Page 2 of All or Nothing
Cherry leaned down, holding the icy barrel to my bare neck and making me hiss and flinch. There was a click, a prick, and then things faded to black.
WHEN I NEXTwoke up I was laid out on a thin, upsettingly gritty cot in a cold, bare room that looked an awful lot like a cell. My mouth was cottony and tasted foul, and my head pounded with a nasty headache that had my eyes feeling swollen and hot. My ears were also really bothering me; they felt tender and a little swollen, almost like I was fighting off a double ear infection. I wasn’t naked anymore, I didn’t think, and when I finally got the strength to lift my head I saw I was back in my pajamas—a ratty old t-shirt and flannel shorts. No bra. Very old panties. A terrible look for being out in public. While I had my head up I looked around and was startled to see I wasn’t alone. In the dim yellow light I could see there were four other cots on the floor in here with people passed out on them. My head slammed back down when my weakened muscles gave out, but I managed to roll onto my side and prop my head back up on my hand, being careful of my sore ear, so I could keep looking around.
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to jump up into my throat and choke me, but I forced myself to take deep breaths and calm myself down. I didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t look good, and I’d probably need to keep my cool. My stomach still gave an ominous gurgle though, and I prayed nothing was going to come shooting out of me unexpectedly because I didnotsee a toilet.
Once I’d calmed down a little I started taking stock of the room I was in: I was at one end of the plain rectangular room, with the other cots spaced about four feet away from each other. My nearest neighbor was lying on their side facing away from me and looked like they were wearing a fur coat. They moaned and rolled over onto their back, and I was startled to see that they were dressed like they were auditioning forCats. The fur coat was actually a full-body suit, their face totally transformed by what had to be some really high-quality prosthetics to give an extremely cat-like face.If they would have used this person as a model for that creepy CGI movie it probably would have actually taken off, I thought.I even saw sharp fangs glittering from their sleep-slackened mouth, and the shine of long claws tipping their furry hands in the gloom.
Beyond the cat person was someone huge who looked a lot like an orc with an extra eye in the middle of their forehead. They, too, were asleep, but facing toward me on their side, and unlike me, they were wearing proper clothes that looked like some kind of armor.
I realized that it probably wasn’t a person in a cat suit, now that I’d seen the orc. I swallowed, beginning to sweat with nerves, my efforts at calming down going out the window. Beyond the orc-person, it was too dark to make out much detail about the last two figures, except that one was very small and had either a really long scarf or a tail, and the person on the opposite end of the room was about my size.
“Fuck,” I cursed, dots starting to connect. “I better not be about to get asked if I want to play a game,” I muttered, lowering myself back down and curling into a ball. Humor had gotten me through a lot of tough times, but something was telling me I was in for something that would take an unprecedented amount of jokes to slog through. After all, I’d seen this before, if only in the filthy alien romances that featured abducted women getting rescued and wooed by sexy aliens. I wasn’t stupid: I knew that in real life that scenario was going to be far from flirty and fun. I swallowed, curling in on myself tighter.Okay, since it’s just me I’ll let myself have a little freakout. As a treat. And then I’ll get my shit together and try and figure this out. I can do this. I’m strong and capable.Would someone who just told their abusive mother to go fuck herself give up in the face of alien abduction? I think not.
With no clocks or windows, there was no way for me to tell how much time had passed, but it seemed like it was probably close to an hour before my fellow cellmates started waking up. I was still scared as fuck, but I’d gotten some control over myself and no longer felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack.
The next person to groan to life was the three-eyed orc, who took one look around and swore, rolling to their feet and struggling into a crouch. They patted themselves down, clearly looking for something, then swore again, more violently.
“Fucking Veldar’s tits,” they hissed, and though the voice was rough and gravelly I thought there was something feminine about it overall. “Anyone else awake?” they called softly.
I raised my hand, sitting back up. “Yo. I think you and me are the first ones, though.”
The orc nodded, their eyes darting around the room. Keeping to their crouch, they crept around the perimeter of the room, giving each of the sleeping figures a once-over when they got close. “Any idea where we are?” they growled as they finished their recon. This personscreamedmilitary.
“Nope!” I responded cheerily, trying to lighten the mood. “And my name is Joss, by the way. Or Joslyn if you’re feeling fancy.” I didn’t trust my legs to hold my weight to go over and try and shake their hand, but I’d read enough alien romances with slave tropes to know that I probably wasn’t on Earth anymore, that I might have been the only human in this room, and that for all I knew a handshake was a declaration of war to this person. So I settled for a smile and a wave.Shit, hopefully that’s nothing dirty either.The heroines in monster romances made this stuff seem so easy. But now that someone else was up and seemed a lot more capable of handling shit, Iwasfeeling a less overwhelming flavor of panic.
The orc grunted and lifted their chin in one of those cool half-nods I’d never been able to pull off. “I am Uraka. Have you seen any others while you have been here?”
“Yeah, I thought it was a dream at the time but I guess not, huh? When I first woke up there were these three spikey guys that looked like they were made of jello but with blinking lights all through them. I didn’t know what they were saying but there was a red one, an orange one, and a yellow one.”
Uraka sat down hard and wiped their hand down their face. “You are female?” they asked.
“Yeah. Uh…are you?”
“Yes. And this felican between us is female. I am certain we are all female, and headed to the stocks as pleasure slaves.”
“Oh,” I squeaked, feeling hot and queasy all of a sudden. “What makes you think that?”
“I do not know what this ‘jello’ is, but from your description, I would bet good credits that those were th'rak slavers.” At my blank expression, Uraka sighed and elaborated. “They specialize in female sex slaves and exotic black market meats.”
I swallowed, panic starting to make me feel sick. I did wonder, though, just how a whole race of people wound up specializing in something like that. “So since we’re all female we’re probably going to be slaves? Not meat?”
Uraka shrugged. “In my mind, either way we are to be meat.”
Bile surged in my throat, though I was able to swallow it back down and keep that much of my dignity, at least. Uraka didn’t look like she was panicking; she was just incredibly pissed, and it gave me a kind of hope. Surely someone as large and capable as her would have some sort of plan? And then I’d have something to do, something I could actually tackle, to make me feel better: help Uraka kick whatever ass she was planning to kick.
“Do…do you think we could try and escape?” I asked in a whisper, my eyes darting around the plain concrete room.
Uraka shrugged again. “We can always try, but they would just kill us instead. Slavers always protect against resistance well, especially the th’rak. Maybe if I had all my gear, or if everyone here had combat training we would have a chance. But tell me, Joss—are you combat-ready?”
I huffed, frowning. “No,” I admitted, crossing my arms over my free-hanging breasts that felt too prominent and heavy. Man, Ireallywished I was wearing better clothes. Or at least better underwear.
But I hadn’t spent the last five years with Dr. Jackson working on my self-esteem just to forget all she taught me at the first real test.“You are so strong, Joss,”I could hear her reminding me in her smooth, soothing voice. “You deserve good things happening to you, and you owe it to yourself to make those good things happen.”
Man, I missed Dr. Jackson right about now. But thinking about her, about how she wouldn’t want me to give up, made me not want to give up either. Maybe I was beingcomo una cabra,as my abuelita liked to say whenever I did something kind of dumb, but I thought I could trust Uraka. She radiated safety and seemed to be making an effort to be kind to me, even if she was tense and upset about the situation.
“Well, how combat-ready do you think you can make me before they come for us?” I asked the she-orc, uncurling the rest of the way from my panic ball. I was scared shitless and if I thought about the situation too closely I felt screams bubbling up my throat, but I wasn’t going to just sit here when I could be helping, could be doing something.
One of her thick eyebrows arched at me, followed by a decidedly wicked grin spreading over her olive green face and pulling her lips taut against her small tusks. The look in her three golden eyes said she approved of my question. “Let us see.”
