“Stop eating the stock, you fat fuck!”
Those are the last words I hear before the ship is thrown sideways hard and fast. The world tumbles. Human parts break free and fly back and forth, vague suggestions of humanity forming patterns in the air. Two eyes and some teeth fly by in a mad grin before something more solid than my head hits it and everything goes black.
Chapter Two
Aspel
Something is poking me. Something pointed and organic.
I did not expect to wake up. Consciousness is pain and it is light and it is heat. There is crusty dry surface beneath my body. Land. I’m not on the ship anymore. I don’t know where I am. I know that it tastes metallic between my teeth… no, that’s my blood.
When I lift my head, I see that the ship, such as it was, has been dashed into millions of pieces across an unfamiliar landscape.
I am outside.
I’ve never been outside. We talked about it in the farm. We wondered what it would be like outside the high walls that kept us contained. Outside is big. Really big. I can’t see any walls whatsoever in the view I have of what seems like eternity.
“M’uklahk.”
Someone says something nearby. The voice makes me freeze instantly, my body locking with the fear of prey.
“M’uklahk dizlahk vinu vunu sisi,” someone else replies.
It is language, but not language I can process. I could understand the Vargons because they use standard speech, the tongue we were taught to follow instructions in.
“M’uklahk dino vavu sisi!”
“Nec M’uklahk!”
“Tiz M’uklahk!”
I think M’uklahk refers to me, somehow. I can’t see the beings speaking, and I don’t want to. Their voices are rough and guttural and full of rage. They do not seem pleased about me. I close my eyes and play dead, hoping that they will go away and leave me alone.
I am poked again.
They want me to move. They want to see what I am. I am grateful that they have not begun consuming me where I lie, but I know instinctively that I am not safe. The only place I ever felt safe was inside the white plastic walls of the early juvenile raising chambers. We were fed, tended, had the colorful pictures to watch until we slept and then we would be fed again. I wish so badly that I could return to the raising chamber. But I was removed from that eight years ago and put into the maturation center where we were taught how to work, follow standard speech instructions, and prepare ourselves for a life of servitude, if we were fortunate. One by one, the most pleasing of us were taken away. First draft was for the breeders. The second draft was for the slaves. The third draft, my draft, by far the largest, was for parts.
I cringe knowing what parts are, and how close I came to being eyeballs and teeth rattling on a shuttle bound for nowhere.
“Sh’aka!”
“Uba sh’aka, M’uklahk.”
Their voices are quieter, but no less intense. I feel the presence of something creeping closer. Toes make sound on sand. I close my eyes even tighter, knowing that I do not want to see what is looming over me. The resonance of the voices tells me that these are large beings.
I have experienced very little in my farmed life, but my instincts are still intact. I was born with certain abilities, and one of them is to know when I am in the presence of predators. I have no doubt that I am right now, and that playing dead is my only chance to survive.
Something hand-like touches me. Fingers. They’re clawed and long and strong. Much larger than my own svelte digits and much rougher along the pads. They draw down my back slowly, exploring me with a touch that might be gentle, but is more likely just cautious.
I was made to be consumed. I am prey. My kind, human, were likely just as wild and strong as whatever is examining me now, but we were selectively bred for a very long time. I know this because it was displayed to us, our fall from grace shown to us on a near daily basis. It was not enough to consume us. They had to humiliate us too.
The fingers are moving down my spine and have reached the swell of my cheeks. They do not stop moving. They slide over the soft rise and then down again, between my thighs, finding a place where it is almost impossible not to react—but I stay still.
Motionless, I try to keep my breathing unnoticeable as those big, thick, powerful fingers continue their exploration of my body, running over the seam of my sex, finding the sensitive parts of me where pleasure flowers in spite of everything.
The human body is incredible. It is used, it is taken advantage of, it is crafted and shaped, and it is traded, but it does not lose the basics of desire and the simple function of survival.