He couldn’t breed. That’s why he made them. He must have lost his abilities decades ago. Grinning, she stroked his thigh, but it was obvious she didn’t mean it. “The triplets are yours,” she said.
“Don’t placate me,” he said.
“Take me back to your quarters. Have your way with me. Breed until you’re forced to knot,” she said.
Forcing the web of his palm against her throat, he squeezed. “I have yet to decide what to do with you,” he admitted. “But I can assure you, it will be worse than what they did to you in that house.”
He turned his head and let out a horrid shriek. Wren struggled away, but before Wren could run, Cassian knocked her head with the butt of his pistol. The heat of pain spread throughout the back of her head. Conceding to the repeated blows, she fell into the depths of his darkness.
The last thing she saw was the lifeless set of eyes on the dancing omegas on the stage.
Chapter Twenty-One
As days seemed to slip out from underneath him, Vash prepared for his oncoming death. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t even swallow. The whites of his eyes were a tapestry of yellow.
“Then there will come seven years of hunger and famine, and all the great abundance of the previous years will be forgotten in the land; and starvation will exhaust the land,” he whispered.
The sound of silence ran in his head like a grinding nail against a chalkboard, rhythm, angry and relentless.
The fear of the end. It washes over everything. Face the fire.
Vash opened his eyes to a sliver of light. Blinking through the pain of his narrowing pupils, he reached for the bars on the door. On some days, they would feed and water his throat, but the light never graced the windows of his prison cell.
I have lost my mind.
But he hadn’t. The door had been propped open by a thin nail. He graced the edges with the flat of his finger, too frightened to take it into his hand lest it be another vision.
The image of Wren seemed to flash against the light. She was always there. Somehow.
He glanced down and felt the radiant flow of chemicals flow through him. “No,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”
He had been carefully hooked and plugged into various tubes that ran into his cephalic vein. A set of vials of pain medication sat on a small, metal desk near to his cot. Attached to the wall was an emergency flare kit and extinguisher.
Pulling against the thin needle, he felt the rising tug of pain beneath the skin. Groaning through the discomfort, he ripped the barb and quickly cupped his hand over the wound.
Dizziness suspended his movements. Stumbling against the table, he groggily reached above and grabbed the flair gun, laughing to himself at how terrible of a weapon it would make. Falling toward the door, he pulled it open and fell onto the concrete outside. A blinding, searing light froze over him like the breath of life. He choked and felt the tears fall from his eyes. Even if this was for nothing, he had to see what fate had prepared him.
More lights switched on around him, painting a trail down the long hallway. Taking the bait, he crawled until he reached a door. Weakly, he stood and forced his body weight against the knob. He rocked his wrist and opened the door.
The room was massive like a commercial greenhouse. Black and gleaming pods housed endless rows of women. Wren… Yes, in every one of them, a part of Wren was visible.
The room was quiet and still, cold and desolate. But there was a certain comfort in seeing the women rest in peace. Real peace. Not even death could provide that. He was sure of that. When his flame flickered out, he’d wind up back in the shit.
Step by step, he walked into the center of the room, where a console sat flashing the Ouroboros. With a yet slower rhythm than glacial ice, he lowered against the console and started to laugh. Inward, his hands tightened and shook. Turning into a manic beast, he screamed.
Then, a voice sprung from nowhere. It was a woman’s voice. “Welcome home, Vash.”
Vash’s whipped his body around, but he saw no one. Walking through the rows of life-suspended women, he searched for the sound. “Where am I?”
A hideous laugh. “You were never given access to the cryo chambers, were you?”
Vash paused and sank against the floor, exhaustion overwhelming his muscles. “You are weak,” the voice said.
Vash peered against the stark white light that shone above him and the clones. “Who speaks?”
“It is the nakedness of the land that you have come to see.”
Vash gasped, breathlessly. “I am weak. If you wish to kill me, do it without the riddles.”
The voice continued to thread its taunting tone through his ears. “You have been on quite a journey.”
Vash gave a sigh of relief. “Wasn’t my journey. I can see that now.”
“Yes, and soon enough, she will be back to her home.”
“And my pack?” Vash asked. “Will they be treated with as much grace?”
Another light giggle followed by the rushed sound of oxygen filling aged lungs. Vash wished he could see the woman behind the voice, but every word rustled in a different corner of the room. “They brought you to me. Their services are no longer needed.”
In turn, Vash let out his own desperate laughter. “Every path I took led to my own demise. Was it you who left me the serum?”
“Mmhm.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Cassian behaves in a rash manner. You would have died if I didn’t help you,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
The quite hum of a wall separating resounded behind him. As soon as he turned, he saw a woman in a large bed. A breathing mask housed her sagging face. She stared at him, hollow and impure. Vash started forward, but he quickly stopped himself from getting too close.
“Are you a…”
“A copy?” she asked. “No.”
Carefully, he walked to the foot of her bed. She lifted her weathered hand and took his with a trembling smile. “Mother,” he whispered.
He collapsed onto the side of her bed. “So, you do remember.”
“I… remember.”
Suddenly, it came back to him, the dream he had been having for decades. He was just a boy. His father told him to run to the stables to fetch his mother, the most beautiful woman in the world. When he arrived, he knew something was wrong. A set of armored vehicles sat idle, and a man in weighted, golden boots opened the door.
Still and motionless, he watched as the man extracted his cock. “Watch and learn boy,” he hissed.
More men followed. They held her down and took her, one by one. Her eyes pierced right through Vash, numb and robotic. Broken like a bird. From that ruined womb came him.
Vash always thought his mother had been killed. Growing up, he learned to respect the man who took her, casting aside the brutal memories of the men’s hands grasping her bucking legs. Their laughter tickled his eardrums, invaded his manhood. Their actions taught him that it was better to take than be taken.
“I have always been your mother,” she said.
Vash closed his eyes and bit through the urge to cry. “The man in gold plated armor… he became my father.”
She gave birth to his child, Cassian. That meant that they were still related. And if they were brothers bound by blood, that made Wren his… niece. The room started to spin around him. “Oh, God,” he hissed. “What have you done?”
The cold oxygen vapor formed around her plastic mask. Inhaling a deep breath, she wheezed and widened her eyes. “Their knots were unsuccessful,” she said.
“I watched them all take you,” Vash growled.
“They can’t perform,” she said. “And neither could I. After you, the lord made me barren.”
Vash hammered his fist against the center console, denting in the plastic housing of the computer screen. “How did you give birth to Cassian? TELL ME!”
Impenetrable rage heated his body. His hands clamped against her frail skin, and she forced herse
lf to answer, even as the tears started to slip onto the cup of her oxygen mask.
“They tried,” she said. “He locked me away. Every morning, a new man woke me with detached tapering. He’d sit and watch, thumbing around his grotesque cock. After the knot bruised into me, he would take me. In a way, I think I became an enigma for him to rely on. Your father found Cassian in a village of trash. You are not bound by blood.”
“He is the bastard?”
His mother nodded her head and let out a whimper of weakness. He couldn’t imagine what she had gone through, but that was a lifetime ago. Now, she had been made a bed of roses. Her throne expanded across the back end of the room, and he imagined her staring at the clones during lonely nights. Her trauma frightened him because it meant seeing the darkness inside of his own head.
“Oh, mother. What have they done to you?” Vash asked, tears running down his face.
But slowly, he couldn’t face what she had done. “You gave her those memories. You made Wren believe it happened to her,” Vash whispered.
“I added some minor embellishments,” she said.
“And Cassian—you made him do your bidding.”
“I deserve another chance at fertility,” she rasped. “She is my only hope.”
A trickle of fear ran up his neck. Vash let go of her hand. She was no longer the mother he once knew. Cold and calculated, he saw her for what she really was.
“What happened to you?” Vash whispered. “You used to be so…”
Before Vash could finish his sentence, she lowered the sheets for him to see the wounds. She revealed her lower half. It was a mess of wiring and plastic casing that held her together. The puckered flesh ran up to her navel, scarred with what looked to be from the edges of a surgical saw. Vash jumped in horror.
His mother’s smile twisted, but somehow held. “They used me up, darling,” she said. “Carved me like a pumpkin.”
Swallowing, Vash felt a sudden sense of urgency consume him. Her eyes met his, carrying the same broken look she did when they took her.
She didn’t bring him here for a family reunion. She came here to end the family and secure a different finale before she left his forsaken planet.
The doors bolted, and the computer flashed red and black warning symbols. The sawed and harsh tone of the alarm systems drowned him in panic. “Let me go, mother,” he said, very carefully. “Let me go, and I’ll leave you with her.”
“My boy,” she whispered. “My sweet, sweet boy. The war has been lost. There is nowhere to run.”
“Mother.” His voice rose with urgency. “Please. Open the doors.”
“You have given a mother everything she has asked for,” she whispered.
“Mother, don’t do this,” he warned.
A glare of commanding devastation overtook her. “All of those nights alone, I waited for you to come,” she said with sudden command. “I waited, and the only one who came to me was your inbred brother, FREAK, the abhorrent beast of my most tender sickness.”
Vash ran to the center console and brought it crashing to the floor. One by one, the lights popped and sparkled into darkness. The fire sprinklers opened their menacing tentacles and drenched the room.
“Mother, we will drown! Do you still fight me?” he screamed.
He tried the door next, but it was impossible to move the handle. Taking an extinguisher in his hand, he pounded against the rusted metal. Over and over, he watched as the metal lay in sturdy. He slunk forward and let the water pour over his eyes. Focusing on the sound of his heartbeat, he let out a cry of misery.
In the middle of the chaos, he turned and looked at the sleeping faces of the copies. Vash lived a life of pain and discouragement. But if he gave up, it would mean never seeing Wren again. Without a centered pack, their children would likely experience the real end of the world.
“Nothing will ever be the same again, will it?” he whispered to himself.
Suddenly, the individual copies opened their eyes. The green and earthy colors of Wren’s iris glowed around him. She wasn’t a commodity to him anymore. She was an equal, and all he wished for was to get back to her.
“Entropy lacks God’s mercy,” his mother said. “The universe was born to eat itself.” The front of the pods opened. The cold mist of the tanks that circled around the women’s cheek and jawbones dissipated into the air.
“It is better to kill the whores than extend the timeline. Now, they can all die,” his mother hissed.
Vash ran to clutch the first copy that fell out of her tank. As she tumbled into his arms, she gasped for air through frenetic shivers. She even smelled like her.
“You can’t do this!” he screamed.
Even Vash knew how senseless that sounded. The world had fallen from the edge of uncertainty. Everyone knew the end. Fire. Brimstone. Men on steel horses fueled by the blood of the lost. They lived out the apocalypse every single day. Yet, the end would not come. Perhaps this was a blessing.
Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall shatter them like earthenware.
The omega in his arms gasped and tapped against his chest. She could not breathe. Lowering his lips, he provided air, but it wasn’t enough. Her body began pumping soundlessly, flopping like a thirsty fish. And, somehow, he felt for the copy.
“I alone can give her happiness,” she said.
He felt dizzy from hunger. Opening his mouth, he tongued at the falling water. “Mother, I’m your son,” he gasped.
“I will gift my child with death, and all the warring factions will know that I am she who searches the kidneys and hearts. I will give unto every one of you according to your works.”
Mother…
Vash felt his legs give out from underneath him. Dropping to the floor, he swayed with fatigue. She was going to kill him.
But maybe the world was better off without him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Vitals read normal. No sign of him in the pack, but he couldn’t have gone too far.”
“The ground sweep will find him.”
“You’re—you’re not a copy,” Killian exclaimed. He rocked his wrist against the set of metal handcuffs, skin now irritated from hours of trying.
A row of omegas stood in leather paramilitary wear. To the side, men sat like obedient beasts, wearing black blindfolds and spiked choker collars in strict obedience. The building itself was a small warehouse with some spare medical equipment and weapons.
The woman who looked like Wren stepped forward to analyze Killian. After shining a light into his eyes, she butted the rifle against Killian’s cheekbone, sending him hollering to the floor. Lucas watched, numb to it all.
“I stitched your wounds. Where is she?” Wren asked.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Lucas said.
Again, she raised the butt of her rifle, but Lucas quickly braced for the shattering impact. Strangely, it didn’t come.
“Vash?”
Killian grunted and wiped the blood from the raised wound. “He left. Went to the barracks, but he’s MIA.”
“Off to find the mother,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” Killian said.
Wren turned and flagged four men forward. “I don’t know what to do with them yet.” She walked through a set of red curtains.
“Hey, don’t you fucking leave!” Lucas screamed.
The blindfolded men snickered. “Great,” Killian sighed. “We’re stuck with these freaks now.”
“Maybe they’ll let us live,” Lucas said.
Again, the men laughed. “Who’s the omega?” Killian asked.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
“He will stretch over it the line of desolation and the plumb line of emptiness,” Lucas whis
pered.
“What did you just say?” Killian asked.
Lucas shook his head and inched his arms back into a more comfortable position. Slumping to the floor, he swayed to his side. “Her eyes were blue. Wren’s are hazel.”
Hours passed until “Wren” stepped out of her tent. Face strained with thought, she motioned for the men to step away. Finally, she pulled up a chair and sat down. “We are the Kali, the last men and women willing to fight for the Republic. We’ve initiated the first sequence of four. Very soon, every major city will forego their supremacy. Dagon was the first, and so far, we’ve taken three coastal ports.”
“You will lose this fight,” Lucas said. “Cassian wields far too much might.”
“Cassian has restrained himself for the girl,” she said.
“The girl. You mean, you,” Killian muttered.
She locked her lips together and bit the inside of her cheek. Clicking the bed of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she paused, face turning a deep shade of red.
Finally, she threw them a key. “Wren is my twin sister,” she said. “My name is Ruby. We were separated at birth.”
Lucas quickly unlocked his wrists and allowed the imprinted skin some air. Killian did the same.
“I was born defective,” she said, quite simply.
Wren’s sister stood up and walked to the alphas, unafraid. Her leather body harness reflected against the pale light. “If I were to explain, you wouldn’t be able to follow. Even now, seeing a woman leading a pack of men. It doesn’t compute, does it?”
Killian grinned. “Explain.”
“I am from the same facility, born in the same artificial womb as my sister. But I was born with a weak womb. He sold me to a group of rebels in the south as payment for a feud,” Ruby said.
“And what if we don’t buy your sob story?” Lucas asked.
“I was raised by a man and a priest. They could have taken me at any moment, yet they chose me to lead instead. Why is that?” she asked.
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