Page 34 of Under Control

“Fuckit, right now I just want to make him suffer.” Iglesias pointed at the reclining couch. “Sit there.”

Tracht considered refusing. He could buy himself some time, maybe allow for Alex or station security to find him. But he was in enough pain that he had no real desire to exacerbate the situation. So he sat, obediently, and silently seethed.

“Not gonna fight?” Iglesias asked.

“No. You’ll do what you will to me. There are two of you, and your guards outside the door. I’m already in bad shape, and I may have a mild concussion. I have no way of stopping you, so fighting seems relatively pointless.” He slurred a few of his words, and that was even more distressing. He had to maintain control. He refused to let them know how affected he was.

“Cool. Then you won’t mind if we put this on you.” Iglesias held up a bondcollar. The same kind as had been inside the container.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Yet Tracht had, perhaps naively, believed they would beat him or rape him. He could have handled sucking a few penises or even being anally penetrated, no matter how unpleasant that was.

He found himself much more afraid of this bondcollar. He hadn’t seen exactly how it worked, but he knew drugs were involved, and the idea that he wouldn’t even be able to protest was…

“You’ll have to remind me what that’s supposed to be. I doubt anybody would believe that I’m a registered bondservant. But if you desire some roleplay…” Tracht said drily, or as drily as he could manage with an infuriating vibration in his voice and the persistent slur from the concussion.

“Like you don’t already know. What dosage do you think we should give him?” Iglesias asked the doctor.

The doctor looked Tracht over. “How much do you weigh? Seventy-five, eighty kilos?”

“Thereabouts, depending on whether we’re on a planet, on a station, or in space. You know how it is.” He watched as the doctor took the collar from Iglesias and inserted several capsules into the heavy compartment.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to simply inject me with whatever drug it is, rather than go through these pointless theatrics?” Tracht asked.

“I like the irony,” Iglesias answered. “And anyway, these things are the bomb. They re-inject steadily, and you can’t remove them, so there’s no way for you to get out of it.”

To think that Tracht had fantasized about putting Alex in one of these collars. It had been nice a nice fantasy, in an abstract sort of way, although he realized he’d never want it as a permanent feature. He liked Alex’s quirks too much at this point.

“You realize I’m not the sort of person who can simply disappear. My crew, station security, my family—they’d all look for me.” Tracht decided that he couldn’t sit still for this. He stood, but he was hit with a wave of dizziness that made him stumble back onto the sofa.

Iglesias laughed. “Thought you weren’t gonna fight?”

“Forgive me that I find your proposal unpalatable. Doctor, please take my current health into consideration with that dosage. You wouldn’t want to accidentally kill me.”

The doctor approached him with the collar. “I think if you have the energy to complain like you do, you aren’t as badly off as you say.”

Tracht again tried to sit up, ignoring the nausea, but this time Iglesias grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him back down. Tracht curled his fingers into fists and tried to recall how Alex usually did his punching workouts.

And how pathetic was it that he desperately wanted Alex to be there with him? Tracht didn’t like this dependence he had on a man who, while loyal, was unlikely to find him.

With as much force as he could muster—which wasn’t all that much—Tracht attacked Iglesias. He went for the testicles, which got him a loud yelp. Iglesias loosened his hold; Tracht took the opportunity to stumble off the couch, but the doctor was right there, and despite his age the man did have quite the right hook.

Tracht’s ears rang from the punch and he fell to the floor. Bile rose up in his throat, and he barely managed to swallow it back down.

“Not so much with the obedience, huh? Well, the collar will fix that,” Iglesias muttered, still wincing in pain. “Do it, Doc.”

Too woozy to do anything, Tracht simply sat there while the collar was placed around his neck. The doctor fiddled with something, and then Tracht felt sharp, painful pricks around his neck.

The doctor pulled on the collar, and the accompanying pain forced a cry out of Tracht. The collar was hooked into his skin now.

Hadn’t he seen a few subs do this to themselves on purpose? Singh and Fontaine had once suspended Nadia via an elaborate set of hooks in her skin. If she experienced even a fraction of the pain Tracht was feeling right now, then he had to conclude that she was absolutely crazy.

It took a few minutes for the other effect of the collar to start seeping in though. Subtle. Very subtle, and maybe if Tracht hadn’t been so riled up, he wouldn’t have noticed it. His muscles loosened, and his breathing leveled out in a way far too unnatural given his current state of affairs.

“Do you sell this for recreational purposes too? I think you could find a thriving market for this drug,” Tracht said. Oh, the slur had gotten worse, not better. “Actually, not half bad.”

“Not on Atalanta, the market’s not big enough and it’s way too hard to keep operations going without security noticing. But on Pylos? You bet.” Iglesias patted Tracht’s cheek. “We’ll give you another half hour. You’ll be feeling really, really nice then. And then you’ll answer my questions. No lying this time.”

Well, that gave Tracht another half hour of reprieve.

---