18
The next morning I woke up on my side, which was already an improvement. It took me a moment to figure out what woke me up, because it wasn't like any alarm I'd ever been subject to. The closest thing to it would be the sound of a TV that's on, but not tuned to a channel. It wasn't a sound so much as a disruption in the air, one powerful enough to wake me up.
Once I opened my eyes, the disruption stopped.
Palashai was standing next to the bed, one hand outstretched toward me, and I got the impression the 'alarm' had come from her.
"I saw Yimshe unlock my restraints yesterday with a gesture. I take it you two have been altered?" I asked.
"So have you. All livestock are fitted with a variety of implants. Some of them are useful for monitoring, others for utility. After what happened yesterday I wasn't about to touch you."
As she turned away I said, "Palashai?"
Hesitating, she twisted her head to look at me curiously, and I said, "Have sex with me."
Her eyes widened, and I said, "There. That should satisfy the rules you gave me yesterday. Now, what's the plan?"
Her eyes narrowed, and she said, "You had no intention of having sex when you asked."
"No, but I'd have accepted it if you called me out. You didn't, so all's well."
"Why bother at all?"
"Because I'd rather you have all your options open. If there's going to be a reason for you not to mess with me, I want that reason to be that you simply don't want to."
Palashai turned around at that, and stared down at me. It struck me again just how big she was. Ten feet tall, black-and-tan skin, muscular, stacked, and with the intense, golden-eyed gaze of a Doberman.
It was a hell of a contrast. Both intensely threatening and sexual all at once.
"Maybe I will call you out," she said.
Raising my chin, I stared intently at her and waited. I knew she was either bluffing, or I was in for some rough hate sex.
"Something you should know about packwren," she said, after a long moment of silence. "We have keen noses. There might not be much for me to see on your face, but I can smell your feelings."
"And?" I asked.
"Let's just say neither I nor my daughter care much for hate sex. I refuse your advance."
With that, she turned and walked out into the main room, leaving me to follow after, bemused but not unhappy.
Given what she'd explained yesterday, Palashai had made herself completely off-limits.
Fine by me. I wondered if Yimshe would make a similar declaration.
Palashai led me across the living room to the smaller study room on the far side and, following her in, I found Yimshe waiting for me ... along with someone else.
She was wearing a jumpsuit of navy blue with gold trim. Her eyes were slitted, larger than I was used to seeing, and the irises were gold flecked with green. Her hands and face were exposed, and green-scaled. Her brow ridge was a bit pronounced, and her nose was flat and sloped smoothly down from her brow. Her face was angular, though not unattractive ... at least, in a purely aesthetic sense.
She was about my height, which meant she was pretty much a short-stack in this world, and had the curves to go with it. Her eyes widened when she saw me and she visibly trembled until a hand settled on one of her shoulders.
Yimshe was behind her, and Palashai stepped to one side and leaned against a wall, folding her arms under her chest.
It was Yimshe who spoke.
"Taz, this is Scilla. She's a syban."
"I'm familiar with the type," I said flatly, remembering both the woman whose neck I had broken at Division Four and the several others who'd managed my restraints during transport.
"She's also a volunteer," Yimshe said, her tone going just as flat as mine.
"Hopefully, she's getting danger pay," I said with quiet amusement.
Yimshe's ears flattened, almost disappearing into her spiky hair as she said, "She's your lesson."
"What am I supposed to learn from her?" I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.
"You need to learn how to get her off," Yimshe said, confirming my guess.
"How am I supposed to do that?" I asked, waving a hand at the syban as I added, "She's scared out of her mind."
"Your reputation precedes you. Consider it part of your training, and remember: she's free to refuse you at any time and should she do so, you fail."
"I told you not to get clever with me," I said, turning hard eyes on Yimshe, who bared her teeth, not giving an inch.
"I'm not being clever. I'm being blunt. If you can't get her to consent, then make her cum, you'll never make it through the season. Scilla won't suffer any consequences for a refusal here either. Your success or failure is all on you. Now, if you'll excuse us."
Yimshe slipped past the terrified syban. She and Palashai both left the room, the latter sliding the door closed behind. I knew better than to presume that meant we had any privacy. We were both livestock, and there was probably a whole team of people watching the feeds from both of us.
I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly as I turned to consider the alien in front of me as I thought about how to do this. I wasn't a pick-up artist. Being smooth wasn't in my toolkit.
The syban was shivering again, over-large eyes trained on me as she took a half step back. She looked like she was about to piss herself.
I very slowly showed her my hands and took a step back myself, giving her more space, mind racing. She was a volunteer, supposedly, but that left me with questions. I might not know how to pick up girls, particularly not alien snake-women, but I did know how to conduct an interrogation, and there were several ways to go about it. First, get her talking.
"Scilla?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as I made eye contact. It was a basic first question: What is your name? Most people answered such questions automatically. It was practically hard-wired, at least it was in humans. I suspected as long as her species was social, it would be the same for her.
"They told you my name," she said, voice shivering.
"I wanted you to tell me," I said, still showing my hands. "If possible, I'd like you to relax. Hurting you isn't going to benefit either of us."
"You talk like you're a rational creature," she said, clearly not believing a word of it. "I've read your file."
"Why did you agree to be here if you're so afraid of me?" I asked, genuinely curious, but also keen to keep her talking. The ice was broken, now I just had to make sure it didn't refreeze. I had no idea how to take things any further than that, but my only option was to wait for an opportunity, and hope something came up. Perhaps I could bribe her somehow.
"I came here because I ... I want to ask you a question," she said, and as she spoke her tone firmed up, as though she were coming to a decision.
Mind racing, I lowered my hands. I've heard resolution like that before, and I knew what it meant.
I said, "Don't."
She took a step forward, and a serpentine tongue flicked the air as the slits of her eyes widened a little. She was intently focused on me.
I said again, "Scilla, don't. I'm warning you, which is more than she got. You'll just be throwing your life away."
I reached back with one hand and beat on the door, then yelled, "You brought me a relative of the one I killed, you fucking morons!"
The door slammed open as Scilla hissed and launched herself at me, mouth opening impossibly wide as a pair of fangs dropped into sight from her upper jaw.
I caught her throat with one hand and swung her around to slam against the wall. She was so light it felt like I was swinging a body pillow around. It took an effort of will not to snap her neck, but I contained the desire and dropped her.
The impact had sent her marbles rolling and she slumped against the wall, dazed and on the verge of blacking out. One hand lifted, swiped feebly at me, and I stood looking down at her as I said, "If you did this on purpose our deal is off."
I lifted my gaze to Yimshe, who was looking at me with wide eyes. I knew in that expression she'd had no idea, but I put a finger up, just short of her muzzle, and growled, "You two are beginning to look incompetent to me."
Movement drew my attention back to Scilla, and I crouched next to her as she shook her head to clear it, her eyes focused, shifted to me, and I gently wrapped my hand around her neck again as I said, "I'm not going to kill you, but I'm not about to let you kill me either. You should have waited. If you'd played along, I might have been vulnerable later."
"I'll ... remember that."
I lifted her chin with my wrist, making sure to get good eye contact as I said, "You have me to thank for that. No one would blame me for killing you."
"Why didn't you?" she asked.
I thought about that, then said, "Director Chosen told me not to ... and because I don't blame you for trying."
"Why did you kill her?" Scilla asked, voice plaintive. "She was just doing her job!"
"I doubt you know what that job was, Scilla. As for why ... I killed her because she was torturing me."
"That's a lie!"
"Is it?"
Scilla glared at me, but didn't answer. I let her go and straightened. She slumped against the wall, shaking with a release of tension that was half grief, half fear. I looked past Yimshe to Palashai and said, "You knew."
She gave me that long, slow blink that seemed to be the packwren approximation of a nod.
Eyes shifting to Yimshe, I said, "You really are a fucking moron. If it isn't obvious by now let me make it clear to you: I'm not the only one being tested here, and you failed."
"So did you," Palashai said, drawing my attention back to her.
I shook my head and said, "No, I didn't. Not yet. Give Scilla the option."
Glancing down at the syban woman, who was rubbing her throat as she looked reproachfully up at me, I said, "She'll be back. She's not done with me."
Scilla screamed, "I refuse your advance!"
I glanced down at her, then laughed and spread my hands as I said, "What advance? I was never going to fuck you. I was told to make you cum, that's all. Now, you won't even get that."
"I got something far more valuable. I made you a failure!" she hissed, sliding away down the wall out of my reach before standing up as she added, "And you're a monster!"
"Oh ... you poor girl," I said sucking my teeth. "That makes two of us."
I then shouldered my way past Yimshe and out into the main room to confront Palashai, who was gazing down at me with that guard dog look I found so ... interesting.
"Anytime, Pala. You just say the word, and I'll bring you down to my level," I said, blood still running a bit high.
"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction," she said.
"It really does sound like you hate me," I noted.
"I was getting there, but this latest gives me fresh hope."
"Don't underestimate my self-control. I kill her and Director Chosen withdraws her support. I warned your daughter not to play games with me, now I'm warning you: don't play games with her. She's in charge, and you're giving her bad advice. Where I come from, bad subordinates get replaced."
"Director Chosen was the one who ordered this scenario," Pala said as Yim guided Scilla out of the smaller room and toward the exit of the suite. "Yim had nothing to do with it."
"Then Yim should have looked into who Scilla was," I snapped, never taking my eyes off Palashai. Nevertheless, I saw Yim's ears flatten in shame as she approached from one side. "You're still playing games."
"Yes. The difference is it works with Yim," Pala said. "She will learn from this, and it cost you nothing. It wouldn't have mattered what she knew. The scenario would have played out the same. When you're live, situations will rarely be simply what they look like at first glance. I'm actually shocked you figured out who she was so quickly. What gave her away?"
"There's a very specific feeling people get when they make the conscious decision to take a life," I said. "It's more pronounced in people who've never done it before. When I got that feeling from Scilla, there was only one reasonable conclusion."
"You make it sound like you have empathy," Pala said, her lips rippling up to show her teeth in a feral grin. "It's almost as if you can read someone's emotions, understand them, and respond appropriately."
We stared at each other for a long few seconds, then she showed me that feral grin of hers again as she said, "The psyche team said you were a psychotic. 'Fundamentally emotionally unsound,' they said. 'Put her in that room with him and only one of them comes out alive,' they said. I knew better. I knew if I put things in a language you understand, you would respond appropriately."
"Tell me the truth."
"Director Chosen authorized this exercise personally, but it was my idea. I went and found Scilla, brought her in, and offered her the chance to be alone in a room with you. The rest you know."
"Why didn't you tell your daughter?" I asked.
"She isn't capable of deceiving you. With your keen instincts, you would have known something was wrong the instant you laid eyes on her, and she had to be present to learn her lesson."
I stared at Palashai and examined what I was feeling in that moment. The only word that really fit was admiration, and there was no reason not to admit it. I said, "You play all the angles, all the time. I don't like that, but I do admire it. So where is she?"
One of her ears flicked sideways as she asked, "Where is who?"
"The girl you really want me to try and work on."
Palashai's grin showed all her teeth as she said, "There are so many reasons to hate you, and yet you have so much promise. Much as I would have liked to arrange something along those lines ... there are no real volunteers. Director Chosen insisted anyone stepping into your presence do so fully informed, and you have the reputation of a horror movie monster. I'm afraid what knowledge you gain from here on out will be theoretical."
I nodded, eyes drifting, then shrugged and said, "Let's get started."
* * *
I spent the next week planted in a little classroom learning very ... questionable things. It was a bizarro world equivalent of something I'd gone through once before. In my old life, I'd sat in classes like these and learned how to find people, get answers if needed, kill them, then dispose of the bodies. In this one I learned how to interact with aliens, turn them on, then get them off.
It wasn't just physical notes either. Some of the species I was 'introduced' to had very specific behavioral preferences. I'd spent time watching succubus entertainment media to learn how to kill these things. I was made to watch some of it again to learn how to titillate them.
Succubi themselves weren't in the curriculum. When I asked, I was told that practically anything I learned about any of the other species would also work on succubi, provided they had the relevant parts. They were the easiest to turn on and get off. So easy in fact that they weren't worth learning about, at least, not according to Pala and Yim.
Speaking of, they were the only two living things I saw. Director Chosen made no further appearances, and it was clear Pala hadn't been joking. I was being isolated as a genuine danger to the staff. That thought offered the only real amusement I got out of that week.
Neither packwren made any moves toward me. After getting my rocks off multiple times daily feeding Mauren it was a bit of an adjustment, and not a comfortable one. Oh well. If my trainers were teaching me anything about this world I was living in, it was that any stretch of chastity was very, very temporary, and that I'd probably come to appreciate their hands-off approach.
At any rate, I'd certainly paid enough for it.
One day before the season opener, Liminal Science was given the relevant information on the first event, and that information was then given to me.
My debut, at least, would be well within my comfort zone.