Doctor Who: Panic Moon Ch. 29

... The screens.

Amy closed her eyes, but only for a moment, opening them again to level her green-eyed gaze on Sander, a sign that what happens next, is for him. And then she concentrated.

It began with a single image, stamped over the screens with stark suddenness, overtaking everything else. Most memories were formed that way, singular clear images around which the rest of the scene orbited with varying degrees of clarity. Amy's cheeks burned to imagine this one; the arch of her back, hips pressing into Sander's, an agonized moan filtering out of the speakers, suffusing the air with a deeply embarrassing penetration. And it only got worse from there.

The collar that ringed her onscreen neck marked the scene immediately, but it was the near perfect clarity of the memory that made it so much worse; of all the moments of her life to maintain at this level of detail, it was awfully telling that the time Sander had forced himself on her in Nirvana had made the cut. The unassailable intensity of their shared telepathic pleasure was lost on the audience, but Amy could remember it all too well, the clear lines of her form as it trembled and squirmed against the restraints she had been put in attesting to that. Her mind's perverse priorities were on full display.

The image flickered for but a moment, her mind shrinking away from what she was doing in shame, but Amy forced herself to continue. This was her, prostrating herself before her kidnapper, begging forgiveness, in a sense. Asking, timorously, and with the only form of communication she had left, for a rescue.

The crowd had become somewhat transfixed; even those who had stopped bidding stood still to watch the show unfolding onscreen, as Amy humiliated herself for Sander's satisfaction. For his part, a raised eyebrow was the only indication that he had even registered the change. Surely he could only maintain his poker face for so long...

Even the bids had started coming faster; Fiori was responding almost as soon as his opponent could provide a counter-offer. Amy's heart began to sink again, hopes dashing again, after rising at Sander's presence; if this didn't work, at least the Guild would be very pleased with the results.

Just then, the moment that Sander had, perhaps, been waiting for played out omni-directionally, every last eye in the room raised to the screens for that one, strident moment; Amy came, her gloriously strung up body twisting under Sander's weight, arched and naked, pale and awful in the unexpected eroticism of the moment. Her voice, raised in climactic shock, echoed through the Showroom, so loud that even the slaves trapped in the wheel turned to look, witnesses to her body's treachery.

Amy closed her eyes, cheeks burning, all too aware of her nakedness in this context, as the sound of her orgasm dropped away into nothingness, leaving a deep well of silence in its wake. Silence in the Showroom; such a rarity, it marked the end of her humiliation like a full stop.

Amy shivered, fidgeted in the quiet, as a groundswell of murmuring picked up from the crowd, a low sound, as if rising from the floor. The sudden click of another bid being entered into the system practically filled the room; Amy turned, saw Sander's eyes staring back at her from the main screen. Everything in her relaxed, all at once; it had worked. Sander was rescuing her.

And a damn sight faster than the Doctor ever had...

Amy shuddered, but couldn't escape the rising feeling of safety that bubbled up from the soles of her feet. Treading the floors of Trismestigius once more would be infinitely better than the meat grinder of human misery she had found herself in outside of Sander's protection. There was something oddly... powerful, about him now. All he was doing was manipulating his little readout, the same as any other bidder, but he radiated control in ways the others didn't. It was an unearthly sort of calm, coming off of him in waves.

He bid without even a moment's thought, eclipsing his opposition at every turn; their bids barely stood for a second at a time before he overturned them, topping their offering by only a hundred credits at a time. This small increase allowed the offers to come faster now, the three still in the game warring over screen real estate as the numbers flew through the wireless network overhead.

This had never been an issue of wealth, for him. The only thing he had needed to begin bidding had been an act of contrition. This was him, making a point.

The number flicked higher, and soon the squid had to drop out of the running, leaving Sander and Fiori to furiously attempt to outdo one another. Amy began to wonder exactly how worried she should be getting; Sander might be here, but he wasn't unbeatable, nor infinitely wealthy. What if Fiori turned out to have a more voluminous bank account?

Was that even possible? Fiori owned a nightclub, but Sander had owned a planet. He still owned a moon. Amy had no idea if there was an upper limit to the amount of money he could spend. Even the robotic auctioneer seemed somehow uncertain, as it gazed on at the progressively larger sums of money being tossed around as though it was nothing.

And then, suddenly, it stopped, the stark motionlessness of the numbers coming as a shock after watching them move for so long. At fifteen and a half million, the counter just stopped, frozen in an infinitely tense moment, and it was Sander's image that remained on the screen. Amy had never suspected that it was possible for a heart to soar suspiciously, but hers certainly did; her rescue would almost definitely come at a price for her later.

And of course, there was still Sally, Lorna... even Christina, though Amy had to force herself to be a good person and include her on the list. Would Sander try to get them back on his own, or would Amy have to convince him, somehow?

The auctioneer-bot spoke up, breaching the stillness with its liquid speech, 'Lot concluded. Sold for fifteen point five standard. Buyer: please collect your lot from Holding. Moving on...'

It was over. Sander had won. Her salvation had been the same man she had escaped from, into the jaws of the Guild. Her journey to freedom had become a full circle.

She felt an insistent pressure on her collar, as her leash was taken up and she was led away by one of the attendants. Her eyes never left Sander as she allowed herself to be moved, an odd mix of gratitude and suspicion flowing seamlessly over her features. And he stared back, clearly unimpressed, untouched by anything she could show to him. Whether Amy wanted to admit it or not, she had crossed a line in his head.

Amy barely even paid attention to where she was being taken. It hardly mattered, anyway; by the end of the day she would be back in that hotel room, right where she had begun her day, only everything will have changed. It would have to... especially if Sander somehow lost one of his other captives.

He must have been following them fairly closely, as he entered the room Amy had been deposited in just after her handler had left. Sander closed the door behind him, letting it slip back into its frame with a gentle click, the last sound to pervade the room for the next several seconds.

And then, they were alone together.

His footsteps were languid, tapping things, clicking heel to toe, feet swinging as he walked around her. Amy stood still, unwilling to break whatever it was that kept his obvious anger at bay, allowing her- now official- Master to circle her. His eyes swept her body, searching for... what, exactly? Signs of mistreatment? Amy liked to think so; that would at least be some evidence of caring...

'Look, Sander...' Soon, the silence became too much to bear, and the words tumbled from Amy's mouth, halting only as she realized that she had no satisfying follow up from that. Not that it mattered; Sander cut in the moment she had begun, as though it was what he had been waiting for.

'You know, when I found out where you were, I was fully intending to storm this place,' He said, voice calm enough, for the moment. 'Just me, Ren and Dulcimer. I was going to dope myself up with some combat drugs first, because Selestene has a wonderful array of interesting things one can get on short notice, and I was very angry. Can you imagine why?'

'I-'

'But then Mara pointed out something that I, in my deeply enraged state, seemed to have missed,' He continued without missing a beat. 'That is, the Guild sells people. There was an easier way to deal with this. And she was right, but to me... it lacked heroism. I wanted something more direct. Violent. Obviously, she talked me around.'

Amy turned, unable to stand the pressure of his cool words at her back any longer. Her mouth opened, but this time he cut off even her potential to speak.

'And so I put on my nice suit, and I walked through the front door, instead of blowing it up,' Sander said. 'Because I'd rather calmed down by that stage. And the advantage of being calm is that I figured out what it was I really wanted out of this chain of events.'

Behind her, that same near inaudible click, and Amy knew the door was opening. Something was happening. She felt strangely light, as though her veins were filled with helium, a torrent of sheer nervousness flowing through her. But she couldn't take her eyes off of Sander; his expression dared her to, giving the impression that the moment she turned away he would strike out at her. The final words were coming, the last pieces of the puzzle snapping into place.

'And what I wanted, Amelia, was satisfaction. Something I could only get through showing you the price of defiance,' Now, the anger flickered below the sheet ice of Sander's voice. 'I wanted to look into your eyes as I sold you on to someone else. That is my right, as your owner, after all...'

A tremor ran through her, up her still bare spine, that she couldn't quite shut off. The world had suddenly tilted on its axis again, her safety had been torn away; she had been offered a foothold out of the pit, only to have it crumble under her weight.

And there was Sander, looking deadly serious, though with a strange glitter in his eyes; they never left Amy's, drinking in every pained moment of her realization...

'Ah yes, that's the look,' He grinned, and just like that the moment was over. Sander's eyes flicked up, over Amy's shoulder to regard whoever it was that had opened the door. Amy stood, stock still, like pretending she wasn't there would help matters. But Sander was still in her field of vision, and she could see the relish bubbling up through every inch of him, as he proceeded to give her that final push, back into the pit.

'She's all yours, Fiori.'

To be continued...