Sweet Nicah was a rarity, and that was her downfall. It meant she had a high price tag attached to her.
“I’m so scared, Levi.”
“It’ll be okay, Nini,” I told her. “Keep quiet and don’t draw attention to yourself if you can help it. Cover your face and belly as best as you can. If I can distract them from you, I promise I will.”
She frantically bobbed her head as she pulled her thin, hole-riddled blanket up over her entire body. I hoped she would be overlooked during this reaping because I didn’t want her to go. I wanted her to stay on The Farm so Mama and I could take care of her and her baby. She needed us, and we needed her. We were her family, and she was ours.
“Mud!” I heard Master’s bellow as he emerged from around the side of the house with two very tall men in tow. “C’mere. Now.”
I jumped to my feet, glanced behind me at my mother, and frowned when I saw she was still asleep. She was breathing, but I knew that Master had really hurt her body. Her pain kept her in a deep slumber, and I didn’t know whether I should wake her just in case this was the last time I saw her. Master’s voice shouted for me again, and fear forced me to turn from my mother and run to him.
When I reached him, I quickly realised that the two men with him were not men. They weren’t human at all. I froze to the spot. I had never seen aliens this close in person before, and these two were definitely aliens.
One had radiant light blue skin, and the other had a brilliant grey, almost like silver. They had to have been close to seven feet tall. Master was at least six foot two, but he looked little compared to them. Not only were they very tall, but they were very broad at the shoulders with thick arms and thighs. I could tell they were very strong with just a single glance.
Physically, they looked very similar to human men, but they were just … bigger and more exotic.
They both wore the same raven black armour-plated suits. The only visible skin I could see was on their face and only because they had removed their helmets and tucked them under their arms. I dropped to my knees before them, placed my hands on my thighs, lowered my gaze to their black combat booted feet, and waited. Traffickers liked to inspect anything they might purchase.
Most of them always pressed to sample Master’s slaves, but he never allowed that. The one time he did allow it, one of the traffickers didn’t buy the slave, and a few weeks after he left, we found out she was pregnant. Master felt like he was played by that trafficker, and he killed the pregnant slave in a fit of rage. He learned from that mistake and only let the traffickers visually inspect his slaves. No touching was allowed below our torsos.
A trafficker could lose a hand if they tried. Many had tried and paid the price for it.
“This here is Levi,” Master boasted. “She’s twenty-one years old, very healthy, has all of her teeth with not a one of them showin’ signs of rot. She also has nay parasites and is a virgin. She is very submissive, one of me finest if I do say so meself. D’ye like her?”
There was a prolonged moment of silence, then a deep voice spoke in strained English.
“She … is a … fine fe-female.”
I felt sick when Master chuckled. “That she is, I ‘ave me many slaves that look like her … some with darker skin, some with lighter. I even ‘ave me a pregnant Southern Eastern Asian bitch. That’s a breed of humans close t’extinction, so a’course, she comes with a mighty nice price tag, as ye can imagine.”
Master always made us slaves sound like we were cattle, and when I paused to think about it, I figured that the description was correct. Cattle were bred for a purpose and so were slaves. We looked different from each other, but our fate was the same. We would always have a master and would never know what it would be like to taste freedom outside of our pen.
Our home was called The Farm for a reason.
“Is she … a fe-female who … ‘ould ‘ike to ‘ome … to Ealra?”
I had never heard of this “ale-rah” before, and I wondered if it was somewhere off-planet. I had never been off-planet before … I had never been outside of Master’s slave pen at The Farm. None of us had once we were put inside. I was born in the pen, for pity’s sake. The only time we made it out of the pen was when we were sold or traded.