, let alone conduct the laborious process of trying to reform them,” Enlil said. “But you do not require reform. Your actions were stupid, reckless, and irresponsible,” Cassie flinched at the sudden edge in his voice, “but not malicious. A simple explanation of the dangers of Naraka should, I hope, be enough to deter reckless experimentation with them in the future.”

Enlil sighed. “I'm not angry at you, Cassie. Or at least, I shouldn't be. The Dominion kept from you the information you needed to act with wisdom. Your recklessness was an entirely predictable response to your situation. You are only technically a criminal. You didn't do anything wrong. You don't deserve this. And I'm going to offer you a way out of it, as much as I can.”

“What?” Cassie asked. Her first thought was that this couldn't possibly be real.

“I can't overturn your sentence, nor help you evade it. Not won't, can't. But so long as you're on this ship, no one in the government has to know whether you're slave or staff,” he popped open the locker. And as she'd guessed earlier, it was hers. Her shirt and pants were folded up inside, and a new pair of shoes had been added, with socks tucked inside them, and a pistol laid across them.

Cassie nearly leapt onto the clothes and pulled them over herself on the spot, but a lingering fear, both that the offer was a trap and that if it was real Enlil might change his mind if she was too eager, kept her in place. “That's it? You're just offering me a staff job?”

“You never should've been arrested. There is a catch, however. Less a catch and more an inherent consequence I'd ask you to consider, lest you do something you'll regret,” Enlil said.

“What's that?” Cassie asked.

“If you are staff, you are not a slave,” Enlil said, “you are going to interact with the slaves on a semi-regular basis, and when you do, you are going to maintain professional dispassion for them. The most critical rule of the staff is that the rules and punishments are unyielding. We don't take pity, we don't act in anger, and we don't play favorites. You are not going to have any friends among the slaves, no matter how much you think they need it.”

“Lily,” Cassie said.

Enlil nodded. “Now make no mistake, Cassie. Liliyana Cortez is a murderer. She is a drug addict who takes assassination contracts on anyone and everyone to sate her addiction. She isn't assassinating gang and police targets exclusively. She kills honest small business owners because their rivals don't like the competition. She kills people trying to expose corporate abuse to the masses because that's cheaper than prosecuting them for industrial espionage. She kills the children of powerful people to send a message that nothing is safe. I know you two get along. She has a long history of manipulating people to finish a job, but that doesn't mean her friendship with you isn't genuine. But she will do anything to get a fix. She could jeopardize – or just end – the lives of any number of my subordinates if I were to let her go. If you come, you leave her behind, not because you're selfish, but because she can't follow you. And that's her fault, not yours. You don't owe her anything.”

Cassie's breath quickened, she felt a sinking feeling in her gut. Without her, Lily was going to end up as Giovanna's drug bitch. Or maybe someone worse. Depending on how Lily shook out, Tanirt might end up going completely insane. “Lily needs help,” Cassie said, “I-I don't just mean a friend, I mean if you want to reform her, you need to help her kick this habit.”

“And I may or may not have the resources to do that this week or the next or the one after. It will likely be months before I'm in any position to run a detox program,” Enlil said. “By all means, give me full information on the problem and I will try to solve it, after you've made your choice.”

“Can't I just stay for a few weeks, though? While she's getting through it?” Cassie asked.

“You couldn't do anything more cruel,” Enlil said, “no one ever quits anything on their first try. She will get through it, you will leave, sooner or later she will relapse. Having helped her through her first detox will only convince her that she is more helpless in the face of her second.”

“What about Tanirt?” Cassie asked, “why is she kept in chains? She seems pretty cooperative to me. Probably safer than Giovanna.”

“Tanirt has had her genes rewritten by the xenorex. They've been using genetically modified humans to infiltrate the government on Rho Geminorum, it appears to be the opening shots of a war,” Enlil said, “one of those modifications is compulsive obedience to the xenorex species. During the surgery in which we attached your collars, we attempted to reverse that particular compulsion. We have no idea whether or not it's worked and if it hasn't she will attempt to sabotage the ship even at cost of her own life. She could end up killing dozens or hundreds of people. We're still working on a means of testing whether or not the compulsion has been successfully disabled without giving her a chance to kill large numbers. Anything less and she'll probably bide her time whether the compulsion is active or not, so we need to find some way to fake it. I believe I've mentioned our thin resources already.”

“It's driving her insane,” Cassie said.

“I can arrange to have her uncuffed in an isolation cell for most of the day when the other slaves are working anyway. I doubt it will help much, but it's something,” Enlil said. “Do you have any ideas that won't endanger others?”

“Put Tanirt into an isolation cell with Lily,” Cassie said, “Lily needs a few weeks to detox anyway, and Tanirt told me she likes to talk with her. It's better than locking her up alone.”

“Lily hasn't done anything,” Enlil said, “I can't lock slaves into isolation for convenience.”

“You were gonna do it to Tanirt,” Cassie said.

“I was going to ask Tanirt if she'd prefer it,” Enlil said, “and I expect she'll say yes.”

“Well, then, bullshit. Your entire operation is predicated on doing bad things to people because it'll be good for them in the end. How's this different?” Cassie asked.

Enlil said nothing. He sat down, steepled his fingers. “It's not the detox program I'd like, but it's the one I can afford,” he said, “maybe I'm being too much of a perfectionist, maybe it's time to make a compromise. I'll consider it. And I appreciate the help, you are much more familiar with these girls than I am. But. You're dodging the question.”

Cassie looked at the locker, and thought of the staff deck outside. She could be one of them. It would be almost like home. It could be a new home. The bottom deck would never be like that. But she'd also be leaving Lily behind there, and even if she detoxed she was going to need a friend. A friend who went through what she went through. And Tanirt. And maybe others, in other cells. “I won't be on the bottom deck forever, right?” Cassie asked. “Slaves who work hard and be good get promoted upwards, right?” Enlil was silent for several seconds. “Commander?”

“That information isn't supposed to be available to people in your position. The basic structure is obvious enough after a few weeks, but the details are kept secret. Keeps slaves from gaming the system. Except, well...Our regulations don't really cover the particular position you're in. And I do hate rash action,” Enlil said. “But I think you need to make an informed choice. Promise me you will not reveal any of this information to any of the other slaves, regardless of what choice you make.”

“I promise,” Cassie said.

“Yes. You can get yourself promoted to higher class. But not higher than second class. For reasons not important to this conversation, first class slaves do not, practically speaking, exist. Make your decision under the assumption that you will never be higher than second class,” Enlil said.

“What's second class like?” Cassie asked.

“It's the staff deck with a lightsout and lockdown, basically,” Enlil said, “and that information is also not to leave this room.”

“How long will it take?” Cassie asked.

“No one is even considered for a promotion to fourth class for at least three months. Slaves who've been fifth class for more than three months but less than a year are only promoted if they've given us a very good reason to consider them obedient,” Enlil said, “and it only takes longer from there.”

“Are all of the promotions based on obedience?” Cassie asked.

“No,” Enlil said, “obedience is necessary but not sufficient for third class and up. I'm not going to go into details but suffice to say I suspect you'll tick all the right boxes if you remain who you are.”

“I...I know what the right thing to do is,” Cassie said, “I just don't know if I can do it.”

“Accepting my offer wouldn't be wrong, Cassie. You don't owe them anything,” Enlil said.

“Is right and wrong just about debts and favors to you? Plutocrat,” Cassie said. Enlil leaned back in his chair and his eyes narrowed. “I-I'm sorry,” Cassie said.

“Don't be,” Enlil said. “In any case, Cortez's professed friendship with you might not even be genuine.”

“It doesn't matter,” Cassie said, “I mean, okay, it matters to me, but not in the big picture. The right thing is what's best for everyone, no matter what they've done or how much I like them or they like me. And Lily will fall apart without me and Tanirt will fall apart without her so I know that there's at least two people who will be hurt if I leave and only one of me that will be better off. I know what the right thing to do is. I just...I can't say it.”

“Then accept my offer,” Enlil said, “if you can't bring yourself to decline it out loud I can't, in good conscience, hold you to your decision. No one on this deck would consider it wrong to accept.”

Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, stamped a foot on the ground, and said “fine, I'll...I'll say it. I'll...Be your slave. For Lily and Tanirt and everyone else down there who might need a friend. I'll be a slave.”

“Are you absolutely certain, Cassie? You can't back out of this later,” Enlil said, “and you won't get any special treatment. Only the officers will even know this conversation happened.”

“Please don't talk me out of this, sir,” Cassie said, “I want to do what's best for everyone, whether they deserve it or not. Why even give me a choice if you'll only take one answer?”

Enlil sighed, stood up, and flipped the locker shut. “You're a good person, Cassie,” he said, “I hope someday I can reward that with more than just praise.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cassie said.

"'Master' is the term for slaves addressing their owner,” Enlil said, walking towards Cassie.

“Yes, Master,” Cassie said.

“Good girl,” Enlil said, chaining Cassie's hands above her head again.

“Why do I have to be shackled, Master?” Cassie asked, trying to keep the indignity out of her tone. Partly because she'd chosen this, and partly out of a now-familiar fear of punishment.

“Staff deck regulation for fifth class slaves,” Enlil said, “exceptions have to be ratified unanimously by the command crew.”

“Aren't you in charge?” Cassie asked.

“I've chosen to abdicate that power to rule of law except in times of emergency,” Enlil said. “Even if we grant that I am so intelligent and so righteous that I am superior to any bureaucracy, it is still unfortunately true that I am very often not present and the lower officers have to function autonomously. Think of Mira. She wants to do good, Cassie. Hard as that may be to believe from your perspective, believe me, she does. But have you ever seen her give a punishment harsh enough to satisfy her?”

“No, Master,” Cassie said, and suppressed a shiver at the spite with which Mira had whipped Lily, or beaten Andraste on the first day. Maybe Andraste brought it on herself, but Mira's dispassionate viciousness was still unsettling.

“It is the law that keeps her in check. And if I die and my command crew are killed, something which could happen after a single unfortunate drop, she will be in command. And she will follow my example. If that example is one of strict adherence to the law, she will continue to keep herself in check. If that example is one of rewriting the law as you please to better fit the situation, that is what she will do,” Enlil said.

“I understand, Master,” Cassie said.

“Good. I told you I had two offers for you, and that was one. Slave or not you're under no obligation to accept the second one, understood?” Enlil said.

“Yes, Master,” Cassie said.

“I didn't buy you just because I wanted to yank you out of a slave ship that could've been much worse, although that was a happy side effect,” Enlil said, “I bought you because you, and your cellmates, have a very special set of skills. Skills that make you effective, as a unit, in nearly any situation. Battlefield support. Espionage. Black ops. Domestic investigation.”

“Industrial labor,” Cassie offered.

“That too,” Enlil said. “Now I won't demand that you fight a war for me. I will say that your homeworld is in danger, and that if I don't find some way of putting fingers in the dyke, it's going to collapse before I have a chance to consolidate and rebuild.”

“You're asking me to...?” Cassie asked.

“You, specifically? I expect you to be the investigative and paranormal arm of the team. You're intelligent, analytical, and you have a solid working knowledge of some of the most forbidden subjects in the Dominion. You're also capable of summoning supernatural aid and fighting supernatural opposition, an ability that's totally useless up until the whole mission depends on it. And most importantly, you're trustworthy. I trust that if you promise to go back down to the surface and help people and then come back up to me, to this place, you'll do it,” Enlil said.

“You want me to do this now?” Cassie asked.

“Within twenty-four hours, yes,” Enlil said. “Waiting will only make things worse.”

“And alone?” Cassie asked.

“Sometimes. I need to be able to rely on you. I'm not asking about a specific mission. I'm asking about a general willingness,” Enlil said.

This decision wasn't half as hard as the last. “Yes, Master, I want to help,” Cassie said.

“Good girl,” Enlil said. “As for the specific issue we're facing now...Most of our forces are currently committed to fighting the xenorex incursion in Nova Byzanta. It's working so far, but if we pull men from there to any other problem, we run the risk of losing the initiative. If the xenorex mean war, this loss could give them a beachhead. If this is just a probe, losing to them could encourage an invasion. We've decided to commit ourselves wholly to preventing either outcome.”

“Why aren't the planetary governments helping?” Cassie asked.

“Unimportant to your current mission, suffice it to say that the invasion is subtle enough that the governments are either genuinely ignorant or have found it more convenient to pretend it doesn't exist,” Enlil said. “The real problem is a second invasion, targeting Toluca.” Enlil had Cassie's interest before. Now he had her attention. “A Naraka cult operating somewhere out of the county has maintained a Hellmouth and they're in contact with a powerful demon. And no, I have not mistaken your shenanigans for a cult. Jeanette was working for Majestic Thirteen,” Cassie's eyes widened, “and my spy in their local cell confirmed the obvious: There was no way Jeanette would actually complete the ritual. Majestic Thirteen thought they were safe, which is why they attempted to arrest you and Jack instead of bombing you from orbit.'

“The night of your arrest, my spy went dark, but my other informants in the area have been keeping an eye on general supernatural activity. The number of wisps has skyrocketed and unexplained disappearances have skyrocketed with them. The body count is approaching the triple digits already,” Cassie tried to swallow but couldn't seem to manage it, “something powerfully supernatural is happening in Toluca. Someone other than Jeanette completed the Hellmouth. And a beachhead for Naraka could be just as dangerous as one for the xenorex.”

“A beachhead for Naraka? What does that mean? I mean, Naraka's not united, not a political unit,” Cassie said.

“Neither is the Trade Dominion. Just because internecine conflict is incessant doesn't mean they don't have a common enemy in us, or that the faction on the other side of the gate doesn't want to expand into an unsuspecting, poorly defended, backwoods county,” Enlil said.

“But how do we know they're going to invade if there's different factions?” Cassie asked, “we can't know they're hostile, can we?”

“Well, there is the almost triple digit body count I mentioned earlier,” Enlil said.

“Are we sure they're dead?” Cassie asked.

“We've found a couple of the bodies, yes. They didn't die quickly,” Enlil said.

“How many?” Cassie asked. “How many people have died?”

“Twenty-six confirmed dead. Another sixty-three missing. Of those missing, going by previous years' missing person rates, only two or three of them are likely to be unrelated,” Enlil said.

“Are...Are you sure they came in through the Hellmouth? Are you sure this wouldn't have happened anyway?” Cassie asked.

“This isn't your fault,” Enlil said.

“I...If these killers are from the Hellmouth, I let them in, didn't I?” Cassie asked.

“You were wholly ignorant of what you were dealing with because information was intentionally kept from you by the Dominion,” Enlil said, “you would have double checked the ritual if you had literature to double check, and you wouldn't have performed it if you knew there was a strong possibility of putting your home in danger. Curiosity is not a crime.”

“Manslaughter is,” Cassie said.

“Enough,” Enlil said, “who is to blame makes no difference to how we solve the problem.”

“Yes, Master,” Cassie said, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” Enlil said. “Echoshire's seen a drastic increase in missing persons. The police are baffled and our informants have reported that what appears to be covert investigators have been poking around the area, most likely Majestic Thirteen, but they left and the disappearances haven't stopped. Informants also report contradictory numbers of wisps in the area, almost always higher than pre-Hellmouth levels, but by exactly how much varies wildly.”

Cassie needed to get the timeline on that. Wisps were a good indicator of supernatural activity in general because most people's ghosts sank into the ghostly otherworld of Mictlan almost instantly when they died unless either they were killed in some extremely horrible way or the border between worlds was generally weak in the area. Opening up a Hellmouth will satisfy the second requirement and cause wisp rates to skyrocket, but when the wisp population is going both up and down a lot, that usually meant something was going on with Mictlan, and that something was usually a poltergeist.

“We're still looking for leads on the cult. With a Hellmouth open, a large number of disappearances are to be expected, but the number in Echoshire is high even under the circumstances. It could be cult-related, and regardless it needs to be stopped before more people die,” Enlil said, “we need you to investigate the disappearances and put a stop to them. Any questions?”

“How do we know it's a cult that completed the Hellmouth?” Cassie asked.

“We don't, necessarily. The rate of disappearances suggests a very rapid influx of minor demons. It's possible that Naraka is just particularly feverish right now, but we suspect that this was planned, that mortal cultists contacted their demonic masters and let them know a Hellmouth was about to open,” Enlil said.

“Will I be alone?” Cassie asked.

“We hope to keep this a purely investigative mission,” Enlil said, “our muscle is limited to Tanirt and Andraste. Tanirt might betray you and Andraste is...Indisposed. She's alive and uninjured,” he hastened to add as Cassie's face was clouded with fear, Andraste was kind of a terrible person but executing uncooperative slaves was rather crossing a line regardless, “but that doesn't mean I expect giving her a gun and sending her to the surface with you would be safer than sending you alone.”

“I understand, Master,” Cassie said, “but what about getting help on the surface? I have some contacts in Toluca County, some of them would still be willing to work with me even after I was...Well, sent here.”

“Who did you have in mind?” Enlil asked.

“Well, there's Jack. He might be involved with the cult that completed the ritual, but there's no way of knowing for sure,” Cassie said.

“Whether you trust him or not is left to your discretion, but try to keep in mind that your life is at stake, and it could take months to recruit a replacement occultist, months during which Toluca will be a battleground between Majestic Thirteen and Naraka cultists. No matter who wins that fight, the population loses,” Enlil said.

“Yes, Master. There's some others,” Cassie said, “Neil, Amber, and Lionel were sort of...Apprentices, I guess. They didn't know much, but we used them for grunt work sometimes, like, if we needed to research every concert held in the county since it was founded, we'd get them to help to make it go faster.”

“How deeply involved are they? In occultism and other crimes?” Enlil asked.

Cassie swallowed. “I...Master, you're not going to have them arrested, are you? Please, I didn't even think about...Please don't.”

“No, I'm not,” Enlil said, “answer the question.”

“Well, I think they've been trespassing sometimes. Maybe they've been out past curfew,” Cassie said.

“Toluca has no curfew,” Enlil said.

“It does for minors,” Cassie said.

“I don't want civilians involved, especially not teenagers. Don't go looking for them,” Enlil said.

“Um...With respect, Master, I'm only two years older than them,” Cassie said.

“You've already made a career out of pumping blood-crazed occultists for their lore and then selling them out to the police. Your 'apprentices' are considerably less involved and you are not to drag them deeper in,” Enlil said.

“Yes, Master. Do you have a record of the reports of wisp activity, including where and when the data was gathered?” Cassie asked.

“Yes. I'll have the details waiting for you on the shuttle,” Enlil said, “anything else?”

“No, Master,” Cassie said.

“Very well,” Enlil said. He stepped toward Cassie, and she looked towards the ground as he approached. “If you find evidence of an immediate threat to the population, call in support from Nova Byzanta. They will send a strike team as soon as they're able. However,” he pulled a coiled bullwhip from his belt, tilting Cassie's head upwards with it. Her heart raced from the whip's proximity. “Those troops could be needed to fight xenorex at any second. You are risking other people's lives by calling on them, and if you do so, you will be whipped. Even if nothing happens in Nova Byzanta while they're gone. Even if the threat to Toluca is real. And if something terrible happens to Toluca that you could have prevented by calling them, you will be whipped more. If you come back from Toluca empty-handed, you will be whipped, in addition to any whipping you receive for calling the strike team or failing to call them at cost to the people of Toluca. But you are better whipped than dead. Better for you, me, and Rho Geminorum. Understand, slave?”

“Yes, Master,” Cassie said, only barely managing to keep her voice steady.

“Good girl,” Enlil said, replacing the whip on his belt. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief while he walked to the door and called Lt. Mira in to escort Cassie to the shuttle bay. “Do good work, slave,” he said while Mira unchained Cassie from the ceiling and cuffed her to her waist chain, “Toluca could live or die on it.”

Cassie was escorted back to the elevator, and closed her eyes against the staff deck. It didn't seem so bad, now that she knew that someday she would live somewhere like it, but she still hated to see it. The elevator halted at the second deck from the bottom, and Cassie was led back through to what she dimly remembered as the processing section of the ship, where the shuttlebay was.

Once Cassie was seated inside the shuttle, Mira uncuffed her hands, then unlocked her waist chain and removed her ankle shackles. The chains gripped in one hand, Mira folded her arms and glowered down at Cassie. “This whole plan of Enlil's is crazy. You'd better make it crazy enough to work, cunt, 'cause if you don't, I'm the one holding the whip. And if you let the commander down, I'll split you to the bone with every blow.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Cassie said. Mira spat on her face before leaving the shuttle. Cassie didn't wipe the strand of saliva off her face until after Mira had left. Apparently there weren't any laws about spitting on this boat.

Cassie's lockbox was already here, the key attached to it by a short chain. She pulled out the pistol, the shoes with socks tucked in, and then her clothes. Underneath those was a white facemask, a pair of manila folders, and a binder sitting on top of a backpack. The label had been removed from the binder, but opening it up she quickly recognized it as her copy of the Encyclopedia Mortuis. Inside the backpack was a phone, a few of the unlabeled meal bars, and what looked like about 100 TradeCoin in bills. From a quick skim, one of the manila folders contained information on the Majestic Thirteen activity in the area and the disappearances. The other was transcripts of informant reports. A lot of the information has been blacked out, but what remained were the reports on wisps.

Cassie pulled her pants up and her shirt over her head, and for a few minutes she lay back and just soaked in how good it felt to be wearing them again. She imagined that she was on the shuttle now because the Lockhearts had a change of heart, decided she couldn't have been wrapped up in any serious blasphemy, and got their legal team to overturn her conviction, and now she was headed back home to catch up on class and give vague answers about her adventure in space to build up her mystique amongst her friends.

Except she was wrapped up in serious blasphemy. Which, okay, blasphemy laws were a stupid cover for other things, but those things, it turned out, totally should be illegal for completely different reasons. Cassie had been telling herself that she wasn't a criminal and she didn't deserve this, but maybe what she didn't deserve was this psuedo-parole from her slavery. She was partly responsible for what was happening to Toluca County, but how big a part?

Cassie didn't really want to follow that train of thought to its conclusion. She knew she would be looking for reasons to justify her actions, and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to find them. And regardless of who was at fault, her first priority should be solving the problem.

She examined the first folder. The names of the informants had been redacted, but the dates and times were still there, along with exact text of the reports themselves. Looked like wisp activity dropped precipitously at around the same time disappearances picked up, briefly resurged slightly, and then dropped to “pre-Hellmouth levels” which, for a town the size of Echoshire, probably meant none at all.

All of this was perfectly consistent with a poltergeist. Wisps were the degenerate remnant of a regular ghost, with only a handful of personality traits still clinging to reality, usually some unresolved business. The wisp could no longer remember their appearance in life, which is why they appeared as disembodied balls of light usually visible only in photographs or video footage. They could usually only remember a few words, and they repeated them with little idea as to their meaning. A mantra related to the circumstances of their murder may have lost all meaning to a wisp except as something which, if only the living would hear it, would bring their killer to justice. That the words conveyed information that would help solve their murder was more complex than a wisp could comprehend. They just knew that saying the words to the living would result in their being able to pass on, like a magic spell.

Poltergeists were mindless wisp gestalts, usually made when dozens of angry ghosts were created in the same place and all of them degenerated into wisps, which most ghosts did almost immediately. Under normal circumstances lone wisps usually vanished into Mictlan within a few weeks at most, so poltergeists tended to only form if there were lots of horrible deaths all right on top of each other, but with the border between Mictlan and the mortal world weak, wisps who were sucked into the land of the dead long ago could come through again, and if lots of them died for similar reasons, they might combine to form a poltergeist decades or centuries after the events that killed them. This was possible with decades or centuries between the first and most recent deaths, if one area just happened to have a lot of deaths under similar circumstances.

Once a poltergeist was formed, it sucked nearby wisps into itself, becoming bigger, angrier, and less coherent. As the poltergeist draws in more wisps unrelated to the original tragedy, wisps with entirely unrelated and sometimes contradictory fetters to the living world, it would go insane, lashing out at random at anyone within its haunt, often with fatal consequences.

Sometimes proper wraiths, who could still remember their mortal lives, got sucked in as well, becoming the face of the poltergeist. With dozens or hundreds of wisps to feed off of, this could cause the wraith face of the poltergeist to sustain itself much longer than normal, lasting decades or centuries instead of just a few years. And as the poltergeist goes insane, the wraith can become the only coherent voice in the storm, and use the rest of the poltergeist to resolve the wraith's unfinished business exclusively. Occultist wraiths had been known to murder lots of people in similar ways in a similar place for the express purpose of creating a poltergeist to seize control of and feed on while resolving their fetters. Once the wraith left, the unled poltergeist would go berserk.

So, a drastic drop in wisp levels was caused by the poltergeist manifesting and devouring nearby wisps, a temporary resurgence is caused by the now-insane poltergeist murdering people at random, which also explained the uptick in disappearances, and the following drop to a total lack of wisps would be because the poltergeist had assimilated all of them. Without a high population density, and thus without a high death rate, it'd probably peter out on its own after a while, provided people were smart enough to avoid its haunt. It usually only takes a few unexplained deaths before people start looking for a new apartment.

In the other folder were a lot of reports of suspected Majestic Thirteen activity about a week and a half ago, which as of two days ago had been reduced to just a single suspicious pair of individuals. The records of the two individuals checked out on the Echoshire census, but investigations reported that no one in town seemed to know who they were, and they hung out in the heart of the city at the Administrative District, which was where all the disappearances had been occurring. And that was a pretty damn hard part of the city to just abandon if it got too spooky, so probably sending someone to get rid of the poltergeist prematurely was the right call.

There wasn't much else reported, but being 90% sure that she was looking at a poltergeist, Cassie knew that she needed to figure out who the poltergeist was made out of. Although the majority of the poltergeist was probably made up of unrelated wisps, a plurality of the poltergeist's wisps would be rooted to a single source. If she could get them coherent long enough to pacify them, the poltergeist would become much less dangerous. Echoshire was a small town, so crawling through the archives for every murder in its history should be manageable, although would be a dull afternoon. Hopefully. The town's newsnet HQ was in the admin district, which meant it might be within range of the poltergeist's haunt or under Majestic Thirteen surveillance.

Cassie pulled the phone out of the pack next. It wasn't her old one. Only the basic apps were installed, and even then the marketplace was missing. There were only two contacts, “Local” and “Emergency.” Emergency was listed in red as an emergency contact. Mixed in with the plastic bills in the pack was a piece of paper with instructions written on it: “Phone contacts: Local is shuttle, Emergency is strike team. Do not connect phone to any networks besides ours. Tear this message up and swallow pieces after reading.”

Cassie sighed and began tearing up the message and swallowing it one little piece at a time. She'd gotten way better at not missing lunch, but even so her stomach almost always had a little pinch, a constant reminder that even if she wasn't going to die or anything, a little extra food would really be nice. She wasn't really so hungry that the paper actually seemed appetizing, but she'd gotten really good at eating things that tasted, at best, like nothing, in the hopes of making that pinch go away for at least a little while.

The lights indicating atmospheric re-entry came on. Cassie shoved the gun, the folders, and the binder into the backpack and clutched it to her chest as she prepared for re-entry, holding onto a strap on a wall that was about to be the ceiling.

Re-entry was always weird. The acceleration started to fight with gravity and Cassie was pulled in two different directions at once, the shuttle rocked as friction hit the heat shields hard. After a few minutes she was back in atmosphere, sideways in her seat. She unbuckled herself and used the seats' armrests as a ladder to climb down to the new floor, then folded out a new seat on what was previously a wall and buckled herself into that.

The shuttle landed out in the plains near the highway a few miles outside town and the pilot got out of the cockpit to greet Cassie. “Hey, there, I'm Jason Briggs. Would've introduced myself earlier, but I'd rather meet on even ground.”

He offered his hand to shake and Cassie took it cautiously. “I'm Cassandra Heart. Call me Cassie,” she said.

“Nice to meet you,” Briggs said with a firm shake, “I'm your pilot. I'll be waiting at the starport out on the lake to extract you, just give the word and I'll be here in ten minutes flat. Shuttle can hover and it's got a gun, but I'm under strict orders from the commander not to use it where the authorities might see. My understanding is that we aren't technically allowed to have weapons on our shuttle and the commander doesn't wanna deal with the court case.”

“I understand, sir. Any tips for me?” Cassie said.

“Well, I just fly the shuttle, but I overhear a lot of briefings for the teams. Now you're investigation, right? The MO with investigation jobs is usually to avoid firefights if at all possible. No roughin' up informants who're holding out on you, things like that.” Well, no problems there. Even after two weeks in the workshop Cassie didn't think she could rough up anyone tougher than an arthritic old man. “They gave you a gun, right? Don't leave it in your pack, you won't be able to reach it when you need it. And don't put it in your pocket, either, way too obvious, especially with jeans like yours.” Cassie looked down at her jeans. They weren't skin tight, but they were pretty clingy. She didn't really pick her outfit for smuggling contraband the day she was arrested. Really, she picked it because they were the pieces of clothing nearest her at the time.

“Tuck the gun in the waistband, and keep your shirt over it,” Briggs continued, “you'll be able to tug it out when you need it. And don't be afraid to call me if you need to make a quick exit, either. You're the only agent we got in Toluca right now, and I'm not going anywhere else. I'm not here for anyone but you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cassie said.

“Oh, one more thing, don't have to call me 'sir.' I'm Jason. Crewman Briggs, if you're feeling fancy.”

“Yes, sir, Crewman Briggs,” Cassie said.

He laughed a bit and asked “is it possible to be disrespectfully respectful?”

“I don't know, sir, but I intend to find out,” Cassie said with a soft smile.

“Good luck, Cassie,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder and then returning to the shuttle. Cassie pulled the gun out from her pack and slipped it into the waistband of her jeans, covering it up with her shirt.

It took her about an hour before she reached Echoshire, and another thirty minutes to get into the admin district at the heart of the city. Maybe it was just her imagination, but people seemed jumpier. Probably not her imagination, really, the recent string of disappearances would definitely have made the news. Which was perfect, because that would hopefully stop her from being recognized from the news coverage of her arrest and conviction. She talked to the archive receptionist about getting in and she had barely even started making an excuse about being a history major from Ashen Grove looking for...Well, that's as far as she got before the bored receptionist pointed her down the hall and to the right.

In the hall, Cassie spotted a camera, double-checked to make sure no one was looking, and pulled out the Encyclopedia Mortuis. Mictlan-related occultism was slim on sigils and the like, but even a description of its inhabitants would serve to fry a computer. Cassie held the book close enough that the words would show up clearly on the recording, and while the camera didn't emit any helpful trail of smoke, she was 90% sure that whatever system was used to store the video had been fried, taking any recordings of her with it.

The archives room had rows of terminals built directly into desks, which stretched up to the ceiling in order to mimic the aisles of bookshelves of pre-digital libraries. Immediately upon entry Cassie recognized the sound of a conversation cut short by someone hiding behind one of the stacks. She walked directly into one of the aisles to hide herself from anyone who came to check on the main entrance, and leaned over one of the terminals without taking a seat, typing a random string into the query and pretending to scrutinize the results. If someone came around the corner, she'd blend. No footsteps approached, however, and she could hear whispering.

She navigated the stacks to come at the whispering from the opposite side of the entrance and peek around a corner at them. She knew these three. The 'apprentices' they'd recruited from Candlewick High. Neil was the short one with the irritating puppy dog crush on Cassie that she tried not to hold against him, Amber was the one who thought every conspiracy theory was real and wasn't aware of the existence of any colors besides onyx black and ghoulish pale, and Lionel was the reluctant redhead kid who was probably only here because he was dating Amber.

“I know I heard something,” Amber was saying.

“I checked, there's no one here,” Neil said, “besides we aren't even doing anything illegal.”

“So? Majestic Thirteen could be following us!” Amber said.

“Majestic Thirteen isn't real,” Neil said, “and the police and DDIA have bigger things to worry about. We aren't involved in the disappearances.”

“The DDIA isn't here,” Amber said, “you don't think it's a little bit suspicious that after this many disappearances they haven't shown up? It's because there's an even higher agency looking into things.”

“I'm pretty sure if some kind of super-DDIA were after us, they'd have us by now. They already caught Cassie,” Neil said.

“Of course you think she's the gold standard for evading arrest,” Amber said.

“She was better at it than we are! They probably got Jack and Jeanette, too,” Neil said, “those two probably just...Well, y'know.”

“Cassie probably sold them out to dodge the firing squad,” Amber said.

“Will you shut the fuck up about your conspiracy theories?” Neil said, “Cassie wouldn't do that, all you've got is a hunch.”

“How come no one else stood trial?” Amber asked.

“Guys,” Lionel cut in, “aren't we trying to be sneaky?” The other two looked at him, glared at each other, and stopped. “Look. I know we've had this conversation before, but we shouldn't be doing this anymore. Cassie got caught, and I haven't heard from the others since.”

Cassie wasn't supposed to get these kids involved. But they were involving themselves, weren't they? She knew that Enlil wouldn't accept that explanation, but all Cassie needed was someone to help her dig through the archives. Enlil didn't need to know the details. And technically she'd only been told not to go looking for them. She stumbled across them completely accidentally, so she wasn't really disobeying orders at all, just taking advantage.

“Hey, guys, what's up,” Cassie said, rounding the corner. The scoobies backed away like they'd seen a ghost. “What're you up to, anyway?”

“Cassie,” Neil said, “you were arrested!”

“Yeah,” Cassie said.

“And sent into space,” Neil said.

“Yup,” Cassie said.

“So what are you doing here?” Neil asked.

“I'm tricksy and clever,” Cassie said.

“You've got a collar,” Amber said.

“It's dead,” Cassie said, “how do you think I got back down to the surface? Slaves don't get vacations.”

“Or maybe you made a deal with Majestic Thirteen,” Amber said.

“Majestic Thirteen doesn't use slaves,” Cassie said.

“Majestic Thirteen isn't real,” Neil said.

“No, actually, they are. I ran into them,” Cassie said, “but trust me, they don't give a shit about you. There's a serious cult operating in Toluca. I'm small fry compared to them, you guys...I mean, frankly, you don't even rate. I mean, you're guilty of what, trespassing?”

“Majestic Thirteen doesn't need actual crimes to get convictions,” Amber said.

“Missing the point, Amber,” Cassie said, “why would Majestic give a fuck? That you, what, go looking up obituaries and sometimes buy weird things from weird people? You don't even know how to use them. Nobody cares.” But by the time she was even halfway through she knew it was the wrong approach. Nothing got on Amber's nerves more than how thoroughly she was displaced as the local spooky expert when actual occultists showed up. Especially occultists who were so irreverent as to refer to occultism as 'spooky,' like it was a Halloween ride or something.

“This is exactly what a Majestic Thirteen spy would say,” Amber said.

“Look, I'm here to look some stuff up in connection to a poltergeist causing the disappearances around here. If any of you don't trust me, you can leave,” Cassie said.

“How do you know it's a poltergeist?” Neil asked.

Cassie had always played coy about real supernatural secrets. She told yourself that it was to keep the scoobies safe, and it did keep them safe. Majestic Thirteen wasn't just a maybe anymore, they were really, definitely out there. The danger she was putting these kids in used to seem abstract. Now it was very real.

But on the other hand, she knew that the real reason she'd kept secrets was because she liked being mysterious and aloof. She liked being a wise elder sage who knew things they didn't and wouldn't always share. And it was stupid, and selfish, and now that Toluca was under attack these kids needed to know what they were dealing with or else they'd be in danger anyway.

“Wisps show up on film photographs. When the borders between realms are as weak as they are now, they show up everywhere. Poltergeists eat them to sustain themselves, and then kill people which produces more, and then eat those. So if wisps go down, then back up, then down again, that's a poltergeist,” Cassie said.

“We've been all over this town for weeks, we'd have noticed if you were taking photographs around here,” Amber said.

“Well I can guarantee Majestic Thirteen doesn't care about you, because they have also been all over this town for weeks,” Cassie said, sliding off her pack and digging through her files, scanning over them briefly to double check if any names were named. “Here,” she said, handing them to Amber once she was satisfied there was nothing there that would bring Majestic Thirteen to an informant's doorstep, “this is all the intel I got, look at it yourself.

“Neil, Lionel? Echoshire's been around since about the turn of the 24th century, I'll take the first 25 years after the founding, Neil, you take the next, Lionel, you bring us up to modern day. We're going over every obituary, there'll only be a few dozen per year in a town this size, and we're looking for deaths that all occurred in the same place. Sort the deaths by location and cause, see if any pattern emerges. For location, get building-for-building accuracy if you can. The recent disappearances are all in the admin district so we know the haunt is somewhere around here, we need to know which area exactly. Particularly if we're inside the haunt right now, we want to be outside it before nightfall.

“Amber, once you've satisfied your paranoia, I'm sure we'd all appreciate some help. People are dying and will keep dying until we shut this down, because Majestic Thirteen are more than happy to wait until it winds down on its own no matter how many people die along the way,” Cassie finished, and then turned to get started before Amber could complain. Neil followed, and Lionel made a show of dragging his feet a little, but Amber wasn't protesting, so he was coming along, too. These kids had always been easily impressed by having a plan at all, and on their own they usually just ambled about ineffectually, following the first idea that popped into their heads. Someone, usually Amber, would form a pet theory and then drag the others into trying to find evidence into supporting it, mostly ignoring any leads that didn't seem like they'd confirm the pet. Any sense of thoroughness had always impressed them into compliance.

Amongst the unusual dead was, firstly, Annette Alvarez, who was killed in a school prank in 2356 when her friends, teasing her over her fear of heights, attempted to shove her off the edge of the roof and onto one of those giant landing cushions used for skydiving, but Michelle Hoffman, the person in charge of the pushing, forgot to check which side of the roof she was on before giving Annette a shove. The school wasn't that tall and Annette might've survived if she'd landed on her legs instead of her neck. Michelle committed suicide by running live wires into her bathtub later that year, but that was out in the residential areas far outside the potential haunt and one murder does not a poltergeist make. Annette's ghost might've haunted the school for a while, and Michelle's her home, but she had probably become a wisp by now.

There were a total of three different fatal car accidents that all happened at the same intersection just down the block from the archive. Echoshire was a small town, but even so, one accident every 25 years wasn't that surprising. Software glitches sometimes, and carbots were no exception. Plus, one of them in 2341 happened because a dude named Evan Price had hacked his car to drive manually and then tried to show off his skills while drunk. That ended poorly for him, but mostly it ended poorly for Krystal Owens and Max Davis, the people he ran over.

Starting in 2359, there had been a number of unexplained disappearances, however, about one per year. No bodies were ever recovered, and it seemed like all of them were last seen at the local school. They tended to be spaced about 9-18 months apart, most of the missing persons were teachers or janitors, although students occasionally went missing as well, especially in recent years. A few gaps of two years or more were filled in by missing persons reports that never resulted in a funeral and thus didn't show up in obituaries. Early on, they happened exclusively at night, but later began happening during the day, which corresponded to the increase in student disappearances. This had the numbers to be the catalyst for a poltergeist if they were related.

It was technically within the realm of possibility that this was a spectacular coincidence. Within the galaxy there were enough high schools that by sheer weight of numbers, one of them would have lots of mysterious disappearances spaced regularly apart from one another that were completely unrelated to one another. But it probably wasn't Echoshire High.

The group had gathered around a table in the center of the library to compare notes, the table's display lit up with all the windows they'd imported from the terminals, mostly spreadsheets where they stored their findings, occasionally obscured by the bags of chips and empty pastry wrappers from the snack runs Cassie had occasionally sent Neil or Lionel on. Amber was still suspicious and apparently thought being in the same room as Cassie would allow her to magically detect any nefarious business Cassie got up to even if she was facing away from Cassie, focused on a terminal, and didn't even have Cassie in her line of sight due to an intervening terminal stack. But hey, whatever, Amber was the last person who'd call the cops on someone, so Cassie wasn't especially worried about her being paranoid.

“Alright, looks like we've only got one real poltergeist candidate,” Cassie said, “now we need to find out enough about them to try and put as much of the haunt to rest as we can. That means we're looking for unfinished business. We've got a list of names, here. Split it up between yourselves and track them down on social media, find their friends, and see if you can get in touch with them. Find out everything you can. Say it's for some kind of school project.”

“Friends lists are locked and hidden for dead people, though,” Lionel said.

“Just scroll through their timeline until you reach when they were alive and see who they talk with like friends,” Cassie said.

“There'll be like two decades of posts to get through first, though,” Lionel said.

“Two decades of posts on a dead person's account. There's probably less than a page of new material between now and the week of the funeral,” Cassie said, “then maybe a couple of pages of funeral stuff, which might also be helpful so read that, and then you'll have the conversations they were having right before they died.”

“What're you doing?” Amber asked.

“It's getting late, ghosts get out and about in the dark. I'm gonna head to the school and see if I get haunted,” Cassie said.

“I'm coming with you,” Amber said.

“No way in Hell,” Cassie said, “Amber, I am going to a poltergeist's haunt with the specific intention of getting it angry to see what it looks like. If you come with me, you will die.”

“So what's your big secret to surviving the encounter?” Amber asked.

The problem here was that Cassie was kind of bluffing, in that the average poltergeist had 'only' like a 40% chance of murdering any given trespasser, so no one's death warrant was signed just by setting foot in the haunt. But still, Cassie had one very important survival trait that Amber didn't: She had nothing to prove and would run like a little girl at the first sign of danger.

“Amber, listen,” Cassie lowered her voice so that Neil and Lionel would hopefully not hear or, if they did, at least understand that this was supposed to be private, “you're the one who actually has any kind of actual commitment to this. If you aren't driving the others on, it might not get done.”

“Yeah, and no one will be around while you report to your mystery boss. All your 'intel' came from somewhere,” Amber said.

“My 'mystery boss' is on your side, Amber. I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly why he wants this town protected but I can promise you that he has sunk way too many resources into doing it for him to be bluffing. I promise you that we are working towards the same goal and we only have so much time, so please, for the love of God, just help me instead of second-guessing everything I do,” Cassie said.

“So I gotta help you because we're all in it together against some mysterious threat? Sounds like every fascist ever. You're not reporting to anyone!” Amber said, and grabbed the biggest tablet on the table to swing at Cassie's head.

It was a light plastic tablet and Amber had only half-risen from her seat to take the swing. It thwapped against Cassie's head and left a sting. “Ow,” she said, rubbing the point of impact. Amber got up out of her chair completely and took another swing, and Cassie caught the tablet and pulled it out of her hands. “Amber, stop!” she said, “what the Hell?”

“I-I...” Amber said and trailed off.

“What, were you expecting to be the plucky heroine sucker punching the mustache-twirling traitor unconscious?” Cassie asked. “This isn't a movie, Amber, Jesus Christ.” Amber did not respond. Cassie turned to Lionel and Neil. “Can you guys look up the victims' friends?”

“Sure thing,” Neil said, as Lionel looked to Amber and back to Cassie, but he muttered out an affirmative in the end.

“Thank you,” Cassie said, and then turned back to Amber. “You can be a paranoiac little brat as much as you like, but don't try to fucking hit someone because you've got a hunch,” she said, and left the archive.

Cassie had been less than an angel in high school, and while she hadn't gone to Echoshire High, breaking into schools after dark wasn't new ground for her. It took a brief visit to the hardware store to get a multitool and some duct tape, but there was still enough light left that Cassie wasn't especially suspicious prying open the panel's door lock, sawing through the wires, and taping them into reversed position. Well, okay, close up she was extremely suspicious, but from a distance she mostly just looked like she was fiddling with a keycard. No one was watching the entrance to a school like a hawk anyway. She'd already checked to make sure neither of the Majestic agents were lurking about.

Cassie waited for night to fall inside, raided a janitor's closet for a flashlight in the meantime. Those were always the first to go when things started getting really spooky, but hopefully she could get a good look at the ghost and then run the Hell away while things were still in the flickering lights stage.

Cassie started making rounds through the school once night had fallen. Ghosts, even degenerate ones like wisps, could usually be provoked into making an appearance if you repeated the circumstances of their death, describing it aloud or better yet setting up the place so it looked like it just happened or was about to happen. But Cassie didn't have any idea how these people died and she didn't even know for sure they had died at all. So she wandered around randomly and hoped they would manifest on their own.

And hey, the way disembodied shadows were showing up in the beam of her flashlight was definitely pretty ghosty. Some of the desks in the classrooms were casting shadows of people who weren't sitting in them. Some of the lockers had shadows cast by people who weren't standing in front of them. The shadows never moved, and although they had no faces, somehow Cassie got the feeling they were watching her.

She might be able to get a reaction out of the ghosts if she was able to name them, and she had most of the names of those who'd disappeared here memorized. “Dominick Pena?” she asked, keeping her beam fixed on one of the shadows standing in front of a locker. “Janice Warren? Brian Cannon?” This one didn't seem to be responding. Cassie waved her beam around at some of the others, but she didn't have their positions memorized and she wasn't sure if they'd moved. But when she brought the beam back to the locker in front of her there were three shadows waiting. She swallowed. “Abraham Diaz?” she asked, swung the flashlight away, and then back in front of her. Now there was only one shadow. Well. She had the right ghosts.

But how did they die? Clearly whatever it was, it was unhappily enough to make them a poltergeist. Or maybe there wasn't a poltergeist at all, and something completely unrelated was killing people, leaving regular old wisps behind? That wouldn't explain the rise and fall of wisp numbers, though.

The flashlight began to flicker. Only a little, and maybe it was just a technical malfunction. Is what someone who had never read even a single ghost story, apocryphal or not, would say.

“I'm Cassandra Heart,” she said, “I'm here to help you.” The shadow did not respond. She slid the beam of her flashlight across the hall and across more of the shadows. She wasn't even sure if they were coherent enough to understand this, but if she kept talking they might repeat a mantra at her eventually. “I don't know exactly what happened to you or why you're still here. Can you please explain to me? What happened? Why are you here?”

She panned the flashlight around, looking for some kind of sign. Carving messages into walls was a fairly popular ghost trick. But nothing seemed to be happening, except that the shadows had changed position. Further from the walls, now, the shadows fell mostly on the floor, the non-people who were casting them were now not standing closer to Cassie. She turned around in a slow circle. The shadows had surrounded her.

At the end of the corridor she could see a figure. Turning the flashlight towards it, Cassie could see what looked like a student. She had the right uniform anyway. She shuffled towards Cassie, listless, her head dangling limp and rolling about with each lurching step. Cassie turned around to see if there were any more behind, but the girl with the unhinged neck seemed to be the only one who'd bothered manifesting as more than a shadow.

Cassie was barely even surprised when she turned back towards the ghost and she was suddenly only five feet away, inside the circle of shadows with Cassie, but even so she jumped a little when she saw the ghost so close. Cassie swallowed and tried to keep her thoughts straight. “Hello,” she said, “do you need help? What's wrong?” Sandra Danning was the last disappearance to match anything close to this description, a student who vanished nearly five years ago. “My name is Cassandra Heart, I came because I heard someone might need some help. Is that right?” The most recent victim was John Lewis, and while this ghost's chest was a little underdeveloped she was definitely female. “Can you please tell me what happened here?” The last female to disappear was Ashley Miller, but she was a teacher, so why the student's uniform? If this was Sandra, where were Ashley and John? They were more recent victims, so they should be manifesting even more strongly than Sandra.

“Do you know who Sandra Danning, John Lewis, or Ashley Miller are?” Cassie asked. Her flashlight flickered again, then went out entirely. Cassie didn't even have time to swear before a shriek filled the air and she could hear the lockers slamming open all around her. She sprinted away from the ghost and could feel hands grasping at her, pulling her back, nearly tripping her up, but she pulled herself free from their grip.

Cassie could hardly see a thing, but she could still make out the motion of objects hurtling towards her from out of the lockers, and jumped and ducked underneath them. The light fixtures burst as she passed under them, showering her with sparks and broken glass, but she dove out of the way of the worst of it, and in the brief flashes of light she could see tablets, keys, backpacks loaded down with whatever, all being flung at her at top speed.

The streetlights outside dimly illuminated the mostly-glass doors of the exit. Cassie slammed into them, trying to push and then pull them open, but they were locked. A backpack rammed into her from behind, pushing her face into the glass, and she could hear something heavy, probably a desk, being dragged across the floor. She pulled her gun and fired a pair of bullets through the bottom pane of glass on the door, ducking underneath and sprinting away. A cloud of debris from the school followed after her, the poltergeist bringing its ammunition with it as it chased her halfway across the parking lot. Cassie didn't stop running until she was halfway across the admin district, not entirely sure if the attack stopped because she got out of the poltergeist's range or if it just got bored.

She found herself a hotel well outside the admin district to stay in, last thing she needed was a ghost attack in the night, and met up with Neil at the archives the next morning. He was alone. “What'd you find?” Cassie asked.

“Well, nothing on most of them,” Neil said, “especially the recent ones, a lot of people didn't want to talk about it. But for a couple of different ones, they all mentioned a fixation with some kind of book before they died.”

“A book?” Cassie asked.

“Yeah, like, a diary or something. Paper and ink. Not all of the people I talked to actually saw it, but those who did all saw it the same way, a little black diary like they sell at the craft shops. No one I talked to ever really bothered reading it. But at least one person was just reading it, never writing in it. The husband of Brittany McDaniel, a janitor who disappeared like fifteen years ago, said they didn't even have a pen,” Neil said.

“Okay, so this book sounds ghosty as Hell. How many people reported seeing a victim with it before they disappeared?” Cassie asked.

“Five. Out of sixteen total disappearances,” Neil said. “And that's not counting the fact that most of the people I got in touch with wouldn't give me any information at all.”

“How long did the victims have the book in their possession before their disappearance?” Cassie asked.

“I, uh...I didn't ask,” Neil said, “but at least one of them had it for months, Mr. McDaniel mentioned that Brittany had it for a while.”

“Double check everyone who was willing to talk to you about it, see how long they were in possession of that book. And double check anyone who didn't want to talk about it or didn't respond, ask about the book and see if you can get a 'how did you know' out of them. Preferably ask them on the phone or in person where they have less time to filter a surprise,” Cassie said. “Where's Lionel and Amber?”

“Amber won't talk to me,” Neil said, “and Lionel says she's still mad.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Are they doing anything stupid?”

“I don't think so,” Neil said, “Lionel didn't sound like he was in the middle of anything when I called him. He didn't sound nervous or anything. I think Amber's just angry.”

“So long as she isn't going to try and go ghost hunting alone. Thanks, Neil,” Cassie said, “double check what we know about that book.”

“Where are you going?” Neil asked.

“I'm going to check up on Majestic Thirteen,” Cassie said, “if I can follow them back to their safehouse and wait 'till it's deserted, I can break in and see what they know.”

The agents weren't especially close to the school, though it was visible from where they were posted. One read on his tablet while sitting on a park bench down the block. It looked natural enough if you looked at any given time of day, but it was a dead giveaway to anyone who was looking for suspicious activity, since he was there all the time. The other agent drove around the admin district constantly, which was again not all that suspicious if you saw him passing by, but if you were looking for it, it was incredibly obvious.

The one in the car was hard to keep track of, but the one on the park bench was really easy. Cassie staked him out from a cafe across the street, then from an electronics shop, then from a sandwich place, bouncing around from one store to another while keeping an eye on him and trying to look like a teenager on a window shopping spree. Cassie knew that whether or not the agent had spotted her, he'd act like he hadn't. The agent in the car stopped to pick him up, and the agent on the park bench got in completely nonchalantly, and now he would lead Cassie to either his safehouse or an ambush.

The car was a car, but the speed limits were pretty low here in town and it was usually pretty easy to figure out where they were going. Echoshire might not be one of Cassie's usual stomping grounds, but she still knew her way around pretty well, so it wasn't hard to find shortcuts. Still, Cassie couldn't help but wonder if the car was a little too easy to follow and her fears were confirmed when she rounded a corner into an alley and got shoved from behind. Cassie fell onto her stomach, rolled onto her back, and there was already a shotgun pointed at her face by a police officer.

“On your stomach with your hands on your head!” he shouted. Cassie had no idea what would happen if she complied, shipped back to the Calypso? Sold somewhere else? Executed? But she knew what would happen if she didn't, so she obeyed, looking around for some way out while she rolled back onto her stomach and placed her hands behind her head. All she could see was the Majestic Thirteen car parked at the curb on the other side of the alley.

The driver agent, dressed in a dark suit with dark glasses, the faintest glint of the data projected onto their lenses visible from this side, walked over to Cassie. “Thank you for your assistance, Officer Baker,” the agent said, as the officer pulled Cassie's hands into cuffs and dragged her onto her knees. “Miss Heart,” the agent said, “I rather thought we'd seen the last of you. Perhaps more drastic measures are needed to cease your meddling.”

“We have a common enemy right now,” Cassie said, “there's no reason for us to be fighting.” The agent shook her down, took her weapon, then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet and towards the car. The police officer wasn't following, so Cassie whispered to the agent “I'm here to get rid of the poltergeist in the high school. You don't want it here anymore than I do.”

The agent tossed Cassie's backpack into the trunk of the car, shoved her into the backseat, climbed in next to her, and then slammed the door shut. The second Majestic agent was sitting in the front seat. “Return home,” the agent next to Cassie said, and the car started into motion.

They rode in silence for several minutes. “You don't have anything to lose by letting me help,” Cassie said, “the only enemy we don't have in common is each other.” The agent still didn't respond. He probably wouldn't respond to anything, no matter what it was, until they got to wherever they were going. Which was hopefully not a quiet spot for an execution. Either way, Cassie knew that if she kept talking all she'd do is risk giving something away, so she waited in silence.

The car arrived at a garage, the doors came down, and the agents pulled Cassie out of the car and into a small house, where they sat her down in a chair in the kitchen. One agent zip tied her ankles to the chair's legs and then uncuffed and re-cuffed her hands behind the back of the chair, while the other leaned against the counter and stared at her. They were silent for close to a full minute. “You've been a lot of trouble, Miss Heart,” the agent said, finally.

“Like I said, today I'm actually doing you a favor,” Cassie said.

“Tell me everything you know about the poltergeist,” the agent said.

“If you let me out of these cuffs and zip ties, I will gladly work with you to solve this thing,” Cassie said, “but I'm not just going to tell you everything so you can shoot me and walk away.”

The agent nodded to his companion, who opened up a cupboard and pulled out a car battery and a pair of jumpers. “Tell me what you know about the poltergeist,” he said.

“You know torture doesn't actually work? They did studies,” Cassie said, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. The other agent pulled her shirt up over her head, it was caught between her arms and the back of the chair. He hooked up the jumpers to Cassie's nipples, cold steel digging painfully into her. “Try me,” she said, and a current coursed through her body, pain screaming through every nerve. Cassie moaned with pain, but she kept her mouth shut.

“Tell me what you know about the poltergeist,” the Majestic agent said again, and Cassie decided she was just going to tune him out. Nothing she said would make them stop, and when they did stop it would probably be to shoot her. Pain shot through her body again and she whimpered, tugging against her restraints even though she knew it wouldn't do anything. The agent was talking, Cassie already knew what he was saying and she didn't care anyway. She looked around for a way out, trying to be surreptitious about it. She didn't want to take another jolt from that battery, but mostly she didn't want to die here. Not when Toluca County was still in danger because of the can of worms she'd helped open. “I don't deserve to die,” she whispered, and then her nerves were alive with pain again, and this time she screamed.

There was a set of kitchen knives on the counter. Cassie tugged on the chair, dragging it to the side bit by bit, and did her best to act like she was trying to get away from the battery. She hardly ever used her mesmer powers, but they were always there, a constant electric hum around everything, the fields that bound atoms together, a background noise she usually forgot about. But the electromagnetics that Cassie could, in theory, use to read minds were also the force that bound all matter together, and every atom of reality could be manipulated with it. She tugged on those fields with her mind, pulling the knives out and towards one of the agents, who raised a hand up and halted them mid-air with his own mesmer powers.

Of course they'd have genen on their team, Cassie thought, it made the interrogation go faster. Lucky that she never really gave any thought to the question he kept asking. Another jolt of electricity ripped through her nerves and now she was screaming in pain. The punishments on the Calypso were bad enough, but they happened and then they were over. That this might be the last thing Cassie would ever feel filled her with a desperate horror.

The electricity coursed through her again, and she could hear the agent speaking, still repeating the exact same question. She could also hear the door splintering open, though, and that got the attention of the agents. One nodded at the other, who then went to investigate, drawing his sidearm. The one who stayed behind turned to Cassie and asked again “tell me everything you know about the poltergeist.”

When Cassie said nothing, he flooded her with pain again, Cassie sobbed and struggled against the cuffs, and she could hear gunshots. “In here!” she shouted, “I'm in here!” She had no idea who broke down the door or whether or not they got shot to death, but she couldn't bear the thought that they weren't here to save her. She screamed in pain from another jolt from the battery.

A paper bag was tossed from around the corner, sliding across the floor, and with a hissing noise it erupted into a bright white light. Cassie closed her eyes and looked away, her eyes seared by the flash, and heard more gunshots. The hissing stopped, and she opened her eyes. Around the edges of the afterimage, she could see the Majestic agent dead, blood pooling out of a hole punched through his head. Cassie felt nauseous, although her mind having been frayed by the battery jolts probably wasn't helping.

Jack stepped into view, dark-haired and pale-skinned, marked by the same magic as Cassie. He checked a corner, then backed towards Cassie with one hand still on his gun and released her nipples from the cable jumpers. Cassie moaned with renewed agony as he removed one, then the other, and tugged her shirt back down. He took a final look around before kneeling down next to Cassie and pulling out a knife with his spare hand, cutting the ties, and then helping her get her cuffed hands off the chair. “How are you for walking?” he asked, setting her back down on the chair with her hands on the same side of the backrest as the rest of her and giving her a kiss on the forehead.

“I just...I need a minute,” Cassie said, “I'll be fine in a bit.”

Jack searched the bodies and found the keys to Cassie's cuffs. “How did you find me?” Cassie asked.

“Amber called me. I found you halfway through your chase and followed you from there,” Jack said as he released Cassie's wrists from the tight, cold embrace of the cuffs. She rubbed her wrists and sighed with relief. “Are you alright,” he asked, offering a hand to help her up.

“Mostly,” Cassie said, taking his hand and standing up from the chair. She'd had some practice muscling through pain lately, but the car jumpers were worse than anything she'd had so far.

“Let's go,” Jack said, “if they have more agents nearby they could show up any second, and if they know there's danger they'll probably bring a SWAT team.”

“They could have intel here,” Cassie said, looking around at the house. It was pretty tiny. Kitchen, living room, couple of bedrooms. It wouldn't take long to search. “They don't have any more agents in Echoshire, anyway, not according to my intel.”

“How good's your intel?” Jack asked.

“It's been pretty good so far, but I guess not perfect,” Cassie said. “It'll only take a few minutes to search the house, you can leave early if you want,” Cassie said, “I'll get in touch with you through Neil.”

“It'll go faster together,” Jack said, “I'll search in here and get the car ready, you search the bedrooms,” he pulled out his phone, “I'm setting this for five minutes, when it goes off I'm yelling for you and we're leaving immediately.”

“Okay,” Cassie said, nodded, and ran through the living room and into a bedroom. She grabbed a pillow, yanked off the case, and shoved a tablet inside, then began tearing apart desk drawers. A few loose pieces of paper had notes scribbled on them, probably supernatural, so she shoved those in, then went through the drawers, pulling out the clothes, but found nothing hiding underneath them. A search of the closet turned up nothing but a few cards shoved into a spare pair of pants, probably for a coffee shop or something, but Cassie grabbed them without wasting time to examine them.

She conducted a similar search of the other room, snagging the tablet, a few more scraps of paper, and a spare wallet, and then started checking the desk drawers for fake bottoms. She found one in one of the side drawers, popping it out to find a small black book. “Think I know what this is,” she said, and shoved it in the pillow sack with the others.

“Cassie, let's go!” Jack shouted from outside, and she ran from the room and into the garage. The garage door was already open. The wiring in the dashboard had been ripped out and tampered with. Cassie jumped into the backseat, Jack was already waiting in the front, and as soon as she was halfway in the door, he peeled out into the driveway on manual and then started driving, trying to stay casual, towards the center of town.

“They've probably got a GPS on this thing,” Cassie said.

“It's just to get us away from the house,” Jack said, “once we have some distance we'll just pull over and leg it.” They passed a police car headed to the house with sirens on a few blocks out. If Majestic Thirteen was tracking them, they weren't in direct communication with the officers. Even so, Jack pulled over a block after, having transferred all their stolen intel from the sack to Cassie's backpack, and they legged it a few more blocks until they found a roadside cafe near the admin district.

After scanning the crowd, or rather the lack thereof, Jack said “I think it's good. Let's get a coffee or something. Where've you been?”

Cassie could lie to him like she'd lied to Amber, Neil, and Lionel. There was no excuse to be made for keeping Jack safe, he was already neck deep in the occult, but Cassie didn't know if she could trust him. She knew that some kind of cult was most likely responsible for completing the Hellmouth, and Jack might be a part of it. He had recruited both Cassie and Jeanette. He had always pushed the group to uncover more occult lore. “You know people have been disappearing since we opened that connection to Naraka?” Cassie asked, punching an order into the auto-vendor.

“Yeah,” Jack said, “you didn't answer my question, though.”

“Did you know we'd be letting an army of murderers into Toluca when we opened it?” Cassie asked.

“I...Not exactly,” Jack said. “We both knew that there were horrible demons out there. Neither of us knew so many would come through so quickly.”

“I...I'm not saying I blame you,” Cassie said.

“No, you didn't say that,” Jack said, “until just now.”

And Cassie knew, now that her head had caught up with her heart, that while she might not have been blaming Jack, she was hoping he'd say something that would put him to blame instead of her. And that was not who Cassie wanted to be. “Jeanette was a spy for Majestic Thirteen,” Cassie said, “she would've done anything to stop that ritual from completing. So someone else completed it instead of her. And from the rate of disappearances, the demons knew there'd be a gate open. The little ones started coming through as soon as there was a crack, it didn't take any time at all for word to get around. There's a cult in Toluca, and they knew when we were completing the Hellmouth. If Jeanette works for Majestic Thirteen and I know I'm not part of a cult, then...”

“Where is all this information coming from?” Jack asked.

“I have...An employer,” Cassie said, “his information has all been correct so far.”

“And by an employer you mean an owner?” Jack asked.

Cassie turned the question over in her head. But even though she couldn't trust Jack, she didn't know he was an enemy, either. She might keep some secrets from him, but she wouldn't lie to him. “Yes,” she said, “an owner. Someone with a vested interest in keeping Toluca in one piece bought me.”

“Cassie, did they...Did they hurt you?” Jack asked.

“No,” Cassie said. Sure, she didn't want to lie, but this was for Jack's benefit. She didn't want him worrying. “I'm fine. It's not that different from the Lockhearts, really. Except for the part where I get chased by ghosts. And anyways. You're dodging the subject. How do I know you're not part of the cult?”

“Cassie, we were not that careful covering our tracks on this,” Jack said, “we pretty much let every occultist within three counties of here know we were up to something. We knew they wouldn't report us to the police.”

“We got most of them arrested for being shitty people,” Cassie said. She could still remember the filthy, bloodstained mattress with a pair of shackles attached to it she'd found in one of the houses she'd visited, an occultist she was setting up a trade with for the Encyclopedia not long before her arrest. The shackles were child-sized.

“Not all of them,” Jack said, “and not immediately. If there's a cult nearby they must've thought it was fucking Christmas when other occultists showed up. Give us the right information and we'd be cats' paws to open up a connection to Naraka for them.”

“Or maybe they were more straightforward about it,” Cassie said.

“What do you want me to do, swear a blood oath?” Jack asked.

“I...I'm sorry, Jack. I mean, I don't know you're not in the cult, but I don't know you are either and I shouldn't be grilling you like this,” Cassie said. “I...I just wanted someone to blame. Other than myself.”

“Cassie, this was an accident. It's not your fault,” Jack said.

“Yes it is!” Cassie said, “we knew Naraka could be dangerous, we knew they've done terrible things to their enemies, and we damn well knew that the last interaction they had with humanity was as mortal enemies! And-and I'm not saying you should feel bad about it, Jack, I'm not your priest, but I knew something like this was possible every moment I worked to get the Hellmouth open, and now it's open and I can't pretend this was some unforeseeable tragedy. It's...It's my fault these people are dying.”

“Maybe a little,” Jack said, “and yeah, I do feel kinda bad about all this. But if your numbers on the disappearances are accurate and there is a cult here, we were manipulated into this. And we're here fixing it, aren't we?”

“I guess,” Cassie said.

“Let's focus on solving this,” Jack said, nodding his head towards Cassie's pack, “what've we got from the Majestic safehouse?”

Cassie took a deep breath and dug around her pack for what she'd recovered. “These,” she said, spreading the slightly crinkled papers out onto a patio table. “Looks like...otherworld openings.”

“That'll get you into Mictlan,” Jack said.

“I still have the Encyclopedia Mortuis,” Cassie said, “could've gotten into Mictlan on my own. But they've got Naraka entrances, too.”

“You planning on visiting Naraka?” Jack asked.

“No, but from the other side they're Naraka exits, which could be extremely fucking handy,” Cassie said. “Plus, Annwyn. In case I ever want to vacation in Annwyn.” It's definitely the least fucked up otherworld, so that wasn't even entirely a joke. “Lots of notes on the poltergeist, too. Mostly stuff I've already got. Did the scoobies fill you in?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, “although I'm not sure how distorted the information I got was. Amber's convinced you're working for M13.”

“Well, the poltergeist is the result of a bunch of mysterious disappearances, they mostly show up as disembodied shadows,” Cassie said, “and Majestic Thirteen knew it.” With a breath, she pulled the book out of her pack, “I've been putting this off, but...There's this thing, too. This book has wound up in the possession of multiple victims of the mysterious disappearances at the school. Neil wasn't able to trace it to all of them, but that's probably just because most people wouldn't open up. Plus, some of the victims might not have had anyone paying close enough attention to notice what they were doing, even if it was unusual.”

“Do we know anything else about it?” Jack asked.

“Just that people who read it usually end up disappearing,” Cassie said. Jack put a hand out to take the first look. “Make sure I don't disappear,” Cassie said, and opened it up. The first page was a standard craft shop diary “property of ______” on an otherwise blank page. A name had been written on the inside of the page, once, but now the surface of the page had been torn off where the writing once was. Around the edges of the tear Cassie could see the corners of a rectangular box drawn around the edge and completely filled in. Looks like whoever owned this diary had second thoughts about identifying themselves, and took at least two separate attempts at disguising their identity.

They hadn't ripped out any of the pages behind, though, so with a bit of careful examination Cassie could make out the imprint on them left behind by the pen pressing through from the page above. “Ann...Annette Alv-" Cassie stopped for a moment. “Alvarez. The girl who was pushed off the school.”

She skimmed through the first few dozen pages of the diary, and it was a perfectly normal schoolgirl's banal daily struggles. She brooded about her friends. She wrote naive fantasies about eternal romance with her fifteen-year old crush. She raged about how unfair her parents were and failed to articulate a point even when she had one. She helpfully dated all of the entries.

The closest thing to something unusual was that she seemed preoccupied with death and constantly worried about not having enough time to see all the fantastic places of the galaxy, particularly what with luminal delays and all. At one point about four full pages were dedicated to charts and lists of pros and cons of seeing various locations and the time it would take to reach them, all made with the atrociously optimistic assumption that the Toluca government would grant her an indefinite travel visa so she could leave the planet and never return by the time she's twenty-five. Plutocrats don't usually release their grip on courtiers so easily, but being fair to Annette, the extent of the control of the plutocracy over county and national governments isn't common knowledge. On the other hand, Annette didn't seem to be aware of how relativity worked and how short the trip would seem from the perspective of the travelers.

A few months' worth of entries in, Cassie reached about a half-dozen missing pages. The imprint left on lower pages was practically unreadable two pages past where something was originally written, but Cassie could still make out fragments of the very last page torn out. From what she could make out, Annette was both scared and excited about some guy. The text on the page Cassie was trying to read imprints on was all ciphered, which made the plaintext imprints slightly easier to read, but there were still large chunks missing from the passages. Cassie was able to find a name, though.

The man she was meeting was Edward Lyon. One of the Lyons, Echoshire's governing courtier family, assigned by the plutocratic Lockheart family to oversee the day-to-day operations of the small town. They acted as police chiefs and judges and city councilors, occasionally exchanging a family member with one of the other major courtier families, so that a Lyon would run off to be a councilor for Ashen Grove and one of Ashen Grove's Townsend family would be sent to be a judge in return, or whatever. You couldn't get any more powerful than that as a courtier.

Cassie ran the first few ciphered words through one of the simple ciphers she knew, and almost immediately cracked it. It was a basic Caesarian cipher, favorite of twelve-year olds trying to keep their little sister from reading their secrets since time immemorial and outdated as any kind of serious encryption for millennia. Cassie didn't need scratch paper to crack this one, since she had most of the shifts memorized, although it did reduce her wpm by rather a lot. There was pretty blatant documentation of Mictlan, here, including a lengthy description on the different types of ghosts that seemed like it was only a few iterations away from the Encyclopedia Mortuis description. Probably someone had a copy of at least that passage, and told Annette, and Annette recorded it as close to word-for-word as she could remember. And maybe the someone who told her was Edward Lyon.

Later pages used the Templar cipher, although it took Cassie a minute to figure out it was a slightly altered version of it, but since the alterations only made it simpler, it wasn't any harder to translate. Discussions of Mictlan continued, including some descriptions of basic necromancy, though it was all theoretical rather than practical. Annette wrote feverishly about how surely somewhere in all this lore about death must be the secret to extending life.

The last two pages with any writing on them faced one another and just had the name “Michelle” written in angry script all across them. This craft diary didn't have lined paper to begin with, so the text had always been a bit sloppy and irregular, but now there wasn't even any attempt to make it line up. It was more like Annette just wrote the first couple in a fit of rage and then obsessively filled in every blank space left. Cassie doubted Annette was alive when she wrote those last two pages.

“This is the diary of a girl named Annette Alvarez,” Cassie said. “She was studying necromancy under Edward Lyon, but then she was shoved off the school by Michelle Hoffman back in 2359. Annette was afraid of heights, and Michelle was part of some prank over it. There was supposed to be one of those big skydiving cushions to catch her, but Michelle forgot to double check which side of the school she was on before she shoved. Annette landed on her head, neck snapped.”

“That's not a poltergeist, that's one wraith,” Jack said, “and no way all this damage is the result of one wraith, I don't care if she was some cultist apprentice. And why is this wraith so fucking bad at picking targets, anyway? Cases of mistaken identity in wraith vengeance quests happen, but this poltergeist has killed like twelve people. That fits the profile for an insane, unled poltergeist better than a wraith-led one.”

“I don't think she is picking targets. Annette died in 2356. Michelle died later that year. The disappearances in the school didn't even start until 2359,” Cassie said.

“I've never heard of a ghost murdering people for revenge after they already had their revenge,” Jack said.

“Michelle died pretty far outside the range of the poltergeist's current haunt. Annette might've been more mobile on her own, but Michelle also might've just legit killed herself out of guilt,” Cassie said, “I mean, these two were friends. Annette mentioned going to Michelle's birthday party early in the diary, they had a great time. I'm positive Michelle didn't mean to hurt her, I wouldn't be surprised if she really did kill herself. Maybe Annette still wants revenge.”

“Annette knows how Mictlan works, doesn't she?” Jack said, “so as soon as she heard Michelle died, and I can't imagine the school wouldn't have been buzzing about it, Annette would've known to go find her in Mictlan. That girl probably got dropped off every tall building in Mictlan's Echoshire for her entire short existence as a wraith.”

“Maybe something to do with Lyon? Why'd he start teaching her in the first place?” Cassie asked.

“Why did I find you and Jeanette? Why did Jeanette go find the scoobies? Helping hands are hard to come by. Maybe he just wanted someone for a synchronized ritual halfway across the county,” Jack said.

“We're on the wrong track anyway,” Cassie said, “you said it yourself, on her own Annette is one wraith. The only reason she's on a rampage now is because she has a poltergeist to throw around. And that poltergeist has got to be the only reason she's still sustaining herself. So where did the-" but once she'd spelled it out, it was obvious. “Fuck, she made it herself. Of course, because she's a Mictlan occultist.”

“She made a poltergeist out of people she murdered and now she's feeding on it? Is that possible?” Jack asked.

“It's happened before,” Cassie said, “it's in the Encyclopedia Mortuis.”

“How come the poltergeist doesn't turn on her?” Jack asked.

“She must have some way of marking targets for the geist. Some way of making all the others think that the target is Annette,” Cassie said. “Wisps aren't very hard to fool, and with the mob psychology poltergeists run on, you only need to fool a few and the rest will follow.” She was beginning to stray into how she planned on pacifying the thing, though, and she wasn't sure if she trusted Jack enough to share those details with him. If he was working with the cult, and that was the simplest explanation for how the cult set up Cassie to be their cat's paw, then he might tie up a loose end if he knew when she would be in Mictlan, another dimension where he wouldn't have to bother hiding the body.

But wasn't this kind of paranoia exactly what had gotten under Cassie's skin with Amber? Maybe she was being unfair to Jack. Or maybe she'd been unfair to Amber. “Then we need to find out how she's marking targets and use it against her,” Jack said.

“The book might have something to do with it. If Annette asked for her diary back before killing them, the wisps might remember her as the person who owns the book. Then when new victims show up carrying the book, she can get the poltergeist after them,” Cassie said.

“If the poltergeist kills someone for carrying the book, Annette would be hard-pressed to get the book from them before they died. Especially without getting the poltergeist redirected to her,” Jack said.

“She doesn't need new victims to associate the book with their death once the poltergeist is already formed,” Cassie said, “poltergeists can suck any wisp into its gestalt. She uses the ghosts of the people she killed personally to start an attack on whoever's carrying the book, and the rest of the geist follows on autopilot.”

“Possible,” Jack said, “but it could be a million other things. Maybe the victims all have the same hairstyle and color, or maybe they share a similar facial structure, or maybe they were all wearing similar looking clothes.”

“We can rule out that last one,” Cassie said, “Neil said that janitors, teachers, and students were all victims. Janitors have different uniforms from students.”

“You get my point, though. The list of potential targeting methods is endless,” Jack said.

“But the book is something Annette can control more easily, and we know it's related somehow. It can't be a coincidence that so many of the victims have been reading her diary,” Cassie said. “It might not be a guarantee but I definitely think it's probable.”

“That's...That's a fair point,” Jack said, “so I guess what it comes down to is, do you absolutely need to get rid of this poltergeist?”

“It's going to keep killing people if I don't,” Cassie said.

“If you end up dead, it'll keep killing people anyway,” Jack said.

“I have to try,” Cassie said.

Jack sighed. “Someday your hero act is gonna get you killed. I hope I'm not around to see it,” he said, “I'll meet you at the school's east entrance in an hour, need to get some things together before then.”

“Jack, why are you helping me?” Cassie asked.

“Why do I need a specific reason?” Jack asked.

It's not like he hadn't helped her a million times before, and vice-versa. And how else was Jack supposed to prove he was trustworthy if Cassie wouldn't trust him enough to help her with anything? “I...I'll see you there,” Cassie said.

The school itself contained a Mictlan well, which was no surprise since it was the haunt of a poltergeist. Getting through the doors this time would be no harder than the last, and the haunt wouldn't have time to pick up strength if they went directly to the well, a darkened janitor's closet, and performed the ritual to get into Mictlan. Reaching Mictlan wouldn't be a problem.

Cassie waited for Jack at the edge of the parking lot. When he arrived, he arrived with a heavy pack and Amber. “Why is she here?” Cassie asked, “this isn't safe for her.”

“Is that the excuse you're going with?” Amber asked.

“Amber,” Jack said with a look. She fell silent. “I don't like operating with less than three. Hell, three is pretty low for confronting a poltergeist. Amber's by far the most committed of the scoobies.”

“I'm not supposed to let her get hurt,” Cassie said. She was already twisting Enlil's instructions into loopholes over letting her help with the research.

“She lives in Toluca, Cassie. She's more involved than she should be whether you like it or not,” Jack said.

Cassie could stamp her feet and demand she get her way. But Jack would leave, and Cassie wasn't sure she could blame him. And if Jack was only bringing Amber to help with an ambush, well...Cassie had very poor odds against a poltergeist on her own anyway.

She could always call the kill team. Annette and her wisps would be corporeal in Mictlan, and they would dissolve when hit with enough force. Like, say, from a bullet. Cassie could just get them into Mictlan using one of the wells and they could mow the poltergeist down. She'd be whipped for that. Maybe that would be worth it?

Cassie decided it wouldn't be almost immediately. She did not need to be whipped any time she wanted to accomplish anything. Enlil didn't know Toluca or Amber the way Cassie did. Just because she perhaps deserved Calypso more than she thought didn't mean that obeying Enlil's every command was wise. And just because she had fucked up one ritual didn't mean she had to run crying to Master every time a supernatural threat reared its ugly head. Maybe most people couldn't handle a poltergeist on their own, but Cassie wasn't most people. She was a certified genius and an occult prodigy. She'd accomplished plenty with only two other occultists in the past. “Alright,” Cassie said, but turned to Amber and said “be careful, alright?”

“I can take care of myself,” Amber said.

“What about the pack?” Cassie asked Jack, “what's in there?”

“A backup plan,” Jack said.

“Meaning?” Cassie asked.

“You remember the North Grove Apartments?” Jack said. A small poltergeist had formed there when they'd tried to contact the victims of a fire there. Jack had banished them with an abjuration ritual.

“I thought you didn't have the materials to do that again?” Cassie asked.

“I scrounged some up,” Jack said, “if we can't get the poltergeist to rip itself apart, we need a plan B.”

“A plan B that requires each of us to be in a different place, alone, in the middle of a poltergeist's haunt,” Cassie said.

“Do you have an alternative?” Jack asked.

Cassie paused to try and think of something. But she'd been trying to think of something for hours. She wasn't going to come up with some brilliant way to beat a poltergeist at no risk with only three people and a handful of ritual supplies in the next five minutes. It was Jack's way or the kill team. “I guess not. But listen, if we have to abjure it, we set up the ritual, we complete the ritual, and we all run away with tails between our legs, no bravado, alright?” She was saying it to Jack, but she meant it for Amber. She just didn't want Amber to feel confronted.

“Of course,” Jack said.

Amber didn't have a gun of her own last Cassie checked, so Jack must've provided the one she had now. The three of them stepped into the school, flashlights in one hand, pistols in the other. Amber kept hers raised like she'd seen in the movies. Cassie and Jack didn't bother. There was nothing corporeal to shoot at on this side of reality. Jack's flashlight panned across a disembodied shadow. “Something there!” Amber said, pointing the gun at it.

“Don't worry about it,” Cassie said.

“It won't hurt us,” Jack said, “we need to keep moving.”

Amber looked from Cassie to Jack, but Jack wasn't stopping so Amber followed him. The three of them crammed into the supply closet, Cassie chanted a few words, and they stepped out. The Mictlan version of the school didn't look very different. Cassie expected that if she went through lockers she'd find outdated tablets, that if she turned on the classroom blackboards they would have lesson plans dated to the last decade on them. But Toluca was a recently settled place, and most of the ghosts here could agree on what the school was supposed to look like, more or less.

Cassie wasn't quite sure when the ghosts showed up, but as the three started moving through the school's halls, they were surrounded, and the shadows weren't disembodied anymore. The dead lined the corridor and watched as they went past, students with faces disfigured by cuts, a janitor with her head caved in, someone so burnt up Cassie couldn't even identify who they might have been.

At the end of the hallway, Annette appeared, her head hanging loose from her snapped neck, and began shuffling towards them. Cassie stopped and dropped her pack to the ground, dug around for it until she found the book. “I found your diary,” Cassie said, pulling it out and immediately tossing it to Annette. She caught it.

Cassie swallowed. There was no telling whether she'd guessed right, but there was only one way to find out, and she'd have to do it before Annette convinced the others to attack. That would come without warning. Annette didn't need to speak to communicate with the other ghosts of the gestalt. “You...You look like you've seen better days,” Cassie said to one of the ghosts, the janitor with her head caved in. She was the one Neil told Cassie had the diary, so she knew for a fact she was one of Annette's victims.

“What's wrong?” Cassie asked, “what happened?” The ghost shied away from her. “Can you remember who did this to you?” Cassie asked. Out the corner of her eye she could see the beams of Amber and Jack's flashlights flickering a bit, the ghost hissed softly. “Can you remember what she looked like? Can you remember her face?” Cassie asked. If this person could remember anything at all, it was probably Annette's snapped neck. “Is she here?” Cassie asked. The ghost looked around the corridor until her eyes locked onto Annette.

The flashlights were flickering in and out, now. Cassie moved onto another ghost, this one holding his intestines in with one hand. Cassie had no idea if this was one of Annette's victims or a general poltergeist victim. She was just hoping to get lucky. “What about you? Can you remember what happened? Can you remember who's responsible?” Cassie asked. “Try to focus on her face. What did her face look like?” The ghost pointed a listless finger towards Annette, his eyes still locked on Cassie.

Lockers were beginning to open and slam themselves, several of the ghosts were starting to draw in around Cassie, Amber, and Jack, the flashlights flickered to life only intermittently. “Cassie, we need to run soon, be right behind me,” Jack said, his hands tight on his weapon.

“Can you remember?” Cassie asked the ghost who was burnt up, “can you remember who did this to you?”

The ghost looked about in confusion, but then a shriek filled the corridor and objects from the lockers began flying out towards Cassie. “Cassie, run!” and she bolted away, doing her best to stay away from the objects the geist was hurling. She could hardly see a thing through the chaos, but she could see that the ghosts, losing coherence now into the misty half-forms as they sometimes did, were circling about one another more than Cassie and her allies. The poltergeist was fighting itself.

The three knocked over a few desks for barriers to hide behind and crouched. The shrieking went on outside unabated. “Can't we help the ones on our side?” Amber asked.

“How'll we know which is which?” Jack asked.

Amber didn't respond. Soon, the collection of pads, the cup of styluses, and other detritus on the teacher's desk began to rattle around, and then hurled itself towards them, and they ducked behind their makeshift barricade. Then the other desks began to rattle and slide across the floor towards them. “I think Annette won,” Cassie said.

“Time for plan B,” Jack said, pulling his pack off his back and retrieving a set of rune bones. “I'll take the skull, Amber, you take the pelvic,” he handed her the pelvic bone and three of the long, skinny leg bones. “Take that to the center of the cafeteria.” Jack turned to Cassie without offering any further instruction, so he must've told Amber how to arrange the bones and what to chant in advance. He was probably expecting this from the beginning. “Cassie, you can handle the rib cage?”

Cassie grabbed the rib cage with one hand, the other clutching her sidearm. A few desks bumped into the edge of their barricade. If she was going to argue, she would have to do it fast. And she knew she should. She had never performed this ritual before. She wanted to say that she could handle it. She was an occult prodigy and regularly nailed complex rituals on the first try. But if she'd been more cautious about the Hellmouth, maybe none of this would be happening. Maybe Annette would still be haunting single people for months at a time, not knocking off a victim every two days.

The blackboard came to life, a closeup of Annette's unhinged face screaming loud enough to make Cassie cover her ears. Jack fired a few shots towards the screen and it went dark, cracks sprayed across its surface. Cassie could hear the room groaning above. Bits of plaster shook down. “That ceiling's coming down!” Cassie said, picking up the rib cage.

“Run!” Jack shouted, and they sprinted for an exit. Jack and Cassie ran for the exit across from the one they'd entered from, which was closer – they had checked for ways out as soon as they arrived. Amber ran back the way they'd come, stopped halfway, and started to follow, but Jack said “no, go!” pointing towards the door they'd first come in through, now closer to Amber. Amber sprinted for the door and the roof came crashing down.

Jack waved a hand to clear the dust from the air in front of him, coughing, and shouted “Amber, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Amber called from the other side, “I'm fine, I don't see any ghosts, either.”

“Do you have all four bones? Pelvic and three straight ones?” Jack asked.

“They're here,” Amber said.

“Any of them broken?” Jack asked.

“I...I don't think so,” Amber said.

“Good. Get to the cafeteria and set them up,” Jack said.

“Jack, I don't think we should leave her alone,” Cassie said.

“We're all in danger. Faster we complete the ritual, sooner we're safe. Get to the atrium and set up yours,” Jack said. He shifted uneasily on his feet for a moment, then wrapped his arms around Cassie and held her tight. “Be quick. Stay safe,” he said, and then released her to jog down the hall with his skull.

“You too,” Cassie called after him, and started running the opposite direction. Cassie might not like the plan, but Jack was right. There was no time to argue. Annette did not take long to recover strength.

The lockers began to slam themselves open and shut while Cassie ran through the hall, the rib cage tucked under one arm. She saw a face in the shadows and hammered the trigger on her gun. The face vanished, the lockers behind sparked as bullets tore through them, and Cassie wasn't sure if she'd hit anything or if there'd been anything there to hit.

Cassie fired at the windowed doors at the end of the hall as she approached them. The windows splintered and crumbled and she slowed just a moment to crouch through the frame. The atrium had a fountain in the middle, its waters black as onyx, surrounded by four curved benches that formed a circle. Or perhaps a crosshair.

She set the rib cage down and unpacked the bones, a fearful eye on her surroundings. To one corner she could see the cafeteria. Amber was already inside, looking around fearfully with her weapon drawn. She looked to what should be the other corner of the triangle and saw a classroom with a corridor on the floor above it. The hall was empty, but Cassie could hear the crashing and clanging of objects hitting lockers. A wisp of one of Annette's victims materialized on the upper floor, there were gunshots, the window was shot out and the wisp was hit by a bullet and dissolved into an ethereal fog. Jack ran through the corridor and tore around a corner to some stairs. He appeared in the classroom a moment later, knocking over a desk to make room for the ritual.

Cassie had arrayed the phalanges and stray ribs into the intricate pattern that would abjure the wisps. Jack would be doing the same with the skull and vertebrae, but Cassie couldn't see him once he knelt down to arrange them. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began the ritual chants. The bones began to glow with a pale light. She could feel Amber's chanting as well, vibrating through her bones and echoing into her head. Soon Jack's chants joined them as well.

Cassie could see a flash of white light, not through her closed eyelids but within them, and a half-dozen screams of fury and rage that faded away in seconds. She opened her eyes and got to her feet to look around. The bones were blackened and charred, but Jack and Amber both seemed to be fine. Jack walked through the classroom door and out into the atrium, Cassie began walking towards the cafeteria. And then the doors and blinds on the cafeteria slammed themselves shut.

Cassie sprinted to the cafeteria and tugged at the door. Jack fired a pair of bullets through one of the windows and it shattered, leaving two tiny holes in the blinds. Cassie ran to the blinds and put a finger through one of the holes, then pulled until it ripped wide enough for her to step up to the window frame and through the blinds.

Annette had already backed Amber into a corner near the serving counter, Amber's gun tossed twenty feet aside, and Annette had started beating Amber bloody with a tray. Cassie sprinted towards the two of them while Jack climbed through the window behind her. Annette smacked Amber across the face one last time, a handful of teeth flying out while Amber screamed and sobbed. Then Annette grabbed a butter knife from the utensils cups and shoved it into Amber's eye.

Amber's screams fell silent instantly. Cassie could barely hear while Jack ran past her, leveled his gun with Annette, and fired. Out her peripheral vision she could see Annette stepping backward as the bullets entered her chest, the rage on her face before it dissolved. But she couldn't hear the howl of fury. She could hear, faintly, a decayed voice whispering “I won't go alone.”

But mostly, she could see the pain and terror on Amber's mutilated face, her one good eye staring back at Cassie while blood pulsed out of the other.

Cassie was hitched to the ceiling so high that even standing on tiptoe her cuffs dug painfully into her wrists. The whip cut a lot deeper, though, drawing out a gasp and a sob. “I told you specifically not to get any of those three into danger!” Master Enlil said to her, standing opposite her naked body. Mira stood behind her, delivering the blows. The whip didn't cut the deepest, though.

“I'm sorry, Master,” Cassie said, head bowed. She could serve up excuses about how he'd technically only told her not to go looking for them, and that since she had stumbled across them herself she had technically followed orders. But Amber wasn't just technically dead.

The whip cut into her back again, and Cassie screamed from the pain. It was up to seven blows already and Cassie wasn't sure when Mira would stop. “How many apologies will it take to bring back the dead?” Enlil asked.

“I...I can't, Master,” Cassie said, and then cried out again as the whip split her. Goosebumps had spread out all across her naked skin, legs trembling.

“I trusted you. Ahead of any of the others I trusted you, and the first time, the very first time I let you act without direct oversight you completely ignore one of the very few direct orders I gave you,” Enlil said.

“Yes, Master. I'm sorry, Master,” Cassie said, and the whip carved into her again, drawing a scream that tapered into a ragged sob. What else was she supposed to say? Enlil's anger cut deeper than the whip. His anger didn't cut the deepest, though.

“Why did you drag them into this?” Enlil asked.

“I...I thought I could keep her safe,” Cassie said. Again the whip cut into her and she screamed, tugging against her chains on instinct alone.

“From a poltergeist?” Enlil asked.

“I-I'm sorry, Master,” Cassie said, “I swear I really am, I didn't want this to happen. Please...Please let me go back. What's happening to Toluca is my fault, I have to clean it up. I have to, please. I swear on my life I will never disobey you ever again.”

“Are you trying to bargain with me, slave?” Enlil asked.

“No, Master,” Cassie said, “I am promising you I won't do this ever again. Please. Please let me fix this. I swear I'll do everything you say, exactly how you say it.”

Enlil grabbed her chin and pushed her head up to meet his gaze. She swallowed and fought the urge to turn her eyes away. “If anyone is ever so much as bruised as a result of your disobedience again, you will never go back to the surface. Do you understand, cunt?”

“Yes, Master,” Cassie said, “thank you, Master.”

Enlil dropped her chin and left the room. The door slid shut behind him, and a moment later the lights flicked off, leaving Cassie alone in the holding cell, wrists still hitched so high she struggled to find her footing, alone and sobbing, renewed waves of pain spilling over her with every stray breeze of the ventilation across her tortured back.

But what cut the deepest was that she could still see Amber's face.

Written by

Kevin Locke

www.patreon.com/KevinLocke

Illustrated by

Katsur

katsur.deviantart.com

Edited by

Kay Dee

literotedit37@gmail.com