by Lolita Lopez
“Her surgery,” Raze said on a rushed breath. “Was she cleared to leave the ship?”
“Not exactly,” Torment answered and took a step to the side, increasing the distance between them.
“You bastard,” Raze hissed. “You dragged her out here to run down that psycho ex of hers without a med check?”
“She made the choice to come with me. She could have stayed.”
“You knew she wouldn’t. Not once she realized it was Harkin.” He shook his head. “You Shadow Force guys are such dickheads.”
“We are,” Torment agreed. “I’m sorry that she’s out there in pain when she should be in a hospital bed recovering.”
“I doubt it,” Raze grumbled.
“Boss,” Cipher interrupted cautiously, his gaze darting to Torment, “I sent the message. As soon as she actives the earbud, we’ll know.”
“Get your gear. Round up the rest of the squad. We’re headed to her last location.”
Torment grasped his shoulder. “I’ll take point.”
Still annoyed with Torment for not making sure Ella had the pain medicine she needed, he nevertheless nodded. “Let’s go find my mate.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“So where are we headed?” Jolly dropped bits of orange peel on the wet sidewalk as she scurried along. “Hopefully not anywhere super dangerous? Because I’ve got an orange and Jed’s zapper up my sleeve and that’s it. If we need some actual, you know,” she mimicked shooting a gun, “we’ll have to make a detour to see a friend.”
“We don’t need weapons.” She glanced left and right before crossing a street. Lowering her voice as they approached a small crowd of people, she hissed, “The last thing we should do is aggressively come at him. I don’t want to spook him, especially if he has another you-know-what nearby.”
Jolly eyed the couple they passed in the middle of the street. “That’s a good plan.”
When they reached the other side of the street, Ella paused to take in the oversized election notices. The stark black print left her frowning. “What the hell is a security fee?”
“They’re charging us to vote,” Jolly explained. “The signs went up four days ago. The official line is that to maintain the safety of the polls and to ensure that every vote is counted correctly everyone has to pay for a stamp on their voter registration card.”
“Oh, what a load of absolute horse shit!”
“Yep. It’s just another way to keep the poor out of the voting booths.”
“They used to hide this bullshit,” Ella remarked, still outraged at how corrupt the government had grown. “Now it’s so blatant and in our faces. The people at the top are absolute scum.”
“Yeah, and that’s how they stay at the top. They’re guarding their power by stepping on all of our necks.”
“There has to be something more we can do, Jolly.”
“I try, Ella. My paper, the radio shows, the Red Feather, New Dawn—we’re all trying, but it’s so damn difficult to make any headway. The government has unlimited funds. They have the secret police. They have those horrific camps up in the mountains.”
“I used to think those were just stories,” Ella admitted shamefully. “I never imagined they could be real. I always just assumed it was a way to keep us in line, you know? Just a lie to scare us into following their asinine laws.”
“Until the raid in the tunnels?”
“Yes.” Catching Jolly’s gaze, she said, “I don’t know what would have happened to all of us if Raze and Torment and the rest of their men hadn’t saved us.”
“I can show you sometime,” Jolly said seriously. “I have photos and files.” She hesitated. “It’s gruesome shit, Ella. Once you see it, you can’t ever forget. It stays with you.”
“That bad?” Ella didn’t even want to imagine what could make Jolly pale like that.
“Horrific.”
“I want to see it. I think, maybe, I can do more to help now that I’m with Raze. I have access to real power now. To people who can actually make a difference down here.”
As the rain began to pick up, Ella and Jolly hurried along the sidewalk, stepping around the larger puddles and jumping over the smaller ones. When they neared their destination, she cast furtive glances behind and side-to-side to ensure they hadn’t been followed. The rainstorm was so heavy now that the streets were deserted. Nobody wanted to be out in this torrential downpour.
“Here?” Jolly furrowed her brow as if trying to remember what the charred and abandoned had once been. “Was this the old Tanger cotton mill?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you work here?”
“Yeah,” she said, memories of the factory flashing before her eyes.
“How are you able to breathe without wheezing? I thought most of the mill workers had white lung from all the fibers.”
“Tanger had fans,” Ella explained. “It kept us cool and most of the fluff out of our lungs. Of all the places I worked as a kid, this was probably the best. The hardest,” she added, “but the bosses were nice. They were fair. We even had a lunch pail included in our wages.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Ella confirmed.
“Huh,” Jolly said with some surprise. “Too bad it burned down. It was some kind of electrical fire, right?”
“Something like that,” she murmured, the old memories of the night of the fire crashing over her like a tidal wave. Nothing like that, she thought glumly. Not even a little bit.
“Why do you think Harkin is here?”
“Because this was the last place I ever saw him.”
“Oh.” Jolly’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Ella exhaled a long, slow breath. “I’m going in, but if I’m not out in an hour or if you hear anything troubling, please, go to the Harcos embassy or to the outpost near the bomb site and get help.”
Jolly looked as if she wanted to argue, but she finally relented. “Okay. One hour, Ella.”
“One hour,” Ella repeated before turning away and taking her first step into the charred ruins of the building. She warily eyed the ceiling, noticing the gaping holes in the roof that allowed rain to pour inside. Water had started to pool in some areas, mixing with years of dirt and all that old soot. She avoided those spots as she picked her way across the main floor of the factory.
Most of the machinery had been removed years earlier. Anything salvageable had been sold right after the fire. Everything else had been left here to rot. Some of the equipment had been picked over by scavengers, Jed probably chief among them, but a lot of it sat there under layers of rust and dust. Her gaze lingered on four sets of yellow eyes peering out from beneath a broken worktable. She gave the feral cats a wide berth, knowing only too well how vicious they could be when they felt threatened.
On the other side of the factory floor, she pushed open the double door that allowed employees into the back areas of the building. The doors screeched as the rusty hinges protested the movement. As she walked down the long, wide hallway, she spared anxious looks at each door she passed, half expecting someone to jump out and grab her. It wasn’t a nice place, but the abandoned factory was perfect for anyone trying to get off the streets to stay dry and warm.
Which is why it was so odd to find the building completely empty except for a few animals here and there. Something—someone—had driven them all out.
Having worked at the cotton mill from age nine to fourteen, Ella knew the layout of the factory by heart. She moved through the interconnected halls and rooms until she reached the stairwell leading down into the huge basement that had once held bales of cotton stacked all the way to the ceiling. The factory foremen had all turned a blind eye to Ella and the rest of the street urchins who sought a warm, dry place to sleep among the bales.
It was easy to romanticize it now, to misremember how cozy and soft the bales had been. The truth was harsher and uglier. She didn’t want to remember the sounds of rats scurrying around in search of food or th
e other predators—the ones on two feet—who liked to use their positions at the factory to lure children down to the basement for their own sick use. She didn’t want to remember the nights her stomach growled or the way she would count down the hours until she could get her lunch pail and inhale all the food inside without even tasting it.
Suddenly, something buzzed on Ella’s wrist, and she damn near jumped out of her skin. Hand on her throat, glanced at the watch and noticed movement on the display. Lifting it closer, she read the message blinking across it.
Raze: Turn on earbud.
A burst of courage rocketed through her as she read the message again. Glad that Raze had let her play with his tech one evening in their quarters, she retrieved the earbud from her pocket, ran her finger over the edge of it until she felt the little bump and waited for it to blink green once before pushing it into place. Worried that Harkin might hear her talking to Raze, especially if he was hiding somewhere close by, she cleared her throat and waited to see if the earbud transmitted the sound.
Only a few seconds later, Raze’s voice echoed in her ear. “Sweetheart? Are you safe?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice so faint she worried he wouldn’t hear it.
“I hear you,” he said, as if sensing her concern. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk loudly or make any sounds at all. I’m here. I’m listening. I can hear everything happening around you. We’re almost to your location. Don’t worry. We aren’t going to barge in and make things worse. We’ll use stealth surveillance. If your safety is at risk, we’ll get you out.”
Relieved to have Raze nearby, she started walking again, navigating through the dark, dank basement storage until she reached the wide doorway leading into the receiving room. On one side of the massive room, long, sharply angled ramps reached all the way up to the street level docks. Trucks used to back up to the doors and push the bales of ginned cotton down the ramps, sending them flying down into the receiving area where they were loaded onto carts, tagged and inventoried.
Surprisingly, the doors up at the street level were still mostly watertight. Only a trickle of water raced down the ramps. It wasn’t even enough to overwhelm the drains in the floor. Glad that she didn’t have to wade through more water, Ella kept walking, fairly sure she would find Harkin somewhere down here in the lowest level of the factory.
She carefully skirted a tall pile of burnt pallets—and gasped. Hands over her mouth, she stifled the scream that threatened to leave her throat. She blinked a few times, wondering if she was actually seeing the terrible thing in front of her or if it was simply her tired mind playing tricks.
But, no, it was real.
George had been hogtied and suspended from the ceiling. He had been tortured, his naked and mutilated body left hanging. He’d been worked over horribly and castrated. She gagged at the sight of his disemboweled stomach and the horrific mess on the floor.
“Ella? Honey? What’s wrong?” Raze’s worried voice filled her ear, but she couldn’t talk.
Her stomach pitched violent as she forced her feet to move forward. She gagged as the overwhelming stench of blood and excrement filled her nose. With her jacket sleeve across her face, she reached out with the other shaking hand to touch George’s neck. She avoided his glassy eyes, staring at his bloody, matted hair as she searched futilely for a pulse under the thick, sticky blood.
“He’s been dead for hours, Elsie.”
She closed her eyes. There had been a time when she had yearned so deeply to hear Harkin call her Elsie again. Now, faced with his horrific depravity, she wanted to puke at the sound of it.
Turning slowly to face the man she had once loved with all of her heart, Ella didn’t even try to stop the hot tears dripping down her face. “Hark, what have you done?”
“What I should have done a long fucking time ago,” he coldly replied. His gaze lingered on her face, making her feel uncomfortable. “You look so good.”
“You look like shit,” she replied honestly.
Harkin choked out a dark laugh at that. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
“What happened to you?” She gestured toward his gaunt body. He looked impossibly thin, his long limbs gangly and unbalanced. His hair was dirty and unkempt. His hands were just as bad, the nails black with dirt or purple with bruises. He had a ratty beard, the growth uneven and patchy.
“We don’t have enough time for that story, Elsie.” He took a step closer, and she fought the urge to step away and maintain the space between them. She didn’t want to anger him, not when he had clearly lost his damn mind. “I kept up with your story, though.”
“I doubt it was much prettier than yours,” she answered sadly.
“Ella,” Raze spoke gently in her ear, “don’t antagonize him. Be his friend. Keep him calm. Find out what he wants.”
Looking around the basement for something to bond over, she said, “Sometimes I wish we could come back to this place. To the way it was before,” she clarified. “To this time when we were young and innocent and had a whole lifetime of possibilities in front of us.”
“Me, too,” he whispered. He wiped a grimy hand down his face. “It all went wrong here.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I wish we could go back and start over.”
“But we can’t.”
“That’s it, Ella,” Raze murmured. “Don’t lead him on but don’t shut him down too hard. Just keep him talking and stay calm.”
“My biggest regret is running out on you and the baby,” Harkin said, his gaze dropping to the floor in shame. “I should have been a better man. I should have taken care of you.”
“We made a lot of mistakes, Hark, but we were just kids. We were babies having a baby. It was doomed from the start,” she whispered, her lower lip wobbling as the pain of their shared tragedy welled up inside her.
“I should have come back sooner,” he insisted, stepping even closer. “I could have saved you from so much pain if I hadn’t waited so long to escape.”
“Escape?” Ella interrupted. “Escape from where?”
His brow furrowed. “From the camp.”
“What camp, Hark?”
He gestured toward George’s gruesomely mutilated corpse. “The one where he stuck me.”
“What?” Ella gaped at him. “George put you in a camp? The work camps? Up in the mountains? When? How?”
Harkin’s expression went blank. As he stared at her, he started to shake his head. “Fuck me, Elsie. You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“Apparently not,” she admitted, wondering how much of her life had been a lie.
“After we argued that night you told me about the baby? After I blew up at you and hit you and called you all those horrible names and threw that stupid fucking lantern and started the fire,” he rambled, “the police picked me up and handed me over to that piece of shit and his goons.”
She stared at George’s body and felt a wave of fresh betrayal. “He never said anything about you in a camp. I asked him, once and only once, if he could help me find you so I could you let you know about the baby, but…” Her voice trailed off as she was overwhelmed by the memory of the torment that question had brought upon her. “He told me that you had jumped onto a Splinter ship and fled the planet.”
“Lying piece of shit!” Harkin reared back and kicked George’s body. Blood and worse oozed out of the gaping wounds.
She gagged and looked away. Desperately, she said, “Don’t! Please!”
“He’s dead. He’s not feeling anything anymore.”
“Exactly,” she replied. “There’s no point in abusing a corpse, Harkin. Just stop. It’s disgusting.”
“He was disgusting,” Harking countered, sneering at George.
“Yes, he was,” Ella agreed. “He was a monster—but he’s dead. You killed him.”
“It was better than he deserved I should have kept him alive longer,” Harkin remarked, his voice heavy with regret. “I should have given him the full
camp experience. Nineteen fucking months in that hellhole,” he snarled. “By the end of it, I’d lost all my fingernails and toenails. I’d lost five teeth and two fingers.” He lifted his right hand to show her the missing digits. “They hung us up by the wrists and elbows so many times and for so long that I still have no feeling from my shoulders down my fingertips.”
“Harkin,” she said, her heart aching for him. She touched his arm, and he flinched, jumping away and breathing hard. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, it’s okay,” he said and reached for her hand. His skin was so cold, and his fingers so bony. It was nothing like the warm, strong hands she had once welcomed on her body. “It’s been a while since I’ve been close to anyone.”
“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said gently. She wasn’t, actually, but she needed to keep connecting with him. It seemed like the right thing to say.
“You would have hated her.” Harkin made a strange face. “Most of the time, I hated her.”
“Hark,” she chastised softly.
He shrugged. “It’s true. We weren’t ever happy together. We were lonely. Nothing good ever comes from two people falling into bed that way. After the first few weeks, we spent the rest of our time apart. She was so wrapped up in the Splinter cause. I didn’t feel the same way so I didn’t put up a fight when she decided to leave and join a supply freighter crew. When I heard she got blown up, I decided that was my cue to get out.”
“I don’t understand, Hark. If you aren’t a supporter of the Splinter cause, why did you build those bombs? Why blow up that embassy? The New Dawn headquarters? What’s the point of all of this?”
“Don’t you see, Elsie?” He grazed his fingertips along her cheek, trailing them down to the line of her jaw. “I did it for you.”
Her stomach dropped. Eyes wide, Ella grasped his wrist. “What?”
“I did it for you,” he repeated firmly. “This is my last gift to you.”
Her heart started to race. “What do you mean? What gift?”
“Your freedom, Elsie,” he said as if it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m setting you free.”