What’s wrong with my eyes? Why do I feel so dizzy? Where is everyone?
She seemed to hear the sounds of people passing somewhere in the distance, but none of them sounded familiar or seemed to notice her lying there, in the shadows.
Jillian looked around, trying to make her eyes work right. There was a strange bluish radiation coming down from overhead. It made the rag beside her head glow a brilliant white, as though she was in a club with a black light. Did that mean it was night here on Prius Six? Did the moon make this strange light that caused white objects to glow? She had never been here at night before, so she had no idea.
She picked uncertainly at the “rag” and found, to her surprise, that it was her bra. And lying next to it, in a jumbled pile, were her panties, jeans, and t-shirt—also glowing because it was white as well.
Jillian still felt weak and drugged, her limbs responding sluggishly to her brain’s commands as she levered herself laboriously into a seated position. Had the tea Mistress Douchenbag given her been laced with something? But her poison checker had given it a green light!
Still, she couldn’t think of any other explanation as she brushed the dirt off her oily skin as best she could and began putting on her bra and underwear, which rubbed uncomfortably against her gritty skin. It was uncomfortable but better than being completely naked in public—she felt less vulnerable once her underclothes were on.
Now for her jeans and t-shirt. But her arms and legs were even dirtier than the rest of her. She started to use the back of her t-shirt to wipe the dusty oil off her skin, but she hated to smear grease and dirt all over it.
“Ugh, such a mess,” she muttered to herself. “Why did he use so much oil on me, anyway? Wish I had a washcloth or something to wipe off with!”
“Here you go,” someone beside her said, handing her a handkerchief.
“Oh, thank you.” Still feeling dizzy and out of it, Jillian took the cloth—which glowed a brilliant white in the strange blue light—and wiped at her arms and legs.
It didn’t occur to her to wonder who had handed her the handkerchief in the first place—her brain still felt like someone had put it through the blender—and whoever it was, didn’t say anything else. They only stood quietly to one side, out of her line of vision. It all seemed rather like a dream—where you wish for something and it appears.
As Jillian wiped away the oil, her head began to feel less fuzzy and her vision cleared somewhat. She became aware that people were passing back and forth, about ten or twelve meters away, though none of them seemed to notice her here, in the dark corner where she had woken up.
She couldn’t really see the people clearly, but they seemed to be leaving the blue-lit space and passing through a long black curtain that led to someplace lighter. At least, if the flashes of weak golden light she saw whenever someone went through the curtain were any indication.
Hmm, a long black curtain that people keep going through… a dark space filled with weird blue radiation…
Suddenly, her drug-scrambled brain put two and two together and the implications of what she was seeing hit her—the Dark Market! She was inside the Dark Market!
“Holy shit!” Jillian mumbled.
Getting unsteadily to her feet, she scrambled clumsily into her jeans. She swayed drunkenly, nearly falling as she attempted to get her feet into the leg holes, and kept having to hold onto the tall wall beside her. Luckily, there were no pain threads on this side of it, like there were on the regular market side.
But once she got her feet in, the damn jeans didn’t want to pull up—the denim was sticking to the oil on her legs and thighs, that she hadn’t been able to get completely off with the handkerchief. Grimly, Jillian tugged them into place. She had to get dressed and get out of here! Every minute she was inside the Dark Market was a minute she was in danger. She—
“Well, now that you’re dressed, are you ready to go, girly?”
Jillian had been concentrating on trying to button her jeans when her hands were still slippery with oil and her fingers didn’t seem to want to work right. The voice floating down to her was high and strangely familiar.
Like someone talking after they sucked in helium from a balloon, she thought, peering up into the darkness. Suddenly a huge shape stepped out of the shadows and into the full light of the blue radiation overhead.
Jillian looked up…and up and up. Horror gripped her like a cold hand around her heart.
It was Ripper, the two-headed Trollox who had taken her grample and offered it back to her earlier. Both heads were staring at her greedily and the one with the red eyes was drooling through its thick yellow tusks.