Page 2 of Baited

Madame Birrix also bleeds her workers dry, taking anything up to seventy percent of their earnings, for ‘board and lodging’ which is entirely laughable, given the amount they make would pay for many nights in one of the posh hotels near the spaceport. No wonder most of her workers do ‘extras’ for credit chips they can conceal from her.

“I will!” Riklinn jumps to her feet. “I will!” she reiterates, wiping her hand over her face. “Right now!”

“I’d get cleaned up a bit first. You know what she’s like about appearances,” I suggest.

“Oh!” Riklinn pulls out her multi-function device and checks her reflection, causing her nose to wrinkle. “Yes, good idea.”

“I’m full of them.” I stretch out.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Izzy, you could probably do with a bath,” Riklinn says to her reflection.

“I do mind, but you’re right. I had to clean up cubicle V-13.”

Riklinn very nearly drops her device. “Not the one from last night?” She gasps.

“The very same,” I reply.

“I still don’t understand why they don’t have bot cleaners here,” Riklinn grumbles, as she pulls out a makeup bag and starts repairing the damage. “We had them at home.”

“Aside from the fact I’d be out of a job and somewhere to live, I don’t think they’ve invented a cleaning bot which could cope with the fluids I deal with daily. But I live in hope.”

I don’t want to be a pleasure worker, but when I see Riklinn attempting it, and when I know what the rewards are, despite Madame’s atrocious rates, it makes me wonder if I could consider swallowing my increasingly threadbare pride and offering myself up.

That is, if any of the species frequenting Tatatunga might be interested in a human, given not one customer has even looked in my direction.

Maybe I should speak to Madame too.

BLAYN

My sword blade slices easily through the flesh of the challenger, his armor a hinderance rather than any assistance. I swing around as he falls, the dust of the dome rising at my feet, and roar out at the crowd, beating my wings in defiance of everything.

Then I fall on him, hacking at what’s left.

Life, death, it is nothing. I have the scent of blood and guts in my nostrils, and I am invincible.

“Blayn!” a voice I should recognize calls out.

I rise, because I need more blood, more violence, more of the crowd baying and more of the fight. If I fight, nothing else matters. The voices don’t matter, the silence doesn’t matter, the dark doesn’t matter.

“Blayn!”

As I beat into the air, my feathers sticky with the fluids of my fallen opponents, my tattooed skin slick with blood which doesn’t belong to me, I’m jerked back to the ground.

There’s a noose around my leg. And one around my neck. The sword tumbles from my grip as I grasp at my bonds. A thick net covers my wings, and I am immobile as I’m dragged down and down below the dome, into the ante chamber.

“Vrex,” Maxym grumbles. “You’re a liability, Blayn.” He’s sporting a cut to his arm which goes deep, his brow pulled low over his eyes, brooding as usual.

I lift my head and howl for the return to the violence.

The captain turns the hose on me. The water is icy, as I like it, but he doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know anything. What is in my head stays in my head because if it gets out, I don’t know what I’ll do.

The harder he pumps the water at me, the more I roar out, until they add the jolt of blue electricity and my muscles go rigid, stopping any further fight long enough to get me into my cell.

And the lights go out as the restraints are removed. For a long time, I stand in the dark, listening to the drip of water and my breathing.

Another gladiator games completed for the owners of the dome, the one place where violence is extolled and where my singular skill in disposing of a challenger is welcomed. Who knows how many more in my future.

The silence is broken by the howl. I am not howling. It is the things in the blackness which scream out, wanting me to answer, to speak, to…

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