"So, can you control my mind now, then?" I asked Perikos. We'd been traveling less than half an hour since we met up with Shadow and I was forced to confront my imaginary exhibitionism.
"
Of course not. Why would you wonder such a thing
?" Perikos sang back at me.
Why indeed. Only that our last and very recent sexual encounter had involved Perikos' power of suggestion and when I tried to clear my mind or alter the imagery I couldn't. Not that I was particularly worried. We'd talked some stuff out and I was ninety-eight percent sure Perikos wouldn't use his powers for evil. Still, I told him to be honest with me from now on.
"What, you mean you can't control my mind anymore? Your powers stopped working half an hour ago?"
"
No
," Perikos began, pausing to allow me to shift in his embrace. My leg had been falling asleep. "
If you are referring to my suggestions –
"
" - Suggestions?"
"
I presented you with a scenario I thought would excite you. You created the details, collaborated in the fantasy. It would not have seemed realistic otherwise
."
"What about when I tried to change some of details?" Like my estranged brother looking on in disgust. Honestly, that wasn't supposed to happen.
Perikos uttered the musical equivalent of a shrug. Fairly or unfairly, I thought I might already have the answer before I put Perikos on the spot. I hadn't really wanted to be able to change anything. I was quite content, actually, for things like that to stay out of my hands. Of course, how would I know I was being forced if I didn't at least try, however feebly, to break the bonds? Depravity, thy name is Jayn.
"Okay, then, but can't you at least admit – "
"
Silence
!" Perikos' voice slammed against me like a steel trap. For a moment I felt like I'd been slapped. Hadn't we worked our way past this bullshit? Then I heard something that made my gut clench and twist so badly I thought it was trying to fight its way out. Then I saw it overhead; the red light of a Kragosa ship speeding towards us. A moment later a blinding javelin of light hit the ground not far from us and began gaining as the ship closed the distance.
If we had more time, Perikos and Shadow could have outrun it. If it dropped in altitude before the spotlight got us, Perikos and Shadow could have grown big enough and strong enough to pull it out of the sky. But we didn't have that kind of time. I knew it even as I turned and broke into the fastest run I could. This time there was no shelter to take, and no place to hide. Perikos caught me around the ankle and I sprawled onto my stomach, unable to stop my forward momentum. My head bounced off the soft fungus floor and Perikos pushed my thighs apart roughly. He reached between them and I felt four thin tendrils pull me open and hold me there. The whine of the engine was getting louder.
"
In
!" I heard Perikos scream and I felt Shadow compress his shape between my legs and push his mass inside me. Shadow tried to push his way into my womb but he didn't seem able to make himself small and thin enough to push past without making me feel like I was being quite literally ripped open.
"
No time
!" Perikos shouted and pushed inside me as well, so that I was stretched wide enough to accommodate both Perikos and Shadow. I doubled over in pain. Even if I wanted to run now, I couldn't. Perikos wasted no time and made himself slender enough to force his way through my barrier and into my womb. I felt and odd sensation that I imagined was Perikos pulling Shadow in behind him.
The light was overhead now, and blinding. I stumbled to my feet and tried to run a few more meters but just as I registered how slow I was actually moving and how awkward my steps had become, I felt a horrible, searing pain in the side of my head.
Spots clouded my vision. There had never been anything like this. I was being boiled in hot tar, in lava, I was being shredded on a cellular level. I wanted to die, I wanted to have never been born. Then it all stopped.
I felt a sharp prick in my neck and before I opened my eyes I knew where I was and what had happened. My arms were strapped to a metal table and my legs were attached to some off sort of stirrups. I was on the Kragosi ship. I could feel hot, smoldering light on the other side of my eyelids and my head was pounding like someone had raked dull shards of glass all round the inside of my skull. The intense pain at the side of my head was gone.
I kept my eyes closed to give myself time to tally my situation. The Kragosi guards had me and the rest of planet's Most Wanted and we were royally fucked. For all I knew they were waiting till they saw me wake up before carving me up like a goose and throwing Perikos and Shadow into the gravitational pull of the first star they passed. I was all alone again.
"
You are not
," Perikos' tune reverberated in my head. It sounded deeper, warmer than usual. The quality of the sound seemed different.
"I'm standing by for any and all suggestions", I thought back at him, not daring to open my mouth and give the game away.
"
They undoubtedly know you're awake
," Perikos said. My stomach felt much more stretched, much larger than normal. "
They gave you something to revive you
." He paused a moment more. "
Be strong, Little Shade. I promise you we are not going back to Kragosa and you are not alone. We will get away, we will just have to be...strategic in our timing
."
Something grunted near my feet. A Kragosi guard. What I thought was a grunt was actually just spoken Kragosi. He uttered a few more guttural grunts and snorts and I couldn't decide if I would prefer he was talking to me or to someone else on board. I heard static and then another oddly familiar series of grunts coming from what sounded like a badly tuned radio. Then the guard poked my swollen belly with something. Not a stick. A rod, maybe?
Suddenly there was pain. My body spasmed and twitched. My teeth clamped together hard as the blast of electricity slammed through my body. My back arched hard enough that my legs and torso cleared the table. My eyes flew open as the guard withdrew the cattle prod from my belly. I had forgotten about those. Didn't stop me from wanting to fly off the table and beat him to death with it.
"Awake!" He blurted out in thick, slurred Common. Definitely an order. The light was so bright I could barely make out his thick grey skin, his cleft, hoof-like hands or his flabby, pig snout or the tusks poking out from either side that made his Common even more incomprehensible.
It occurred to me to wonder about Perikos and Shadow. Had the shock hurt them? They were oddly silent. As my thoughts went to Perikos, I heard his soft whisper in my head. "
The electricity is detrimental to your species, not ours. Unfortunately, I had not realized it was coming in time to redirect it
."
And me on a metal table. I tensed and prepared for more of the same when the bay door slid open and in the glowing light I could make out another guard's dark shape in the doorway.
"Jayn bek Sherop. Do you know why you're here?" His Common was fluent. The husky, rasping tone was horrifyingly familiar.
"Brogn?" My voice came out somewhere between a gasp and a squeak. The last time we had met, the Warden of Kragosa had promised to rape me, but only after Perikos raped me. Well, that hadn't gone as Brogn had planned, but I had it on good authority that any female creature of my size and stature was likely to bleed to death from Brogn's brand of lovin'. I had sincerely hoped he and I would never meet again.
The door slid shut behind Brogn and he waddled over to stand beside me. Three thick, sausagey fingers drummed against my belly next to where the guard had shocked me.
"Surprised to see me?" he asked, emitting another series of grunts mixed with an odd sort of hacking, wheezing sound.
Laughter
, Perikos suggested wordlessly. "I am surprised to see you, Jayn bek Sherop. Why, in our short time apart you have become quite a fat sow, am I not right?"
More laughter as he swatted my belly. If he hadn't been so sick, so revolting, I could have described it as playful. This was more like a mangy cat playing with its food before eating it. Fuck, I was disgusting myself with that line of thinking.
"Of course you are surprised that I would involve myself personally, am I not right? I will admit that I took your escapes personally. I like to think I am a thorough warden. I am fastidious. I was well paid to make the Perikos problem go away and then I find out that I delivered it a mule. Or more accurately in your case, a sow."
He slapped my belly again and I felt Perikos and Shadow shift and move inside me.
"Had you been other prisoners, I might have let you go. Sometimes a good warden must make a decision; is retrieval cost effective or a waste of valuable, limited resources? In the case of the Perikos, we would receive funds as long as it lived in our custody. You, on the other hand, were nothing. Hardly more than a wet hole to sleeve myself in, but I told myself good things come to those who wait. I was right, Jayn bek Sherop. Instead of being paid in small, erratic installments by the Perikos government, I will receive a sizeable lump sum for guaranteeing his demise."
My heart thrummed like a harp string in my chest. Nothing was ever gained by playing nice with Brogn. "Good luck getting them out without getting killed in the process."
Brogn laughed again, so hard this time he wheezed and huffed to catch his breath, his girth shaking like jelly under the strain. It took him several moments to reply. "Your bluff is pointless beyond its capacity for amusement. There is something more valuable to this government than the death of belligerent rebels. Do you know what that is, Jayn bek Sherop?"
There it was again. Something was closing in on me. I felt Perikos expand slightly and then contract again inside me.
"If you guessed that the Perikos government has offered me enough to allow me to live out the rest of my life in obscene luxury if I deliver you to them unharmed, then you are correct!"
I thrashed and strained against the straps holding me down on the table. Brogn laughed again and squeezed my right breast hard, like he was trying to ring out a sponge one-handed.
"Stupid Human. I would have thought you'd be happy so long as something was pummeling your cunt. You lack foresight at any rate. Suppose they did not want you? What would stop my doctor" – he gestured to what I had taken to be the other Kragosi guard, who was watching me – "from sawing you open with a dull blade and shining a very bright light on your passengers? What would stop me from riding you like the bloated sow you are, even if it killed you? No, Jayn bek Sherop, you are very lucky today. We are devising a way to extract the fugitives from you without causing any noticeable damage, and when we do, we will deliver you to our...clients. I'm certain they can think of a great many things to keep you occupied."
Brogn reached over to what I supposed was a table behind my head and brought with him three lengths of cord and an oddly shaped crescent piece of white plastic. I watched Brogn take one of the cords and open a metal clip at the end of it. He pinched the flesh around my navel and I felt the metal clip snap closed around the skin there. He closed another between my first and second toe.
"These are hooked up to a battery, of course," Brogn said as he tightened the straps at my ankles and wrists. "I would like to cause you a certain degree of mental and physical anguish before we part ways and if it kills of harms or even encourages those cowardly worms inside of you to come out, so much the better. The most obvious places to shock you into submission would be the most sensitive parts of your anatomy. However, I have learned from my mistakes. I will not do anything to you while your...passengers are still alive that could possibly be interpreted as pleasing, even to someone as reportedly desperate and whorish as you."
He forced two fat, dirty fingers into my mouth and I bit down hard. Brogn jerked his hand back a moment, probably to examine the damage. Then I saw his hand move almost before it started and something told me to close my eyes and brace for impact.
I felt the impact, the physical pressure and sensation of Brogn's vast, bolt-like knuckles pound against my face but something thrilling, even spine-tingling coursed through my torso instead. I didn't just feel good. I was nearly there.
Brogn seemed to decide my shriek of ecstasy was really one of immense suffering and he took the opportunity to wrench my head back by my hair and jam his fingers halfway down my throat. I was so aroused I forgot to put up a fight and before I knew it Brogn had forced the crescent-shaped white plastic thing between my jaws. I tried to close my mouth but the retractor held it wide open. He then reached down and closed a bulbous, sweaty hand around my throat and I coughed and spluttered. Brogn waited until my tongue poked out between my teeth and then snapped the final clamp shut on the tip of my tongue. I screeched and squawked through the pinch of the metal but I also knew the shit hadn't hit the fan yet. He hadn't even turned the damn thing on yet.
Brogn grunted smugly and slapped my exposed pussy. "You may be pleased to know I've set the charge to an interval timer. I would hate for you to die or become accustomed enough to it that you no longer wish to die. If the reports I have been given are correct and the Perikos truly has some affection for you, perhaps it will take pity on you. This will not stop until they are prepared to cease hiding and realize they are only prolonging the inevitable. You have been bought and paid for by those who matter on this planet. And they have no life here at all. No life anywhere, for that matter. I will leave you to ponder that, Jayn bek Sherop. See you in the morning."
