This is not the start of a new era

Let's face it. I'm terrible at social media. I'm terrible at keeping my website updated. It took me over two months to put new covers of the entire Whatever It Takes series up here. And it took me even longer to actually put all the books in the Supernova Casanovas series on the site. No one will probably read this, but if you do, here's a reward. A (very much unedited!!!) chapter from book 5 of the Supernova Casanovas series - My Alien Mistress.

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Chapter 1

Steven

The hard metal floor is cold under my bare, bruised knees. My muscles cramp as pain flares from the collar around my neck again.

Focusing on the cold floor, I try to block the pain out. Metal floor. Feels like steel, but it’s probably not. I doubt aliens use primitive Earth materials like steel to build their spaceships. Although, who knows? Isn’t the whole universe built out of the same building blocks or some crap like that? Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen. Iron. Is steel made of iron?

The asshole torturing me is breathing the same air as I am, even though the sharp bone spikes running across the top of his head like some morbid mohawk clearly mark him as an alien. Clearly, there’s oxygen here, enough for me to breathe easily. There must be iron on alien planets as well. They mine the iron, smelt it, make steel, build spaceships and—

Another wave of pain. My muscles burn from how tightly they’re contracted, my molars at the brink of shattering as I clench my teeth. I won’t scream or beg. Not that I could while that shock collar is active, but I take great care being silent even between the jolts.

They want to break me? Tough luck. I didn’t get through SERE training just to bend over for some alien asshole with a glorified dog training collar.

Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. Weeks of gruesome training in the wilderness, topped with getting captured and tortured for information. The capture was fake. The torture was not. On the brink of collapse from physical exhaustion, dehydration and days of denied sleep, the line between reality and make-belief blurred anyway. But I made it through, and if this jerk thinks he can break a NAVY Seal with that children’s toy of his, he’s gravely mistaken.

I keep my focus on the floor as the pain pulses through me in irregular intervals. My lungs seize as my captor experiments with the collar settings in his vain venture to find out one that would miraculously make me compliant.

Me? I’m focusing on the maybe-steel floor, not letting my thoughts wander to my one weakness the alien bastard could exploit. My heart stutters as I imagine Jaime being tortured like I am. He wouldn’t survive it.

His body, already weakened by the constant struggle against the muscular dystrophy that’s slowly stealing his mobility, had barely begun to recover from yet another bout of pneumonia when we were taken. If he’s out here, somewhere, lying on the cold floor, unable to move without his wheelchair…

I furiously stamp my despair back down into the recesses of my mind. I can’t think about Jaime right now. I can’t let the aliens know that he’s my weak spot. Escape, that’s what I need to focus on.

Straining my arms, I fruitlessly tug on the magnetic cuffs keeping my wrists bound behind my back. Nasty little things. Remotely controlled, like the collar, and insanely powerful.

One time I disobeyed the order to join my hands behind my back, thinking I could keep the cuffs apart, that the magnetic field simply wouldn’t engage if they weren’t touching. They snapped together with such force it nearly dislocated both my shoulders. If I’d been holding one arm in front of my body and one behind my back when the cuffs activated, they’d probably tunnel through my insides like a knife through butter.

When they aren’t active, they’re just inconspicuous metal bracelets on my wrists. Smooth all along the surface, with no obvious joint or control mechanism for me to pry open. The collar has some sort of controls on the back of it, but every time I try to touch them, it jolts me nearly unconscious.

There’s no getting out of either of those, not without the remote. The problem is, even if I could get my hands on it, I don’t know how to use it to remove the collar. The damned aliens implanted something behind my ears that allows me to understand them, but it does nothing for the written language. The alien scribbles on the cell wall, probably left behind by another soul unfortunate enough to inhabit this cell before me, are still nothing but alien scribbles to me, just like the symbols on the collar remote.

Which means I’ll have to take someone hostage and force them to remove the collar for me. Ideally not the guy torturing me. He’s stupid, but tough and would take too long to break. The guards that follow him around probably won’t be too much help, either. They are big and strong and look a little like walking piles of rock but from what I’ve seen, they are also about as intelligent as a walking pile of rocks.

I haven’t seen many other aliens around, though. There’s a couple of blue, skinny humanoid aliens, who bring me food and water, but those have collars around their necks as well. A bunch of the rock-like guards. It’s difficult to count how many of them are exactly since they all look the same. Then there are the head-spike bastards, the ones clearly in charge of this venture. There are at least four others aside from the one currently torturing me, and their boss.

As if my wayward thoughts summoned him, the boss arrives. His head spikes gleam with golden rings, many more than the grunt with the remote has. Now, I’m not an expert on alien culture, but it seems that more bling equals more clout everywhere in the galaxy.

My tormentor finally switches the collar off and turns to greet his boss. “Captain Garresh.” He shifts his weight from one foot to another, his eyes roving over me and the cell, looking anywhere but at his boss. “I, uh, didn’t expect you down here.” 

Garresh cocks his head, piercing the grunt with a deadly stare. “You didn’t expect me to come and survey our precious merchandise? How far along are you with breaking him?”

“Um.” The grunt clears his throat. “It’s going really well. Slowly, because he’s strong, but we’re getting there.”

I stifle a snort. He’s a terrible liar. He’s getting nowhere with me and all three of us know that.

“You’re a useless piece of shit, Zahrev,” Garresh scoffs. “If you’re making progress, why are his hands bound?”

The boss has a point. When the torture first started, I was free to move around. The grunt had clearly been convinced that a primitive life form like me would be easily controlled just by the collar alone. He was wrong. I nearly got him, but one of those rock-like fuckers took me down with a cattle prod. After that, they fitted me with the cuffs and forced me to kneel in the middle of the cell throughout the “sessions”. If I move even an inch in the asshole’s direction, he knocks me out with a single press of a button.

So no, we’re not making progress. The only thing progressing here is the damage the damned collar causes to my brain. The pain I can handle, but the hallucinations? Those are a bad sign.

They started a few “sessions” ago. At first, I thought the female was a new tormentor, sent to replace the incompetent idiot torturing me at the time. Mainly because she was glaring at me. It didn’t take me long to realize that she wasn’t really there, that she was just a figment of my imagination. But what a figment she is!

I never considered myself overly creative, so how I came up with her is a mystery. Naturally, I’d expect a figment of my imagination to be human, but she’s clearly not. She looks mostly human, tall and toned as if she works out a lot, but has two short horns protruding from her forehead. They’re just small nubs, three inches long at most, partially hidden by her short hair, but they’re definitely horns. Maybe I’m imagining some beautiful female devil?

Oh, and she has three breasts, which just shows how weird my mind really is.

At least I’m not imagining her naked. In fact, she’s usually almost completely covered, wearing what looks almost like an alien military uniform.

So apparently, a sexy female devil with a triboob wearing military gear is a secret fantasy of mine I never even realized I had.

Tuning out Zahrev’s blathering, I recall last night’s torture session. Not the pain, but the way my hallucination looked worried. Anguished, almost. When I listed to the side, she reached out as if to catch me, frustration flashing across her face as her immaterial hands passed through my body.

Is she a signal from my subconscious? A representation of the fear that I’m never getting out of here? That they’re going to torture me until my body gives out? That Jaime is going to die?

Or am I simply losing my mind, my brain short-circuiting from all the electricity they’re sending through it?

She’s here now as well, standing in the corner, watching me with a concerned frown. I smile at her. She might be just a figment of my imagination but she’s the only person I have here. She and Jaime, but I can’t think about him.

The boss with all the head bling, Garresh, finishes berating the grunt for being incompetent, then sizes me up. “This is your life now, slave,” he tells me. “The sooner you come to accept that, the sooner the pain will stop.”

This time, I fail to stifle the snort. A slave. Did they really kidnap a black guy from Earth to be a slave? It’s so fucking ironic I almost start laughing hysterically.

Instead of punishing me for my very non-slave-like behavior, Garresh turns to Zahrev again. His words hit me harder than any shock collar ever could. “What about the other one?” he asks. “You grabbed two humans, didn’t you?”

I force myself not to react. I can’t give them anything, no clue on how important Jaime is to me.

“Yes, uh…” Grimacing, Zahrev scratches the back of his neck. “The other one is…defective.”

Garresh doesn’t raise his voice. The icy cold threat is palpable even when he speaks quietly. “Did you damage my merchandise during transport?”

“No! We didn’t, sir. The transport was flawless as usual. The other human must have been damaged prior to the transport.”

Garresh growls. “How much defective?”

“Well… He can’t walk and doesn’t seem to be able to use his arms much, either. This one,” he points at me as if Jaime’s condition was my fault, “has been pushing him around on some wheeled contraption when we took them. We thought it was some primitive human ritual. We didn’t realize he actually needed the contraption to move around.”

“Humans don’t get rid of cripples and weaklings? How disgusting,” Garresh snarls.

My jaw ticks, my teeth aching from how hard I’m grinding them together to stop myself from lashing out at him. How dare the fucker speak like that about Jaime? Jaime, who has been bravely battling a chronic illness entire life, even though he knew could never win, that it would get him eventually. Jaime, who is the sweetest, most caring and loving person I’ve ever met.

It’s only by sheer will that I don’t lash out at this condescending bastard whose civilization, despite clearly being technologically advanced, still holds prehistoric views on the value of a person’s life.

Garresh pulls out a device from his pocket, peering at the screen with a scoff. “Truly pathetic. Can he even feed himself?”

“Most of the time, yes,” Zahrev replies. “He seems to be able to somewhat…crawl around.” He shudders, grimacing in disgust. “But not much more than that. The other slaves have to clean him up.”

“Blood and bones!” Garresh shakes his head. “No one will buy a cripple, not even a human cripple. He’s a waste of resources. Feed him to those beasts we picked up on Pilvo 4. They’re always hungry. But Zahrev, this loss will come from your share of the earnings.”

My heart races as I weigh my options. I can’t let them kill Jaime. I can’t! But what can I do?

My hallucination watches me, her expression anguished again.

“But, Captain—” Zahrev tries to protest.

Garresh cuts him off. “Shut the fuck up and do what I say or I’ll feed you to those beasts too! Get rid of the cripple. It insults me to have him on my ship.”

I suck in a panicked breath. Zahrev doesn’t notice, but Garresh does, his mouth curling into a vicious smirk. I can almost see the cogs whirling behind his shrewd eyes as he puts two and two together. “You have something to say, slave?”

A lump forms in my throat and I swallow around it with difficulty. The choice between preserving my pride and saving Jaime’s life is simple. Since the day he was born, I’ve always chosen my baby brother, and I always will.

“Please don’t kill the other human,” I say, hating myself for giving the aliens the edge they need to control me. But I’d hate myself infinitely more if I let Jaime die. “If you keep him alive, I’ll cooperate.”

Garresh reveals two rows of sharp, pointy teeth in a victorious grin. “Now we’re getting somewhere!” He crouches in front of me, his hand skimming the top of my head.

I can tell he’d love to grab my hair to hold me in place while he laughs into my face, but my buzzcut doesn’t exactly offer him any handholds. He grabs my ear instead. “You will be the most obedient slave in the entire galaxy, human,” he snarls, his spittle spraying my cheeks and nose. “If someone tells you to kneel, you’ll be on the floor before they finish the word. If someone tells you to suck their cock, you’ll moan at how delicious it is. If someone tells you to bend over, you’ll take it up your ass like the good fucking slave you are. Then and only then will I even think about feeding that useless cripple my idiotic crew brought to my ship. Is that clear?”

Blinking, I get rid of tears of helpless rage welling in my eyes. “Yes,” I reply quietly, my voice trembling.

The slap that lands on my cheek is more humiliating than painful. “Yes what, slave?” Garresh prompts.

Glancing at my hallucination, I see she’s nodding to encourage me, her anguished expression now replaced by pure determination.

Roughly swallowing, I mentally prepare to seal my fate before giving the bastard what he wants. “Yes, Master.”