The Life We Lead: Ascending (19 page)

James grabbed Tim, who was starting to shake.
Tim became very upset at shouting and physical violence.

“Jim, we can’t get involved. We don’t know
what it’s about, and it isn’t our concern today,” he said quickly
and quietly.

“I know what they are saying. He said Joe
should have used the proper manners and taken a bonus with him. Joe
was saying it was for a different thing and then he got hit, Tim
said, still shaking.

“Jim, you are able to deal with violence,
remember? It is a rule, and Joe is okay right now. It’s a rule,”
James said. He then asked, “What do you mean ‘bonus’?”

Tim stopped shaking. He looked sad. “I don’t
know, but it is what he said. Grant, I would like to go home soon.
I do not like this place.”

“Soon,” James replied.

Lien finished yelling and Joe set off. Upon
joining them, Lien began to speak as if nothing had happened while
showing them down the corridor, which was complete with a vaulted
ceiling.

“Here we are in the main front area.
Different areas of our home can be reached from here,” said Lien,
spreading his arms wide.

As they reached the end of the corridor, they
found a rather magnificent opening. It looked like an indoor
courtyard and living room with grand mirrors, tapestries on the
walls, large carpets, and soft leather couches. A bar area in the
corner had a suited Caucasian boy with large ears and red hair
manning it. He looked extremely out of place.

Looking up, James saw that they were under
the tower, but the inner chamber of the tower also had a variety of
angled mirrors intermixed with steps leading to the peak. James
quickly realized these were used to harvest natural light, though
electrical lights were present, too. He also recognized that
cameras were everywhere, and not just the obvious ones in the
corners.

Lien spoke again, as if giving them a tour.
“If you come with me to the right, you find most eregant rooms
prepared for guests to try out before taking home.” They followed
him down the right-hand corridor.

James was confused, but Tim seemed happy to
be on the little tour and didn’t appear to think anything was
wrong. James was not about to upset that peace, so he kept quiet
and smiled as Lien showed them a well-furnished bedroom inside the
second door on the left as they entered the hall.

The king bed was set on a hand carved frame
with posts that ran to the ceiling. The royal purple curtains on
the bed were pulled back, and the walls were painted a soft
lavender. On the ceiling directly over the mattress was yet another
mirror.

James’s eyes denoted a small line running
from the edge of the mirror at the headboard toward the wall. It
was perfectly straight and could easily be a line for a hidden
camera that had been patched over.

A door on the far left of the room led to a
very nice bathroom with a shower and tub. Aside from the plumbing,
that seemed to be an added feature well after the fortress was
built, everything was tiled and looked modern.

Stepping back into the hallway, they met a
woman who looked very much like Lien. It turned out to be his
sister, Bik. She was very gracious and said, “If you hurry, you
seeing them in bathing room.”

Tim spoke up. “We just saw the bathroom. I
liked the shiny green tiles.”

Lien interjected. “I am giving them the tour,
Bik. Go!”

She gave him a look and walked away.

“She is as bad as her bastard, Joe,” Lien
spat. “Qiang was right to treat her as cousin and not sister
anymore. Prease, this way. Show you more.”

James gave a small nod to show his lack of
concern. He understood that many cultures of the world had
different views and this was one of them. He didn’t agree with it,
but at the same time he felt that Grant wouldn’t care too much and
acted accordingly.

They saw another room similar to the prior
one and then a third room set up like a classroom. “This teaching
room. For those who like pray teacher with bad student,” he
winked.

And it suddenly clicked in James’s mind. This
was a brothel. The teens working out front were probably all
bastards of the prostitutes. Lien thought he and Tim were here as
regular clients, and Joe had tried to tell them they were not. The
bonus he mentioned must have been a woman to keep them company on
their journey to the fortress.

James stepped forward to speak with Lien.
“Sorry, I think we should …” but Lien cut him off.

“Okay, okay. I take you now. I show you.
Normar the rast room is exciting, but we go see now,” Lien said,
slightly flustered. “Bik ruin surprise.”

James tried to engage him again, but Lien
waved him off and said, “Come, come.”

Tim followed Lien, clearly eager to see more
of the place, and James tracked them, trying to think of how to
tell him they were not here to visit prostitutes. All the while, he
kept processing what he saw.
This is a rather out-of-the-way
place to set up a brothel.

Lien took them through a few more passages
and turns, then stopped outside a room and opened the door for
them. They could hear voices and splashing. Tim walked in, and
James paused to try to explain.

“Mr. Tan, I think we need to speak. Jim, my
cousin, and I are here to gain some information,” James
started.

“Yes, yes. To see what we do and training.
Make some picks, yes?” He gave a prolonged wink and a smile. He was
missing several teeth and had really bad breath.

“No, Mr. Tan. We have come for other
information. We called and spoke with Mr. Rasa about the Spirit
information,” James said.

“What is that? Oh you mean stuff? Or Sirff,
or how you say?” He paused. “Sruff. No, snuff!” Lien exclaimed,
clearly thinking he had found the right word. “We train, but you do
as you will. You pay and is yours.”

“Snuff? No, we do not wish to kill anyone or
have sex. We are here for information …” James began again.

“Oh, but your cousin, he is showing other
intention,” Lien said, laughing and pointing.

James turned to see Tim stepping out of his
pants.

“Tim!” James cried out, and there was an
echo. He called, “Jim, stop!” getting the name right this time.

Tim looked up as James raced toward him into
the large, Olympic sized poolroom. Steam issued from the huge bath,
but that wasn’t the only thing in the two to three foot deep pool.
It was filled with what looked like at least forty children.

James paused. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
He had expected to see a variety of women and perhaps some men, but
not kids. Now he understood the warning about coming here.

“They asked me to play. I like to swim, and
they said I don’t need swim trunks. They don’t have any, and they
said that adults swim with them all the time,” Tim said, looking
innocently at James.

James focused, speeding up his thought
process. He could not tell Tim these kids were slaves and being
abused. He would freak out. Tim’s very nature was childlike and
innocent. He was great with kids and enjoyed playing with them, but
he couldn’t join them, could he?

Perhaps a second went by. James could hear
Lien approaching. “What if one of the kids peed in the water?” he
said quickly.

“Oh, that is not good. Sometimes that
happens. Yes, good point,” Tim said.

James turned back to the pool. In the blink
of an eye, he counted twenty boys and fifteen girls. They seemed to
be every size, age, and skin tone imaginable. They certainly
weren’t all from this part of the world. As they splashed around,
James noticed they all seemed to have a similar scar somewhere just
below their waistlines. Each scar was about the size of a nickel
and looked like a burn mark.

“You see, we have the finest in the world
here,” Lien said into James’s left ear. He turned to Tim and said,
“Please feel free to do as you like. They are very friendly.” He
clapped twice.

A white boy stood up from the center of the
pool from a crouched position and faced Lien. He was about eleven
years old but had not entered puberty. He was one of the older
kids, if not the oldest, but that was not the remarkable thing
about him. It was the blue eyes and straw hair. They struck James,
as did the boy’s scars. Three were very distinct. One was on his
inner right thigh near his groin, one at his pubic symphysis, and
the other was on his center left upper thigh.

The boy started scurrying around and ushering
kids toward James and Tim.

Just then, a young man about James’s age
walked quickly into the room and pulled Lien to the side. He had a
determined look on his face and spoke rapidly.

James and Tim were swarmed with kids
chattering away and pawing at their clothes. Only the blue eyed boy
remained in the water, but he was right at the edge, watching the
others.

The stranger finished speaking and left. Lien
came over and clapped his hands twice again. The blue-eyed boy
called the others back to the pool.

“Why are they going back? I thought we were
going to play a game. She said we could play hide and seek.” Tim
pointed at a little girl about nine years old with long black hair
who was waving at him. He waved back.

“So sorry. My nephew instructs me you not
suppose to see. You here for other thing. So sorry,” Lien said.
“Prease come now, this way.”

“Wait, just one moment.” James held out his
hand to stop him. He quickly decided to exploit this mistake and
Tim’s innocent desire to play with the children to their
advantage.

“Why can’t we discuss both?” James asked. “As
you said, my cousin is interested, and so am I.” In his head, he
finished with the thought,
Interested in freeing these kids and
burning this hellhole to the ground, hopefully with you and your
partners in it.

James knew he needed to secure his host’s
trust a bit more in order to see the best way to help these kids.
That meant seeing more of the layout.

“Please, finish showing us around before we
conduct our other business.” James looked into Lien’s face, trying
to conceal the rage burning through him. Thankfully, the room was
hot and covered up how red he had to be turning.

Lien laughed and wiggled a finger at James
before bowing slightly. “Oh, oh oh, I knew. I knew. Good, yes.” He
turned and called “Seim!”

A young man who looked about twenty years old
appeared out of a dark corner of the corridor.

Lien said something to Seim, who vanished. He
then called “Fang!” and another young man about the same age
appeared. Lien again spoke but this time pointed at the children,
clearly telling him to round them up and get them out of the
pool.

“Prease, this way,” Lien then said to Tim and
James. Tim looked a little sad to leave the kids, but he
followed.

“Seim will tell them you wish to finish the
tour and then we join for tarking,” Lien said.

Finish the tour they did. They saw the
dormitory style bedrooms for the kids. They also saw a real
classroom where, according to Lien, some of the children were
educated as requested by their masters. And they saw areas that
made James want to vomit and hurt Lien at the same time. There was
even a nursery that seemed to be empty of inhabitants at the
moment. They passed at least two rooms with a variety of equipment
clearly meant to train the kids for a variety of things. The place
seemed to operate in a “made-to-order” style for the clients’
requirements of the children.

Most of it went over Tim’s head, but when he
saw the whip in one room, he asked James, “Why do they have that?
Those go to hit horses to make them run faster.”

“I don’t know, Jim, maybe they have horses,”
James answered quickly.

“Strange place to keep it, near where
children play and sleep and go to school. They aren’t teaching the
kids to hit horses, are they?” Tim asked loudly.

“No,” James said.

“Probrem? What is hitting horses?” Lien
asked

“Nothing. Jim was mistaken.” James turned
quickly and bumped Tim’s leg to signal him not to talk because Tim
looked like he was about to start an argument.

They exited into the same open area they’d
begun in, but from what would have been the middle hallway. The
original corridor was now to their left.

“We go now and finish other business,” Lien
said, leading them down the last remaining hallway from that room,
now on their right.

This hallway had a different feeling than the
others, more like the living quarters for those not enslaved. It
was decorated with paintings and pictures. It, too, had a variety
of doors, but it felt more homelike.

James couldn’t help but wonder what they were
getting into now.

They stopped at the last door on the left off
the main hallway. Lien knocked, and they entered an impressive
looking office space with many TVs on the walls and high-end
computer equipment. The right hand wall hosted an impressive
surveillance system and server equipment. There seemed to be some
major power breakers, too. As the door shut, James heard a powerful
locking system engage. Clearly, no expense had been spared in this
operation.

While James and Tim checked out the room,
Lien whispered something to the stranger who had come to the pool
room. He then introduced a woman. “This is Jie, wife of my brother
Qiang.”

There were a total of four extra people in
the room now, Jie, Seim, the stranger, and another man lurking in a
corner. James saw no mirrors in this room, but there were
cameras.

A woman who looked to be in her early sixties
stood to welcome them. Like Lien, she was Chinese and wore her hair
pulled into a bun. She was wearing a mix of Chinese and American
clothing that suited her very well. Her eyes were set firmly on
James, then shifted to Tim, then back to James. James knew
instinctively she was shrewd and calculating, but he felt something
else about her, something protective.