Subjection (25 page)

“You did this?” his mother asks, giving me a doubtful look. “What does a slave need with security?”

“Sascha,” my master warns, looking at me with alarm on his face. “She doesn’t even know what’s in there.”

“But I do,” I say. “It’s not hard to open, ma’am.” I explain the process, watching as my master gets increasingly pale.

Smiling, my master’s mother breaks through the security, looking more and more gleeful as she gets in further. Suddenly, her face drops, and I realize she’s reached the final point.

“What is this?” she demands, scowling.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I mumble. “I wasn’t supposed to be looking at it. I just liked it, and even though I wasn’t supposed to be pleasuring myself—”

“Shut your mouth!” she snaps, glaring at my master, who is utterly confused. “Porn, Cash? You let the boy watch porn?”

My master looks confused for another moment and I try to catch his eye. Suddenly, it dawns on him. “Well, I certainly don’t allow him to,” he replies coolly. “That’s probably why he tried to hide it. The little delinquent that he is. It’s why he no longer has access to a tablet without supervision.”

The scowl on the woman’s face is frightening. “I have other matters to attend to,” she snaps, turning to glare at my master. “See that he’s punished,” she cautions. “If you let them get out of hand, it will come back to bite you later.”

My master just nods. His face is slack, like he’s waiting for the next blow to fall, but the rest of his body is tense. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t even say goodbye. He watches silently as his mother turns and opens the door in a rush. Without turning back, she storms out, slamming it behind herself. A few seconds pass, and I wait, terrified that she’ll return. My master is just as nervous, and I don’t think he breathes until the slight sound of her hov-car tearing away from the house has faded into silence again.

We’re left alone.

“You know she wasn’t looking for porn,” he says quietly.

I nod.

“You found the other data?” he confirms.

I nod again.

“Is it still on the tablet?” he asks, his voice wavering. It’s so unlike his usual confident, arrogant demeanor. He looks at me with wide eyes, almost more afraid than he was when his mother was prying into his life.

“Yes, sir. I hid it.”

“Why didn’t she find it, then?”

“I hid it better than you did.” I realize how offensive the words are the moment they leave my mouth, but they’re true. He owes me this recognition.

My master goes quiet for a few moments, and I start to worry. Am I some sort of risk to him? Was I wrong? Or is he just angry that I outperformed?

“You protected me,” he says, looking down at the tablet. “Why?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. It doesn’t make sense, but nothing with my master makes sense.

“Sascha, I treated you like a dumb animal and threatened to give you away,” he reminds me. “Why would you protect me?”

I don’t know how to explain it. I could tell him that he’s better than the brothel, he’s better than Bobby, he’s better than the unknown, but those would all be lies, and he’s told me so many times not to lie to him. I don’t know how to tell him that I want to be his partner. I can’t deny my feelings for him, no matter how illogical they are.

“Why do you think?” I challenge. Isn’t it obvious that I’m infatuated with him?

He shakes his head. “Just go back to your room, Sascha,” he mutters.

I don’t argue. I go back and lie in my bed, wondering if I will ever be enough for him.

Chapter 22
Raising Stakes

I need to be alone to think, to revel in my good fortune. The good fortune that my little good luck charm brought me. I had worried so much about that data, and here he had hidden it with some sort of magic, or so it seemed. I try to focus on the tablet, trying to figure out how he did it. It crosses my mind only briefly that he might have just deleted it from the tablet; he said he didn’t, and I trust him. I shouldn’t trust the deceptive little slave, but I do. It’s a strange feeling, one that is made stranger by the fact that I can’t get his face out of my mind, even though he stays in his room for days, obeying my last order. I bring him plates of food without speaking to him, wondering why it’s so important to me that he eats. I can’t sell him; even if I could bring myself to be so cruel, I couldn’t afford to have the limited secrets he knows out in the public. Besides, I want him around.

If our roles had been reversed, I would have let me sink and drown under my own lies and cruelty. I would have enjoyed the spite and the power, and I would have enjoyed the suffering. It frightens me how much I am really like my mother, no matter how much I try to avoid being so.

After a few days, I summon the courage and make my way to his room. I open the door and stand there, stunned when he jumps up, smiling like he’s excited to see me.

I pull away, startled by his unexpected happiness. I’ve grown used to his pouting; the desperate reverence throws me off.

“We need to talk, Sascha.”

I lose my nerve, turning away and walking down the hall to my office. After a few steps, I realize he’s not following, and I wonder if he thinks I’m testing him or something. He’s smart, but sometimes he has no common sense. I would never waste that much time, except that I did last time I punished him. Sometimes, I have no common sense.

“Don’t take all goddamn day,” I call over my shoulder, pleased when I hear footsteps behind me.

I go to my office and sit at my desk, leaving Sascha to stand awkwardly in front of me. I feel safe here, in control, and it helps to clear my mind. I think of the first time I brought him in here, how I ordered him to kneel and proceeded to grill him about his life. He was just as terrified of me then as he is now, but for different reasons. He doesn’t need to be, now. He moves to go to his knees.

“Don’t you get
enough
rest now?” I snap, irritated that he’s acting like this. It’s easier to snap than to tell him how I feel.

He stands again, thrown off, and puts his hands behind his back, like it hides his fidgeting.

I can’t say anything for a few minutes. I’m still furious at him for snooping, but I’m grateful for his help. More than anything, I’m curious about him. I can’t figure him out, and it bothers me.

“Just what were you hoping to find out about me?” I demand.

“I don’t know, master.” He cringes as he says it, and I can see him growing more afraid the angrier I get

“You don’t know.” I repeat his words back, unbelieving. “And you didn’t know why you helped me, either? Or are you just not telling me?”

“I don’t know, master,” he says again, looking miserable.

We’re silent for a moment he looks like he’s waiting for me to hit him, or at least yell at him.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask.

He stands there, looking trapped. “The search results didn’t tell me anything, master.”

“From what I can see on the history of your tablet, that is perfectly correct. Do you remember why I said I never wanted a slave, Sascha?”

“Yes, master,” He says, looking away. “I believe you said they were pesky and underfoot.”

Sascha has proven to be exactly that, but he is so much more. If he didn’t look so terrified, it would be comical. “You’re that, but you’re helpful, too,” I concede. “I really appreciate what you did for me the other day, with my mother. You know, I’ve never outsmarted her, before. I thought I was hiding so well, but she caught it. You fixed it before I even knew it was a problem.”

“Yes, master,” he responds.

I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure him out.

“Did you want me to show you where the data is hidden on my tablet?” he offers, as if he’s reading my mind. I want to tell him no, to tell him that I’ve already figured it out and don’t need a slave to help me do it, but I’ve spent days, and I’ve gotten nowhere but the decoy information.

“Yes, please.”

With a satisfied smile on his face, Sascha comes over and shows me his amazingly elegant disguise. In just seconds, the entire dataset is available. I haven’t lost anything. He’s saved more than my reputation.

“Did you read it?” I ask, curious as to how much he knows. The second the question leaves my lips, I realize he won’t answer. My mother’s training system used tricks like that all the time, setting a slave up for perceived success, then tricking them into admitting that they had lied, or cheated, or stolen. They were shown over and over again that there was no way to win, and I don’t want Sascha to fail again. “Never mind. That sounds like a setup for punishment. Forget I asked.”

“I didn’t, sir,” Sascha replies, glancing up at me. I study his eyes, for once seeing nothing but honesty there. “I knew you didn’t want me looking, you had told me not to pry into it before. You’re good to me. I don’t want to mess that up.”

His words are so bold, so painfully true and stark that I have to believe him. He is so much more trustworthy than I am. I was going to sell him out and place the blame on him. He has to know that’s why I put the data on his tablet. As much as I tried to justify it to myself that we would both be safer, it was a lie. I was hiding behind him, cowardly, and still he stepped up to take my place without question. As much as I’ve tried to avoid feeling anything but annoyance toward Sascha, I can’t help it now. I am not only grateful, I am in awe of my slave, and ashamed of my own behavior.

I’ve never seen my master look as scared as he did when his mother was here, and I’ve never seen him at such a loss for words as he is now.

“Is everything all right, master?”

“It’s fine.”

I can tell that he’s lying. Something happened when his mother came here, something far more important than a visit from an estranged mother. “This isn’t just a family conflict, sir, it’s obvious. There’s something else going on, something with the research you’re doing.”

“Good, you figured it out,” my master replies, looking away from me. “Now you can stop asking questions and sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

His tone tells me to shut the hell up, and common sense does too, but I ignore both those things. “What did I hide for you, master?”

“Leave it, Sascha!” He warns, glaring at me. “You know nothing about it!”

Nothing about it? I’ve worked on this project with him for months. I lacked the details, but it didn’t stop me from putting hours of labor into it, and it didn’t stop me from outsmarting his mother. When she was here, I watched him act more strangely than I’ve ever seen him act before, and as a slave, my well-being is directly linked to his. “Nothing, master? Is that because you never tell me anything, or because I’m just a stupid slave?”

If he wasn’t sitting at his desk, I’d be wincing, because I deserve to be slapped for a comment like that. He doesn’t move, though.

“You are most certainly not stupid,” he says, rolling his eyes. The dismissal hurts more than the slap would have. “And I don’t think I treat you that badly for a defiant slave who has no respect for limits. Do I?”

I think back to the first few weeks that I was here, the harsh orders, the threats, the way they continued. And I think about the free rein I have around the house, the tablet that I used to have before I pried into my master’s life, the meaningful work he’s given me, and the care he’s taken to make sure I’m healthy and at least somewhat content. And then I think again about his orders, or the way he ignores me, or the punishments he’s subjected me to, no matter how deserved they were.

“You beat me, master,” I mumble, unable to put any other thoughts into words.

“Yes, because you can’t keep a civil tongue in your mouth,” he replies, calm. “What was I supposed to do? Give you the day off without pay? I hate to repeat myself, but you know nothing about what’s going on here. I’ve done my best to give you what I can, but there are boundaries, especially when other people are involved.”

I think about all the times I’ve been sullen and defiant, all the times that I’m sure any other master would have hurt me or sold me. The only times he’s done anything of the sort has been when I’ve taken my childish actions public. His image is the only thing he spends more time protecting than he does me.

He stands up, grabbing my tablet off of his desk as he does. He walks over and shoves it at me as I stand there gaping at him.

“What is this?” I ask, old training making me wonder if he really wants me to read it.

“The data that you hid from my mother,” my master replies. “It’s my current research project.”

I go silent, reading through the information that I had only scanned when I found it, afraid of punishment, afraid of finding out more than I should have known. It’s only the raw data, though, that, and a collection of names and addresses. I know there’s more to it; for all this tells me, my master could be completing a research project for the State Department of Demoted People. What’s more; I know from hiding the file that there is far more information than what I’m looking at right now.

“Happy?” he asks, still not looking at me. I realize it’s how he handles lying to me, or hiding things. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed or if he just doesn’t want to give anything away.