The spider remained, watching them impassively.
Glaring, the men pulled her and Kyle to their feet. They were not gentle or modest.
One leered at her, his hand slapping her buttock. “Don’t worry, pretty little thing. The monks won’t touch you. But they’ll let us show you a good time, before they space you as a waste of mass.”
“Fuck you,” Kyle said, earning a beating. The soldier punched him in the face several times while others held his arms.
“Knock it off,” their leader said. “He has to be able to talk.”
Dragged through the corridors, they came to an elevator. The ship was built on the vertical, instead of the normal horizontal. Like an old rocket ship instead of a surface vessel. Prudence wondered why. Passive grav-plating didn’t care which way you laid it. Maybe the monks had not trusted their opaque sky, and had built their ships in deep holes in the ground, like missile silos, easier to conceal than shallow pits. Or maybe they were just crazy. Not every action had a reason. Not everything made sense.
The brig was small, with only two guards. The clones obviously didn’t intend to take a lot of prisoners. Kyle and Prudence were forced into a bare room, with solid steel walls. Chains hung from the ceiling, and there were bloodstains on the floor. Their bound hands were held high above their heads while a chain was looped between them and locked. Now they stood, naked and helpless, but after enough hours their legs would give out. Then they would dangle. After enough hours of that, their lungs would collapse, and they would die.
The leader of the guards explained the bloodstains with a grisly smile. “The monks believe in corporal punishment. They say it improves discipline, but I think they just like flogging. The chain is so you have to choose to stand and take it. If you do something stupid like turn around, they’ll flog your front side, including the naughty bits.” He leered at Prudence’s nakedness. “Not so much a problem for you, missy. But that’s good news. Maybe there’ll be something left for us to play with when they’re done.”
“Fuck you,” Kyle said, through his bloody mouth.
They didn’t even bother to beat him this time. Laughing, they walked outside, and sealed the door.
“Prudence.” Kyle sounded so lost and alone.
She shook her head. They still had to wait.
But not for long. Five minutes and one of the guards from the brig came in, the huge steel door whining as it opened and closed.
He walked around them, leering. Trying to intimidate her. Futilely, given the circumstances.
“Jobson and I talked about it, and we decided not to wait on the tender mercies of our employers. I won the throw, so I get to go first.”
He took his jacket off and hung it over a camera on the back wall.
“No point in letting that pervert Jobson watch.” Prudence marveled at the sensibilities of rapists. “You think about how you want to play this. It’ll likely be the most fun you’ll have for the rest of your life.” He advanced on her warily, his hands open and in front of him.
She didn’t react. He grinned, and spoke to Kyle. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn too. The monks are like that. Fine for them, eh, a planet full of men. But Earth if an ordinary man don’t get to missing a woman something fierce.”
Kyle didn’t speak. He must know he couldn’t prevent this. He must understand that not provoking the guard had to be the best thing he could do for Prudence.
Yet she could guess how much it cost him to remain silent. To look away in shame and helplessness. She could guess to the billionth of a credit what the cost was, because she had looked away helplessly while they beat Jorgun.
“You can scream or cry if you want.” He seemed disturbed by their silence. “I turned the audio off. I didn’t want to gag you. You wouldn’t be able to tell me how much you enjoyed it.”
He stepped in, close, the stench of his sweat overwhelming. She heard cloth rustle and metal clink as he undid his trousers.
Turning her face back to his, to stare him in the eyes, she put one leg up over his hip.
“Eager to get started.” His leer was vile, up close. “I like that. It won’t make me hurt you any less, but it’s a good try. Don’t forget to tell me how much you like it.”
She pulled him in close and put her other leg over his hip. Now she rested her weight on him, so she could reach up and grasp the chain, instead of hanging from it.
The guard grinned and tugged at his trousers, trying to pull them down without dislodging her legs.
Twisting, she pulled him around, turning in a circle. Focused on the heat of the moment, he did not realize which direction she was leading him.
When his pants fell to his ankles, the belt buckle clanking dully on the steel floor, he grinned at her and leaned in close.
“A kiss, first, then.”
She squeezed him tight and stared into his eyes. She let herself hate this man, with all the years of righteous wrath she had carried since a sixteen-year-old girl had traded her family for jars of ashes. Using him as a platform, she swung one leg out and over his shoulder.
Annoyed, he reached up to grab her leg. She flipped the other one up to join it. Locking her left foot behind her right knee, she squeezed.
Stupidly, he spent the first fifteen seconds fighting her, pitting the strength of his arms against the strength of her legs. Only when the lack of air began to weaken him did he think to start hitting her. She struggled with him, twisting and cranking at his neck, trying to avoid his blows while keeping the pressure up. He started pulling away, and now she was fighting just to keep her hold.
They staggered around in a circle, bound by the chain, and she realized she was losing. He kept getting loose enough to catch a breath. Soon his attacks would hurt her enough that she couldn’t hold on.
There was a sharp crack. She felt the force of the blow even through the guard’s heavy body. He stiffened momentarily, his eyes suddenly focused on some distant point, and then sagged limply in her grip.
They swung together, for an instant, until she let him fall. Lying on the ground at an unnatural angle, he feebly twitched his arms, trying to reach his broken back, while drool spilled from his mouth.
Kyle grinned savagely. “I might have broken a toe.” He had kicked the guard in the spine. The guard’s attempts to retreat had only brought him within range of Kyle.
Kyle stretched out and put a foot on the guard’s throat. She shook her head.
“I know,” he said. “They almost certainly have him on a sensor. If we kill him, they’ll come. I’ll wait until the door opens. I’ll give you as much time as I can. But please, Prudence. Say something.”
She couldn’t speak yet. Instead she released the chain and stood on the ground again, staring up. She would only have one chance. Carefully, her hands opened wide, fingers spread in a net, she spat the medallion out of her mouth.
Wet and slick, it slipped through her fingers, fell to the floor, and began to roll away.
Kyle stepped on it, quick as a snake.
“What the…”
Shame at her failure, at muffing the one chance they had to live, washed over her, released by the gift of Kyle’s second chance. She sobbed uncontrollably, tears spilling from a breached dam.
“What is this?” Kyle asked wonderingly. Gently prodding it with his toes, he tried to pick it up.
Prudence’s heart thudded. If he activated the device unknowingly, the blade would spring out at some random direction and cut off half his foot. She had thought it was impossible, but she remembered Jandi’s easy release of the blade.
She tried to warn him, and failed. Now that her mouth was free of the secret it had borne, the medallion that it had hidden while she stood by and let Jorgun’s heroics save her life, she found her voice was silenced by grief.
“I don’t think I’m flexible enough,” Kyle said. Gently he pushed the medallion over to her, avoiding the flopping guard.
She reached out with her foot, her toe brushing his. The contact was electrifying, the promise of hope burning like a branding iron.
Carefully, methodically, she maneuvered the medallion under her foot, until her toes could grip it. Experimentally, she sagged on the chain, letting her taped wrists take all of her weight.
