Chapter 1 Pulled Off The Street

In this world, there are no monsters.

The existence of a monster implies the existence of the opposite to provide a bar of comparison: a warrior princess come to pull you from the jaws of the dragon, a cunning man outwitting an evil wizard to bring you home at last. A world with monsters is a world where sometimes, just sometimes, a person is saved. But here, in this world, there are no monsters.

Nobody is coming to save you.

Spencer heard the refrain of the slaver's whisper in his ears as they dragged him up another flight of endless spiraling stairs, legs numb and feet falling out from under him.

Nobody is coming to save you, bitch. Give up now and maybe you'll be allowed to live.

He stopped kicking after the third punch, a solid fist to the gut that made him double over vomiting on himself while the slaver screamed at him to behave.

"He, they, she, I don't give a shit what your pronouns are. You're an

it

now, got it? You're an object, and objects don't have genders. Objects exist to be used. Objects do as they're told. And objects are thrown in the fucking garbage if they don't work. Tell me, do you want to be a garbage whore?"

Spencer heaved on himself again, a pungent mix of bile and whatever scraps of food they'd kicked his way over the past couple of weeks. Had it been weeks? Days? He couldn't tell. Since he'd been grabbed off the street the slavers kept a blindfold tight over his eyes, making him entirely dependent on their fleeting goodwill to find his food or relieve himself.

Back in Cambridge, when he was a free man walking the streets (or as free as he could be in the New Republic), he'd offered the correct salutes and salutations in public to show he was not a threat to the regime. But in private, behind closed doors with all smart devices locked in a box outside, he heard rumors. People grabbed off the streets, taken and never seen again. Before the families had time to speak out they were visited by officers of the regime, and by the next day they'd pretend not to notice their loved one was missing. They never did return, after all, and there were never any answers. What was the point in mourning someone when the very act itself would ensure you disappeared next?

There was no pattern, no way to tell who was next. Young, old, trans, cis, femme, masc, they were all pulled off the streets at random. Spencer thought it was a fear tactic, a way to keep the people of the New Republic in line and silent. Most of them were still old enough to remember when free speech was an inalienable right: it would take a massive campaign of fear to coerce the whole population into silence.

In hindsight, it was dumb of him to walk the streets at night. Before he transitioned he knew better: femmes always travel in packs, or armed with pepper spray in both hands ready to raise the alarm at whichever man saw a lonely woman and thought her easy prey. But years on testosterone changed him: he lost the baby fat around his face, his shoulders broadened, and his voice dropped just far enough that nobody questioned his gender. The more cis men he spoke to, the more he realized that they never thought about traveling in packs, or the inherent dangers of being alone on the street at night. The streets belonged to men. He felt that they finally belonged to him too.

The van was quiet. He barely noticed the sliding door thrown open beside him until a set of hands clamped over his mouth and shoved a pungent rag against his nose, dragging him into the abyss while he swung his elbows back, desperate to feel them connect with any body he could start fighting with. He tried not to breathe in too deep, all too aware of his consciousness slipping away from his grasp. He opened his mouth to scream and a strong hand shoved the rag into his mouth, muffling the sound but exposing the perfect weakness. Spencer bit down, the coppery tang of blood bursting from the fingers in his grip as he ground down on the unfortunate hand in his grasp. At the very least, he'd make them regret taking him.

"Fuck!" The kidnapper shouted under his breath, trying not to wake up the neighborhood, "Fuck I will kill you if you don't let go of me, you little shit." As if to accentuate his words, the kidnapper slammed Spencer's head onto the ground hard enough to make black spots dance across his vision. His jaw went slack as stars swam across his eyes and the rag was pressed against his nose again. This time, he didn't have the strength to fight back.

As the fumes did their work and Spencer drifted further from reality, a fist connected with his stomach that sent him coughing on the floor of the van, sputtering his kidnapper's blood across the floor. He heaved one labored breath in through the mouth before a piece of tape was unceremoniously slapped across his mouth, leaving him with nothing but the taste of someone else's blood and the feeling of his consciousness drifting away from his body into darkness.

...

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