A/N: Chap 4 review responses are in my forums as always. And now, brace yourself. And feel free to review my Chapter 2 warnings.
Chapter Five: Westward Ho
Red sun. Blue leaves shimmer in the wind. "Are you ready, my sister?"
Taylor's eyes snapped open. Her entire body hurt, but not with the sharp, agonizing immediacy that dragged her down into unconsciousness before. Instead, the pain felt like a dull, constant throb from all over. Stifling a moan, she reached up and wiped at her face. Her fingers broke the crystalized gunk of sleep from her eyes, but also broke the dried blood that covered the lower half of her chin. Underneath the blood, she felt just the barest hint of a scar.
When she fell unconscious, her chin was split wide open from Mouse Protector's shield.
She sat up from the stinky bed that occupied the majority of the sleeper cab. Outside was dark, but at this time of year it could have been anywhere from dinner time to midnight. Moving enough that the dull orange glow of a nearby streetlamp illuminated it, Taylor looked at her thigh.
The shirt she'd wrapped it in looked black with old, crusted blood. She winced as she undid it, but then stared in wonder at the thick cut underneath it. A hard scab had formed along the six-inch cut, thick enough as to be hard to the touch. It didn't look like a fresh cut, but something that had been healing for days.
She stood and winced, but even standing the pain was bearable. Stood up, she caught sight of her face in the mirror that the driver had installed over the cab. Pure-black eyes stared back from a face straight out of a horror movie. Her long, black curls hung lank and filthy about her shoulders, matted with blood. Her cheeks looked deathly pale next to the black, broken mass of dried blood on her chin and neck. She looked like a fucking vampire.
Though she wasn't interested in sucking anyone's blood, she was so hungry her stomach hurt.
A quick search through the truck's cab found several filthy-looking baseball caps and a cheap, plastic pair of sunglasses. The little mini fridge in the cab contained three beers and a water bottle. She found a roll of paper towels on top. She drank half the water with desperate need, but then used the rest to wet paper towels to clean her face, neck, and the skin around her leg.
Opening the door felt like climbing into a freezer. The cold air bit right through her hoody and sweats, causing her scar to ache where it was exposed through the bloody rent in her pants. She kept going anyway—as cold as it was, North Dakota felt worse.
She found herself in a huge parking lot framed by a berm of plowed snow. She could see streetlights illuminating trees all around, and she wondered where she could be that would have forests and, if she could make out the faint silhouettes behind the truck stop, mountains.
The scent of fried chicken made her stomach cramp painfully. She looked a mess, and had a sword hung through the straps of her back pack. Her stolen Air Force coat did a good job of hiding a lot of that, she knew, but it wouldn't work inside. She needed new clothes. She needed…
For a moment, the longing to be with her mom and dad stifled her breath and left her with tears in her eyes, bent over. When she was able to think, she clasped at the Force as it ran ever present through the back of her mind, and let its warmth fill not just her body, but her mind. The agonizing grief remained—she could still feel it hovering over every thought—but now it felt distant enough that she could embrace the loss without it dragging her down into despair.
With that, she started limping toward the truck stop.
Using her new senses to sweep the area, Taylor confirmed she was alone and tossed Mouse Protector's sword onto the roof of the place where she could easily retrieve it. She then took a deep breath to center herself and stepped into the store.
With her filthy hair hidden within an equally filthy ballcap, and her pure-black eyes hidden behind sunglasses, she looked odd but not striking. As eyes from all around the store latched onto her, the mental noise she received was mostly the impression she was a runaway.
Wonder how much for a quickie 'round back.
Or a prostitute.
Only the smell of food dragged her further into the store. A quick search through the store found travel-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner, soap, a tooth brush and paste, a brush for her hair, and…scissors. She stood eying the scissors for a long time, before she picked those up as well as bandages and wrapping for her leg.
The old, heavy-set woman at the check-out eyed Taylor with disdain. Her hair reeked of cigarette smoke and Taylor could see the contempt in the woman's eyes. In her eyes Taylor was nothing more than a tall, skinny girl trying to hide in a coat and sunglasses and while looking for another trick to turn.
"I need a shower," Taylor said.
"Go buy some diesel, then," the woman said.
"You want to let me take a shower."
The woman stared blankly before handing over a slip of paper with the security number to get into the shower. "I want to let you take a shower."
"You also want to quit smoking. It's bad for you and makes you smell bad."
"I also want to quit smoking. I smell bad."
With a nod, Taylor took the slip and wandered to the back of the large complex, going through slightly run-down hallways until she reached the women's showers. She tried not to notice several men in the seating area of the restaurant with similar slips of paper, waiting for a men's shower to open up.
There didn't seem to be that many female truckdrivers. Which meant fewer women's showers and no wait. Her slip let her into a cramped but workable single-person bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a shower stall. She was relieved to see a mat, towel and washcloth, mainly because she'd complete forgotten them. More importantly, due to the beginning of the cramp in her abdomen, she was relieved to see a pad dispenser.
For all her fears about a dingy, moldy mess, the shower was in fact cleaner than what she used back in Brockton Bay, with better water pressure and more hot water. She took her time, washing the blood not just off her leg, but also her neck from where she split her chin (now healed), and several other spots where she must have bled during her two fights but not realized it over the primary pain in her leg.
The water ran in a constant stream of red down the drain.
Out of the shower and dried, she wrapped her thigh in the bandage and pulled on the spare jeans she stole from the Schaefer's. Bare chested in the warm, humid shower, she stared at her face and hair in the mirror. Her hair hung down limply against her sickly pale skin. As skinny and underdeveloped as she was, with her too-large mouth and gawky big eyes, her long black locks were the one thing she felt about herself that was beautiful. She remembered her mother's hair was the same—long, flowing with a large, natural curls that became kinks when wet or if the air was too moist.
It was one of her most distinctive features. Well, besides her freakish, inhuman black eyes. She couldn't do anything about her eyes, but…
The first length of hair came off with terrible ease, leaving a gap on one side. She kept cutting, and with each snip it became somehow easier, as if each strand of hair had been a weight holding her back. By the time she finished, her hair was not even shoulder-length. It looked terrible, but it also changed her entire appearance.
She ran a hand along the length of her neck. With her hair cut shorter, her neck appeared longer than she remembered.
She finished dressing and left the shower with her bag over one shoulder, looking for food. Her sunglasses attracted a few odd looks, but her power calmed any who would have otherwise questioned it. She settled into the fast food section of the place and ordered a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, with a large soda and an extra side of macaroni and cheese.
After the food was gone, she settled back on the molded plastic bench and considered her options. During her perusal of the store, she'd discovered she was in a town called North Bend which was just a few miles east of Seattle.
All Taylor knew about Seattle was what she learned in World Affairs. She knew Leviathan struck the city in 2003, eight years before. She thought of it because she needed a place to disappear to. According to a documentary she watched online, cities recovering from Endbringers, even eight years ago, were perfect places to get lost in. She just had to find a way to get there that didn't involve killing or fucking anyone. As desperate as she was, Taylor wasn't that desperate.
She doubted she ever would be.
Dressed in her spare clothes that she'd stolen from the Schaefer's with her shorter hair hidden by a ball cap and her eyes behind sunglasses, Taylor left the store to fetch her sword and perhaps find a place to stay for the night.
She was intensely aware of the burly, bearded man who walked out almost on her heals. She couldn't fetch her sword with him so close, and she couldn't just knock him out without letting the Protectorate know right where she was.
Then he spoke to her.
"Hey, sweetie, you lost? Looking for some place to go?"
He had a slight accent that she couldn't quite place. She could feel him staring intently at her, and as she turned she sensed his intent as he appraised her body like a piece of meat.
Her first thought was to do what she'd always been taught in school—in a world with the Slaughter House Nine and capes that could master you at a glance, stranger danger was a real thing.
But after a moment she remembered that she was the danger. She was a cape, and a powerful one at that. She could master him if she had to. So, instead of running away or going back inside in the hopes of losing him, she turned and met his gaze. She even forced a smile.
"Looking for a ride to Seattle," she said.
"Really?" Again the odd accent. She couldn't quite place it. "Heading that way myself. I might be able to give you a ride."
"Out of the goodness of your heart?"
The man grinned, revealing stained teeth. "Well, we might make it a business transaction. I bet if we put our heads together, we might be able to think of something you had to trade. Either an item or a service."
As they spoke, Taylor skimmed the surface of his mind and fought back a wave of revulsion. He'd stripped her in his thoughts. Moreover, his imagination was frighteningly accurate, like a judge in a dog show who just had so much experience he could see at a glance what she might look like under her clothes.
Not much tits, but good legs. Chinks love 'em pale and skinny. Glad I made the call.
Taylor didn't understand what he meant by that last. But his intent was clear, and she realized that somehow, he meant her harm. With that moral threshold met in her mind, she raised a hand to deal with him.
Before she could speak, she felt a jarring rupture in the Force. She turned, confused and disoriented from the rupture in the Force, but caught only the faintest hint of orange light before something slammed into her like a brick, pushing her into darkness accompanied by the ringing of her skull.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
The sound of angry Spanish woke Taylor.
She didn't jump up or open her eyes, though. She remembered almost immediately upon waking the man with the odd accent who followed her out of the truck stop, and the flash or orange light. It wasn't an accident, he'd targeted her for some reason. Wherever she was, she was a captive.
So instead of jumping to her feet and lashing out blindly, Taylor squeezed her eyes shut and just breathed.
Sea salt. The scent was as unmistakable to a Brockton Bay girl as coffee milk or Johnny cakes. The slight taint of rot and salt in the air told her they were near or even on the ocean. The smell of old oil made her think industrial. Only then, with the smell as a guide, did she feel the faintest motion on the steel shelf under her. They were on a boat.
The steel was cold, and she was naked.
Her cheeks burned and a deep pool of rage and shame ignited in her stomach. Someone had stripped her; had seen her and touched her naked body with ill intent. Had they done more? She was on her period, but would something like that stop whoever captured her? She didn't feel any different. What was it supposed to feel like after something like that?
Panic began to mount, overwhelming the shame and anger. Finally, though, she forced her ranging thoughts to calm. She didn't have any real discomfort from her privates, so realized the odds that she'd already been violated were low. More importantly, panicking about it would do absolutely nothing.
Stop acting like stupid old Taylor, damn it! You're a cape now. You have power. Use it.
Taylor chose not to consider the fact that the voice in her head now sounded like Emma. Regardless, she reached out with her senses, just like she did on Dragon's plane. The most immediate presence she could feel was another girl her own age, throbbing with pain, anger and shame even more intense than Taylor's. She was the one cursing in Spanish even as she wiped away her own tears.
Beyond the girl, though, Taylor could sense others. Like flashes of color on the back of her closed eyelids, her mind detected other youths nearby. They appeared to be held in separate metal cells, but there were a lot of them. Dozens, approaching if not more than a hundred. Some were her age, but most were younger. Nor were all of them girls, though most were.
Several of those closer to her age hurt just like the girl in her cage.
Taylor sat up. Just that movement brought her skin into contact with cold steel and set her to shivering.
"Hello?" She could hear the chatter of her own teeth with just that one word.
The Spanish cursing stopped. Taylor could hear a rustling—skin against steel. The presence got closer, until she felt bare, clammy skin against her own. More importantly, a rough but warm blanket found its way over her shoulders.
"They only give us one blanket," the girl said.
Her English was so accented Taylor had to depend as much on her thoughts as her words to derive meaning. What meaning she gleaned was pain, anguish, overwhelming sadness, and yet an urge to help those around her.
"Thank you," Taylor said as she accepted the small kindness. "What's your name?"
"Maria."
"I'm Taylor."
They said nothing for a moment. Under her blanket, Maria felt warm against Taylor as the two huddled against the cold steel.
"Maria, do you know who they are?"
"Fuckin' Russians," Maria snarled. Her rage felt like fire in Taylor's mind, uncontrollable and white-hot. She started cursing again in Spanish, but in her mind the words were meaningless. Just sounds to vent her rage and shame.
Taylor placed her arm around the girl's shoulders and simply held her as she cursed. If Maria cried, she did so while describing their captor's small dicks and the many diseases they got from their whore mothers and donkey fathers.
When the worst of the cursing storm abated again, Taylor risked another question. "Where are we?"
"Still in Seattle, I think," Maria said. She sniffed a little, but then cursed again. "Nabbed me when I was pickin' some shit up. That pendejo Jorge fucking stood there and let 'em take me. Joto."
The darkness of the room shattered with the sound of rusted steel grinding against steel. Taylor blinked back against the light and saw a silhouette that looked kitted out in military-style fatigues pants and a heavy vest holding a slim, petite figure by the arm.
"Ah, good," the man said in horrible English. "This one all done. You come, no fight, we fuck you easy. This girl no fight, we fuck her easy. No hurts. You fight, and we hurt you. Give you to Tunguska. He likes 'em to bleed."
He shoved the naked newcomer into the room, then made a point of removing a heavy black baton. "You come easy, or you come hard, little cýka?"
For two long heartbeats, Taylor sat and stared at the silhouette of this man who told her he was about to rape her. Intellect and emotion could not unify sufficiently for her to truly understand what was happening. Intellectually she knew that, somehow, she'd been caught by human traffickers. Emotionally, though, it just seemed impossible.
When he took a threatening step in, the newcomer whimpered and scampered away, pressing herself flat against the steel wall to Taylor's left. It was that sound that broke her shock.
Slowly, Taylor stood, conscious of the cold steel grating that bit into the soles of her feet and the cold that made the hair on her arms and neck stand on end. She motioned for the tiny girl to come forward. The girl did so without a word, and let Taylor guide her under the blanket she just vacated. Only then did she turn to face the soldier.
For the first time since she was a baby and her dad changed her diaper, a man saw her naked. She knew the light from the hall outside illuminated her body, but also knew just from the fact she couldn't see the lights themselves that her face remained in shadow. Which meant he couldn't see her eyes.
He didn't know she was a cape.
"You want me to come get you, little cýka? If I come get you, I'm shoving this up your pi'zda so hard you'll taste it, then I give you to Tunguska. He fuck your ass. His hooy big, split your ass open til you bleed. That what you want, little cýka?"
"Yes," she whispered.
She didn't know if it was the cold, the terror or the anticipation which made her shiver, but she knew that he could see it. That she had just enough breasts for him to see them move as she shivered, and it turned the fucker on.
"Da!" He took the two steps down into the room until she could just see the hint of his eyes and raised his baton to hit her.
She grabbed his neck in her power and slammed him against the wall right where the other girl had flattened herself seconds before. She felt rage burning in the pit of her stomach as the Russian's eyes bulged in shock and a lack of air.
A distant voice called from down the hall. "Piter, ty v poryadke?"
Taylor bored Piter's mind like a hammer, blasting away any resistance in a second. At her silent command, he answered. "Da, prosto igrat' so shlyukhoy!"
The comment was met with distant laughter but nothing else. When Taylor was sure no men were coming, she took a step closer to Piter.
"How many men are on this ship?" Taylor demanded.
"Eighty-five," Piter answered in a monotone.
"Are they soldiers?"
"Da. Chinese Union Imperialtrades American girls for guns and money. Big money."
That explained the man who stalked her at the gas station, Taylor realized. She could actually see it in Piter's mind. They sent recruiters out throughout the surrounding area looking for runaways or prostitutes, or traded with the local gangs, until they had enough girls to finance their trip back to the warring Russian states.
Piter's mind opened to her. She watched in his memories as he made love to his girlfriend, Annika. Their bodies moved in a sensual dance Taylor had often imagined but never visualized so thoroughly. Annika gave him a necklace and a searing kiss before he boarded the boat to go abduct little girls from America to sell as sex slaves to the Chinese Union Imperial. The Chinese slavers liked American girls.
He kissed his mother good bye. She said a prayer for him and told him not to fuck too many of the American whores or he might get a pox.
He hugged his brother and promised a whore for him when he was old enough. American girls liked big Russkiye dicks.
He looked down at their last capture as he stood in the door, the skinny girl with the bad haircut and the small tits. He didn't mind that they were small, not with her long legs. The scar looked bad on her thigh, but the rest of her looked svelte and sweet. She was beautiful in her own way. Surely Tunguska wouldn't mind one fuck? How would he even know?
Taylor broke the contact and stared down at the two speechless girls, huddled together under the blanket. With her face toward the light, Taylor saw that the newcomer was Japanese, probably not any older than Tayler herself.
"What's your name?"
"Yuki." The girl's voice emerged somewhere between a whisper and a breath.
"Yuki, did this man hurt you?"
"Not as…not as bad as Tunguska hurt Maria yesterday."
Maria began cursing in rapid-fire Spanish. Taylor, though, concentrated on what the tiny girl said. This morning. How long had they been here?
Taylor looked back to the soldier with his dull eyes. He was fully prepared to rape her right there in the cell, in front of the two other girls, then drag her out to the other men to share. It had been right in the forefront of his thoughts, watching how her breasts moved while she shivered.
He didn't think anything of it, as if somehow he was entitled to hurt her and do to her whatever he wanted, because she was a slave in his mind. Property. His girlfriend thought nothing of it. His own mother thought nothing of it. They were American whores. They deserved whatever happened. They were all nothing.
Nothing.
The sound of his neck snapping filled the room. Taylor watched with a numb feeling as he slid down to the floor in a boneless heap. Yuki made a faint squeal which she covered up with both hands.
Maria crossed herself with a whispered, "Holy fuck."
Taylor ignored them both for a moment to kneel down next to the body. With the hall illuminating his face, she was astonished at how young and even handsome Piter looked. He wore short-cropped blonde hair with a strong face. High cheekbones gave him an athletic look, relaxed now in death.
She grabbed the second baton he wore on his belt. With both weapons clutched in her hand, she then pulled the massive pistol from his belt. She had no idea how to use it, but she took it and shoved it toward the girls.
Yuki stared at it as if it might bite her, but Maria reached out without hesitation.
"You're a cape," Maria said.
"Yes."
"Are you a hero? Will you get us out of here?"
Yuki leaned forward, her hands clasped together in prayer between breasts that made Taylor look developed. Taylor met the girl's eyes, and there was just enough light in the room for Yuki to realize how black they were.
"I'm no hero. But I'll get you out of here."
Taylor closed her eyes and cast out her senses until she found the man who had called out to Piter. He sensed him in a room at the far end of the hallway watching television while rifling through the captured belongings of all their slaves.
Opening her eyes, he could see how terrified the two girls were. Not just of the soldiers around them, but Taylor herself. She told them she wasn't a hero.
"Let the other kids out, but keep them down here," she told the two urgently as she swallowed bile. She sounded hoarse and grim in her own ears, as if it were someone else speaking entirely. "There's at least a eighty-five soldiers on the boat and a few capes. If you guys run out there before I say, you'll all get shot. Do you understand?"
Both the other girls nodded as Taylor crept out of the cell, self-conscious in her nudity.
The plank that ran the length of the hall between the cells cut cruelly into her feet as she walked. The low ceiling made sure she couldn't just levitate, though. The cell doors were all angled out front the central passage, one after the other, fifteen on each side. It made for a very long walk toward a heavily armed man at the end of the room. She could hear him laugh at something on television. It sounded like a cartoon.
Her body was shaking now, despite her efforts to calm and warm herself with the Force. She knew, as surely as the sun would rise and that her father was dead, that she was about to kill a man in cold blood. Another man in cold blood.
I really am a murderer, she thought to herself as she finally came even with the guardroom door. Inside the room she found the man she sensed calmly and methodically going through all the clothes, backpacks and purses of all the kids they had captured.
He looked to be a heavy-set, older man with close-cropped white hair that stood on end, and a vicious scar on the left cheek which was closest to her.
"Eto ty, Piter?" He spoke over his shoulder.
He stood up to his significant height when he didn't get an answer and turned to see Taylor's staring at him. She felt her cheeks burn as his eyes completely ignored her face, travelling up from her hips to her inconsiderable chest and only then to her face, where he saw a pair of pure black eyes staring back at him with such rage, the air around her head shimmered with the Force of it.
Only then, facing her anger and her power, did he realize the danger. In that second, however, he reacted with the honed instincts of a professional killer, ripping a pistol from his holster. He stopped when Taylor reached out a hand, grasped his neck in her power, and snapped his spinal cord from within.
Like Piter, this soldier dropped to the decking without a sound. She thought about saying something pithy, like those 80s muscle-bound action heroes her dad loved so much used to, but she didn't see the point. He was dead, and there was no audience watching.
Which, considering she was naked, she really appreciated.
Taylor moved forward when she saw her backpack, stacked with dozens of others. A brief search found her clothes and she got dressed quickly. Though Jeff Schaefer's boots weren't a good fit, the relief of having socks and boots was enough to make them a godsend. As she was walking out she saw stacks of cash on the table, next to watches, smart phones and jewelry.
The phones were all probably locked, but she took the cash and put it in her backpack without hesitation. She was going to need it. She hefted her two stolen batons while strapping her back pack as tight over her shoulders as she could while still being able to move.
The soldier she killed had an assault rifle propped up against his desk, and wore two large pistols on his belt. There were other weapons around the room which she considered. She pulled both his pistols, and after a brief search some extra clips.
She stepped back out of the room to see Maria and Yuki outside the cell, keys in hand. Both were squatting near the entrance to their cell. The moment they saw Taylor, they started to dart back into relative safety, only to pause when they realized it was her.
More importantly, they saw she was now dressed in sweats and a hoody, with her backpack. Wordlessly, Taylor pointed to the room behind her, before motioning for all the other cells. Yuki covered herself with her arms and shivered, but Maria stood up straight, hoisted the pistol that her hand could barely hold, and nodded firmly.
With her intent understood, Taylor draped herself once more in the Force, projecting out the idea that she was unimportant and unnoticeable. Only then did she start up the steep metal stairs to a higher deck. Then a higher one after that. She let herself be guided by her goal and the Force, knowing without a doubt that the slightest mistake would lead not just to her death, but the deaths of the hundred kids behind her.
A/N: There are some things that I will never depict in my writing. However, in my mind not only was this situation inevitable, but almost unavoidable. Even today, sex traffickers specifically target girls in Taylor's circumstances. The difference between the horrors of this world and Wildbows is that they didn't capture a slave, they captured a fucking Rancor about to go on a rampage.
And for the record, I'm using canon characters from a RPG thingy that Wildbow created. I'm not as familiar with it, so all canon characters in the Seattle area may be AU or OOC from this point out.