Page 16 of Control

“You really think it could get that bad?” I asked.

“As a group,” Dutch said. “People can be really stupid and panicky. That ‘end of the world’ mentality takes over and they scurry around like rats fleeing a sinking ship. That’s why I don’t trust ‘civis.’ All of the worst things that have happened to me in my life was because some civi got stupid. I’ve never had a fellow vet do me like that.”

“Retired but still about that life?” I asked Dutch with a smile. “There’s something to be said about that brotherhood.”

“Yeah,” Dutch said. “We don’t panic when the shit hits the fan.”

“Or when you’re waiting in line for your turn with a female avatar?” I said, referencing an old adventure of his that he felt the need to tell me about some time ago.

“Oh God,” Dutch said with a grin. “The last thing I need is another gang bang with a bunch of people on antidepressants!”

“Hey!” I said with a smile in my voice. “It’s not a gang bang. It’s…group therapy.” Dutch and I both laughed for a moment, our eyes locked until something pulled his away from mine.

“On the topic of wild times,” he said while looking past me. “You may not want to turn around.” My smile dropped from my face and was replaced with curiosity.

“Why?” I asked, uncertain of what he was asking me not turn to see. Dutch looked over my shoulder and then back to me, a look of worry on his face. “Dutch. What is it?” He looked back over my shoulder once more.

“She’s here,” he said. Hearing him say those words, I didn’t even have to turn around to know who he was talking about.

“Oh,” I said, my voice already beginning to shake. “Oh, God.” My heart already beating out of my chest, I turned around in the stool to looked back out to an open area in the room between a few tables where only a handful of people were standing.

There she was, her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail as she always kept it and her top a cream colored white with yellow accents. She was wearing the short shorts she always liked to wear, the color matching those she used for her top, and her wrists were adored with white, furry cuffs that looked somewhat ridiculous but seemed to work for her and her overall look. She wore spike stilettos, white, with a braided accent and buckle just above her ankle. Her skin was a dark, chocolate brown which contrasted with her outfit. Her eyes were a swirl of brown and hazel and her lips thick, seductive, and covered in bright red lipstick which appeared as if it were dipped in glitter.

Without thinking, I stood up and stared at her, a cacophony of raw emotions suddenly rushing back to me as I watched her from the bar. She looked back and forth across the room as if looking for a place to sit with a group of her friends, many of whom I did not recognize. As she scanned the room, her eyes fell upon me and instantly locked on. She froze. She knew it was me and I know she felt those same emotions overtaking her in that instant. My hands began to shake and I struggled to keep myself from tearing up right then and there. I looked down to my hands a moment, squeezing them into fists before forcing myself to relax them again over and over, a practice I’d always done to try and calm myself when my anxiety piqued. Before I knew it, I was moving toward her, not even considering what seeing her again could mean for my mental wellbeing.

As my feet took me closer to her she also started walking, moving toward me with confident, yet delicate steps as if she were doing her best not to appear shaken. The closer she got to me, the more the people around me began to fade away, disappearing into the background of my vision. With each step, the space around me grew darker while the light which seemed to focus solely on her only got brighter. After several more steps and unconscious movements around a few chairs, we were standing before each other, still not having broken eye contact. I pulled the hood back from my head, revealing my own high pony tail and letting my long black and purple locks flow freely again. I unlatched my cloak and let it fall to the floor, not caring to conceal myself any longer.

We stared at each other for what felt like forever, not saying a single word. I could see her lips slightly quivering and I could feel a slight welling of tears in my eyes. Unconsciously, I lifted my right hand and before I knew it I was almost touching her cheek. Without warning, she took my hand in hers and pulled it down, letting it settle on her chest. I could feel her heart beating as quickly as mine was, it’s steady but powerful thump pulsing so hard that it felt as if she were barely holding it together.

I’d not seen her she left me all that time ago, yet I still found myself thinking of her everyday since. She’d removed me from her friend’s list not out of spite, but out of a need to protect me from the possible consequences of our friendship. She was there that night when I was awarded my title and it was shortly after that she broke my heart, leaving me shattered and broken on the floor of my old apartment.

I knew why she did it to me. She didn’t want to, but felt as if she had no other choice. She didn’t want to be a burden to me. She wanted to be the protector I might need given my situation and what she and I had gotten into, and the best way she thought she could to do that was to leave. She knew her lifestyle and well known kinks would be used to judge me by way of association. I ached for her for so long and thought that maybe I’d gotten over it all, but seeing her there in front of me made me very aware that I wasn’t over her, not even close. I turned my hand in hers, gripping her fingers, and carefully pulled her toward me.

“Ana,” she said to me in a light and almost brittle voice. After a tense few seconds, I mustered the only words I could in that moment.

“Hello, Reyna.”

CHAPTER 8 - REYNA

IT WAS A Thursday and I’d had an especially rough time with my consultation work. All I’d wanted the entire day was for time to pass so I could have my bath and head to bed so I could go to Aurora. It had become a small crutch for me both mentally and socially. I’d been barely leaving the apartment as it was and being invited to participate in the Alpha testing for the game provided me with even less reason to leave. I’d eventually made it a habit of leaving the house once a week just to get the bare necessities - food, water, toiletries, and any other additional items I may need that I couldn’t order online.

I knew something I’d seen earlier that day had soft triggered me and had started to bother me, but I did my best to ignore it. I didn’t even bother to eat dinner that night, opting instead to just have my bath and head to bed so I could escape. I neglected putting on my usual nightwear, instead just going to bed nude and throwing my blankets over me after I secured the headband in its’ proper place. The game had long progressed beyond the Alpha stage and Open Beta had just ended, giving way to live where a flurry of new players had come in so things in Aurora had started to become much busier.

Following the usual countdown, I closed my eyes and logged in, opening my virtual eyes and finding myself inside my wardrobe as usual which was and still is my preset login location. After getting dressed in something fairly ordinary, I hopped around from room to room with no real purpose. I was still dealing with the soft trigger even as I was asleep and it was coming through in my erratic decision-making in the game that night.

Having been to at least a dozen rooms, I ended up in the Slave X Auction room, a role playing establishment where players could put themselves up as sex slaves to the highest bidder. It was all consensual and done for fun so there was no real issue with any sort of abuse. Every one of the participants being auctioned enjoyed the fantasy of being owned or at least being submissive or “subs” to other players. It was a popular option among the BDSM community in the game, some of whom I’d become familiar with given the kind of work I’d been doing in Aurora.

I took a seat in the second row of some plush red and black chairs that were adorned in similarly-colored buttons and brown leather. The room itself was something resembling a modern playhouse or theater, complete with an upper balcony and several dozen chairs so others could watch the auctions take place. The first few rows where I was seated were reserved for those interested in potentially purchasing a slave. Having never done it before I had no idea how it all went down, but was interested in learning.

Each slave, most of whom were women, were held in a back room until their name was called. At that time, they’d come out on stage and walk around, showing off their body and giving potential buyers a preview of who and what they’d be getting. Some of the slaves would strip down and stand there completely nude which I never really liked. I’d always felt and still do feel that part of exploring someone the first time was part of the fun of getting to know them so exposing themselves on stage before the purchase spoiled part of the fun.

As the event went on, more and more “slaves” were presented and purchased and I even bid on a few while having no intention on actually wanting to buy them. Some of the women were up there for a time and no one would bid so I felt the need to kick start the bids so I’d call out a random acceptable amount, usually 1 to 5 thousand gold. Already within this event, I had some slaves stand up there and it appeared people were too afraid to bid and things would get awkwardly quiet. My bids did help to get things rolling though in at least two of the auctions. In one of them, I’d ended up in a bidding war with 2 other buyers where we all ended up on the maximum bid of 50k gold. When the maximum bid is reached, other potential buyers can chime in with a maximum bid if they choose. Once the bids were closed, the maximum bidders engage in a roll off where a random number generator was used to produce a number between 1 and 100 and the highest rolls would then win the auction.

On the second to last auction, I lost with a miserable roll of 22 and the winner had managed an 86. Only a single auction remained and I’d only looked over their profile for a moment before they were called out on stage. She was a dark skinned woman, about 29, wearing white and yellow shorts with a white top. Much of her accessories like her bracelets and earrings were also white as well as the nail polish on her fingers and toes. The contrasting colors made her stand out and the mask she wore came off when her auction finally started. She was made available to both men and women so I decided to bid on her.

My opening offer of one thousand was quickly eclipsed by another offer of 5 thousand and yet another of 10,000. I looked up to the stage again and saw her up there looking around the room. She was trying to see who the bidders were using our bidding paddles. After a slight pause, I quickly raised my bid to 15 thousand. I looked over to my right and spotted a relatively new player that had made a name for himself for all the wrong reasons. Your Master, as he called himself, was one of those men that loved collecting women like trophies. I’d gotten to know him when he approached me in another room when he’d first started after the game went live. He wanted to “recruit” me into his stable of women and when I refused, he got angry. He argued that I needed a pimp and that he’d help me make a lot of money. Still, I refused. I’d seen what some pimps did to their girls and I had made the decision long ago that I would remain solo, even if it cost me jobs which it didn’t seem to. Even as more pimps rose in prominence the flow of clients I was seeing never decreased, but their mentions to me of bad experiences did.

Your Master or YM as I called him for short was very strict with his girls and he took a sizable cut of their earnings. On more than one occasion, one of his girls approached me and asked about my rates which were, at the time, fairly high and asked how I managed to keep getting customers without a pimp while still asking for so much. I explained to her that I focused on the quality of my encounters with my clients. I never just got naked and had sex with them until they climaxed, but instead I spoke to them like human beings, made them comfortable, and showed them kindness and compassion. I had quickly developed a sense for knowing which potentials would be too aggressive for my liking and I would turn them down. Sometimes they’d get exceptionally angry with me which only justified my decision not to take them on as a client. The unfortunate side effect of that is those same men would often find their ways to YM’s girls where they were allowed to treat them roughly. YM didn’t care as long as he got his money.

---