As Krysty sat, the other she-he moved to the side and rear of the chair. Before Krysty could react, Jann locked an arm around her neck and plunged a hypodermic needle through her shirt and deep into her shoulder.
“Yeow!” she cried.
She couldn’t get free of the arm. Jann pushed the plunger home, shooting burning pain into her muscle. Then she jerked out the needle, leaving a spreading patch of red around the tiny hole in the fabric.
“Sorry to be so rough,” Dredda said, “but we don’t have time to wrestle with you.”
“What the hell did you shoot into me?” Krysty demanded, rubbing her wound.
“Don’t get upset,” Jann told her. “It’s perfectly safe. It’s just something to relax you.”
It was already becoming apparent to Krysty that she had been drugged. Her head was growing heavy, and her tongue was starting to feel thick. Her fingertips and toes were starting to tingle. She tried to get up from the chair, but the she-he pushed her back down easily. Her legs had no strength.
“You can’t fight the effects of the sedative,” Dredda said. “You might as well stop trying.”
Dredda and Jann picked her up under the arms and dragged her limp-legged over to the table.
Krysty was fully conscious, but paralyzed. She had feeling in her limbs, but she couldn’t move them. She could think, but she couldn’t talk. The she-hes laid her out on her back on the operating table, then Dredda started pulling off her boots. Jann slipped the jumpsuit from her torso, unzipping it and rolling the fabric down over the points of her hips. Then the two of them pulled off the jumpsuit and her panties.
Jann took a pair of stirrups from under one of the trolleys and attached them to the either end of the table. The doctor lifted her feet and hooked them inside, spreading her legs wide.
Unable to raise her head, unable to give voice to the string of curses that filled her head, unable to defend herself, Krysty felt tears of impotent fury slide down her cheeks.
You bastards, she thought, you filthy bastards.
“Pick up her head so she can see what’s happening,” Jann said to Dredda. “It’s a quick and painless procedure,” the she-he assured Krysty. “The sedation was necessary only because we assumed you would resist.”
Dredda slipped a hand under her neck and gently raised her head from the table. What Krysty saw made her shudder. Below the flat, pale plane of her belly, above the tuft of red hair atop her pubis, her entire crotch was in full view and easy reach of the muscular creature who stood between her splayed knees. After pulling on a pair of transparent, skintight gloves, Jann attached a long, thin instrument to the hose emanating from the low cube beside the table.
Gaia, protect me! Krysty thought, shuddering as uninvited fingers deftly opened up her most private place and inserted the hollow, pointed tip of the instrument.
The box beside the table began to hum and from deep inside her the instrument started making sucking, slurping sounds.
“Your lover, Shadow Man,” Dredda said, “refused to give us his seed for the in vitro fertilization of our eggs. But he couldn’t refuse you. You gathered the necessary material for us. A little vacuuming up is all that’s required. As Jann said, it will be painless and quick.”
Dredda set Krysty’s head back down, leaving the redhead to stare unblinking at the domed ceiling. The extraction procedure took two or three minutes. They were very long minutes for Krysty. She lay there while the doctor probed her inner recesses with the suction tip, her face burning with anger and shame, more humiliated than she had ever been in her life. When it was finally over, Jann gave her another injection, which caused the paralysis to gradually subside. After a few more minutes, she was able to sit up and pull her clothes back on.
Whereas before Krysty had been speechless due to the drug, now she was speechless due to fury. She looked wildly around the room for a weapon, her green eyes flashing.
Dredda noticed the way she was staring at the instrument tray. “Maybe you should rethink that. First of all, you’ll never reach it before I do. Second, I might accidentally injure you in the process.”