by J. L. Mac
“Lots of people died to make me an expert.” She scowls back at me.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean,” she asks.
“You asked me who died and made me the expert. I answered you.” The group takes a collective step back and their body language shifts. They become agitated, afraid, and a few shift to pre-confrontation stances. Unconcerned, I turn my attention to Cade, but I still address the entire group. “I brought you food, blankets, some basic cooking gear. I’ll try to bring you more from time to time. For now, stay out of sight, stay indoors. They’re running patrols through this area and if one of you gets caught, all of you will get caught.”
“What’s your name,” Cade asks. The question seems so unnecessary that it catches me off guard. What’s this desire for everyone to introduce themselves? Not ‘thanks for saving me’, not gratitude for the supplies. Nope. He wants introductions. I try not to roll my eyes and go on with the stupid pleasantries.
I exhale, and my response in an exhausted sigh. “Sic.”
Cade cocks an eyebrow. “Wait. Your name is sick?”
I sigh a second time. “Sicarius. People call me Sic for short.”
I still see a few belligerent gazes as I scan his group and decide I need to give them another reality check. “I need to go. Stay inside. No one goes back. I can tell you The Corp isn’t forgiving. You all left the walls after having multiple seditious meetings. At best, you would end up at hard labor for life. My bet? Some of you would be executed in the square as an example to your fellow citizens.”
The look of disbelief, then horror that ripples through the group shows me that my message has been received. Whether they stay put or decide to go back and roll the dice, I’ve done my part. I can tell Iris with a clear conscience that I’ve tried to help her friends. I leave them and go back to the shack. Locking the place down, I finally am able to collapse on my bunk. Being in bed makes me think of Iris, and as I drift off to sleep, I wish she was here beside me, where she belongs.
I WAKE TO THE SOUND of footsteps in the hall and my father’s shouts. “She’s blind!” I lurch forward and struggle to gather my wits. A sleepless night with Sic has left me tired, dazed, and perfectly sore in the best way.
The door to my bedroom flings open and crashes against the wall behind it. “Iris Tierney. You are hereby under arrest, charged with suspicion of sedition against The Corporation. Come with me please.” As one agent makes introductions Fenra style, another grabs me up out of my bed, the same bed I shared with Sic only a short while ago.
“Wait! Wait! Where are you taking me?”
“In for questioning. Chief Ingram wants to speak with you himself.”
“Yeah I bet he does,” I growl as I shake wayward tangles of hair away from my face.
“Now, you just wait one moment! I’m Doctor Tierney. I’m on the Research Board. A top employee. My daughter is no criminal. She’s not done anything seditious or—or illegal!” he pleads, alternating between desperation and his attempt to sound stern. It makes me feel awful. We may be caught up in a rough patch lately, but I don’t relish the idea of causing my father any emotional turmoil.
“Dad it’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll get this sorted out, Iris. Don’t worry,” he calls after me.
“Take her,” another voice that I haven’t heard yet, commands. The hands around my arm pull me down the stairs and it’s difficult to tell above the sound of my own heart pounding in symphony with the clunky footsteps of the agents around me, but I hear the agent say “Arbitrium.” My father gasps or maybe I’m imagining things. “If you need me to do it, I can. But you must decide now.” I barely make out the whisper and I can’t even be sure that I’ve heard the agent correctly. My father says nothing as I’m pulled from my home in my pajamas and bare feet. They load me gingerly, almost carefully, into the rear bench of a Security railcar and it only serves to drive my fear into overdrive. I know I haven’t done anything wrong; well, I didn’t do what they are alleging. I only went to that meeting because Ingram instructed me to.
Maybe this is just a ploy. Maybe Ingram is rounding up everyone including me so I look just like the rest. No one will know I was instructed to attend Cade’s meetings in an effort to feed Ingram information. That has to be it.
What is arbitrium-abatrum-abetrim? What did he say?
My mind reels in a hundred different directions and then…
Sic.
The door to the room they deposited me in opens with a sloof and footsteps that I know belong to Ingram tap against the floor. His gait is easily recognizable. At least, for me it is.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
“I wouldn’t know now, would I?” I clip, feeling perturbed.
“Now, that’s a rather unceremonious way to greet your employer don’t you think?”
“What’s unceremonious is being double-crossed!”
“Yes. Well, in my defense, I didn’t intend on dispatching the raid to Cade Nielsen’s hidey hole, but…” he sighs dispassionately then clicks his tongue.
“There’s no excuse. You could have warned me. You should have warned me. When are you letting me out? I think everyone believes the show you put on at my house.”
“Hmm,” he hums, sending a chill down my spine.
“Ingram,” I warn, doing my best to tamp down the fear and anxiety that has developed in the pit of my stomach.
“You’re quite attractive when you’re agitated. It suits you,” he murmurs while coming closer to me. Leaning in, he inhales deeply and brushes one finger across my cheek, making me mentally markup ‘bathe’ as top priority when I get home. “You even smell beautiful,” he whispers.
“Do I? Hmm, let’s see. What was that fragrance? Oh, that’s right. That would be the scent of another man; the one that I was in bed with all night. I’m glad you like him. If that’s your sort of thing…” It’s an immature jab, but a jab nonetheless. Maybe if Ingram knows that I’m not his plaything, he’ll back off and stop touching and sniffing me every chance he gets.
“Agitation may suit you, but arrogance, however, does not.”
“Can we stop this? When are you letting me go?”
“I’m not. You’re going to stay right here for now.”
“No. You can’t do that! I did nothing wrong,” it’s hard to miss the plea in my voice.
“Get comfortable. Perhaps a shower will help. It will, at least, rinse his stink off of you. I like my women fresh,” he murmurs in my ear then saunters out of the room.
For a moment—minutes—hours, I’m not sure, I sit perfectly still in the metal seat that I’m bound to. Shock and dismay battle for territory in my brain, but it’s a draw.
“Up,” a gravelly voice commands a short time after Ingram has left. The sound of two sets of boots tromping across the room brings my senses to attention.
“What are we doing?”
“You’ll see. Heard you’re a real peach. Thought maybe the guys were exaggerating but they definitely weren’t. This is going to be fun.”
The other man snorts obnoxiously as the agent with the gravelly voice man-handles me. He pulls me to my feet and jerks my arms painfully. I do my best to wrench away from him, but his hands are big enough to wrap all the way around my upper arm. He squeezes my flesh hard enough to make my bones ache and it’s no wonder. I’m all of five feet three inches tall and one hundred twenty-eight pounds. Judging by the sound of his boots against the floor, he has got to be at least two hundred pounds. I can only speculate as to how tall he is but his voice comes from well above my head.
The best thing to do is comply. That’s what my brain keeps dictating but my instinct is to flee. To fight. To run.
Sic.
I should have gone with him. I should be with him now. The moment thoughts of Sic come to mind I try to push them away. Thinking about one spectacular night with a man that I feel as though I’ve known forever stokes an emotional flame within my chest, one that I don’t have the capacity
to manage right now.
The stone floor is cold beneath my bare feet and hard enough to bruise my heels as I’m dragged along this way. I do my best to stay upright, but my escort is walking so fast. Being blind and bound with cold, numb feet has done a number on my equilibrium.
My feet tangle up beneath me and I lunge forward, skidding painfully across one knee. The agent beside me doesn’t seem bothered enough to help me up. I bite my tongue cruelly, too stubborn to let out the cry of pain and embarrassment that demands to see the light of day. Metallic warmth disperses in my mouth before I release my tongue from the vise of my molars.
It’s no simple task, but I take a deep breath, swallow the blood down, and get back to my feet, shaking legs be damned.
We walk along for another fifty-eight steps and a scanner prompts on the panel near me.
Sloof!
“In you go,” the gorilla with a death grip on my arm commands. I sniff and immediately note the moisture in the space around me. Feels like the air outside after it rains.
Humid.
Suffocating.
I distinctly remember the day that I begged my dad for a garden. Our unit has a small patio just off the back door. I wanted so badly to grow lavender and mint and basil and all the things that my keen nose could enjoy far better than most people. It took me a month of pestering but he relented.
Had I known that the supplies we needed were going to cost him so much time I would never have been so persistent. Thinking back on it makes me feel terribly guilty. The plastic fifty-gallon rain barrel was the most expensive item because it wasn’t something readily available at our Procurement Facility. Dad ordered it and filled out the special request to obtain rain water, which I now think is absurd. That barrel, that stupid chunk of plastic cost him three weeks of time. Time that he owed Fenra. Hours upon hours of work in the lab to pay for a stupid gardening phase I was intent on trying out.
Hours that he was working off when I decided to water my seedlings alone.
I held my breath for a pretty long time when I first went in. Dad had fashioned a sort of scoop from a plastic carton that dehydrated potato flakes came in. It worked well because it floated right on top of the surface. I had felt for it, careful not to accidentally sink my water scoop. I wasn’t careful enough. I reached for the scoop and heard a glug!
Before thinking better of it, I plunged my arm down into the barrel but I was too short and the submerged scooper was sinking to the bottom. I rose up onto my tiptoes and pulled myself up and over the edge of the rounded-plastic edge. My fingers grazed the scoop and I held on tight. Getting back off the barrel was far more difficult than getting onto it. The hand I was using to brace myself began to slip. The harder I tried to hold on, the more the muscles in my shoulders and arms burned and shook. Then…
“I said strip!” The caveman agent bellows as he shoves me hard between my shoulder blades, sending me forward a few steps. My bare feet slap down in the water on the floor. It takes me a moment to snap out of the memory of the day I nearly drowned in an oversized bucket.
“What?” I splutter, only just now aware that he has removed one cuff from one of my wrists.
“Chief says you need a shower. Says you’re filthy and hotheaded. Says a shower ought to cool you down,” he jeers, winning a laugh from his companion. “So strip or I’ll do it for you.”
“I—no!” I cry out, appalled and in disbelief at what’s happening to me. My protest barely makes it past my lips before a sickening blow resonates from my ear clean through my head. Both ears begin to ring, temporarily rendering me without yet another sense.
“I said no!” I scream like a banshee hoping that anger will see me through.
With a sickening oof, his fist lands explosively against my stomach. I double over in pain and work at breathing, but air simply won’t move. A raspy whine escapes as I collapse with my cheek pressed against the stone floor. A barely there layer of water covers my cheek. An eternity passes before the smallest gulp of air makes its way into my abused body.
“I won’t,” I whisper to the floor.
“Have it your way,” the agent says as he steps forward and claps the cuff back around my wrist and yanks me angrily to my feet. He lifts the hem of my shirt and toys with it. The sound of thread ripping echoes all around me. The fabric covering my body, a body that I haven’t even seen, a body that only Sic has seen, is tossed aside baring me to both men. The urge to be ill torments my empty stomach.
“Well, look at that, would ya?” he grunts and jerks me violently forward. I struggle against him but he overpowers me easily. The sound of spraying water sends me tumbling into a full panic.
His grip at the nape of my neck squeezes forcefully, sending me to my knees under a torrent of stinging, ice-cold water.
“Shower!” He yells then releases me and I scramble from under the spray, gasping for air. He catches me by the ankle and drags me back to the water and holds me in place by my neck. “I said shower!”
The frigid water slips over the surface of my body but my mind is guarded. My mind is a safe place.
Sic’s hands. Sic’s scar. Sic’s long legs striding over the ground at his feet.
I’ve dreamed of him for so long. Under normal circumstances, it’s simple to retreat into my mind and summon past dreams of a perfect stranger that I know so well. Right now? It’s all I can manage just to focus hard on him, to employ every cell in my body, so that I may conjure a phantom.
Sic’s hair. Sic’s voice. Sic’s touch. Sic’s lips. Sic’s breath on my skin.
Drenched and shaking and naked, I’m lifted to my feet. My muscles shake so violently they begin to burn. The sound of another set of footsteps approaching barely registers through the fog that has enveloped my mind. I cling tightly to the image of Sic in my mind. He’s running faster than I’ve ever seen him move, the image of agility and athleticism.
“What in the fuck is this?” Ingram growls, distracting me from thoughts of Sic. I attempt scrambling away from the direction that his voice has come from.
“She wasn’t complying,” the ogre with his hand around my upper arm offers.
“You stupid asshole! Look at her!” Ingram barks. The two agents don’t say anything, the grip on my arm growing tighter the only sign of tension. “Fix this mess and bring her to my office and don’t take the main corridor for the love of god! I’ll leave the rear door in my office open.”
“Yes, Chief,” the men say in unison. I listen as Ingram walks away, leaving me alone with my abusers. “Bitch,” the agent near me grits out as I’m dragged away from the room.
Ingram’s office has a couch in it. It’s firm and uncomfortable against my tender body but I can’t stand. I can’t do anything but think of Sic.
What will he think when he finds out I’m here? Where is he now? Have they captured him too?
The door slides open and though my swollen eyes are shut and I lie motionless on Ingram’s couch dressed only in an oversized prisoner’s jumper, my senses go on high alert in the presence of my predator.
He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason I’m not floating after an amazing night with a man that I have longed for, for so many years.
Ingram sighs and walks across his office. Stopping, I hear him pour liquid. His footsteps come nearer and his scent inundates my nose making me flinch and back away. “Drink,” he orders, placing a glass in my hand.
“Fuck you,” I rasp, taken aback by my own insurrection following an assault unlike I’ve ever dreamed of having to suffer.
“Don’t give me reason to hand you over to Agents Krause and Flynn again,” he threatens successfully. I bring the glass to my dry lips and sniff before taking a gulp. The water slakes down my dry throat and lands heavy in my empty stomach. “I have food for you, as well.”
“How generous. When can I leave?”
“As soon as this investigation is wrapped up.”
“I did nothing wrong. You can’t hold me like this.”
&nb
sp; “I can and I am.”
“What do you want from me?”
“The same thing I wanted since the first time I saw you begging to see the dean. Anger suits you, but so does vulnerability. Maybe that’s why I want you so badly.”
“Even bruised and banged up… you… I want you.” Ingram grabs my hand and forces me to touch the bulge at his crotch. I jerk my hand away and stifle the shiver of disgust that spreads through me.
“Yeah, well, I agreed at first but now I’ve changed my mind so forget it.”
“Ah. Yes. Agreeing. It was so entertaining letting you think you had a choice in the matter,” he whispers as his fingers drift over my collarbone. “But as it turns out, you don’t.” In spite of myself, my heart hammers hard in my chest and anxiety builds. “As if you could deny me,” he whispers softer still. “You asked me when we would make good on our deal, well, I told you I’d work it out, didn’t I?”
Realization hits me like lightning and I grimace, the dried blood on my cheek cracking. “You planned this?”
“Well, I can’t take all the credit. With Benson’s death still so fresh, my superiors demanded that I do something to assure the public that Security has control over our cozy compound. The raid was a convenient way to get you here, in custody and at my mercy. So vulnerable and furious. They truly make you more stunning than you already are. I can’t resist.” Ingram snakes his fingers around the nape of my neck and pulls me to him. His mouth covers mine in a suffocating kiss that I fight hard to break away from.
I bite his lip hard, drawing blood. “You set me up! I told you I’d do what you wanted. I agreed!”
“Yes. You did. But these circumstances suit me far better. Who would believe you now? After all, you’re a suspected Resistance Sympathizer. You’d try anything to get yourself out of trouble. What do you look like insisting that you were exploited by a respected Fenra Security Official? You, a Resistance Sympathizer? No one would believe you and I get credit for keeping our compound safe from Dark Land animals and better still, I get you in all your blind, vulnerable, angry glory.”