Page 2 of Anchored

And then, like the bad little slave he was, he crawled beneath the bunk bed and pressed his ear to the air vent.

But they must’ve been sitting by the wet bar, which was all the way across the store from his room, because he couldn’t make out a thing. Still, he stayed there, breath held and trying to still his noisy heart, for a good two or three minutes. Until the thought of the mistress coming up and finding him sneaking like this scared him more than the outcome of their conversation, and he wormed out from under the bed. He must not’ve cleaned well enough under there this week, because some dust specked the knees of his dress pants, but he wiped it off easily enough. Then sat down on the lower bunk—the one he still shared with his mom because the room wasn’t big enough for a cot and it beat sleeping in the smaller upper bed with Jaime—and just tried to breathe. To reason.

If the man didn’t want him to fuck, then why did he want him? All he knew was tailoring and housework, so what could he possibly do for the man, who was wealthy and surely already had all the house slaves he could possibly need? Daniel crossed his hands in his lap and fiddled with the braided steel bands welded on each wrist. They were getting tight. He’d need new ones soon. If the man bought Daniel, might he have any use for Daniel’s mother too? She was a good fuck—he heard it all the time from the mistress’s best clients. And she could clean and sew and cook and even dance, dance as beautifully as those freewomen in pretty pink leotards in the old New York City Ballet program she’d kept from since before he was born.

But she was getting old now, thirty-six this March, and what would a rich man want with an old dancing slave?

Daniel stared out the window overlooking the old brownstone’s ventilation shaft and realized he was crying.

No. No. Crying was for babies, and he was a man now. He was. Man enough to service customers in private. Man enough to be sold on with or without his mom.

But please, God, with. I don’t ask you for much, I’m just a slave with no soul, I know that, and I know I don’t feel what real people feel and I know I can’t love like real people love, but please, God. Please. She’s all I’ve got.

But God didn’t listen, of course He didn’t, His mercy wasn’t for abominations like Daniel, for slaves, for those born soulless and wrong. People like Daniel could only hope to earn God’s love through good, loyal service, and no matter how hard he tried, he’d never quite seemed to manage that in his mistress’s eyes.

So it came as no surprise when she called him downstairs, and his mother wasn’t there, and nobody even mentioned her as the businessman bundled up his new suit and his new slave and put them both in the backseat of a sleek, black sedan. The man’s driver—a valued slave, Daniel could see, from the fine gold chains around both wrists, which could never be used to restrain the man like Daniel’s could—pulled the car away without a word. Away from the only owner he’d known for the entirety of his eleven years, and she’d sold him without a single word, a single glance. Just a cheery exchange of papers for money and a too-hard slap on the back.

He tried not to fidget or cry in the backseat of his new master’s car, wanting desperately to look around, wanting his mother even more desperately. But he didn’t dare ask about her or unglue his eyes from his feet. His master was sitting next to him, watching him so intently that Daniel felt the heat of the man’s stare. He wouldn’t cry in front of this man. He wouldn’t cry.

“Daniel?” the man said, and the “Yes, sir?” rolled so instinctively off his tongue that he had to stop, correct himself, say, “Yes, Master,” instead. And didn’t that feel strange, because his mistress’s husband had died so long ago that he couldn’t even remember the man’s face.

“I’m not your master,” the man said in that same kind, patient tone he’d used all along, and at that, Daniel couldn’t help but look up, a question in his eyes that he thought for sure would be slapped or punched clean away. And then he’d really cry, he wouldn’t be able to help it anymore. But the man just smiled and said, “I bought you for NewWorld Media. Do you know who they are?”

Daniel swallowed hard. “No, sir.” He started to apologize for being such a dumb cunt slave, but the man just kept on talking.

“What about InfoGlobe? Do you know what that is?”

Daniel nodded—of course he knew what InfoGlobe was. His mistress would watch in the back room on slow afternoons, letting it drone on while she sewed. Daniel would steal glances whenever he could, enthralled by the wonder of a whole wide world beyond the walls he knew, the limited sights he’d seen. He’d actually gotten so lost once in a report from the front lines of some distant war, filed by a slave—an actual slave reporter!—that his mistress had beaten him bloody for slacking off.

He still thought it might have been worth it.

The businessman reached a hand out, and Daniel bit his lip, wondering how he’d angered the man to violence without even speaking. But the man just ruffled his hair and chuckled again. “Well, NewWorld Media owns InfoGlobe, and now they own you. Because you, my boy, have a face just made for television.”

Now

“Daniel, you’re late,” Tim said from the open door of Daniel’s office. He threw a warning glance at his watch and added, “News is live, you know.”

“Sorry. Coming.” Daniel saved the package he’d been editing for tomorrow’s broadcast, snatched his jacket and tie, and followed his handler out of his office. No way to tell if Tim would let his tardiness slip or if he’d be paying for it later, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that now.

Tim left for the control booth, and Daniel made a dash for the stairs, unwilling to wait for the overworked elevator to take him three floors up to the studio. There wouldn’t be time for proper makeup or sound checks then, and he didn’t want to get Serena or Mike in trouble.

He trotted into the studio a couple minutes past check-in, breathless and still tying the knot on his tie. Mike handed him his IFB, and the moment he popped the little speaker in his ear, he heard Tim complaining that he looked flushed. Serena must have heard it too, because she came at him with a makeup brush.

“Sound check, Daniel.” Tim again, voice sharp through the IFB. Mike was standing patiently behind him, waiting to run the mic wire up the back of his jacket. Daniel flashed an apologetic wince at the camera and stood so Mike could do his thing, winced again when Tim scolded him through the IFB. He liked Tim—liked him a lot, in fact—but Tim had bosses to answer to, and if Daniel screwed up any more tonight, Tim would have to report him.

Stupid, useless cunt.

No. He wasn’t that boy anymore. Hadn’t been for twenty-five years. Days like this, though, he could still hear her voice so damn clearly, feel her bruising fingers on his chin, her strap on his back.

He shuddered, shook the memory away.

Get it together, Daniel. Right now.

Easier said than done, though. It seemed not even the fear of present-day discipline could turn his thoughts from the issue that’d been gnawing at him all week: his new part-time owner-to-be. Maybe his old owner’s voice was so strong today because tonight he’d be calling someone master again for the first time in two and a half decades, and that hadn’t exactly been a gleaming highlight of his life. He’d been living in the West Side men’s dorm since NewWorld Media had bought him, but tonight . . . Tonight, he’d be sleeping in someone else’s home. Someone who’d won the right to be his mistress or master in one of those obscenely expensive celebrity-slave auctions. And Daniel wasn’t some ignorant child anymore; he knew there was just one reason why a person would bid six mil for a year’s worth of evenings and weekends with him. He’d never once been made to serve like that at NewWorld, but things were clearly changing with the company’s debts piling up and share prices dropping, and now hundreds of slaves they’d never used like that before were being leased out to—

“. . . iel! Damn it, Daniel!”

Shit. Tim. Daniel tried not to look guilty as he turned to camera 1, cleared his throat, and checked the prompter against the script an intern had dropped on his desk. “Yeah, Tim. I’m uh, I’m sorry, I was—” He cut himself off before any bullshit excuses could fall from his lips and compound the problem. Maybe a woman won my auction. That wouldn’t be so bad, right? “I’m set. Prompter’s set.”