Free His Favorite Girl by Steph Sweeney

collecting evidence for the purpose of blackmailing the company."
    "What did you do with him?"
    His smile widened.  "I still have him.  I'll probably keep him for a while."
    My stomach twisted into a knot.  I thought about the soldier at the bottom of Brian's pit, naked and shivering and scared for his life.  What condition was he in now?
    "I want to see him," I said, my voice cracking in anticipation of immediate refusal.
    "Okay."
    "What?"
    Sean shrugged.  "Okay, I'll take you to see him.  Not right now, though.  I have some things to do. "  He looked at his watch.  "How about noon?  You can meet me here and I'll take you up."
    I nodded quickly, unable to speak, and as Sean walked away I just stood there in shock.
    Up.
    There were only two floors above Level C, and I knew for a fact he wasn't housing a prisoner with the Favorite Girls.
    Today at noon Sean was going to take me to Level E.
    Holy shit .  I have to tell Patton.
    I waited for Sean to turn a corner.  Then I ran down my hallway and back to the room.  As I opened the door Liu's loud, angry voice blasted in my face, but she stopped as soon as she heard me.  I didn't catch what she was saying and I didn't care.
    "Everything okay?" Flora asked.
    "Yep, just gotta make a call," I said, rushing to the telephone.
    I dialed Patton's office.  It rang four times and went to voicemail, so I dialed his apartment.  The same.
    "Liu," I said.  She spun around in her chair and looked at me for the first time.  "I need you to do me a favor."
    She grimaced.  "Are you fucking serious?"
    "Please," I said.  "It's an emergency."
    "What's wrong?" Flora asked, standing from her chair.
    "Nothing, everything's okay.  I just have to talk to Patton."  I turned to Liu.  "When you get to work, tell him I need to see him."
    "Why don't you just wait for him?  He'll be here in half an hour."
    She was right.  I would have to postpone talking to Judy.  It would be better to wait until she got off work anyway.  We would have more time then.
    "Okay," I said, taking a long, deep breath, trying to calm myself.
    "What's so important anyway?" Liu asked, her cynicism cutting through my patience like a razor blade.
    "If you could show yourself as trustworthy, " I said, "maybe I would tell you."
    "Whatever."
    She went back to eating her biscuits and gravy.
    Flora still stood there looking timid and nervous.  Her intelligence and intuition had no end.  Completely dumb to the circumstances, she could still sense the gravity of the situation.
    I walked over to her, forcing a smile, and brushed a crumb from the corner of her mou th.  "Finish eating.  Everything's fine."
    "What's going on, Melissa?  Can you tell me?"
    I gave her a furtive nod, hoping Liu wouldn't see it.  "Eat your breakfast.  We'll talk later."
    The next thirty minutes crawled by.  Now that I had time to sit and think, I started to get scared.  I didn't like being alone with Sean.  Once he had me on Level E, I would be helpless.  Not even Patton could save me.  He might well decide to strap me to the same pole to which he'd tied my first Flora and Mr. Moses.  Slit my throat just like he'd done to them.  And I would die looking at his pale, black-eyed, grinning face.
    Tattooed irises be damned.  Sean was a fucking alien.  I was convinced.
    While I waited for Patton I started thinking about the party.  All those powerful men, business executives, politicians, high-profile religious figures . . . all at the behest of Mr. Shriver, the CEO of a sex slave operation that--I was learning lately--was so much more.  These were men who made me more uncomfortable than I'd ever been in my life, and yet Mr. Shriver had captured them all like flies on a sticky strip.  With his power and Brian's technological innovations, Your Favorite Girl, Incorporated might actually take over the world.
    So where did that leave me?
    Hopeless.  Futile.  Dead.
    This train of thought tamed my eagerness to talk to Patton.  Yes, Sean