My companion, Vee—Veronique—she needed me to be neat, and quiet, and obedient. If I was, we got along quite well. If I wasn’t, I was…left alone. I’m very good at passing time alone.” Jay looked him straight in the eyes then, his gray pair looking positively ancient. “But I don’t like it.” Alexei tried to put together the strange pieces of that story, mulling them over in his mind. “You were…owned? And…abused.”
