gently and carefully strip her naked. I want to see her nude, but I also have to inspect her from head to toe. I need to know precisely what kind of condition she is in, if there are any blemishes I should take note of, or other concerns. Because she is my prisoner, I am fully responsible for every inch of her. She is mine, not just to punish and contain, but to care for.
As the clothing and packaging falls away to reveal the flesh beneath, I find myself taking in a deep breath of amazement.
She’s beautiful.
She is not a young woman, and her body is fuller and more shapely as a result, but it is also strong, and marked with the stripes of growth and change.
Mine.
The word pops into my head without bidding, an instant claiming. She’s mine. She’s beautiful. Her dark hair is streaked in places with hints of silver. I wonder if that is where she got her name from, though somehow, I doubt it.
I could stare at her all day, but I do not like the condition she is in. She’s breathing lightly, and shallowly, making me wonder if they have used too many drugs, or perhaps starved her of much needed oxygen when they subdued her.
I grab the medical scanner I had ready for her arrival. Sometimes prisoners come sedated, other times they come off the ship fighting. I suspected she might be a fighter, so I have all the supplies at hand to mend basic human injuries.
The scan reveals that her heartbeat is steady. Her reflexes are repressed, but that’s to be expected after sedation on top of sedation. She looks at me, but with glassy eyes, barely recognizing me as another entity.
Those murketeers have doped her to the gills, but I think she will come around in a few minutes. Until then there’s nothing I can do — besides complain.
Somebody is going to pay for this.
I call the IHPZ from the terminal on the other side of my quarters. The same terminal I first took their unlikely call from.
A human female responds to my hail.
“Karen speaking, how may I direct your call?”
“Give me your master, human.”
There’s a pause, and then an exhalation of breath which I can only interpret as annoyance.
“I have no master. I am the manager. My name is Karen, and you will speak to me with respect.”
I do not know what the hell is going on at the IHPZ, but their human women are out of control.
Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about them. I have to worry about my human. At least, until there are more humans being sent here from there, thanks to the delinquency they are clearly encouraging among their ranks.
“Put me on to the first scythkin male you see.”
“Sexist,” the woman on the other end of the line mutters to herself. She does, however, do as she is told.
“Tyank here.”
“It’s Warden.”
I need no more introduction than that.
“Oh, you got the package?”
“I have a doped up, plastic-wrapped human who is dehydrated and weak.”
“She’s not weak. Don’t ever make that mistak…”
He doesn’t manage to finish the sentence before my head explodes, or at least feels as though it has exploded. I recognize the sensation of every single neuron being stimulated at once. I’ve been hit by an electrical bolt, one almost powerful enough to knock me unconscious. It is certainly enough to anger me into intense and immediate rage which makes every blade on my body extend at once in a fanning motion of death.
I swing around, just barely avoiding eviscerating my human, who has made a miraculous recovery from her sedation. She has also, apparently, been concealing an electronic charge device somewhere on her person. I can only begin to imagine where that might have been concealed, and for how long. She must have planned this before she left the IHPZ, secreted it in one of her tight human cavities and waited patiently for the most opportune time to deploy it. I am impressed.
She looks at me and I feel the full force of her human rage. I feel it like a force sweeping from her fragile body toward mine. She hates me. She hates me fully, completely, every cell of my body, every inch of my blades.
She’s waiting for me to retaliate. I wonder what happened the last time she hit a scythkin with a weapon. I wonder if she was beaten. I wonder if that last unfortunate scythkin gave into the flash of rage resulting