And if our hearts both gave out now, if our lungs refused to take in oxygen, it would have all been worth it. She has a soul.
When I can’t keep us on the side of the tub any longer, I hold her tight and collapse back into the bath. Ionic water ripples around us, silencing us, and then we come up for air as if we’re being both reborn this time, and maybe we are.
Her first gasps for air match mine, and I stroke her damp hair as I hold her close. “There’s no going back now unless I erase your memory of this.”
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. Through the link, I know what she wants me to do. She doesn’t want to remember that I have seen her true self.
It’s fucking tragic.
After a few minutes, I get out of the bath and access the neural interface. I give Autumn one last look for confirmation. We hold eye contact for a few seconds, I search her blue eyes, and then she nods.
I don’t hesitate, with a wet fingerprint, I delete her memories of the last hour. Her body will remember, but her mind will not.
Am I a monster?
10
COLLARS AND CONTRACTS, EVE
Seven days trappedon a military starship alone should have felt endless, but it hasn’t. It’s felt both scary and exciting.
The Commander has visited me at least once a day, every day, accompanying me on walks through the dark corridors while I asked him questions about what’s to come on the other side of the galaxy.
He’s patiently answered my questions, but with cryptic half-sentences and long pauses, as if clarity itself was classified. Every time I would press him for more information, he would either change the subject or tell me simply it’s just how hierarchy works in the galaxy and I must accept it. The Commander has reminded me more than a hundred times since I arrived on his ship, “You are no longer on Earth, Madame Eve.”
The ship’s computer, by contrast, has drown me ininformation—endless data streams, histories, charts, and protocol files. I have devoured them all until my eyes blurred, but the more I studied, the more I realized how little I understand. And I worry that when I finally step off this ship, I’ll be unprepared. And that my failure will mean I end up a human companion, never able to return to Earth and never free again.
While on the ship, I’ve learned that the humans I met on my first day—the companions—are owned. Not mistreated, at least not in theofficialrecords, but owned all the same. When I asked the Commander to see them again, he refused and asked me, “To what end?”
I couldn’t then, and still can’t now, articulate why I wanted to see them again or what I would ask them that I didn’t already know.And when I think about it too much, I think it must be the Devil inside of me that wants to talk to them again. To understand more deeply, the line that separates us, between the free human and the owned human. And while that knowledge may serve me, it might hurt them. Because, the only thing that separates me from them is where we were born and the necklace around my neck, which is why it seems so unjustifiably cruel.
But, I try not to let myself linger on their fate. At St. Catherine’s, I learned to survive by compartmentalizing everything and locking away the things I couldn’t change. And that habit, for better or worse, has never left me. I’m in no way dismissing the human companions I’ve seen here; I’m simply filing the memory away, as sharp as broken glass, until I can do something.
So I read. I walk. I ask questions that may or may not be answered. And each night in my small bed, I imagine the Celestial Spire and tell myself that if I can learn enough now, maybe I’ll stand a chance of surviving in this alien world. Denise survived after all. She more than survived; she thrived, didn’t she?
Between the Commander’s visits, I’ve also begun reading the Celestial Spire’s employee handbook that Cal downloaded to my e-reader. I thought it would be schedules, uniforms, maybe even instructions on how to make alien coffee. Instead, it reads like a manual for surviving a medieval court dressed up in corporate language.
The rules are endless. How to stand when a superior enters. Which corridors I’m allowed to use. The exact angle of bow required depending on who’s watching. Every detail is designed to remind meI’m not staff; I’m the property of the Sovereigns (yes, they are really referred to as ‘Sovereigns’) as long as I am under contract. But that’s not just because I’m human, it seems that when you work for a company in the galaxy, your employers not only give you wages for work, but also provide you with housing and are responsible for your pastoral care.
One section of the handbook warns that failure to follow proper protocols will not be met with reprimands, but with “public punishments.” And my heart skips a beat as I skim the disciplinary pages hoping my version of the handbookis outdated.
In the next section about special events, a line catches my eye.
“Receptionist-class staff may be called upon for Grand Championships duties as determined by Sovereign rank.”
No explanation or context is given, just those two words:Grand Championships.I wonder if it’s like their Olympics or a famous spaceship race like our Formula One?
I close the handbook and decide to take a break. My mind is spinning with all of this new information. This isn’t just a workplace owned by Reima Two employers; it’s a whole society that expects me to behave as if I were born into their culture.
And unmistakably, it’s a matriarchy; every clause drips with maternal lineage.
After a few minutes of thinking about it, I ask the computer to explain the matriarchy and how it works. After a few hours, I have learned that most women stay planetside, directing empires and corporations while their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers are sent into galaxy to trade, to command ships, to wage wars, and protect their planets.
And where the hell does this leave me?
I’m not from Reima Two, nor am I an Imperial citizen. I’m not even a man. I’m a human woman entering an alien man’s domain, (the Celestial Spire isn’t located on a planet, it’s its own gigantic space station) completely outside their hierarchy. And with dread spreading through my entire body, I know exactly what this makes me. It makes me fucking fresh meat. Literally.
I tighten my fingers around the necklace Clay gave me. It’s the only thing that keeps me from being invisible in this society. No, that's not right. It’s the only thing that keeps me from being a companion, owned, a sex slave.
