by Kit Jennings
He extended elegant fingers to the burning stickiness at the side of her head. “I told them they must take care with head injuries. I must apologize, it seems you have a minor concussion.”
Grand, just what she needed. “My clothes?”
“They’re right here for when you’re ready to leave.” He patted the neatly folded pile on a folding table she could just make out as her eyes adjusted.
She swallowed. Always obliging, he lifted a glass of surprisingly fresh water to her parched lips. “All that’s left then is for you to unlock these manacles, and I can be on my way.”
He pulled a second chair forward with a head-splitting shriek and sat across from her as though taking his rightful seat at the opera. “I rather thought you’d have no trouble freeing yourself.” He crossed one leg over the other and brushed imaginary lint from his pant leg, waiting.
When she remained silent, he continued in conversational tones. “This does take me back. I’d have a chess set brought, but I’m afraid I don’t have time for a game.”
Aika endeavored to shrug in her awkward hunch. “I never had much patience for it anyway.” She looked around with polite interest in an attempt to gather a better sense of her surroundings. “Are your masters here, too, or are they monitoring the situation from a safe distance?”
He gave her an enigmatic smile that would have been at home on the face of a sphinx.
“No need to be shy. Other than my assistants and a few cameras we are quite alone.” He cocked his head to one side. “Do go on, please.” Pause. “Just one little ascension?”
“I hate to disappoint you, but truth be told I never fully mastered the technique to begin with. Never had to.”
“Perhaps a lesser demonstration, then? You need only free yourself and you can go, with my compliments.”
The lie sat between them like a house cat washing its paws. He knew it. She knew it.
“Mind if I borrow a hair pin? I appear to be fresh out.”
He waved his hand comp at her. “Not so easy as that, I’m afraid. The manacles will only open with my security code. No?” He sighed. “You used to be a great deal more fun. Very well.
Perhaps a more aggressive method of motivation is in order. Gentlemen, if you would be so kind.”
The mismatched pair from the other night emerged from the dark. The dark one pushed a metal cart before him like a waiter with a dessert cart—only instead of expensive delicacies it carried a far more sinister form of entertainment.
The Agent turned his back on her and started to walk away.
Aika smiled, a little sad. “It won’t work, you know.” He paused, back and shoulders military rigid. “Ascension comes from willing sacrifice. But you’ve never understood that, have you?”
He remained still, considering her words, then disappeared without comment.
She exhaled. “You heard him, lads. Let’s get on with it.”
It was worse than she expected, but nothing she hadn’t endured before.
The simulation chamber smelled like recycled air, stale but not wholly unpleasant.
Turbines whirred overhead, muffling the dusty silence in cotton wool. Aika burrowed her toes into the façade of sleek blue steel and obsidian glass a bare inch from her nose and reached for the next handhold. A general aura of déjà vu made her shake her head in puzzlement, as though to shake the original memory loose.
She looked across the fabricated expanse to her companion. She swore she could see his eyes glitter from here. “Why shouldn’t they fight?” she said into her mouthpiece. “It’s their homes, their lives—their world.”
He heaved himself over the ledge for a breather before the next section. The programming was his own, and particularly vicious. Even he didn’t know which pitfalls would trigger at any given moment. “Yes, and look what they’ve done with it.”
A breeze that bore little resemblance to fresh air blew a tendril of hair into her face. She tugged it away with casual, if infinite, care. “You’re exaggerating.”
“You’re naïve.” He walked catlike along the ledge and reached down to lend a hand. “It’s best we handle it. Besides, the meek inherit the Earth, do they not?”
“Have you seen a battlefield after the dust settles?” Aika considered the next expanse, stretching her back.
A resounding thud shook dust from overhead. The bombardment had started again.
“What do you think?” he asked, as though a garbage lorry had pulled into a nearby alley, or construction were taking place round the corner. An annoyance to be tolerated, nothing more.
“The cable, perhaps?” He fingered the high-tensile, retractable cable at his waist.
“Not if we work diagonally to the left.” Aika resumed her climb in the manner of one for whom the abyss yawning below held larger fears than a mere tumble to a messy death.
“If you could choose?”
She moved rhythmically now, getting into her stride, muscles stretching with satisfying liquidity and the occasional twinge of overexertion. “I don’t get a choice.”
“But if you did?”
She sucked in a breath as the window beneath her fingertips disappeared, though the smooth glass still cast a deceptive reflection. She swore and sidestepped to the next row on the left. “Humanity. And freedom.”
He snorted, or perhaps it was a grunt of effort. “Freedom to starve? To die of disease, to live in poverty?”
“Freedom to live, to love. To make your own destiny.” She stared at her dim reflection in the black glass. “Everyone should have a choice.”
“Have you ever loved?” he asked softly.
The question was not like him. “Once.” She kept moving, as though to get it over with as soon as possible. He took the hint.
The steel rim slipped through her grip. It was there, she could touch it—she simply failed to keep hold of it. Nor could she progress. It was either fall or go on hanging in space until gravity chose for her. She craned her neck to her companion, cocking an eyebrow.
“A choice,” he murmured. “To die in fear, or live without pain and suffering. Even love, if it is forever.”
“You call that living?”
Aika let go.
She tumbled in freefall like a spider spinning a web, filled with a strange and terrifying euphoria. They had been two thirds of the way to the peak, but now she plummeted, arms outstretched, the passage of her fall whistling between her fingers.
One after another, windows exploded outward in violent domino effect. Shattered glass pricked her skin like diamonds and ice. She tucked her head and rolled, breathing calm, heartbeat slowed until she could feel the tension between here and there. A gentle nudge between one heartbeat and the next, drawn out in a timeless moment. She inhaled sharply, drew shadow around her like a favorite blanket, and pushed.
Like a swimmer propelling to the surface of a rippling lake, Aika erupted on the other side of the cascading glass. Her hand flung out above her head, cable spiraling out into space.
For a horrified instant she thought the claws wouldn’t catch, but then they did and she swung high, higher, highest. At the apex of its length she retracted the cable’s claws and landed on delicate feet a good hundred yards above her falling point. He regarded her with unreadable scrutiny.
“Avoid death in immortality while the world passes you by?” she breathed, adrenaline pulsing through her like fine wine. “Or risk death in order to live?”
Aika’s entire body throbbed, causing rivulets of blood to course along the valleys of curves and muscles of her bent form. Welts and cuts covered her body, burning like the fire of the Flame as her wounds struggled to heal.
They really shouldn’t have stopped. And they definitely shouldn’t have left her alone.
The Agent was right. She had little trouble freeing herself. Muscles strained to the breaking point as she lifted her head. Her lungs constricted against searing heat, enflaming every molecule of her existence. Her torturers had certainly cut it fine.
>
It took time to slow her heartbeat. If they were still watching on camera they were going to be sorely disappointed. Her breathing deepened, flowed like water into her gut to circulate in reserve. One hand after another she pushed herself upright with excruciating care. She wrapped herself in comforting dark, hovering on the breathless brink of between, and pushed herself past her manacles, falling to her hands and knees on the cool grimy floor with a small cry. She hadn’t been sure it would work, but she needed to conserve her energy for the real thing.
It took an age to crawl to the table and grip the edge, to pull herself to her feet. Getting dressed took longer, the wounds on her shaking fingers reopening with the effort of buckling her boots. The button on her trousers kept slipping through their blood-slick hold. Finally, she got them fastened. The cotton of her shirt stuck to the worst of her hurts, the pools of drying blood on her back and torso.
The darkness around her began to fray with her tenuous control, and she made a monumental effort to pull it together again, only have it begin to shred once more. She hadn’t much time. He would get impatient to see what she was about, half in shadow as she was.
In a Herculean last burst of energy she ran for the windows covered in yellowed, peeling newspaper, offering only a fall of dim gray light by which to see. She dove headlong for its thin promise of freedom, glass blossoming in all directions as she crashed through. She sailed through the air, using her momentum to push her way fully into between…
She nearly made it. Then pain erupted and she lost control, tumbling into the frigid, fetid river below.
Declan thundered down the stairs of his building, boots making enough noise to warn of the impending arrival of the Four Horsemen. It had taken time he didn’t really have, but he’d located a possible sighting near the old Whitehall building.
He skidded to a halt in the lobby and tore open the security door, but was unable to proceed further. A broken, bloody heap lay crumpled on the concrete before him, shallow breaths the only evidence of life slipping away by the moment.
How in hell had she made it all the way here from wherever she’d been broken? He stooped and slipped his arms beneath Aika, her limbs hanging like limp noodles, head weighed back by the bloody morass of her hair. He hurried back up the stairs and crashed through his door, slamming it shut behind him as she began to shake. Shallow wounds that looked as though they may have begun to heal reopened and bled anew.
He laid her at the bottom of his shower cubicle and ripped her boots off, cranked up the water as hot as it would go. He slid out of his own boots and crawled into the shower with her fully clothed. He pulled her into a cradle made of his long legs and arms and held her under the steaming water, pushing matted hair from her face until she stopped shaking.
She began to cough in rough, racking spasms. He turned her onto her side, murmuring soothing sounds as she spewed rank river water from her lungs, hands braced on the stained tile.
Blood ran in watercolor streams down her arms and swirled into the rusted drain.
He held onto her until the last tremors faded and she was able to move on her own. “Can you stand?”
She propped herself up on the second try. “I’m fine.” Her voice rasped as though she’d swallowed gravel. She leaned on him as he leveraged them both more or less upright. He was so tall he nearly lifted her from her feet. Despite her claims to the contrary, she started to shudder again from the effort.
His fingers tucked under the hem of her ruined shirt and peeled it from the congealing wounds covering her back and torso in painful inches. Her fingers clawed into his wet shirt.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve got to get these off you.”
She nodded, gasped as the bruise-colored cotton finally came loose with a final effort and he was able to pull it over her head.
Her trousers proved worse than her shirt. He pulled the sodden leather down past hips and thighs leeched of color to blue-veined corpse white. She braced her hands on his shoulders so she could step out of them one leg at a time.
Declan caught his breath when he saw her. No doubt under all the cuts, abrasions, bruises and blood she was lovely. As she hunched shivering in the boiling water in what had once been white undergarments that stuck to her skin, it was impossible to tell beyond a general form.
“What did they do to you?” he demanded, voice rough.
She shook her head with a game smile. “You really don’t want to know.”
She was right. He didn’t. “Come on. Off with the rest so we can get you cleaned up.”
Aika leaned against his chest, heart hammering in her ears, mercifully drowning out all but the sound of the shower. He released her bra and slid it from her shoulders with all the sexuality of a military medic preparing a patient for emergency care. But his hands soothed in silent apology, strong and warm on her lacerated skin, his quiet strength seeping into her marrow. Without him, she might not have been able to cope.
His thumbs slipped past the elastic of her underwear and pulled the cotton down over her thighs, where the garment fell of its own accord. She could sense his diligence in not looking at her more than he had to, either out of consideration for her modesty or because the extent of the damage reached proportions not inappropriate for a bad horror movie.
“You need stitches.”
The latter, then. She shook her head and inhaled a shaky breath. “It’ll heal. Always does.”
He wisely kept his doubt between his teeth as he sponged her gently clean, the combination of the porous surface and hot water stinging. Then he washed her hair, pausing at the matted blood at the side of her head.
“You’ve a head wound.” He parted her hair to determine its severity.
“A mild concussion.” She pressed against his solid warmth as he massaged her scalp, wrung the sudsy water from her hair away from her skin. Clean, musky masculine smells permeated the steamy air, bringing with them some measure of comfort. He continued to hold her long after she was clean, until the water turned cold.
He helped her from the shower, wrapped her in a cocoon of a towel. When she was ready he took her into the sleeping area and replaced the towel with a blanket before putting her to bed, tucking the bedding around her bound form. He watched over her until her breathing deepened in sleep, then peeled off his wet clothes and slipped into dry pajama bottoms. He slid into bed with her and wondered what more he could do.
Some time in the night he surfaced to half-wakefulness, the soft form in his arms stirring with a quiet sigh. He turned into the warmth of her of crackling hair, pressed his lips against her temple. Hair tickled his nose; he pushed it out of the way, thumb smoothing across her cheek, fingers tugging serpentine tendrils from her face. She tucked her head against his shoulder with a soft murmur, exposing the curve of her neck.
Moonlight bleached her skin to opal, internal heat lending it a healthy flush once more.
Long eyelashes were no more than a shadowed fringe against her cheek, red-gold strands shining amidst the auburn flood of her hair. In his grogginess he felt as though he’d somehow caught one of the elusive faerie in his arms. She smelled faintly of wild flowers.
His tentative kiss awakened Aika from dreams of bright summer sun and soft green grass and impossibly blue waters reflecting the sky. Heat pricked at her cuts and bruises, salving them as they healed. She found reality filled with the warm circle of his arms, his seeking mouth. She relaxed, opening herself to his gentle exploration, part of her still dreaming.
He tugged the blanket from her body, lesser wounds healed with the pink of new skin, others closing with ragged garnet lines. Conscious of her hurts, he remained infinitely careful in touching her, hesitated before filling his hands with her yielding curves. Her breast weighed heavy in his palm, nipple hardening with gratifying speed at his touch. She buried her lips against his throat, wove her fingers through his ink black hair. She slipped a foot between his calves, like a cat seeking deeper warmth. Her free hand slid down his lithe chest.
>
Declan stopped her reaching for him. “Wait.”
Her dark eyes searched his moon-polished blue. “What’s wrong?”
His hand covered hers over his lower abdomen. “A few hours ago you were bleeding to death in my shower.”
Her mouth curved in a smile. “I heal fast.”
“You’re still hurt.”
She put her fingers against his mouth. “I’m fine.” And kissed him in a way that proved it, and drove every protest from his head.
He lined himself against her, pressed her into the worn sheets, the stiff mattress. She reached for the covers and pulled them waist high against the night chill of the room, fingers dancing across his long spine. He slid his hand over her lush thigh, hooked her knee over his hip, buried his other hand in the hair on her pillow as he kissed her. She tugged aside the gathered waist of his pajamas and tucked her face into the curve of his neck. With one arm clenched across his shoulders, she pressed him against her.
Declan caught his breath. The internal heat that flushed her skin welcomed him like a hearth fire. She sighed across the hairs at the back of his neck, tightening around him until he was fully seated within her. He gave her a moment, kissing the mole on her shoulder, the hollow of her throat, her lips. Her other leg joined the other around his waist, settling her spine into the bed in a comfortable curve.
Keeping her locked tight around him, he moved his hips so his entire length slid from her inch by precious inch until she nearly lost him before slipping back in, keeping a slow steady rhythm of long strokes meant to prolong her enjoyment. Aika’s nails kneaded his back deliciously, her deep breathing a purr of pleasure as she lightly nipped his shoulder.
Far too soon he felt liquid tremors run through her back muscles like electricity attracting lightning from the sky. He increased his pace as his own muscles and breath tightened. Aika felt the impending buildup begin at her toes and move with startling speed through her body to her lungs, her heart. She reached for the summit, clenching the pillow behind her.