Page 50 of Fifth
The headman drank it in, then made a show of shame, palm down for calm he didn’twant.
“Emmy,” he said, using her name the way a man uses a key. “Step forward so the buyers can see your eyes.”
She did. The guard tried to touch her. She pulled away and forced herself the last half-step to the rail. The small defiance drew a hiss. The headman didn’t like it either, but he liked the cameramore.
“This female’s condition...” he said to the drones, like he was reading a label he had forged. “Young. Unbroken. Untouched by the preserve. And she has documented ties that make her more valuable to collectors—her blood connection to the girl already inside the trials. Sisters. Arare matched set, one trapped in the preserve, one offered for sale. And when the final Challenge isdone, perhaps the hunters will be promised the alien’s head as a trophy if they spare the girl, so she can be sold aswell.
“Imagine it—both sisters in the hands of bidders. That is a guarantee of scarcity. And, for those who like a story, imagine the content value, the returns, the frenzy when buyers can boast of owning both sisters. Emmy now, and Hannah later. Will one bidder claim them both, completing the set? Time will tell!”
Hannah made a sound in her throat that wasn’t a word. Locus held her closer by choice, not force. His palm found the line of her hip and lingered, thumb stroking unconsciously at the curve he wanted to memorize. The warmth of her body seeped into his side, her trembling pressing her tighter into him. Desire and fury tangled until he could barely separatethem.
He lifted his voice so the headman heard it. “You speak of value as if you understand the word.”
The headman’s gaze slid over. He lifted his chin a fraction, amused and wary. “I understand plenty.”
“You understand profit,” Locus said. “Value is different.”
“You going to teach me economics, alien?”
“I am going to finish this,” Locus said. “When I do, there will be no drones left in your sky.”
The headman’s smile thinned. “Try it. You take down a single drone and the footage alone will triple her price. Every replay means more credits for me. We both thrive on outsiders watching—but mine pay better And don’t forget all those people in Hannah’s neighborhood. I can take them out with a snap of my fingers.”
Hannah’s hand pressed against Locus’s abdomen, her palm hot against the ridges of muscle, steadying herself and him atonce. He didn’t look down, but heat surged at the contact. He kept his eyes on the dais, his thoughts on not snapping the headman’s neck before the yard forced the last trial. Discipline was a habit so old it came like breath. He used it now as his body reacted to every tremor inhers.
“Let us begin,” Voss said from the base of the platform.
He had arrived without fanfare, atall man with a colder face than the others, jacket unzipped to show a vest lined with tech, boots without dust. He had the look of someone who didn’t sleep in camps. He had come for a single purchase and didn’t intend to stay. Men moved out of his way without knowing they did it. He took the steps and stood one plank back from Emmy, not quite within reach.
“I don’t need a show, fool,” he told the headman. “Name your reserve—the minimum price you’ll take—and spare me your patter.”
“I enjoy my patter.”
Voss slid a look over him that stripped without touching. “I enjoy not being shot in the back while an auctioneer talks too long.”
That pulled a genuine laugh from several hard faces. The headman put a hand to his heart as if wounded. “Reserve is high.”
Voss drew a line on the ledger with the tip of a stylus. “Higher.”
The woman with the bowl shifted to a tablet and began entering figures. Numbers stacked. The headman watched the rising total and forgot to perform for a moment. Greed had a voice all its own. He swallowed and found his smile again. “Wehave other buyers, Voss. You do not buy the whole show by breathing at it.”
“Bring them in,” Voss said. “Let them make it expensive.”
Screens on the pole uprights brightened. Faces winked into life, most masked, some in shadow. Bidders from outside the yard. Locus catalogued accents, languages, backgrounds in the fast rhythm of war, not commerce. Ships. Ports. Houses. Credits. Names would come later. He didn’t intend to need them. He intended to remember their faces long enough to endthem.
The headman lifted his arm. “We begin. Sister lot. Provenance attached. Transport immediate upon completion.”
Hannah’s breath sawed and caught. Locus heard it like a wire pulled tight. He bent his head, his mouth close enough to her ear that his breath stirred the strands of her hair. “Breathe.”
She did. He caught the struggle, followed by the victory when air found its way into her lungs and stayed. The scent of her hair teased him, faintly floral beneath smoke, and the urge to lower his mouth to her temple gnawed at his control.
The first bid came with a smooth voice from the nearest screen. The second hit before the clerk finished logging the first. Voss made the third without changing expression. Prices rose. Abell clanged with each new bid, until the yard itself seemed to turn into a bell. Every ring vibrated through the metal in the fence and the bones of the men who never saw such staggering numbers before. They leaned in like carrion birds scenting a carcass, hungry for a feast that wasn’t theirs.
Derision peppered the bidding—”She’s worth more chained than free!”
“Show her cry and I’ll pay extra!”
A bidder laughed, “If the alien dies, I’ll double my offer for the survivor.”
