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The world around Melissa is fuzzy, out of focus. Like when the television at home breaks, the holographs jerk around and look blurry. That is what Melissa is seeing.
Even through that blurriness, she can see that she isn't at home. Home is a small room, a soft bed, pink walls. Home is not an even smaller room, a bed which feels like concrete, grey walls.
Groaning, she reaches up to rub her aching head. Something metal brushes across her face, and when she rubs her head something hard and cold knocks into it. Blinking, she looks at her hand. There is something metal locked around it, like a manacle. And a chain attached to it, leading off.
She jolts awake properly, scrambling to sit up. She is sitting on a concrete slab that may be trying to emulate a bed. There is a manacle attached to each wrist, with chains attached to loops on the walls. One wall of the small room is steel bars, presumably a door. Outside is a sterile white corridor. There is a copy of the room opposite, the exact same. Although there is no inhabitant.
She springs up to pace around, her mind racing. What could this place be? It looks like a prison cell, although the chains and bars suggest to her those prison cells from old movies. She hasn't been arrested before, but she has seen enough movies to know how it works. How it looks. And it doesn't look like this.
Besides, what could she have been arrested for? She hasn't done anything, she's sure.
So her thoughts swirl around like a hurricane, buffeting her back and forth as she paces in her tiny cell. She can move around it fine; the chains are long enough. They would prevent her from actually leaving, though.
She finds that she is scared. There is no way that this is good, that it can end well. If she hasn't been arrested, then she must've been kidnapped. But who? What kind of freak would have a place like this in their basement or whatever? And why would anyone kidnap her, the daughter of a firefighter? They aren't exactly rolling in v-cash.
She hears footsteps coming along the corridor. Jumping, she steps to the back of the cell, as far away as possible from the door. Pressing her back against the wall, she waits for her captors.
When they arrive, she is surprised. They are dressed oddly. The woman is wearing a white dress, but it looks old fashioned. Like something they wore hundreds of years ago. What century was it- the 18th, maybe later than that? She isn't exactly an expert on historical fashion. The man is wearing a black jacket and white shirt, but even then, they look like museum pieces. Maybe it was the 21st century?
Taking a deep breath, she steels herself. "Who are you?" She asks, glaring at them. "Why am I here?"
The woman replies. "You are here because of the Libel and Slander Act." She explains coldly, blatantly ignoring the first question. "This law tightened regulations on spreading false information about a company or individual and harshened the penalty for this."
"I know the Libel and Slander Act." Melissa retorts scornfully. "That doesn't explain why I'm here."
"Because you posted false and inflammatory statements about a corporation on the V-Net." The man chimes in. "Which is a crime. Under the Libel and Slander Act, which you claim to know."
Melissa stares. "What?! No, I didn't." She scowls. "Yeah, I posted some stuff about V-Tech. But that wasn't libel! They were planning to tear down the clock tower, that's not a lie."
The woman removes a V-Tablet from her pocket and checks something. "Quoting you directly: 'that company has too much power and they abuse it constantly. everything bad in the country is their fault. I don't understand why everyone loves them, they're evil', end quote." She raises an eyebrow at Melissa. "Those are some bold accusations, kid. And that’s only one of many."
Melissa shakes her head violently. "That's not libel either! I was just angry and saying stuff!" This whole situation makes no sense. "You can say stuff like that, free speech!"
The woman scoffs. "You know, I thought from all your complaining about V-Tech being evil, you would be smarter than that."
"What does that mean?" Melissa asks. She feels strange, cold.
"You can say 'stuff like that' about anyone aside from V-Tech." The man says simply.
Anxiety squirms in Melissa's stomach. "That doesn't make any sense." She snaps. "Besides, even if I did libel, where am I? This is not a prison cell; this is some messed up murder dungeon!"
"Actually, it is a cell in the storage area of V-Labs." The woman explains. "V-Tech is able to, due to cooperation with the national government, handle crimes committed against itself. Which is why you are here."
Melissa looks down at her hands and sees that she is shaking. Badly. Her head feels thick, her chest feels cold. None of this makes any sense. "This can't be legal."
"Oh, it is. V-Tech never breaks the law." The woman chuckles. "They just make it work for them."
The words spin and spin around Melissa's head, like a tornado. "V-Tech really is an evil corporation." She mutters, realisation dawning on her like possibly the worst new day to ever begin. "That's why no one ever complains about them, because if they do..."
"There we go." The man says. Melissa just stands still, finding hard to get her head around the words that she said herself. This is why people refused to talk to her about V-Tech, why her father kept begging her to stop. "Now, onto business. We have an offer."
"I'm sure it'll be a great one." Melissa snarks, lifting her head to glare at them again. "I don't suppose it involves you letting me go?"
"No." The woman says. "It involves you signing a contract."
She turns her V-Tablet around so Melissa can see the hologram floating above it. A page of complicated, legal words. She squints at it. "Let me summarise it." The woman says. "I'm sure we would all prefer to finish this so we can go for lunch. In signing this contract, you are giving yourself to V-Tech. You would sign away your rights, really you sign away your personhood, to become property of V-Tech."
Melissa just stares. "What?! Why would I sign that?!" She snaps, fear and anger battling for control of her tongue.
"Because it's your only option." The woman presses down on the screen of the tablet. The contract prints out and falls at Melissa's feet. A pen joins it a few moments later. "
"I'd rather go to prison." Melissa spits, fire dancing in her eyes.
"You aren't going to prison." The man says. "You are staying in here until you sign that contract."
Melissa kicks it away. The contract flutters to the ground at the woman's feet, the pen nearly collides with the man. "I'd rather die than sign that."
"Interesting choice." The woman remarks. She strides back to the door. "Let's see how long it takes for you to change your mind."
Fury and fear send Melissa forward, push her to lunge at the pair. They easily step out of the way, leaving her to tumble to the floor. She is far enough away for the chains to be taut, so they hold her arms backwards. She winces but refuses to give them the satisfaction of showing the pain any more than that.
The door slides shut. She is left alone.
———
She ignores the contract. She paces around, glaring through the fear. But hours pass, and she is still left alone. Alone aside from that stupid contract, which smirks at her from the floor. She kicks it again.
She is starving, but food doesn't come. Her stomach yells at her, growling like an angry tiger. She drinks from the small metal sink, but that doesn't help much with the hunger. Groaning, she sits back down on the bed.
She doesn't want to fall asleep in here. Not in this horrible place, not when she is surely being watched. She doesn't want to be helpless.
But though she holds herself awake for hours, exhaustion soon combines with hunger to overcome her. She curls up on the uncomfortable excuse for a bed, and sleep soon drags her down.
She shoots awake, drenched in sweat, tears burning in her eyes after a nightmare. She wraps her arms around her shivering form, wincing when the edge of the manacles dig into her. She wants to go back to sleep, she wants to pretend that she isn’t here. Fear has a tight grip on her heart, squeezing tightly.
The only thing squeezing more than her heart is her stomach. Growling, twisting and turning, she is so hungry that it hurts.
She waits on tenterhooks all day for her captors to come back. Will they hurt her to force her to sigh their contract? But they don’t, they leave her alone. She is left alone all day in the monotonous silence of her cell, her stomach the loudest noise.
It is only after hours, when she is beginning to become weak from hunger, that she suspects what they are doing. I’d rather die than sign that.
Oh Melissa Chase, you idiot.
Surely they can’t be doing that, surely that’s too far even for them. But hours and hours and hours pass. And they haven’t fed her. They’re trying to starve her to force her hand.
Well, she can hold on. People can survive a while without food, and they can’t kill her. Surely they can’t. She won’t give in, she has to stay strong.
She goes to sleep. When she wakes up, she is still alone in her cell. She drinks a lot of water, which doesn’t fill her up. She finds that pacing is too much effort, it is easier to just sit still. She thinks, which is not good because there aren’t many good things for her to think about. And far too many bad things.
What would they do to her if she signed the contract? She has no idea what they could want with her, but it certainly wouldn’t be good. She shivers at the thought- while she has no idea, her imagination can create hundreds of scenarios. Each worse than the last.
She used to look up to Victor Verliezer. She thought he was clever, and she always admired cleverness. When she got older, her opinion changed. Soured. She came to hate V-Tech.
Hated it without understanding. If V-Tech can do this, if they have this much power, then she didn’t hate them enough. Her annoyance, her vague hatred, all done without understanding. And now she knows that V-Tech is more powerful, more dangerous, more evil, than she ever could have imagined.
She has plenty of time to think about that. In between nightmare plagued hours of sleep, are hours of monotony. Of pain. She is lethargic, often dizzy. She finds that she is losing her desire to drink, although she knows that she has to. She spends most of those long, long hours huddled on the concrete slab that is her bed. Thinking. Fearing. Crying.
She just wants to go home. She would never cause any more trouble, never say anything else against them, if she could just go home to her dad. In a moment of weakness, she tells the walls that. She knows that she is being watched, and she pleads with the mysterious watchers.
If they hear her pitiful pleas, they ignore her. And she regrets it, because she knows now that she has to do something about this, not hide for her own safety. She doesn’t want to break down and beg, but the longer this goes on for the stronger the urge gets. Sometimes the urge is stronger than the hunger.
Is she getting thinner? She thinks that she might be. The manacles seem to squeeze a little less, her clothes seem to hang a little looser. She tries her best to ignore that, huddles and closes her eyes and prays. Waits.
Time passes and passes and passes, until a thought permeates through the haze. A simple one, an obvious one. One that she should have known all along, that maybe she did. They aren’t going to relent if she just holds on. She either signs that contract or starves to death.
If she was a stronger person, a braver person, it would be an easy choice. But she is so cold, and so weak, and so frightened. She doesn’t want to die here, alone in a cell. She wants the pain to stop.
Besides, she reasons, even if she signs it she can’t be forced to follow it. Not forever. This isn’t some magic fairy story, she knows that she can find a way out of it. But she will never find a way out if she stays in here. Logically, the choice is clear.
In reality, the choice is like a dark forest. She can’t see into it, she doesn’t know if she will ever get out of it. But she has no choice, as much as she burns with helpless rage and fear. She never had a choice.
Hands shaking, she picks up the pen and scribbles her name on the line. As soon as she does, shame floods through her. She should’ve held on. Should have kept her word. Should’ve died rather than give in.
But she can’t. She can’t do that. It hurts too much, she feels too bad. Tears burn in her eyes, she reaches up to wipe them with a shaky hand. Her breaths are choked with harsh sobs, although she tries to keep them in. She presses her hands to her face and trembles.
She hears footsteps. She looks up to see someone scanning their eyes in the door to her cell. Someone very, very familiar. “Victor Verliezer?” She asks weakly, managing a glare even while huddled on the bed. “You must have an easier job than I thought if you have the time to come here.”
He strides in and picks up the contract, reading it with a satisfied expression. That expression makes her skin prickle. “I just wanted to come and pick this up myself. You may be unimportant, but you’re going to contribute to something very important to me.” He turns to study her now. She feels simultaneously the urge to curl up and hide, and to rush forward to attack him. She is pretty sure that she would collapse if she tried to fight right now, so she plumps for the former. “Food will be brought. You’re going to need your strength.”
“What for? What are you going to do to me?” She uses the fiercest voice that she can. “I’ve signed your stupid contract, now tell me what’s going on!”
“I’ll send the handlers down.” He completely ignores her, musing to himself as he marches to the door, locks it behind him. “I’d like to get it done as soon as possible, but she might need a while to recover. I’m sure we can shorten that time as much as possible, though. Don’t want to waste resources.” He laughs.
“Tel-“ He leaves. She is alone again, in the same cell that she has been for days or weeks.
It feels even worse than before.