Human Commodity (13 page)

“They’re good.
 
I always set aside the afternoon to work with the new contracts,” Damon replied.
 
He noticed the distraction of fucking with her tit had kept her from paying too much attention to what Eddie had been doing.
 
It would be interesting to see how she reacted to the laser patches.

Daria watched from a drugged detached perspective as the Doctor wrapped some kind of foil around her legs.
 
Some patches were stuck under her arms, and he even laid one on her privates.
 
She thought that it would be easier to just use a blanket, but if he wanted to stick the little metal sheets on her, at least it was a little warmer.
 
The Doctor took the Master’s arm and pulled him over to the wall by the door.

Daria was disappointed that there was not more to the covering, but before she could say anything, the Doctor flipped a switch and there was a flash from the ceiling.
 
The men walked back over to her, and suddenly every place the foil was covering began to get warm… and then, burn.
 
“Ow… ow… get it off.
 
Get it off of me,” she screamed.

“She’s not shutting down again,” Damon noted.

“No, and she can certainly feel it.”
 
Eddie walked to the cabinet, and came back with a bottle of pills.
 
“Three times a day should keep her at the level she’s at now.
 
You can fool around with backing off when you think she’s adjusting.”

Daria was moaning in agony as the laser patches burned off her hair.
 
It seemed forever until they began to cool, and her fists clenched and opened until the Doctor finally took them off her.
 
Eddie stroked her forehead, and she leaned towards his hand.
 
“What the hell was that crazy bitch thinking, to send her handicapped child through here?”

“That’s one cold bitch,” Damon agreed.
 
“It’s not like she’d be able to tell her anything… and to throw her in with the others just as a distraction…”

“Yeah, well Barbra tossed her baby just because it was a boy and couldn’t be used,” Eddie reminded him.

Daria quivered, “Mom said Barbra wouldn’t let another spear of evil inside of her again, so that’s why Lilly had Annie.
 
I guess the blonde members drew straws or something to see who was going to get stuck with it, and that’s why Annie’s ten months younger than me and Lizzie.”
 
Daria had calmed considerably, and she was staring at her pink legs.
 
“Are they going to stay all red like that?”

“No,” Eddie answered.
 
“Damon, those women are dangerous.
 
To manipulate…”

“AG, what is a spear of evil?” Damon asked.

Daria wiggled a finger of one bound hand.
 
“God…
you
know.
 
Mom says if all the spears were chopped off she wouldn’t have to work so hard to fight the evil world of human slavery.”

Damon paled, and absently rubbed his crotch.
 
“Weren’t there any men in the headquarters?”

“Sure… sometimes.
 
For someone to move to headquarters, they had to prove themselves by bringing a bastard in.”

The way the girl said it with such detachment was unnerving to both of the men.
 
“What did they do with them?”

“They gave them a room downstairs.
 
When they proved themselves more, they got to move to the second floor.
 
Annie, Lizzie and I got the attic.”

“They gave the men rooms?” Eddie asked in confusion.

Daria smiled.
 
“No, silly, the novice members.
 
The bastards were chained in cages in the basement so Doc Hancock could work on a way to break their evil spears.”

“What the
fuck
?” Eddie gasped.
 
And I was married to that crazy bitch?

Daria continued to chill them with what she considered to be common knowledge.
 
It
was
common knowledge at POHO, even to the three isolated girls in the attic.
 
“She finally figured it out.
 
They just need more information on the commodity set up to deploy.”

“
Fuck me
!” Damon bellowed.
 
“Deploy what?
 
And how?”
 
Damon stepped back from the girl.

Daria tried to shrug, but with her wrists strapped down the motion was minimal.
 
“I don’t think they voted on it, yet.
 
They were deciding between Spear Corroder and Evil Disintegrator.”
 
Daria muttered, “Stupid names.”
 
She looked up at Damon.
 
“Can I have a blanket?”
 
God, she was cold… and her mind still felt like it was someplace beside her.

“What does this thing do?” Eddie asked.

“Nope.
 
Not until I get a blanket.”
 
Daria sealed her lips in protest.
 
She was still confused as to why these smart men did not know about Doc Hancock’s weapon.

Damon walked to the cabinet, himself.
 
If it took a blanket to get the information to save his cock… the hell with it.
 
He covered her and her green eyes smiled up at him.
 
“Thank you.
 
It’s not as soft as Doc Hancock’s, but it’ll do.”

“Master,” Damon reminded automatically.

“Sheesh…
Master
.”

“Daria… the drug?”

“Oh… um, I don’t know if it’s a drug, exactly.”
 
She looked over at Eddie.
 
“I wasn’t very good in science, but Lizzie was.
 
She thinks it’s like a virus.”

“It can
spread
?” Damon panicked.

“Duh… it would be kinda’ stupid to try to get a bunch of bastards to take pills.”

Eddie and Damon were getting paler by the minute.
 
“Daria,” Eddie almost whispered.
 
“How does it spread?”

“That was the tricky part.
 
It’s what took Doc so long to get right.
 
It had to be able to live in the warm wet depth of the cursed cavern and multiply without eating away at everything.”
 
Daria looked up, and she thought that the men looked a little disappointed with her answer.
 
Actually, their minds were frantically deciphering the ideological terms she was using… and they did not like what they were coming up with.
 
“You know.
 
Down there.”
 
Daria lifted her head and her eyes got wide when she saw her privates were bald and pink like her legs.

Eddie ran to the phone.
 
“Rodrigo, get your new RG over to room two, and tell Terry to get that new BB over there also.
 
Get them strapped down and then get the hell away from them.
 
Wait for me.”

The Doctor turned to Daria.
 
“What does it do, Daria?
 
What does Hancock’s virus do?”

“I told you.
 
It eats the bastard’s evil spear.
 
I guess it hurts a lot, because the bastards in the basement would scream until their voices broke.”

Eddie was about to tell Damon that they needed to get rid of Daria, too.
 
“I used to feel sorry for the bastards.
 
I snuck down and talked to one of them, and he wasn’t at all scary like mom said he was.
 
She told me that he was just pretending to be nice so he could stick me with his spear.
 
I don’t think so, though.
 
He just seemed scared, but I still couldn’t let him go.”

Eddie had put on new gloves and was back to swabbing her privates.
 
“That tickles.
 
You won’t find any in me.
 
Mom said it wasn’t worth wasting it on an AG, and she wanted to see what happened to me in Greece.”
 
She looked down at Eddie.
 
“They only put it in Annie, because they didn’t want SHCI to figure it out.
 
Pretty smart for OTRs, huh?
 
Doc Hancock even has it figured out so that it dies and disintegrates once the air hits it, so that… um… that prick bastard she was married to, could not figure out how to destroy it.”
 
Daria waved her secured hand.
 
“Something like that.
 
Doc Hancock could be a little scary.”
 
Daria looked down at Eddie.
 
“But, she did give us gowns with flowers and soft blankets.”

“It works that quickly?”
 
Eddie was trying to figure out that if it died in the air, then the man would have to be inside…
wait a minute.
 
She said the guys screamed for a long time.

“No.
 
In the beginning, I think it took about a week.
 
Doc got it down to a couple of days now.”

“I thought you said the air kills it,” Eddie said.

“Yup.
 
It dissolves into nothing.
 
That’s why they were thinking of calling it the Evil Disintegrator.”

Damon asked, “If the air kills it, then how does it have time to work once the man’s out of your pussy?”

“What?”
 
Daria was still very fuzzy, but she was fairly certain she did not have a cat.
 
She looked up at him.
 
“When I get to Greece, can I have a white cat?
 
We weren’t allowed to have pets in headquarters, because mom said they were vile creatures who spread germs and could not live on food from our garden.”

Shit, she’s had one fucked up life
.
 
Damon stroked her breast and she smiled.

“If the spear is out, how come the air doesn’t kill the virus?” Eddie clarified.

Daria thought for a moment, and cleared up enough to understand their confusion.
 
“
Oh
… no.
 
It doesn’t eat the spear from the
outside
.
 
It goes up the bastards’ ammunition shoot… and I guess Doc got it to grow really fast with whatever it eats up in there.
 
I only got to see one little spot when it got to the outside.” Daria wrinkled her nose.
 
“It was really gross… all red and spongy with green ropey things, and it smelled awful.
 
That was the bastard that I thought was nice, and I left because his screaming hurt my ears.”

Eddie called Phillip, and he was back in the clinic fast enough to see the two men were still shaken.
 
Eddie informed him of what Daria had said.
 
Phillip turned to her.
 
“Daria, have any other women brought the virus into the compound?”

Daria yawned and her stomach growled.
 
“When do we get dinner?
 
I don’t like fish.”

“Daria!
 
Has anyone else brought the virus in?”
 
Phillip was running his fingers through his hair.

Daria’s eyes began to fill.
 
“Please don’t yell at me, Phillip.
 
I’m already scared.”
 
She
was
beginning to get frightened as the drugs continued to wear off.

Eddie noticed her eyes becoming clearer, as she studied the room and the men.
 
“I gotta’ give her something before she melts down again.”

“Keep her conscious, for fuck’s sake,” Phillip muttered.

Eddie gave her a pill and a sip of water, which she took with no protest.
 
It hit her almost immediately, and the green eyes calmed.
 
“Daria, is Annie the only one who has the virus?”

“Yup.”
 
She looked at Phillip and her eyes filled again.
 
“Are you still mad at me Phillip?
 
I don’t have the Evil Disintegrator… only Annie and the ones that are signing have it.”

Phillip’s face turned white.
 
“Which ones that are signing?”

“The novices at headquarters.
 
They’re going to start signing one a month after New Year’s.
 
The OTRs said that they’re the only members of POHO that are young enough to contract that Mason might want.
 
Their mission is for one of them to meet him.
 
Our mission was much easier, but it would have been cool to meet Mason Sanford.”
 
Daria smiled.
 
“He’s a genius, you know.
 
Annie, Lizzie and I got to read about him on the computer.
 
He saved the world.”
 
Her features took on the fuzzy confusion of the tranquilizer again.
 
“Mom doesn’t understand that, but she’s awfully busy with the evil world of human slavery.
 
If she wasn’t, maybe she would let him keep his spear.”

“
Holy
shit,” the men said in unison.

“I have to get to room two.”
 
Eddie began quickly gathering things and stuffing them into the pockets of his lab coat.
 
“Damon, leave her here until I can make certain she’s clean.”

“No problem,” Damon assured him.

A few minutes later, they heard Terry screaming.
 
“You cunt… you fucking cunt.”

Damon whispered, “He never was one for waiting.”
 
He thought for a second and said, “Daria, can a man transmit this thing to another woman?”

Daria rolled her eyes.
 
The bastard might be handsome… okay,
really
handsome… but he was not very smart.
 
“Of course.
 
You don’t think a few members could fight the evil world of human slavery by themselves, do you?”
 
Daria looked back at Phillip.
 
“If you’re not still mad at me, could you please get me a different Master.
 
This one isn’t any good.
 
He’s handsome and all, but it took him
forever
to get me a blanket, and I know it’s
way
passed dinner time.”
 
Daria whispered, “And he’s not very smart.”