Bile pushed at my throat. “I missed you about as much as I missed charger dung.”
I didn’t see the slap coming. Blood welled from where I’d bitten my tongue.
When the spots cleared, he was inches away. “I missed that mouth most of all.”
Oh? I spat blood into his sadistic face. He reared back, shock, then fury contorting his features. Without warning, he clapped his mouth to mine in a bruising kiss. Rage flooded my senses, and I shoved him. Inflicting pain was one thing, but kissing me?
No. Freaking. Way.
I scrubbed a sleeve across my mouth, snarling, “I should turn your stupid brain into scrambled eggs for that, but I’d rather do this.”
My knee was slamming into his groin before I could think better of it.
Satisfaction at hearing his lungs empty quickly turned into more pain as he backhanded me. I straightened only to receive a sharp prick to the neck. Flinching away, I stumbled on unsteady legs. A lethargic feeling slid through my body, slowing my movements and numbing my limbs.
Lars grabbed my arm again, forcing me upright. “Apparently you’re dangerous now and must be sedated during the transfer process. I personally don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
“Wh-why are you here, Lars?” I slurred as he wrenched open the staff’s stairwell door. While we descended, I goaded him into spilling information. Pride was his greatest weakness, so I aimed for a sore spot. “You didn’t w-win a Trial. Shouldn’t you be s-slinging dung in the stables or s-something?”
He cackled, not at all bothered by my jab. “You’ve been blind, Mute, too focused on avoiding the elites and winning the Trials. I was only trying to elevate my eliteborn status by showing my willingness to earn it. You never noticed me in the halls because I was a lesser elite, you stuck-up snob.”
His fingers dug into my bicep as I missed a step, keeping me from plunging down the stairs. “Since you’ve been away, I’ll tell you what loyalty gets you around here. Not only do I now have a room on the second floor, but a job very few even know about. Too bad you decided to betray your family by siding with that outsider. What do you see in the giant meathead anyway?”
I bit my tongue, refusing to comment. I’d forgotten that he was born into an elite family, but keeping tabs on Tatum House’s residents was never a priority of mine. His presence here made sense now, but if he was tasked with bringing me to the bunker, then why were we in the sub-basement? Maybe my gut had misled me. Maybe Renold never planned on sending me to the bunker, but meant to keep me down here for the rest of my days.
The thought of rotting away in this place triggered my panic button.
I couldn’t see straight as we veered down an unfamiliar hallway. Bare bulbs lit our path, patches of light and shadow blurring and spinning the farther we went. The floor swooped underneath me, and I pitched forward.
Before I could hit the ground, Lars wrestled me over his shoulder. Blood immediately rushed to my head, further spotting my vision. “You’re heavier than you look, Mute,” he grunted, sliding his hand too far up my thigh.
A wave of exhaustion stopped me from putting up a fight, so I settled on mumbling, “Well you look like a charger’s—”
My head suddenly smacked against the cement wall. I groaned as pain splintered my vision.
“Oops,” he said flatly. “What’s the point of a sedative if it doesn’t shut you up?”
Keys jangled. A lock scraped open. Despite the fierce pounding in my skull, I noted the room we entered. The heavy steel door at the far end.
I swallowed another wave of panic as metal groaned and moldy air wafted up my nose. I glimpsed a tunnel lined with fluorescent lighting before Lars sealed the door shut and spun around. A tunnel?
“Wh-what is this place?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said brattily.
“You remind me of this outsider I m-met. Same obnoxious laugh and soulless eyes. He was always scheming, uncaring who was hurt as he sought to gain his leader’s attention.”
Lars squeezed my thigh. “Sounds like my kind of guy. What happened to him?”
“He stuck his neck out too f-far, and his leader snapped it. I only w-wish I could have snapped his neck myself.”
One moment, I was staring at boots and concrete. And the next, everything went dark.
A terrifying scream jolted me awake. When another pierced the air nearby, a cold sweat doused my body. Those screams. They weren’t human.
“Wakey, wakey, Mute,” a voice singsonged. For a horrible moment, I thought I was back in the correctional center with Skervvy.
But the voice wasn’t quite right. And the smells were all wrong. The air was a new kind of foul—old blood and rotten meat. The more I blinked, the clearer my vision became. But I had to be dreaming. This was too horrific to be real. Yet I couldn’t blink it away. It was real. I’d much rather endure a cell with flesh-eating vorax than this.
Lars dropped me, not bothering to catch me as my legs gave out. The screams rose to a feverish pitch. Lars swore and stepped back, then must have thought better of it. He grabbed my arm and dragged me sideways. I tried to dig in my heels, but the floor was slippery. Wet.
Blood. Some dry, some not.
And . . .
Bones.
Something heavy rattled a cage nearby. Lars swore again and dropped my arm. Before I could stop him, he swung a gate shut in my face. A lock clicked, sealing my doom. He leered at me through the thick metal bars, jangling a set of keys.
“A couple nights in here should give you some perspective.” A pause. “Just don’t move, speak, or breathe. Maybe they’ll forget you’re here.”
He cackled, loud and long, setting off a chorus of roars as he strolled out of sight. A door slammed, and I knew—just knew—that I was alone. Alone with a roomful of hungry, carnivorous beasts that wanted nothing more than to rip apart my flesh.
I curled into a ball in the middle of my cage. Because on either side of me . . .
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.
Stars help me, I looked.
I saw the massive tan paws designed to shred first. Then the muscled chest built for climbing and pouncing. The dagger-like fangs were as long and sharp as ever. And the bright yellow eyes . . . were staring directly at me.
I jerked as one hissed and batted at the bars separating us. This close with nowhere to run, I was forced to face my childhood fear at long last.
Memories—memories I’d buried deep—clawed their way to the surface.
Pale green eyes and rich brown hair. An open smile and booming laugh.
Those were my memories of him.
Mum always said he and I were exactly alike. Adventuresome and reckless. Attracted to danger.
But I was rash and dumb that day, sneaking past the community’s outer fence to follow his hunting party. I was only five, weaponless and completely untrained. The two saber cats cornered me, knowing I was an easy kill.
My screams alerted the hunters.
And my father . . .
My father darted in front of the beasts without hesitation, bravely taking them on to save his foolish daughter. And all I could do was watch. Watch as they tore him down and ripped out his jugular. Blood splattered the snow. Close enough to touch—like the cats on either side of me right now.
An object in the corner of my cage dragged me from the painful memory. Something round with two gaping holes. A human skull.
The pressure in my chest became unbearable.
I screamed.
But no one was going to save me.
Not this time.
This was meant to break me.
At a different time in my life, it would have. I would have done anything, anything to be free of this nightmare. But things were different now. I was stronger than I ever thought possible, even with my body locked in a cage.
So I waited for two days.
Listened to my companions hiss and pace.
Lars came by a coup
le times only to jab a pole through the bars and inject me with more sedative. I was treated like a wild animal, kept calm so I wouldn’t harm the handlers. The sedative fogged my mind, leaving me too weak to access my abilities.
At the end of the second day, Lars came back, this time without a pole. Hunger clawed at my stomach from lack of food and water. A headache threatened to crack open my skull. He had to drag me from the cage and let me lean against him, I was so weak.
Drugged and starving, I was a poor excuse for an infiltrator. But my opportunity was coming. It had to. I was adaptive and resilient. Quitting wasn’t an option.
We left the room of caged beasts behind, descending a floor in silence. Still cuffed, I didn’t attempt to escape. That wasn’t my mission right now anyway. Instead, I worked on settling my too rapid pulse before I passed out. I needed to memorize the layout of this place so that when the time came, we could easily find the prisoners and lead them to safety.
But all plans were tossed aside when we exited the stairwell and I saw him.
He simply stood there, secured between two guards. They all stood as if waiting. Waiting for me to arrive. To taunt his capture in my face.
We lunged for each other at the same time.
“Bren!”
“Lune!”
Our captors tore us apart. Lars caught me around the waist and started dragging me down a hallway. The harder I struggled, the more punishing his grip became. As my ribs bent under the pressure, I cried out.
A roar echoed off the walls. I twisted around in time to see Bren ram a shoulder into the guard next to him. The man flew sideways, rebounding off a wall before crumpling to the ground. He lashed out at the second guard, but the man was ready with a volt stick.
I screamed as blue electricity lit up Bren’s chest.
He was struck again and again until his body twitched and fell. I felt every hit, felt the searing heat charge through my limbs and freeze my breath. Lars continued down the hall, forcing me to lose sight of Bren. I growled and cursed, fighting to break free despite the waves of dizziness threatening to pull me under.
“I thought this moment would never arrive,” Lars purred in my ear. “You. Me. Him. He’s not so high and mighty now, is he?”
I wet my cracked lips and spat, “You’re not fit to lick his boots.”
He slammed me to the ground. Before I could catch my breath, he planted a boot on my chest, forcing the air from my lungs. As I fought to dislodge the boot, he bent down and grinned wickedly. “Well, you’re not fit to lick mine. But if you do, I’ll let you up. Better hurry, your face is turning purple.”
Righteous anger filled me, and with it, a snarling whoosh of adrenaline. I grasped at the feeling, pulling the energy to me until a trickle of my newfound ability arose. The water-like force built in volume, shoving aside my body’s weakness and reinforcing my mind. I wrestled for control of the energy, like reining in a charger.
This time I would be in control.
I zeroed in on his boot. “Step back.”
His leg slowly lifted. When both his feet were on the floor again, I let go of my tight grip on the energy. Restlessness still buzzed through my veins after it was gone, strengthening my lethargic muscles. When I glanced up to find Lars’s expression completely blank, I used the opportunity to scramble down the hall toward Bren.
I was inches away, inches, when a volt stick froze me in place. Control was ripped from me as my entire body seized. I fell into a convulsing heap, close enough to Bren’s prostrate form that my twitching fingers brushed against his shirt.
“Stop,” a voice commanded. The pain switched off, but my muscles continued to spasm. Before I could touch Bren, something sharp pinched my neck. I jerked away to see a needle retreating. The sedative whooshed through me, stilling my movements. Groaning weakly, I blinked up at a frowning Renold.
“She was to remain sedated at all times, Mr. Cooper,” he said, fixing his glacial stare on Lars.
“She was, Your Grace,” I heard him say. “I followed your orders explicitly—”
“Apparently you skipped a dose,” Renold cut him off, his usual calm replaced with a hard edge. “If you’re incapable of following orders, perhaps I can find you a different position.”
“No, sir, I won’t fail again.”
“See that you don’t. It would be unfortunate if I had to replace you.” Weighty silence fell as the thinly veiled threat settled between them. Then, “Make sure they’re both safely delivered to the interrogation room.”
He strode off without another glance at his daughter, half-starved and delirious. Lars hoisted me up, bearing most of my weight as he led me down the hall. Everything spun, but I caught glimpses of wide-eyed faces trapped behind glass. I struggled to focus, searching for familiar dark red hair and hazel green eyes. Frustration and panic built when the hall ended and I couldn’t find her.
We turned left down a shorter hallway, the lights dim and ominous-feeling. Nausea rolled in my empty stomach. When Lars pulled open a metal door, I expected to see blood. Perhaps a discarded finger or toe from an especially gruesome interrogation.
But it wasn’t an interrogation room we entered.
Lars closed the door behind us and grabbed my wrist to remove the cuffs. I stiffened, alarm flitting through me.
When my restraints were gone, he said, “Strip.”
What the—?
“No,” I snapped, flaring my nostrils to show my disgust.
He jabbed a finger straight ahead. “All prisoners must be clean, and to be honest, you smell pretty rancid. Strip and get in the shower or I’ll do it for you.”
He’d probably like nothing more than to help me undress. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. He huffed when I willingly slid open the opaque-glassed stall door and stepped inside. With the sedative still heavy in my veins, removing my boots was a challenge. I placed my belongings on a white-tiled shelf away from the showerhead.
The water, of course, was freezing. Only Tatum House had warm water in this city. Still, I took my time, hoping the cold would chase away some of the fog clouding my brain.
Before I was ready, Lars barked, “Time’s up, Mute.” He rapped a knuckle on the shower door, and I’d never been more thankful for opaque glass. “Put these on. Leave your belongings.”
I mashed my lips together to keep sarcasm from leaking out. But when I reached for my new clothing through a crack in the door and saw what he intended me to wear, it physically hurt to keep my mouth closed. This had to be a joke. I held nothing more than a white, midriff-baring tank top and tight matching shorts.
My body began to shake. With rage.
Lars smacked the glass, making me flinch. “Now, Mute.”
Clenching my jaw, I slipped on the material that could pass for underwear. When I exited the stall, Lars raked his eyes up and down my body. I might as well have been naked. Despite my anger, humiliation burned my cheeks.
“I never would have guessed that was under there,” he goaded, fishing for a reaction. My expression remained blank. When I refused to take the bait, he grabbed my arm and led me from the room. I thought he’d made a mistake in not cuffing me again, but we entered another door across the hall, which he swiftly closed.
He marched me straight to a metal table, the room’s sole piece of furniture, ordering me to sit. When I didn’t comply fast enough, he used the opportunity to manhandle me onto a chair. I landed hard on the metal surface, but still refused to engage him.
This seemed to irritate him to no end. He grabbed my wrists and yanked them across the table. Before I knew what was happening, he had them locked in metal cuffs attached to the table’s surface.
I finally reacted.
My chair tipped back as I sprang up, struggling to free myself. But the heavy table was bolted to the floor. Thoughts of what Lars could do to me in this position slithered through my mind. The restraints bit into my flesh as I strained back. His gaze dropped to my chest and I froze. Panic sealed my windpipe shu
t as he reached for my breasts.
Before I could attempt to bite him, he made a fist and yanked.
I gasped as the leather around my neck snapped.
He dangled the bear tooth necklace inches from my nose. “What’s this? I told you to leave your belongings, so this must be special. Is it, Mute? Is it important?”
My rapid breathing filled the silence, and a slow grin bled across his face.
“I think I know just what to do with it,” he said before tossing the necklace to the floor. He raised a boot.
“No, wait!” Adrenaline surged through me. I scrambled to grasp the feeling and wrestle the energy to my will. But it was too late. His boot came down. The heel struck the bear tooth with a resounding crack.
As he revealed the damage, I could only stare.
The tooth was broken. Destroyed. Jagged pieces clung to his boot as he scattered the remains.
The sight was a terrible omen. A warning that I’d lose more than a necklace from a golden-eyed boy before the end came.
As if to confirm my gut feeling, Bren staggered in, wearing nothing but white shorts. A guard thrust him into the chair next to me and secured his wrists to the table. Lars righted my chair but I refused to sit. My focus was on a barely conscious Bren whose forehead now rested on the table. He probably didn’t even know I was here.
I started to tremble again. And this time, anger wasn’t the only emotion boiling to the surface. I channeled hatred toward the people who hurt others for their own selfish gain. The feeling was hot in my chest. The fog blanketing my mind began to lift.
“What’s she doing?” a muted voice said.
Lars swore. “Get the Supreme Elite! Hurry, you idiot. The sedative isn’t working!”
He slapped my cheek. The sting only fueled my hatred. My eyes snapped to his.
“Stop breathing.”
The command rang hollowly in the void between us. Almost immediately, he grabbed his throat and began to choke. He stumbled back against the wall, mouth and eyes wide as he stared at me incredulously. In the back of my mind, something whimpered at me to stop. I flicked the weak voice aside.
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