Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
“Just because I don’t have some kind of superpowers doesn’t make me defective!” I exclaimed. “And you can’t leave me here—I’ll freeze to death!”
I wasn’t kidding either—it had been chilly aboard Gumpas’ spaceship, but O’nagga Nine is absolutely freezing. Even the warmest day there is like living in a meat locker. I was wearing warm clothes that Gumpas had reluctantly given me, but they weren’t warm enough to counteract the terrible cold of O’nagga Nine—I was soon to find out that nothing was warm enough to counteract it.
“You may freeze,” Gumpas said coolly. “But if you do, please remember that you have brought this fate on yourself. If you had only manifested your powers, you could even now be speeding towards Tangella Alpha-Prime to live in the lap of luxury as a treasured concubine of the Dark Emperor, Shadout the Twenty-second and one half.”
Well, I had no interest in living on some alien world as the concubine to an Emperor I didn’t even know, but I didn’t want to freeze to death either!
“What am I supposed to do if you leave me here?” I asked Gumpas desperately. “I don’t even have any way to make a living!”
“Certainly you do…” He shrugged, as though it didn’t concern him. “Sell your blood.”
“Sell my blood?” I exclaimed. “Are you kidding?”
“Naturally not. The Naggians need blood to survive. They mostly get it from their mates but many of the males have a ‘taste’ for different or exotic blood sources. You should do quite well for yourself here, seeing as you are what they call a ‘Warm Blood,’” Gumpas informed me. “Good day.”
And then the door to his spaceship closed and the engines started, causing me to jump back in alarm—I didn’t want to freeze to death but I didn’t want to get burned alive either!
When the ship took off, I knew I was stuck. Also, the sun was going down and the temperature was dropping fast. I had to get to cover. So I ran to the nearest public building and made my way inside.
I ended up in the lobby of the biggest building in the city where Gumpas had left me. It was a place called the “Central Hub,” where the series of underground tunnels that connect all the other buildings in the city converged. Did I mention that the buildings and infrastructure are all made of ice? Yeah, now maybe you have an idea of how cold it is on O’nagga Nine.
I started out by timidly offering my blood to random Naggian men passing by as they made their way from one building to another via the warren of tunnels. Most of them gave me a strange or disgusted look and turned me down. I was beginning to think I might starve to death before I froze.
There were merchants around the Central Hub who would sell you food or drink if you pricked your finger and deposited several drops of your blood into their “collection banks” but they all refused to let me pay that way. Apparently they didn’t want my “hsh’frux” blood to contaminate their pure supply of Naggian blood.
In case you’re wondering, hsh’frux is a term that basically means “dirty off-worlder.” The Naggian are an isolated, insular society who almost never welcome anyone who isn’t from their world to visit. They have a mistrust of foreigners which verges on outright hatred, which makes it really hard to make a living there if you don’t look like them—which I don’t.
See, the Naggians are all tall and thin with this dead-white skin, long, straight, black hair, and glowing blue eyes. They even look like space vampires—at least they do to me.
I, on the other hand, am about five-seven with brown skin, brown eyes, and while my hair is black, it’s not long and straight—it’s curly. Also, I am most definitely not thin—I’m what you might call a “curvy girl” which never bothered me back on Earth. Here on O’nagga Nine, however, it’s a different story where they like their women thin to the point of emaciation.
Anyway, I probably would have starved to death if a girl called Mar’ra hadn’t taken pity on me. Mar’ra was a Blood Whore—one of the destitute Naggian women whose families have cast them off for some perceived impropriety, often as slight as looking at a man the wrong way or showing too much wrist or neck, which are considered erogenous zones in Naggian culture. The cast-off females have no skills, since women aren’t allowed to work in their society, and so they’re reduced to selling the only thing they have left to them—their blood and their bodies.
Mar’ra saw me standing around the Central Hub that first evening and came to slip an arm through mine.
“You know, the Sweepers will be out soon—you better find a place to stay,” she told me. “You got a bolthole around here?”