THE GENDER GAME 7: THE GENDER END
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BELLA FORREST
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Copyright © 2017 by Bella Forrest
Nightlight Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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CONTENTS
1. Viggo
2. Violet
3. Violet
4. Violet
5. Violet
6. Violet
7. Violet
8. Violet
9. Violet
10. Violet
11. Viggo
12. Violet
13. Viggo
14. Violet
15. Viggo
16. Viggo
17. Violet
18. Viggo
19. Violet
20. Violet
21. Violet
22. Viggo
23. Violet
24. Violet
25. Viggo
26. Viggo
27. Violet
28. Violet
29. Viggo
30. Viggo
31. Violet
32. Viggo
33. Tim
34. Violet
35. Viggo
36. Violet
37. Violet
38. Viggo
39. Violet
40. Violet
41. Viggo
42. Violet
43. Violet
44. Epilogue: Violet
BONUS CHAPTERS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Read More by Bella Forrest
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1
VIGGO
Exiting the plant was surreal. What had been a cacophony of noise and chaos barely an hour ago was now replaced with the loud yet final roar of the fires that still burned on either side of this entrance. The rest of the noise consisted of muted sounds, sounds that I immediately gravitated toward—soft chatter, boots falling on the ground, and the groans of the wounded. Some people were crying, but quietly. Most simply stood around, vacant expressions in their eyes.
I recognized the look because I understood the feeling. It would be so easy to fall into that shelter of numbness, push away all that I had seen. The thought was tantalizing. I wouldn’t have to think about Gregory, how small the bullet hole that had ended his life really was. Or the women I’d killed. Justified as I had been, it still didn’t change the fact that I had erased people from existence today. None of them would ever feel the sun on their faces or the touch of someone they loved again.
There was guilt. I was alive, whole, save for a scraped shoulder and a few aching ribs. So many others had died. What made me special? Why was it their time and not mine? Where was the justice in any of that?
Alejandro’s grip on my vest tightened, the fabric bunching uncomfortably around my neck. I adjusted my grip under his arm and glanced over at him. The older man was pale and his jaw set, determination stamped on his weathered face. I guided him around the corner to the wall, easing him down to the ground to keep from jostling his mangled hand. His good hand patted my shoulder as he leaned back, his breath coming in sharp gasps.
I squatted next to him as Tim helped Mags to a position leaning next to her uncle. The young woman still looked dazed, her blue eyes glazed and unfocused. As soon as her back touched the water treatment plant’s wall, she jerked around, blinking as if she couldn’t understand how she’d gotten there.
“Sit down, Mags,” Alejandro grunted up at her, and she looked down at him, equally surprised to see both of us there.
“What? No, I can’t.” She looked up, biting her lower lip for a second. Shaking her head, she squared her shoulders. “I need to find Amelia,” she said after a moment, referring to her third in command. She seemed as though she were grasping at straws, trying to stay in control when she really just needed to rest. I knew the feeling, and that only made it more painful to watch. “We need to be on cleanup and—”
“Sit down,” ordered April, rounding a car, a first-aid bag already in her hands, and I started. The last time I had seen her she had been flying into a water vat, one continually churned by a massive arm used to keep the liquid moving.
“April! How did you—”
“I’m an excellent swimmer,” she replied curtly, meeting my gaze. “And I promise to tell you all about it later. Right now, you have to let me check you out.” She looked at me and frowned. “Who’s in worse shape?”
I straightened up, my left side aching hard enough for me to reach out and use the wall as support. “I’m not sure. Alejandro’s hand is pretty bad, but Mags is acting a bit dazed. She was lucid minutes before, but…”
Before I could finish the sentence, April had the scanner out, running its beam over Mags’ face. Mags raised her hands, swatting lightly at the scanner, but April reached out and grabbed the woman’s wrists, pinning them together almost effortlessly. I stared in surprise as Mags hissed in pain. April cocked her head, and moved the scanner down to Mags’ shoulders and arms. She released her grip almost immediately, scanning the rest of her body while Mags massaged her shoulder.
“Mild shock, but likely because of a simple dip in endorphins due to adrenaline leaving the system,” April told her. “Water and food for you, and you need to be checked out again for that shoulder. It’s partially dislocated, but it can wait for a few hours. Alejandro?”
Alejandro looked up at her, his blue eyes already swimming with reluctance. “There are worse cases,” he insisted, but April ignored him, squatting down. If the condition of his hand caused her any emotional discomfort, April didn’t show it, which impressed me. I couldn’t look at it without getting queasy—the fingers were bent at unnatural angles, like a glove had been shoved onto him all wrong, thanks to an enhanced woman crushing it with one hand.
“Viggo!” I looked up to see Tim pointing behind me, and turned in time to see Morgan and Cody moving toward us, awkwardly supporting Jay’s weight between them. All three of them were wet, as if they had been swimming with all their clothes on. For all I knew, they had been. Cody was shivering violently in the chilly night air, but he looked like he was not physically damaged. Emotionally, I couldn’t say. Morgan looked fine, thanks to the Liberator suit she was wearing; it was Jay who had my heart pounding with worry.
Even though he was wearing black, I knew he was bleeding. A torn blue scrap of fabric had been tied around his midsection, the front saturated with blood. I was moving before I could even register it, my hands going out to take the young man’s weight off Morgan and support him.
“April!” I shouted over my shoulder as I gently turned him over.
Jay’s wide brown eyes looked up at me, his lips quivering. Sweat and water droplets streaked his face, and I could see how much pain he was in by his intense grimace and labored breathing. Worse than that, though, was a kind of numb, dejected, absolute misery in his eyes.
“She shot me,” he whispered hoarsely, and I could see how much effort it was taking him just to talk. My stomach churned seeing the young man so pale and hurt… and I felt a wash of rage coming over me, as well as ice-cold fear. Where was Violet?
“Who did?” I asked. “What happened?”
I looked up at Morgan for an answer; her mouth was pinched, her green eyes hard and angry. “Desmond shot him. It was a mess.” She met my gaze and faltered for a moment. “She and some wardens captured Violet and took her onto a heloship. But Solomon was following us. I saw him jump onto the hel
oship from the top of the plant. He’s… He’s been helping us, so maybe he’s helping Violet? I-I hope he’s helping her. I couldn’t, I didn’t have time, I was fighting my—uh—” She faltered again, her head shaking.
Jay coughed, and I looked down at him as he took in another shuddering breath. Tim was kneeling next to him, holding his hand over Jay’s wound, his silver eyes worried. “Tell him who you are,” Jay said, addressing Morgan. “Trust him.”
I looked from Jay to Morgan and back again, but Jay was focused solely on Morgan. Despite the severity of his injury, his face was firm—and dead serious. A small hand pressed insistently on my shoulder, and I gently lay Jay down as April pushed me out of the way. She ordered Jay not to move as I stepped back a few feet and looked at Cody and Morgan.
“What is Jay talking about, Morgan?”
It was Cody who answered, his voice oddly hollow. “She’s… a princess from Matrus. She killed her twin sister.”
I looked down at the young boy, and back to Morgan, wondering if it could possibly be true. It was all so very much to take in. Violet was either in enemy hands or Solomon was on board—and both ideas were awful for completely different reasons. Morgan was a princess… and had killed her twin? I was going to need the story on that. But there were so many things that needed my attention. Jay was wounded, Cody looked lost and broken, Alejandro and Mags were injured, and… My mind kept going to sickening places, where Violet was already dead. I had to go after her.
“I’m nothing like my sisters,” announced Morgan flatly, interrupting my thoughts. The look of sheer disgust on her face made it hard for me to believe she was lying.
Blinking at her, I nodded, and then turned away, needing a minute to sort through what I could do something about and what I couldn’t. The injured were going to be cared for by people more qualified than me, so that was off my list. Morgan could wait. We just needed to notify Ms. Dale and Henrik about who she was, but if what Cody was saying was true—and at this point, I doubted the kid was cogent enough to think of a lie—then that meant that whatever her background, she was definitely on our side. So she could stay.
“How long ago did they take Violet?” I asked, turning around.
Morgan’s brows drew together over her green eyes, and she checked her watch, her mouth moving slightly. “About… I don’t know, twenty, twenty-three minutes ago?”
“Okay.” I squeezed my fingers together, activating my microphone. “Jeff, how much fuel is left in the heloship, exactly?”
There was a pause, and then Jeff’s voice filled the line. “The readout says five percent, Viggo, but I’m not quite sure what that means in terms of flight time.”
“It means about twenty minutes of flight, probably less,” supplied Amber’s voice in our ears, a strange reminder that half of what I was saying was still being broadcast to members of all our teams. “What’s going on?”
“Violet was taken by Desmond on a heloship, heading…” I looked at Morgan expectantly, and her frown deepened, her eyes anxious.
“East,” she supplied.
“East,” I repeated into the comm. “Solomon was seen on the heloship as well, so there’s a chance he got in and caused some damage. We need to get to a Patrian airfield, and find some fuel, so we can track the heloship down.”
“You can’t,” replied a rich masculine voice, and I recognized it as Logan Vox, one of the rebel leaders we had recruited to take out the soldiers at the plant. “It’s the reason I went into hiding and started recruiting for the rebellion. The Matrians started collecting pilots and dismantling aircraft. Our storehouses for parts—fuel, tools, munitions… they were all cleared out. It’ll take at least a few days to repair the heloships, if we can even find the parts we need to repair them. It’d be too late at that point.”
“Well,” said Ms. Dale imperiously, her voice firm and commanding. “We’d better figure something out. Violet Bates is the reason we’re all here and in this fight, boys and girls. She’s the one who cracked this conspiracy wide open, and we owe it to her to go after her. So let’s think of a way.”
As if on cue, a car roared up toward us. Alarmed, I turned and yanked my gun around, my heart pounding uncomfortably, only to relax my aim when I saw Owen throwing open the door. Blood streamed from a small cut over his eyebrow, but the rest of him seemed relatively unscathed.
“Viggo,” he shouted when he spotted me. “There’s something I have to—”
“Madre de dios!” I looked past Owen to see Cruz standing on the other side of the car, his uninjured hand covering his mouth. My small amount of relief that Cruz had escaped further injury was overwhelmed by concern over what he was looking at. “What is that?” he demanded.
“Desmond,” Owen replied grimly.
I quickly crossed the twenty or so feet that separated us and threw open the rear door. I immediately had to look away. If it weren’t for the hair and the eyes, there would be no way of discerning the identity of the… well, pulpy remains of human lying in the backseat, clumsily thrown atop what looked to be some kind of tarp. I was surprised her eyes were still intact, given the remains of her face alone. I doubted I’d ever be able to forget the image of an exposed and broken jaw pushing through her flayed skin like that, while her still-open eyes stared vacantly at the seat ahead. I took a closer look at Owen and realized he was covered in blood, likely from carrying her.
“You moved her?” I asked him, still not comprehending why he would bring us such… decimated remains.
“Yeah, well…” He met my gaze, his eyes hard. “It seemed like the right thing to do. After all, people should see that even monsters can be killed.”
The queasy feeling in my stomach remained. “It’s true. But that’s pretty, uh, gruesome.” In truth, it was hard to connect that broken, mutilated body to the woman who had orchestrated so many of the awful plans that had changed the face of Patrus—and Violet’s and my lives—forever. I found it hard to feel the anger, hard to feel that she was really gone. I knew this had been more merciful than the end she’d deserved, but it didn’t make me feel anything at the moment other than disgust.
Owen’s eyes glinted, and the hard look didn’t fall from his face. “Look, I didn’t bring her here for your approval. I brought her here because she fell—she almost fell on me—from the heloship that escaped the plant. I thought it was important for people to see, and it might be useful in dealing with the Matrians… but more importantly, I marked the coordinates where she landed. Maybe Thomas can triangulate the starting location from where the body landed. We could track Violet.”
The thought sent a pulse of energy through me. I immediately stood up and moved over to one of my men, asking him to give me his comms. Within seconds, I was back to Owen, holding the equipment out to him. He quickly slipped it on.
“Thomas,” his voice buzzed in my ear. “I found where Desmond hit, and marked the coordinates. Do you think you can—”
“Are you sure she’s dead?” Ms. Dale demanded. “We need proof. This is something we can’t leave to chance—”
“I’m sure,” I replied, cutting her off. “Owen brought her corpse back. She’s definitely dead.”
If Thomas had any triumph or sorrow over Desmond’s death, his voice didn’t show it. “Give me the coordinates, Owen.”
I moved back over to Morgan as Owen began listing off the coordinates, questions burning through my mind. How had he and Violet gotten separated? “Morgan, why wasn’t Owen with you?”
Morgan blinked at me, and then seemed to sag in relief as she noticed the blonde man by the car. I could tell by her expression that she was in shock… or maybe just drained. It was hard to tell the difference these days.
“Thank God he’s okay,” she muttered, pushing some of her hair behind her ear. “He drew off several of the enhanced Matrians. We were hopelessly outnumbered, and he shot at them and distracted their attention.”
I made an instant decision not to be mad about Owen abandoning his post as
Violet’s bodyguard. I was sure he had done his best to keep Violet as safe as he could, all things considered. Besides, the man had been given an impossible task. The only way to keep Violet safe was to lock her up and throw away the key, and I would never ever let that happen to her, so it looked like a lifetime of reckless adventures for me. Not that I would complain—if we could just get her back from this latest one alive. I felt like praying to whatever was out there to keep her safe, but I felt even more like rushing after her as fast as I possibly could.
First things first. “They found Desmond’s body,” I informed Morgan quietly. “She was thrown from the heloship.”
“Good,” she replied, crossing her arms across her chest.
Cody started to cry quietly, and Morgan’s face went from satisfied to mortified. Immediately she knelt down and pulled the boy into her arms, holding him and whispering softly to him. I watched them both as I waited for Thomas’ analysis on the radio, listening to her tell him that it was over, and by picking up bits of their conversation I caught on to the fact that Desmond had fired at Cody, turning the entire boy’s world upside down. My heart ached for him, but deep down, I was glad he had seen that darkness in Desmond before she had died. It would be good for him in the long run.
It was finally starting to process—like waking up and realizing the last night hadn’t been a dream, but a memory. God, I was so happy she was dead. Now that I’d had a taste of a moment of thinking of the world without Desmond Betrand’s evil schemes, I wouldn’t apologize for that happiness. That woman had been the source of all my troubles since I’d met Violet. Well, one of the sources—the other was still at large. I just hoped Violet was all right.
I also hoped Desmond had been bluffing about her threat with the boys, because if she wasn’t, we would have less than a week to find a way to rescue them or break Elena’s hold over them before her “people” started executing them. It had sounded like an absurd plea that she’d made when we’d kidnapped her, just to force us not to execute her—but with Desmond and Elena, we could never really be certain.
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