2018-08-12 - spike - The New Shop 73

Author: spike
Title: The New Shop 73
Date: 12 August 2018

Chapter 73
A warm breeze brushed my cheek. It carried with it the tang of the sea and the sweetness of fresh flowers.

I smiled, yawned, rolled to my side and groaned with pleasure, then my back caused a grunt of pain.

None of that registered at first. It was the feel of the sheets, that’s what caused me to snap awake completely. I could feel them, rough against my skin. I could smell. I… I opened and closed my mouth. My hand shot to it and my nose. They were free. Clear of any obstruction. Then I saw my hand, my darkly tanned hairless skin, the nailless fingers. I was free of the suit!

I opened my mouth again and exhaled. Nothing emerged but the hiss of breath.

I opened it a third time and concentrated. Concentrated on the old sensation, something I’d not experienced in I didn’t know how long, the tightening of vocal chords…

“Ahhhhhh. Wha th fuch. I”

My speech slurred. My tongue seemed to be getting in the way.

How the hell though? Was this another of Q’s lies? That the suits could never be removed? Obviously mine had, I needed to know how! Why?

I swept the bed sheet off and looked down at myself. No tattoo, no chastity and it was then I realised I didn’t have a buttplug either but fuck me, I looked good. My musculature… God I thought I was good looking before the suit but now?

My right arm and left leg… I twitched my toes and twiddled my fingers. The arm and leg themselves were ugly in the extreme, both were black, purple, green and yellow from bruising but I could move my fingers and toes. I felt my arm with my other hand…

Fuck, how long had I been out? My arm was broken! So was my leg but now apart from the bruising, they felt fine and surely bruises would’ve healed before my bones!?

I looked around the room. It was lavish affair. Gold ornaments, a huge TV on the wall opposite the bed, ornate furniture and an open window through which the breeze had obviously blown.

I swung out of the… Then I noticed… The sheet that’d covered me, the sheet I’d been lying on, the sheet that’d felt so coarse against my skin… Silk. God, it felt rough compared to the suit.

I winced as I sat up and my hand shot to my back. There was a dressing taped there and when I touched it, I yelped... Fuck it hurt. That was where the bullet had struck.

I slid off the bed and gently tested my weight on my bad leg. Another wince of pain, but it didn’t feel nearly as bad as it should. I tried to stand and managed it. Then I noticed the full length mirror in the corner and as carefully as possible, limped over to it. I looked even better standing up. I turned and admired myself for a few minutes.

I still didn’t know where the hell I was. I wandered over to the window. It opened onto a balcony and when I stepped out… Was this the paradise they’d mentioned? Was I finally on Q’s island?

Fuck it looked… It was beautiful. In the distance, brown earth stretched for miles, a mountain shrouded in mist was bare too, but below me it was lush and green. Suited slaves worked the grounds. More marched out in formation carrying tools. I looked to the right and there, white sandy beaches and a sea so pure and blue… I’m… Was that another suited slave out there windsurfing? I peered closer at it and chuckled. It carried something on its back and had something shoved up its nose. Obviously to prevent water entering its lungs.

I was! And it truly was idyllic. A paradise just as described. I clamped my mouth shut, took a big, deep breath and relished the scents this time. Oh god it smelled good. The first thing I’d smelled since I put on the suit.

The beauty of the place, the amazement of being out of the suit, it’d held it at bay, but my anger at what had been done to me didn’t wait long before it bubbled to the surface.

“Right!” I limped to the door half expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t.

It began to grow more painful as I walked but two corridors down, a slave. One wearing nothing but chastity. I increased my pace to catch up with him.

It took a minute and when I did, I grabbed him by the shoulder.

He froze, spun around and stared at me.

“Thlake mme tho Q.”

“What?”

“I thaid thake me to ffucking Q, now!”

He looked me up and down, at my smooth scalp, eyebrowless face, nailless fingers and hairless crotch. A twitch of the lips, a suppressed sneer. “Don’t talk to me like that! Do you know who I am?”

I glanced down at his chest… As expected a tattoo.

“I can thee yoor name’thpth.” I tried again to control my mouth. “Name’th Dominic, tho whath?”

“Sir! So what, sir.”

“Before I wath thealthed into that thute, I wath a mathter…” I paused again. Damn this was frustrating. “Ssss. Ssss. Ma-ssss-ter. Ssss-orry. Out of practi-sss… Talking. And no, not sss-sir! Am I in a” another pause “ssss-uit now?”

“No! And I’ll have to speak to”

I held up my hand. “If I’m not in a fucking” I gulped “suit, then that means I no longer belong to him, I’m a master again. Now take me to that fucker!”

He stepped back in shock at the insult directed at Q, terror flashed across his face as if the very idea of insulting his master in such a way would result in the harshest of punishments.

I poked him in the chest. “NOW, sslave!”
“Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!” He rushed off down the corridor.

“And not tho fatht! It hurtth!” I limped after him as he slowed down.

He lead me to a pair of large double doors. They were heavily decorated, carved with exquisite designs of men in various states of bondage, many of them inlaid with gold. The handles seemed to be gold too.

The slave pointed and turned.

“Well open it, then! God, who trained you?”

He gulped. Another “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir!” He turned the knob and pushed the door open. I stepped through.

If I thought my room was lavish, this place… Statues of slaves lined the walls… Or were they statues? They were carved or moulded from bronze, marble, granite and gold and seemed life sized but using his graphene technology who knows if there were people inside. Nah… They didn’t have goggles and mouth tubes. They had faces. Human faces. They had to be statues. Two long tables ran down the length of the room and a red carpet led down the centre. At the end, two steps leading to a throne and sitting there engrossed in something on a screen… Q.

I limped down the hall. God it was a long room and he didn’t even notice me until I’d got to the steps.

He sat up in alarm. “What the hell? You shouldn’t be out of bed! You certainly shouldn’t be putting any weight on that leg yet!”

Ow, getting up those steps sent daggers of pain down that leg, but I persisted, I got to the bastard, I threw a punch.

What surprised me was he didn’t defend himself. He didn’t dodge, he just sat there and took it. My other arm lashed out but this one… He raised his hand calmly and caught it. There was no force, just a gentle slowing of the punch to a stop.

“One punch is all you get. I deserved that, but it wasn’t entirely my doing and I seriously wouldn’t recommend you put much force into the arm either.”

“Noth your ffucking doing? You ordered me podded! You shipped me thousandth of mileth away to a fucking hornethth nethth and you obviously shoved a thtick in and thtirred them up for good measure. A thity I’d never even been to! I asked you twithe! Don’t make me athk you a fourth time! Why!?”

He pressed something on the arm of his throne… Should I call it a throne or a captain’s chair? There seemed to be an array of switches there.

“Blank! Fetch a chair. One of the good ones! Place it beside me!”

I glanced back… One of the statues hopped down off its pedestal and rushed across the room, picked a chair from under one of the tables and rushed to place it next to its master. This one almost looked like marble. That was new.

The moment the chair was placed, it jogged back to its pedestal, hopped back up and took up a pose. Q flipped a switch again and it froze in place.

“Sit. Please! You need to take the weight off that leg, it’s nowhere near to being healed yet. I’ll explain everything.”

I glared at him.

“Please! Sit down!”

“Fine!” I winced as my dressing brushed the back of the chair but god… It was a relief to my leg.

“Pay attention… A month ago, a man submitted his details for a background check in Atlanta. He said he wasn’t from Atlanta and his background check confirmed it, but he’d found the store there so that’s where he submitted. Three weeks ago, he received confirmation his checks had passed.”

“The vandal?”

“We believe so, yes but a few thousand dollars… Nothing compared to his other crimes.”

“But you thaid he’d pathphed hith background check.”

“Oh, he had. Nothing flagged any alerts. A few holidays abroad including one last year in Egypt. What didn’t come up from those checks is what he did there.”

“Why? What did he do? What could popththibly make you think what you did to me was a jutht punishment?”

“I’m getting to that. This is what he did.” he turned his screen so I could see and a video began to play.

It was CCTV footage. A man in jeans and a t-shirt… he had a middle-eastern look about him. He held up a sign written on cardboard. The top half, I couldn’t read. It was in Arabic but the bottom half, in bold capital letters written with marker pen. “Death to the west.” The man raised his hand. In it, a radio? A remote control perhaps? He flipped a switch, smiled and pressed a button on it.

Q sighed. “Background checks, clear. Until that point in time he’d never broken the law in his life. Not in the USA at least. We believe he crossed the border while in Egypt and joined an ISIS training camp. Fifteen minutes after pushing that button, he arrived at the shop and they sealed him in. A wash, flush, couple of days to adjust and into a pod. He was one of the slaves you spoke to.”

“What did he do? What wath that thing?”

“Watch.”

Another video. A recording of a news report. Footage of buildings from a helicopter… Schools… Smoke billowed from each of them.

“At two pm today, Atlanta was rocked, no, devastated by a series of explosions. The four largest elementary schools in the city were hit. Who did this? Why? We don’t know, but so far the death toll is in the hundreds, most of them children under the age of ten. If you have any relatives in the city of Atlanta, Georgia or its surroundings and you’re worried they may have been caught in the attacks, an action line number is at the bottom of the screen. We currently have no further details. Fire crews are still dealing with the aftermath and the national guard have been drafted in to give aid to the survivors. Please, if you know anything about this atrocity, contact the number flashing on the screen now.”

“Fuck! Tho… He… He bombed…”

He nodded and sighed. “It’s the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.”

“But I wath attacked almotht ath thoon ath I left the fucking dumpthter! How could they know tho quickly?”

“You said we sent you into a hornet’s nest and stirred it with a stick. You were the stick.” He tapped something on his console again. “Blank, fetch the suit.”

“Thir! Pleathe… Get me an armband. Thith is fucking fruththtrating.” I pointed at my mouth.

He nodded. “And collect an armband and wheelchair too!”

Another statue unfroze and rushed for the door.

“White blankth, thir?”

“They’re not permanently white. Their outer suit contains a mesh suit. It’d designed to look like marble when frozen. They take turns as my statues. I like the idea of having statues that’ll run to my beck and call.”

I liked that idea too. I liked it a lot. In fact, I liked it so much I wanted to join them. “But I can’t thee goggleth! They look human! How do they thee?”

“Oh, they can see, just as you can see out of your mirrored goggles. Their faces are masks of course, hiding the goggles beneath.”

I returned to the topic at hand. “That ththill doethn’t ekthplain why me, Q! For fuck’th thake! I was in the thtore when all that happened! You know I w”

“We didn’t think you were you! You were him! You had his core ID! You know the only way to identify a blank is by its core! What I’d like to know is how you switched yours for another blank’s! Ingenious way to hide yourself true bu”

“Hide mythelf? Fuck me! The only timeth my core wath removed wath during my washeth and I wath frozen during thothe, tho there was no way in hell I could thwitch anything! What happened then? Why wathn’t it captured the moment it arrived?”

“We didn’t know! No-one knew anything about that sign on the CCTV until after the vandalism. The police didn’t find it immediately and it took them over a week to release it to the public. It was only after those shelving units fell and I went to re-evaluate the background checks that the footage came to light. The moment I knew, I adjusted its work schedule. Put it on the most unpleasant jobs I could find until I decided what to do with it. Until something could be shipped to the store.”

“Unpleathant jobth?”

“Yes.” he chuckled. “We had it cleaning out the flushing mechanism.”

“No, you had me cleaning out the flushing mechanithm!”

“You? Hmm… What job did you do the previous day? I’ll call up the work schedules for the week. It should pinpoint when your core was mixed up…”

“Wait… Wait one minute… You thaid all that happened three weekth ago? How long have I been here?”

“You returned to the store and punished my slaves on Thursday evening last week. Today is Saturday, Adam. You’ve been here a week. Emergency Medical evacuation. Something we’ve had in place for a while, it got you here in twelve hours. They stabilised you as best they could in the store but it was touch and go for a while.”

“Touch and go? I very nearly died!”

“You did die, Adam. You died twice on the operating table. You had the most terrible injuries I’ve ever seen.”

“But… How could I even walk? I know my leg wath broken, my arm too!”

“Yes, and that’s why you shouldn’t put any weight on it yet. It’s not even close to being healed. We have medical techniques and technologies here the general populace won’t see for a decade at least. Your leg wasn’t just broken, the bones were shattered. You had a hairline fracture to your pelvis, three broken ribs and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry, but the internal injuries you suffered were extreme. I’m afraid we had to remove a kidney.”

“But I feel fine! Well, my leg hurtth, true but”

“You can thank graphene again. I’ve said before that it’s the most wondrous material ever discovered and I wasn’t lying. A plethora of uses and one of those is the most astounding yet. We have tested them, but I’m afraid in your case, we had to use you as a guinea pig. You would’ve died without them.”

The blank returned, wheeled the chair to the bottom of the steps, ran up and handed Q a bundle and an armband. He handed the armband to me and I put it on and immediately gave up talking. I logged in, selected my profile and typed instead.

“Without what?”

“Nanites. Or if you prefer, nanobots. They can roam the blood stream, detect and destroy infections, rebuild damaged tissue and bone, eradicate pre-cancerous cells and tumours. That’s what they did. Using a computer and medical imager to direct them, they rebuilt your leg and arm, moving every single fragment, every grain of bone into the correct place and then fusing with them. Your bones aren’t healed but they supported your weight because they’re laced with graphene now. It was like a million piece 3d jigsaw puzzle, putting your leg back together.”

I stare at him in horror. “Those things are still inside me?”

“I wouldn’t worry. Free ones are programmed to enter your bladder for expulsion when their job is done or they’re nearing the end of their life. After their successful use on you, all slaves will be fed them from now on. They can be used to deal with complications such as appendicitis without the need to ship them here for suit removal.”

“About that… How the fuck did you get it off?”

“With something I’m extremely unhappy using. Something that currently doesn’t exist on this planet. I ensured every single scalpel used was destroyed the moment your suit and additions were off and out.”

“What something?”

“Graphene again. Hardened into a blade. After all, what’s the only thing that can cut a diamond?”

“Err…”

“Something of equal or greater hardness. Graphene can cut graphene but the blades are incredibly dangerous. I don’t permit their existence unless needed. The ones used on you were incinerated.”

“Bloody hell, how are they so dangerous?”

“Their edge is one molecule thick. With a graphene blade you could remove someone’s arm as if you were cutting through air. Hell, you could cut through a steel bar with little resistance. As I said, it’s a risky business. A very delicate procedure to remove your suit and additions. You’ll note we haven’t removed your earplugs?”

My hand crept up to my left ear and prodded. It was still there. “But how can I hear? I thought they were powered by the suit!”

“They’ve been fully deactivated and they were set to pass thru mode before then. Don’t worry, they’ll remain unless you demand their removal but they won’t impede your hearing now.”

Fuck me. “Sir… Where is it?”

“Hmmm?”

“That… That monster! Is it here?”

“Oh, no. No, the blank that wore your core is currently confined to its cell and has been for the past week, not permitted to mix with any of the other slaves. It washes and flushes alone too. Solitary confinement.”

“How do you know that blank is the culprit, sir? There were ten slaves released from their freeze during that washing cycle, sir. We all”

“Ten? You think it might’ve have been more than you? All of them might have mixed up cores?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please. No more sir. I called you Adam for a reason.”

I hadn’t noticed that… But he had. “What do you mean, no more sir?”

“You’re a free man.”

“You chew me up and now you’re spitting me out like used gum?!”

Q sighed. “It’s not like that. I couldn’t in all conscience place any demands on you after what happened. I couldn’t expect any obligation from you, so, I free you from any. You will be provided with a life, a good life. We’ll put you into a temp suit for shipping, get you back state side, give you a new identity… Unless you choose to stay.”

“But that thing’s still there. They need me and quite frankly, what happened to me… Oh my god it deserves even worse. Do you have an internet connection, sir?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because I found on the cell phone I stole from the first person who attacked me that the lynch mobs I avoided were using twitter to organise, sir. Photograph a blank holding up a sign saying “Catch me if you can.” Post it to the conversations that use the hashtag lynchmob, sir. They might think it’s dead. Let them know in no uncertain terms that it’s still out there, sir. Better still, let me send the tweet.”

The grin he produced… God it had a malicious streak. “That is a fucking brilliant idea. As for how we stirred up that hornet’s nest… I said you were the stick. This is what your suit looked like when we removed it.”

He unfolded the bundle he’d been given. From the front, nothing unusual. Well, nothing unusual for us apart from the lack of an arm and leg, but the back… A large yellow arrow ran from the crown of the head, down the neck and pointed at large yellow lettering that completely filled the back of the suit.

“I am Ibrahim Khan.
I am the Atlanta school bomber.
This suit is my punishment.”

I stared at it. “Oh… fuck. Thank fuck that first one attacked me.”

“Why?”

“He attacked me with a knife! I took him down and stole his clothes. That probably saved me a lot of hassle. I suppose I must’ve been caught on camera before he attacked me though, sir.”

“I keep saying stop call”

“Stop saying that. If I’m a free man as you say, I’m free to choose, correct?”

“Of course”

“Then I choose! Seal be back in. Tube me up and seal me in. Permanently again. No temp suits. They need me there. I spoke to those slaves and I should be able to find out which one isn’t who it says it is. Assuming it’s been lying or they’ve not questioned it sufficiently to find out. I doubt the one with my core is the guilty party, sir!”

Q stood before me, a wide grin growing. He knelt and stared me in the eye.. “I’m going to do something now and I ask you not to resist. You’re not a slave now, but if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

“You give yourself to me? Willingly this time?”

“Yes! You stole my life away, true, but the life you gave me was one I wouldn’t give up in a million years, sir. I love it. Why would I want anything different now?”

“I’m going to kiss you. Oh god, am I going to kiss you?”