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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SomeOtherTroper on 2024-12-03 01:56:37+00:00.

[Author’s notes]: this is where some may wish to avert their eyes. I am not writing erotica or outside the bounds of the rules, and you can skip this chapter (and probably the next one too) and get a very sanitized summary after things are over. But at the same time, I am dealing with some really goddamn heavy topics here, and I feel like a warning is in order. That may just be vanity on my part, but it has much more to do with people I’ve known who were in destructive relationships with very manipulative people.

If I get to write a seven-foot-tall Crocodilian and a human insane enough to jump into hard vacuum to cripple another spaceship, I get to say “you may wish to avert your eyes”.

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[Grace]

I punched in the code, always mindful of the gun barrel shoved into my back and the way ‘Sam’ was pulling me into it with those ziptie handcuffs. If this was just a heist, my brains would be all over the carpet in seconds after it unlocked, but since my co-workers had tried to kill me, I had no idea what to believe.

“It’s open,” I said, as the door began to retract its bolts, and …holy Christ! Was that Santiago?

“I dealt with the shark,” the Crocodilian said, everything from his face down to the cuffs of his trousers painted in blood, “so how are we going in?” he asked Sam.

“WE’RE-” and then Sam turned to look at him, “…going in very carefully. I think we all know what we’ll find down here, unless little miss hostage wants to sing like a songbird.”

I told them I knew nothing more. It was like any normal bank with safety deposit boxes - you need a bank employee to unlock your box, but what’s in it… the bank never knows.

“Convenient,” the Crocodilian rumbled, pushing through a heavy velvet curtain into a room I’d never seen before. Circular, with couches or chaise-lounges around the perimeter. The lights were a dull red.

“Looks like they all fled with the alarm,” Sam said, “let’s keep going.”

The next curtain deposited up into a small space, with a curtain on the opposite side. Sam immediately hit the button for the door on the right, and it slid open into a …pool? One that was heated enough to send steam into the atmosphere.

“[UNTRANSLATABLE]!”, Santiago yelled, stripping off his military gear in record time and diving into the pool. He looked so at home in the water, but something was tugging at the back of my mind, like fishhooks in my brain. Then I realized it, as Santiago completed his third lap: all the walls and the ceiling were mirrors.

Sam said, very levelly, “I think the opposite entrance goes straight to that penthouse casino,” and I looked behind me at what was… yeah, now that he mentioned it, that was an elevator camouflaged with the same wallpaper the normal walls were.

“Yo!” Sam yelled, “mi hermano! We have bigger fish to fry!”

“Come on,” Santiago said, toweling off, and he was a, uh, um, a, very good looking member of his species. I tried not to remember how he’d shielded me through a three-floor drop and I failed. He had a heart too. What do they call it “the Suspension Bridge Effect”? You know that thing where being in a dangerous circumstance with someone make you more favorable towards them?

“There’s something on Earth we call The Dance Of The Seven Veils,” Sam said darkly as he ushered me through the velvet curtain before him.

Nobody was in the room. It was just a makeup and dressing room. Then my mind started to put the pieces together as Sam slammed the muzzle of his rifle into the small of my back. I had to stop and collect my thoughts before answerin-

Another shove. And another. Those were going to leave bruises. “I don’t know!” I shouted, “I never knew!”

“Fine,” Sam said, pressing his gun into a new place in my back while pulling on the ziptie handcuffs, “but what do you think they’ll know?” he said, putting me facefirst against a cage, slamming my face into it, and then holding my arms so far above my head there was nothing I could do.

Faces came toward me out of the darkness, all with rabbit ears, as I had to stand on my tiptoes just to stay balanced.

“So you’re the new meat?” a voice asked. I assume it was their leader, or at least the leader in that cell.