Beyond Shame

“She won’t,” Lex interjected. “Now get out.” When the door slammed behind him, Lex dropped to a chair across from Noelle. “You hanging out for all the gritty details, Dallas? I know you get off on it.”

Dallas raked his gaze over them in a way that made Noelle think perhaps he was imagining them both naked—and enjoying it. He grinned slowly as he hauled open the door. “Another time. Have Ace fill in her bar code, but no cuffs. Not until she makes it through the week.”

He snapped the door shut behind him, and Noelle let out a breath and tried to meet Lex’s eyes without flinching. “You must all think I’m a ridiculous, naive fool.”

“Of course you are.” Lex leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “You’re from the city. They won’t let you be anything else.”

No judgment, at least, and maybe even a little sympathy. “I tried to be something else. That probably makes me more of a fool.”

“Only if you thought it’d work.” Lex pulled a small etched silver case from her boot. “Not many rules. First one is, the group means more than anything. We survive because we stick together—no exceptions. If you join up, it won’t be a free ride, but it’ll be a good one.”

Tend bar, clean house, or suck dick. Noelle stared down at her brightly patterned dress and traced a finger over one swirl. A dark craving dug its hooks into her as the fantasy formed, one where she wasn’t responsible for the filthy things they commanded her to do. Surely it couldn’t be a sin if she didn’t have a choice. “I’d have to give them all sex?”

“Nope. You don’t have to lay a finger on anyone, not if you don’t want to. Get a job, work the club, whatever. The sex is a bonus, not an obligation.”

Noelle was sick, twisted, because the only emotion she felt at hearing the words was vague disappointment—and crushing shame to cover it. “Oh. That’s good.”

Lex grimaced. “I thought you were into fornication. What a waste. Anyway, one of the runners managed to get his hands on some fertility drugs, and now he and his woman are having a baby. She used to wait tables at the club, so there’s an open job there. Ever done that sort of thing?”

“No.” Her mother would have slapped her hard enough to leave marks for a week if Noelle had breathed a word about working outside the house. “I can learn, though. I’ve read books about pre-Flare technology, and I’m a hard worker.”

“Any dance lessons?”

Finally, a question she could answer in the affirmative. “From the time I was five.”

“But none of them were on a pole, right?”

She shouldn’t even know what the question meant. Pornography was every bit as illegal as liquor, but it was the only place in Eden to learn about a stripper pole. “No, not exactly.”

Lex just nodded. “If you don’t want to wait tables, we can show you a few things about stripping. There’s a ton of credits in it. Not as much as the hardcore shows, though.”

Surely she didn’t mean… “Isn’t that illegal?”

Lex paused in the act of lighting a cigarette, her lighter sparked and waiting. “Honey, you’re not in Eden anymore. The only laws here are the ones Dallas hands down.”

“I’m not in Eden anymore.” The words hit her in the gut, stark and real, the first thing to come close to penetrating her creeping numbness. Her breath rattled out of her lungs, and she shuddered and fought to drag it back in. “I’m not—I’m not in Eden anymore.”

“Oh shit.” Lex tossed the unlit cigarette aside. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“No, I know.” Noelle clutched at her silly dress and tried to force herself to breathe normally. She wasn’t in Eden anymore, so she might as well avail herself of one of the advantages. “Can I have a drink?”

“No.” Lex held up her hands. “I’m not an uptight bitch, but you were rolling pretty hard when you came in here. I don’t want to accidentally kill you.”

Of course. Stupid. Noelle closed her eyes. “You’re right.”

The other woman sighed. “Look, bottom line. No one’s going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You have to work, but you can keep all your clothes on while you do it. And don’t fucking listen to Dallas—he won’t set you out. Not if I ask him not to.”

It was too much to process. The loss of everything Noelle had, everything she’d ever known, everything she was…and the tantalizing promise of freedom that made her want to hope when hope was an emotion she’d never learned how to feel. “I think I’m just overwhelmed, and maybe still fuzzy from whatever that man gave me.”

“Then you need to rest.” Lex crossed the room and pulled a pillow and a blanket out of the small closet by the bathroom. “Want something else to wear?”

Anything besides her fancy party dress. “A nightgown, maybe?”

“Uh, T-shirt?”

“All right.” Noelle managed a smile. “No more layers and layers of modest clothing, I guess. That’s a good thing, right?”

Lex handed her a folded bundle of white fabric. “It’s whatever you make of it, honey. Whatever you want, it’s all up to you.”

What a terrifying thought. “The last time things were up to me, I got arrested.”

“Then I guess it’s all looking up from here, huh?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” But maybe it was time she started.

* * *

Noelle woke in darkness, disorienting in and of itself. She blinked up at the empty space above her and tightened her fingers around the blankets as her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest.

She wasn’t in Eden, that much was certain. Her bedroom had too many sources of illumination—the glow of the display panels that controlled the brightness and temperature in her suite, the soft light from the computer screen embedded in her desk, even the moon and streetlights shining through her gauzy curtains. Her family might live in the penthouse, far above street level, but Eden was a city of light. Too many of her parents’ generation remembered the years of darkness, after the solar storms had plunged the world into chaos and shadow.

Her mother had been afraid of the dark, but Noelle had never shared that anxiety. Still, she felt a twinge of it now as she wet her lips and spoke. “Lights, twenty percent?” She turned it into a question out of instinct, and her answer was more darkness.

No, no one out in the sectors would rely on computers for something pre-Flare technology could handle just fine with far less expense. Which meant she had to stumble out of bed and find a light switch. How deliciously uncivilized.

The cement floor was cool under her bare feet, and rough. No plush carpets softened the hard expanse, only a rug half hidden by the bed that had folded out of the couch. Noelle skirted the edge of the mattress with halting steps and blinked into the gloom, trying to make out the shapes around her.

She stumbled a little as she worked her way around the room, but eventually her questing fingers encountered a switch. Turning it on flooded the room with low, diffuse light, something that made everything visible enough but kept the corners shadowed and the room itself…intimate.

Or maybe it only seemed that way because of the bed. All of Lex’s furniture was nice, but her bed dominated one side of the room, piled with sleek cushions and luxurious sheets that could have easily belonged in Noelle’s bedroom back home. High quality, expensive—and utterly out of place surrounded by unadorned brick walls and cement floors.

There were four doors Noelle could see. One opened out into the hallway, and another she thought might be the closet. Hoping one of the remaining two led to a bathroom, she opened the one closest to her and found a treasure trove instead.

This second room was smaller and contained only a table and a pair of chairs. But the walls were covered in art—not the digital kind displayed on the enormous plasma screens currently popular in Eden, but pre-Flare masterpieces. Hypnotized, Noelle moved to stand in front of the closest painting, an Impressionist piece in a gilded frame.

This close, she could smell the slightly musty scent of the canvas and paint, could see the individual brushstrokes. She touched a faded red rose petal and marveled at the subtle ridges of the paint, three-dimensional and vivid in a way nothing in Eden was, not anymore.