“Pet, enough, give it a rest,” Boss rumbles. “You know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing? Pointing out the obvious shitty dynamics at play here?” I keep pushing the point, even though it’s not really working for me. My guess is that I’ve tried this in the past. I’m probably going to do a lot of things that already failed in the past. No way to tell that before it happens.
“You’re trying to set us at each other’s throats. It won’t work.”
I think it will, though, because Sharp and Kronos already had a fight of some kind. So.
“I’m just saying Sligtonians are the reason I ended up here, because they steal humans from Earth. They’re bad creatures, and letting them be blown up in interstellar skirmishes seems fine to me.”
“We need to earn money, and you need to be put in your place. Is there any objection to me crating her?” Kronos asks the other two. “She needs to be safely contained or who knows what she’ll do while our backs are turned.”
“I’ll settle her,” Sharp says. “Let’s go, pet.”
“Are you going to be mean to me?”
“No. I’m going to put you in your place.”
He takes me to my bedroom, where he pulls something from the walls, a sort of table thing. It’s soft and padded, but I balk at it because the last time one of the aliens put me on some kind of device thing, I suffered terribly.
“Is this like Kronos’ device?”
“No,” Sharp says. “It’s not. Come and lie up here.”
I hesitate, but then I do as he tells me. Fighting him is only going to result in more pain. He doesn’t say that, but it’s in the air. I crawl up on the table, and try not to squirm too much when he starts strapping me into place, face down. They run over my midsection mostly, not arms, which is good because I am pretty damn tired of being restrained by these aliens. It’s like they can’t trust me without knowing I can’t move.
“Why do you have these?” I ask, pulling at the straps.
“Because you were always naughty.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Quiet,” he says, running a hand down my back in a soothing manner. “I don’t want to have to do the same things that Kronos did to you. I am trying to be more civilized where you are concerned. This doesn’t have to be painful.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No,” he says, chuckling.
“I want you to stay here,” he says, massaging my shoulders and back, legs and even my butt. My body finds his touch to be familiar. I know that because I relax immediately and sink into a state of relaxation and ease. He is making me feel very cared for and very tended to. Almost makes me want to do what he wants.
Almost.
“I can’t be stuck to a board the whole time you guys are fighting aliens,” I say. “That’s no fun.”
“You’ll be safe and comfortable, and if the ship gets into any danger…”
“I’ll be stuck.”
“It’s this, or a cage. I can assure you, you do not like the cage.”
“I don’t?”
“You loathe the cage.”
He says it in a way that strongly implies I’ve been in the cage before and I really don’t enjoy it. I can imagine hating being confined, though being bound isn’t really all that much better.
It’s not fair, is it, that they know me better in some ways than I know myself.
“Who are you?” I ask him the question in a kind of probing, sort of silly voice.
