Episode One Time to Go

N adira

"The senator wishes to see you in the breakfast room," my wrist-comm informs me. "Immediately."

At least he doesn't want me in the bedroom. I guess that's the point, though, isn't it?

My thirty-sixth birthday is coming up, and it's no secret he's been shopping around for a younger wife to replace me. It doesn't come as a surprise. I was his fourth wife. He doesn't want a woman who's anywhere close to forty.

I've been watching the parade of young girls he's brought to our home since shortly after our marriage when I was eighteen. He's never tried to hide it. Just as my father never tried to hide the same behavior from my mother.

That's the way it's done Up Above. Women are just something to be used, traded, and bartered. Agreeing to my marriage to a sixty-year-old senator got my father a fatter bank account that allowed him to move higher in Tower One. That earned my father more power, which helped him make even more money.

Only married women are allowed to have children.

The senator is one of the most powerful men in the Up Above. He didn't need daughters nor did he want to share his wealth with a son until the end of his life when he would use his DNA to clone himself. He kept all his wives on the pill that prevents pregnancy. Marriage was a way he bestowed favor on the men below him. He liked my father. I guess he found someone else with a daughter he likes more.

I was just a pawn, as are all women.

I put on one of the diaphanous pastel gowns he allows me to wear. It might as well be made of tissue paper it's so thin. These see-through sleeping gowns are the only clothes, in fact, the only things , I own.

This one is the palest pink. I think it looks terrible against my red hair. That's why I chose this one. I stopped trying to look pretty to seduce him years ago. He still hasn't admitted to himself that the frequent loss of his fragile erections has less to do with his bed partner and more to do with his age.

Even though I'm not allowed out of our apartment, I hate being forced to wear clothes that leave nothing to the imagination. All the men coming and going get a good look at me. My husband the senator has never bothered to protect me from their leers, although he would kill me if any of them raped me. It would be my fault, at least in his eyes. Heaven forbid someone sullies his property without his approval.

He could only be summoning me for one of two possibilities. He might accuse me of something I didn't do so he can punish me. That's a daily occurrence, though, and is usually handled impersonally when my wrist comm tells me, a grown woman, I must stand in the corner. The other option is to inform me he's replacing me with someone younger and plans to send me to the Punishment Tower.

The Punishment Tower. I shiver when I think about it. Of course, I know little about it, only what I've heard from the hired help. Who knows where they get their information?

I believe some of it, though. With a name like the Punishment Tower, it isn't hard to believe the tales of abuse, or that screams can be heard all the way to the Down Below at any time of the day or night.

"Nadira," he says when I reach the doorway. He doesn't bid me enter, certainly doesn't offer me a seat at the breakfast table, so I stand at attention, which is his rule.

His new head of security, Armstrong, is sitting with him, lounging with his booted foot across his knee, not even trying to hide his superior sneer. Yes, Armstrong, I get it. Born somewhere on the lowest three floors of this tower, you've worked your way up in the world to be breakfasting with a senator.

Let's not mention how you managed that by your penchant for doing his dirty work without ever asking a question or breathing a word. So, yes, you're supping with this century's version of royalty and I'm standing, barely clothed, like a supplicant in my husband's house.

Armstrong is casually looking me up and down from his deep-set, insolent brown eyes. That's more than I can say for the senator. He's fiddling with his computer pad, ignoring us both. I arrange my features to look submissive, stupid, and fearful. Just how men in the Up Above like it.

Finally, he sniffs like he smells something rotten, looks at me as if he's forgotten I've been standing here for long minutes under his brutish hired man's scrutiny, and says, "I'm in need of a younger wife."

The only thing shocking about this statement is that it surprises me. I've known this was coming since the day I got here. For months, I've assumed this day was fast approaching. That it sends a bolt of fear up my spine is the only unexpected thing about it.

"I'd planned to send you to the Punishment Tower, but," he glances down at his computer pad and shakes his head, "I'm informed they have no room." He looks at Armstrong with a conspiratorial grin and says, "Must be a lot of misbehaving women out there."

Armstrong laughs as if it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, then glances at me out of the corner of his eye. He knows something I don't about what's coming next. I'm not going to like it, which thrills him so much I imagine his dick is hard under his paramilitary camouflage pants.

Although the remains on his plate suggest he's eaten his fill already this morning, my husband reaches the silver tongs toward the tray of pastries and makes a show of selecting the best morsel, then places it on his plate.

Since I'm only fed when he allows it, and I haven't had anything to eat in more than a day, it's quite obvious he's enjoying his little torment.

There are only two choices for a wife when she grows too old: the Punishment Tower or death. Perhaps it's because I'm ready for either of those outcomes that I'm thinking about the delicious-looking cheese Danish rather than what's going to become of me.

I'm ready for death. If I were a more courageous woman, I would have found a way to kill myself long ago.

Too bad I'm a coward.

"With the Punishment Tower off the table, I'm in a bind. Your soft-hearted father drove a hard bargain when he sold you to me. He made me agree not to kill you when the time came. Made me promise the Tower instead."

He shrugs as if he were a coquettish, sixteen-year-old girl instead of a seventy-eight-year-old bastard, then sips his coffee. He's not going to eat that pastry. It was just a prop.

"I was discussing my quandary with Armstrong here when he offered me a third choice. It's quite the solution. Tell her." He lifts his chin to his head of security to give him the floor.

"We just made one of the senator's other problems disappear by sending her Down Below. It seemed to do the trick, although when my predecessor went to retrieve little Alliana, the hover was set upon by mutants. It's a shame, but at least the senator had me trained and ready to fill Bleeker's boots."

The smile he flashes belongs on an animal, a jackal perhaps. His eyes are dead.

It's not surprising that while Bleeker's fate is mentioned there's not a whisper about poor little Alliana being set upon by monsters.

"You'll be transported Down Below so the senator can keep his word to your father—"

My husband interrupts, his hand in the air. "My word is my bond." So fucking sanctimonious.

"And he can make room for his new wife."

The head of security stands and says, "Time to go," without even looking at me. "I'll see you in a few hours, senator."