Chapter 5

I lay on my bed at home that evening, trying to get my mind on the movie I’d rented, a comedy in which one man goes through a series of misadventures trying to keep his appointment with the noose, while another man mistaken for him is nearly snuffed in his place. I tried to concentrate on the story, but my mind kept wandering. I’d felt wonderful after my interview, and certainly while having sex with Scott at his apartment, but now every point of concern kept crowding back into my mind. How important was it that I had never played any hanging games? Dean Porter seemed to like my naked body, but did he really? Would he say so if he didn’t? Did the Dean, despite my efforts at redirection, figure out that I’d only been conscious of the need to go to the Academy for barely over a month? How many minuses did I really have?

I groaned when I saw Andrew looking in through my door. I had meant to close it. And lock it. And barricade it with steel bars. “What do you want?”

“So how did the interview go?”

“Okay.”

“Come on, Amy. You know I really do want to know. Just give me an impression.”

I sighed. “I thought it went really well. I answered all his questions, showed him my body, let him choke me. I felt good about it after.”

“You don’t sound like you feel good now.”

“You know me. Am I the Optimism Queen?”

Andrew looked at me, and seemed to come to a decision. He brought his hand from behind his back, showing a small, transparent capped bottle and shaking it. “I need you to take a capsule for me.”

My jaw dropped as I gave him an are-you-crazy look, and then I burst out laughing. “So you’ve decided poison is the way to go? After all I’ve done for you?”

He gave me an impatient look. “Why would I kill you? Okay, yeah, I know I’ve got a reason, but look at all the drawbacks. I imagine the law would be with me, you being my sister-slave and all, except they’d want to know if it was okay with Dad, and there you have it. Even if the law lets me off the hook, and even if I could find some foolproof way so they don’t even know it was me that did it, Dad would know somehow. Or suspect. Why would I even want to take a chance of his suspicion falling on me, when I can get you out of here just by sending you off to the Academy?”

“Thought you assumed I wasn’t going to get in.”

“Well, I’ve got that covered too, don’t I? Except for one thing—suppose you get your rejection letter and just decide to disappear? That’s fine if you stay away and get declared dead, but I can’t count on that. I can see you showing up suddenly with some fancy lawyer who manages to find a way to void the contract. Or at least be a pain in the butt.”

“You think too much, Andrew.”

“Oh, right, and you don’t? How much time have you spent on all that Academy crap in the last month?”

I lay back on the bed, my fingers laced under my head. “Touch^eacute;.”

“Look, I just need you to take one of these capsules for now. They’re slave trackers. Have you heard of that?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I’ve heard of tracking slaves, but not with pills. What the hell are they?”

“The latest wonder of bionanotechnology. They’ve just come out with them for general usage. When the outer skin of the capsule dissolves in your stomach, inside there’s a tiny GPS transceiver that signals your location. I can go to a Web site on my computer and track you by that—each capsule sends a different ID code, and I write down the code on the capsule and log in using that. I can find your location within about ten feet.”

I sat up and looked at him in silence, and finally lay back and said, “Bullshit. My body would flush it out in a day.”

“Look, hold on...” He went back to his room, came back in a moment, and handed me a sheet of paper. “Somehow I figured you wouldn’t trust me on this. I ordered this stuff online. Here’s a printout of the invoice. Go to this Web site and read about it.”

I dropped the paper on the bed beside me. “Later. I’m busy.”

He looked at me sourly. “Yeah, you look busy. Anyway, by tomorrow, Amy. This is the last bit of assurance I need that you’ll be around when I own you. That guarantee, remember?”

I sat bolt upright and glared at him. “I thought we were done with that. That’s what the contract was for.”

“Yeah, the contract is one thing, but what stops you running out on it before I get a chance to enforce it? I want this one last thing, Amy. Then I’ll stay out of your way till you hear from the Academy.” He smiled. “I’ve got used to this idea of waiting on the sex till I own you. It’ll make that first time that much more fun.”

I gritted my teeth and turned away from him, turning up the sound on the TV. I wished I could stop him from even hinting he wanted to get me into his bed, but I was really out of things to use on him. “Get out. And close the door.”

He pointed at the paper on my bed before closing it. “Read about it.”

I sighed and tried to concentrate on the TV. The paper Andrew had given me caught my eye. I started to crumple it, then stopped suddenly with a gasp.

Andrew, when he’d reminded me of his need for a “guarantee,” was doing more than just stating what he was looking for. He was reminding me of the alternative. If I refused to set his mind at ease on the possibility of me not making the Academy, he was, no doubt, still prepared to set me up for the kidnapping he’d spoken of before. To have me carried off and made a helpless puppygirl for some stranger who would be happy to train me with a whip. I would be gone before I heard from the Academy.

“Shit!” I muttered between compressed lips. I turned the TV off, and my computer on.

It was easy to find complete information on the product Andrew had bought, as described on the invoice. I read about it, and cross-checked it on several other reliable Web sites.

The capsules were for real. On being ingested by a slave, the outer covering, as usual for a capsule, dissolved in the stomach. Inside the capsule, the tiny GPS transceiver, powered by a chemical battery that would last nine months, signaled the slave’s location. The transceiver was enclosed in an outer coating that was biochemically compatible with the cells in the digestive system—in fact, it attached itself to the cellular walls of the intestines, gradually being absorbed into them, safe from being ejected from the body as unused waste. Removing it required major surgery, but there really was no reason to remove it from a slave. In its experimental stages there had been no cases of ill effects on the test subjects. Before its battery gave out—six months was the recommended time—the slave simply swallowed another capsule.

Up to today, my feeling of certainty about admission to the Academy had persuaded me not to bother planning an escape if it didn’t work out. But I had to admit the idea had run across the back of my mind.

This would make it impossible.

On the other hand, fretting over the results of today’s interview aside, I still did feel admission was inevitable. It had to work that way. How could I, with Miranda’s help, have finally discovered my lifelong dream, only to have it snatched away from me?

And of course, if I did go to the Academy, it was irrelevant whether Andrew had made me swallow a slave-tracking capsule. If I was at the Academy, Andrew had no use for the tracker. He’d know exactly where I was, for what it was worth, even without it. Nothing Andrew had asked me to do, from signing the contract to ingesting the tracker, made any difference once I was admitted to the Academy. And I did believe him when he said the Academy was his preference—I would be completely, permanently out of his way without the slightest effort on his part.

Even that didn’t really matter, though. The fact was, I didn’t have a choice. I believed him on the puppygirl threat, his one stated way of taking my Academy dream away if I didn’t cooperate with him. I couldn’t afford not to believe him.

Pushing my chair back angrily from my desk, I turned off the computer and grabbed the invoice. Down the hall, I pounded on Andrew’s door.

When he opened it, I snarled, “Are you going to be tracking me all around town, wherever I go?”

Andrew looked genuinely surprised. “Why would I give a shit where you spend your time every day? I’ll just feel better now if I know I can find you when the time comes. I’ll test it once in awhile to make sure it’s still working. If I watch your progress while you walk around the house, will that violate your precious privacy too much?”

“Can I wait till early August?”

Andrew shook his head. “Who knows when the Academy might mail out the first rejections? I’m sure they’ve had applicants that they wouldn’t want within fifty miles of the Academy. How long does it take them to figure that out? If you’re going to do it, do it now.” He fixed his eyes on mine. “Otherwise I need to make other plans.”

I tried to stare him down while my fury rose pointlessly. Forcing my voice to calmness, I held out my hand, open palm up. “Okay, give me the thing.”

Andrew’s eyes lit up. “Okay, but not quite like that. Come over here.” He backed away from his door to let me in. He ducked quickly into his bathroom, ran some water, and emerged with a partly-filled drinking glass. He set it on his desk, next to the tiny bottle of capsules. On closer examination, I saw that the bottle held just two capsules.

Andrew looked in his desk and found a small square of paper. Opening the capsule bottle, he shook one of the capsules out onto the paper. Bending down, he rolled the capsule slightly until its code number came into view, and wrote it on the paper. Then he picked up the paper, folding it into a small valley with the capsule at the bottom, and brought it towards me.

I reached for it, and Andrew jerked it away. “Nope, nope, nope. Don’t touch it, and don’t lift your hands to your mouth. I don’t want you palming the little bugger and pretending to swallow it. Then carrying it around in your pocket so I’ll think it’s inside you. Tilt your head back and open up.”

Rolling my eyes, I did as he requested. Andrew lifted the square of folded paper, tilted it, and let the capsule roll into my mouth.

Keeping his eyes on me as he backed towards the desk, he recovered the glass of water and brought it to me. “Keep looking up. And keep your hands down.” He held the glass to my mouth and tipped some water in. “Now swallow.”

I didn’t have much of an alternative, other than choking. With a sinking feeling, I swallowed the capsule and felt it slide down my throat towards my stomach. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I told myself. I hadn’t even made plans to run away anyway. Where would I go?

“Now say, ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’”

I nearly choked anyway. “What??”

“Just say it.”

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head, and repeated the nonsense.

Andrew nodded. “Fine. You could only say that clearly while you were trying to hide a capsule under your tongue if you were a trained ventriloquist. Just making sure you swallowed it. Now don’t mind me if I follow you back to your room.”

“What? Why?”

“Just go back to watching TV or whatever you feel like doing. I just want to make sure you don’t stick a finger down your throat and barf the thing up in the next twenty minutes. After that it won’t matter.”

I walked stiffly, my hands clenched into fists, back to my room, where I flopped on the bed and turned the TV back on, starting up the movie again. I lay on my stomach, my chin propped on my fist, my eyes looking in the direction of the screen, not seeing it, while Andrew lounged in my doorway, slouching against the frame, a study in relaxation.