Oh, my God. It can’t be.
Briar.
I rub my eyes.
She’s still there.
Fucking Briar. St. Catherine’s golden girl, my nemesis, the one who always had the right answer and the sharper tongue. My bully. The one who used to snatch my diary and read it out loud to the other girls all the while I wanted to die of shame.
And the last time I saw her—what was it, two years ago? She was still the system’s darling. She’d made it to university, then had landed afantastic job, and I’d read about her in the newspaper when the mayor had given her an award. A headline girl. Proof you could escape the gutter. Proof that I hadn’t, and I hated her for it.
But now?—
Her hair has been dyed pink; her body has been mutilated with nipple piercings and a matching pink tail swishing between her legs, like an obscene anime parody. And she’s collared, and chained, an alien trainer’s wet dream, essentially.
Our eyes meet for half a second.
Does she even recognize me in this uniform?
Her handler tugs hard on her leash. “Come on. It’s just the Spire’s pet pretending to be free. She’s not. Keep walking, or I’ll swat your ass.”
Briar stumbles forward.
I stand frozen. My mind is spinning. Part of me wants to laugh, ugly and cruel. Bad things happen to bad people. She tormented me when we were kids, so maybe karma is real?
But the other part of me can’t stop thinking she’s still Briar. An orphan just like me who survived St. Catherine’s. So why should I not feel any less pity for her than for these other humans that are strangers? They could be just as immoral as Briar.
I stand rooted to the spot thinking about this for a second. Then, I decide I need to go back in and find out if that woman with the pink tail is really Briar or if I’m already going insane from all the abuse I’m witnessing.
Back inside the Atrium, the Sovereigns see me and call me over before I can even draw breath. They are still talking to Aefre, and there’s Briar with them. She’s that fucker Aefre’s pet. As I walk over, I know my face must be covered in sweat, but I don’t trust my hands not to shake, so I don’t wipe it away.
As I stop and join the conversation, I look at Briar more closely, just to make sure it’s not a doppelgänger. But nope. It’s her. It’s definitely Briar. The woman I grew up with.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“I acquired her at the Abyss Nexus from the Octopods for almost nothing. She was literally begging me to take her. And I almost didn’t. She’d bitten off a human male’s penis in her holding cell. But, of course, when I found out what the Octopods had done, it all became clearer.” Aefre strokes Briar’s pink hair like a puppy. “She’d been put in with the males. Who knows why?”
“The lower on the hierarchy of Octopods the less likely they are to know the difference between female and male humans,” Lorian says.
“Now that our liaison has returned, we must make the rounds,” Rafe says politely, and we walk away from Aefre and Briar.
Finally, I have to wipe the sweat from my brow, and I do so with a shaky hand while thinking,Are orphans an alien abduction speciality?
“Are you feeling okay?” Rafe asks.
I nod. “Just that medical thing from before. I’m fine.” I make eye contact with Rafe, and then he looks me up and down as if looking for some damage. No doubt reviewing in his mind if he’d missed anything in his surveillance. However, we’re interrupted by an Imperial man with a lot of jewelry before Rafe can finish his assessment.
Tribune Jin Kol. He looks nothing like I imagined from his picture in the database. Why am I not surprised he’s used an enhanced image to make himself look better?
He has very thin lips that are frowning as he looks me over with cold eyes.
“This is Eve Eden, our new liaison,” Rafe says.
Jin Kol lets his gaze drag down my body and back up again. “I preferred the blonde one,” he says flatly.
The blonde one. Denise.
This man isn’t just unimpressed; he’s dismissing me entirely, not because of my performance but because of my appearance.How is this the man who is supposed to be the champion for humans in the galaxy?I try again, thinking if I can just begin talking to him, perhaps he’ll become interested in what I have to say.
