Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“Argh. God. Fuck,” she curses as she wakes up. “My fucking head.”
“Sukar said you might have a headache,” I tell her. “That’s what getting high does.”
She shoots me a resentful look, and I can practically see memories clicking into place in her mind in an awkward sort of not-all-the-way-there way. I don’t know how much she recalls, but I do know she’s about to remake the events of the last three days to best suit herself.
“You know I didn’t choose to be high, right? It just happened.”
“You chose to dive into a crowd full of people who could, and it turns out did, do almost anything to you.”
“God. Fucking chill,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”
She gets up out of her sleep pod, a structure designed for sedation-aided sleep. It has a rim around the edge, the entire bed looking something like a half peeled egg. This matters because the usual way of getting up out of the bed is to sit up and slide off the feet end. Lyric decides to simply flop up and over the side, nearly landing flat on her face. I manage to break her fall, but only just, catching her by the scruff of her performance outfit before her face meets the floor.
“Fuck,” she curses again. “When did gravity get so heavy? And so sucky. I hate it. I hate actual gravity. My head really hurts. Where’s the doctor? I need something for this.”
“What you need for this is a damn good thrashing,” I growl at her. “You disobeyed a direct order from me. I have told you several times that crowds are dangerous and you need to stay out of them, but the first chance you get, you throw yourself into the middle of them. Do you have a death wish?”
Her lower lip quivers, and her eyes start to well with tears, and she looks so sick and pathetic that I decide to put her punishment off for a little while. But only a little while. Her ass is going to pay for what she did. I intend to ensure that she never jumps into a crowd ever again, and not because I give a damn if she fulfills her contracts, but because I very much care if she survives.
“I don’t have a death wish,” she sobs. “I’m a rock star.”
“Sure you are,” I say intending to be comforting, but instead coming off as patronizing.
“I AM!” She insists. “Look how famous I am!”
“Indeed, very famous.”
She scowls, and the urge to thrash her resurfaces more strongly than before. But I am not entirely without mercy. I’ll let her get breakfast before I beat her.
Even more hours later…
The come down is taking a long time. Lyric is moping about the ship, complaining about headaches and begging Sukar for pain medication which he insists she has had more than enough of already.
“Please. Just a little something.”
“I can’t give you anything else. You took an unknown substance at the last concert, and my very low dose sedation put you under for two days. I think your system is thoroughly overloaded. You need to detox from all sedatives and pain killers. No more being put out to bed, and no more pain relief. Have some water and try to relax.”
“Water,” she snorts. “Water. What fucking use is water?”
“You seemed very enamored of wetness as a concept earlier,” Sukar muses. “How sad your revelations seem not to have stuck.”
“I can’t remember anything,” she sighs. “I remember jumping into the crowd, and then waking up a few hours ago. I remember asking you for pain relief, and you being a huge jerk about it.”
“Endorphins help with pain,” Sukar suggests.
“You mean like sex?”
“Or pain,” he says. “Proper, sustained, well-deserved, disciplinary pain. Just as the doctor ordered.”
“The fuck?”
Her confusion has to be pretend, because she knows very well what will be happening to her. It has happened before, after all. It’s one of the few contractual clauses she is aware of.
“Worth a try,” I say, grabbing her. I have been waiting to do this since I saw her first jump into the crowd in bold defiance of every safety briefing. She’s a brat. She’s disobedient. And she’s going to get herself into trouble of the lethal kind if I cannot get her under control.
“Let me go! What the actual FUCK!?” Her screech of outrage reaches a quick pitch that I will soon realize in retrospect was fair warning.
Lyric
My head is pounding and I am absolutely not in the mood for any of this. I don’t know what the hell has been happening this last week, but I feel like I just woke up properly, like I’ve been sleepwalking somehow every damn day. Now everything is raw and intense, and real. It’s like someone took my skin off and left every nerve open to the universe.