Free Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya by Ronald Wintrick

She had repaid him a million times over. It was amusing to him, as he thought about it then, at least finding some small humor in the situation, that the smallest amount of money he ever spent on Tanya had been in purchasing her in the first place.
     
    Chapter 19
     
    Tanya was a prostitute and hooked on drugs. She could no longer remember how long she had been there in that place of horrors. It seemed like an eternity and had assuredly been over a year. H er willpower had been completely usurped by the drugs she now had to have. She could no longer live without them. She was physically addicted. It seemed a small price to pay, to let the unending stream of men use her body, as long as the needle was always available. It was.
    The needle was always available. As much as she could use and she used it excessively. She didn't really notice anything about the men anymore, unless there was something truly unique about them. The very first time she had seen Handler was in one of these me mories, when he and the pimp walked in to her roach infested room together.
    “This was the cat burglar?” Handler asked with some skepticism.
    Tanya’s pimp held up his hand for Handler to see. The stumps of his fingers were now perfectly healed over, that incident having occurred so long ago at that point that i t seemed to belong to another lifetime entirely. The Tanya of old had been free and in charge of her own destiny, but now, her life was little more than a blurry haze of meaningless days melding into meaningless nights and the needle always ready. The message to Handler was clear. “She's the one all right. She took my fucking fingers, the bitch!"
    Tanya hadn’t known what it was that Handler started doing next. He had a machine in a briefcase and he began placing electrodes in various places on her body. When he had all the electrodes emplaced he turned on the machine and began watching whatever it was it was telling him.
    “She's barely above average.” Handler lied several minutes later, while hoping his pounding heart wasn’t audible. It wasn't as though this one would know how to read the test results, but he might know how to read another man, and he was afraid his excitement was plainly written on his face. “She is beautiful, though. She's worth something for that. I'll give you a thousand.”
    The price rose to eighteen thousand by the end of their bargaining, still a paltry price to have to pay to own another human being, much less to possess Tanya! Apparently to prove that the reason he was purchasing her was sexual he took her immediately, right there in her roach infested room, the first time of many to come. Now Tanya understood the reason she had forgotten her past. Her memories had been suppressed. Tanya wondered now if all of Handler's Operatives had been stripped of their memories the same way that hers had been taken, or if she had been a special case; he had simply been unable to help himself and then had to suppress those memories later in order to use her as an Operative.
    If he had been able to control himself then, then Tanya wouldn’t have had to have her memories erased , would likely have joined the O rganization eagerly, and probably would have been eternally grateful to him for saving her from the horror which her life had become! It was an error that could not be taken back, however, and now he would have to die.
    Tanya had made the right decision, she decided, as she watched out the port as her ship slowly drew up to the Kievor Trade Station. She had no idea what she as was going to do there, but the Organization was extremely powerful, employing many Operatives, so there was nowhere she could go within human space where she could be sure o f her next breath. The fact she had gotten out at all was a miracle. If it was her operation and the roles reversed Handler would not have gotten out. She would've made sure. In retrospect it seemed extremely arrogant and sloppy of him, but just because he had