Claiming Their Omega Pet

“Is that how your kind teaches you to please us?” A male voice rumbles from the dark as my hands falter on the black satin sheet. I’m in a room I’ve never seen before, and the large bed that stretches before me is rumpled. Light displays throb in the distance, but they’re distorted. There’s a presence at my back and a tension that vibrates the air around me. It distracts me from the details of the room. Am I making this bed or rising from it? Are there doors? Do I recognize anything? Hairs rise at the back of my neck as he closes in, moving the air by my head. Something brushes the strands away from my shoulder, but I can’t move my body. Not to turn, not to drop the fabric clenched in my fingers. How do I defend against this? Do I need defending?

I hate that I always freeze. I don’t know why my panic stalls me or how to keep it from happening. No matter how capable I am, my body never unlearns what it’s already been taught. I’m always defenseless.

Why can’t I leave? It’s as unclear as the blurry room, as strange a thought as whatever place I find myself in. Fingers glide up my spine, then curl around my throat. They’re so solid and forceful that I feel the telltale sting where bruises will be. Familiar and alien at once. I’ve felt a grip that sharp but never so warm. The skin pinches too tightly under burning fingers. Far too warm to be human. Is he one of them—the Thur?

I’m unable to make a sound as the fingers form a ring of pain but fall short of choking. My voice is as frozen as my body. They both betray me, proving I’m only as good as what I’ve always been when my cheek hits the satin pillow. I want to lock up, but heat and pressure crowd my back, bowing it until I’m presented without a fight. Loose. Pliable. Easy. I should do something, say something… Fight…

I don’t. I never do.

That’s how I wake—hands clenched around tangled bedding, half-delirious and clinging to the confusion that follows me from yet another dream. My mouth gapes, gulping against words that won’t come. It feels like suffocating as the first tear slides down my cheek. I moan, pretending the sound doesn’t sound half so pathetic when I fold myself deeper into the bed.

I hate waking up like this. Not the fear. That’s normal. As is the loathing. But it’s the damp press between my shifting legs that drives my groan deeper into the fabric and brings the shame to the surface. I’m beginning to worry about my mind and what it means for these dark dreams to coax such a reaction. That for every second of fear and powerlessness, there’s thrill and exhilaration rooted just as deep. I can hardly look myself in the eye.

Would it be so bad to reach between my legs and find a little pleasure where I can?

I know the male from the dream is one of the Thur. This is what it is to be a conquered species, I realize, with all of our waking and dreaming consumed by our invaders. They’re our saviors if you hear the Institute tell it, harkening back to a time when we had rudimentary technology and relied on explosive weapons, woefully unprepared for a Thur blade or the tech that came with it. That is the crux of why we receive such training at the Institute. Re-education. Gratitude. We can never forget the nature of our new place in their world.

Breeeeep Beeep.

Throwing my head face down into the pillow again and again seems like the only appropriate reaction to the dreaded work alarm. I miss being grateful to work at the Mid and have my own money. I miss the optimism of imagining a wealthy Thur rescuing me from my circumstances—from being freshly sixteen and convinced I could change my life like a spicy romance book.

I turn my head to the opposite ear, using my hearing loss to soften the sound of the alarm.

Now, at twenty-three, I have only the naked truth: real life isn’t a book. There is no physical appeal great enough for the Thur to leash a human as more than a pet, and some money is not worth the cost of gaining it.

Breeeeep. Beeep. Ding ding-aling-ding.

Two alarms are blaring loud enough to be annoying through my damaged ear. All technological advancements have been hand-crafted with their abilities down to the melted metal alloys or gemstones used to craft them. Conductors and connectors, moving parts, and processors. All far higher functioning than anything we’d developed on our own.

Everything we use now comes from them, simply modified to work within our electrical grids. They’ve manufactured some of the most beautiful creations I’ve ever seen.

And some of the most deadly.

My temples are throbbing and fumbling fingers have knocked my phone onto the floor, trying to silence it. I throw half my torso over the side of the bed and turn off the alarms. Red and orange take turns flashing across the walls, grating at my headache, and blue flickers over the floor, washing my apartment in some of my least favorite colors. But it’s free lighting—one of the few perks of living above a liquor store. Varik didn’t pay for a premium digital display, so it loops one of the three preselected images. A woman at a bar drinking, a group of men at a party, or a Thur business meeting. All opportunities to visit Varik’s store.

I take full advantage of the second perk of living above the liquor store and draw a sip straight from a bedside bottle of glees, a heady combination of Earth liquor and fermented fallow the Thur brought with them when they invaded. According to the rumors about how things used to be, our drinks are more potent because of the fallow which is good because I’m all out of rapi-doses, so the quickest way to kill a hangover is to stay drunk.

That might be a stretch, but it feels true when the second gulp goes down smoother than the first, and the pounding behind my eye softens. I’m not delusional. I know I drink too much and that I don’t eat enough. I know what it means to live every day like I’ll never get older. The other workers at Mid all have dreams and plans… things they want to do once they’ve saved enough or gotten too old, whichever comes first. I know that it’s not a good sign that I don’t visualize the future as the others do. Just like I know, eventually, this shit is going to catch up with me.

If Ry hadn’t paid for my enrollment at the Institute, who knows what I would be in a few short years?

The pulse behind my eye tugs at me. I leave the bottle on the floor outside the bathroom, telling myself I’ll scrounge up a rapi-dose from Sass at work.

Hot water slams against the back tiles, steaming the entire room in moments. The third perk of being the only person who lives above the liquor store… my water is always hot. There’s tech that sustains infinite heat, but most humans can’t afford it and Thur certainly never offer to install it out of kindness.

I want the Institute to explain why—if Thur are so heroic—do most humans live like me, too poor to afford all the glorious tech they rave about? It’s a damn con, is what it is. Selling us a lie meant to make re-education smoother. We’re expected to serve. To be mastered. And we’re expected to enjoy it. I shrug off the ratty t-shirt and lose the final battle to look back at the mirror. The medicine cabinet is hanging off one hinge, but the thing still manages a reflection. And then my vision turns blurry as my eye switches to low power.

I turn the light off before slipping into the steam, allowing the darkness to flood around me and ease my eye. The water sears my stomach, but I don’t flinch. If anything, it’s soothing. These moments are when I feel most at peace. When the hot water finally stops feeling soothing, I exit, glancing at the clock. I’m probably pushing the limit of Jack’s patience, but I can’t seem to move any faster tonight.

To the others, it’s a miracle he even lets me live here. Every other employee sleeps above the Mid in dorm-style apartments, and I’m sure there’s never any hot water there. They have rudimentary tech but nothing fancy, just enough to be considered standard. No different than here. They still couldn’t convince me to sleep within a hundred feet of my adoptive brother.

Some of the workers think that because Jack and I grew up together as siblings, I get special treatment.

“Devi doesn’t get it,” they laugh. “She gets the best VIP room because she’s family.”

“She’s lucky. Heard she’s been the golden child since his mother took her in off the streets when they were kids.”

They’re always the new ones. The workers who have been here awhile know better.

I try not to think about any of it now, swiping my hand across the recharge dock by my closet, feeling the last of my money drain away. Immediately, my blurry eye clears, a nearly inaudible beep telling me it’s been fully recharged. I don’t when I’ll have enough to eat dinner, but at least I can see.