Fifteen minutes and more than two kilometers into their flight, Mark was feeling a rising tide of helplessness. Since their initial choice of the northeastern fork at the vestibule, the walkway had given them no other choice to make. It was a single corridor forming the eastern perimeter of the great diamond array, and they were almost at the northern apex. Mark was fighting a rising tide of despair. They were running out of hexagons.
Their speed wasn't that great, but Toshi and especially Frida didn't look fit to run much faster, and besides it wasn't their speed that was dismaying Mark. It was the track that they were on.
For twenty-two times, they had jogged the hundred-meter sides, the super-frigid outside fields clearly visible in the light of the stars and the planet's small moon. There was no other choice. Their only other options were to stay put or head back, and that would be insane. Mark suspected the western perimeter path would have presented them the identical situation.
And now they were a hundred meters east-northeast of the southern vertex of the northernmost hexagon of the diamond array. Finally, their corridor was leaving the perimeter of the diamond array. But there was still no choice in their path, no choice to make. Mark had a horrible feeling they were about to find there was no place to go, that their path was just one big loop with the Black Mall home complex as the only exit from the track.
His mind kept jumping back to Maddy urging him to pack a pistol. But Mark hated guns. He would have to admit, target practice with his dad was sort of fun, but the idea of using a gun as a weapon against another person made him shudder. He wondered now whether he would pay for his squeamishness with his life. He looked at the two women with him and felt an intense wave of shame. They were trusting him to protect them, but perhaps they would also be forced to pay for his squeamishness.
The three slowed to a determined walk as they hiked the last hundred meters to the southern vertex. "We must be very close to the great wall," panted Frida. She looked very distraught, and Mark didn't blame her. She was in an unknown alien environment and facing a high probability of soon being raped and tortured. Mark paused for a moment to talk to her.
"Two walls actually, separated by about a hundred meters. In between there is some sand, and then some cobblestone walkways, very difficult to walk on, and then a large field of some very strange ivy. And you're right. We're in a diamond pattern of hexagons. The northern tip of the diamond array we're in just misses touching the inner wall of the great perimeter wall by about eight meters."
Frida turned her head and gave him a relieved smile. "So you know what this place looks like?"
Mark nodded. "Imagine a truly colossal hexagon, exactly twenty-six kilometers for each side, aligned so that two vertices run due north-south."
"What?"
"The northern vertex is twenty-six kilometers north of the center of the hexagon, and the southern vertex is twenty-six kilometers south of center."
"Oh." Frida paused for a second. "Okay. I get it."
"We call the mall downstairs Black Mall. Think of a northernmost point of a great spiral along the black centerline in the mall corridor. That point is precisely 6,457 meters west and 20,279 meters north of the center of the great hexagon, a place we call Hex Hall. That point in Black Mall is precisely aligned with your home complex. Your home enters the Mall on the inside arc of your spiral. The center of your circular stairwell is the center of your local hexagon, and eighteen meters due south of the other point I just described."
Mark looked at Frida and smiled. The precise description had had its desired effect. Frida looked a lot calmer knowing something about her environment. Mark knew he was probably giving a false impression of knowing more than he actually did, but he told no outright lie, and his motive was one of kindness for Frida's distress. Mark's conscious was at peace.
He decided the explanation was well worth the minute it took to make it. They started walking again in a much more confident and relaxed manner.
Frida smiled back at him, her relief visible on her face. "Ah. So I take it you've been here before?"
Mark shrugged. "Not quite here, much further south. But I've seen satellite images."
"Of here?! Oh wow, really?! Tell me, this isn't Earth, is it? I mean, with all the stars and everything, it can't be, right?"
Mark sighed. "That's right, not Earth. Look up ahead! There's something different!" In his mind, he thought hopefully, "Maybe we got lucky at last!"
They sprinted the remaining distance and then stared in fascination at the setup before them. The corridor bent 120 degrees and continued to the west-northwest, and Mark was certain it was the beginning of the mirror image of the path they had just taken. The corridor would join the perimeter of the western side of the diamond area. But finally, there was another option.
Without speaking, they walked due north into a short transparent area. They then walked down one branch of a double spiral helix of crystal-clear stairwells. Their branch exited four meters below onto the ground level of the last northernmost hexagon.
Ground level indeed. Mark recognized the plant immediately. It was the strange ivy that ran like a moat around the perimeter wall. The ivy covered the area inside the last hexagon, except for a narrow cobblestone walkway that ran from their southern vertex to the northern vertex two hundred meters beyond. Mark pulled out his pocket binoculars and took a look.
The cobblestone walkway led to a much higher stairwell at the northern vertex, one that connected to high walkways that came back along the hexagon walls at a height of about ten meters. The walkways were flat shelves without guardrails, and ended in the second branch of the spiraling staircase far above and just behind them. Mark re-entered the bottom of the stairwell and stared into the chamber they would come to if they made the journey to the northern vertex and then backtracked along the high walkways.
It was a barren chamber six-meter square in area, with a mall-sized four-meter by four-meter door exiting south back towards the diamond complex. The door was closed, but there was no mushroom lock blocking the access button. Mark felt a glimmer of hope. He had a Black Mall lock in his pocket, the one from Esau's Bar and Grill, and this was still Black Mall territory. If they could get to the other side of that door and then lock it, it might provide a very effective barrier against pursuit.
Mark came out of the stairwell and stared at the cobblestone path. It started out twelve meters wide, two meters on each side adjacent to the ivy of black cobblestones, then two meters on each side of red cobblestones, and then finally an inner four-meter core of yellow cobblestones. The color similarity between the path and the setup between the great perimeter walls was unmistakable.
And the pattern did not last. The black and red lines of cobblestones curved inward until the inner core of yellow was eliminated, and then the black cobblestones swallowed the red core. The middle one-hundred meters of the two-hundred-meter path was a mere four meters wide of pure black cobblestones.
Still, Mark hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to traverse. He looked at the women's feet and nodded in approval. Frida had come to them in her pajamas, put she had put on good boots. Without explaining why, he asked the two women not to speak and to try to keep as far from the ivy as possible. He then silently led the way forward, with Frida behind him and Toshi binging up the rear.
Half way across, in the dead center of the hexagon, Frida had a question about the geometry of the malls, and she forgot about Mark's command not to speak. "Mark," she called out in a normal tone of voice.
All three of them gasped as a great ripple shook the ivy. Mark turned and put his fingers to his lips, imploring Frida not to make a sound. She looked both terrified and mortified at the mistake she had made, and nodded her head vigorously. After a few seconds the rippling subsided, and they slowly continued their journey.
Time: Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:29 AM
Gilberto and Neto walked very deliberately up the east side of the easternmost hexagon. They had traveled halfway up the diamond array. Their guns were drawn and out in front, and Nadine was trailing behind them. Across the great diamond array Pancho, Berto, and Tiffany were in a similar position on the western side.
"Stupid!" Gilberto was kicking himself mentally for not thinking these bitches might be armed with guns from the three missing compadres. It took Neto to point this out to him about fifty meters after leaving the home complex. "That fucking Alfredo!" Gilberto fumed. "I bet he didn't forget. He looked so relieved when I volunteered. I never bothered to ask him why. Stupid!"
But if the bitches were armed, Gilberto thought they would have picked one of the bends of corridors to lay an ambush by now. He began to feel more confident with each hexagon they covered and began to pick up the pace a bit. His mind was already imagining all the different ways the men of balls with him would sink themselves into Toshi. That bitch was in for one rough night. Gilberto would not stop his men from their fuck rotations until both Toshi and the men's balls were wasted.
And Frida! His personal prize! Her boyfriend Diego had astonished Gilberto a week ago when he admitted that so far he had accepted Frida's plea not to have anal sex with her. The compadre had never slipped more than a single finger up inside her virgin backdoor.
Well, the bitch was about to find out what it was like to get her plumbing properly plumbed! Gilberto cracked an evil grin at the vision of Frida's bare butt held high and tight by Nadine and Tiffany, those sexy long legs held open by the laughing mistresses. Oh yeah, how Frida would yelp as the two women spread her lifted butt cheeks wide and Gilberto pushed his mighty express train into Frida's brown tunnel. Toshi would be roughed up but still usable after they were through with her. Frida though…
Gilberto loved the pleasure of blowing out a woman's sphincter, especially one who was a virgin at her anal door. He loved to hear the bitch pant and then scream as he worked himself in. The chance had come along only once before, almost two years. Gilberto had gone in full bore up inside an anal virgin, and had an explosive orgasm when he felt the bitch's anal muscle blow out under the stress. Diego's single finger would not have stretched Frida's sphincter muscles at all. Gilberto was anticipating exquisite pleasure for his cock.
Gilberto was ecstatic, barely able to contain his excitement, lost in his vile thoughts. "Maybe I'll let Frida beg for some spit from Nadine and Tiffany before I hook her in the bowels, a little lube to ease the entry pain when my cock pushes past her rectum. But lube or no lube, her brown shit hole won't be just brown after tonight. Bitch Frida is gonna be the bitch of the burning pink potty after I get through reaming her!"
"And what's the worst she can expect?" Gilberto blinked. His shriveled conscience had asked the question in a whisper. A well worn memory flashed through his mind, a visual memory of a nameless prostitute. It had happened almost two years ago, while he was still a teenager. Gilberto accepted the challenge from his conscience. He relived the memory.
She had been so young, so cute and fresh looking, long straight hair, such a pretty smile, lovely green eyes, and she was so incredibly foolish to trust him. She had allowed herself to be seduced by Gilberto's boyishly good looks and charming politeness, and he had taken her to a very secluded spot. It was there that she sold herself to him, in a place where she was alone with him and completely unprotected.
Gilberto casually asked her price for anal sex. Unwittingly she signed her death warrant by confessing she had never done it. Gilberto's mind finished with the memory by imaging how the naked young prostitute had struggled underneath him. Gilberto jumped his vision to thoughts of butt humping a pinned and struggling Frida.
His weak and shriveled conscience tried one last time, again flashing a memory into his mind, the young prostitute crying in pain, loudly at first, then weakly, the blood from her ruptured intestine pouring like a river from her anus, running down her bare legs and covering her feet as she tried to stand, so much blood. Crying and trying to stand for a moment and then collapsing. "Is this what you want?" his conscience asked him in derision. "Is this really what you want?!"
"Of course!" Gilberto's mind replied in howling laughter. "I was never caught, and this time I don't even have to worry!" His conscience gave a final wail of despair and shriveled into oblivion, never to return. And with visions of new dark pleasures dancing in his mind, Gilberto turned with his group and started walking the next hexagon.
Time: Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:33 AM
Toshi viciously slammed the flat of her hand against the almost invisible door, her teeth bared. Mark gasp at the intensity of her emotion. There was no lock, but nevertheless the door was unresponsive when they tried to push the access button. In fact, there was no access button. They were at the end of the line, with pursuit sure to arrive soon. None of them had any delusions about that.
Toshi turned to the man she had just learned to love. "Mark, if things get really hopeless, can you kill me before I'm captured?"
Mark stared at her and hissed back, "What?!"
"I'm totally serious. I'm facing a night of raping, then some torture to get me to tell what I know, and then a very painful death. Uno made that very clear to all of us. The penalty for attempted escape would be rape and then death by torture, no exceptions."
Mark was speechless.
Toshi continued, "We were forced to watch how they killed Britney. She complained about the rapes and then tried to run away. It's unspeakable what they did."
Mark's jaw twitched. "I…" He took a deep breath, forcing himself not to cry. "I can't give up hope. I can't and I won't! And I have an idea. Frida, Toshi, we have to split up. I'll be on the walkway, about halfway back."
Frida grimaced. "Split up? And where will we be?"
Mark took a deep breath. "Right here where they can see you. You're the bait for the trap."
Time: Thursday, January 17, 2019 12:46 AM
Three compadres were exposing themselves to Frida and Toshi, and the men were grinning like jack-o-lanterns, but it was the predatory leer of Nadine that Toshi found the most disturbing. Toshi and Frida were being tormented by their enemy, separated by only a few centimeters of transparent barrier. They were being mocked and taunted about their pending rapes.
Gilberto curled the fingers of his right hand into a hole, and then plunged the flip-the-bird finger of his left hand into the hole, working it in and out while his eyes drank in the sight of Toshi's and Frida's bodies. Then he moved his cupped hand while staring at Frida, turning to display his hairy rear and then goosing himself in his bare butt, signaling to Frida where she was going to get it.
Gilberto gave a short maniacal laugh. Uno was right! Toshi did come back! And both bitches were obviously unarmed, hanging like two cherries on a tree waiting for Gilberto's mouth.
Gilberto's thoughts shifted from Frida's shapely ass to remembering the taste of Toshi's sweet loins and he started to drool. In complete depravity, he had already unzipped his pants, letting his excited cock pop out and wave stiffly in the air. He now rotated his hips left and right, letting his cock wave an evil side-to-side greeting to his captives.
Wanting to get in on the fun, Pancho and Berto had also dropped their pants and were jerking themselves erect in full view of the trapped women. Nadine gave a wild laugh and took a moment to reach under Berto jerking hand and penis. He grinned at her at first, allowing her hand to reach up under his legs and cup his scrotum. She fondled him for a moment until he sighed at the pleasure, and then he yelped as Nadine painfully squeezed his sac.
"Hey Nadine! Let go!" Berto hissed, his face suddenly breaking out in sweat.
"Just checking your ammo," Nadine answered with a sensuous wiggle. "Are both your nuts fully loaded? Let me check." Her fingers released some of the pressure, but then she curled her wrist, driving her two middle fingers to the very top of his sac. She leaned close to his ear and whispered, "I love feeling a man's tubes. Feel where I am Berto? Cough for me."
"What?!" he hissed back.
"I want you to cough for me. I know how to test for hernias. Cough for me. I want to examine your groin." She pushed very firmly, rubbing her fingers against the muscular wall at the top of his sac.
"Nadine, cut it out!"
Her fingers shifted slightly and then pinched, catching a sensitive tube where it joined the orb of his left testis. Berto grimaced and then gasped.
"Feel where I am now?" Nadine hissed. "I own your left nut. One little jerk of my wrist and you'll be a one-ball wonder for the rest of rest of your life. Your choice." She pulled on the connection, not quite enough to rupture him but more than hard enough to show she meant business.
Berto quivered and then capitulated. "Okay!"
"Smart boy!" Her fingers returned to the roof of his sac. "Cough!"
Nadine had drilled him. It felt as if she had pushed her entire hand up through the middle of his sac, and in reality she had come close. Berto coughed several times, biting down an urge to vomit, and then in a flash Nadine laughed and jumped away, leaving his sac to flop loosely between his legs. Berto looked down and blushed in humiliation. He had been displaying a full erection to Toshi and Frida just a moment ago, and now he was completely limp, looking like a little boy.
Gilberto glanced over and grinned at how completely his girlfriend had dominated Berto. Hah! Nadine knowing how to do a hernia exam! What a joke! Oh, she was such a wild and playful vixen!
His attention returned to his prey, and he pressed his face against the thin barrier separating him from the two frightened women. He drooled and let his spittle mark the clear barrier, staring at Toshi and grinning at her crying back at him in absolute fear, her eyes locked on the massive naked erection Gilberto was pressing and humping against the glass. Toshi had been a Drama major back at Burlington, and Gilberto had no idea what an excellent actress she was.
Gilberto rubbed his erection against the glass for a few last strokes. Watching Toshi paralyzed with fear and staring at him with glassy eyes was just so enjoyable. And at last he stopped. Enough foreplay! Time to get it on for real. Gilberto started to stuff his erection back inside his pants and motioned for his posse to leave their branch of the spiral glass stairwell. They stepped out onto the cobblestones to join Neto and Tiffany.
Pancho had enjoyed displaying his penis to the women, and he was still panting and trying to zip himself up when he came and stood by Gilberto's side. Pancho was sweating and looking very nervous, and he hoped Gilberto would assume it was just his excitement about the upcoming humping of the bitches.
Pancho pointed with his arm. "See, I told you how rough the walkway is. You have to walk very slowly. The red stones are even worse. And the black stones are the worst of all, and wicked sharp too. You'll have to walk very slowly. You have to be careful. Think about every step."