Punishment
The transition from the frantic escape to the cold, echoing silence of deep space felt like falling into a different kind of grave. The adrenaline had masked the reality of our tether, but as the Void-Skipper's engines settled into a steady, rhythmic thrum, the true nature of my 'rescue' began to crystallize.
I wasn't a free man. I was a bird that had swapped a cage for a gilded leash. The Price of the Breath
The cabin was dark, illuminated only by the rhythmic pulse of the navigation sensors. I stood by the small observation port, watching the stars blur into streaks of cold fire.
My Bio-Clock hummed—a low, steady vibration against my skin. It was green, fed by the overflow of Devillione's high-tier accounts. Every minute I lived was a theft from his life-force, and the realization made my stomach churn.
"You're thinking about her again," a voice rumbled from the shadows.
I didn't turn. I knew the weight of his footsteps, the way the air seemed to thicken when he entered a room.
Devillione was no longer the enforcer I had outrun in the slums; he was something more primal now.
"I'm thinking about the fact that I'm a parasite," I said, my voice flat.
"I'm thinking about the fact that you own my oxygen, my time, and my biometric signature. You didn't save me, Dev. You bought me."
"I did both," he said, and the sound of a heavy magnetic lock engaging made me spin around.
The door to the crew quarters had hissed shut, the red 'Locked' light reflecting in Devillione's dark pupils. He had discarded his tactical vest, his black undershirt clinging to the hard, restless muscle of his chest. He looked predatory. The jealousy that had exploded into a kiss in the hallway hadn't vanished; it had condensed into a cold, hard demand for absolute control.
He moved toward me, slow and deliberate, pinning me against the cold metal of the hull. He didn't touch me, but the heat radiating off him was a physical pressure.
"You took Vricksen's bribe in your heart long before you took it in your hand," Devillione whispered, his face inches from mine. "You were ready to erase us. You were ready to become a ghost just to avoid being mine. That kind of betrayal carries a debt, Rainier. And in this ship, I'm the only one who collects."
I tried to push past him, but he caught my wrists, slamming them against the bulkhead above my head. The metal was freezing; his grip was fire.
"You have a choice," he growled, his voice a jagged edge that made my pulse spike. "The Zero Sum Game requires a balance. You betrayed the link. You tried to run. Now, you choose how you pay the interest on that debt."
He leaned in closer, his breath hot against my ear, echoing the way he had shared his air with me when I was dying.
"One option: I remind you of your place through the pain you've been running from your whole life. Physical discipline until you can't stand, until your body remembers who saved it. Or," he paused, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of my neck, "you give me what I've been hunting for since the day we met.
You surrender. Not as a debt-slave, but as mine. Sex, or the rack. Choose your punishment, Rain."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. The "Wow Factor" of our world—the biometric tether—glowed brightly on the wall. My life was literally tied to his. If I fought him, I was fighting the source of my own breath. If I gave in, I was losing the last scrap of autonomy I had left.
The choice felt like a trap. Physical torture was familiar; it was the language of the Syndicate, the language of the slums. It was a pain I knew how to endure. But the other? Surrendering to the man who had just stolen me from the jaws of death? That was a different kind of destruction. It was the "Total Zero" I had always feared—the complete erasure of my will.
"You're a monster," I gasped, my vision blurring as the psychological weight of the past finally crashed down on me.
"I'm the monster that kept you breathing," Devillione countered, his grip tightening. "And I'm the monster that's going to make sure you never think about leaving again. Choose. Now."
I looked into his eyes—the eyes of a man who had burned his own life to keep me from vanishing.
The jealousy, the possessiveness, the raw, unadulterated need to own the very air in my lungs... it was all there.
"The choice is yours, Rainier," he whispered. "But either way, by the time the sun rises on the Outer Reach, you'll know exactly who you belong to."
I stared into the abyss of his eyes, my breath hitching in a chest that felt too small for the air he had forced into it.
The silence in the cabin was absolute, save for the hum of the life-support system—a system that was only running because Devillione's credits were feeding the ship's hungry core.
The weight of the last few days, from the desperate sprint into the "Oxygen-Transfer" in the hallway, culminated in this singular, suffocating moment.
I was backed against the cold hull, my wrists pinned, the predator finally having cornered the prey he'd been chasing through a dozen sectors of neon and blood.
"Choose," he prompted again, his voice dropping to a vibration that I felt more in my bones than in my ears.
"The pain you're used to, or the surrender you're terrified of."
My mind raced, trying to find a third option, a backdoor, a runner's exit. But there were no vents here. No mag-lev tunnels to disappear into. There was only the heat of his body and the cold reality of my debt.
If I chose the physical punishment, I could maintain my inner walls.
I could hate him through every blow, every bruise. It would be a transaction—blood for betrayal. It was the currency of the Syndicate. But if I chose the other… if I let him touch me not as an enemy, but as a lover who owned my pulse… I would be acknowledging that he hadn't just saved my life. He had captured it.
"You want me to beg," I whispered, my voice trembling. "You want me to say I'm yours so you can feel like you won the game."
"I've already won, Rainier," Devillione said, his grip on my wrists loosening just enough to slide his hands down to my palms, interlacing our fingers—a gesture that felt more controlling than the handcuffs I'd escaped.
"I'm just waiting for you to stop pretending you're still a player. You're the prize. Now, which way do we do this?"
I looked up at him, the red emergency light casting a demonic glow across his features. I thought of the bribe I'd thrown away, the ghost-life I'd nearly stepped into. I realized then that I didn't want the pain. I was tired of being broken by boots and pulse-fire. I was tired of the cold.
"The second," I breathed out, the word feeling like a surrender of my soul. "The… the surrender."
Devillione's expression didn't soften. If anything, it grew more intense, a dark satisfaction flaring in his eyes. He didn't waste time with tenderness. He moved with a sudden, overwhelming force, his mouth crashing against mine.
This wasn't the Oxygen-Transfer kiss of the hallway. That had been about survival.
This was about conquest. He tasted of salt and the metallic tang of the ship's recycled air. As he moved me toward the bunk, his hands were everywhere—possessive, charting the territory he had just officially claimed.
As the Bio-Clock on the wall ticked forward, fed by his surplus, I realized the true horror of the Zero Sum Game. To save my life, I had to give it away. Every touch was a signature on a new kind of contract, one that didn't have an expiration date.
"Stay in the red with me, Rain," he murmured against my skin, his voice thick with a jealousy that had finally found its target.
I closed my eyes as the ship hurtled deeper into the Outer Reach. I was no longer a runner. I was no longer a Zero. I was a man who had traded his freedom for the right to keep breathing, and as Devillione's weight pressed me into the mattress, I knew I would never be able to pay back the debt of that shared air.
The ship groaned as we hit a pocket of gravitational turbulence, but the sound was distant, muffled by the roar of my own blood in my ears.
I lay there, pinned by the gravity of a man who had become my atmosphere, my lungs finally full but my spirit feeling like it was being squeezed through a needle's eye.
This was the fallout of the Zero Sum Game. In the earlier chapters, I thought the game was played with credits and data-slugs. I thought I was clever for navigating the "Bio-Clock" margins. But as Devillione's hands moved over me with a terrifying, meticulous ownership, I realized the game was played in the flesh.
"You're thinking again," Devillione murmured, his voice vibrating against the hollow of my throat. He shifted his weight, his knee forcing its way between mine, a physical wedge that anchored me to the present.
"I can feel your pulse spiking on the monitor. Stop trying to find an exit, Rainier. There isn't one."
He was right. On the bulkhead behind us, the Tether Display was glowing a soft, rhythmic green. Because we had merged our signatures in the airlock back in the ship's computer now treated us as a single biological unit.
I was letting him into my nervous system. Every time his skin brushed mine, the ship's internal sensors calibrated our pleasure and pain into a unified data stream.
It was a digital intimacy I couldn't escape.
"You're hurting me," I whispered, though it was a lie.
The pressure of his grip was firm, but it wasn't the pain I'd expected. It was the certainty of him that hurt.
"No," Devillione corrected, pulling back just enough to look me in the eye. His pupils were blown wide, reflecting the red emergency lights.
"I'm grounding you. You've spent ten years floating, Rain. Trading breaths for favors. This is the first time you've stood still long enough for the world to see you."
The Jealousy of a Ghost
He leaned down, his mouth hovering just an inch from mine—a mockery of the life-giving kiss from the hallway.
"Vricksen wanted to turn you into a ghost. He wanted to strip away your name and put a serial number in its place. He was jealous of the fact that I knew the real you. He wanted to steal my rival and turn him into a drone."
His fingers traced the line of my ribs, finding the jagged bruise where the Syndicate boot had landed. I winced, and the ship's lights flickered in response to my sudden spike in heart rate.
"I'm not letting him have a single piece of you," Devillione growled.
"Not even the memories. From here on, every mark on your skin is mine. Every breath you take is an extension of my own."
The surrender wasn't a single moment; it was an ongoing erosion.
As he moved with a slow, deliberate intensity, I felt the walls I'd built the runner's walls, the thief's armor—simply dissolve. There was no room for secrets in a shared biometric link.
Hours later, or perhaps only minutes—time has a way of warping when you're trapped in the Outer Reach—the ship's chime signaled our approach to the Fringe Station. The "Zero-Class" haven where we were supposed to find Vicky.
I lay in the dim light, my chest rising and falling in perfect sync with the man beside me. The punishment was over, but the consequence was permanent. My Bio-Clock showed a healthy, glowing surplus, but it felt like a brand.
"Get up," Devillione said, his voice returning to its cold, professional edge, though he didn't move his arm from where it was draped across my waist. "We're docking in twenty. Put your mask back on, Rainier. But remember—underneath the mask, the link is still there. If you try to run toward Miri and leave me behind, I'll feel it the second your foot hits the station floor."
I sat up, the cold air of the cabin hitting my bare skin. I looked at the briefcase sitting in the corner, empty and useless. I had survived. I had outrun the Syndicate. I had even escaped Vricksen's Ghost trap.
But as I looked at Devillione, I realized I had traded a d
eath sentence for a life sentence. The Zero Sum Game had reached its final calculation: I had my life, but I no longer had myself.