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  Bound By The Ice Dragons

  Terran Relocation Act

  Alyx X

  Text Copyright ©2020 by Alyx X

  The Series, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © Alyx X.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Market Street Books

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For Information regarding permission, write to:

  Alyx X at [email protected]

  Production Management by Market Street Books

  Printed in USA

  This Edition, April 2020

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Izon

  2. Tessa

  3. Izon

  4. Tessa

  5. Izon

  6. Tessa

  7. Izon

  8. Tessa

  9. Izon

  10. Tessa

  11. Izon

  12. Tessa

  13. Izon

  14. Tessa

  15. Izon

  16. Tessa

  17. Izon

  18. Tessa

  19. Izon

  20. Tessa

  21. Izon

  22. Tessa

  Epilogue

  Now Cumming By Alyx X

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Tessa

  I never knew whether to feel hopeless or lucky. Most days, I chose lucky. I chose lucky because to choose hopeless would mean I had nothing left. And that would be the worst thing of all.

  On one of the luckier days, I was hurrying down the polished stone sidewalk in The Glass City. I pulled my patched coat tighter around me against the cool sting of the salt air. I’d always felt at home here. It was where I’d grown up, but now I felt increasingly like an outsider. Like Mom and I were moments away from losing our tenuous grasp on our lifestyle.

  Which we were. We’d moved farther and farther away from the middle class housing, right to the outskirts, and we were only still there because I cleaned for the richest people left on Earth. I could almost smell the choking stench of Smog City, as if it was waiting for us, its arms open, its jaws open wider.

  But we weren’t there yet. We were still surviving even though Mom’s health faltered a little more with each passing day.

  The glass skyscrapers of the city rose in the near distance. Some of the spires were twisting almost endlessly toward the sun while others had blunt, jagged edges that looked snapped or broken. All of the buildings looked cold and lifeless until the sun’s rays caught them at the right angle turning them into blazing monuments of light. As if God himself lived here in the city.

  But God would never choose to live on the remnants of this dying planet. Earth was mostly barren these days.

  Just thinking about the desolation of this stupid planet, my shiver was no longer due to the ocean wind playing with the bare threads of my oldest jacket. I scurried up the driveway to one of the glass mansions of the city suburbs and my first job of the day. I had another busy day ahead of me—five houses to clean.

  “Hello, Mrs. Zane.” I let myself through into her kitchen to find my employer standing at the counter, a coffee in hand.

  She glanced at the clock, and I pretended not to notice. I was right on time, but these people never failed to check. Some employers would use any excuse to complain about me, so I tried my best not to give them one.

  “Wrist.” The single word was clipped, as if this woman had no patience for a lowly maid like me. I obediently held out my left hand so she could scan the tracker I wore under my ident band.

  As she scanned me in, logging my arrival time at work, I breathed a hidden sigh of relief. No matter what she claimed now, I carried an official record of when I’d arrived. The company I worked for monitored everything, and I’d grown used to dividing my life into two-hour blocks. Even if I finished early, I never left a minute before that two-hour mark. I’d perfected the art of making the work exactly fit the hours I got paid for.

  I used the title ‘housekeeper,’ but I was just a glorified maid and cleaner. I went into people’s beautiful homes to ensure they stayed that way. Wiping up spills and messes and shuffling away the debris of their lives.

  I was an invisible person—not wealthy, not one of the shunned poor, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  I could handle being invisible to the families I worked for while they continued to pay me. My wages supported Mom and me, which felt good after she’d supported me for so long.

  Thinking through my day, I applied some cleaning solution to my sponge and started scrubbing the sink. Apparently, some of my families were too lazy to wash away their coffee rings in the sink. Sometimes, I even had to move their mugs to the dishwasher. It was possible that this family had run out of glasses, which left me to clean up their unconventional drink ware.

  I opened the dishwasher door to check if I needed to run it, my schedule whirling through my mind. Five houses today, and I’d repeat these same steps in each. Five families who both supported me and looked down on me while I ghosted around their sweet smelling, expensively furnished houses.

  Some day, they’d introduce robots to do my job, or create houses that pretty much cleaned themselves. Until that moment though, my job was pretty secure. And I’d probably do it until the end of my days.

  Still, at least I wasn’t scavenging.

  The day passed quickly, mostly on autopilot as I moved from task to task. Always three steps ahead in my mind as I sorted, cleaned, tidied, and straightened. I was thinking through the items I needed to grab on my way home, about to move on to my pre-sleep task list, when my ident band vibrated with an incoming message.

  I paused to look at my band. I missed my old bracelet. The one we’d had to sell when Dad died in a mining incident. The badly damaged replacement still looked unfamiliar on my wrist, and my heart still ached for the bracelet I’d grown up knowing Dad had chosen for me. The new band was worse than government issue, but we’d bought it from the underground network of smugglers who passed goods in and out of The Glass City.

  After we sold my old ident, I’d needed a new one straight away to remain compliant with Earth’s method of registering the population. If I didn’t wear one, someone would report me for the infraction. But we had needed the credits.

  No one trusted anyone anymore and the population’s mindset was always every man, woman, and child for himself. Someone was always waiting to pull the person above them from their rung on the ladder and then take their place. It was true survival of the fittest.

  My wrist vibrated again, and I hesitated, glad my last employer wasn’t home yet. I wasn’t supposed to waste any time while I was on the job. Although, it was unusual that anyone would try to contact me. I hadn’t received a comm on this band in months. I sighed as I thought of the cameras probably watching me, but when my ident band glowed red, signaling urgency, I passed my hand over it to answer the comm.

  A holographic image flickered to life, rising from the band to be almost 3D. The image was grainy, as if the lens in the chip was badly scratched, and I couldn’t make out anyone I recognized.

  “Hello?” I sounded suspicious even in my own ears, and my usual tone definitely verged on wary most days.

  “Miss Banks?

  Uh-oh. Someone so formal was never a good sign. “Yes?” I managed to make it sound like I was questioning my own name rather than answering them. I cringed as I swiped my cloth over a scuff on the baseboard, still working even as I waited to hear what the person wanted.

  The image flickered, fading out briefly befo
re it returned, grainier than ever. “Miss Banks, this is Doctor Lee from The Glass City Infirmary—”

  I dropped my cloth. He carried on talking but I didn’t hear him. I had only one thought.

  “Mom.” Her name emerged like a gasp.

  He flickered again, but I caught the next words. “She was admitted earlier today.”

  Mom. Shit. I had to go.

  I tuned the doctor out again. I didn’t even ask him how she was, or what she had been admitted for. I only had one impulse—get to her. Without another thought for the grainy image beaming from my ident band, I began packing the cleaning supplies back into the closet. I think the doctor was still speaking, but my movements made it harder to see or hear him. I picked up my bucket of soapy water; my jerky, anxiety-ridden movements sloshing some of the dirty liquid over the side.

  I scrambled my stuff together and offered a small prayer that this family might understand why I’d left mid-job. Maybe they wouldn’t even know. But I didn’t have time to hang around and wait for them. Here, they trusted me to scan myself in and out, and I wondered briefly which would be better—to leave early or to forget to scan out at all? Which carried the heavier punishment?

  I almost ran to the nearest express platform, praying for a pod to arrive quickly the entire time. I probably looked a mess as I tried to hold my coat closed and push my hair back off my face in the same movement. Just seeing a crazy woman like me run down the street in a neighborhood like this one would probably drop housing prices for a good three-mile radius.

  An expresspod was just leaving the platform when I arrived, and I cursed. I checked the timetable shimmering in the air above me, relief flooding my system at the mere five-minute wait for the next one.

  I curled my fingers. Hopefully I had enough credits on my ident for this ride. I mean, I did, but I was borrowing credits from one of the other bills that would need paying. If the company I worked for didn’t fire me for leaving early, maybe I could work some extra hours.

  I rushed into the infirmary ready to rip my ident off and crush it into dust. Fucking peak travel times and their prices. That single ride had used far more credits than I even wanted to think about, but it had been necessary.

  Glancing around, I drew a breath. Everywhere smelled of sanitizer and some floral perfume I could only guess they used to mask the stench of disease and death. Gleaming white surfaces met the usual glass and everything shone bright and clean, but somewhere in this building people lay dying.

  The tired-looking woman at the front desk glanced up at me, then away, as if she hadn’t intended to invite me to speak and the eye contact had been a bad idea. I ignored her dismissal of me and approached her anyway.

  “Tessa Banks,” I said, my tone assertive. “I got a comm from a doctor about my mother.”

  She sighed. “Name?”

  “I just told you.”

  She sighed again, “Of your mother.”

  I rocked back a little, pressing my lips together to try to conceal my frustration. I didn’t have time for this crap. I needed to get to Mom. “Gwenda Banks.”

  “Miss Tessa Banks?” A smooth voice spoke behind me, and I whirled round.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Doctor Lee.” He started to reach out his hand but paused, his gaze skimming me. Then he retracted his arm and let it drop back to his side. What, was I the first poor person he’d ever seen?

  I didn’t care. I didn’t want to shake this guy’s hand, anyway.

  “Your mother collapsed while at the market. She was brought here and we’re treating her but—” He paused, and I glanced around the giant atrium of the infirmary entrance.

  This asshole was seriously going to give me the news of Mom’s condition here? “Can I see her?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Miss Banks, your mother’s condition is deteriorating. We’re prepping her for surgery. But—” He stopped again, and his gaze landed on my ident band.

  I rubbed my right hand over it, concealing it. Shit. Shit. Mom needed to stay here? They were prepping her for surgery. I had to think. Only, I couldn’t think. I…

  I scrubbed my palms over my face. “I need to sit down.”

  “Of course.” Doctor Lee signaled to a nearby nurse.

  “Show Miss Banks to the surgical waiting area. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  The nurse grasped my elbow gently, steering me down a curving hallway to our right. “This way,” she said redundantly.

  “Where are we going?” I almost couldn’t process what was happening. “Mom needs to stay?” I heard my own voice, but I didn’t know why I was speaking.

  “She’s very sick.”

  “But how can she stay?” How would I afford it? Is what I wanted to ask, but that would mean admitting my only option, and I couldn’t just let Mom die.

  “How can she leave, honey?” The nurse turned gentle eyes on me. Her dyed, warm-blonde poof of cotton candy hair looked out of place around her deeply-lined face, but her faded eyes were kind. She smelled of marshmallows and comfort.

  “But how can she stay?” Desperation leached into my voice.

  “Wellness Security?” She smiled as she spoke, but her eyes remained troubled as she named our state-run health coverage.

  I shook my head. There was no way our minimum coverage would pay for a stay at the infirmary, and that was before I had even looked at the cost of actual life-saving surgery.

  The nurse clasped my arm a little tighter. “You’re sure?” she murmured.

  I nodded. It would be a story she’d heard a million times before. And I knew the drill. We all did. We’d all heard the stories of what happened when your family couldn’t afford to treat you. You were quietly shipped out the back door to a rest home.

  But rest was a misnomer. They actually sent people to beds in warehouse-sized buildings where disease ran rampant, and food and water were slowly withdrawn until the body simply gave up. That was if the patient couldn’t be taken home to die, and few families could afford time away from work to provide care. So, we all turned a blind eye to state-sanctioned healthcare and blatant neglect of the dying.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. “I can make more credits,” I whispered. “I have to.”

  The nurse drew me to one side and glanced up and down the corridor. Finding it empty, she leaned a little closer to me. Anyone looking would think she was just checking on me.

  “Lean against the wall,” she whispered. “Look sick.”

  I did as she asked, too drained to argue.

  “Right. Now, I don’t tell everyone this, but you seem down on your luck, especially for someone so young and pretty.”

  I nodded, the movement small.

  “I know a way you can pay for the surgery.”

  I parted my lips in shock, and she nodded.

  “You heard me. We can make this whole mess go away.”

  I narrowed my eyes as suspicion snaked through me. Previous experience told me that if something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. “Offers like that don’t come without a catch.”

  She shrugged lightly, her movement confusing, as if she didn’t really care one way or the other. “It is that easy. It’s just one little signature at the bottom of a page.” Her voice turned even more syrupy, but instead of being comforting, it was cloying and suffocating. I wanted to be far away from her, but I couldn’t move.

  “How do I save my mother?” I whispered, because I couldn’t leave without trying everything available to me.

  The nurse began walking again, pulling me along with her. Her grip on my arm was tighter than it had been before, like she had a hold of something she didn’t want escaping.

  “The Terran Program will arrange everything if you sign a contract with them.”

  I stopped walking and almost doubled over. The news was a gut punch. The Terran Program? I hated everything Terran stood for, and especially hated their program of selling people in to virtual slavery. I couldn’t fathom an existence where every minute o
f your day was owned by an evil corporation, and your life was spent paying off a debt you didn’t deserve.

  A hysterical laugh bubbled from my lips. Yes. Yes, actually I could imagine that existence because I’d lived a hair’s breadth from it since Dad died. Only now, the Terran Program seemed to have come calling. Maybe it had only been a matter of time. Maybe I was never meant to escape their ever-reaching claws.

  “Your mother is right this way.” The nurse guided me left, down a corridor with plated glass windows on either side. In each small cell-like room we past lay a patient in a narrow bed. “Many of these patients are still with us because their relatives have signed agreements with the Terran Program,” she said conversationally. The suffocating tone seemed to have lifted now that she had me so close to her goal.

  Terran probably had her on commission; the vultures.

  I swallowed against bile as it rose from my empty stomach, the bitter acid burning the back of my throat.

  “Here she is,” the nurse stated simply.

  I turned as the nurse let go of my elbow, taking in the small room and the woman lying on the bed. My world dropped out from under me as my entire focus narrowed on the pale, broken-looking figure in the bed. She looked so small and weak. Her body barely registering beneath the blankets.

  “She’s too thin.”

  “Yes, dear,” the nurse agreed. “She needs looking after.”

  I clenched my fists and exhaled a slow, focused breath. I’d always been able to understand people choosing to leave Earth. It was dying. We all were, and the richest among us could leave whenever they chose. I wasn’t against that, although envy blossomed in my chest when I thought of the fortuitousness of their births.