Starbleached Read Online Free PDF

some kind of
information to the monster in its native tongue. A power-pack heart beat as
they passed by.
    I’m in the guts of a living thing, she thought, and
would have gagged if there were anything in her stomach to bring up.
    It reached one large room and gently set her in the center.
Wires, tubes, bladders and veins wound through the walls and tables, went deep
into the floor. Computers of incomprehensible design beeped softly to themselves.
It must be some kind of lab.
    Something clicked behind her head. When she turned the
Overseer had the enzyme case open, vial in one hand, applicator in the other.
The needle on the applicator gleamed.
    Adry’s nerve broke. Hands still bound, she raced for the
door. Only it was so dim, so dark, she didn’t see the low bench until she
tripped over it and went flying. Her teeth rattled as her chin bounced off
black exoskeleton flooring. A two-thumbed hand gripped the back of her neck.
Nematocysts prickled tooth-like against skin, and she screamed. The first sound
she’d made in hours tore through the darkness, and the applicator needle
punctured her skin like a pin through a balloon. Chemical burn, the Enzyme was
now in her blood stream. She gritted her teeth and waited for the pain of
entry, for her life to be drained away.
    The monster let her fall sobbing against the bench. It was
cool, the surface relatively dry against her forehead. She was quiet a long
while, just breathing.
    “I have no intention of harming you. I did not believe you
would be comfortable in my presence without any protection.”
    Blood ran from the injection site, cramps crawled through
the muscles in her back. It knelt, bringing its head nearer to hers, black mask
to bare face. Without visible eyes, it was expressionless, like a breathing
corpse. Its lips parted, the faint glow of its tongue ghastly in the darkness.
If she shot it, would it bleed? Or would it be as hollow as it looked,
collapsing into a puff of air and dust before the gunshot faded? She ached to
test this hypothesis. The look on its cold face was hungry, as if it desired
the same for her.
    She would not be the first to speak next.
    She couldn’t afford to be.
     
    *****
     
    Then:
    “It’s called Stockholm syndrome.” Holton’s main psychiatrist
turned away from her holo screen. Paige Jordan didn’t get to talk to people
often. She was too busy analyzing psych profiles. Her office was a gentle
haven, one wall open to the winds blowing through the green concourse. Adry’s
own reflection looked back from one chrome wall. Fabrics here were cream and
beige, a mental safe zone. Square in the middle of all this engineered
refinement was a velvet painting of Monde Castor, the larger-than-life
performer from New Vegas, mirrored with a similar painting of Elvis. It was all
wonderfully tacky. Paige crossed her legs and continued with her lecture. “It
was identified in the nineteen hundreds during a bank robbery. Something they
thought the credit system would end, you know?”
    Adry smirked. Yesterday four people had hacked the biggest
bank system in New York and triggered a massive cred transfer. All transfers
for the day had to be canceled, millions were lost, and the scummy little
bastards still got away with it. “You were explaining about the slave process,
and what happened to Major Abrams?” she reminded.
    “Yes. The first step in breaking an individual is a major
shock to the psyche. A kidnapping, a hostage taking, something you can’t escape
from quickly. The second step is time. The longer you’re with your captors, the
more likely you are to identify with them. You come to view any kindness on
their part as a personal gift of life.
    “When someone is drained to the second stage, they’ve lost
everything. Identity, memory, sense of self. And the first thing they find when
they open their eyes is usually the Overseer that drained them, tending their
wounds and caring for them.”
    Adry blinked. “You’re kidding.”
    “The