Chapter 32 - Contact

 Thursday, August 15, 2024—7:40 PM

Sabriya froze, instantly recognizing the voice. Her gut spasmed; shallow breaths came instinctively, speechless and trembling. Get a hold of yourself, Girl. He can’t hurt you just yet. Disguise your voice, an old woman. Tell the truth … mostly.

“Hello?!” Sabriya replied with a high-pitched, quavering, hesitant voice. “There’s been an accident … I came upon … stopped my bicycle … to help, but I can’t … I’m too old … ’dare two men … unconscious … don’t think der’s dead.”

“DAMN! Who are you? How’d you get this number?”

“I’m calling on a phone … found in the da truck … the most recent number ... ‘dare also girls and boy in the back ... d’are distressed … need a doctor. Might you come and help? How far away you?”

There was a pause, and loud, angry, muffled talking in the background that Sabriya could not understand.

The man’s voice came back more rash, more demanding. “We can be there soon as we can tidy up a delivery in Mannu.”

Acting dumb, “Where exactly that? Are you a long way?” 

“Never mind where I am, tell me where you are.”

Sabriya told the man as best she could, describing the landmarks off the main road to Red Coast and how far down the rural route marked with a sign that read G351. Before Sabriya could ask how long it would take for him to get to the “accident,” the man disconnected.

Working as fast as she could under the city’s reflected light off the low-lying clouds, Sabriya carried and dragged the five children through the woods and brush by different obscure routes to camouflage her path. 

Jogging back to her SEC, she asked Landon to locate Dr. Lu Funzini, director of the Meijing Medical Laboratory, and ask if she could meet him at his lab later this evening. Landon confirmed he would try, and in the same breath, reminded Sabriya of the APB out for a vigilante on a cycle. “Try to lower your profile. You’ve now got the real police looking for you.”

“I’ll do my best. In the meantime, can you trace a telephone number and find out the billing address?” She gave him the memorized number. “It’s the phone number of the man in charge of this particular trafficked cargo. I don’t know if it’s the same person who’s behind capturing Jia Kun and Gely, but it’s a person I know all too well.”

“You know him? Who is it?”

“Sapptoso Wanti. He’s a trafficker … and he’s Jia Kun’s father—the man who controlled my past and from whom I fled years ago. He’s awfully dangerous. Given the chance, he’ll kill me or carve out my organs. Unfortunately, I was either a genius or the stupidest person on the planet. I told him where his truck is. You’ve got to get these kids out of here before he comes.”

“How far away is he?”

“I have not the … wait, he said he’s coming from the Mannu district. That’s south of Meijing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, let me plot it … .yeah, okay, he’s at least two hours away. I’ll get Hannah on the rescue. She can get there in less than an hour. What will you do?”

“Lu Funzini, I know where his office is. I’ll head there. He can help me locate Sapp, and perhaps Jia Kun.” To herself, she thought, “What have I gotten into? Oh, St. Michael, please help me and protect Jia Kun.” 

Sabriya mounted her SEC, moved it out of hiding onto the road, and began retracing her route. But no sooner had she started down the road than she saw two vehicles approaching from the main road. One with police emergency strobes going off like Chinese New Year fireworks. She was right; the police were the rats in Sapp’s pocket. She reversed direction, turned off her lights, and opened her encrypted radio channel. “Scorp. Scorp! Landon? Urgent.”

“Yes, SEC One.”

“Police are nearly upon the site of the truck. I was driving toward them, but I’ve reversed direction. The kids are where I pinned them. Direct me out of this mess.”

“Will do. I’ve got you on the map. You’ve got a couple of klicks before you need to turn south.”

“How did they know we were here? Could my one phone call on the truck driver’s cell have triggered my location?”

“Definitely! Cell towers triangulate location somewhat precisely. But, I don’t know how your nemesis would get that information … wait, this is the police?”

“What it looks like from here … flashing lights and … previously, a marked truck with a machine gun. It feels like they’re looking over my shoulder.”

“I don’t have a solution. Let’s get you out of there.”

“Right!”

As Sabriya raced away from the oncoming police, she forcibly suppressed her anger at hearing Sapptoso’s voice, albeit through a cell phone. But she could not suppress the memory of his perversion and anger that had led to this.

 

Flashback—October 2011
Meijing

Slamming the door open against the wall, he barged into her room and stood over her bed, demanding, “Where’s the rest of it?” 

“That’s all there was. He was poor,” she said, cowering behind a soiled sheet and blanket.

“Don’t lie to me. We had an agreement.”

“I didn’t agree to this.”

“You did! You started this.”

“You manipulated me, and I have nothing to show for it.”

“So you steal! That’s it?”

“How can I steal from myself?”

“Right, you can’t. You’re stealing from me.” He grabbed her arm, yanked her off the bed onto the floor, pulled apart the bed, shoving the thin mattress into the corner, looking for the money. He was convinced the trick had paid more than she had turned over.

Defiant, no tears, she yelled at him. “I’m telling you, I gave you all I had.” 

“Damn, you, bitch. I know you better than that.” He kicked her legs with his hard boot, creating yet another bruise to go with the others. 

She teared up, but refused to cry. The hatred was deep. 

He yanked out the drawers of her dresser, scattering the contents—camisoles, stockings, panties, bras, T-shirts, ribbons, and letters tied in bundles. But there was nothing. With a quick thrust of his arm, he wiped the top of the dresser clean—extra condoms, makeup, perfumes, barrettes, ugly-cute stuffed animals, all went flying, hitting walls, a cacophony as everything tumbled to the floor. Behind a curtain that cordoned off a dressing area, an iron pipe hung with cheap gowns, thin robes, negligees, and shoe boxes. He ripped down the curtain, flung everything on hangers into the air, and kicked the boxes of shoes she had neatly stacked on the floor. All ransacked … for nothing. 

While he was ravaging her belongings from a life of being ravaged, she dragged the mattress back onto the rattan frame and cowered cross-legged on the bed, holding a blanket over her naked body for what little protection it offered. Her face tight, her muscles taut, deeply creased jowls, eyes, cheeks, and mouth, hard set in scorn. Someday he’d pay. 

There would be no tricks tomorrow. Good. Her room, more than she, would have to recover—that was the unwritten rule. For three months, their twisted relationship had fallen further apart if that was possible. She had resisted his advances. Why he wanted her, a woman he visibly loathed, was a mystery. But to her, he was all she had. Her perverse attraction to the whoremonger repulsed and frightened her. She longed to leave. But there was no place to go. And yet, this was no place at all. 

Disputes over customers’ payments had been brewing for some time. There was a fixed rate for a half hour or an hour, and then there were extras, for which she was entitled to fifty percent. Of course, which extras and how much she collected were entirely her word against the departed tricks’. Sapptoso wasn’t privy to the in-room negotiations. What he wanted had little to do with what really happened. She knew that and, consequently, made up her own rules. 

She was convinced that Sapp’s devotion to his bronze god had perverted him, which, to her way of thinking, gave her permission to secrete away a perversion of her earnings that, to her way of thinking, his perversity had not earned. While she was willing to deprave herself and satisfy just about any man who requested her services, she considered it a depravity to give satisfaction to the man who convinced her of the need for degeneracy. From the beginning, she had never considered her descent into moral corruption anything but a necessity to expedite her ascent from it. 

So, when her cleaned-up boudoir was open for business again, she was repulsed when he entered and demanded her services with all the extras for free. It was the least she could do, he claimed, for him to allow her back within his graces. She refused … which he refused. But it wasn’t a stalemate. He was bigger and stronger … the very model of a modern major pimp … and he despised protection. 

There are Natural Law consequences for every action, and humans have no choice in the matter. Like all businesses, Sapptoso’s nascent brothel was subject to the supply-and-demand economic model. In due time, when Sabriya’s customers demanded a curvaceous maiden, all she could supply was a bloated pregnancy. When customers demanded seduction and congeniality, she had little choice but to supply what came naturally—irritability and hostility. If customers demanded she come to them smelling of lilacs and musk, there were times when she supplied her own seductive odor of vomit. When a customer demanded to kiss her velvety cheeks, all she could supply was acne. And often when a customer demanded a dance, her supply was down to a wobble and swoon. After weeks of complaints, when Sapptoso demanded infanticide, she threatened him with homicide.

Sapptoso finally caved and took Sabriya off the menu. In turn, her developing nurturing instincts found meaning in caring for the other girls who continued to work. To those who were homeless, she tried to give them a home by stealing for them more and better food and clothes, and to those who were emotionally imprisoned, she listened and intervened on their behalf with the man who manipulated them all and denied them freedom.

Late at night, alone in her room, Sabriya would lie on her bed, her eyes filled with tears, her heart summoned hope, her womb crammed with purpose, and her spirit overflowed with prayers for a child that could break the curse.