Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

They put the bracelet on my ankle first and pulled it tight, then unlocked the chain and cut the rope off my wrists.

The metal was cold and heavier than it looked. It closed against the bone with a soft, final click and sat there, tighter than it needed to be, the inner edge already finding the places where skin would remember it.

Blood returned to my fingers in a slow, tingling rush. The rope marks on my wrists stood out pale and raw.

I stood up and rolled my shoulders. The chain’s absence left a strange lightness in the leg that the bracelet immediately cancelled. The small room felt different from standing height—cobwebs closer, Bagins’ shadow shorter across the concrete.

Bagins stood in the middle of the room and watched me get up. His arms were folded again. The pistol was gone inside the jacket. The four men had already moved across to Trapper in the corner, the dark shapes of more bracelets in their hands.

"Can I be frank with you?" Bagins said.

"Mhm."

I walked toward him. The bracelet answered every step with a small, continuous weight against the ankle.

"If you hadn’t killed Rivers, I’d still be out there simping for that woman." He dropped his voice so it went no further than the two of us. The confession sat soft and absolute in the small space. "Standing at her door in nothing but shoes, taking her instructions, calling her president." A pause. "You did me a service, Abram."

"I see." I closed the last of the distance. The bracelet settled against the bone. "So this has all worked out rather well for you."

He laughed, watching his men wrestle with Trapper’s leg. The sound was short and private and completely without the performance he’d given the factory floor.

Trapper’s wet, unbroken muttering continued under the scuffle of boots and the soft metallic complaints of the second bracelet closing.

"I don’t know." He put a hand on my shoulder. The contact was light, almost careful. "Do you think we’ll ever get the chance to sit down and actually talk? I don’t come across many people like you."

"I don’t know either. The future’s unpredictable, professor."

"You’re right about that."

He took his hand back and put it in his pocket.

"I did some research on you, incidentally. You grew up outside. Came through the walls with an ability level below the threshold, which should have ended you right there. Then you went back outside, brought a specimen home for the government, and walked into a job at CGI that people inside these walls spend their entire lives dreaming about."

I looked at him, then past him at the men getting Trapper off the chain with the bracelet already clamped on. Trapper’s face was a dark, swollen map under the yellow light. His muttering continued, continuous and unintelligible, the sound of a man whose world had narrowed to the metal on his ankle and the hands forcing him upright.

"Sounds like you’ve made the last two months into a whole biography."

"Bala trusted you." He wasn’t finished. The words kept coming, quiet and precise, the particular tone of a man who had already decided the shape of the person in front of him and was only confirming the edges. "Sinn trusts you now. What exactly is so special about you, Abram?"

"Nothing."

He laughed again. The sound was thinner this time, almost thoughtful.

Trapper was mumbling something continuous and unintelligible as they hauled him upright.

Two of the four men came back across the room for orders.

Bagins gestured one of them closer. The man stepped in. The other held his position.

"Bracelets on the two girls." He said it to the man and looked at me while he said it. The eyes didn’t leave my face. "Leave the blue haired one. Let her go free."

Something moved behind his eyes as he watched my face—calculation, confirmation, the particular satisfaction of a man who had just found the softest place to put a knife and was waiting to see whether the other person would flinch when he named it.

The men left immediately. The door opened. The light from the corridor spilled across the concrete in a hard rectangle and then narrowed again as the door closed behind them. Their footsteps receded down the thin-walled corridor toward the room where Mercury’s voice had come from.

"Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m releasing the blue haired girl?"

He said it like he thought I hadn’t worked it out. The smile that accompanied the question was small and complete and reached the eyes for the first time since the pistol had gone back inside the jacket.

Mercury had shouted her name through a wall and told me she was awake. That was all it had taken. Bagins had heard a woman calling out to me about somebody, decided that somebody mattered to me, and found the softest place to put a knife.

Letting her walk out of here wasn’t mercy. It was leverage with legs. The bracelet on my ankle sat colder against the bone with the knowledge of it.

"I’m not going to ask," I said.

He smiled. The expression arrived slow and absolute.

"You’re smart. I honestly wonder who could stop us if the two of us ever worked together."

"Put one finger on me and I’ll taser your whole arm off." Mercury’s voice came through the wall. Clear. Immediate. The particular clarity of thin construction and no insulation, and of a woman who had already decided the conversation on the other side of the concrete was hers to interrupt.

Bagins stopped whatever he’d been about to say and listened.

"And how are you going to taser anybody with your hands tied behind you?"

"Try me and find out."

Bagins looked at the floor and muttered something into his own chest.

"That woman. Again."

He turned to me. The smile was gone. The expression that replaced it was cleaner and more practical—the face of a man who had finished the private conversation and was ready for the public one.

"Let’s go."

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