Confined Love by Lacey Thorn Read Free Book Online Page B

for his eyes, which seemed cold as ice. “He is known as The Auctioneer.
Anything you want, he can find and get it for you. He runs most of the crime
syndicates in the fifth. Drugs were his mainstay for years until he discovered
something that the men of that quadrant wanted more. Women.”
    “Why are there no women there?”
    “The fifth was once used as a prison center. The worst
element of society was shipped there and held away from the rest of society.
Enforcers guarded it for years until a new technology was created,” Radek
answered.
    Kain took over the story. “The technology was robotic in
nature. Allowing the prison to be run from a shuttle that circled above. Doors
were locked and unlocked by remote. All prisoners were implanted with anodes in
the backs of their necks. Once inserted below the skin, the anodes grafted to
the top of the spine, becoming part of them. This enabled control. Any issues
or problems and an electric current could be sent through the anode.”
    “So what went wrong?” Obviously something had or we wouldn’t
be heading there.
    “The shuttle operators began to give certain prisoners the
ability to control certain processes from the ground.” Xanthus heaved a sigh.
“And one of them managed to bring it all down.”
    “They had misplaced his file. Didn’t realize what he had
been sent there for. He was a model prisoner and was rewarded for it.” Kain
shook his head with disgust. “Someone dropped the ball. He was a bio-scientist
who managed to figure out how to counter the spine grafts. Once those were
destroyed they took over.”
    “And the fifth quadrant became a haven for the criminal
minded.” Radek seethed with anger beside me.
    “What about the shuttle that was patrolling? Wasn’t this
reported to them?”
    “Not soon enough,” Xanthus responded. “By the time the
command post realized what was happening, they had overrun the place. Weapons
had been stored there from when we had Enforcers on site. They found them, took
them and used them very expertly against us.”
    “And a war zone was created.” Kain sighed as he spoke.
    More pictures flashed up. These showed exactly what the
women were used for. Half naked, chained to the beds. Some were obviously drugged
out of their minds. It made me sick, the lunch I’d been eating pushed aside.
Sex was no longer on my mind. Bruised skin. Blood and semen. These women didn’t
enjoy the sex they were forced to participate in. It disgusted me.
    “How many?”
    “What?” Xanthus glanced over at me. I interrupted something
he’d been saying but I hadn’t been listening anyway.
    “How many women are believed to be there? Held like this?”
    “We don’t know for sure,” Kain answered. “We discover new
places all the time. Close one down and another pops up.”
    “Drugs are the other main trade. Don’t eat or drink anything
we come across there. If it’s not on this shuttle, we don’t consume it. No
exceptions. Ever. In the field it can be difficult to determine friend from
foe. Remember that.” Radek delivered this warning with a squeeze of my arm.
    “Trust no one who isn’t a part of this team.” Xanthus’ gaze
was intense.
    “Understood.” I nodded.
    This was far more than I’d heard rumored. A former prison
zone. No one at home knew about this or even hinted of it. I had my ear to the
ground and I would have heard about it. Barring that, Emma or Mandy would have.
And I was headed right into the center of it. “So what are we doing there?”
    “We’ll be heading into zone 4.”
    A map came up and Xanthus pointed to the zone as he shared
where we were going.
    “We’ll start with a perimeter check and work our way in. We
have several hot spots we’ll be checking on.”
    Kain did a zoom-in on zone 4.
    “Those are located here, here and here.” Radek pointed them
out. “These are known slave houses. We shut ’em down and they open right back
up in a few weeks.”
    “We are recon. We do a visual scan