“Okay, they’re ready for her now,” a voice came from the doorway, making me jump and look up. Another null female Sec stood there, and she was talking to Firmer.
“Okay, honey, now’s the time you get to show everybody what you can do,” Firmer said, getting out of her char. “You follow her, and I’ll follow you.
I stood up slowly, still playing scared but stubborn, and went toward the newcomer Sec. She waited until I reached her before turning and leading the way, and once I was out in the hall I understood where I was in relation to the part of the complex I knew. We were walking through the area on the inner side of the executive offices, and the women’s Medical section was just ahead. After just a few steps we were passing their lines, and they still didn’t look around in curiosity.
I was escorted through the women’s dormitory and the low dining room into the men’s area, and from there to the part of the building where all the exercising and training was done. When we moved out of the lift area we could see a small crowd of people waiting around the assignment board, mostly male with a couple of female executive types among them, and I didn’t realize the welcoming committee wasn’t official until Finner moved up to walk to my right instead of following along behind.
“I hope you’ll excuse our not stopping, but we have people waiting for us,” she said to the group in general, keeping it polite but also making it firm. “Since you were all invited, why don’t you just come along with us?”
“We prefer voicing an opinion or two ahead of the rest,” the lazy answer came as one man stepped out in front of the others, his grin full of anticipation. I didn’t have to look twice to know Jer-Mar, the very first Prime I’d met in that place, and when his blue eyes came to me I also had no trouble remembering the vicious delight they usually showed. “Well, well, sweet thing, so you’ve returned to us in ignominy. They won’t be letting Kel-Ten keep you all to himself any longer, you know, which means you’ll be available to the rest of us again. They intend seeing how well you do being tied down in a room with an open door, I hear, so I’ve already volunteered to be first. And tenth. And fiftieth. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that.”
He had moved up to stop in front of me by then, deliberately blocking our path, his mind positively writhing with delight. Firmer put a hand to my arm, obviously intending to guide me around him, but the slime wasn’t finished. Once he’d said the words meant to send me cowering to the floor at his feet, he reached a hand out and closed his fingers hard on my left breast.
Any competent tactician would know that the worst thing you can do is show your surprise reserve before the battle starts, but it wasn’t a tactician who had had so much done to her by that lower life form, it was me. Without even stopping to think about it I reached through my curtain to Jer-Mar’s mind, and then it was him doing the screaming, his face twisted in shock at the pain he felt. He went to his knees clutching his groin, his screams echoing in the otherwise silent area, and the faces of his cronies were gray with suddenly-departed gloating.
“So now we know one of the things you can do,” Firmer observed calmly, looking down at the writhing Prime. “Would you like to tell me what it is for the sake of my next report?”
To possibly keep them off your back for a little longer, was the suggestion, which might or might not have been true. At that point it hopefully didn’t matter that much, so all I did was shrug.
“He thinks he’s feeling very sensitive parts of him being squeezed in a strong, angry fist,” I answered, watching Jer-Mar collapse completely to the floor as I released him. “I’m sure you know it isn’t the pain we’re given but the pain we think we feel that hurts, so I didn’t have to touch him to do that. All I had to do was give him the proper sensations.”
“All,” the other Sec said in a mutter from my left, still staring at Jer-Mar. Firmer did no more than nod, and then we continued on our way. Behind us we left a number of very upset males, and two equally disturbed females in yellow uniforms. Quatry and her loyal assistant still hated me, but now they feared me as well.
Our final destination turned out to be one of the bigger training rooms, and there were quite a lot of people in it. Aside from white-clad Secs and black-clad trainers there were dozens of Primes dressed in their short exercise clothes, most of their minds filled with outrage and indignation. Iii been told how touchy they were when it came to being challenged, but that was just too bad about them. You didn’t have to be special to challenge someone, you just had to be good—or ready to fall. As I felt my curtain thickening against the noise I knew I wasn’t ready to fall, and wouldn’t be if I had the choice. Through the windows wed passed I’d been able to see it was almost full dark, not far from the time the attack was scheduled for.
I was led through the big room to the back of it, away from the doors to the hall where the major portion of the crowd was. There were two men in black waiting for me there, giving off the air of being in charge, but I already knew they weren’t. We were being watched and monitored from very near, from a place that was safely behind shielded walls, where those in the room could remain untouched.
“So this is the ring who thinks she can face up to Primes,” one of the trainers said as we came up, his voice dripping contempt as his mind probed toward mine. “It’s too bad we were all dragged away from what we were doing for nothing. Her mind power is so weak, I can barely detect it.”
“That makes you weak, not me,” I countered as I stopped a couple of feet in front of him, refusing to get flustered or angry or embarrassed the way he wanted me to. “If you were all that good you’d be showing off your knees like the rest of them, not wearing black from head to toe. If we’re supposed to be here for a reason, why don’t we skip the conversation and get on with it.”
The man’s face flushed as his mind filled with insult, but he realized very quickly I was just giving back what I had gotten. He didn’t seem to think I had the right to do that, but he wasn’t too thickheaded to remember I was a Prime, and one who could do things no one knew much about. He would have preferred continuing the argument, but he gritted his teeth and got on with the show instead.
“If you’re in that much of a hurry to lose, I think we can oblige you,” he said, still stiff with affront but also pleased at the thought of what he knew would be done to me. “Step right out here and we’ll get started.”
He gestured toward one of the lines on the floor before beginning to head for it, and my two Sec companions moved toward the back wall when I followed the man. They were the only other women in the room, and even though their faces were expressionless I had the strangest feeling they were hoping I wouldn’t lose. The men in that place were arrogant beyond standard for the breed, and even though female Sees would not be given the disdain used on female Primes, they must have had something they would have enjoyed getting even for. I smiled to myself just a little at that, taking it as a confirmation that nulls did feel things like everyone else after all.
“There’s no sense in having one of our absolute best waste his time on you,” the man in black announced more to the audience than to me when I joined him on the line, a smirk creasing his face. “After this is over you’ll have their attention, but not now. Prime Ind-Fam will begin, and will probably also finish. Just face him, he’ll take care of the rest.”
The man stepped away from me to the accompaniment of laughter from the watching Primes, all of them really enjoying themselves. The one who seemed happiest, though, was the brown-haired, brown-eyed man who stood facing me on a line of his own, twenty feet away if the distance indicators were accurate. That had to be Ind-Fam, of course, and he didn’t waste a minute beyond the time it took for the trainer to get out of range.