by Shade Owens
“Oh, hush, hush,” Hawkins said, now gliding the tip of her knife along her bottom lip. “I’m not mad at you, Brone. I just wanna talk.”
Not mad? She’d blatantly threatened to kill me. How did one go from wanting me dead to wanting to chat?
“Then what is this?” I asked.
She bent forward so far that her back resembled a ball.
“I had a plan, Brone,” she said, now flicking the tip of her knife in my face as if scolding me. “The one problem is that plan included you… And, well, you fucked me big time.”
I swallowed hard, prepared for her to snap any second. All I hoped was that she’d do it fast, whatever it was.
She gently traced the tip of her knife along my cheek, my jaw, and then up my ear to push my hair back. “Oh, Brone,” she breathed. “I’m in a bit of a pickle, here.”
My stare followed her knife.
“I can’t trust you anymore,” she said, “but I still need you… I need your women. And the only way to get them is through you.”
What was she talking about? I had no intention of continuing her absurd idea of an attack plan—a Trojan horse. It was preposterous. I wasn’t about to send my women back to where they’d spent countless years of their lives being tormented by the Northers.
“You’re going to get me what I want, and in exchange, I’m going to save your life.”
“What’re you talk—” I tried, but she grabbed me by the collar and pulled me close to her.
“Hold still,” she said, her rancid breath heating my face.
“What’re you—”
“I said hold still.” This time, it came out harsh and impatient.
Then, I felt the blade. She made it glide along my scalp, and piece by piece, my hair fell into the sand by my toes. I pulled away and stared at her wide-eyed, but all it did was aggravate her. She dug her nails into the back of my neck, and with a sadistic smile across her colorless lips, said, “What’s wrong? Did I cut you?”
With my fingers, I touched the side of my temple, feeling prickly skin where hair had once been. Why was she doing this? I wanted to cry, or scream, I wasn’t sure which. Part of me debated punching her in the face, but I was powerless—she was the one holding the knife. Why was she shaving my head?
“It’s for your own good, Brone. You have to blend in with my women.”
I didn’t understand. What was she planning to do? Drag me along with her? It didn’t make any sense.
All of a sudden, she laughed, the sound coming out like a failing car engine. “It’s perfect… I mean, you actually did me a favor, Brone… By pulling what you pulled. I see now how devoted those women are to you. They’d never follow me. At least, not willingly. But they will follow you… They’d follow you anywhere, even if that means arming up and marching to battle to save your life.”
Oh my God.
Was she going to use me as bait?
Hawkins continued on with her knife, whistling an unfamiliar tune in the process, and when she finished, I felt naked and humiliated. I ran my palms over my head, imagining what I looked like. What would Ellie say about this? Would she be repulsed by me?
“Beautiful,” she said, staring wide-eyed at my head as if it were some famous artist’s canvas. “Now, close your eyes.”
“What, why?”
Instead of explaining anything to me, she made her eyelids go flat, which I knew was a translation for, Don’t question me.
I did as she instructed, and she added, “Don’t open them until I tell you.”
My heart raced, but I figured if I went along with it, maybe she wouldn’t kill me.
A sharp, debilitating pain suddenly seared from my eyebrow all the way down to my cheek. I let out a whimper and reached for my face, and the moment my fingers made contact, I wished they hadn’t. Loose flesh hung open—a large gash—from my forehead down to the side of my jaw. It ran over my eyebrow, which was now split in half, and my palms became warm and wet with blood.
“Wh-what did you do?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Collins,” Hawkins announced, her voice authoritative. Footsteps entered the shack behind me. “Get Brone cleaned up.”
I opened one eye—the one without blood pooling over it—and looked up at Hawkins pleadingly. What had she done?
She didn’t smile at me this time. Instead, she wiped the blood from her knife onto her pant leg and stared down at me. “They won’t recognize you now. You should thank me, Brone. I’m saving your life.”
CHAPTER 1
“Oh, quit your whining,” Hawkins hissed, sinking the raft’s wooden paddle into the dark water below.
The water slipped through the raft’s cracks, cool and silky against my skin, but it was so black. Aside from the moon’s reflection casting white lines through its ripples, it was colorless and barely resembled water at all.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek as pain radiated across my face.
What had she done to me? What the fuck had she done? I must have looked like a monster.
She whistled that same tune again and pushed the raft forward. Collins stood on the other side, using the other paddle. At the center of the raft were seven of us, including me. The other six women, for the most part, all looked alike—shaved heads, scarred skin, and rags around their breasts and groin areas. Unlike Hawkins, they’d removed their wooden armor, which meant we weren’t charging into battle.
Was Hawkins really going to do this? How psychotic did someone have to be to want to be caught by the Northers?
I felt sick to my stomach.
This wasn’t happening. Any moment now, I’d wake up with Ellie lying by my side, protected inside the Cove’s rock cave.
This had to be a dream… I couldn’t go back there.
Without warning, old bits of last night’s trout came blasting out of my mouth and onto the raft.
“Yo, what the fuck!” shouted one of Hawkins’s women.
She pulled away, causing the raft to teeter-totter.
With a quick swing of her arm, Hawkins’s smacked the squeamish woman upside the head. “Pops, what the fuck did I say about sitting still?”
“Sorry, Hawk,” said Pops, shoulders slouched, and a scowl directed at me.
“Rinse it off,” Hawkins said, sticking her nose into the air as if having caught a whiff of feces.
I scooped water from the oil-black ocean and spilled it across the raft over and over again until my vomit disappeared. Pops sat at a distance from me, her dark narrowed eyes never leaving mine. But as I straightened my back to sit up, something hard gripped my neck and forced my head down into the water.
“That’ll clean it off,” I heard, a muffled voice through the water in my ears.
The moment I was pulled back up, I swung a fist at my attacker but missed when Hawkins stepped back.
“Watch it, kid,” she said. “Only looking out for your”—she wiggled a finger at her face, drawing a line over an invisible scar—“you know…”
How far would I get if I lunged at her right then? If I sank us both down into the water, would I have time to kill her? My heart, a ticking bomb in my chest, pounded hard against my rib cage. So hard that it became difficult to catch my breath.
I’d felt this before: powerlessness. Nothing enraged me more than being in a position of vulnerability and not being able to fight back. It reminded me of the Northers—of Zsasz and her goons. They’d beaten me, tortured me, and what had I done to get my revenge?
I ran… along with hundreds of women.
I suppose this was a form of revenge in itself. How would I get my revenge against Hawkins? She was leading me straight to the Northers, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Infection’s an ugly thing,” Hawkins said through her whistled tune. The moment we reached the edge of the water, she dug her paddle into the sand and pulled us to shore. “Salt water’s a godsend.”
Maybe if I ignored her enough, she’d stop talking to me.
“If y
a don’t clean it, you could be disfigured entirely,” she added.
This time, I didn’t miss. Without thinking about consequences, I swung a curved hook straight at her jaw, the cracking sound bringing me instant relief. “You already fucking disfigured me!”
My relief, however, was short-lived. The next thing I knew, Collins had me down in the sand, her fist beating down on my aching face. I wasn’t sure how many hits she’d landed—four, five maybe—before Hawkins stopped her.
“Whoa, Colls, easy,” Hawkins said. She knelt down beside me, threw her long blond hair over her shoulder so that it ran straight down her back, and examined my face by pinching my chin with her thumb and index finger. “Hmmm, gotta say, Collins. The bruising’s a nice touch.”
Collins smiled a set of half-missing teeth. It was the first time I’d ever seen her smile—it looked like she’d fallen face-first into a woodchipper. Her lips, too, were scarred and bubbly as if she’d eaten a grenade.
She was almost as ugly as Zsasz.
“Come on,” Hawkins said, pulling me onto my feet and shoving me forward.
I followed her women through the narrow path alongside the Cove. It was dark and difficult to see. Frogs, insects, and night owls sang nearby, reminding me of where I was—a jungle. Warm humid air licked my throbbing face and I inhaled, my mouth filling with the taste of wet earth.
What was she planning? To walk North and hope to land on Norther territory? Or, was she expecting me to guide her? I’d only been taken there once; it wasn’t like I’d memorized the damn path.
I bit my tongue as the pain in my face worsened and tried focus on other things, like Murk. Was she still alive? Was saving her still a possibility, or a delusional dream? And what about my face? Out of nowhere, a sharp pain radiated down into my lip like an electric shock. Oh God. How was I supposed to keep this wound clean once captured by the Northers?
They wouldn’t help me, and if it got infected, Hawkins was right—I’d be disfigured or worse, dead.
“Keep movin’,” Collins growled, punching me in the back.
I was already a prisoner, I thought.
Overhead, lines of white moonlight penetrated the heavy vegetation, illuminating bits and pieces of our messy path. Leaves rustled as we pressed on, and every step I took, I hoped I wouldn’t trip on something, or worse, get bitten by a snake. My shoes, two slabs of wood with leather straps, made me feel naked and vulnerable. One bite was all it took for my life to be over.
My life…
Was it even a life? Was this even happening, or was I dreaming? The hot pain across my face reminded me that my reality was, without a doubt, real.
God, how I wished I’d been sentenced to an actual prison—a concrete building with armed guards, cold metal gates, and bulletproof glass. However unpleasant, it would have been a paradise compared to this goddamn place.
Slowly, the moonlight’s cool glow and sparkling stars began to fade as the overhead sky turned a paradise purple. Within the next hour, the sun would rise and warm the jungle floor. My feet, now cold and wet, were another danger I had to think about.
What was Hawkins thinking, anyway? She had no idea how to trek through a jungle. She may have been a criminal mastermind in the real world, but out here, she was ill-prepared. Maybe if I got lucky, nature would take care of her.
By the time the sun rose, Hawkins’s women complained about sore feet and aching legs. I fought the urge to smile, remembering how long it had taken me to adjust to long travels. No way would they adjust during this trip—by the time we were either caught or killed, their feet would be covered in bloody blisters.
This thought, as sadistic as it may have been, comforted me.
They deserved to be in pain.
Stretching my back, I caught a glimpse of Hawkins rubbing her left knee with a grimace on her face. A weakness, maybe? When she caught me looking, she jabbed her knife in the air and growled, “Keep it movin’, Scarface!”
I glared at her, contemplating if one more punch would be worth another beating. But my right eye had already swollen over, making it difficult to see, and my lip, thick and cracked, tasted like rust. It wasn’t worth it.
I was about to turn back around when I heard something—a static sound.
Then, with a malicious grin, Hawkins plucked from behind her belt the same communication device—the C-42 Transponder—she’d originally used to make a deal with me. It crackled several times before she reached it up to her lips, her glare still aimed at me.
“Ace, Hawk in the sky, over,” she said.
The same man’s voice I’d heard a few days ago blasted out of the transponder, “Ace in place, over. Location on the move. Eyes are in the sky.”
CHAPTER 2
Tegan was pregnant, I suddenly remembered.
I’d been so caught up in my own nightmare that I’d forgotten. How was that even possible? From what she’d told me before—before turning into a speechless mess—she’d been on the island for over seven years.
No way had she been impregnated before arriving on the island.
It had happened here. But how?
* * *
“How’d this happen?”
“Why isn’t she saying anything?”
“Tegan, can you talk to us?”
“Fuck off. Give her some space.”
“Tegan,” I said, my voice gentle, and everyone stopped talking. I moved in closer and sat next to her on the main rock—the largest and flattest rock at the Cove. Impatiently waving in front of my face, I urged everyone to back away. They were huddling around her like a bunch of seagulls around a picnic basket.
“It’s okay, Tegan,” I said. “You can talk to us.”
But she wasn’t talking. It didn’t make sense—she’d made so much progress over the last few weeks that I was certain she’d gotten better. Now, she was back to being her silent self as she had been when imprisoned by the Northers.
What had they done to her?
And how had this happened? How the hell had a woman been impregnated on Kormace Island, an island full of female convicts?
So many thoughts rushed through my mind.
Had men somehow infiltrated the island? And if so, when would they have gotten to her? She’d been locked away like the rest of us.
“Tegan, please,” I tried, but she sat there with pouted lips and eyes glazed over.
I pulled away and sighed.
“Still nothin’?” Coin asked, arms crossed over her muscular pecs.
Then, Arenas appeared beside me, short and mouthy as usual. She gripped her narrow waist, her bony elbows sticking out, and offered a cocky smile. “Ain’t none of you heard the rumors when we were captured?”
“What rumors?” Coin asked.
Arenas scoffed. “Somethin’ about Rainer trying to reproduce to build her army.”
Rocket rolled her eyes. “Reproduce… Right. Because Rainer has a penis.”
“Who are you to judge?” Hammer chimed in. “Maybe she does.”
“Man, this shit’s getting way too weird,” Coin said, staring toward the setting sun. “I’m goin’ to bed.”
* * *
Explosive laughter erupted behind me. I swung around, reaching for an arrow from my invisible quiver, but stopped when I realized I was unarmed.
“That’s what I was thinking!” shouted one of Hawkins’s women.
She was speaking so loudly—almost as if doing it on purpose—and swaying her arms over her head like one of those stretchy toys with elastic for arms. Was this Hawkins’s plan at getting caught? Did she not realize that Northers weren’t the only threat? That’s when it hit me—she had no idea what Ogres were.
Hawkins had a one-track mind, which would lead to either her victory or her demise. The result would depend entirely on plain luck.
“Me too!” shouted another one of Hawkins’s women.
Their eyes, wide glossy balls, darted from side to side as they spoke, reminding me of aspiring actors with zero talent.
It was worse than watching a kid’s school play.
And Hawkins relied on these women to protect her? What the hell was she thinking? She was going to get us killed.
The first one who’d spoken, a middle-aged woman with a bloody cloth for a top and brown fingernails, let out a choppy laugh and even went as far as to place a hand over her belly like Santa Claus.
At the same time, Hawkins slapped her upside the head. The woman flinched and reached for her matted salt-and-pepper hair but bit her tongue when she realized Hawkins had hit her.
It was evident Hawkins was as unimpressed as I was.
“Keep it moving,” she growled.
Her smug walk and ugly smile didn’t make an appearance. Clearly, she was getting tired and sore. How long had we been walking? Five, six hours?
For the most part, I was fine. Hungry, tired, and thirsty, but in no pain other than my face. Every so often, my eye began to water due to the searing pain, but I didn’t reach for my face or make it obvious that I was hurting.
Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was touch the wound and risk infection.
“Brone!” Hawkins shouted, and my shoulders jerked forward. “Are we still headed in the right direction?”
Glaring into nothingness, I slowly turned around. Was she seriously expecting me to guide her to the Northers? How stupid did she think I was? I wanted Rainer dead and I wanted to save Murk, but at what cost? My life? We weren’t prepared for this at all.
And that’s when an idea hit me. What if, rather than guiding them to the Norther city, I led them elsewhere? How would Hawkins know? She’d never been on Norther territory. She didn’t know that it sat at the center of the island. Besides, the island was huge. What were the chances we’d even find their territory? The safest way to get out of this mess was to let the jungle take care of Hawkins.
It was a risk.
Leading them to unknown territory may have been as stupid as leading them to Rainer, but it was a gamble I was willing to take.
“Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “Keep moving North along the western coastline.”