The Accidental Slave (Aya's story Part 1) (6 page)

“Go, go, go,” Jonul shouted and Kato drove
towards Mika, who was dragging Aston to the van. Jonul helped get
him in the van and then they quickly collected the young warrior
who was still passed out from the beating he had taken from
Aston.

“Drive!” Mika yelled and Kato stepped on the
pedal and hurried away. He was doing what was expected of him and
pushed away the feelings of resistance.

Aya

“Move!” Aya was forcefully pushed forward, and
stumbled to the ground. A strong grip pulled her back up and
someone repeated the command with a growl. Aya tried to comply,
terrified of the men and their brutality. She tried to walk faster
but the bag over her head challenged her equilibrium. With her
hands tied behind her, she had nothing to support her if she fell,
and she had nothing to protect her from bumping into any sharp or
dangerous object.

Aya felt another push from behind.

“Ahh.” She whimpered, frightened. All her senses
were on alert and she was trying to figure out who her kidnappers
were. Maybe local treasure hunters thinking they could get a ransom
because she was a foreigner, or maybe it was Masi warriors, who
called themselves freedom fighters. She heard talking from several
voices, all speaking Spiri fast and too mumbling for her to
understand. Aya tried to organize her thoughts and stop herself
from going into an anxiety attack.
Focus, pay attention.
Listen
, she ordered herself.
Panic won’t do you any good
right now
. A few minutes ago she had been carried down some
stairs, and the way the men’s voices carried an echo she felt sure
they had taken her to a cave or a tunnel. As she moved and stumbled
forward Aya tried her best to stay calm and avoid panic, but mental
images of worst-case scenarios played out in her mind and she
couldn’t stop crying or get her legs to stop trembling.
What do
they want with me? To kill me? Try to get a ransom? How far are
they willing to go… chop off my fingers one by one until someone
pays for me?

A sob escaped Aya. She knew the chances of
getting a huge ransom for her were unrealistic. Both her home
country, Norway, and her employers, Spread Life, had strict
policies of never paying ransom. Aya knew this. It would put
everyone at risk of being a target. The kidnappers would be
disappointed that the only people Aya could imagine would pay
anything for her were her family and friends, and none of them were
rich or able to raise millions for a ransom.

“Stop crying, bitch.” Someone snarled and a fist
hit her face. Even through the cloth bag she felt it burn on her
cheek. She swallowed her scream of fear.

“Stop,” the man behind her ordered and pushed
Aya harshly to the ground.

She lay still, listening to the men talk and
sensing them moving around her for five or ten minutes.

“It’s ready… hold her down,” a hoarse voice
commanded, and immediately a pair of strong hands pinned her down.
Aya felt her T-shirt being pulled down over her shoulder and before
she could react a burning pain made her scream out in pure
agony.

“Ahhrrgg!” It only took a few seconds but the
pain and the smell of her burned flesh made her almost pass
out.

Someone pulled her up into a sitting position
and with a rough movement the bag on her head was removed. She
looked around to get a sense of where she was. She wasn’t in a cave
or a tunnel as she had suspected. She was in a basement. The floor
was cold concrete and the walls were all bare except for the
splashes that looked like dried bloodstains. The room was not much
bigger than a standard bedroom and full of instruments that looked
like tools of interrogation and torture; on the table lay a glowing
hot iron with the Masi symbol. Aya knew before she looked down at
her shoulder that she had just been branded.

Three men were standing only a few feet away
from her. They were all dressed in dark-colored uniforms and
leather boots. The oldest of them was around fifty and projected
authority with the way he stood and talked. He was of medium build
with a round belly, and had gray hair and cold gray eyes that she
didn’t like. On his black uniform she saw the name Mantonis. Aya
knew that name. This was the man most hated in the refugee camp,
and she had learned about him during her briefing in London.
Mantonis had been the biggest slave owner in the country and one of
the primary forces behind the revolution. In camp he was mostly
referred to as Satan’s Son.

Aya’s eyes moved to the other two men. One of
them she couldn’t see clearly because he had his back to her, but
the third one was the one that scared her the most. He was in his
late thirties, and Aya recognized his rusty voice; he was the one
who had pushed her and growled at her. The man was tall and had a
big beard that was probably meant to distract from the fact that
his face had many ugly scars. The lines were still pink so the
wounds couldn’t be more than a month or two old. It wasn’t marks of
a knife; more like bite marks and scratches from claws. Maybe he
had been attacked by an animal. Whatever it was, the wounds weren’t
healing well.

“Search her,” Scarface grunted, and the third
man turned and bowed down in front of her.

A pair of amber brown eyes locked with hers.

“You!” Aya gasped.

This was the man from the marketplace. He was
withdrawn and cold but definitely the same man she had collided
with a few weeks back – even his scent was the same – but this time
her anger towards him overshadowed the strong attraction she had
felt earlier.

Scarface growled impatiently behind them and it
made the man from the market pull Aya up. He was half a head taller
than her and once again they were standing very close, Aya with wet
and scared eyes and he with an impassive expression that was so
different from the curious glance she had met the first time she
saw him. He leaned closer and slid his hands to her behind, feeling
her jeans pockets, and then to the front, where he searched her
front pockets. Aya turned her head away, disgusted that she had
actually had sexual fantasies about this man’s hands on her body.
Now she wanted nothing more than to spit at him and knee him in his
balls for touching her without her consent, but her body was still
in so much pain from the burning and the hitting that she decided
to stand still and wait. Not that she had much choice; she was well
aware that she couldn’t fight off three grown men with or without
her hands tied behind her back.

When the young man didn’t find anything, his
hands slid up her hips under her T-shirt and stopped when he found
the pouch around her belly. It only took seconds, but every stroke
of his hands on her body felt like a violation and she shot him a
hateful glance.

With a quick jerk he pulled her against him
while he unbuckled the pouch on her back. Aya tried to pull back to
avoid her body’s physical reaction to his warmth and masculine
scent but the surge in her stomach was instinctive and made her
flush with shame.

“Here.” The young man released her to hand the
pouch to Mantonis, who reached out with a smug smile while Scarface
stepped closer with a raised hand, hissing for Aya to sit down. She
quickly complied to avoid being smacked again.

A sound from the doorway made all three men turn
to face the door. They automatically held up their weapons, but
lowered them when they recognized a short and bald man entering.
Aya took only one glance at him but immediately looked down when
she saw his eyes. She had seen dilated pupils like his before and
they always meant trouble. The man looked high, crazy, and
unpredictable, like a walking time bomb that could blow up in rage
any second.

The newcomer brought Aston with him and pushed
him down beside Aya. With a rough movement he pulled the bag from
Aston’s head.

Aston looked relieved to see her again and
forced a small smile, probably meant to calm her; but seeing him so
dirty, bruised, and bleeding made Aya’s heart ache and her tears
pour out again. Aston had clearly taken a severe beating and Aya
was scared beyond anything she had ever experienced, fearing that
neither of them would get out alive.

“What are they going to do to us?” The sound of
her whisper made the man from the marketplace look back at her. He
frowned, shook his head, and put a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

Aston whispered back and moved closer to Aya.
“All I know is that we are at the Masi headquarter.” And then his
eyes fell on the Masi symbol branded on her shoulder. He closed his
eyes and lost all color in his face.

His strong reaction affected her and the
pressure in her chest became heavier, making it hard to breath.
“What if they kill us?”

Aston couldn’t touch her with his hands tied
together, but he leaned towards her and tried comforting her.
“Don’t worry, Aya, we are worth more living than dead. They won’t
kill us.”

Aya wasn’t convinced, and whimpered when the
little bald guy kicked Aston to keep him quiet.

The old man squatted down in front of them with
a sadistic smile on his face.

“Where are you from?” he asked Aston.

“England,” Aston answered shortly.

“Ah, England. The country that is fighting
against us.” The old man spit on the floor before Aston to signal
his disgust.

“And you, blondie, where are you from?” He was
looking at Aya, who blinked with her frightened big blue eyes.

“She’s from Norway, she speaks only a little
Spiri,” Aston explained and received a growl in return. Thoughts of
beautiful Norway filled Aya. All her family and friends had warned
her not to go to Spirima, and for the first time she really wished
that she had listened to them. She wished she were back in
Norway.

“Why are you here?” The old man looked down to
the logo on Aston’s uniform.

“Aya is a nurse at the refugee camp. I work with
security,” Aston said almost fluently.

The old man barked orders at Aston’s captor, and
only now did Aya see that the man was bleeding from his shoulder.
The short bald guy immediately kicked Aston again and shouted at
him to get up. Aston moaned in pain and Aya screamed when Aston was
brutally pushed out of the room. She called for him and tried to
kick herself off the ground. It only resulted in Scarface’s
instantly smacking her with his hand and pushing her back down
again.

Sitting on the cold floor, Aya cried heavily and
cursed them all for doing this to her and Aston. “I came to Spirima
to help. I’m a nurse. I’m not the enemy,” she cried. Her words were
few but she was too scared to think straight and form any long
complicated sentences in Spiri.

Scarface kneeled down beside her and stroked her
face. “Just do as we say and you’ll be fine.”

Aya pulled her head away, feeling repulsed by
his touch. “Don’t touch me!” she hissed at him, and he instantly
smacked her across the face again – this time making her taste
blood on her lip.

“What’s your last name?” The old man was looking
straight at her.

Aya didn’t know if she should cooperate or not,
so she didn’t answer. The old guy opened her ID papers and looked
through them.

“Ah, Aya Johansen, and you really are
Norwegian,” he stated. “And let’s see how old you are…
twenty-three.”

While Mantonis was still searching through her
things, Scarface was looking at her like he was enjoying the show
and found it amusing to see her so frightened. Everything about him
repulsed her. Especially his nasty smirk and his small staring
eyes. There was no kindness coming from him. He made a low comment
to the old man that she couldn’t hear, but Aya understood what he
had said when Mantonis leaned closer and asked: “Aya Johansen… are
you a virgin?”

Aya swallowed air and her heart stopped. What
was the right thing to answer? Would she be spared if she were an
innocent virgin? She didn’t know, and she could feel panic setting
in as the old guy repeated his question louder and more
impatiently.

Aya hesitated, but when Scarface stepped towards
her with a raised hand and rage in his eyes, clearly about to smack
her again, she cried out, “I’m a virgin” hoping it was the right
answer and that they wouldn’t have a way to check.

Scarface licked his lips and ogled her while
making a comment to the man with amber eyes, who looked away with
knitted brows when Scarface kneeled down next to Aya again,
touching her long blond hair. Aya held her breath and closed her
eyes to avoid his closeness but she could still hear him sniff her
in and feel him touch her face. With a rough grip he forced her
mouth open to inspect her teeth.
I’m not a fucking horse for
sale, get your stinking hands off me!
Aya screamed internally
and pulled away from him. Her resistance only made him laugh
condescendingly and force her head back to him, making the smell of
his bad breath overwhelming. She was disgusted and froze when he
licked her earlobe and laughed. With his demonstration of power he
stood up and pointed at her. “I’ll take her.” Aya understood enough
Spiri to know that the most disgusting man she had ever met had
just claimed her as his.

Aya hardly noticed the young man from the market
place putting a large bandage over her burn mark on the shoulder.
“It’ll keep the wound clean,” he said in a low voice but she was
completely focused on Mantonis, who nodded and patted Scarface on
the shoulder when he pulled out money and paid the old man.

Pure panic made Aya crawl backwards pressing
herself towards the wall and screaming “No, No!” She would rather
die than ever be close to Scarface again. Her reaction only made
Mantonis and Scarface laugh and joke about her being a wild thing.
Now she understood why Mantonis was called Satan’s Son; he truly
was evil. Aya turned her face and appealed to the young man from
the marketplace. “Please help me,” she begged and saw pity in his
eyes.