Human Commodity (14 page)

Damon clenched his jaw.
 
“If it wasn’t for the drugs…”

“She’d still be IQ80, but she does seem to remember a lot.
 
She might be autistic, or something.
 
I’ve heard they get distracted, but that they can have an uncanny ability for numbers or remembering certain things.”
 
Phillip smiled down at her.
 
“And she does seem to like Mason, despite Vanessa’s influence.”
 
Daria smiled and nodded.
 
“No, I’m not mad… and no, you can’t have another Master.
 
You’ll just have to work harder for this handsome one.”

“Okay, Phillip.”
 
Daria turned to Damon.
 
“The virus takes almost a day before the bastard feels it, but his evil spear can shoot it into all of the slaves he spears.
 
Pretty cool, huh?
 
I think Doc Hancock’s even smarter than your Doctor.”

“Fuck, I hope not,” Phillip muttered.

“I’m going to two to tell Eddie what she said.
 
Maybe I can calm Terry down a little,” Damon replied.

Daria looked at Phillip, and she remembered he told her to be nice to Damon.
 
“Bye, Master.”
 
Damon was almost out the door when she added.
 
“If this Terry bastard is a friend of yours, tell the Doctor to give him a shot of penicillin.
 
He’ll only need one, but it has to be in his ammunition supply.”

Damon stopped in his tracks.
 
“What?”

“The sack thingies.
 
Doc said she had to put in a safety measure so that all of the bastards didn’t screw themselves into extinction.”
 
Daria looked confused.
 
“I don’t really know what she meant by
that
.”

Eddie and Damon returned about twenty minutes later.
 
Phillip said, “She drifted off about five minutes after Damon left.
 
It’s weird, but somehow these girls have almost an admiration for Mason.
 
She’s sincere too, I’m sure of it.
 
Despite the isolation with those crazy bitches… or maybe because of it.”

“Cut the pills in half,” Eddie told the Damon.
 
He turned to Phillip.
 
“The virus is beyond the cervix, but it’s noticeable if you’re looking for it.
 
I gave her penicillin in her ass to see if it kills it.
 
If it works, I’m ordering it as part of introduction in all of the compounds.
 
These bitches might try to filter POHO in overseas.
 
Terry’s pissed, but the girl is pleading for him not to be mad at her.
 
There’s something about them… hell, I don’t know.
 
Anyway, Terry’s taking her back and Rodrigo doesn’t want the RB to go to the facility, either.
 
They say they can work around the weirdness, now that they know what’s going on.“

Eddie lifted Daria’s lids and checked her eyes.
 
“It was brilliant to use penicillin as an antidote.
 
That hasn’t been used for decades, but I keep some around for people allergic or immune to other things.
 
I’ll make sure we boost our stockpile up.”
 
He slid the injection into her bottom.

“Eddie… this ups the ante with them,” Phillip said.

“No, shit.
 
We have to get Nance.
 
I’m figuring she has different strains of this thing, in case we stumbled across the antidote.
 
If it was me, that’s what I would have done,” Eddie replied.

Damon looked down at the girl.
 
“You sure she’s clean?”

“Positive, Damon.
 
I gave her the antibiotic more to make
you
feel better.
 
The other girls confirmed that Annie was the only one, and she felt terrible about it.
 
If their mothers thought that they were sending brainwashed martyrs in here, they were wrong.
 
Lizzie says they were excited to finally see what life was like outside of POHO.
 
Shit, from POHO to SHCI… one form of slavery to another.”
 
Eddie looked up at the trainer.
 
“You can take her as soon as she comes to, but it might not hurt to keep an ear out for any other little bombshells she might drop,” Eddie suggested.

Phillip brushed the sleeping girl’s forehead again.
 
“Seems POHO’s
 
spy has turned out to be our little informant.
 
I can’t wait to see Vanessa’s face when I tell her.”

“Vanessa?
 
You think she’ll come in for the money?” Eddie asked.

“Hell no.
 
This is war.
 
Mason’s going to
bring
her in.
 
Mason’s going to bring them
all
in,” Phillip predicted.

Daria began to wake up, and Damon unhooked her restraints.
 
There was no way she was steady enough to walk yet, and he did not bother to take the blanket away from her when she wrapped it around herself as she stood.
 
Damon had to hold the swaying girl’s arm.

“Is it dinnertime, yet?” she yawned.

Damon rolled his eyes.
 
“Come on.
 
I’ll feed you.”

“Thank you.
 
Bye, Phillip.
 
I’ll see you later.”

“Goodbye, Daria.”

Ordinarily, Mason would have been too pissed off about the Spain problem to give much consideration to a couple of new contracts.
 
His jaw slowly dropped as he was informed about the afternoon’s proceedings.
 
By the end of the conversation, he was on the phone.
 
By midnight, the POHO headquarters was in flames, and the last of the leadership and headquarters novices were screaming in the initiation room of the Training Compound.
 
Annie and Lizzie confirmed with separate duplicate lists, the names of all the women they should collect.
 
No one bothered to ask Daria.

Just as Eddie had suspected, every one of the POHO members held the virus.
 
They were given the antidote, and Eddie enjoyed watching Nancy’s shocked face when two decades of research was neutralized within minutes.
 
“I should have guessed you’d go in with them, Nance.”

“There’s another strain, Eddie,” Nancy smiled.

“No, there isn’t.
 
I had them grab your notes, Nance.
 
Even this one lost effectiveness by half every time it was transmitted.
 
And you were frustrated because the women’s antibodies killed it within three months.”

“What?” Vanessa shrieked.
 
“Nancy… you said this was it.
 
You said that after we all let you shove that shit inside of us, it would spread world-wide.”

Nancy shrugged.
 
“What the hell was I supposed to do to get any kind of financing?
 
I gave POHO all of the proceeds from the sale of my house and my medical practice, and you kept grabbing it for your legal stuff.
 
Vanessa, you never gave me any funding for research.”

Eddie said, “I’m surprised you agreed to get pregnant.
 
You told me you never wanted us to bring a child into the world.”

“No, Eddie.
 
I just didn’t want to bring
your
child into the world.
 
Do you think I didn’t notice you drooling over the reports of the countries adopting slavery?
 
Or hear your conversations with Phillip over whether he could figure out a way for you to bring an overseas slave to Texas?
 
It was your face I saw on every screaming bastard I experimented on.”

“I guess you’ll be the one screaming now, Nance.
 
I just don’t see us reconciling,” Eddie chuckled.

Vanessa cursed Daria’s existence when she found out that she had betrayed them.
 
To make matters worse, the bastards kept joking about her producing a mentally impaired child.
 
Nancy tested the girls, and Daria had well above average intelligence.
 
The bastards must have thought she was stupid just because Vanessa had never let her become involved with their evil world of human slavery.
 
She should have known better than to let the evil spear inside her, and she did not give a shit what became of her offspring now.
 
Her own fucking daughter had destroyed the Preservation of Humanity Organization within six hours of being released into the world.

Nancy and Lilly had no reaction when Phillip chided them as to their daughters’ future.
 
Nothing seemed to faze the women or get through the hateful glares, until Mason told them they had been sold to separate regimens of soldiers in Russia.

“You can’t do that,” Vanessa shrieked.
 
“We’re a lot.
 
We’re supposed to stay together.”

Her mind had flipped, though Eddie had decided that Daria’s impairment was not inherited.
 
For the leader to be spouting what she presumed to be commodity protocol, was ludicrous.
 
Mason smiled at her.
 
“Ah, Vanessa.
 
It’s been a long fight… and you’ve never really understood any of it.
 
The time on your back will do you some good.”

There was one more outburst from her after Damon spoke a few words, and then the mighty adversaries from the Preservation of Humanity Organization were dragged to the transport cages.

Chapter VI

Damon guided Daria to the elevator, and as they rose to the top floor he watched her open the blanket and stare at her bald pussy in the reflective copper walls.
 
She closed it again, and threw it open in a weird game of peek-a-boo… as if she thought the next time she looked, the hair would be back.

Shit, I hope it’s just a matter of cutting down the dosage
.
 
The elevator stopped and Daria swayed when her stomach made a slight lurch.
 
“Come,” Damon ordered.
 
She turned for one more flash in the copper walls, and then she wrapped herself up and followed him.

Clarett was just leaving Phillip’s room, and she turned to face them in the hall.
 
Daria’s mouth dropped open as she stared at the woman in the black leather outfit.

Clarett looked down at the girl.
 
“Fuck, Damon.
 
No way is that a level ten.”

Daria slurred, “Nope. I’m an IQ80.”
 
She looked up at the Master, and added, “Maybe.”

“She’s a special contract.
 
Phillip is probably still in the clinic with Eddie, and they’ll be meeting with Mason as soon as the Commodities Exchange closes,” Damon told Clarett.

Clarett kept looking at the girl in the blanket.
 
She looked familiar, but not like someone she knew very well.
 
It hit her just before she pressed the elevator button.
 
“Daria?” she yelled down the hallway.

“Bingo.
 
I knew you’d remember me, Claree.”

Clarett practically ran down the hall.
 
“Damon, do you know who the fuck she
is
?”

Damon’s eyes narrowed.
 
“
I
know who the fuck she is, Clarett, but how the fuck do
you
know?”

“Their crazy group kidnapped me for about a month when I was sixteen.
 
They thought that dad was selling drugged women from the club to SHCI, or something.”
 
She smiled at Daria and stroked her cheek.
 
“This little toy helped me to escape.”

Daria smiled.
 
“The OTRs were sure pissed off at us, Claree.
 
Even when we told them that your dad wasn’t doing that.”

“How are the crazy OTRs?” Clarett chuckled.

“Nuts, as usual.”

The absurdity of the meeting hit Clarett.
 
“Daria, what are you doing here?”

“The OTRs deployed,” Daria informed her in a bored voice.
 
“We were supposed to get a bunch of information, but the bastards aren’t even as smart as
we
are.
 
I guess this is going to be a bust, like everything else they do.”

Damon was a little confused.
 
Clarett was speaking to Daria as though she was certain the girl would understand her, and Daria was calling Clarett by a nickname… and she was not getting pissed off about it.
 
“Clarett, do you know what kind of impairment she has?”

“Impairment?”

“Daria.
 
I mean, we know she’s a little slow… or disorganized, or something.”

“Daria?
 
Slow?
 
Fuck
, Damon.
 
Daria’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
 
Those girls spent their entire lives locked into that building bombarded by that crazy POHO shit, but they still figured out that Mason was a genius and their mothers were OTR.
 
I was the only one they’d ever talked to from the outside, and they wore me out with their questions.”

Daria yawned.
 
“I’m really hungry, Claree.
 
Do you know that doctor took all my hair off?”
 
Daria’s eyes widened.

“Damon,” Clarett put her hands on her hips.
 
“What the fuck’s wrong with her?”

“Fuck, Clarett.
 
She went into meltdown when I told her to strip, so we got her on tranques.”

“Shit.
 
Are Annie and Lizzie here too?”

“Yes, but they’re not drugged.”

“No, they’re more adventurous and adapt faster than Daria.”
 
Clarett continued to run her fingers through Daria’s hair.
 
She thought back to her time at POHO, and she remembered that while Lizzie and Annie made lists of outlandish ways to help her escape, Daria would roam around on the wooden planks, staring at the wood stud walls that were decorated only by pictures the girls had been drawing since they had been able to hold a pencil.
 
They were never given the luxury of crayons, but had all become accomplished at sketching.
 
It was Daria, who had taken a few days to consider her thoughts, and come up with the solution.
 
“She sort of slowly absorbs things and sometimes looks distracted, but she ends up with a better understanding, I think.”

“Clarett, you okay with her here?”

“Damon, she’d never make it outside of structure… and she’s sure as hell a lot better off here than with her OTR.”

“Claree… food?”
 
Daria interrupted.
 
“I snuck you out,” Daria reminded her.

Clarett smiled.
 
“Master will get you some food,” Clarett looked up.
 
“She doesn’t like fish.”

“I know.”
 
Damon was getting exasperated.

Clarett put her hands on Daria’s shoulders and looked down at her.
 
“Daria, you need to do everything Master tells you.
 
He’s going to show you a whole new world, just like you used to dream about in the attic.
 
You just do everything he says.”
 
Clarett looked up at Damon.
 
“Get her off the drugs, Damon.
 
I doubt if the kid’s ever even had an aspirin.
 
Take it slow for a few days, and then she should be fine.
 
This kid means a lot to me, okay?”

“Do you live here, Claree?”

“Right across the hall from you.
 
I’ll stop by and see you if your Master tells me you’ve been good, okay?”

“I’d like that.
 
Maybe we can play pussy cream again.”

Clarett winced a little, and shrugged at Damon.
 
“Whole pasture, remember?”

“Hey, stop by and see Annie and Lizzie too, okay?
 
They’re going to feel better too, if they know that you’re here.”

“I intend to.
 
Now, go get some dinner.”
 
Clarett went in search of Phillip to find out what the hell was going on.
 
She would not catch up to him until the next morning, and they laughed when he told her Vanessa’s reaction at their insistence of her daughter being nuts.

Damon realized that Clarett felt a true obligation to his contract.
 
Damn
.
 
The whole situation since he had met the girl was strange.
 
He opened the door to his suite, and Daria followed him inside.

“You don’t like fish,” he stated flatly.
 
“What
do
you like?
 
Steak?” he asked sarcastically.
 
Shit
, her eyes were filling up again.
 
What the fuck, now?

“You don’t have to be so mean to me, Master.
 
Claree told me you’re okay, so I won’t be bad or anything.”

“How the hell was I being mean?”
 
And why the hell am I asking you?

“I would never tell
you
that you either had to eat a slimy fish or have a sweet cow murdered to fill your selfish gullet.”

Damon rolled his eyes.
 
The POHO liturgy was insane.
 
Oh, fuck me
.
 
“Are you a vegetarian… you know, all salad’s and shit?”

Daria was already distracted as she looked around the strange room.
 
“No shit… just salad, please… Master.”
 
She walked up to a cage and frowned, and swooped her head towards the bastard as a vent gushed air noise.
 
A panel opened and he took a big green salad out of a hole in the wall.

Daria clenched her sagging blanket and wandered over to him.
 
She bypassed the salad he was holding and stuck her head into the kitchen transport.
 
Damon grabbed the back of the blanket and pulled her quickly back before the panel slid closed and chopped off her head.
 
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Daria glared at him, as much as her drugged countenance would let her.
 
“
I’m
not the one pulling salads out of walls.”

Oh
hell
no.
 
“Where do you get
your
salads?”

“Sometimes we made them ourselves, on Barbra’s day off from the kitchen.”

“I suppose you had a garden?”

“Yup.
 
Out back.
 
It was fenced off from the evil world of human slavery.”

Tubes for food delivery had been installed in all buildings since 2028.
 
They ran beside the water lines, for god’s sake.
 
He laid the salad on the counter, and the girl stared at it with obvious longing.
 
What the hell is wrong now?
 
The packaged fork was sitting on top with the packaged dressing… but the girl just stared at it.
 
For fuck’s sake… he wasn’t going to feed her.
 
“I thought you were hungry.”
 
Daria nodded.
 
“Well, what the hell are you waiting for.?”

“You.”

“Me… for what?
 
I’m not hungry.”

Daria’s eyes glazed a bit in the brainwashed look she got when she prepared to spout more POHO crap.
 
“Food is a gift that has to be earned.
 
People… labor… and still their pantries are empty.
 
The gift of food must always be acknowledged.”
 
Daria looked up at him proudly.
 
With as fuzzy as her head was… though, she was beginning to feel tingly like she did before when things began to clear up… she was afraid she would mess up.
 
Of course, it was one of the first litany’s POHO instilled in you.

“How is it acknowledged?”
 
The group was becoming more fanatically fucked up by the minute.

“A leader gives us a task or a lesson to repeat… if we do it right, we get to eat.”

“I see.
 
And
I’m
your leader.”

Daria made a mental note to ask Claree if she could find someone smarter for her… but he was kinda’ handsome, and Claree liked him.
 
He was smiling at her, and it made him not look so mean.
 
Daria reached up a finger and ran it across his mustache.
 
“Oooh… it’s soft,” she said in surprise.

“Take off the blanket.”

Daria considered it.
 
The apartment was warm, he had already seen her naked.
 
Claree had told her to do what he said, and she was
really
hungry.
 
She walked to a chair and folded the blanket over it, and stood in front of him with expectant eyes.

“Eat.”

Daria climbed up on the stool and attacked the packaged dressing.
 
As she was spilling it over the spinach, Damon grabbed her wrist.
 
She looked up warily.
 
“Yes, Master?” he queried.

“Oh.
 
Okay.
 
Yes, Master?”
 
She fixed on his hand until he released her to go back to eating.

Damon picked up the phone.
 
“How you doing?”
 
Damon listened, thankful he had not taken Annie.
 
“Look, these three have some weird notions that I’m digging through that could make them interesting to train.
 
Watch that she doesn’t stick her head in the food transport.”
 
Damon smiled.
 
“Good, I’m glad Clarett tracked you down.
 
Keep her caged until you feed her.
 
They’ll do anything you ask them to, for food.”
 
Damon chuckled.
 
“Yeah, tell Rodrigo.”

“Could I have some water, please?”
 
Daria asked.
 
“Oops, Master.”

Daria watched a bottle arrive through the panel.
 
“Where does it come from?”

“A central warehouse in the middle of the city.
 
Every few blocks has storage facilities to cover their area.”

“Wow.
 
Way
easier than weeding in August.”

Damon leaned back on his stool.
 
The girl was positively entrancing.
 
Maybe some of it had to do with her innocence… okay, and a dynamite body.
 
The green eyes were captivating, set off by those pouty lips…
shit
.
 
“What else did you have to earn?”

“Not much.
 
Our evening baths, books, time off, working in the garden, dusting or sweeping the second floor, looking out the front window, using the computer, cleaning the kitchen… stuff like that.”

“You had to
earn
those privileges?”
 
And POHO accused
them
of slavery.

Daria finished her salad.
 
“Thank you… Master.
 
That was delicious, and every single leaf was green.”
 
Master was not so bad.
 
He even smiled a couple of times.
 
Even if he was not too smart… he was very strong looking.
 
“Why is your skin so brown?”