“There’s no time like the present.”
CHAPTER 3
ANDROMEDA
Sylvus ison me in a flash, looping silk around my arms to pin them at my sides first. He spins me so rapidly as he wraps me that I have little chance of fighting back.
“Hey!” The world keeps spinning as he deposits me upright in the hammock. This silk wrap is slightly stretchier than it was before, and it reminds me of those sleep cocoons that induce deep body pressure that the ICSS issues to every human. They work like a charm. I always refused to use mine.
“What?” he asks.
“Was that entirely necessary?”
“Yes,” he says, throwing me over his shoulder.
“Ow, hey—why?!”
“Because you don’t seem to have very good self-preservation instincts. And I can’t have the merchandise getting damaged.”
“How can milk get damaged?”
“You’rethe merchandise, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” I grunt and try to shift my weight.
“Stop wiggling.”
“Your shoulder is digging into my diaphragm!”
He gives a weary sigh and slides me off his shoulder, cradling me against his chest.
That licorice scent is the strongest yet.
It’s oddly soothing. Between that and the compressive wrap around me, my lack of sleep over the past couple weeks catches up to me.
I dig my fingernails into my palms to stay alert.
“Do you know how we used to do things before the sanctioned clinics?” His voice is low and rumbling next to my ear, but still with that musical lilt.
My heart rate ticks up again. “No.”
“I will have a good time showing you,” he purrs.
I shudder. There’s something so menacing in how he says that, but… I’m not exactly afraid. More…nervous? Notexcited, necessarily, but perhaps… full ofanticipation.
I’m eager to get the first part of this over with so I can go back to checking out and killing time until I’m rich enough to tell the ICSS to fuck off.
Sylvus carries me into a darker tunnel in this three-dimensional maze.
“I can walk, you know,” I mutter.
He chuckles, navigating a bend in the tunnel. “Up a vertical surface?”
“I have hands. I can also climb.”
“Yes, but climbing wastes energy. Energy I want.”
A tingle rushes from my chest. “Do you haze all your new hucows? Telling themspooky storiesabouthow we did things beforeto get them all jumpy and nervous? It won’t work on me.”
