“Camera, lights, action,” says Jamie. I am old enough to have some notion what he is on about.
Harry, the freak, operates the vidcam. He has a wild look about him. Alliea is standing by too, frowning. Maybe she is jealous, because it’s clear to her the Captain is becoming infatuated with me?
Flanagan has explained that they will transmit my message via video email to the Cheo. The date of the message will reassure him I am still alive. I have been given a script to read.
“Okay?” says Flanagan. He continues to be nice to me. But that of course is because he needs me to cooperate. Which I will, but on my terms. I shoot him a fierce look, to boil his blood, and keep him hoping for the unattainable. That’s how I like my men: desperate.
I glance at the message he has drafted: “I am being well cared for. But I am in fear of my life. Please help me. Give these people what they want. It is only money. My dearest son, I love you.” It is cringemaking stuff, without a scintilla of wit or rhetorical energy.
I look into the vidcam. Jamie nods. “Let me die rather than deal with these terrorist scum,” I say calmly. “Do not pay their ransom, do not…”
And Harry slashes with his claws. My face rips open, blood spurts from my eye socket, I fight back furiously, but he has the strength of ten. I lose myself in a maelstrom of hitting and biting and clawing. ..
He’s eating me… the fucking monster is eating me alive…!
Flanagan pulls the beast off. The vidcam is still rolling. I stare into the camera. I can feel that one of my eyes is out of its socket, it is oozy and cold upon my cheek. I am frozen with fear.
“That went well,” says Flanagan.
I am hysterical.
Slowly I force myself to calm. My breaths become deep, composed. I figure out my error.
My error is this: they don’t need my cooperation at all. They just need to show me humiliated, in pain. So as to force the Cheo to abandon his principles and pay the ransom. This was the message they had always planned. The script was a bluff. I fell for it.
“Get me to the sick bay,” I say, clinging to a semblance of dignity.
In the hold of their ship is my own space yacht. I am taken to the sick bay there, which is equipped with state-of-the-art organic repair technology. The skin cells on my face are boosted. My ripped eye is replaced with a clone from my eye bank. My scars are healed. I am given an injection to guard against the risk of fever from the man-beast’s savage bites.
Within a month I will be as good as new. It’s a process I am familiar with.
Flanagan comes to apologise. “I want us to be friends,” he says mildly.
I fix him with my firmest one-eyed stare. And I say: “YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”