Sedition (29 page)

She drags me into a small, bare room, shoves me inside, and locks the door when she leaves. It’s rather anticlimactic, but I can’t do anything about it. I sit with my hands bound and waiting, worrying about my master.

It feels like hours before she returns, but there is no way of marking time in the small, dark room. Still, it’s been long enough that my tongue has loosened; the fact that I wasn’t immediately tortured gave me courage.

She walks in the door and glares at me, and I roll my eyes. “So, this is evaluation?” I ask.

She walks over, a tablet in her hands, and smacks me in the head with it. “Cut your attitude or you’ll lose points for real,” she snaps, and immediately orders me to follow a variety of orders.

The evaluation is something like what we did at the re-education centers, practicing poses, positions, stock phrases. Kristine is about as interested in it as I am, which makes me wonder why she insisted on it, anyway. More than anything, she seems to be going through the motions, and every once in a while, she’ll pause, flicking over to something else on her tablet. I don’t ask, I just keep performing when she asks me to. Finally, she finishes, and she takes me to another room and seats me at a table. I assume she’s going to interrogate me, and I’m right.

“What do you know about the re-education centers?” she demands.

“They teach high school students how to be slaves, ma’am,” I reply, glaring up at her. “The Miller System, which you developed, is the most popular training method, but may or may not be the most effective.”

She slaps me, but it was worth it to see the look on her face.

“Don’t lie to me,” she hisses. “What else do you know?”

“I know a slave can’t legally be compelled to testify against its master,” I supply.

“Your master,” she hisses. “Do you know what he’s doing right now?”

I hope he’s safe. I hope she hasn’t mobilized forces against him as well.

“Take a look,” she orders, shoving her tablet at me. I see a video feed of my master at home, the time stamp from a few hours ago, and I see him later visiting Torenze, and I see him now, walking into a courthouse, a furious look on his face.

“He’s getting me out,” I realize, relieved. I really can count on him to save me.

“He’s trying,” Kristine corrects, smiling. She pokes at the tablet a few times, and reveals a team of armed officers at the house, rifling through everything in there. In addition to the officers, there are uniformed agents with the words “Miller System,” emblazoned on their backs. Everyone is taking things, touching things, destroying things.

“You can’t do this!” I protest. “My brother, he submitted the statement, he fixed things, he—”

“Shut up,” Kristine orders. “Yes, your dear brother did make it difficult. He submitted his statement, and his wife even retracted hers. I must say, your family has quite the charisma.”

“Then, why….”

“Oh, the warrant?” she laughs. “Seems a little birdie placed a recording device in the dining room while your master was whipping you. Nobody knows who might have done such a thing, but the records came to my office, and I just had to let the district judge know that someone was planning to destroy me, and maybe the whole re-education center! It would have been a lot faster, but it seems my son has forgotten his manners, and rarely does anything more than chew with his mouth open and talk about doing lewd things to you in the dining room.”

I sit silently, thinking of the conversation we had last night. All our secrets, all our plans… everything was exposed.

“Where do you think you’ll end up, Sascha?” Kristine asks, her smile widening. “Do you think anyone will buy the slave of a convicted felon?”

“He’s not a felon!” I snap, but even as I watch in horror, the video feed shows him being accosted by more officers, handcuffed, dragged into a police hov-car. “His research… it will show what he’s doing! It will show all of it; you’ll be the felon for trying to cover it up!”

She comes over, grabs a small handful of hair, and twists it until I scream. “Why do you think my company is involved?” she asks. “We’ll make sure that the public only sees what they need to see to prove Cashiel is a corrupt man who deserves no less than a few life sentences in prison. Oliver Torenze will take my offer and wash his hands of the whole thing in order to rejoin my company, and you… well, you’ll go someplace nobody will ever find you. I’ve been trying to find a way to get Cashiel out of his house and away from his security system long enough to raid it for months, but I never realized just how attached he was to you until last time I was there. Can you believe it? Everything he’s done, destroyed, just because he fell for a stupid little whore.”

I think back to weeks ago, when Cash first told me about the project.

Once the data is out, it can’t be erased. Not from public record, not from people’s minds. They stopped me before that happened last time; this time, it can’t happen again. You’re a part of that.

I smile up at her. “You’re too late,” I inform her, starting to laugh. This whole, grand plan, and she forgot the simple input of a slave.

“What are you talking about?” she demands. “I arrived just in time! You saw the video feed. Everything is being destroyed. With any luck, that will include you.”

“Bring up a tabloid,” I suggest. “Or a major news venue. From here, international… it will start with the tabloids, but it will spread. They all got the same information.”

She glares at me, but she does as I suggest. I see her face growing more and more red as she searches, finding the preliminary report all over the internet. It’s spreading like fire, more and more people are boosting the signal to other sites, questioning the validity, wondering how this massive information bomb had been sent, and why. The news site she pulled up has two images, one, a compilation of the data, the other, an image of my master being placed in the police hov-car and driven away.

“Everyone will see,” I remind her, just as the doors to the evaluation room burst open.

“Ms. Miller, we’re going to have to ask that you hand the slave over to state custody,” they inform her. “His master’s being sent to prison, and he’s scheduled to go to the slave Detention Center immediately, for his safety and ours. They’re predicting riots.”

I see Kristine Miller draw back her hand, and I feel a sharp pain in my head before everything fades to black. The last thought I have is how it’s up to me to save Cashiel—again.

If you enjoyed this story, you can sign up for a free membership at
ForbiddenFiction
and discuss it with other readers and the author at the
Demoted 2: Sedition
story page
.

We do our best to proof all our work, but if you spot a text error we missed, please let us know via our website
Contact Form
.

Author’s Notes

The earliest form of
Demoted
was just one book… one very, very long book, without much of a plot. Thankfully, with the help of FFP editor James L. Wolf, it evolved into two books, both with plots! Behold the amazement! Tearing the original book apart and rebuilding it into two books was a challenge, but I love the way they both turned out. The boys get a chance to love each other even more, and the villains get a chance to dig their claws in.

Speaking of villains, probably my favorite addition to
Demoted
is Cash’s mother. While she has always been a part of the story, her particular evilness really got developed in the editing stage of
Sedition
. I just don’t think there are enough truly evil mothers in fiction. There are plenty of evil stepmothers, evil fathers, and even evil children, but I think mother really knows evil best! I was even fortunate enough to have a real-life inspiration source while I was editing, although that source shall never be revealed.

You may have noticed that I left you with a little cliffhanger. Okay, maybe not so little! Never fear, you’ll have a chance to find out what happens with Cash and Sascha in the third and final book in the series.
Succession
wraps up the trilogy, and all your beloved (and hated) characters are back in action—as well as a few new friends.
Succession
is in the works right now, and I can guarantee that it is just as sexy and exciting as the first two, if not more.

About the Author

Alicia Cameron
has been making up stories since before she can remember. After discovering erotica during a high school banned books project, she never really turned back. She lives in Denver, Colorado with two tiny dogs and a rabbit who conspire regularly to distract her from doing anything productive. By day she works in the mental health field and is passionate about youth rights and welfare. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, glitter, and punk rock concerts.