Type K
Wufei and Quatre spent most of their night threading through the throng of dancing, writhing bodies on the first floor of their boss’s headquarters, trying to enjoy the music. Twice they were offered a new drug called Type K, and twice they refused. Quatre, a one-time drug smuggler out of South America, cautioned Wufei that hybrid drugs were everywhere in the city and three times as dangerous as any disease.
“They’ll eat out your guts and leave you half-dead, wanting more,” the blonde had commented. “I’ve never heard of this Type K stuff, ’Fei, so I wouldn’t even try it if I was you.” The Chinese man had listened to his blonde companion and declined use of the drug, albeit reluctantly.
It was nearly 3:00 AM, and Quatre was growing a bit tired. He glanced at the thin, waif-like girl in front of him who was doing her best to appear sexy by dancing and contorting herself to the music’s pounding rhythms with a faintly bored expression. Her hard, apple-sized breasts and narrow hips didn’t interest him. Neither did her obviously feminine form. Still, he had to keep up appearances and look like he was enjoying the lady’s ministrations, so he smirked and ran a hand over one of her hips. She licked her lips and rubbed against his thigh. The two began to dance together, rubbing up against each other every now and then, the girl panting softly and Quatre imagining that her bony body wasn’t hers. Instead, it was that handsome doc’s…
Wufei glanced at Quatre and the girl from the side of the room, seeing them occupied, slowly wove his way through the crowd and back up the stairs. Taking up a discreet position in the hallway that led to the door, he folded his arms across his chest and began to wait.
Sure enough, his patience was rewarded nearly forty-five minutes later. Shouting and yelling sounded from inside Khushrenada’s office, then the sound of glass breaking. Probably that vase of flowers the boss’d bought for the girl, Wufei mused.
A few minutes later the door was thrown open and she stormed out, looking around desperately for a means of escape. Spotting the catwalk, she made a run for it, but it was useless in her impractical heels. She stumbled and cried out, falling to her knees against the steel grating. The world swayed back and forth around her. She shook her head rapidly, trying to regain a sense of equilibrium and failing. Before she could get on her feet again Khushrenada was already on her, pulling her to her feet with a hand locked around her arm in a crushing grip. She bit back a whimper and glared venomously at him.
Wufei had watched this all agape. He moved to go help, (he didn’t know who he intended to help, his boss or the girl), then remembered himself and stood still. He wasn’t even supposed to be standing here, let alone watching the boss.
Spying on the boss, in fact. If Khushrenada found him here, he’d be severely disciplined—or worse, executed.
There was a hard, angry look on his boss’s face, and something desperate shown in his cerulean eyes. Wufei had never seen the boss like this before. He swallowed, trying to dissipate his shock and remain still, hidden in the shadows. He couldn’t afford to be discovered by the boss.
“You will submit to me, you whore, or I’ll make your life hell,” Khushrenada hissed into the girl’s ear. Through her dazed mind, the girl managed to score a stinging slap across Khushrenada’s face, spitting on him. After she did this, the ginger-haired man shook her hard enough to knock her hair loose from the French knot.
“Stupid bitch! You think you can escape me? You think you can resist me? You thought wrong!” That said, Khushrenada hoisted the dazed girl off her feet and carried her back inside the office. As they passed by, Wufei’s black eyes widened in alarm when he saw the girl’s eyes locked on his, a silent pleading in them. She’d seen him! He waited tensely for her to shout a warning to Khushrenada, but it never happened. The door slammed shut, and then there was a click in the lock. Wufei breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t revealed him.
Concerned for her, Wufei pressed his ear against the thin wall of the office, hearing a low scream of protest and the sound of cloth ripping. Then he head the squeal of a chair shoved across the steel floor, things falling and breaking. A disgusted look registered on the Chinese boy’s face as he realized what Khushrenada must be doing.
No way to treat a woman, any woman. Stifling the urge to be sick, Wufei walked quickly away down the catwalk and back down the stairs, looking for his blonde companion. He found him standing near the foot of the stairs.
“I was waiting for you,” Quatre said. Seeing the look on his friend’s face, he realized something must be wrong. “What’s up, ’Fei? What’d you see?”
“Nothing,” Wufei replied in a disgusted tone, shaking his head quickly. “Let’s go, all right? The damn music’s giving me a headache.”
Quatre nodded silently and they both stepped out of the warehouse, heading into the night.
*~*~*
Once it was over, Khushrenada got to his feet, a smug, satisfied expression on his handsome face. He pulled on his pants and tugged on his shirt, commenting to the girl lying on the floor at his feet, “Now I’ve got to go wash your filth off me. Don’t go anywhere, hear?”
The girl was conscious enough to register a sense of irony at Khushrenada’s words through her pain-wracked mind. He’d post an armed guard as soon as he left. Three blocks around would be covered with his men. There were no windows to this little office, no way out except for the door which Khushrenada exited through and locked behind him. No way for her to escape.
After he was gone, she slowly rolled to her side, putting in an immense effort just to sit up. Her flimsy excuse for a dress was little more than rags now. She was bruised and sore all over from Khushrenada’s hateful rape, humiliated in more than one way. Looking around, she found a jacket in the corner and covered herself with it, taking a seat in the softest chair in the room and trying to nurse her wounds. How low she’d fallen in only a year, she thought.
Closing her eyes, she pictured the handsome Chinese man she’d seen lurking in the corner by the office door. What had he been doing? Hope had fled her long ago, but maybe, just maybe…
“Can it, Darlian. You’re never getting out of here,” she muttered aloud to herself, leaning back in the chair to get what rest she could.
*~*~*
Half a mile down the road, Quatre was dying to know what had so upset his friend. The Chinese man rarely showed any emotion, and he was clearly upset by whatever he’d seen. Pulling over in the parking lot of a run-down Quickie Mart, he cut the engine and said, “Fess up, ’Fei, or we aren’t going another block down this goddamn road.”
Wufei looked up in surprise at the blonde, then sighed heavily. He might as well tell Quatre. “I went upstairs to see what the boss was doing. Remember the girl he had in his office with him? Well, she ran out of the office, trying to escape I figure, but she fell down and he caught her. Then I listened through the wall at what happened after he took her back in that office. Quat, the boss is a… a
monster.”
Quatre had a grim look on his face. “No shit, ’Fei. I could’a told you that from the way he treated Maxwell when he found him and Yuy together.”
Wufei nodded, murmuring softly, “Stripped naked and lashed, then hung up in headquarters as a ‘victim of the disease.’ Khushrenada’s vicious, Quat. Real vicious.”
“Yes, he is vicious, ’Fei, but he’s also our employer.” Quatre straightened in his seat, glancing at his friend with a serious look in his eyes. “We can’t exactly write a resignation and just step out of this, y’know? We have to do what we have to do.”
Wufei closed his eyes, folding his arms over his chest, and nodded. “I know, Quat. I know.”
Starting up the car again, Quatre pulled out of the desolate parking lot and started heading for the apartment he and Wufei shared, thoughts filled with memories of his long-haired friend before that fateful night that’d been his demise.
Victim of the disease… God damn it, boss, you are
a monster.
~TBC~
Kira Maxwell
KiraxMaxwell@msn.com_________________
On to Part 3!