Doctor Who: Panic Moon Ch. 29

Assuming the alien ahead of her was even female, that is...

The line kept moving periodically, that curtain at the end devouring captive after captive, divulging them out into an uncertain future. The walls whirred, dragging each of them forward. Amy tripped over her own feet, the tug of the leash an unexpected pressure as she lost herself in the sights and sounds of her surroundings.

And there was so much to absorb; the auction block was like a well oiled machine, its procedures honed to perfection by obvious practice. It was easy to see that these people had been at this for years at least, and Amy wondered precisely how many slaves had been shuffled through this sales department for sentient beings.

The line was fed constantly, more and more destined for the block added to the end behind Amy, until she couldn't tell where she had originally started, as she advanced. The humans were the easiest to pick out; for some reason their familiar forms called to Amy's eyes, their emotions so much easier to decode. Their sadness was obvious, but hard as she might look, Amy couldn't locate Sally; was the poor girl still locked up in the wheel?

What was better, being locked up there, or facing down the auction block?

Even away from the crowds, the watchful eyes of the guards made up for the lack of cold disregard. They came in all shapes and sizes, the one uniform feature being the near hostile lack of interest they displayed toward the vulnerability of the beings in line. At this point, their presence seemed almost ceremonial; though they had weapons, they remained holstered and ignored. The thought that someone might escape seemed a very remote possibility indeed.

Closer and closer she got, to the end of the line, and whatever lay beyond it. By now she could pick out the sounds that came from behind the curtain; an indistinct voice, raised and wearing the theatrical tone of a salesman. The hubbub of the crowd, as they inspected the merchandise, conferred amongst themselves.

The constant susurration of commerce in action, driven to evil intent.

It wasn't until she was standing before the curtain that Amy truly felt the need to run. She realized in that moment that some small part of her was still holding out for a rescue, from the Doctor, from Rory, even from Sander. Anyone, really; she was Amy Pond, after all.

Help always came for her... even if it was late, in the end.

And then came the tug of the leash, the pull on her collar, and Amy stumbled through the curtain and out onto the stage, into the blinding light and slithering noise of the auction. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the well lit stage, coming from the general, depressing gloom of the line, but she soon picked out the dais she was being guided toward, and the crowd below it, all eyes focused on her.

A wave of pure inhibition washed over her from head to toe, leaving in its wake the desire for her to cover herself. Only her utter helplessness fought it down; she knew without seeing that there would be a punishment for hiding the merchandise.

Her eyes alighted, momentarily, on what must have been the auctioneer. Its singular robotic eye rolled to meet hers, before turning back to face the crowd, obeying programming that stated in no uncertain terms who the important people in the room were. The eye was mounted atop the auctioneer's podium, two spindly arms- one bearing a gavel- sprouting from the sides and bending at the elbow toward the top. In some ways, Amy had to admire the directness of the design, the way it crammed the requisite components of an auction together... but at the same time, she couldn't help her offense at not being considered worthy of a real salesman.

But the track her leash was linked to was running out, she had no time to be thinking such thoughts. When it ended, the leash clicked away from her collar, leaving Amy free for the first time, bound only by the ceaseless cumulative pressure of every eye in the room on her pale skin. A nervous, sickly sensation crept over her, as she realized that she was expected to make those last few steps to the dais herself. While naked.

She had had nightmares like this, she was sure.

Amy briefly considered the crowd. How far would she get? Would the buyers bother stopping her? A naked woman tended to stand out in a crowd, but how long could she remain hidden before eventually being spotted? Would it be enough to get away?

Suddenly, something black and oily coiled inside her, complete with the return of that treacherous little voice: what would be the point? Even escaping wouldn't get her off of Selestene...

The collar around her neck suddenly felt so much tighter.

Amy took a deep breath, and raised her chin proudly. She had faced down Daleks, Angels, Cybermen and things too numerous and terrifying to name, she would not walk to her fate here with eyes downcast. These people were merchants in the trade of flesh, slavers, not worth fearing. Sander was a threat, compared to them. Sander had intent...

And you like his intent...

Again, the Judas whisper in the back of her mind. She quashed it down, as she took her first step toward the chasm her life was quickly becoming, but even so she couldn't help but wish for Sander's company right now. He seemed positively friendly, in the face of what was to come. But it had nothing to do with him personally.

She repeated that, once, twice... and before she knew it, she was upon the dais. The pad below her lit up as her weight pressed down on it, making graceful, curving shadows lick up her milky skin, accentuating just the right spots while revealing just as many more to the appraising eyes of the crowd. A tiny screen at the foot of the dais blinked an instruction at her, in insistent red letters: "Stand still, with your arms at your sides. Do not deviate."

Despite the prickling need to hide herself, Amy somehow managed to keep still, with waves of sheer, overwhelming observation washing over her. There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on to eternity, without the intervention of anyone in an official position, as if to give the audience time to view the new lot, from head to toe, and it was impossible for Amy to meet every challenger eye to eye. The feeling was entirely disorienting.

And then, it began.

There was bright blue light above her head, as above and all around her, holo-screens bloomed to life, her personal details scrolling down next to a her picture, the smile on her past self's face a hollow reminder that, once, she had achieved her happy ending.

'Amelia Pond,' The voice suffused the air, issuing so many speakers that it was impossible to determine any individual source, like a cage of silken, flowing sound. 'Lot number: 04396 Rating: Triple A. Time Active, Multiple Proficiencies. Beginning memory scan...'

Amy could barely concern herself with the whirring of some strange machine below her, transfixed with the social pressure of the crowd as she was. Even so, she felt like something had to happen next, if just to break the tension, and was only mildly surprised when she heard the voice in her head.

'Hello again,' Grelle's smooth tones slipped under her consciousness. 'Just sit still and let me do a little live editing, here...'

He didn't speak again, but Amy could feel illusory fingers rummaging through her mind, pulling out memories and images and fantasies... and projecting them onscreen. And in that moment, she understood what he had meant by a "highlight reel."

The screens that floated overhead spilled out her personal life for all to see. Not just the intimate details of her time in Leadworth and, shamefully, those days she had spent with Sander, but even her fantasies, rich and detailed, in painfully high definition. And through that voyeuristic procession, a definite pattern began to emerge.

There she was, surreptitiously pinching her nipples as Rory fucked her, hard enough to hurt, sending pinpricks of pain stabbing through her chest. And there, collared and bent over a bed, screaming in orgasm as Sander took her anal virginity. Next was a fantasy she had gotten off to so many times, the Doctor's hand around her throat as he thrust deep inside her. Now her mouth was full, cheeks burning red, prickling tears in her eyes falling onto the lapels of her phony policewoman's uniform...

And that was the image that twisted the knife more than any other, because Amy recognized the scene very quickly; it was a vignette from Leadworth, before first entering the TARDIS... and that was not Rory she was sucking.

Her eyes dropped to the floor, head bowed to avoid... everything that was happening. It wasn't much of a defence mechanism, but it was all she had. It certainly didn't stop the scan; every minute it played stretched on into eternity, an eon of moaning and slurping and the distinct, familiar sounds of herself in orgasm. Her life had been opened up with surgical precision, bleeding out all of those shameful inner desires and weak moments she had worked so hard to keep shoved to the back of her mind.

She could practically feel her asking price rising, moment by moment, clip by clip, moan by moan. The slow mechanisms of commerce, powered by her dignity.

When she chanced a look out at the world in which she had been submerged, Amy could see all eyes transfixed on the screens, watching, drinking up every moment with a strange, detached kind of appraisal. Oh, some were definitely interested in what they saw, but not in the way that Sander would be; the fires of their arousal were muted, only embers really. But they were replaced by a mercantile cunning, hinting at the amoral algebra taking place behind their eyes. Amy was profit, and every other person in the room was weighing up how much.

She heard herself begging, voice edged with desperation, debasing herself for Sander so he would let her cum. As the words spread through the crowd, she heard snatches of alien languages, as personal translation software relayed the words in languages more suited for the buyers. There was even text scrolling along the bottom of the screens: the humiliation of Amelia Pond, now with closed captions!

Amy should have been relieved when her highlight reel wound down, the screens dimming, though they never stopped playing completely. It should have been a small mercy, but Grelle spoke in the back of her mind right after, shifting the gears from embarrassment to outright fear, almost deftly, like it was a kind of passive aggressive psychological warfare.

'Want some advice?' He said, and Amy wondered how one could make a telepathic message sound smug. 'Make yourself seem valuable. Smart investments get snapped up, and nobody likes damaging their expensive toys.'

'Bidding begins,' The auctioneer-borg spoke up almost immediately, before Amy had had a chance to absorb the shift in her situation. 'Initial price: Three million standard.'

A much larger hologram bloomed to life above all the others, Amy's highlight reel hovering around it like worker bees around a queen; this screen showed Amy's headshot beside her initial bid and a smaller, blacked out silhouette, clearly meant to display the highest bidder, when one arose.

And one soon did; the smaller portrait rippled, as a hand in the crowd tapped at a personal holo-computer, ferrying a bid through to the Guild's systems. Amy's eyes darted to the face of her prospective owner, heart sinking almost as a defensive preparation. It turned out to be justified; the bidder was an alien, slotted cephalopod eyes set into the front of a distinctly squid-like face. She was going to be bought by Cthulhu.

The next bid took but a second, the shift onscreen happening with shocking rapidity. The new winning bidder was a human, much to Amy's relief; in fact, it was the rough woman from earlier, her first grinning molester. Was that actually better?

Everything the Guild had been doing had prepared Amy for the idea that she was going to be somewhat expensive, with an attendant degree of popularity, but nothing could have made her ready for this; the initial series of bids flickered across the screen so fast she barely had time to register one bidder before it moved on to the next. Aliens, humans, men and women, there was no normal, here, no standard that Amy could see. Every being that vied for her service seemed strange, far removed from the type of person she could meet on Earth.

And her price kept climbing too: four million, five million, six...

Her mind went blank. What was there to think? She could only watch, as her fate was decided by committee, out of her hands at every level. What did it matter, what opinions she formed of the bidders? They would take her whether she liked the look of them or not. She couldn't even stop the advertising screens from displaying things she would rather keep hidden. There was nothing she could do now.

Amy Pond, who had saved lives and travelled worlds beyond compare, was helpless.

Had she been better off with Sander? Escape had seemed so wonderful, in the moments after closing the door to the hotel room, running down that hallway with the girls. And now... here she was. Hadn't Sander's attentions at least been bearable, compared to this?

She looked up.

The screens were all Sander, now. Scenes from the asteroid base, from Trismestigius... she watched herself getting violated in every way he could devise. She watched herself giving in, failing her own hard won independent spirit, over and over again. When Amy's body went up against Sander's, Sander won. Had she ever walked away from those encounters without doing exactly what he wanted?

Even one time?

No. Onscreen she came again, exploding on Sander's cock. It was a definitive answer to the question, but Amy needed it not to be. No, no, no. Think of something else...

Rory. Yes. Rory was safe. Kind, sweet, Rory.

Rory's not enough. He hasn't been ever since-

Amy bit the inside of her cheek, the pain silencing the voice of her own internal treachery, as she visualized her husband and the things he used to do to her. One by one, the visions of Sander were pushed from the screens, replaced by a slideshow of matrimonial intimacy; still not ideal, but infinitely better than what it had been.

The bidding had begun to slow, the numbers too high for the majority of the crowd to surmount. Even so, her price flicked up, bid by bid, the pauses between them growing in increments, as the escalating price demanded further thought from the bidders.

Higher, higher... human, alien, man, woman...

Eventually the bids slowed to a trickle, then a few, and then a single portrait, dominating the screen, stable and ready. The seconds ticked by, drifting in the stillness, before finally, mercifully, the bid climbed higher. The face that replaced the previous bidder made Amy's heart thud in her chest.

The man from the Olivan! The one that had taken a liking to her, wanted to...

Keep her.

Life as the sex toy of a nightclub owner... would that be better than what she had just escaped? Amy very quickly decided that the question didn't even make sense: "better" was in Leadworth. Better was the TARDIS.

But the bidding continued, heedless of what she wanted; the owner of the Olivan... Fiori, yes, had gotten himself locked in something of a bidding war with the seafood-flavored alien that had begun the process, what seemed like years ago. The numbers flickered, higher and higher, cracking ten million without ever stopping. Oh, but it would; all auctions had an end, after all. The pricier things got, the closer that would be.

Amy cast her eyes over the crowd, remembering with a kind of horrified fondness the days when she could reliably depend on her husband and her Doctor to burst through doors and swoop in at the last moment. Of course, that fantasy had ended a while ago, replaced with one where the persistent villain wins, and the heroes are nowhere to be seen. Instead, a steady stream of hostile alien buyers filtered in, some taking a place at the crowd beside her, others drifting off into the Showroom, looking for different fare. She found herself realizing that each and every person coming into this place was evil, by definition.

It was a dizzying reminder of just how badly things had turned out.

She could feel her price rising by degrees, now at a steady one-two beat as the squid and the criminal traded bids, but Amy didn't dare glance up to see. Her eyes darted from one constellation of people to another, desperate for that last minute reprieve, the one she instinctively knew was never going to come.

When it did, she had to check and double check before she believed it.

The milling crowd parted as he moved through it, just marginally, but it was enough, like the singular entity of the group could sense the purpose in his steps. Through his narrow path he wound his way, slipping down the avenue the crowd had allowed him despite its occasional circuitous nature. He was flanked by the blonde, who knew enough to stick close to him, looking as good as she did in this place. His eyes locked with Amy's momentarily, before he shifted his gaze to continue his journey toward her auction.

Sander Hackett had arrived in the Showroom.

The bidders had a kind of tidal motion to them; the most active among them were allowed positions closer to the stage, so long as they drifted further back as their bids tapered off. Sander, Mara tagging along close behind, was able to slip through the near impenetrable crush of people simply by offering his palm computer and intentions to bid. Amy's heart thudded in her chest as he drew closer, tension mounting with every moment that he didn't bid, yet Fiori did. All it would take for him to lose his chance was three seconds.

Going once, going twice...

Amy felt tension drain from her bare shoulders as he finally drew up to the edge of the stage and placed his hands on its surface, just shy of touching the dais upon which she herself stood.

That tension returned very quickly.

He was angry, it was easy to see. He regarded her with a cold, dispassionate rage, the kind that could bend steel. His gaze was long, and steady, locking with her eyes for several nervous, agonizing seconds, before breaking the stare to sweep up and down her body. He had already seen more than enough of it, but Amy- perhaps charitably- assumed he was merely checking her for injury.

But why wasn't he bidding? The numbers flicked higher, but Sander's contribution wasn't among them. Every fresh bid brought her closer to the tipping point, the moment when the bids stopped... there was a time when his opportunity would run out.

Twelve million... Come on, Sander...

He just regarded her coolly, resentment written over his features so clearly, shifting only when he looked aside, toward the other bidders, or some point of interest on the Showroom floor. But for the most part, he just watched; watched her specifically, as if waiting for something.

The thought slid coldly into her mind: what if he was? His anger was an affront to Amy's independent sensibilities, but it was present. In his mind, she had... failed him, somehow. And he was no rescuer, like the Doctor or Rory; he would need something more. A show of contrition.

No, contrition would mean he actually cared. What Sander wanted was submission.

But she was already naked, stripped and put on display in front of more strangers than there were people where she had come from. Where else was there to go? What could she even do, here? She only had control over...