Gaylen was brooding. He didn’t like it, but there was no denying the fact. The room was small and bare, and while there was a small entertainment unit in the corner he didn’t feel motivated to test it out. Instead he simply sat on the bed and stared out the window.

The city’s multicoloured lights warped and twisted in the rainwater as it poured down the glass. It reminded him a bit of aurora borealis undulating across a sky, and had a similarly hypnotic effect. It really was a good brooding aide, accompanying the various issues swirling about in his head.

It had never been much of a secret that the Hegemony was working to get rid of genetic undesirables. They themselves dismissed it all as propaganda, but it matched perfectly with their rhetoric. It had always been just one more distant horror in a galaxy full of them; ugly background noise and nothing more. And now somehow the issue had landed in his lap.

There was a buzz at the door.

“It’s me,” Kiris said.

Gaylen opened. The golden woman had shed her roomy outerwear and headscarf.

“Do you mind a bit of company while you brood?” she asked.

Gaylen smiled weakly.

“Come in.”

She did come in, and offered a large beer bottle.

“Join me?”

“This doesn’t seem like the right time,” he replied.

“We’ll be plenty sober by the time we move,” she countered and Gaylen gave in. He supposed she’d bought the bottle in the lobby.

He gave it back and returned to his spot on the bed, resting his back against the wall. Kiris joined him.

“I think your view is better than mine,” she commented.

“Is that why you came?” he joked.

“If it were, I wouldn’t admit to it. So... no.”

She stretched her legs out and her arms up, before relaxing against the wall.

“How are you doing?” she then asked.

“I guess I’m hoping this isn’t going to be a pattern,” he replied. “Simple jobs turning into life-threatening disasters.”

“Oh, I’m hoping so as well,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s the main thing eating at you right now. Is it?”

“Oh, those eyes of yours,” Gaylen complained.

“These eyes of mine.”

She had a sip.

“You know, we don’t actually need the agent,” she pointed out. “We could just set out on our own, get to the ship, and forget the whole thing.”

Gaylen hesitated.

“Yesss,” he said slowly. “We could do that. Are you going to point out to me that I don’t want to?”

“Do you really need me to?”

He sighed, and looked inwards for the right response. The response that was right. She handed him the bottle and he took a sip.

“What’s your read on our agent friend?” he asked. “I guess I should have asked you earlier.”

“A true believer, if that’s what you’re after,” she told him. “He’s hardened to this kind of life, but he really is a Feddie to the core.”

“Mm.”

Gaylen nodded slowly.

“You’ll find plenty of those in the Federation. Plenty of people who just mouth along with the words, but plenty of real ones too There’s an... ego, I guess is the word... in the Federation character. As a society, it is so damn taken with being the guardians of justice in the galaxy. I guess it is the one unifying bond between... I don’t even know how many separate cultures.”

“I’ve been there,” Kiris reminded him.

“Yes. You know my story: Bad friends, bad decisions, back when I was young and dumb enough to think those were cool. But I guess it all seeped into my DNA anyway, when I wasn’t looking.”

He held his hand out and got the bottle again, as he stared numbly at the rain-streaked window.

“Then came that stupid robbery, and Levi Lok turned it into a bloody mess. I went on the run, hid on a big freighter. Got tossed out on Quentiso. I had no money and no contacts, and I learned just how little I knew about life on society’s underside. I wound up down in the Deep Streets.”

His mind turned against him, bringing up images of filth-streaked, man-made canyons of houses, so deep that the sunlight was only ever a bright crack high up above.

“I have been in some awful corners of the galaxy since then,” he said distantly. “But the Deep Streets make them easy by comparison. It’s all about fists down there. If you don’t have a gang and can’t prove yourself with your bare hands you are nothing. You are prey. And I had to learn damn fast. It was two years before I was able to get a piloting licence and get out of there.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

He looked at his knuckles.

“Turned my hands into meat and gristle. Down the line, once I had some money, I paid a corner doc for an overhaul. Young as I was, I could almost believe in that hell being divine punishment for what I’d gotten involved with. Except for all the perfectly innocent people suffering besides me.”

Gaylen sighed.

“After that it was still all just survival, survival, survival. Working with whoever would pay for my next meal. I’ve dodged death so many times. I just want a quiet life. And yet here I am, being stubbornly reminded that I’m a Federation boy. Damn it, Kiris; I think I really am going to help him get that record keeper. Come what may.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, surprising him. Kiris was very fond of her personal space. But he wasn’t about to complain about some pleasant human contact.

“It does stay with us, how we’re brought up,” Kiris said. “Who we are made to be. No matter how we feel about it. Even if we actively fight against it, that's still us reacting directly to upbringing.”

“I try not to complain about upbringing when you’re in the room,” Gaylen said, half-joking.

“Yes,” Kiris said, going distant for a moment. “There was a noblewoman who owned me for a little while. One time she flogged me for ‘negative atmosphere’. Six days later she was in a good mood and let me twirl in front of a mirror in one of her dresses. I hated her; I quietly hated all of them, and those of my people who just bowed their heads and obeyed. The real social pressure to submit came from them. But I also... it also felt good to be complimented. To be treated with affection, even as it was wrapped up in control and the ultimate power disparity. And of course I hated myself for feeling two ways.”

“You’re as human as anyone, Kiris,” Gaylen told her. “You can expect to be at least a little bit insane.”

“True,” the woman said, and focused again. “Take you, for instance: You have a real habit of tormenting yourself for your mistakes. It almost seems like an addiction at times, even as you also want to move away from it.”

Gaylen knew this perfectly well. But there was still something to hearing it in spoken words. What exactly that something was he did not know.

“And you wouldn’t hate the bad about yourself if you weren’t at your core decent. I’m no idealist, Gaylen. But I think you ought to go through with all of this, if only for your own sake. But whatever you decide, I’m with you.”

He put an arm around her shoulder. It felt nice, and so did her smell.

“Thanks,” he said. “And I’ll be sure to tell people you’re not being high-minded about it.

“Good. Although I can appreciate some things about the Fed. It’s an open secret that they fund the Chainbreakers. They got me out of the Kingdom. Me, and a whole lot of others. I did spend some time in that community on Bosimoko; there was a whole system in place for integrating slaves into free society. It was... nice. I won’t deny it.”

“Then why did you leave?” Gaylen asked, and wondered if he’d forgotten or for some reason just never asked that question.

“I was an outsider, I suppose,” the woman told him.

She leaned into him, putting her head on his shoulder. Gaylen knew she was being heartfelt and did his best to focus on that, but it was hard not to get distracted by the fact that a genetically perfected sex slave smelled amazing.

“There are now adult Chanei there who were born into freedom,” she went on. “The whole place, it has... developed a culture of its own. And with the Kingdom making escapes ever harder... there are fewer like me than there used to be. And besides, I think my heart just wouldn’t sit still. Too much angry energy. So much freedom, and so many possibilities. So I went off. Hit the lanes.”

“I know,” Gaylen said. “That’s how we met.”

“Yeah. Also...”

He could tell that she was forcing herself to face something.

“Also, I was frustrated. With Chanei. Including myself. Even free ones tend to fall into bad relationships, if they’re getting involved with non-Chanei. Just latch onto someone and become their good little pet. Eager to please. Eager to give in. Put several people in a room and there will be someone who looks at us like free chocolate cake.”

She was silent for a few breaths.

“That’s why I keep up a shield the way I do. I feel like I always have to watch myself. Whether it’s in my DNA or in my upbringing, it’s so very easy to just let someone start telling me what to do. To let someone use me. That lust for us... I always see it in people, and there IS a part of me that wants to indulge it.”

She did a self-mocking snort.

“Freedom. I wouldn’t want to give it back, but it is a damned hassle to manage.”

“It certainly is,” Gaylen said. “But there-”

“Gaylen,” the woman said.

He turned his face to hers, a couple of inches away.

“You never looked at me that way,” she said. “As a prize or a conquest or a pet or a slave.”

“No...” he said. “I’m only human and you are incredibly attractive. But I don’t think of-”

Kiris swung her right knee nimbly about, straddling Gaylen’s legs. In the same motion she leaned in and kissed him. Meeting with no objections, she kissed deeper. For a moment a corner of Gaylen’s mind wondered if there was something special about Chanei saliva. Then he simply stopped being able to think, as seemingly every nerve in his body came alive.

He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but he let out an embarrassing gasp when she separated.

“I don’t need to ask if you want me, Gaylen,” she said with a coy smile. “And as for me: I am what I am, and I just need to handle it the right way. Same with all of us, I suppose.”

“Aha,” was all the response he could muster right away.

She pulled the shirt up over her head. She really was perfect. Almost to an eerie degree, like a mannequin.

The Chanei stroked his face, and he realised that he had his hands on her hips.

“I want this,” she said, staring into his eyes. “For myself, and because we respect each other. I don’t know what comes in a few hours, but I know I want this and so do you.”

He touched her face in turn, and nodded.

“Just do one thing for me,” she said, and fiddled with her hair.

“What?”

She undid the cord she’d bought at that market; the one she’d described as both soft and strong, and put it in his hands. Then she turned around and pressed her wrists together behind her back.

“Tie me up.”

He complied, looping the cord around several times before knotting it firmly in place. Next he got up. Kiris kept quiet, just waiting with an air of relaxation that he didn’t normally see in her. Gaylen undressed, and really put his willpower to the test by not hurrying, savouring the moment.

He stood in front of Kiris and cupped her face.

“Here and now, Gaylen...” she said, looking calm and happy, “... I will let you control me. Because I want you to.”

A distant, still-rational part of Gaylen’s mind wondered just where the real control was in this situation. Kiris looked down at his groin and up again, with a slightly naughty smile.

“Looks like I’ll have to help you with your pants,” he said with a smile of his own.

“Yes. I think you will.”

He gave her a gentle shove and she let herself fall onto her back.