Chapter One

The Prohibitors circling his wrist kept him bound in place in the back of the dark, dinky transporter. It didn’t matter how much strength he used, how loudly he screamed, or how much he tried to reason; it all seemed useless. There was no escaping. Even though it was futile to fight, it was not in his nature to give up, no matter how powerful his enemies were. He had dignity and pride, and he would never allow them to do whatever they wanted with him, not without a fight. He was human, too, and that would never change, even if he was from the outskirts. 

For two weeks, he kept up chaos, using every pit stop as an attempt to escape. He was persistent, hardly tiring, while coming up with new and better ways to fool the men who held him against his will. At the slightest sounds, he’d rise, convinced they were ready to liberate him, but the sounds would die away, and his expectations with it. There was a small part of him that hoped they would turn him loose. That they’d realize he wasn’t even worth the coin they paid for him. 

But because they did spend money on him, he knew that they intended to get their full worth out of it. Even still, he hoped that he could’ve convinced them that he wasn't worth it. 

Whatever it was. 

That was wishful thinking and had no place in the reality of his circumstances, especially since he was cuffed with Prohibitors. Every escape attempt would be hard-fought because of them.

It became obvious that it was all pointless as the days ticked away, and his continued attempts at freedom proved unsuccessful. The men holding him captive began to let him starve, allowing his body to grow too weak to fight. Eventually, they’d feed him again to keep him alive for whatever they had planned for him. When they realized he attempted to run every time they stopped to relieve themselves, they began leaving him restricted in the transporter. There were many moments when the urge to relieve himself was overwhelming because of this, and try as he might, having to hold his bladder only got him so far. Unfortunately, it led to a few accidents that the men discovered later on. 

Even those he tried to use to his advantage until that too was thwarted.

At the moment, he was sitting in one of those “accidents.” 

With his knees bent in a squatted position inside the steel shipping box, he waited patiently for the men to make their pit stop, which had become a daily routine. When they did, they would either check on him or not. 

He could feel the transporter slowing down to a stop. He gritted his teeth while knocking the back of his head gently against the steel wall.  

He froze when he heard the back door creak open.

“Look at this scruffy kid,” one of the men taunted as he opened the back door wider. Sunlight poured into the tight dark compartment, painfully blinding him. Squinting, he shielded his eyes against the light. “He peed his pants,” the man said after a moment of holding his nose from the stench.

He briefly cast his eyes in the man’s direction, giving him an intense glare while resisting the urge to feel ashamed for wetting himself again.

“Take a look at this, fellas,” another one of the men bellowed out. Slowly they all gathered and fell into a chorus of laughter. 

Bowing his head allowed his dark shaggy hair to fall over his face and hid him from the men that came to stare and taunt. He tried to distract himself by gently pulling at the Prohibitor that bonded him to the side of the transporter. His painfully bruised wrist refocused him, and as he pulled, he hoped again they would come undone, but in his heart, he knew they would not.

“What to do with him?” one of the men asked.

He clenched his jaw to keep his mouth shut.

The light began to fade away as the doors to the back of the transporter were suddenly closed shut. In the dark compartment, the muffled sound of the men's conversation could be heard,  “Pour a bucket of water on him, so he doesn’t chafe, Lady Hwang wouldn’t like if her shipment came in damaged, the spoiled-,”

He tuned out the rest of their conversation. Sighing, he collapsed onto his . His pants were soiled all the way down to his ankles, and he knew the men would be back to douse him in water. When they returned, he was determined to give it his all and attempt another escape. 

~

They had come and gone, and the water around him was finally starting to dry. His escape plan had failed yet again, and he was shivering though it wasn’t cold outside. He cursed the Prohibitors as the fatigue and physical stress of his situation were finally starting to affect his mental outlook. Was it foolish that he held onto the optimistic hope of escape? It was becoming harder and harder each time to put a plan into action before it was halted. Maybe his captives were getting wiser, or maybe all the abuse was beginning to make him daft. 

Maybe it was a bit of both. 

They had been traveling for weeks now, and from the sounds outside, they had finally entered the city. 

It was the home of the gentry class and housed the seat of the Royals. The vitiated people of wealth, iniquity, and nobility surrounded the area, making it possible for people of his class to enter the city as property only. 

Just the thought of having arrived in the pastel city, known by its citizens as Wenyan, gave him chills that had nothing to do with him being wet. 

He began to thrash against the Prohibitors and the wall, pulling his arms taunt while silently pleading for it to budge. Pain shot up the nerves in his wrist and arms, but he continued to thrash anyway, even when he was sure he was bleeding. The self-inflicted pain was well worth it if it meant his freedom; he could not allow his hope of escape to fade. He knew if the transporter got to its destination, it would be close to too late for him. So, with trembling arms, he pulled with renewed vigor until there were tears in his eyes. 

He couldn’t give up.

Wenyan wasn't a place you could easily leave if you were from the lesser class. Coming from the outskirts meant one of three things. You either were poor, uneducated, or born sick, and sometimes all three. If a person of such a background was brought to the city, they were meant to be used as mules or abused in other ways by the wealthy. It was a life he was taught to avoid. The stories he heard about the people who were taken to Wenyan sounded like nightmares told to children as bedtime stories to scare them. And scared he was as the transporter picked up speed, bringing him deeper into the metropolis.

Quietly, so the men wouldn’t hear, he began to cry. Still, he pulled on his bonds with all his might and only succeeded in deepening the wounds on his wrist further. Those hot tears of anguish burned trails down his face as he slumped forward onto the wall. His entire life was a fight to survive. Outskirt living was anything but easy since the Wenyan ruling authority restricted those on the outskirts of technology, amongst other important things. Yet, despite not having what many had in the city, he managed to live a life that he could be proud of. He understood that if he wanted to better his life, he had to go out and make it happen on his own. Oppressed as the people of the outskirts were, they still made things work for themselves. And there was always that option for him, even if it was an uphill climb. 

He loathed admitting, however, the further he was taken into Wenyan, the less viable that option became.

He at least had the loving memory of his mother and the steady presence of his uncle, who looked out for him despite any and everything that happened. They both brought about a sense of stability for him growing up. When things were dire, hard, and seemingly impossible, they made sure he didn’t suffer the harshest side effects of their unfair lives if they could help it. That’s what got him from day to day. But this? There seemed to be nothing he could do to change his situation. The men laughed in his face when he tried to negotiate with them. They actively prevented him from running away. Like a mouse in a trap, he was stuck, and the knowledge of having to accept that was warring with his incessant need to escape.

Thinking objectively, he could pinpoint the exact moment things went wrong for him, and he cursed that day in his mind. Growing up, his mother always warned him that he should never be too kind to strangers. So if there were people he didn’t recognize, he wasn’t even to smile at them, let alone greet them and offer help. 

Because he strayed from his mother’s advice, he found himself where he was, sold off to men for pouches of silver and gold, and gagged so he couldn't make too much noise as they forced him into the back of a transporter. Now he sat like some pitiful animal chained to the side of the transport container’s wall, and for all his thoughts of escape, he could not make it happen. He was pitiful and hopeless.

That feeling of hopelessness crept up higher and higher, wrapping itself around his neck in a vice-like grip. He coughed, hands hurriedly finding their way to his tensed neck as he struggled to take a deep breath. This kind of intense desperation was something he wasn't familiar with, causing his stomach to clench and unclench like a fist. He focused on taking deep breaths to calm down and reminded himself not to give in to the despair that engulfed him. There could be hope found in every situation; he just had to remind himself that he believed that. 

After calming down some, he curled up closer to the wall, allowing his circumstances to resonate within him. Then, closing his eyes to the darkness, he focused on hearing whatever he could. If his mother was right about strangers, she probably was right about the type of place the pastel city was as well. 

In all 24 years of his life, he had never been outside of the humble outskirts, and he knew everyone within a certain radius of his home. His mother always told him stories about the dangers of traveling beyond where she allowed him. She made it clear that she reminded him often because she loved him. When she recounted the story of his older brother, whom he hardly remembered, she always did so in a way to scare him from going further than he should. She’d say he roamed through the market one day, and he never returned. That’s why it was important to stay by her side. 

That account of his brother’s disappearance stayed with him.

Growing up, he never took her words for granted. He didn’t think he could if he tried. She repeated them as many times in a week as she would call his name. When she died, he’d repeat her sayings to himself, half as a reminder and half as comfort. Though he had a momentary lapse in judgment when it came to his mother warning him about being kind to strangers, the tales she told of the pastel city he never forgot.

His mother said it was a city of light and color, soft pastels decorating the metropolis world, which was why the people of the outskirts called it the pastel city. The buildings, the street walkways, all blended seamlessly with the flowing waters and the endless sky. She’d always say it seemed like a city that held a magnanimous beauty, and that was its trap. 

The people were the ones that made the place detestable. 

Wenyan was a city named for its refined position and virtue, a name directly chosen by its first King, who established the prospering society to this very day. Its inhabitants, however, were the opposite of pure and good. Though, if you asked them, they'd personally tell you they upheld the title of virtuous accordingly. So whenever he would reflect on the warnings his mother gave him about that sick place, the irony of those words wasn’t lost on him.

It was like the mirrors they looked into didn't show them their true reflection. It was either that or the glamorous lifestyle that led them to believe that outer beauty was all that was required in the world. It took a twisted thinking individual to believe that subjugating another human to bend to the will of others was a normal, let alone deserved, method of living. But that was the example shown to each generation from the Royals themselves. They set the standard, the rest of the gentry class that inhabited the city followed their lead. That example controlled the kingdom's destiny and caused emotional and physical turmoil for the inhabitants who struggled to live on the outskirts.

When people went missing from the small rural places of the outskirts, they would always reappear again in Wenyan, working in many different roles but always in a position of servitude. He used to be under the impression that these missing ones were taken, snatched from their run-down homes and their uncomfortable beds in the dead of night, but now from his own experience, he found that “taken” was not always accurate. 

There was no doubt in his mind that he was sold. 

And it happened in broad daylight.

A/N: I will upload the first 3 revised chapters here for anyone who wants to read. If you would like to continue to read the full story as I update it, you can click the highlighted link to take you to Kindle Vella where you will be able to read a new chapter every Tuesday.