by Keri Lake
“Estrus is a trigger for males to mate. The last time a subject was sent into the cells during estrus, she required multiple stitches.”
Neela. That’s why Cadmus attacked her.
In all the time I’ve been here, I don’t think Doctor Tims has ever said more than two words to me. His face is typically the last I see before they put me out, and the first when I wake up. He’s always been a somewhat cold and distant man, and it surprises me that he’s offered this information, though I don’t dare make the assumption that he cares. None of the doctors in this place truly care about the savages they drag in from the Deadlands, or they wouldn’t do the inhumane things they do to us.
“Please. Tell me why this is happening to me.”
Instead of answering, he twists away from me, but I reach out for his arm, swinging his attention to me again.
“Please.”
Removing his glasses, he pinches the bridge of his nose, then huffs, before sliding them back on. “You are no longer equipped to accommodate a human pregnancy. Your womb has been modified for impregnation by an Alpha.”
“What?” The words sink beneath my skin, snaking through my bones like poison. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“To instill obedience. An Alpha will fight to protect his female, but he’ll be willing to give his life to protect his pregnant female.”
“I don’t understand. The Alphas have fought. Easily. They’re the strongest in the Deadlands, right? Why would they need to be willing to sacrifice themselves entirely?”
He sighs, giving a furtive glance toward one of the other doctors walking past the half-opened curtain. With a nod, he clears his throat, and lowers his voice. “Do you know why this hospital was built here?”
I shake my head, the pain in my stomach subsiding for the curiosity he’s stirred.
“This is ground zero. Where the Dredge began. By accident, really. When Szolen was constructed, one of the workers unearthed a pod that had been cocooned. The first to be infected with Dredge carry the purest form of the pathogen. To keep it from spreading, a facility was built beneath the desert, this very hospital. It’s since been sealed off, but we believe the cure lies in those early samples.”
“So, why haven’t you unsealed it? Why use human beings as guinea pigs, when you have the cure below your feet?”
“Because the early infected are the most violent of all. And to get to the cure, we’d have to get past them. Though we don’t know how, we know their numbers have grown.”
“You want to use the Alphas to retrieve the samples.”
His silence answers for him, and the grim expression on his face twists my stomach.
“And to make the Alphas comply, you figured getting me pregnant would give them purpose.”
“Alphas tend to be self-destructive in isolation. We’ve had a number of them commit suicide. Some allow themselves to be killed, either through punishment, starvation, or in training. Some escape during raids. Companionship and purpose have been shown to increase compliance. It is the deeply rooted human necessities that have proven to be most effective.”
I know this more than anyone. Having found out about my sister, I no longer have purpose, or reason. “You come from Szolen, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a family?”
“I do. A wife and a son.”
“That’s why you do this? That’s your purpose for your little experiments on young girls. Savages.”
Lowering his gaze, he nods. “If I refuse, my wife and son will suffer.” When his eyes meet mine again, they carry the sadness of a man who might actually have a soul. “What horrible times we live in, when love is a curse that can be exploited for hate.”
It’s true. Every person I’ve loved, I’ve lost. And I fear what my sudden feelings for Valdys might mean for the both of us.
Doctor Ericsson sits across his desk from me, his pen furiously dancing across a sheet of paper. A minute later, he snaps the folder that’d been laid out before him closed, and a smile stretches his lips. “Well, how are you feeling right now?”
“Still queasy.” As promised, Doctor Tims provided a note, excusing me from the Alpha cells. At the very least, it’ll give me a couple of days to think about how I should approach Valdys. While I feel most safe with him, I can’t allow myself to play into this game, this cruel and wicked plot to use his feelings for me as a reason to sacrifice his life. To do their bidding at his expense.
“That’s a shame. Valdys has been quite anxious for you to return to his cell. In fact, he’s grown a little belligerent about it.”
“How so?”
“Refuses to eat. And we’ve had to subdue him twice in the last two days for lashing out.”
I recall Doctor Tims’ conversation about how they become suicidal without companionship. How sickening that would be if he hurt himself because I refused to see him. “It’s just a few days, I’m certain.”
“A few days,” he echoes, in a tone that sets me on edge. He tips his head back, nostrils flared, as though he can smell my lies on the air.
If it were possible, my stomach twists even more so.
“Did I ever show you what happened to Neela after her first encounter with Cadmus?”
I don’t want to know, but the consequence that shadows his words draws my curiosity, and I shake my head.
“Come with me.” Pushing up from his chair, he leads me out of his office, and down the hallway, passing rooms with large windows, where surgical procedures appear to be in progress, as the staff inside gather around beds shrouded in white sheets.
“We learned after her encounter that she had fallen into estrus. A mistake on our part, really. After the attack, she was mended and transferred to another room for observation.” He comes to a stop in front of a closed door, smiling as he twists the knob to open it.
A heady, sweet scent lingers on the air, strumming a chord of excitement inside me. My heart kicks up its pace, as we approach Neela, who lies still on a bed, a white strip of tape across her mouth, arms and legs strapped down by leather belts, and tubes sticking out of her flesh.
“We’d hoped to reintroduce her to Cadmus after she was healed and her estrus had subsided. Her stitches have been removed, but this is now day twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six days of estrus?”
He lifts a clipboard from the side of her bed and flips the page. “We’ve sedated her, but she wakes every thirty minutes, like clockwork, in excruciating pain.”
A pang strikes my stomach in this very moment, and I set a hand there, frowning down at her. “Why? What happened?”
“Science is approximate, at best. The human body is a very complex structure, and when you mess with it, well, it doesn’t always play by the rules of science. It seems the hormones produced during estrus are only balanced by the chemical reaction that happens when male sperm is introduced. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn this until it was too late.”
“Too late?”
He pulls back the sheet to reveal a round, bulbous lump in Neela’s gown, where her stomach would be.
“She’s pregnant?”
“No. That her womb has swollen into false pregnancy is the best explanation we have at the moment.”
“Can’t you …. Can’t you inject her with … sperm?”
“Very good deduction, my dear. Yes, we could absolutely inject her with sperm, and perhaps she’d find some relief. Perhaps even true pregnancy. Unfortunately for her, science is the nature of this facility. We’re using this as an opportunity to observe estrus cycles in our female subjects. So that we may modify our procedures in the future. Perhaps I didn’t mention … Doctor Tims is the lead researcher for this project.”
Sickness mingles with the ache in my belly, and I bend forward, resting my hand on Neela’s bed to keep from collapsing. He lied to me. The bastard lied to me so he’d have another guineapig to study.
The bed shakes, snapping my attention to Neela, who seems to be caught up in a seizu
re. Her eyelids shoot open, wide as if in terror. Muffled screams fail to break the barrier at her mouth, and she lifts her head slightly up off the pillow, brows turned up in pleading. Her stomach gurgles and shifts beneath the gown, her fingers splayed and flexing into fists.
I’m bearing witness to what must be her hell.
“Help her. Please help her!”
Tipping his head, Doctor Ericsson continues to watch her, seemingly unaffected by her agony. “It’ll pass soon. It always does.”
I reach for her hand, the sight of her bringing me to tears, and when she tips her head back, the veins in her neck pop out like the lines on a map. The barrier at her mouth balloons with her scream, but doesn’t break.
“We’ve found these episodes to be both disruptive and upsetting to the staff.”
Staring down at her, I grind my teeth, wishing I had the balls to grab something in the room and stab him right here. To give Neela the satisfaction of watching him bleed all over her. Another few seconds of her writhing, and the bed settles. On a rush of air through her nose, she seems to deflate into stillness again, and her grip of my hand slackens.
“The pain is unbearable. It inevitably causes her to black out afterward, but in thirty minutes, it’ll be more of the same,” he says, jotting something down on the clipboard. “Now, what was it you said? A few more days, and you should be ready for another visit with Valdys?”
I glance down at Neela, whose belly has grown even bigger from just minutes ago. In thirty minutes, she’ll suffer the hell of another episode, and it’ll grow some more. Through a blur of tears, I lower my gaze to the floor. “I’m feeling better, Doctor.”
Chapter 22
A nervous tickle quivers in my chest, as Medusa leads me down the dark corridor. The pounding of the iron doors, as we pass, is far more fervent than before, and the muffled growls are a sure bet every Alpha on this floor knows I’m in estrus.
“Like wild dogs.” Medusa shakes her head, as we head toward the cell at the end. “This is a terrible idea.”
Her comment would be somewhat touching, maybe even cause to back out, if I hadn’t witnessed the consequences laid out in agony every thirty minutes.
“Valdys won’t hurt me.” I’m certain of it. He had every opportunity to watch me die at the hands of that creature, but he didn’t.
“Perhaps not as a general rule. But there are primitive characteristics in play where these Alphas are concerned. Things we haven’t even begun to understand about them. Bear in mind that, while they may be human, they also carry the same pathogen as the Ragers, and we can all appreciate the desire to avoid one of their nests.”
“If you’re …. If you’re trying to make me feel better about this, it’s not working. I don’t have a choice, unless I want to end up like Neela.”
At the mention of her name, Medusa flinches and huffs a sigh. “I honestly don’t know which is the lesser of two evils.”
Perhaps there’s a small bit of humanity left in Medusa, after all. With a smile, I pat her on the shoulder, a gesture that seems to startle her. “I guess there’s only one way to find out. That’s why I’m here, right? The guineapig.”
“Be careful. I suspect the rules aren’t going to be much use at this point. Just … try not to agitate him into something violent.” She turns to face the wall, and sets her hand on the outline.
A clang from behind clenches my muscles, and I turn to see a slight dent in Cadmus’s door. Another clang, another dent. He growls in frustration, and Medusa gives a light nudge. “In you go. The sooner this is over, the better.”
With a nod, I enter Valdys’s room, and the door clicks shut behind me, narrowing the light to a single beam.
Nerves flaring through my body, I step deeper into his cell, approaching the dark shadow in the corner. “Valdys?”
Slapping a hand over my mouth, I recall the video, when Neela called out to Cadmus during estrus. A trigger.
“Well, well. What have we here?” The voice doesn’t belong to Valdys, and when Cadmus steps into the light, my body turns ice cold. “Seems a mouse has fallen into the snakepit.”
“Where’s Valdys?”
“Doctor Ericsson thought it might be interesting to switch things up a bit.” He lifts his chin into the air, drawing my eyes to the silver band, like Valdys’s, around his throat. He sniffs, closing his eyes with a smile. “My, you smell good enough to eat, little one. And I intend to feast. All. Night. Long.”
He lurches toward me, and I jump back a step.
“Wait. Just … wait a minute.”
“One minute of waiting is one minute less I get to be inside of you.”
Another step toward me, and I throw my hand out, as useless as the gesture might be. “I …. I’ve seen Neela. She’s in agony without you. They’re torturing her.”
A flicker of pain dances across his face, and it’s then I realize, during whatever moments he was with her, something inside of him managed to bind with her. As quickly as it appears, though, the look on his face fades back to one of pure lust. “There’s nothing I can do about that. Besides, I never wanted Neela. I wanted you.”
Two more steps, and I’m boxed in, just as when he had me in the observation room a few days ago. Arms pinned to the wall. His large body pressed into mine.
He buries his face into the crook of my neck and inhales. “Ah, fuck. You smell like peaches and pussy. My favorite meal.”
“You raped her. You almost killed her.”
He pulls away from me once more, until his face is in view. “Perhaps you should ask the good doctor about his intentions with Neela.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was ordered not to lay a hand on her. Not to come near her. They wanted to see how she fared through the pain of estrus when not relieved of it.” The corner of his mouth quirks with the slightest smile. “I’m not one to follow orders. Seems I wasn’t fast enough, though, before Legion barged in.” His eyes trail down to my breasts, and he licks his lips. “I would’ve surely relieved her, but it takes a bit more time for me to finish.” Dragging his fingers down my throat and over my collarbone, he studies my eyes, as if gauging the effect of his touch that I’m desperate to ignore. “Two dozen lashes was my punishment for interfering with their little experiment. And she suffered, anyway. I’m no saint. But I would’ve spared her that pain.” When his thumb brushes over my nipple through the fabric, a quiet whimper escapes me that seems to widen his smile. “Just as I’ll spare you yours now.”
“No, don’t do this, Ca--” I abruptly cut myself off to keep from inciting him any more than he is.
“Say my name. I want to hear you say it.”
Shaking my head, I turn away from him, as he snakes his hand down the edge of my body, toward my hips. The ache in my belly turns to something else. Something that makes me want to shrink against the wall and fade away. A surge of wetness rubs against my thighs as I struggle to keep his hands from where I ache the most, exacerbating the shame beating through me. When his fingers slither over the soaked cotton, my back goes as stiff as the wall behind me.
“Oh, look what I found, sweet girl.” He runs his fingers over my panties, tunneling between the lips of my sex, and I shudder. Not from fear or disgust, but something else. Something I wouldn’t dare admit aloud. “I can make you feel better, Calithea. I can take the pain away, and make you feel downright fucking good.” The sound of my name as it rolls off his tongue is wrong. It’s wrong, and it’s right, and I’m too dizzy with desire to decipher between the two.
“No.” The word tumbles from my lips on autopilot, and I’m grateful, because my brain is too caught up in the sensation. “Listen to me,” I whisper, so as not to be heard on the cameras. “They want you to do this. The first Alpha to impregnate me gets sent to the tunnels below.”
He scoffs, snaking his hand down inside my panties, where his fingers skate over my sensitive and swollen flesh. As I arch into him, writhing at his touch, giving him precisely what he wants, his l
ips stretch with a wicked smile. “What tunnels.”
“Where they store the cure. It’s guarded by primitive Ragers. More violent than the mutations.”
Eyes on me, he tips his head and glances back to where I presume the cameras are hidden in the room.
“Getting me pregnant would give you purpose. It’s what they want. And he chose you first, in case it fails.” I only suspect that’s the case, but the twitch of his eye tells me I might be right.
His eyes stare off in silent contemplation, as if he’s putting the pieces of a messed up puzzle together inside his head. The shift in his jaw accompanies the flare of his nostrils, and he slides his hand out from my pants, shoving his fingers into his mouth. For one brief second, a flash of ecstasy dances across his face, lightening the darkness from before. “Mmmm. Pity, really. I get the feeling fucking you would’ve been incredible.”
Breath seeps out of me on a sigh of relief, and when he turns away from me, I can move easy again.
“Guard!” he calls out, shoulders slumped in disappointment, as he keeps his eyes on me. “Get this bitch out of my cell. Now!”
Seconds tick, before the door clicks open. Medusa doesn’t even bother to look at me as I pass her. Across the hall, I notice the dents in Cadmus’s door. At least three more since I first entered the cell. I’m guessing that’s where they put Valdys.
I don’t know what’s better. To go to him and rope him into this sick game, or to sacrifice myself, end up strapped to a bed, like Neela.
“I can open the door, if you’d like to see him.” There’s a small bit of hesitation in Medusa’s voice, as though she’s resigned herself to the consequences of doing such a thing.