“Hey—you cut me!” she gasped, still not believing the situation.
Her attacker scowled at her.
“Only because you moved, stupid bimbap! See how you made me damage the merchandise!”
Selena realized he was talking about her.
“I’m not merchandise that you can buy and sell!” she protested. “This is unbelievable!”
She shook her head, feeling dizzy with the unreality of it all. Everything that was happening seemed like some kind of a nightmare—a bad dream she hoped to wake up from soon.
No, you can’t think like that—this is no dream—you have to fight, whispered a panicked little voice in her head. Fight, scream, kick—do whatever you have to in order to get free!
“Help! Help!” Selena shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Help me—this man is attacking me! Help!”
To her vast relief, a couple of tall Ma’shorkan males dressed in matching blue uniform coats came jogging over. They left the busy main concourse and entered the small, dark hallway where the bald man with the greasy beard was holding her captive.
“What seems to be the trouble here?” one of them asked importantly.
“Thank God! Are you the police? Er, the authorities?” Selena asked them.
“We are the Spaceport Peacekeepers,” the second man said, nodding.
“Well then, help me!” Selena exclaimed. “This man is attacking me—he’s trying to kidnap me!”
To her astonishment, instead of immediately trying to help her, the first policeman turned to her attacker and said,
“Is this true, Brakus?”
All this time her attacker had simply been standing there quietly, as though nothing was wrong. It suddenly occurred to Selena that he hadn’t tried to stop her screaming or calling for help and he hadn’t tried to drag her away when the police—or the Ma’shorkan equivalent of them, anyway—showed up. Now he opened his squinty purple eyes wide in a look of complete honesty.
“Why, no, Your Honor, none of what she says is true,” he said. “This little bimbap is my property. As you can see, she has no Seal of Independence and so I claimed her.”
“I did have a Seal before he cut it off me!” Selena countered. She looked down at the floor, searching for the scrap of yellow silk, but it was nowhere to be seen now. “I had it,” she insisted. “Look at my arm—he cut it off me and I’m bleeding.”
“I’m very sorry, Miss, but if you have no Seal to show us, then you can be claimed,” the first policeman said. He didn’t sound sorry at all, Selena thought—he sounded bored, like this kind of thing happened all the time.
“But…but I’m supposed to play my violin at the emperor’s gala!” she protested. “If you let this…this man take me, I’ll miss it and he’s going to be very upset!”
But this seemed to only amuse the two spaceport policeman. They exchanged a glance and the first one said,
“Of course! And Empress the Third has invited me for tea. I must get ready to go!”
Then the two of them burst out laughing, as though it was the funniest thing they’d seen all day.
“This is not a joke!” Selena exclaimed, stamping her foot. “I came here from the Kindred Mother Ship—from Earth—you can’t just let some man take me! This is human trafficking!”
“No, these are the laws of Ma’shorka Centra, little bimbap,” her greasy attacker purred, leering at her. “Lose your Seal and lose your freedom. You belong to me now because I claim you as mine—my property.”
“See that she doesn’t cause any more ruckus,” the first policeman said to her attacker. “I wouldn’t want to have to site you for a noise violation, Brakus.”
“And if you’re claiming her, you can’t allow her breasts to stay covered,” the second one added. “You know the law—they must be exposed.”
“Of course, Your Honor—I’ll take care of it right now,” the attacker, whose name was apparently Brakus, promised with an oily smile.
And, to Selena’s horror, he raised the knife again and slipped it under the hem of her stained white t-shirt.
“Hey, what are you doing? Stop!” She shrank back from him, feeling the icy blade against her skin, and then her attacker sliced outward with a single move.
The cotton t-shirt parted at once, hanging in tatters on either side, and revealing her bare breasts, which were as perky as ever, thanks to the damn float dots Kat had talked her into.
“No!” Selena gasped, trying to cover herself with her free arm. “You can’t let him do this to me!” she exclaimed to the policemen. “Why aren’t you stopping him?”
“Sorry, Miss, but it’s not our job to stop a lawful claiming,” the second policeman said dismissively.
“What about stopping a theft? Is that part of your job?” a deep voice demanded.
Turning her head, Selena saw the big Kindred from the shuttle standing behind her. His broad shoulders seemed to fill the entrance to the small, dark hallway and the look on his face was like a thundercloud. When he spoke again, his voice was a deep, menacing growl.