A developing situation

<snip>
"Would you prefer that we put a bag over your head and dragged you to my brothel?" the insectoid chirped angrily. "Then again," (s)he mused, "this one has more spunk than I appreciate my workers having. Well, 'boss', do you think this tiger we have unchained for your audit would perform satisfactorily in the pits?"
</snip>

For fuck’s sake

In the silence that followed, Twoso hauled himself up from the floor and dusted himself off.

Cass nervously nipped her bottom lip between her teeth. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d ordered the inspection.

“The produce needs restraining in future” she observed, more for want of something to say, than anything else.

“Agreed” Twoso rumbled.

Breathing heavily, the blonde woman’s looked back and forth between them before finally meeting Cassandra’s gaze “Help me” she pleaded "We're both human!"

Slowly shaking her head, Cass pulled a pistol out from within her suit jacket and pointed it at her "It's not personal. It's just business"

Madam Sin’s inhuman eyes glittered in the light as she cocked her head “I say we should ship her to the brothel.” she chittered her high-pitched insectoid laugh “We have a couple of Hauruk clients. If she even survives coupling with them, she’ll no doubt die soon afterwards. Her injuries will be horrific enough to serve as a warning to the rest of this shipment”

“Fuck” Cassandra’s dry croak of revulsion mingled with the other woman’s gasp of horror.

Sin skittered forward a few steps “We could even amp up her body chemistry for them. They love the smell of fear that you mammals emit. The pheromones drive them wild”

This was too much. The nameless blonde captive darted to one side to make a break for it and dash between the packing crates scattering the floor of the warehouse. Cass fired a half-hearted shot over her head in an effort to maintain the pretence of being a hardened criminal, but Twoso, lunged after her. Lashing one of his three arms out, his manipulator tentacles found purchase and coiled around her lower leg “Not so fast, little salakrane!”

Yanking the woman towards him, he hauled her off her feet and onto her back with a strangled cry.

“Now, hold still,” he snarled, coiling another hand down around the struggling woman’s throat “or I’ll squeeze the life out of you”

“Help me” the woman screamed “Help -” her shouts abruptly cut off as a thick rubbery tentacle slithered across her mouth “Mmmmnh”

Still struggling, she tried to claw it away with her fingers as Cass and Madam Sin converged on where they struggled.

“Fuck it” Twoso drew a blade from his belt with his last free hand and held it in front of her eyes “I warned you”

The woman’s scream was one of muffled terror as he bought the blade around to push it into one of her eyes.

“I kind of liked you” Cass said as she trained her pistol on Twoso. His eyestalks whipped around in surprise, just as she she pulled the trigger.

His body erupted in a messy detonation of heat and gore.

“You bitch” Sin hissed, rearing up on her hind legs to slash a clawed hand at Cassandra’s face, only missing by the scantest of margins as her target instinctively recoiled and stumbled backwards.

A wild volley of shots from Cass, as she struggled to regain her balance, deterred Sin from pressing the advantage and forced her to skitter away behind some of the packing crates.

Ducking back behind another of the crates, Cass leaned her head around the corner “Would you get the fuck up?” she snapped at the nameless, now gore splattered, woman, who was frantically struggling to heave Twoso’s corpse off her.

The patter of chitinous feet on concrete, over to her left, made Cass wheel and point her weapon in the direction of the sound, but Sin was nowhere to be seen.

“Can you use one of these?” she proffered her pistol to the woman as she slithered out from Twoso’s grasp and struggled to her feet. She looked a mess.

“I... I don’t know”

"Here's hoping" Cass thrust the pistol into the woman’s hands and drew a spare from inside her jacket “Our lives are on the line. We need to get out of here”

The lights went off at that moment, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

“You should have killed me first” Sin’s voice echoed around the warehouse.

“Fuck...”

<tag>
Nim - sorry it took so long - I've just had a nightmare couple of weeks
</tag>