Her face contracted, mouth trembling. But she couldn’t say a word.
“Listen carefully, Sierra,” he said. “We’re going to eat our meal. You will continue as if nothing had happened. Bring us refills on coffee. Bring us our check. After we leave the restaurant, follow us to the parking lot in back of the fabric warehouse at the end of the mall. I want you out there in ten minutes. No longer.”
Her eyelids fluttered. She made a short, choked sound.
“Go,” he snarled. “Go do as I told you.”
She lurched across the room, knocking over a chair in the process.
The distilled loathing in the eyes of the other slave soldiers had intensified, if that was even possible. The puddle of ice water kept dripping steadily onto Ty’s lap. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Eat your fucking food,” he snarled.
They picked up their forks. He wondered if he’d have to tell them when to piss.
Sierra came back to refill their coffee. She was sweaty, hands trembling, but still functioning. She offered no more chitchat.
Mark paid the check that Sierra had left. The other slave soldiers clumped along behind him, not even pretending to behave normally. Still defying him.
They walked in absolute silence to the remote, empty parking lot at the end of the strip mall where he’d left the truck. When they arrived, he got out the freq wand and turned the pain setting to the highest level.
“This is what happens when you show me attitude,” he said.
He punished them all, one after the other. Their shrieking and writhing felt good. He prolonged the session for the last one, Raquel. He particularly enjoyed the way all that violent arching and twisting made her tits bounce.
“Mommy? What’s that guy doing to that lady?”
Mark spun around, startled. He’d been so involved in Raquel’s punishment, he hadn’t even heard them approach. A young, pimply woman with messy pink hair and an old army coat was gaping at them. She held the hand of a little boy in a gray down jacket. Her hand was covered with tattoos. The kid was maybe four years old.
More footsteps, but a glance behind him showed that it was only Sierra, following his orders. She hadn’t changed her clothes or put on her winter coat. She was still in her waitress uniform, displaying an attractive nipple hard-on in the frigid wind.
Which meant he would have to dress her himself. Fucking great. Details. Multiply them by twelve hundred, and his head was going to explode.
“Mommy? Is that a mean guy?” the kid quavered.
The pink-haired girl edged away. “Let’s just go, baby.” Her voice was high and thin.
The girl took off running, dragging the kid behind her. In a moment, she picked him up and continued onward through the empty parking lot in a heavy, awkward lope.
Mark turned to Sierra. He couldn’t have devised a more perfect maiden voyage for her if he’d planned it to the last detail. “Kill them,” he ordered.
Sierra’s eyes were bleak as she looked at the pink-haired girl with the kid on her hip, who lurched onward, casting panicked looks back over her shoulder. She was calling for help, screeching like a bird, but there was no one in earshot to hear her.
Mark pointed the freq wand at her. “I said to kill them, you dumb bitch.”
Sierra gasped at the pain. She let out a sharp, desperate sound and took off.
The pink-haired girl had gotten a good lead by now, but Sierra ran faster than any professional sprinter. She soon overtook the girl’s clumsy trot.
But just before she made contact, she veered off to the left. She ran incredibly fast, her feet in the white waitressing kicks a blur of movement. Right past the pink haired girl . . . and onward . . . and then she curved back around the way she came.
She couldn’t run away. She was resisting her programming to the absolute limit, but it was dragging her back to him in a big parabolic loop.
But she’d let the pink-haired girl and her kid go free. They were now scrambling into a battered pickup which peeled away, tires shrieking. Off to tell her crazy story to whatever meth-head pal of hers would listen, the trashy slut. His secrets were safe. But still.
He’d been disobeyed.
Sierra was almost back, but her pace was faltering. She staggered, stumbled.
About thirty feet away, she fell to her knees. She tried to get up. Fell again.
She began to crawl toward him.
Mark walked out to meet her. She was bleeding from her nose and ears. The auto-destruct was punishing her. Cheating him of the pleasure. She gasped for each gurgling breath. Blood flecked her lips. Her lungs were probably full of blood by now.
He turned to Raquel. “Bring one of those big sheets of plastic from the truck,” he ordered her. “And duct tape. She’s leaking. I don’t want a mess out here.”
Raquel did as he asked, and stood there, looking down at Sierra. Tears streamed down Raquel’s face.