Page 34 of Galaxy Games Four-Book Box Set (Galaxy Games)

34

It’s Time

B laze

“Get comfortable, females and males,” Jahzara Zedd says, her voice so smarmy I want to throw something at the screen. “What you’re about to see is going to be unsettling.”

“Blaze, you don’t need to watch,” Xzavic says. “Let me shelter you from it.”

He’s right. I mean, really, even the most masochistic person in the galaxy wouldn’t want to see their near-rape by two ugly, psychopathic brutes.

I move his toga aside so I can snuggle against his warm, blue chest. Little Red nudges the spot under my chin with the top of his softly scaled head. It’s his sign of affection. Xzavic puts his chin on the top of my head and begins to tell me about his planet.

I know I should be listening to his calming words, but Jahzara Zedd’s strident, grating voice cuts right through Xzavic’s soothing tone.

“Did these two fool you last night when you saw them act out what they convinced the galaxy was their passion for each other? Well, females and males, it seems there’s another side to Titan.”

“Turn it off!” Xzavic’s rough, gravelly voice, seething with anger, reaches my ears from screens across the street.

“Turn the fucking camera off!”

Are they using some kind of video sorcery to show him doing something he never did? I wanted to nestle against him and listen to his tales of his childhood from before he was abducted, but I can’t contain my urge to turn around and see what’s on the screen.

There’s Xzavic, one hundred feet away and fifty feet high. His face is distorted in anger, his blue eyes burning with hatred.

He doesn’t scold me for watching. I think he’s so focused on what he’s seeing, he’s barely aware I’m still in his arms.

“Hold on, friend.” One of my rapists says toward the camera. It looks like he’s trying to pull his ugly, gray face into a smile. It’s just a threatening grimace, though. “We can share.”

“I had her already, although I wouldn’t refuse another turn.” It’s Xzavic’s voice, but we’re not shown his face.

The male behind me sits up taller, every muscle in his body tightening.

“After you,” the Charthian says.

“She snuck out on me this morning,” Xzavic’s voice is so hard, so uncaring. A flare of shock simmers along my synapses.

“I guess she knew I was going to kill her before I ate my breakfast.”

His twenty-foot-high hand grabs my chin and he squeezes my cheeks into a duck face.

“Bitch! Don’t fucking move,” his voice is so cold as he threatens me. Like ice.

“This isn’t what it looks like, Blaze. I know you don’t remember, but this isn’t how it happened.”

He’s pulling that beautiful blue cock out of his pants, but thankfully it’s partially hidden behind one of the malfunctioning black screens. I can imagine it, though, hard and pulsing and excited to enter me.

I pull away from him so forcefully, little Red has to scamper not to be thrown to the ground.

“No!” the twenty-foot-high me screams, then kicks at him.

“Blaze! I didn’t rape you. That’s not how it happened. Well, it is how it happened, but it was only to distract that animal so I could kill him.”

The huge screen across the street goes black as Zedd sneers, “We won’t show you the brutal assault perpetrated by Titan. It goes on for eleven minutes and seventeen seconds. Just think about what that poor female endured as we cut to commercial break.”

Titan tries to pull me toward him, his hands on my shoulders, but when I yank away, he lets me go.

I stand and pace the few feet to the end of our little hiding spot, then pace back. For a moment, I believe it. I learned early that I couldn’t always believe what I was told, but I could believe my own eyes. But when I’m watching something produced by the network? That’s another story.

Titan didn’t rape me. I would have known that. Even if I don’t remember it, I would have been aware of the evidence. I play back what happened this morning. I was out of it, dissociated so I wouldn’t have to endure the painful experience of being raped by those two horrible gray males. But I can recreate it from the dark haze of the inner recesses of my mind.

Titan tricked that motherfucker so he could get close enough to kill him. To save me.

Xzavic is still sitting with his back against the wall. I guess it’s so he won’t scare me. I hit the ground in front of him so hard I’m sure I’ve skinned my knees. Wrapping my arms around him, I press my head against him as I apologize into the blue wall of his chest.

“Xzavic, they turned my head around, but I know your heart. I don’t know how I doubted you, even for a minute. I’m sorry.” I press my lips over his heart, kissing him again and again.

“I understand, my love. You were in shock and weren’t tracking what happened. It’s hard to disbelieve your own eyes.”

I kiss his chest again, then rise higher, grab the back of his head and ply his mouth with kisses. These aren’t sexy or sensuous, they’re like long declarative sentences, apologizing with my body as well as my words.

“I understand. It’s fine.”

He’s such a good male.

“Those fuckers just told the whole galaxy you’re a rapist. Not just a rapist, but someone who would do that to the woman he supposedly has feelings for. They must not want you to earn another credit.”

“They’re hedging their bets. In case I actually win The Game , they’re going to have public opinion so strongly against me no one will protest when they find a reason to kill me. Oh, they won’t have to find a reason to kill me. They just manufactured one. They’ll punish me for raping you.”

“Fuckers!” I say. I’ve always hated feeling powerless, yet here I am, totally impotent to protect him.

Even if I kill myself so he can win this shitty game, they’re going to find a way to punish, possibly kill, this fine man who, even right this moment, is trying to soothe me.

“Welcome back, females and males. Shocking, wasn’t it? Seeing Titan rape that poor little defenseless female. You’ll notice his credit count is down to zero. We may not be able to punish him through the legal system, but we here at TMN can do our part to reflect public sentiment.

“Next up, we’ll be taking calls from some of Marentine’s best legal analysts—”

Zedd is interrupted by a black screen emblazoned with one word in white letters: “Truth.”

“We have less than two minutes before the authorities can track our signal. Here is the truth,” says a voice distorted by software.

The screen shows the exact moment when my tote goes from 6,672 to zero, and again when it’s slashed from 37,243 to zero. It shows the moment this morning when I pulled canister after canister out of my backpack and all of them were at zero charge.

Then the shot cuts to the four well-armed males approaching me at a jog as if they were on a military mission. I watch silently, wondering if they’re going to show the down and dirty of what those two were about to do to me.

Instead, they show enough that anyone in the audience sees the truth of what happened. From their rough treatment of me, to how Xzavic pretended he was about to rape me in order to trick them and get close enough to kill them.

“I don’t know who’s behind this guerilla video warfare, but the whole planet will see what the network is doing,” I say.

The final shot is a closeup of Red, his big blue eyes blinking at the camera. Then the announcer says, “It’s time to end slavery. It’s time to stop the practice of one person owning another. It’s time to stop enriching those at the top, at the expense of the poor and hungry. It’s time.”