Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
“Go home, Zeki.” Malik tries to shoo her away.
“No. I’m coming with you. I heard you talking. I packed a bag. I’m ready to go.”
“Zeki.” Malik rounds on her aggressively. “You have to go home, you could get hurt out here. We’re going to be criminals, Shah and I. You know what that means?”
“Means I’m going to be a criminal too,” Zeki says. “You have to take me with you, or I’ll tell on you.”
Malik looks at me. I shake my head emphatically. “It’s not safe for you. It’s not safe for her, either.”
The kid looks at me. “I’m not letting my brother go without me. And I’m not staying behind at home. You know how angry they’re going to be. They’re going to take it out on me. You have to take me with you.”
Malik turns to me with a sigh. “I’m sorry. Can we take her?”
“Once you guys leave this place, there’s no coming back for birthday money, or food, or a comfortable bed, or a hug from Mom or Dad…”
They laugh at that. Guess there’s not a lot of hugs in this house.
“Fine. I don’t give a fuck,” I say. “But we’re going. Now.”
Present day…
“So that’s how I met Malik and Zeki,” I tell Dreamy. “That’s how all this started, just a bunch of runaway kids trying to make a life for themselves.”
“You’ve made an incredible life,” she says, her eyes wide. She’s either impressed or shocked. Maybe a little of both. “Look at everything you’ve built. It’s like a whole city, no, a whole civilization. And everybody plays by your rules.”
“Not everybody. Not all the time, but if they know what’s good for them, they do,” I agree.
She giggles a little. “So you must have come back to the Colony more than once, like that time you met me?”
“The Colony will always be home, in a way. My mom still works there. She doesn’t really remember me now, but you never forget where you were raised. We do a lot of business there. Unofficially, of course.”
Dreamy nods a little. “I don’t remember my family. I got taken when I was five to be raised as a worker. I wasn’t ever meant to be anybody. I’m still nobody, so I guess I manifested my destiny as well.”
I smack her ass, making her yelp and squirm against me. I love the way she moves. I love the way she feels. She’s a delicious little treat, and she’s all mine.
“You’re someone, Dreamy. You broke your programming. That’s rare. That’s really, really rare. Malik wanted to come with me because he thought it sounded fun. You helped me with nothing to gain, and everything to lose. You’re a good person.”
“I feel like…” She pauses. I feel more like a shell of a person, like someone who maybe would have been someone? Now I am just what I have to be.”
“Not on my ship. On my ship, you’ll find out who you really are.”
“How?”
“Because you’ll have to. You can’t be a drone here, Dreamy. You’ll have to make choices. You’ll have to be whoever it is you really are. Don’t look so worried. It’ll happen without you even knowing it.”
She looks uncertain, but that’s because she’s still so new. She doesn’t realize she’s already changing, already becoming more of what I knew she was the very first time I met her. Brave, and sweet, and selfless to a fault.
6
Dreamy
Shah is a busy guy. It’s not easy being a master criminal. While he goes off to deal with whatever needs his attention, I choose to stay in his rooms, because nothing in the food court feels like it’s worth being the drone who got fucked there. I don’t know if I was supposed to gain confidence from that interlude. I’ve definitely gained a kind of twisted love-hate relationship with the idea of being in public. Sex with Shah is life changing. Literally. The life I knew is gone, and the life I now inhabit feels entirely alien to me.
A knock at the door of Shah’s room makes me answer it reflexively. I’m surprised to see that the person on the other side is Zeki.
“Shah told me to bring you some more clothes,” she says, shoving a pile of them at me.
I take them and go and lay them on the bed. “Thank you,” I say. “That’s really…”
“Why does he even want you? You’re just a stupid drone.”
So it’s going to be that kind of conversation. She’s stepped into his quarters and the door has closed behind her. It’s just her and me now, and though she’s not that much physically larger than me, she contains more menace per ounce than a warhead. I’m scared of her, but I am also annoyed by her. It’s not my fault I’m here. Shah chose me.
“I don't know,” I tell her. It’s the truth. I really don’t know what Shah sees in me. All I really know is that once he makes a decision, he seems to stick to it.