Chapter Fourteen

“How did you know that food was drugged?” Iona asked as they took a break on the fourteenth floor.

“I have been drugged a lot. I’ve had owners that thought that if they gave me enough rush I’d like what they did to me. If I was sleepy enough, I might not notice what they did to me. If they gave me something that unlocked the inner parts of my psyche, I’d discover somewhere deep down that I loved them. It was all so foolish. I’ve also endured times in my life where every meal I had was drugged.”

“What did you do? Did you stop eating?”

“That’s actually the end of the explanation I’m willing to offer,” he said lightly. “I don’t think about any of that old stuff, but I do remember that if you are served mashed seasonal roots with spices, it is the best place to hide sedatives. Mulled wine does a very good job of hiding what’s happening with the sedative and making it more effective. There were crystals on the tips of the fork prongs. It’s salt laced in rush. Not a half dose, but a full dose. There were also grilled mushrooms on the plate and I can’t be sure, but they might not have been kitchen mushrooms. Without doing research, I’m not exactly sure what they were.”

“I’m asking you though, is it better to starve yourself rather than to eat that food?” she asked as she repositioned the clip in her hair to keep her hair out of her face.

“The situation was different today and so yes, the correct answer today was to starve. But if you’re owned by a master and you starve yourself to avoid the drugs they’re trying to get you addicted to, someone in the kitchen might take pity on you. But if they do and they’re caught sneaking you unlaced food, what will happen to them will be worse than what happens to you if you take all the drugs in the world.”

“So, you took them?”

“I took the sedatives. I chose to take the sedatives. Truth be told, I’m still taking sedatives and I’d rather be asleep than awake.”

“Madam Damsel said that you’re over sixty years old. Is that true?”

“Olivine was a teenager when I was given to her as a slave. I was twenty when I got away from her. She looks like an old woman now, so that number isn’t crazy. I don’t know what she still wants with me. I thought she already had her fun.”

That was when Iona put it together. The hottie she had seen on the top floor of the stage had been Gage. She was wearing the shirt he had worn to the show. The person next to him that Iona thought was a man dressed in drag had been Olivine. She tried to remember as much as she could but came up a bit blank. Had they been wearing stripes?

“Here,” Gage said, reaching for her hand.

“You shouldn’t touch me. I’m disgusting after everything I’ve been touching down here,” she warned.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been touching all the same things you’ve been touching and I’m worried your sleeves are getting in the way. Let me roll them up.”

Iona sat still while shirtless Gage got her sleeves out of her way.

“Are you ready to keep going?”

She nodded and stood up.

***

They made it to the cargo bay. Iona watched Gage walk around like he owned the place. He checked tags on bundles of cargo and strode into the deserted office like he belonged there. It was quite the feat considering he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Iona was hiding between two crates, worried there would be cameras in the cargo bay and thinking it would be better if she wasn’t seen.

When Gage came back into view, he was wearing a blue and yellow reflective vest, a hard hat, and a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses. He even had a walkie-talkie in a holster at his belt. He smiled at her, flashing her white teeth before bringing a dolly with an open cardboard box on it.

“Your chariot, my lady,” he said with a mock flourish.

She whined and got in. He closed the flaps over her and then to her surprise, he taped it shut. Just once, but it was enough for Iona to feel extra uncomfortable.

“Calm down,” he whispered like a cowboy whispering soothing things to the horse under him. “We’re doing this so we can stay together while I search the warehouse for the food order I spoke to Madam Damsel about. I want to know if it’s already been loaded onto the Cannonball III or if it’s still here.”

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“We need it?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Yeah. We need it. If I knew we were going to have this many issues, I really would have insisted on getting provisions on Callisto.”

Gage wheeled her down aisle after aisle. Iona held herself tightly together like an egg, with her knees to her nose, and tried not to put any weight on the sides of the box. It was better for her and Gage to stay together, even if she felt like a magician’s assistant who had to keep the illusion intact until the end of the act. She’d done that sort of thing before. She had a good body for cramming it into unusual boxes and a visiting magician always knew that an assistant the audience knew made for a better distraction than any woman he could provide.

She hated working for those guys, both the magician and her boss who had hired the magician. However, even if she spent every afternoon in a rattling cardboard box, she’d happily be Gage’s assistant.

How had he known how to do all that he’d done? The food was drugged. Skip dinner and get out of town. The way out of a moving elevator is up. Everyone knows that, but he had known how to slow it down so she could get out too. He’d known about the lasers and known the layout of the tower so he’d been able to get them directly to the cargo hold.

She could see a little of his face through a crack in the box.

Suddenly, she realized that the only thing she’d ever really admired in a man had been how much money he had. It was a sobering thought as she bounced around on the dolly. Was that really why she wanted to get together with Sherman? Because she wanted to be bought by the richest buyer in the Jovian system. It didn’t matter how he was going to treat her or how he treated any of his other models? As long as she brought in the most money? As long as she took the maximum amount of money from him? Did she feel the same about Dante? She smoothed out her forehead with her middle finger. She knew it was.

In the clarity of a cardboard box, she realized that she had been waiting to love herself until she had distinguished herself. She needed to be the best in some way out of billions of people. It wasn’t enough to be the best person out of a hundred. Not even one in a million. She needed to be one in a billion, the fanciest, prettiest, highest-paid woman before she could love herself.

How many rich men had to treat her like a princess before she was a princess to herself? Before she was priceless to herself? Suddenly, she understood there were no limits. She’d never hit the threshold where she could be satisfied with herself if she didn’t draw the line somewhere. Once she conquered the Jovian region, would she have to beat the highest-paid Martian girl, the highest-paid girl on Ceres, and eventually beat out the highest-paid model on Earth?

Fuck.

Did anyone have the stamina for that? And if she gave everything she had to being a model, what would be left for her when her career was over?

“Gage,” she whispered. “I think I might throw up.”

He stopped the dolly. “Take a rest. I found it. We’re lucky. The crate is still in the warehouse. There’s a note for me on it from Madam Damsel.”

“What does she say?”

“Just that she’s sorry and once I get in the air, I should never come back to Europa.”

“She thought you’d escape?”

“The note doesn’t read like that. It looks like she expected Olivine to get what she wants out of me tonight. I’d be sedated and I’d black out. In the morning, I’d have no idea what had happened the night before. Right, like I’d have no idea what that woman did to my body when I woke up. This crate is scheduled to be loaded up tomorrow morning before the drugs would have worn off.”

“Should we wait?” Iona wondered aloud since she couldn’t see his face.

“No. We need to go now. In a perfect world, I’d wheel you over to the forklift, load you onto the back of it and then drive back here to get the supplies, but if you’re feeling sick, I don’t want you to throw up in the box. The warehouse is deserted. I mean, I haven’t seen anyone. Do you want me to leave you here while I go get a forklift?”

“No!” she said decisively. “If I throw up in the box, then I throw up in the box. We have to stay together.”

There was no answer from Gage for a second. Then the dolly started moving. Quietly, he whispered, “Well, that’s very cool of you.”

The trip to the forklifts was vomit-inducing for Iona. For one thing, it took a great deal of butt balance to stop the box from falling off the dolly. For another, there was no fresh air in the box, so she was smelling a sickly combination of the chemicals from her hair products, whatever was in the filthy water that had been dumped on her, the musk from Gage’s shirt which was completely corrupted by the stink of rillo piss. She was motion sick without a vantage point and the ride seemed to last forever.

When they finally got to the forklifts, Gage pushed the box onto the back of the forklift and she felt him strap it down.

The egg she was holding herself in broke and she could finally lean against the side of the box. It tore a little under her weight, but she could still relax quite a bit.

“Hold on,” Gage whispered to her. “You’re doing great.”

“Do you know how to drive a forklift?” she asked.

He laughed. “I can drive a starship, babe. Everything else is less complex. This should be smoother than the dolly.”

She felt him jump up into the seat and turn on the forklift. They got moving.

He was right. It was a nicer ride. It was also faster and not two minutes later, he had picked up the crate. Then it was only another few minutes until they were in the cargo elevator and heading up to where the Cannonball was docked. The elevator doors opened and the temperature in the air dropped dramatically.

There was yelling, but Iona couldn’t hear the exact words until Gage replied. “Hi!” he called cheerfully. “I’m delivering cargo for the Cannonball III.”

“You’re going to have to hang on,” Iona heard a security guard say. “This pilot doesn’t have clearance to board his ship until tomorrow morning at eight. You can load your cargo, but we need to return him to his room.”

“Are you Gage?” Gage called out to someone.

“You know I hate you, right?” the other voice called out.

“Yeah, well the feeling just goes around and around, doesn’t it?”

Then there was the unmistakable sound of a struggle. Iona smashed open the lid of the box above her and stood up. Gage and the other man she’d seen who looked like him were beating the tar out of the security guards.

Aside from the red hair and their clothes, the two men were identical.