Abducted Read online

  My heart was pounding in my chest as I pushed at it, my pulse skittering like a frightened rabbit’s. The sleeves of Sarden’s black shirt had unrolled themselves and they kept getting in the way as I tried to get a grip on the damn thing.

  “Let me go,” I muttered under my breath. “Let…me…go, you bastard!”

  And suddenly, it did.

  I dropped to the bottom of the tank like a stone, the weight of the sodden shirt pulled me down.

  “No!” I tried to say but I sucked in a mouthful of the yellow liquid which was more viscous than water, and choked it out again. I looked up, clawing to find a way out but the sides of the tank rose around me, slick and high and unclimbable. I thrashed as hard as I could, the glowing yellow tank mixing with the vision of the murky blue pool in my past to make a confused vision of horror in my head. Angie, I thought. Angie, I’m so sorry…

  Suddenly the slimy black tentacle grabbed me and lifted my head above the water again. I took another ragged, gasping breath and coughed it back out again, trying to rid my lungs of the horrible liquid, which tasted like mud and blood mixed together.

  Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, more tentacles appeared and started tearing at the black shirt I was wearing.

  “Hey…hey, stop that!” I gasped as they managed to get it open. Two more tentacles stripped it off my shoulders, leaving me naked and flailing in the slimy liquid. What the hell was going on? What were they going to do?

  I found out sooner than I wanted to.

  Two thin, shiny black tentacles suddenly appeared right in front of me, their tips pointed at my chest. I looked down at them stupidly, unable to move since the thicker tentacle was still wrapped around my waist.

  As I watched, the end of each tentacle began to grow and change until, instead of a blunt tip, they had both turned into starfish-looking appendages on the end of the long black arms.

  Before I could wonder what the starfish-hands were for, both of them surged forward and plastered themselves to my boobs.

  “Hey! Hey, stop it, you perverts!” I began to thrash even harder, trying to get away from the awful things. But they were stuck on me like suction cups. And speaking of suction, it seemed like they were determined to suck my nipples right off my breasts. In fact, it felt like someone had put a vacuum hose against each of my boobs and flipped the switch to high.

  It hurt like hell and felt perverted at the same time. And then another tentacle brushed at my inner thigh.

  “Oh, no,” I said, kicking out at the thing as hard as I could. “Oh, Hell no, I don’t think so—get away from me!”

  I was shouting at the top of my lungs—dimly I could hear my own voice echoing in the vast chamber. But there was no one to hear—no one to save me. Was this how my story ended? Could I really die like this, molested to death by some creepy alien creature, like some hapless schoolgirl in Japanese hentai tentacle porn?

  “No!” I screamed as the tentacle brushed between my legs again. “No—no, you son of a bitch! Get off me!”

  And then the main tentacle around my waist yanked me down again. My mouth filled with the awful yellow slime and I couldn’t shout any more…

  Chapter Eleven

  Sarden

  I didn’t care for Count Doloroso—there was something strange about him. But I told myself he was just an odd male with a weird Assimilation obsession. What could it hurt to let him buy the medical instruments in my hold?

  We made the deal, to be finalized when he came to my ship for the Assimilation equipment in a few standard hours. Though Gallana isn’t actually on a planet, it orbits around a star and its rotation is paced to mimic the thirty hour day of Femme 1, where the Empress lives. Since the day is long, it was still just mid-morning. I should still have time to find a mechanic to replace my panel after Doloroso made the pick up—I hoped, anyway.

  Doloroso and I took one last drink on the deal and I left The Suck Hole, the thought of Zoe still in the back of my mind like a nagging song that won’t leave your brain.

  “Call the ship,” I told Al, who had been keeping silent in his travel form during the negotiations. “Check on Zoe—make sure she’s well.”

  “Don’t you wish to hear what I have found out about the local services and mechanics, Master?” he asked. “I have one you might care to visit but—”

  “Not now,” I snapped, quickening my pace. “Check on Zoe.”

  He was quiet for a moment, humming softly on my shoulder.

  “No answer, Master,” he said at last.

  “What? What do you mean, no answer?” I frowned. “She’s probably sulking because she wanted to go with me.” As if I’d bring her to a place like The Suck Hole! “She’s probably just refusing to answer.”

  “No, Master—I don’t think so.” Now Al sounded worried as well—if an Artificial Life-form can be worried. “I’ve scanned her room twice now and I don’t detect a heartbeat or breathing. Either she is not there. Or…”

  He didn’t finish and I didn’t need him to. I remembered Zoe’s big blue eyes, filled with tears she refused to shed last night when she’d begged me to take her home. Frozen Hells of Anor! What if she’d hurt herself in order to avoid being traded? What if she’d decided it was better to die than to live the rest of her life away from her home planet? What if she’d…?

  I couldn’t let myself finish the thought. I sped up until I was almost running, drawing concerned looks from the Majoran Peace Keepers stationed in the docking area. I didn’t give a damn though—the worried feeling that had been tugging at me almost the entire time I’d been making my deal had worsened into a sick dread in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t known the little Pure One even an entire solar week yet but somehow the idea of losing her was unbearable.

  I tore into the ship, barely giving the hidden side panel door enough time to open before I was squeezing inside. As I pounded down the main corridor, I feared what I would find when I came to her room.

  “Al, unlock her door,” I ordered, my boots thunk-thunk-thunking on the metal floor.

  “No need, Master—it is already open. Look.”

  Sure enough, as I skidded to a halt before the bedroom I had assigned to Zoe, I saw the door standing wide open. A quick look inside the room revealed no trace of her. My own door was unlocked as well but she wasn’t in there either.

  “Frozen Hells of Anor!” I swore angrily, coming out into the main corridor again. “Where is she? Al—scan the rest of the ship.”

  “Yes, Master. Scanning.” He hummed softly, still in his travel form on my shoulder. And that was when I heard it—over the quiet humming of Al’s processing, a faint splashing noise, like water sloshing in a tank.

  And then a single, piercing scream which was cut off abruptly.

  “Fuck!” I pounded down the corridor as fast as I could, feeling like my heart might burst. I didn’t know how in the Frozen Hells I’d known it or how she had gotten out of the Force-Locks and escaped her room, but my uneasy feelings had been correct—Zoe was in trouble.

  The splashing sound came again from the back of the ship. But what was she splashing in? There were no personal cleansing pools located in the hold, where the sounds were coming from. So how in the hell…

  Suddenly an image rose to my mind’s eye—the holo projection of the sensitivity tank Doloroso had been so eager to buy. The yellow liquid with its nest of black, writhing tentacles, the sensu-pods. “I imagine they will be quite hungry by now” he had said…

  “Zoe!” I shouted, running for the door to the hold which I could now see was standing wide open, as were all the other doors along the corridor. She must have opened every one, looking for a way out. “Zoe, where are you?”

  A faint splashing and the noise of liquid sloshing onto the ground was my only answer. I reached the darkened hold and started shoving my way through the medical equipment stored there, not giving a damn if I broke any of it or not. Up ahead I could see the yellowish glow of