“No … oh, no, no, no.” Ria shakes her head vehemently, any excitement she might’ve felt at being so close to home now jaded by concern for Silver’s safety. “We’re sticking together.”
“They’re going to check this car.” Silver positions herself close to the door. “And when they do, we have a few seconds of surprise on our side. The weight discrepancy could be a simple loading error for all they know, and they’ll be caught off-guard.”
“So we run together,” Ria insists, trying to take Silver’s hand.
Silver evades her. “I’m stronger than all of you, so you run and I cause hell—that’s how this is gonna work.” She readies her useless gun. “I’m the biggest threat, and they’ll stick to me like glue.”
“But—”
Silver stops her with a kiss. “I know where you live. I’ll find you.”
There’s no time for argument. The voices get closer, and Silver hears the click of weapons, the weight difference noticed.
“I feel like I should thank y—” Carmen starts.
“Save it.” Silver’s not interested.
There’s a short, painful silence, then the door swings open and a cacophony of ugly noises fills the air.
Yelling.
Threats.
Plenty of whistle-blowing.
An alarm is triggered.
A shot is fired into the side of the freight train.
Silver’s plan works about as well as she expected it to. Carmen is wily and fast, and she knows the terrain well: she disappears in a flash. Oliver is slower, but perceived to be the least threatening of the group: he’s not even pursued. Ria, though tormented by the thought of leaving Silver there, on the barren, concrete platform of the freight station, manages to elude the grappling hands of a border guard, weaving her way through freight containers until she finds her way through a gap in a chain-link fence and slips unseen into an alleyway, her fading voice calling out some parting words.
“Ya tebya ochen’ lyublyu.” I love you so much.
“Ya tebya budu zhdat’.” I’ll be waiting for you.
In fact, that’s the last thing Silver hears as she hits the ground—everything else is a blur. Being the only person wielding a weapon, she draws the attention of the border guards like a magnet, and they converge on her like a swarm of blow flies on a corpse.
First, they disarm her with a gunshot to her right arm, the bullet severing her brachial nerve, making it impossible to retain a grip on her gun. It clatters to the ground, and she’s brought to her knees by a blow to the back of her neck and a rush of electricity coursing through her chest.
She’d know that feeling anywhere.
Her muscles are cramping, there’s intense pain, and a complete loss of all motor skills. Yep, she’s just been hit with a stun gun.
The blow disorients her and blurs her vision, almost knocking her unconscious. The five-second electric jolt does the rest, rendering her completely incapacitated.
After that, she’s only mildly aware of being kicked in the ribs and thrown onto her back, the barrel of a shotgun pressed against her throat.
They check her for an Authenticard, but don’t find one. Failing that, they prick her finger for a sample of blood, hoping to locate her file in the Crown Prosecution Service’s extensive database of British citizens.
Unfortunately, when the information comes up on their law enforcement PDA, her citizenship record is incomplete, only the highlights available.
Name: Ella ‘Silver’ Cross.
Birth date: 27.08.2314.
Nationality: Amaranthian.
Citizenship status: Pending.
Notes: Immigrant, landing approved, current whereabouts unknown.
Viral status: Unlicensed human enhancement detected. Detain immediately.
“What shall we do with her?” one guard asks another.
“Send her to Bedlam,” is the reply.
EPILOGUE
Omega Detainment Corridor
The Sentinel District
Amaranthe, 2349 CE
— present moment
The cells smell like piss and desperation. Usually the last stop before a Sentinel District resident is banished to the Fringe District, or sent for enforcement, the detainment corridor in the basement of Omega headquarters is dark and dingy, the stench often unbearable.
The whole place—little more than a concrete, dead-end tunnel—is cleaned out once a week with a pressure washer, the remnants of urine, fecal matter, vomit, and blood all swilled down the gently sloping floor toward a centrally positioned drain.
Immediately after cleaning, the corridor smells so strongly of bleach it feels as though your lungs are disintegrating with every breath. By the time the end of the week rolls around, it’s difficult to be in the corridor without expelling your stomach contents.
Today is day six. It reeks.
In one of the cells, a sixty-something-year-old man perches delicately on the edge of a metal bed, trying not to touch the stained, damp rectangle of foam that passes for a mattress. Some of the staining is obviously urine: yellowy-orange, with a rank odor and a slightly sticky consistency. Some of it is semen: white, crusty, and splattering the mattress in small dollops. Other stains might be a combination of sweat and poorly cleaned vomit, while yet more are clearly blood: dark brown, and soaked all the way through the foam.
The man, his jet black hair grayed with age, his sideburns completely white, sighs and raps his fingers on the handle of his walking stick. There’s no clock in the detention corridor, so he might’ve been stuck in here for one hour or three. He started to lose track after the first twenty minutes.
His permanently violet eyes watch a lone cockroach crawl out of the drain in the middle of the room and trundle along the drainage gully on a search for a midday snack of stale vomit and poop.
Crunch!
Its exoskeleton shatters beneath a high-heeled, slip-on shoe, its guts exploding left and right, life extinguished instantly.
The woman in the shoe approaches the man’s cell, her starchy pant suit rustling with every step, long auburn hair bouncing over her shoulders. She’s slender, her face angular and symmetrical, pleasingly feminine. Her lipstick-coated lips twitch with the beginnings of a smile when she casts her violet eyes on him, but she suppresses it.
“When they told me a man claiming to be the former Hunter General Maydevine was at the city gates asking for me, I didn’t believe them.” She steps up to the cell bars, peering closer, as if she can’t quite believe her shimmering eyes. “I didn’t see how a man in senior years could survive the destruction that occurred with the napalm and the British fighter jets.” She locks onto his violet eyes. “But now I do.”
The man, Maydevine, stands stiffly and positions himself squarely in front of her, limping slightly, using the walking stick for support. His clothes are tattered and stained, his white dress shirt torn and covered with dried blood, his trousers blackened with soot.
“I didn’t see how a former Hunter with an exemplary record could suddenly turn her back on her friends and betray them by swearing allegiance to a foreign military.” He glances down at a pin fastened to the lapel of the woman’s jacket. “But now I do.”
The pin, a small Amaranthe flag, marks her new position as the Governor: the leader of this small, once isolated city.
“How were you infected?” She studies his eyes. “Did Silver know when she left you for dead in the Fringe District massacre?”
Maydevine shakes his head. “She had no idea.” He takes a step closer. “Where is she, Rachel? I want to see her.”
“That’s Governor Jenkins, if you don’t mind.” Rachel puts him in his place, not liking the informality of her first name on his tongue, even though he was once her boss.
“Don’t be pompous,” Maydevine growls at her, no time for her newly found airs and graces. “Where’s my daughter?”
“She’s not here.”
“So fetch her,” he demands.
�
�Impossible.” Rachel shakes her head. “I sent her away for her own protection.”
“Away where?” The lines on Maydevine’s brow make deep furrows when he frowns.
“To England.”
“Alone?” The lines turn to valleys, the frown deepening, his tone accusatory.
“Of course not.” Rachel folds her arms, exasperated by the insinuation that she’d be so cruel as to send Silver off to a foreign land all on her lonesome. “She was accompanied by Alex, and the seat I reserved for you was taken by Luka. By way of apology for your unintentional demise—which I accepted was partially my fault—I also made sure she received a cure for the virus she so desperately sought to be rid of, if only for the baby’s sake.”
“Baby?” Maydevine looks blank.
“You didn’t know?” Rachel peaks an eyebrow.
Maydevine dips his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, wishing he had a cigarette. “Silver’s pregnant?”
“You’re going to be a grandfather.” Rachel’s lips twitch again, a genuine smile desperate to escape. “Congratulations.”
“You have to let me join her.” His mind starts to race, endless possibilities firing between synapses. “You’ve no use for me here.”
“You’re right on the latter, but so wrong on the former, Gabriel. I don’t have to do anything.” She pauses, letting those words hang in the air, cementing her authority. “But I will,” she adds with a caveat. “On one very small condition.”
“Name it.”
“Silver left something behind at my apartment, and I don’t want it.” She motions for a guard—one of her personal security services officers—to step up from the entrance of the corridor. “Please return it to her.”
Maydevine watches warily, wondering what could be so important—or repugnant—that she’d agree to send him overseas in order to be rid of it.
Rachel’s officer holds a cardboard box out to her, and from it, she rather tentatively withdraws a squirming bundle of calico fur.
Meow.
OUT NOW
The Outlier Trilogy
Volume Two
SILVER: Bedlam
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keira Michelle Telford is an award-winning author with a love for the gruesome, the macabre, and the downright filthy. She writes dystopian science fiction, erotic lesbian romance, and other lesbian fiction.
Website: www.keiramichelle.com
Twitter: @mylostanddamned
Facebook Page for KM Telford
Goodreads Author Page
Amazon Author Page
Works by this author:
The SILVER Series
The Amaranthe Chronicles
The Outlier Trilogy
www.ellacross.com
www.facebook.com/thesilverseries
The Prisonworld Trilogy
www.carmenwild.com
Other standalone books:
Cadence of My Heart – an erotic lesbian romance
The Housemistress – an erotic lesbian romance
Hoar & Rime (A Short Story) – lesbian fiction
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
Lex Talionis Page 37