The Complex (The Omega Protocol Chronicles Book 3)

by Courtney McPhail

  He spun her over onto her stomach, putting his big palm down on the middle of her back as he straddled her hips, his weight pressing her down into the mattress so she couldn’t move.

  She tried to buck him off but he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She tried to scream but he was ready for that and he pushed her face into the mattress so it muffled the sound.

  He kept her face there as he shifted on top of her and she heard the unmistakable sound of him unbuckling his belt.

  Oh please, God, no!

  Panic flowed through her as she bucked and fought beneath him but he kept her pinned. No, no, no! Where the hell was Travis or Marsh? She needed them to hear her. She needed help now.

  “You’re gonna pay for hitting me, you cunt,” he hissed into her ear.

  He reared up and she registered the sound of something cutting through the air a moment before the leather belt came down on her bare back. She had thought the hit to the face had been bad but the agony that ripped through her body as the leather split open her skin was more than anything she had ever experienced. She couldn’t even cry out, her voice choked off by the pain.

  He brought the belt down again and again, the first few hits separate white hot lightning bolts but the blows that came after weren’t so precise as every nerve ending in her body was overloaded. When the darkness came for her this time, she didn’t fight it, welcoming the peace that unconsciousness offered her.

  It didn’t last long and she was slammed back into her body, her back feeling like it was on fire as she stared up at the light fixture hanging from the ceiling. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a white glass dome with faux gold edges, but the way the sunlight that streamed in the window reflected off its curves, it sparkled like fine crystal.

  She felt a tugging on her legs and she took her eyes off the pretty light to look down. Crawley was at the edge of the bed, yanking her jeans down to her feet where they tangled with her chains.

  “I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of this,” he said as he crawled over her, his hands going for her panties.

  She steeled herself, gathering all the strength inside her and pushing back the pain. When he started to pull down her panties, she rammed her thumb into Crawley’s eye. He reared back off of her, his hands clapped over his injured eye, roaring in pain. She scrambled off the bed, falling to the floor among the boxes. She bit back a scream of pain and she forced herself to her feet, knowing that if she didn’t move, it would all be over.

  The bedroom door burst open, banging against the wall as Travis barged into the room. He looked at her, pants around her ankles, shirt gathered up under her armpits, and then to Crawley, who had one hand still over his eye as he tried to get on his feet. Travis read the room immediately and lashed out at Crawley, kicking him in the ribs and sending him back to the ground.

  “You fucking bastard,” Travis cried out, pulling back for another kick but Marsh appeared behind him in the doorway and tackled Travis to the ground.

  She bent down and untangled her jeans from her chains, yanking them up so she could move but as she pulled them over her hips, she saw Crawley heave himself back to his feet.

  Rage burned in his one good eye as he glared at Veronica. “I’m gonna fuck you up, cunt.”

  A flash of silver caught her eye and she saw the fountain pen next to one of the boxes that had been upended. She grabbed it and she charged towards Crawley, swinging her arm up in a wide arc and driving the sharp end into the spot where his neck met his shoulder.

  Crawley let out a scream but she didn’t stop, wrapping her other arm around his head to hold on tight as she pulled out the pen, blood bubbling up from the wound. She drove the pen down again, straight into the side of his neck.

  This time it plunged in more easily, not meeting any bone like it had in his shoulder. When she pulled it out, blood spurting out of his neck in a stream, splashing over her face in a warm wave. A gurgling moan escaped from his lips, blood dribbling out over his tongue as he tried to scream. She only held him closer, driving the pen into his neck over and over again. He thrashed in her arms, trying to get away but she was stronger now that his life blood was leaking out of his neck.

  She only stopped when she was struck across the back, the pain causing her to drop her hold on Crawley and they both slumped to the ground. She rolled onto her side and saw Marsh’s heavy boots in her field of vision. Travis lay on the floor behind him, blood dripping from his nose and mouth from the beating he’d taken.

  “Veronica, you gotta run,” he gasped out. “Find Malcolm.”

  She tried to push herself up but Marsh’s boot came down on her back, right on one of the welts Crawley had put there. Veronica fell back to the ground, pain sending her curling up into a little ball.

  “Ben! Aaron!” Marsh barked out and Veronica heard the clank of chains in the hallway as they answered the call. “Aaron, help me tie up their hands and then you’re gonna help me get these two assholes down to the cell. They make any wrong move, push them down the stairs. Ben, go find Jacob and tell him this bitch here just killed Crawley.”

  Subject File #742

  Subject: The one part of the job I hated the most was playing along with the target. It always left me feeling dirty pretending I was like them. I’ve showered half a dozen times since but I still can’t feel clean after playing along with Jacob.

  Malcolm leaned against the wall, the cool cinderblock refreshing in the stuffy room. The lantern was bright and gave off a lot of heat, turning the damp room humid. Sweat trickled down Sam’s forehead, the man resolute as he glared at Malcolm with his one good eye. The water hadn’t bought them that much trust. Malcolm and Nas had been taking turns trying to convince Sam they were on his side but he wouldn’t listen.

  “It’s bullshit,” Sam said, “Another one of Jacob’s games to get me to talk. I’m not an idiot. I’ve been working with him since all this started. I know all his tricks.”

  “I told you, we’re prisoners like you. We want to get out of here, just like you.”

  “Not like me,” Sam said with laughed. “I took something from him. I’m never getting out of here alive. You’ve got a chance to get out of here by doing what he wants. He’s backed you into a spot and it’s your only option. He’s good at doing that.”

  “Tell me about Jacob then,” Malcolm said. “You think this is about me working for him, do your best to convince me to work for you.”

  It was silent as Sam looked at him, only the faint rumble of movement upstairs that drifted down through the vents.

  “I was the super here, you know. When news of the infection and then the state of emergency came, some people split but others stayed. I ended up a sort of de facto leader. We worked to shore the place up, make sure we could take care of ourselves. Then we started letting people in. We couldn’t leave them out there on their own, not when packs of infected people started swarming through town.”

  Sam sighed, letting his head fall back and his voice turned wistful. “We had different personalities butting heads but we managed to keep things peaceful. The thing I didn’t bank on were the kind of strangers we were letting in. See they didn’t know anybody here, didn’t have roots, and that made them wary of everyone. Jacob got in their ears, whispering warnings about me, telling them that I didn’t do things fairly. I thought I was the big man in charge but what right did I have to it. Because I fixed the pipes around here? He ended up convincing the others to call a vote, elect a leader so that everything could be fair.”

  “And Jacob won.”

  Sam nodded. “I didn’t take it too hard. The people decided and I wasn’t the one they wanted. That was fine, Jacob could carry the burden if he wanted it so much. So I sat back, let him take over. Stupid fucking move. I should have fought it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this place changed. Jacob brought in his new wave communism bullshit about sharing everything and owning nothing. I wrote it off as some hippy bullshit at first, nothing that c
ould really be harmful. People were still fed and had a roof over their head. Then I found out what owning nothing really meant.”

  Sam shook his head, sucking a breath through his teeth. “They were smart to keep it hidden from me for so long. The second I found out, I planned the escape.”

  Nas pushed himself off the wall, crossing his arms over his chest as he stood in front of Sam. “What did you find out?”

  “Jacob told you the rules of this place, didn’t he? Everything belongs to everyone.”

  The way Sam said that, Malcolm knew he was implying something but for the life of him, Malcolm couldn’t figure out what he meant. “You gotta be clearer with your meaning.”

  “You really don’t get it?” Sam said and looked between the two of them with some admiration in his eyes. “It took me a while to figure it out too. I figure that means our minds aren’t fucked up like theirs. When Jacob said everything, he meant everything, including your body. The women’s bodies.”

  Malcolm remembered the women he had seen in the food line, their faces drawn, the posture slouched. He had chalked it up to the hardness they experienced living life now but it had been more than that. They were broken from living here. The things the men must have done to them.

  God damn them all.

  “You knew that they were raping the women here and your answer was to run away?”

  “I didn’t run alone,” Sam said. “What do you think I meant when I talked about what else I stole from Jacob? I helped twelve women get out of this hellhole.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Safe,” Sam said, glancing up at the vent. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “Why did you really come back here?”

  “Because I didn’t get them all out. I had to leave three behind. After I made sure the other girls were safe, I came back.”

  That settled it for Malcolm. He had no choice but to throw in with Sam. He knew that Sam was telling the truth about what happened here. There was no way Malcolm could get the information Jacob wanted. He couldn’t deliver up those women to these monsters.

  “If we help you get the women still here, will you show us the way you got out? They still haven’t figured out how you managed it.”

  “You want me to believe you’re on my side? Fine. Get these cuffs off me, then we can talk about getting out of here.”

  Malcolm hoped that would be enough bait for Jacob to jump on to agree to hand over the keys. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Clay answered his knock, opening the door and letting him out into the hallway. Jacob appeared in the doorway of the room next to the boiler room, a grim look on his face. He had definitely heard every word of it.

  “What he told you in there, about the women, it’s not true,” Jacob said. “He didn’t take any women with him. Only fuel and food. He’s just trying to win your sympathy by trying to turn himself into some hero. He’s nothing but a thieving rat. He is just angry that the others voted me in.”

  “Of course,” Malcolm said. “He likes being in charge, doesn’t he? You hear how he thinks he can order me around? He thinks he’s in charge in there.”

  “You were right about making him think you want to help him,” Jacob said. “My men took pliers to his nails and he still wouldn’t say anything. In barely an hour, you’ve got him ready to talk.”

  “I’ve got to get the keys to the cuffs,” Malcolm said. “It’s a gesture of trust. I can see it in him. I do this for him and he’ll believe it. I’ll give him a chance to stretch, get comfortable, then I’ll tell him to work out the plan of escape with me. I’ll make sure he tells us the exit he used and where he stored the stuff he stole. You can go get whatever it is he took and we’ll be square, right?”

  Jacob nodded. “You’re sure you’ll be safe in there with him?”

  “Trust me, the condition he’s in, he’s no danger to anyone.”

  Before Jacob could answer, he heard a pounding of footsteps on the stairs and a man appeared, his eyeing lighting on Jacob. “I gotta talk to you, boss.”

  “Excuse me a minute,” Jacob said, moving down the hall to have a whispered conversation with the man. Malcolm strained to hear what they were saying but they were too far away. The way Clay eyed him, any step closer to try and listen in was going to be stopped.

  He could tell though that whatever the man told him pissed Jacob off. His hands were clenched in fists at his hips and he even stamped a foot as he hissed orders. The man nodded and then headed back upstairs while Jacob took a moment to compose himself, running a hand over his hair to put it back in place.

  When he turned back to Malcolm he had a tight smile on his face. “An issue has come up that I have to handle personally. I will be back momentarily. Clay, give him the keys. Uncuff him and let him stretch his legs. I’ll give you the signal when I’m back and you can get to questioning him again.”

  “Is everything alright?” Malcolm asked.

  “Fine,” Jacob replied, his tone clipped. Things were clearly not fine. “There’s an interpersonal issue I need to deal with, that’s all. You focus on Sam.”

  Malcolm wanted to know more but he wasn’t going to push his luck. Right now, he had the opportunity to speak with Sam without Jacob listening in. He could finally lay all his cards on the table without worrying about his double agent cover being blown.

  Malcolm went back into the cell where Nas was back to leaning against the wall and Sam had let his head drop to rest on his chest. The door closed behind him and Malcolm shook the keys.

  “Time to get you unlocked,” Malcolm said and went to work on the cuffs. “We’ve only got a short time to plan. Jacob is upstairs, for real this time. If we want him not to know what’s really going on, this might be our only chance to talk freely.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you mean ‘for real this time’?”

  “We’ve been playing both sides. I told Jacob I’d get you to trust us with a fake escape plan, get the info from you and turn it over to Jacob.”

  “You expect me to trust you now?”

  “We don’t want to know where you took those women,” Nas said. “You keep that to yourself. Just tell us how to get out of here.”

  Sam still looked skeptical.

  “Look, Nas and I came with two other people, one of them a woman,” Malcolm said. “Both of them will die fighting before they let anyone rape her. I have to get them the hell out of here before we all end up dead.”

  Sam shook his head, not believing them. Malcolm understood that it was hard. He was trying to protect those women and he didn’t want to make the wrong move here.

  “We told Jacob a line of rubbish about who we are and what we were doing when we were found,” Nas said. “You want some trust? We’re all from an island where we’ve got a bunch of kids in dire need of medicine that we took from the local hospital. This is life and death here. We need your help to get the medicine out and you need our help to get the remaining women out. So let’s work together, yeah?”

  Sam looked between the two of them and Malcolm could practically hear the gears turning in his head. He was weighing out his chances but it didn’t take that long, probably because trusting them was the only chance he had.

  “Alright, you got a deal.” Sam groaned as he pushed himself to his feet and Malcolm reached out to help him stand straight. “They lock all the medicine up in the armory. Your stuff is likely there. It’s the old laundry room here in the building. Where did they have you and your friends before?”

  “A room in the basement of the other building.”

  “The storage units in the basement were converted into cells. So that’s where they are.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “Jacob said they had to work to earn their freedom too. He had them cleaning out apartments with a crew.”

  “Alright, they’re likely in the other tower then. That had the most abandoned units,” Sam said. “Our best scenario, we get out of here and find the other women. They’ll kno
w for sure where your friends are being kept.”

  “How are we going to get to the women then?”

  “We’re gonna need a distraction,” Sam said. “Our best bet is to get to the armory, load up and then go to the generator room. Jacob never cared about the fuel I took. He still has barrels of it leftover. We light it on fire and every eye will be on it. That will give us a chance to find everyone and get out of here.”

  “How do we get over the walls?”

  “We aren’t going over the walls, we’re going under them. There’s an underground parking lot for both buildings. We emptied it back when this first started and then barricaded the garage doors. I’m the only one who knows about a door that opens to stairs out past the walls. It’s how I got out last time.”

  “Okay, so we have a way to find our weapons, the medicine, our friends and a way out of the complex,” Nas said. “Now how the hell do we get out of this room?”

  “I have an idea,” Malcolm said, the pieces of the plan falling into place in his mind. It would be a long shot but it was the only chance they had. He knew that Jacob was a liar. He had never intended on keeping his end of the deal.

  Subject File #745

  Subject: It ain’t right what went down. I shoulda known. I sat with those guys, knew they were bad news. I shoulda dropped them where they stood.

  Administrator: It wouldn’t have stopped anything that happened.

  Subject: I know but it woulda felt good.

  Jackson knew the men in the truck. Or at least he knew men like them. He’d met guys like them on the inside. Rough, dumb and lacking a conscience. They were dangerous men because they were unpredictable. And here he was in the back of the truck with them, heading back to this Complex.

  It wasn’t like he had any choice. Claudia had been right. Now that he was up close and personal with Eddie, he recognized the gun he carried. It was the same one Malcolm had taken with him when he had left the island. Whatever this Complex was, it was where he would find Veronica.