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  Dom was bathed in bliss, his eyes shut, a perpetual stupid grin on his face as Maximillia's head bobbed up and down on his tumescent thickness. She started increasing her tempo, snaking her tongue along his length which he felt instantly. “There you go. Just like that.”

  He reached over her back and rubbed her ass, slapping it, forcing her to wince, choking for a moment on him. She had to prepare to act and at the most opportune time. A second too early or too late could spell failure.

  From her peripheral vision, she noticed his grip on the coilarm slackening as she continued to work his meat. The timing had to be perfect.

  His head was cocked back, eyes still closed. “I’m getting close, baby. Don’t you stop. Don’t you dare stop.”

  As she sucked Dom’s rock-solid pillar, Maximillia tasted the faint trickle of pre-cum rolling onto her tongue. He was very close, so she sucked faster and harder.

  He laughed. “I think you’re starting to enjoy this! Good. Daddy’s almost there. Just a few more seconds.”

  The pre-cum trickled in heavier. She knew he was about to blow. Then, his cock twitched in her mouth, followed by a thick glob of cum which pooled onto her tongue. She had to move now!

  Maximillia pulled her lips off of Dom’s cock and lunged for the coilarm. Feeling her hands on the gun, he snapped back from the edge of rapture and tightened his grip. She wrestled him for it and he tumbled out of the seat, falling on top of her. She put her finger on the trigger and pressed it, firing oranium rings through the body of the limo.

  “You little bitch! You wanna play, huh? We’ll play!”

  She put her entire body into the struggle, swinging the coilarm down and firing again, piercing through the ceiling and down through the front of the limo. Several shots punctured the main control panel, frying the navigational systems, sending the limo veering off-course.

  The car swung off the maglev track and rolled, tumbling end over end. Dom and Maximillia were thrown about the cab, smashing against the insides of the limo. Finally, the limo slid face first, crashing into the bottom of a trench beside the track.

  Maximillia awoke to the smell of smoke. Shards of glass had sliced up her arms and legs. Her nose was bleeding, but she was alive. Dom was folded up in a horrible contortion, plopped upside-down in the corner, his jaw mangled asunder and half of his face sheared off, his dead eyes wide open. Her shorts and panties were on opposite sides of the overturned limo. She snatched them up, put them on and crawled through a broken window as the crumpled limo caught fire. The sound of law enforcement vehicles and emergency transport sirens were indisputable.

  The federal police arrived, a contingent of their personnel vehicles rolling up to the maglev track. The police piled out of the vans, armed to the teeth, and unfurled out across the scene. Maximillia saw the ivory-armored behemoths closing in and dropped to her knees, letting her arms hang limply at her sides. The cops saw the unthreatening waif near the wreck and lowered their weapons.

  ***

  The interrogation room was starkly lit, nearly blinding white light cascaded about the small, domed chamber. Through squinted eyes, Maximillia glanced about, dressed in the unflattering togs of a police prisoner. The face of a female federal interrogator materialized on the wall-screen in front of her. A typical humorless employee of the state; all business and no play. A wall of text crawled up beside the interrogator's firm visage. It was Maximillia's case file: vital statistics, rap sheet, medical history and other miscellaneous tidbits.

  "Can you confirm the validity of this data and that it applies to you?" the interrogator asked coldly.

  "Yes," the girl nodded, trembling in her seat.

  "Alright, Maximillia. Last night you were found near the wreckage of a limousine off of route 41. One Dom Tsen-Tze was amidst the wreckage, deceased. You want to tell me what the nature of your relationship with him was?"

  Maximillia nodded, troubled but relieved. "Okay," she said, turning to face the interrogator again. "It's complicated."

  "You know, we recovered the storage drives from the limo's on-board video and audio recorders. We saw and heard everything that happened in there."

  The young girl had sunken into her seat and was glaring at the interrogator through a curtain of her dark locks. "Then, you know I didn't kill him."

  "The evidence was clear that you acted in self-defense."

  "So then you know what happened. Why do you need me?"

  The interrogator seemed to deviate from her script. "Maximillia, we know everything. We have for months. We've been running a multi-agency operation on the Tsen-Tzes utilizing full-spectrum surveillance. We know about Dom, your pal Mardo, the Bruisers and we've got detailed files on all the rackets the Tsen-Tzes have been running. We've got intel on their entire criminal network: the drug-running, prostitution, Xartha's, the off-world stuff. We've got it all. Look, we know you're just a foot soldier. What we need is your testimony. A lot of the intel we have isn't admissible in court. You've been on the inside. You know all the players. You are one. You're just a worker bee, but you are a member of the hive. We even know where you were before Dom picked you up."

  Maximillia's eyes glazed over, a weak resistance welling up in her. "Where was I?"

  The interrogator sat forward and exhaled, a sudden humanity pouring from her. Now she was just a woman, her armor removed. "I know you lost your baby."

  The girl couldn't shield her weakness any longer as her lips began to tremble.

  "We want to nail Mardo and we've got the Tsen-Tzes on the ropes, but we'd need your testimony to drive that final nail into the coffin," the interrogator said with a warm frankness. "You know, I wasn't always in a uniform. I used to be just like you. I had a rap sheet. I was going to be a young mom, but I lost her."

  Maximillia could see that the interrogator's words were true. Her ability to discern deception had become razor-sharp and, whatever the circumstances, this uniformed officer of the law, this rigid steward of justice, her story wasn't a fabrication. She was pouring out her heart when she didn't need to. Maximillia kept quiet, but her glazed, teary eyes exposed her.

  "I had to make a choice to turn my life around," the interrogator continued. "I could've chosen to die in the muck or change the script and remake myself into someone I could look at in a mirror. No one could force me to do it. I had to choose. If you don't care about yourself you've probably got someone in your life who does. If not for yourself, do it for them."

  As the tears flowed, Maximillia lowered her head, sniffling.

  "Will you help us nail these guys?" the interrogator finally asked, a vigilant resolve in her voice.

  The girl looked up and wiped away the tears, fighting off the sorrow.

  ***

  Gareth, Maximillia's father, levitated into a windowless, cylindrical room via his hoverchair, escorted by a police official.

  “The transmission will begin shortly. If you need anything I’ll be right outside,” she said.

  “Okay, thank you.”

  The worriment showed on his face. A three-dimensional holographic effigy of Maximillia materialized before Gareth.

  “Hi, dad,” she said with a sheepish shame in her digitized voice.

  “Maxie, what happened?” he asked, panic-stricken.

  All she could do was shake her head.

  “It’s okay. Papa’s here. I just want to know what happened. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’ve been so stupid,” she confessed.

  “Well, tell me. I’m going to love you no matter what. You get mixed up with some bad people? What did you do?”

  “I just wanted to tell you before the sentencing that I love you. I know I’ve been difficult, but I just—I just made a lot of bad choices. Met a lot of bad people.”

  “But, are you okay?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, dad. I’m okay. I just have to get through this. I don’t know how this is going to go. No matter what happens, though, I love you.”

  The trial was merely p
reparation for the slaughter. Maximillia testified to having intimate knowledge of the prostitution operation at Xartha’s. This included client lists as well as an awareness of drug trafficking—including refined Gatekeeper—on the premises. She gave the authorities everything they needed to drop the hammer on the entire network of Tsen-Tze operations, and they moved quickly.

  The feds were granted a court-ordered warrant and executed a bust on Xartha’s. Their findings were consistent with Maximillia’s detailed testimony. Hundreds of clients whose names were on the archived records were convicted. The Tsen-Tzes' prostitution ring was dismantled completely, but, unbeknownst to Maximillia, they also owned—and had been running through other phony subsidiaries—multiple front companies that acted as clandestine sites for the solicitation and distribution of prostitution all over Mandra Bay and the adjacent city sectors: massage parlors, augmented reality cafes, shuttle depot terminals, temporary dormancy cell blocks and cantinas among others. Not only that, but the kylaxian syndicate also had their plated claws in a human and alien trafficking racket that involved slave labor for off-world clientele. Vaika plead guilty and opted to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for her freedom.

  Olympus fell screaming from the heavens and crumbled against the craggy earth below as the Tsen-Tze hierarchy were implicated on a growing mountain of state and federal violations. The limo crash ended up both convicting and exonerating Maximillia of her own crimes. The video files confirmed that Maximillia acted in self-defense. Dom wasn't murdered. He was a victim of his own hubris.

  Maximillia's various criminal associations with Mardo and the Bruisers were taken into account when the time for sentencing arrived. Ultimately, for her extensive cooperation with the feds, the judge handed down a fair, yet lenient judgment: four years in a segregated correctional facility for women accompanied by two years of probation involving mandatory enrollment into a work release program. She accepted, both humbled and shamed by the public circus surrounding her trials and the related trials.

  The Tsen-Tzes' stranglehold on the criminal rackets in the sector was viciously razed, leaving them scrambling for relevance in the greater sphere of the underworld’s gang hierarchies. They were marginalized and, seeing them in their weakened states, a power vacuum sprung up to decide who would claim their territories. As they are wont to do, the warring gangs battled it out with animalistic fervor, shedding blood in the streets.

  Maximillia waited in the lobby of the district lockup—shackles, jail togs and all—for the Angel Falls Correctional Facility shuttle to arrive when a familiar face was walked in: Taryn.

  A security guard sat Taryn down next to Maximillia. They looked at each other with sheepish grins, almost admiring the other in their unflattering uniforms and matching

  magna-shackles.

  “I’m sorry,” Maximillia said.

  Taryn shook her head, a softness in her eyes. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. We didn’t exactly have much choice, did we?"

  “Did you ever think of running out?” Maximillia hoped Taryn’s answer was the same as hers.

  “Yeah, but where was I going to go? Neither one of us had an out, I guess.”

  “We were so stupid.”

  “We were. But, are you alright? Did Dom try to—,” Taryn didn’t want to finish her sentence.

  All Maximillia could do was nod.

  “So, what now?” Taryn asked.

  “Well, a few years up at Angel Falls, I guess. You?”

  “They’re sending me up to Jeeno. Did I tell you?”

  Maximillia was genuinely caught alight by the question. It was the first time she felt like a normal, gossipy girl in what seemed like ages. “No, what?”

  Taryn rubbed her belly. “I’m pregnant.”

  Maximillia’s eyes grew three sizes as her jaw dropped. She leaned over and hugged her friend. “I’m so happy for you!” She was puzzled, though.

  “Chota,” Taryn clarified.

  “Is he staying with you?”

  “Probably not. There’s probably a couple other girls in the group that are just as pregnant as I am with his babies.” A melancholy cascaded down her face. “I’m sorry... about what happened... with yours.”

  Maximillia exhaled, looking down. “Thanks.”

  The Angel Falls shuttle hovered in, flashing landing lights and a whooping siren announcing its arrival. Maximillia looked at Taryn and they shared another hug. “Keep in touch, okay? Be strong. For both of you,” Maximillia offered, glancing down at her budding belly.

  “I will. You stay strong, too.”

  The two friends giggled, their eyes welling up with tears. Sniffles followed, but there wasn’t time left for that.

  “Prisoner, your shuttle has arrived,” Maximillia’s guard reminded.

  The girls waved goodbye to each other as the guard escorted Maximillia through the shuttle’s open doors and helped her buckle in. She never took her eyes off of her friend; the two of them shared weak, hopeful smiles through the shuttle door’s plasma-glass window.

  The door slid shut and the shuttle rose with a throbbing whine, barreling off into the sky. Maximillia would never see Taryn again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Angel Falls Correctional Facility for Women had all the charisma of a cinderblock. It had the architectural design of a hospital but exuded the oppressively haunting vibe of a militaristic reeducation camp.

  New inmates were forced to undergo a birth control procedure, completely temporary and reversible, but mandatory upon arrival, as well as undergoing an "ultra rapid" detoxification therapy for those who were hooked on whatever Mandra Bay and the outlying districts lured them into. Maximillia was technically still addicted to Gatekeeper, but by that point she'd been so saturated in the drink that it had lost much of its efficacy and she'd become numb to it. She still craved it from time to time but it was a diluted lust. Even still, she went through rapid detox and purged what little hungering she had for it, once and for all.

  After the preliminary processing, Maximillia was finally introduced to her cell, which was an open bay living area with five other girls. They were largely low-threat D-level criminals whose transgressions involved public drunkenness, trespassing, public indecency and disturbing the peace. Regretful singular choices. Most of them wouldn’t be back inside. The conditions were cold and uninviting enough to scare them straight.

  Mardo, Dom and most of her clientele at Xartha’s used to bombard Maximillia with compliments about her long, dark head of hair. It was a physical attribute of hers that they’d fetishized, one that had made her invaluably exotic. Her hair had absorbed gallons of semen from both humans and aliens. The mane that had attracted her so much attention had become a parasitic albatross. She had a love/hate relationship with it and had stopped brushing it months ago; it had become a tangled, bushy mess. Still beautiful, but dangerously so.

  One of the first choices she made upon arriving at the facility was to visit the on-site hairdresser. She made the clinical decision to part with those thick tresses and had her head shaved. When she looked in the mirror for the first time and saw her shorn head, she had no regrets; she was liberated from that thing she was so wholly coveted for. It was an impediment she reveled in ridding herself of. She rubbed her bald head and a sense of celebratory liberty washed over her.

  Not all of the girls were one-time visitors just itching to get rehabilitate themselves, get back into the world and become productive members of society, though. Some of the girls were irredeemably scarred. There were cliques, as there always are. Maximillia steered clear of most of them. They were attention-seeking, trouble-attracting vortices of mutual misery. Most of the girls in these cliques craved the lack of freedom and the tyrannical rule of the state’s ineffectual correctional programming. They didn’t want to be out. Angel Falls was their home. Maximillia had little in common with them.

  Still, though, their interests bled over into hers and she had to deal with them constantly. It began with tens
e staring from across the cafeteria, with those girls sharing hushed, mysterious whispers between their lots leaving Maximillia wondering what they were conspiring. Then, the slight verbal digs began. These smirking demons would utter aloud to themselves in the recreational hall how strangely large Maximillia’s eyes were within earshot of her. They’d wax philosophical about how many men she’d fucked and berate her on her sexual prowess. She knew they were baiting her. She was only mildly amused at first, but the aggravation grew into a simmering, muted ire.

  One of the veteran girls was an older tarian woman named Zenna. She had already done a solid seven years inside which carved her into a stoic introvert who exuded a cool, impenetrable pride. She knew the mean girls of Angel Falls well. She called them Zohtahni, which was a tarian colloquialism, which roughly translated into “scarred women who scar”. The Angel Falls Zohtahni had never bothered her. Zenna wasn’t a threat to them. She was an old soldier whose scars had already healed over. She had their unspoken respect. Maximillia was fresh meat, though; young and beautiful. She was a girl who possessed everything they coveted: hope and potential.

  Then, things got physical. The Zohtahni noticed Maximillia’s scars. They posited that she didn’t get them from being a predator, but rather by being efficient prey. They didn’t know whom she’d been prey for, but it didn’t matter. First, it was light pushing as they emerged from the dining hall and crossed paths with Maximillia. A few quick shoulder bumps would be the territorial declaration about who was in charge. She blew off these physical altercations at first. She could see the light of freedom in the distance of the dark tunnel she’d fallen into and didn’t want to deter herself from the path towards it. Unfortunately, getting jumped in the showers

  didn’t leave Maximillia with many options.

  It wasn’t long after that that Zenna took Maximillia under her wing. The older tarian was a lesbian, as were a few of the other girls. Maximillia knew a few Bruisers back at the compound who were so the revelation wasn’t a stunning one. The tarian had a bit of a masculine swagger that had hinted at some alternative sexual orientation. Many of the girls in lock-up were either lesbians or temporarily bi-curious, either due to violent coercion by other girls or just by the lack of contact with men that had driven their sexual curiosities into full-swing.