Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
He had an air of menace and detachment that is still sending chills through me. He looked at me like I was nothing. No emotion whatsoever. But there was interest, and intent. Like he had a plan for me. Physically he was kind of, well, attractive. Dark hair, cut shaggy. A missing limb. A scar on his face. The remaining eye a brilliant green. I knew the second I looked at him that he was the bad guy. The sort of guy Rustle would think was an alpha.
“What is wrong with that guy?”
“What isn’t wrong with him?” Arkon says. “Don’t worry about him. I am the one in charge of you. I am the one you answer to. He has no right to you.”
I can almost hear an unspoken ‘yet’ at the end of that sentence, but I don’t want to say anything about it because thinking about it scares me.
“Here,” Arkon says. “In here.”
He leads me into an office space that is, like everything, an alien-sized place with alien-sized items and a general scale that makes me feel like Gulliver on his travels.
Arkon picks me up and puts me on a soft table. Sort of like a medical table. After Drak, it freaks me out a little. Part of the machinery, he said. I don’t want to be part of the machinery. That seems like a very bad thing.
“Just what are you guys wanting me to work on, exactly?” I ask. “Like, what’s the job?”
“You’re training to interface with a new tech,” he explains, much as he has before, much as I was briefed while still back on Earth. And yet, somehow it doesn’t sound as reasonable now as it did before. There’s no quitting this job, I guess. Even if I wanted to, there’s no easy way home. If I want out of here, I’d have to convince him to send me home.
I park that idea as Arkon starts fiddling with some machines I don’t recognize. Are they the machinery I’m supposed to be part of? They look like medical devices of some kind. There are dials and tubes and little suction-y things, and…
He turns to me and gives me a stern look that catches me off guard and gives me those excited zippy feelings I’m probably not supposed to have. This man is incredibly attractive. Even with the extra arms, he has an air of complete authority. I noticed that a lot of the people coming in were being checked by security as they did. Security practically bowed to him as we came past, though they had their eyes on me like the little two-armed freak I am.
“In the meantime,” he says. “We have the matter of the forty-three thousand more credits for the damage to the ship.”
I’d forgotten about that. I mean, I guess I thought he had already dealt with it, maybe. I guess not. It was deferred, and now it’s going to be not deferred.
“Oh. Uh. Yeah. That was a mistake.”
“It was,” he agrees. “A mistake for you.”
He really has gone all stern again. For a moment, I felt like he was almost sweet and protective, the way he put himself between Drak and me. But I guess he’s going to deal with me regarding the ship issue, and I guess he’s going to do it the way he has dealt with everything. Physically.
I bite my lower lip and I try not to say anything. Saying things in moments like these always makes them worse.
“Fortunately, there is a chance for this to be a learning experience for you. The way you’re going to be trained to the machine involves sensors that connect to you. They’re going to read your outputs and in time, that will control various elements of machines in our research.”
I nod along, pretending to understand. I think I get it. The words are simple enough. It’s just that the concept is super weird and I can’t see why anyone would want this, but I guess science tends to be that way. It seems fucking odd and then suddenly you have a microwave.
He rolls out a relatively low padded table device that looks small compared to the rest of everything in the room. I realize that is because it is made for me. Arkon taps the padded surface.
“Come and lie down,” he says.
It’s odd. Like a massage table, but with way more points of articulation. I lie on it, and find that it’s very comfortable. As soon as I am in position, he starts strapping me to it and moving the various parts of it about. He moves the knee part of the legs down, so I’m in a kind of bent over position. He straps my thighs and my calves down so I cannot move them. He does the same to my forearms and wrists, both of which have their own little padded places to go. Then there’s my torso and head. My head pokes through a hole in the not quite a massage table, and he secures that with a strap behind it. Another two run across my back. By the time he is done, I am snugged up so tightly against this padded device I cannot move at all. It’s unexpectedly comfortable.