Excerpt: STUDENSTEIN First Scene
Chapter One
"Get in there, Foxy."
Shani Brown snarled at the voice in her headset. "I told you, you gaming nerd. I'm not using a damn call-sign!" She slowed the ancient camper van to a crawl. San Francisco's SoMa district stretched dark and empty in every direction. A knot of Goths loitered around the entrance of the club as if the lighted doorway was a fireplace and they were trying to keep warm.
She craned her neck to see past the bouncer and into the red-lit interior. "He's gotta come out eventually. Why can't I just wait?" She pulled over and parked along the sidewalk, mulling over her reluctance to enter. It wasn't as if she would be expected to have sex inside.
Q-ter, back at the Zombie Underground in Seattle, cleared his throat. "You know doing this on your own means—"
"Yeah, yeah." Shani stepped one thigh-high boot out of the van. "I know I'm your bitch. But next time I go out on my own, I'm calling the shots." She hung up and slid the smartphone into the pouch on her steampunk corset. She had no idea where her roommate Kuri had found the get-up. The ribbing and stays forced her cleavage up to her neck—made her ass look even bigger. Shani couldn't wait to take off the uncomfortable piece of shit and get back in her baggy track pants.
"ID?" The girl at the door looked her over.
Bitch.
Shani dug her wallet out of a pocket. Utility corset her ass. With a scowl and a hand on her hip, she flashed the card in goth-girl's direction, daring Miss Thang to pluck it from her grip. The hostess waved her through.
The narrow walkway led past a coat check and to an enormous dance floor beyond. Bass shook the walls. In a few cages around the room, half-naked girls and boys writhed in vinyl or latex. Shani fought back a surge of nerves. They didn't look like steins—reanimated humans built as slaves or lab-rats. But they could have been love-bots wearing makeup to cover their scars and brighten their skin. Back when Shani had been a victim of the undead sex trade, her makers had slathered on foundation, put plasters on her stitches. Mostly though, the clients liked when she looked like a monster.
Shani composed a quick message to the Frank inside her mind, asking him to investigate the whole damn club for "love-bots". As she uploaded text into the ZU message center, she scoffed at the politically correct term. Back in Shani's day, there had been no denying she was a sex slave. Sure as shit Shani hadn't been built for "love".
She wound her way through the crowd at the edge of the dance floor. The music changed and the black-clad patrons flocked toward the new song, clearing the way for Shani to get to the stairs. She climbed to the second story and went to the bar. "Scotch, neat," she shouted over a couple heads.
A cry sounded behind her and Shani turned. Standing in the middle of a corded-off area she spotted the stein she'd been sent to rescue. His shoulders spanned beyond the stupid leather vest he wore, but his body narrowed to a slender waist and hips. Skintight pants displayed a bulge so large Shani figured they'd grafted it off a black man.
Even with a few scars, his face was pretty enough to upstage his body. Shaggy black hair fell to his chiseled jaw, giving him an "I may be sensitive inside, if only you can reach me" vibe. A lock fell across his big brown eyes, highlighted cheekbones that could cut glass. His lips—thin and arguably the only non-perfect thing about him—twitched up on one side before he swung his arm in a wide arc and flogged the female strapped to a table.
His client cried out in her bindings. Her forehead scrunched up in pleasure.
Dang. Shani reached past a necking couple to get to her drink. This is some fucked-up lifer shit. She raised her glass for a sip and felt ice against her lip.
Spinning back to the bar, Shani shouted, "I said neat, not on the rocks." She slammed her drink down and glowered at the bartender until he tossed out her beverage and replaced it with the one she'd asked for. When she turned around to watch her mark, he'd disappeared. Some human guy had taken up beating the woman's ass in the play area.
"You'd attract more flies with honey than vinegar."
She smelled him standing too close, and knew before she turned around who it was. "Ya know, I never understood that." Shani swiveled to face the other stein, refusing to let her eyes focus on his too-straight teeth or the sparkle in his eyes that said he was having way more fun than a slave-boy should. "Why the fuck would I want flies?" Shani threw back her drink. She growled at the feel of liquor burning her throat.
The guy's face went slack as if he didn't know what to think. He blinked once, and Shani wondered if maybe he'd only been programmed with a few phrases. Like, "You're so fine, baby" and "Suck it, slut". A lot of steins had sub-human intelligence. The ones built for laboratory studies couldn't even talk.
Shani tried to catch the bartender's eye, hoping for another drink before she had to figure out how to get the guy outside. The bartender pointedly ignored her, so she turned back to her mark.
A shit-eating, I-told-you-so grin spread across his face. He held out a hand, lifted an eyebrow in a way that had to have been programmed it was so choreographed, and said, "I'm Royce Harden. What's your name, gorgeous?"
