Calypso Slaves - Love Me Always

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"A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp."
-Carson McCullers

Cassie didn't come back after lunch. She didn't come back in time for dinner. And the next morning, instead of unlocking her cuffs like he did for Giovanna, the guard grabbed Lily and Tanirt and the fears that had been growing inside Lily tied her intestines into a knot. Andraste disappeared first. Lily thought it was because she was unstable and dangerous, but they never really told them why and they never found out what happened to her. But then they took Cassie. Cassie, who was the kindest slave Lily had met and pretty well on the docile side of average, who'd never talked back to guards or tried to sabotage anything. The two of them broke a few rules, but half of those they'd already been whipped for. Was the illegal sex really worth a disappearing act?

And now they were taking Lily and Tanirt. Lily and Cassie had gotten up to a bit of illicit activity, but Tanirt? She hardly ever talked, but what could she possibly have done with her hands cuffed all the time? Lily supposed she could still lick. Tanirt talked so little. Maybe she had it in her.

Lily took a deep breath and tried to steady herself as the two of them were taken towards the mysterious locked module. Turns out she was going to find out what was inside there after all. Surprise. The doors opened, and the place was bustling with activity, not dark and quiet like the brief glimpse Lily had gotten when she and Cassie tried to sneak in. Crates were stacked up across the floor, many of them still strapped down, but others were being pushed around by forklifts operated by slaves in black suits so skintight Lily could see their nipples pressing against the fabric, the cameltoe of their cunts showing through between their thighs. They had masks as well, goggle eyes bulging out, a re-breather with pipes attached to a small, hyper-compacted tank of oxygen along the back, but few of the slaves had the masks on. Most of them had the masks hanging back down their necks as they went about moving the crates around, pushing them onto forklifts or hauling them off onto one of a pair of elevators that went up to the deck above.

A row of large shipping containers lined one wall, a small slot installed at the bottom of the door, and the guard brought Lily and Tanirt there. Another guard patrolled along the length of the containers, stopping at one when he saw them coming. He unlocked the container and opened it up, and the guard leading them crouched down to unlock Lily's ankle chains, then uncuffed her and removed her waist chain, before giving her a swat on the ass with his crop and pointing inside.

Lily walked into the container. It was lit by a light from the top hooked up to wires that were duct-taped to the ceiling and went out through a tiny gap maybe half an inch tall and two inches across that'd been carved in the top of the door. Attached to the same set of wires was a camera just above the door. Two sets of two folded up blankets had been left on the floor, each with a thin prison pillow on top. Lily couldn't see any of the slabs used as beds in her cell, but she used the blankets for a soft place to sleep in the first place, since the slabs weren't any more comfortable than the floor. At the far end, there was a hole in the floor with a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of hand sanitizer set nearby. She hoped there was some actual plumbing under there and not just another container, but she wasn't counting on it.

The guards had a pistol pointed directly at Tanirt's head while they unlocked her shackles, cuffs, and waist chain, and then ordered her inside the container. She put her hands in the air as soon as they were out of the cuffs, about level with her head, and left them there until the container was shut behind her. Lily could hear a heavy lock sliding into place. Tanirt sighed and lowered her hands.

"Are we being punished for something?" Lily asked.

"Probably not," Tanirt said.

"How do you know?" Lily asked.

Tanirt looked at Lily for a while before answering. "They asked me if I wanted to come here," she said, finally. Lily wondered if it took her a while to work up the nerve to say a complete, proper-length sentence or if she was just trying to figure out a way to condense the information into four words or less. But hey, side note here: She got a full complete sentence out of Tanirt. They were totally gonna be besties.

That thought only reminded her of Cassie, though. "They didn't ask me," Lily said. "Do you think Cassie is in here?"

"I don't know," Tanirt said.

"Did they tell you how long you'd be here?" Lily asked.

"Two or three weeks," Tanirt said. "They...they said I wouldn't be alone. They didn't say who'd be with me." Was this about Tanirt? Was Lily just here to stop her from going nuts in isolation?

Lily leaned her back against the wall and then slid to the ground with a sigh. At least she had someone to talk to. And no work at all to do, for two or three weeks, if they were letting her out with Tanirt. Plus they asked her if she wanted to come, which definitely implied that this might be less sinister than Lily feared. Except...if they made Andraste the same offer, and she accepted, did some other poor slave get drafted into being her cellmate? Did they cycle Andraste's old cellmate out for Cassie?

"Lily?" Tanirt asked.

"Yeah?" Lily said.

"I'm glad you're here," Tanirt said, "not, I mean...I'm not glad you're here, I don't...I don't want you to..."

"You're glad we're together," Lily said, smiling at her, "I get it. Don't feel bad for me, I could use the break from the work. Like, I'm pretty sure I talked to you before about how I kind of wouldn't mind being locked in handcuffs for a day if it meant I didn't have to go to work? Well this is kind of the same, except I don't even have to be locked in handcuffs. And the work we do is exhausting! I mean, probably not for you because you look like you could probably bench press the whole ship, but I'm little."

Tanirt laid face down on the floor, her hands planted under her shoulders, and then pushed herself up, and down again, and up. "Don't stop," she said, and then added a push-up later "please."

"I wonder what we're making anyway," Lily continued, "sometimes you can tell because we're making the whole thing right here, but usually we're only making parts and then sending those parts off to get finished. I guess probably because the finished things need some kind of genius engineer to make, or because they're dangerous. Hey, there's an engineering department on this ship, maybe some of the parts we make just goes up to them to turn into finished products."

Lily thought for a second, couldn't find anywhere else to go with that train of thought, so went chasing another. "Giovanna said we're worth like a hundred thousand each or something, I wonder if that was how much they sell us for or how much profit we make? Probably profit, I mean, it can't cost more than like fifteen thousand dollars a year to keep us the way they do, and we do work that usually pays at least twenty-five thousand a year, but even that means it takes a full decade to make a hundred thousand and most of us only have sentences that go for like eight years or something. Except my sentence is life, so if they bought me for a hundred thousand and worked me just 'till I'm forty they'd get double their return, which seems reasonable. Do plutocrats really plan that far ahead? People always say they can't think more than a quarter ahead but I guess that can't be literally true because they buy things that won't pay off the price of purchase in the same quarter all the time, probably including us. Hey, how long's your sentence anyway?" Lily asked. She wasn't sure if she wanted it to be short or long.

"Life," Tanirt breathed the answer out while pushing herself off the ground.

"Oh, right. You said you sabotaged a nuclear power plant a while ago, right? I guess that would be life," Lily said.

"Usually," Tanirt said.

"Are there times when it wouldn't be?" Lily asked.

"Dunno," Tanirt said.

"I'm gonna go ahead and say that probably all nuclear sabotage sentences are life," Lily said. "Well, okay, unless it's a plutocrat doing it. Then there'd be like a fifty billion dollar fine or something, and the guy whose power plant he sabotaged would go have golf with him. Even then, though, the guy who did the actual sabotaging would probably get life for it." Lily wondered if Tanirt was paid by a plutocrat. Was she a mercenary? A revolutionary? Lily didn't want to pry that deep yet.

Eventually she finished with the push-ups, laid on her back, and asked Lily to hold her feet while she did sit-ups. Lily could feel Tanirt's muscles flexing just a bit underneath her. For the first couple she said, "Hold it tighter. Lean into it. Use your bodyweight. Yeah, like that." Tanirt seemed a lot more confident telling Lily how to properly set her up for a sit-up than with regular conversation. Lily had to lean her weight in to keep her from shifting around as she pulled herself forward with each rise. The power in her body felt amazing. She wondered if Tanirt would let her hold an arm while she pushed herself up, feel the muscle flexing underneath her skin. Lily had spent a lot of time in the criminal underworld, and most of the girls she'd met were direct fighters, tough and strong, but she never got to touch them and Lily was pretty sure she didn't want to. They were dangerous. So was Lily, really, she had no idea when her next bout of withdrawal symptoms were going to hit and when they did she'd probably rip Tanirt's stomach open if there was half a dose inside. If the idea of her laying a finger on Tanirt when she didn't want you to wasn't ridiculous, anyway.

But Tanirt wasn't like that. Lily didn't know exactly who she was working for, but she could tell that Tanirt was working towards a purpose. Maybe it was something as base as money, maybe it was even something really disempowering like keeping blackmail material under wraps, but it wasn't a job or a skillset she stumbled into by accident. Tanirt knew how to do what she did because she wanted to know, and she did it because it was the best move available to her, Lily was sure. Tanirt was so in control of herself. She was chained up for weeks before she freaked out, and even then she didn't even touch Lily when she was right there next to her. Every movement of Tanirt's body was directed and purposeful even when she was flipping her shit.

Lily wished she could say the same. The next day she completely freaked out from withdrawal. She felt like there were spiders crawling in her veins and trying to get out, like her skin might burst open at any second. She curled up into a ball in the corner by the door and closed her eyes and just tried to not feel anything for as long as she could. But you can't get away from a feeling that's under your skin.

Tanirt crouched down next to her and asked, "Are you okay?"

"No," Lily said, "there's spiders in my skin and I can't...I can't..." she didn't even know what exactly she couldn't except be less withdrawn. "I need a hit and I can't get one, not in here. There's nothing in here and I'm stuck here because of you and it's gonna fucking kill me." She knew, a little bit, that this was both a stupid and a horrible thing to say. But the words were coming and she couldn't stop them right now. "It's your fault I'm stuck in here."

"I thought you said you could use a break," Tanirt said.

"I was lying!" Lily shouted, "I wanted to make you feel better, and now I'm too freaked out and fucked up to pretend you haven't fucked me over. Leave me alone!" She didn't want Tanirt to leave her alone. Lily wanted Tanirt to hold her tight. Her arms must be like a warm, pliant vice, and it'd give Lily something, some sensation, besides the spiders to think about. The cold of the container floor only lasted until her body heat sunk in, and even if she found another spot it really wasn't a good feeling at all. Especially during the day, when the generators worked overtime to expel the body heat of three dozen workers moving around the room outside, it was a piercing, distracting bite of cold, but it wasn't as bad as the spiders.

It took hours for the withdrawals to subside, and Lily knew from previous efforts to kick her habit that they would be back. It felt like there was liquid ice and molten steel flowing through her veins intermittently, but it wasn't so bad that she didn't notice the guilt that'd tied her intestines tighter than the fear had. Tanirt had wrapped herself up in her blankets to go to sleep, and Lily didn't want to wake her, but she promised herself she'd apologize first thing in the morning.

When the breakfast bars came, Lily ripped out a chunk for courage. As she swallowed the moistened piece of foodbrick, she wondered why she had thought this would ever give her courage. But Lily hadn't talked to Tanirt since she'd told her to leave her alone, a solid twelve-ish hours ago, and Lily couldn't let that hang in the air any longer. "I'm sorry," she said, "about what I said before. I'm..." Lily turned over the options in her head, but there was really only one way this could go. She'd basically told Tanirt already. "I'm going through withdrawals, sometimes. People say that it's like it's not the same person, when we're high or withdrawn. And, I don't mean that you shouldn't be mad because it wasn't me, because it really was me and you should be mad, but just...please forgive me? I didn't mean any of it. I don't even have steady access back in the normal cell, so it might not be any better there, and even if I did it's not your fault I'm here in the first place. Can we please still be friends?"

Tanirt stared at the meal bar for several seconds before she looked up at her and said "Sure. I...forgive you, Lily."

"Thank you," Lily said, and even with the ice pumping so cold she was nearly shivering, she felt better.

"Tanirt, I...I know I don't really have any right to ask you any favors right now, but, please..." Lily swallowed. "It helps a lot if there's something else to feel besides my insides crawling around, and if you could just ignore everything I say when I'm freaking and...hold me tight. Just when I'm freaking out, I mean, just because the pressure and the warmth make me feel better, and I know you don't owe it to me at all and you should probably still be angry at me for being a jerk, but please, just...please. It would help me so much."

"It's alright," Tanirt said, "it's..." she paused to try and find the right words and this time Lily had no idea what ones she might be looking for, "it's not any trouble. I don't...I want this to be easy for you. Or easier, at least."

"Tanirt, thank you so much," Lily said. She'd have to repay Tanirt somehow, someday. That camera did have a blind spot directly beneath it, but it's real small and Lily had no idea whether or not Tanirt liked women at all and it would be super awkward to ask. This conversation was pretty much at its awkward threshold already. Lily didn't have anything to offer but her body and her voice, and Tanirt already had Lily's voice, but maybe if Tanirt didn't want her body she could get her something else? What did Tanirt want anyway? This is why Lily needed to get to know her better. That, and because she was simultaneously adorably vulnerable and a demi-god who radiated power with every flex.

It was a couple of days later, while Tanirt was in the middle of her daily push-ups, when Lily asked Tanirt what she was doing in the nuclear power plant. "Sabotaging it," Tanirt said.

"Okay, sure, but like, was it an environmental thing? Were you trying to shut it down before it melted a forest or something? Was it just because the power bill was too high and you wanted to register a very forceful complaint with whoever owned the plant?" Lily asked, "I mean, I don't wanna pry, you don't have to answer or anything, I'm just talking."

"It was to destabilize the government," Tanirt said, giving one more tiny sentence each time she pushed herself up, "shake the confidence of the people. Cause anarchy. Spread enemy forces out to contain it. Individual enemy units would be small. Far away from each other. We'd destroy the units one by one. Before reinforcements could arrive."

Tanirt seemed much more confident talking about this sort of thing. It was matter of fact, like she was giving a report. "Who were you fighting for?" Lily asked.

It was several push-ups before Tanirt answered, and Lily was wondering if she should change the subject or if Tanirt was just gathering her thoughts. "They called themselves gods," she said finally. Lily was pretty sure she'd heard this song and dance before. Tanirt didn't seem as zealous as she'd expect from a cultist, though. And not as stupid, either. When Lily first got out of the Hashashin, she believed all kinds of crazy bullshit. It took her months to go back and sort out what information she'd been given by the cult exclusively and what was corroborated by normal people. She had to go over her entire adolescence with a fine-tooth comb looking for bullshit, or really looking for what few things were left after getting rid of the bullshit, looking for something to build the rest of her life on. Tanirt seemed a lot more grounded than that.

"They're aliens," Tanirt said, "like gods. In some ways. They can create life. They made me."

"Made you how?" Lily asked, because this sounded a lot like cultist bullshit. Maybe Tanirt seemed more grounded because she hardly ever talked. Maybe she needed someone to help her deprogram. "Like, were you reborn in their image or something, or...?"

"They decanted me. Eleven years ago. Along with my sisters," Tanirt said.

"Eleven years ago? What about before?" Lily asked.

"Nothing before," Tanirt said, "we were infants. Can't remember past ten years. Was really little. We age fast. Learn fast, too."

Holy shit. "So are you...still human? I mean, you're my friend, either way, but..."

"I am," Tanirt said, "humans like they wanted. Shaped by intelligence. Not chaos." Tanirt was quiet for a few more push-ups. "They're not gods. Just another ruling class. As good as any. As far as I can tell."

Lily shrugged. "I guess so. I never really worried about rulers or anything. Why'd you fight for them?"

"Can't disobey. Something in my brain. I think they turned it off. The Calypso people. When they put the collars on," Tanirt said.

"So...now what?" Lily asked, "do you want to get back to them, or...?"

"I guess," Tanirt said, "they had nicer food. Softer beds." She took a deep breath, rising up one last time and then pulled herself onto her knees. "And also...I guess they made me feel more important. Like...like I was part of something. Even if that something was mostly bullshit." Tanirt stopped to think again. Normally Lily would try to fill the silence, but she couldn't think of anything to say. "I want to fight again. I don't care who for. I just want to be...important to someone, again. Gods or plutocrats or whatever. I didn't pick the xenorex side in the first place. I never had a choice. I guess that hasn't changed."

"Thanks for telling me," Lily said.

"Thanks for asking," Tanirt said.

The worst of the withdrawals hit over the next few days. Twitching out was only the beginning, this time. Tanirt kept her promise. When Lily started pacing around and then finally clutched her knees to her chest and started shaking, Tanirt came and sat next to her and wrapped her arms around her tight. Lily leaned into her and she tugged Lily closer and she wasn't sure how long but eventually she ended up in Tanirt's lap, pressed tight against her chest, Lily's breath ragged and occasionally sobbing. She held Tanirt tight and occasionally scratched and clawed at her own skin, sometimes even at Tanirt's.