“TIA?” I HOLD my breath, as if waiting for someone I fear dead to call from the next room. “Tia?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and knuckle them, feeling the dark corners of the room pressing in. “Lights one hundred percent,” I say, and then realize Tia isn’t there to make it happen. Did I lock the door? With paranoia blooming in my gut, I swipe the key fob off the chest of drawers and lock it, imagining Arlington on her way to kill me, having somehow shut down my chip. A brief tap on the standard lamp switches it on fully and the added brightness makes me feel slightly better.
It can’t be Milsom doing this; she would leave Tia active so she could send a message to bollock me. Was Tia being hacked and shut itself down as a fail-safe?
“Please stand by,” Tia says, and I yelp and then laugh with relief.
“Did someone try to hack you?”
“Please stand by.”
A new icon appears in the top right of my vision. A solid-gold letter “G” in a blocky three-dimensional logo slowly spins clockwise. I try to swipe it away but it remains. A spoken “delete” command is just as ineffectual. None of my other icons have reappeared.
“Incoming call from Stefan Gabor.”
“Reject it and tell me what the ever-living fuck is going on.”
“You do not have call-rejection privileges,” Tia says, and there’s the little beep that signals voice connection.
“Good evening, Mr. Moreno.”
I stay silent, too many thoughts and fears rushing through my head for me to be able to reply in any way that won’t bring Milsom’s wrath down on my arse.
“I take it you’ve noticed the icon?”
My guts clench so sharply it’s painful.
“I bought your contract from the Ministry of Justice.”
“But it was a nontransferable con—”
“The word ‘nontransferable’ doesn’t apply to ‘billionaire twats’ like me. Surely you know that. Prepare yourself for immersion. I prefer to see someone’s face when I break their life into little pieces.”
The call ends and it feels like I’m going to vomit up my intestines.
“Immersion in thirty seconds,” Tia says.
“What? I don’t want to immerse—”
“Please sit or recline in a comfortable space and confirm that you are not operating machinery.”
“I’m not sitting! I don’t want to immerse!”
A countdown appears in the left-hand corner of my vision in red numerals. “25, 24, 23—”
“This immersion is compulsory. Please comply with safety protocols.”
Is that even legal? “Fuck this shit! Tia, get me Milsom. I need to speak to her!” Maybe if I don’t comply, the immersion won’t be able to happen.
“Failure to comply with safety protocols will put you at risk of injury. Any injuries sustained that subsequently interfere with the completion of your duties to the Gabor corporation will result in extension of your indentured status.”
“16, 15—”
“Tia,” I say, my voice hoarse with panic as I sit down on the bed. “Get me Milsom; tag it urgent.”
“You are not permitted to contact former Ministry of Justice colleagues unless given explicit permission by Stefan Gabor.”
“Then call the fucking police!”
“No crime is in progress. Please confirm you are not driving a vehicle.”
I can’t stop shaking. I can feel my pulse in my neck, compressing my throat with each beat. A notification flashes up with “No vehicle detected” and Tia starts warning me of the potential of heart attacks, depression, PTSD. And then the hotel room disappears.
—
I’M sitting in a chair covered in white leather, the real stuff, with a high back and generous arms. The room is huge, with a gleaming white marble floor and a central fireplace as big as my entire bathroom at home. There are flames, though they are a cold blue and look holographic. There’s an L-shaped sofa that must be bigger than the car in which I was driven to Devon, a rug on the floor that looks like a polar bear skin with a sickeningly realistic head still attached.
The rest of the furniture is made of crystal, cut with facets at the edges to catch the sunlight pouring through the window. There isn’t a speck of dust, as expected for a virtual space, and no attempt whatsoever to make this place feel welcoming.
On the wall opposite me there’s a portrait of Stefan Gabor that’s at least three meters high, either created in his younger days or by a digital artist who was prepared to sacrifice realism for the sake of client satisfaction. It’s the kind of portrait that has eyes that seem to stare at you from the canvas. The painted Gabor is wearing a white suit and silky white cravat, like some sort of smug modern God very pleased with himself for being so goddamn rich.
To my left there is a window instead of a wall, overlooking a city with a skyline I don’t immediately recognize. It could be an imaginary one, for all I know. The sky is blue with cotton-wool clouds scudding across it as if it’s blowing a gale out there.
There is total silence; no fake crackle from the pseudo fire and no sound of the wind programmed to penetrate the triple glazing. All the while as I take in the room, that fucking golden “G” spins, forcing me to consciously try to ignore it. I close my eyes and it’s still there, spinning in my private darkness.
Unable to bear it, I twist to peer around the high back of the chair and see a painting of Travis, this one two meters tall—of course—wearing a white suit in a different cut. The artist didn’t have to fake his beauty. It almost looks like something from an advert. He is too handsome to seem real.
“It doesn’t do him justice,” Stefan Gabor says, and I start so violently the chair scrapes against the floor with a squeak. I turn back toward the fire to see him standing next to it, looking just as he did in the hotel restaurant, only disgustingly satisfied with himself. “I sacked the artist who made that. He’s designing condom packaging now. I like the picture well enough, but I asked for something special.” He fixes his eyes on me, made small by the flabby expanse of his jowls. “He’ll never create portraits again. I made sure of that.”
“You’re trying to intimidate me,” I say, dredging up some sort of sludgy courage from the place deep inside me that I haven’t needed for a long time. “Surely you have better things to do with your time.”
He smiles and opens his arms with an expansive gesture. “So, there is the real Carlos Moreno! I was wondering whether there was anything more to you than class envy and deductive reasoning. I knew there must be. Not many survive what you did and make your pay grade, even if you only get to pay off your debt with it.”
I keep my mouth shut, remembering the way he treated Travis in the restaurant. This is one sadistic bastard and I don’t want to give him anything he can use against me.
“That will change now,” he continues. “The MoJ contract was incredibly generous. I see no reason why my property needs to have an allowance.”
He’s talking about my allowance like it’s a salary, or something granted to me by my owner as a kindness, not part of the debt I’m paying off with servitude. Then the rest of his words sink in. Oh God, now he holds my contract. He owns me, and for the first time since the hot-housers caught me, I feel genuine terror.
My adrenaline levels, already high, spike and the old training kicks in. I push all the panic aside, fixating on the facts before me. “If I don’t have an allowance anymore, I take it the length of the contract has been shortened accordingly,” I say.
“No.” He smiles. “Ten years were added by the MoJ just before I bought it, as punishment for your transgressions.”
I stand, clenching my fists. “What transgressions?”
“Failure to report the disappearance of my husband. Failure to notify me in a timely fashion that he’d left the hotel.”
“Bullshit! That was a civil matter outside of my remit. There’s no fucking way that—”
He holds up a hand. “You forget who you’re speaking to. Do you want me to remind you of your status here?” When I stay silent, with great difficulty, that smug smile returns. “Better. If you raise your voice in my presence again you will be punished. I can be very creative.” I rage at him within the confines of my skull but my mouth stays shut. “Yes, the commissioner herself added those years and gave me her personal apologies for your conduct. I think she was relieved to have you taken off her hands.” He points at the chair. “Sit down, Moreno. If I wanted you to stand I would have told you.”
I sit and watch him stride over to the window, looking out at the shorter skyscrapers and parks below like a king surveying his domain.
“You have a private apartment with a generous space allocation. This isn’t a permissible arrangement under your new contract. I have many properties in my portfolio and accommodation will be assigned to you, something more suited to your circumstances. This will be arranged while you’re traveling. I understand you don’t have any personal effects of note, which is just as well, as your accommodation will be smaller than what you’ve grown accustomed to.”
“Traveling?” I ask the question to stop myself imagining the box he’ll put me in, along with thousands of other poor bastards without any real choice about where they live.
“I’ll get to that shortly. I think it’s necessary for you to understand your change in circumstances first.”
This is really about him getting to gloat. I assume he’s seen my previous comments about him that I asked Milsom to bury for me. He wants to revel in the power he has over me and then this will be done. I just have to stay quiet and not give him the slightest chance to dig his claws in any deeper.
“You will be given new clothes. You will represent me when you fulfill your duties in public and online, and I will not have you dressed like a bloody plod who thinks any old suit is smart.”
Something shifts and I look down at my clothes. My suit has been replaced by one I’d never be able to afford, one with narrow-cut legs and a high, uncomfortable collar. The tie has a thick, fashionable knot that feels like it’s trying to choke me. I feel like a fraud in it and I realize he’s taken just a sliver more from me. The MoJ let me choose the clothes they were obligated to provide for me from a wide selection. Even though I never wanted to incur more debt to extend that range, I never realized how much the decision about what to wear meant to my sense of self until it was gone.
Only now do I appreciate the leniency of the contract with the MoJ. I was able to apply for extensions to my debt and that’s gone now, by the sound of it. Even though I hated having to ask permission to be trapped in my contract for longer—as if it were some sort of privilege to have to apply for the money to make my life bearable and then pay for it with my own freedom—at least I could. It was shit having to weigh up the need to eat with the prospect of dying indentured, but it feels like it was something precious, now lost.
“When you travel you will only have an allowance for food if you’re staying somewhere without access to a printer,” Gabor continues. “When you’re not traveling, you will be able to use the printer in your new accommodation.”
He turns and looks at me when he says that, as if waiting for the dismay to leak out onto my face. Gabor knows how important I feel it is to eat well and he wants me to know that he has taken that from me. Even though I can feel a new despair pooling within my stomach, I keep my features blank, like Dee taught me to, practiced under the gaze of my psych supervisor to avoid the machine. I may not be in the MoJ anymore but I’m not going to forget what I learned there or in hot-housing. When he doesn’t get what he hoped for, he turns back to look out of the window.
“Your APA has been updated in line with the change in ownership, so you’ll learn many of the everyday details as you go. If you do as I wish, to the best of your ability, without hesitation, then I will not punish you. If you carry out your duties in an exemplary fashion I may reward you. If you disobey me . . .” He pauses to look at me again, a predatory smile spreading across his face. “You don’t want to disobey me. And you should know that if I discover that you have deliberately acted against my interests, I will have you serve out the rest of your contract in a brothel specializing in satisfying the most sordid tastes. I understand you have some limited experience in that area already.”
I want to slam his head into the glass, grab his hair as he reels from the blow and throw him to the floor and remind him, as I smash his face into a pulp, that the use of indentured persons in brothels or any other aspects of the sex industry is illegal. But he already knows this and I know better than to express my opinion. He bought a nontransferable contract, for fuck’s sake, one that was supposed to protect me from bastards like him, to protect me from ever having to do anything like what I had to when I was desperate. One I had to work hard to merit—the irony of which didn’t escape me at the time. I worked so damn hard to be owned by the right kind of corporate entity and he has rendered that worthless without even trying. He could throw me in a brothel, maim or disfigure me or even kill me. The paltry number of fundamental human rights I struggled to keep are now gone.
I think of Alejandro swinging from that cord and I am filled with a visceral flash of rage. How could he have squandered all the privileges he had? What could possibly have been so bad that he couldn’t face finding a way through? He had power, wealth and respect and he just chucked it all away, when I have nothing. Because of him. I don’t even have the choice to take my own life. Even with the MoJ, if I did anything to deliberately endanger my life Tia would have shut me down. I’m certain Gabor won’t have changed those settings.
“I am right about your experience, aren’t I?” he says, and I struggle to bring myself back to his misery fest. “There wasn’t a great deal of detail about that part of your life just after the Circle. Your psych supervisor thought you might be a repressed homosexual—understandable considering all the cock you sucked to buy passage across the Atlantic, and the string of girlfriends you failed to keep all those years since.”
I’m on my feet before I realize it, about to leap at his throat before the old training kicks in at the last moment.
“He also talked about the constant battle to keep your anger under control. So much of it. Are you feeling angry with me now, Moreno?”
I straighten my back, clasp my hands behind it. “No. Sir.”
“I should think not. I’m not the mother who abandoned you. I’m not the father who couldn’t provide for you because he was too fucking weak to cope with life. I’m not the cult leader who sucked him in and took everything he owned and wouldn’t give you a red cent when you asserted your right to leave. I’m not the pimp who said he would help you when you were lost in America, unchipped, starving, penniless, and then sold you to the man who wanted a rent boy all to himself while he sailed across the Atlantic. I’m not the traffickers who masqueraded as a charity and sold you to the hot-housers. Why would you be angry at me?”
He knows everything. Not even Milsom knew how I got out of the States. I feel naked in front of this monstrous man. The anger dissolves in liquid shame and I look at the floor so he doesn’t see it in my eyes. I sit down before he tells me to.
“I, on the other hand,” he continues, walking toward me, “have every fucking right in the world to be angry. You knew my husband was in a car on the way to Heathrow and you did nothing. You knew he had been stalking that cult leader and you said nothing. You had no intention of interviewing my husband and yet you didn’t tell me. If you had bothered to tell him, you could have stopped him making a terrible mistake. If I didn’t need you to fix this, I’d take great pleasure in expressing my anger.” His hand comes out of nowhere, grasping my tie and hauling me to my feet. “I hope you appreciate just how lucky you are that you are worth more to me intact and functioning.”
“I do, sir.”
He drops me back into the chair. I tug my tie and jacket back into place.
“You are also lucky because I know exactly where he is going and you are the one person in the world who can—and will—bring him back to me. As far as the Circle and the rest of the world who might take an interest in you are concerned, you are still working for the Ministry of Justice, and the commissioner agreed that it was best to keep your public status as before, just until interest in this case blows over. You are going to accept the Circle’s invitation to attend that idiot’s funeral and you are going to bring my husband back to me. From the moment you land on American soil you will have forty-eight hours to deliver my husband into my care. For every hour past that deadline I will add a year to your contract. If you fail, I’ll get my money’s worth out of you via whatever unsavory means I decide.”
The fear of failure churns with the bittersweet satisfaction of getting my wish to return to the Circle after all.
“Any questions?”
“What if he doesn’t want to come back to you?”
“That’s irrelevant. What he thinks he wants is very different to what is best for him. If he refuses, bring him back anyway. All you need to do is get him to a rendezvous at the edge of the Circle’s land, and my people will be waiting for you. If you need to knock him out and carry him over your shoulder, so be it.”
“What if he isn’t there? Just because he was stalking Alejandro, it doesn’t mean he cares about the cult. A religious-protection visa was the best way to get away from . . . Norope.”
“He’s going to the Circle.” Gabor speaks with total certainty. “Anything else?”
“When I bring him back,” I say, not wanting to appear anything less than confident, “what will my duties be?”
Gabor’s hateful smile returns. “Whatever the fuck I want them to be. Now go and bring my husband back, or I’ll make your trip across the Atlantic in the bottom of a pervert’s boat seem like a fucking holiday.” His smile becomes wicked. “No pun intended.”