Trapped: Chaos Core Book 1 (4 page)

His advance wasn’t
entirely unwelcome, however, and she let him kiss her, his lips
softening against hers as he realized he wasn’t about to be pushed
away. He tasted of peaches, and moved his lips slowly, prying,
lightly pinching hers. It was much more like the time Sun and her
kissed on a lark to tease a few of their crewmembers at a party than
anything else. He kissed as sweetly as Sun did, but less firmly.
Aspen liked it, she loved Larken even though he still seemed to love
the Countess, so she returned the kiss, adding vigour to it, and she
licked his tongue forward to play for a moment before gently closing
her lips and withdrawing with a smile. “I love you too, Larken,”
she whispered, feeling a sharp pang of guilt. “I don’t think the
Countess would be okay with this though.”

“I don’t know. A
lot has changed. Things have been strange since we received news that
you were recovered, she has been very particular about how I look.
There’s some kind of consultant named Panna at court, she scans me
often and reports to the Countess in private. Neither of them seem
happy about whatever they’re talking about.”

“I might know what
it’s about, but it’ll have to wait,” Aspen said. “Help me get
back into the Countess’s good graces. I can’t bear how angry
she’s going to be when she sees me,” she said, applying years of
stage craft thanks to endless drama lessons.

“Oh, no,” Larken
said, full of concern. “She adores you, this is a cause for great
celebration.”

“The Countess will
see you now, come this way,” a tall shapeshifter said. His upper
body was a long taper with vertical eyes that protruded slightly,
dragging brown-yellow skin with them when they peered here and there.

“Thank you,
Seneschal,” Larken said.

Aspen didn’t have
much time to adjust to the fact that their old Seneschal had been
replaced, he’d been a kind man who doted on her while she was at
court. “What happened to Arsenault?”

“He was killed by the
artificial intelligence controlling the kitchen,” Larken said.

“Oh my God,” Aspen
said. “I hope it was quick.”

“It was not. I had to
help clean, I don’t want to talk about it,” Larken said.

They entered the great
hall, where the Countess held audience, and the theme of stone
pillars in front of walls with deep alcoves was repeated, only the
stone was crimson, brown and grey. At the end was a single tall
throne that wove those colours together using vines riddled with
gemstones. A seven step dais held it above everyone in the grand
chamber, where holograms of the Countess’ ancestors haunted the
alcoves. Above those alcoves were tall windows, blue skies and a few
spiral stone spires were visible but nothing else. Upon the throne
sat Countess Valona Tineau Danti. Her garb was surprisingly simple –
a long blue gown with a black under layer that showed through down
the centre. Fine platinum chains hung down the backs of her long
sleeves, sliding against the throne as she stood.

Flesh crafting had made
the woman unnaturally thin and tall. Her face was always narrow and
long, but it seemed even more so with a neck extended at least twice
that of a normal humans, lengthened arms, legs, narrow hips and a
waist that looked like stretched toffee. Special muscle groups, an
extended spine and outer support that were added by the flesh
crafters while they were making alterations kept it all together. A
shock of white hair made her head look even taller, a lattice work
jutting up from the shoulders of her dress held the locks aloft for
her.

The Countess was
hundreds of years old, the flesh crafting had been taking place well
before Aspen or anyone she knew were born. Her family were far, far
away, Aspen had never knowingly met any of them, but she knew that
the Countess sat far above them in the hierarchy. Outside of her
palaces, the woman was universally despised, but she could utterly
destroy anyone in her considerable sphere of influence, and Aspen saw
it happen more than once while she stood beside that throne. The
Countess used the law, blackmail, her own corporate empires, even her
own private military to destroy her enemies. She did so often, and
with pleasure.

“The little Autumn
returns,” the Countess purred, her tailored voice high pitched but
soft. A woman in a simpler, long crimson dress holding a slim, high
powered hand scanner walked alongside the Countess. The device cost
as much as some small freighters, and it was pointed at Aspen. “What
have you done to yourself, girl?” she looked to the guards. “Get
that off of her immediately.”

A button on the back of
her collar was pressed and the suit reverted to its inert sheet
state, falling off. Aspen caught it just in time, holding it to her
bosom but the Countess yanked it off of her and flung it across the
room with her inhumanly long fingers. Larken started taking his robe
off only to be pushed to the side. “Keep your clothes on, stupid
boy,” the Countess said. “I don’t need you for comparison, I
can see she’s ruined you as a matched pair, she may as well be some
freakish alien. I’ll still inspect her personally, the damage must
be assessed.”

“Yes, Countess,”
Larken said, bowing deeply and straightening his clothes.

This was the essence of
what Aspen hated about her life under the Countess. Nothing was hers,
even her body was property. The Countess flicked a lock of hair.
“Such a common brown colour,” her hand ran down her back. “Pasty
pale, and so fat. It is as though you have been hiding under a stone
from the sun, getting fat on grubs and worms. Where have you been,
child?”

Aspen waited for the
inspection to continue, not expecting that she was being called on to
answer a question so soon after entering her presence.

“Answer me, girl!”
the Countess shrieked, her voice not so smooth or pretty.

“They kept me on a
ship, where I had to carry cargo,” Aspen said, the answer was ready
at hand thanks to many terrible daydreams where she imagined she was
recaptured. “It was very hard.”

“I don’t believe
you,” the Countess said, leaning forward so she could try and look
Aspen in the eyes. “They found you at a dance club, you were
dressed like a commoner who was looking to breed with some thuggish
thing, the way you were writhing against him. I have the footage, but
I could barely stand watching it, my stomach is still unsettled. What
do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry, I won’t
leave you again,” Aspen said as pleadingly as she could.

The woman in the
crimson dress tsked and shook her head at the Countess.

“Lying little bitch,”
the Countess hissed. “You’ve gone pale, and chubby,” she said,
cruelly pinching skin and a little flesh from Aspen’s belly and
twisting, pulling. “You should be bronze, just like Larken and
beautifully blonde, innocent creatures of nature. It’s what I paid
for!”

Aspen suppressed the
urge to slap the Countess’s hand away, her face turned red by the
time she was released.

“Hair grown too long,
and missing entirely in other places, it’s as if you don’t
realize how much work it was to have you made. You’re too stupid to
realize how perfect you were! Where there was texture and perfect
shape, you’ve bulged and made yourself plain. You ‘re not meant
to change at a whim like some…” she struggled to find the word.

Nothing had ever made
her angrier than what was going on right at that instant, and even
worse, Larken was cowering several metres away, not enraged but
terrified. “Like a doll?” Aspen finished for the Countess.

“No,” the Countess
said, whirling at her, pointing a long, thin finger. “You are
common, but we will restore you. Consider yourself fortunate that I
am willing to overlook your defiance, and that I don’t have to call
my flesh crafters to fix what you have done. By this evening you will
be standing in your place beside my right coffer. Poor Larken has not
been able to take his place at my left hand because it would have set
the whole dais off balance, and we even tried to match him with
another Aspen, number three. It was a disaster! They had no
chemistry, even after months. I tried everything, but it was all
fumbling and polite misunderstandings and failed attempts at romance.
I even tried to make the match work by killing that Aspen’s mate,
but the girl wouldn’t stop moping. A few weeks later she managed to
get her hands on a grenade, put it in her mouth and set it off in the
garden. We were having an outdoor luncheon! The Duchess of Mir lost
an arm, and she still won’t stop talking about it. It was such an
expensive waste, but why should I even bring that up to you two, you
barely know what money is!”

Aware that the hand
scanner was pointed at her and that her lies would be detected, Aspen
gathered all the emotion she could. “I’m so sorry, Countess,”
she said and she was sorry, but only that she was recaptured. The
weight of the situation couldn’t be more clear to her, and she
couldn’t feel more forlorn or afraid.

The Countess glanced at
the woman in the crimson dress, who shrugged, then regarded Aspen.
“You are telling the truth, Aspen,” she said, slightly awed. “Was
it so terrible being away from court?”

“Yes,” Aspen said,
focusing on how awful it was to be back.

“Then your repentance
may be short, especially if you are obedient in the coming weeks.
Larken, give her your tunic and bring her to my own cosmetic aides,
they’ll set her right again. Oh, and signal the kitchen. She’s on
a strict diet starting immediately, it must be horrible having so
much extra weight to drag around. I understand this, perhaps,” the
Countess said, waving in the general direction of Aspen’s chest.
Then she pinched her hip and her belly, less cruelly but still
sharply. “But this extra matter, and those thick thighs. It’s
like looking at some fat, plucked flightless bird.”

Aspen poured extra
effort into smiling at Larken as he wrapped his robe around her. “But
look,” the Countess said, smiling for the first time since their
reunion began. “My summer pair are back together again. You still
match, despite Aspen’s unfortunate self mutilation.”

Bright, penetrating
lights were everywhere in the palace beauty parlour. Aspen had
blissfully forgotten the ridiculous regimen that she and Larken had
to follow to look the way their creators – those capitalist genetic
designers – had advertised. She felt as though she had never left
once the stylists and specialists descended on her, dressed in white
and blue smocks.

Eyebrows and hair were
follicle adjusted so they grew at the right matching pace and colour,
then everything was colour shifted to match the lively highlighted
blonde colour she was supposed to have. The follicles Aspen had
adjusted to her liking everywhere else were reactivated so she would
have more, and then they were stimulated so, after a few minutes of
furious itching, she was ‘reforested’ as one of the smiling
technicians said. Aspen was not amused. “What about my legs?
Natural women have hairy legs,” she said, thrusting a calf up from
her seat.

The technician looked
at the bare limb, then to the the beauticians to either side, and in
half a panic she asked; “Is that in the design?” Another
beautician brought up a hologram of Aspen’s legs and shook his
head. “Then it doesn’t go on you, dear. We must stick to the
blueprint.”

“You realize I’m
going to be dead in two years anyway, right? Like a switch going off,
I’ll get painfully sick, my organs will take about a week to fail,
and then I’ll be another corpse buried in the back garden, rotting
under the lilac trees,” Aspen said, creating the deepest
uncomfortable silence she’d ever seen, it was fantastic. “I’ve
got an expiry date so all this is really pretty pointless.”

“Let’s try to keep
our composure, luv,” the eldest of the technicians said, plucking
an errant hair from her neck. “This will take much longer if you
bring dark clouds into the room.”

There was no escape,
not for the moment, Aspen reminded herself silently. Sometimes the
only way out was through, not around, not up or over, so she went
against every instinct she had for the rest of the day. “I’m
sorry, you all work very hard, thank you.”

“Well, thank you,”
the only male one said, he was one of the so-called technicians,
which meant he handled the more invasive devices. “We honestly
don’t hear that enough.”

The next hour was one
Aspen wished she could forget. Even when they were finished and
rubbing a special blend of lotions into her skin – the reward for
all the rest – she knew it wasn’t really at an end. The assembly
line went on, the makeup artists got to work on her next. To Aspen’s
chagrin, the Countess had something special planned that night, and
she was to be made up in brown and green dye. “You mean body
paint?” she asked when one of the artists informed her.

“No, my girl, take
that robe off. We are to paint you like a wood nymph from ancient
lore from head to toe. The presentation for your second debut will be
a work of art. Nothing can run, nothing can drip, so it’s brushes
and dyes for you. Hold still please.” Those were the last words
spoken for a long time as the lead makeup artist and five of his
assistants painted her until she looked like some child of the woods.
It took two hours for them to do what a bot would have done in
fifteen minutes if it were the old days.

They kept her robe as
she was sent on to the next stage, where she hoped they’d dress
her, since all she was wearing was green, brown and black dyes. They
covered her from head to toe so she looked like she was made from
grass and trees but still very feminine – enough so she wished
there was a bush she could hide in – so she hoped it was just
undercoating.

“Well, they certainly
did their best,” a tall woman covered in fine silver fur sighed.
She was of a race Aspen had never seen before, but she liked the big
eyes and long, pink nose tipped snout. “I’m sorry dear, your
frock is to be very simple tonight, the Countess wants to show you
off. Court has been boring this season.”