Page 2 of Decadence

The alien’s smug, gravelly voice grated against her nerves. Who was this self-entitled prick?

If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’d rather die than surrender to an asshole like you. Sienna raised her head and stared at the grey metal ceiling, where she suspected the recorder device was hidden. The slender faceless alien accomplice kept glancing in that direction, after all.

She summoned the last of her strength and spat. “Fuck you,” she said in English, her voice coming out as a cracked whisper.

“This won’t do. That tone of voice is completely unacceptable. Why are humans so stubborn? Punish it again.”

Bzzt. The collar fired, sending her into a deeper dimension of hell.

“For some reason, this one is harder to break than the others. It’s inconvenient, but carry on. I like the look of it. If its skin was a better hue, it could almost pass for Kordolian.”

Kordolian?

She’d been bought by a Kordolian?

Fear snaked through her heart, turning her cold even as the aftershocks of pain rumbled through her body.

Everyone had heard rumors of what Kordolians were like.

She let out a tiny whimper of fear. She was so screwed.

“Y-you can’t b-break me,” she hissed in imperfect Universal, still staring up at the ceiling. “G-go and get fucked.”

The buyer laughed. “Is it stupid, or just stubborn beyond belief? Pain isn’t enough, is it? Yer going to have to use the implements, Ephrenian. Go and get the tools.”

The slender, faceless alien shrugged.

She froze. Implements? Tools?

“See, human, we’ve had slaves for longer than yer kind have known civilization. There are lots of ways to get a body and mind to bend to the will, no matter what the species.”

With a strange ambling gait, the alien—this Ephrenian—walked across to the opposite wall and retrieved something long and made of dark grey metal; a stick-looking thing with pointed metal barbs at the end.

“Time to get ya marked,” the Kordolian said, and the smug satisfaction in his voice made her want to retch. “When ya understand that yer owned, it’ll be much easier for ya to accept yer place in the Universe, little pet.” The alien laughed, before barking rapid-fire orders to her captor in a language she didn’t understand. “Now I need to go and handle some business. Ya better have morphed into a good, quiet little slave by the time I get back, else we’ll have ta put yer in the box.”

The faint static of the transmission went dead.

The Ephrenian advanced toward her, gently slapping the barbed stick-thing against its outstretched palm.

She stiffened.

What the hell was it going to do with that—

Boom!

The Ephrenian never got the chance to use it, because at that moment, the metal doors blew apart.

Naked, in agony, terrified, and unable to do anything but crane her neck upwards, she stared at the smoldering edges of the doorway, peering through a haze of acrid metallic smoke.

For a moment, there was only silence, and then the Ephrenian started speaking rapidly and frantically in its strange alien language. She couldn’t understand the words, but it was clearly a desperate plea for help.

Nobody came to his aid.

A male voice—a different one—drifted into her consciousness, speaking yet another language she’d never heard before, the words cool, clipped, and precise.

A dark shadow appeared at the edge of her vision, but before she could clearly make it out, the Ephrenian rose up behind her; lurching, furious, its slender arms outstretched, four-fingered hands extended.

And then it was upon her, encircling her neck with an impossibly strong grip, cutting off her air. She flailed about, trying to break its grip, but then it activated the shock collar again, sending a burst of searing pain through her body.

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