Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
People are shouting at one another. In the factory, we keep our voices low and speak only when spoken to. We are rarely spoken to. These people seem to be speaking for close to no reason at all, and at volumes I would be ashamed to have my voice. I don’t know if I can speak that loudly.
For the past six years, since I graduated from the schooling facility, I have followed schedule. Now I do not know what the time is. There are no clocks here down at the docks where the dark closes in around me like a warm and salty blanket. I follow the pull of the unknown until the embrace of dark is replaced by sound.
OMEGA
A flashing sign lures me, draws me, commands me. It hangs above the door of a building I know I should not enter. The music is emanating from this cavern of the criminal. I should turn around, go back to my room. I should return to schedule.
But I don’t.
I keep walking forward, still uncertain as to why, following a sudden curiosity that will not let me go. There are others here, but I am accustomed to ignoring everybody around me. Workers are trained to focus on their own work and nothing else. There are eyes on me, but they don’t matter.
As I step through the door, music wraps around me, pounding through my flesh. I’ve never heard music like this before. I’ve heard hold music, light melody piped through tinny speakers. I’ve never felt the kind of sound that makes the soft parts of me thrum with primal recognition. I feel compelled to move, like a puppet on a string.
“You’re in the wrong place, Dreamy.”
A deep voice rumbles in my ear, sending shivers right to a part of me I didn’t know I had. He uses a name I do not recognize, but there is no doubt that he is addressing me.
“Shah!”
That’s a name I never thought I’d say again. It’s a name I’m surprised I ever knew at all. I look up at him and I feel time go wheeling back around the clock as if it is embarrassed it ever had the fucking nerve to pass without his permission.
Shah is executioner handsome. His head is clean shaven, leaving his thick brows to carry the aesthetic load. They hold up their end of the deal well. He has dark eyes, shark eyes, the kind of eyes that belong to the last person you ever see. His energy is dark and intense, and he’s intelligent. Smarter than anybody I work for, and smarter than anybody they work for. Shah is the one-man ruler of everybody who refuses to be ruled.
When the black lights of the club strobe over him I can see every bit of his skin besides his face and neck has been covered in tattoos, like passport stamps from every system he’s wanted in, I assume. He’s larger than life. Larger than most living things. In the shadow he casts, people like me disappear. He’s gritty, and filthy, and dangerous. He runs the gangs of this quadrant like a godfather, commanding respect and obedience.
And he’s smiling at me.
“I can’t believe it’s you, Dreamy.”
Dreamy is not my real name, but it is the name Shah knows me by. A long time ago, in another life, we knew each other briefly. He was a friend of a friend of a drug dealer of a friend. I once asked him very nicely to stop punching said friend of a friend in the face, and he was actually obliging enough to do that.
“It’s me,” I force a nervous smile. Was he always this big? Or has he been supplemented over the years? Most people are augmented now. His kind, the criminal kind, always have illegal augmentations that give them physical advantages over law enforcement. And I guess, now that I am this close to him, over me too.
“What are you doing here? This is not a place for a girl like you.” He lifts a thick, dark brow, and I find myself lost for words.
“I, uh…” I’m blushing. Why am I blushing. I feel like I’ve been caught by the principal, only if the principal was actually a hyper-violent crime lord with a reputation spanning several galaxies.
“Are you looking for a friend? Lost someone?”
He’s assuming I’m mixed up with a bad crowd again. He’s wrong. I’m mixed up with the straightest, most law-abiding, mind-numbingly boring crowd.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I. Uh. I wondered what this place was like,” I say. It sounds lame, because it is lame. People don’t come to places like this to see what they’re like. They come because they have a death wish, because they’ve been retired from the Colony, or because they’re criminals. Am I a criminal now? Is that how easy it is?