The Gender War

by Bella Forrest

  The Gender Game 4: The Gender War

  Bella Forrest

  Nightlight Press

  Contents

  Map

  1. Viggo

  2. Violet

  3. Viggo

  4. Violet

  5. Viggo

  6. Violet

  7. Viggo

  8. Violet

  9. Viggo

  10. Violet

  11. Viggo

  12. Violet

  13. Violet

  14. Viggo

  15. Violet

  16. Viggo

  17. Violet

  18. Viggo

  19. Violet

  20. Viggo

  21. Violet

  22. Viggo

  23. Violet

  24. Viggo

  25. Violet

  26. Viggo

  27. Violet

  28. Violet

  29. Viggo

  30. Violet

  31. Violet

  32. Viggo

  33. Violet

  34. Violet

  35. Violet

  36. Viggo

  37. Violet

  38. Viggo

  Also by Bella Forrest

  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.

  Map

  1

  Viggo

  I prowled my cell like a caged animal. The blank white walls and iron bars stared back as I paced blindly, seething with rage. Nothing could excuse my disgusting lack of foresight. My head still throbbed where the Matrian warden had knocked me out with the butt of her rifle as I’d resisted arrest—I hadn’t foreseen even as simple an act of brutality as that. Looking back, it was obvious the Matrians would have been suspicious of Violet and me. I had seriously misjudged the situation. And now I, and the woman I loved more than anything, were going to pay the price for it.

  Unless I could find a way to get out.

  I had to put aside the rage that was bringing my blood to a fine boil just under my skin, and think. Sitting down on the cell’s narrow bench—its only comfort—I tried to forget about all the events that had brought me here. I needed that baggage out of the way so I could work on a way to escape.

  When I’d been a warden of Patrus, clearing my head had been easy, even normal for the days I’d spent ignoring my feelings, scraping by in the dull everyday routine. But since Violet, I’d been getting used to having a direction and a purpose in my life again… and a choice. So I was having a hard time letting all of this go.

  At first, I’d thought our arrest was due to the natural confusion and panic over the realization of a possible bombing. However, we had defused the bomb, saving the queen’s life. There had been witnesses, both on the balcony and down below, who could testify that I had wrestled the bag away from the determined terrorist, and that Violet had disarmed it.

  So the violence and doubt we had been met with was almost unbelievable, certainly unjust.

  My hands clenched of their own volition—a martial arts reflex—and I stared down into my lap, where silver links of handcuffs were digging into the flesh of my hands. This was my first obstacle, and it wasn’t impossible. I had learned all sorts of creative and fun ways to get out of handcuffs as a warden, and this type was the easiest to circumvent—all I needed was something slim, preferably metallic, and I’d be out of them in moments.

  Easier said than done, when the room was nothing but a set of bars and three stone walls.

  And a bench, I reminded myself, looking down at it.

  Spreading my legs a little wider, I bent at the waist to peer at the shadowed area under the bench, studying how it had been installed. As I had hoped, the bench wasn’t built into the wall, the screws covered up by plaster and stone—it was held up by flimsy metal supports that angled up and bolted to the wall and the underside of the bench. Inside it, the screws were visible, the little round heads set into their grooves.

  I smiled in spite of everything. A screw would be a bit big, but I just needed the tip of it. Getting one out of the wall, however, was another story.

  I looked down at my clothes and fumbled for my belt, remembering that Violet had told me she’d used a dog collar as a makeshift screwdriver. My girl was nothing if not inventive.

  Thinking of Violet sent a thread of fear through me. I hadn’t seen her since they’d separated us hours ago… and I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious before waking up and being dragged by four women through the corridors of the queen’s prison to this cell. If it weren’t for the fact that we had been treated so violently, I would have believed this was just standard procedure. I knew Violet was still wanted, wrongly charged for the murder of Queen Rina, but I would have assumed our actions would at least buy us some consideration.

  Unless, of course, we were being played. Which I was strongly beginning to suspect. But in what way? I considered the possibility that Queen Elena bore Violet some grudge regarding her mother. Yet, if she were a reasonable human, she would have heard Violet out, especially seeing as the both of us had saved her life—and the lives of countless others.

  Which made me return to the feeling that something was going seriously wrong. I’d been here too long without a chance to make a statement or plead my case, and when the female wardens looked at me, I didn’t see any trace of sympathy or mercy in their eyes. I saw anger. Unbridled and raw. They could be doing anything to Violet.

  Unless they had decided she was more trouble than she was worth and just executed her by injection, as was standard protocol in Matrus.

  My heart lurched at the thought, like a top suddenly thrown off balance and sent skittering across the floor. I wouldn’t accept that possibility. Not now, not ever. Violet and I had been through too much for me to believe that there was no chance I could save her.

  I had to believe that they wanted her alive, at least for now. That I still had time to get her out of this. And with whatever was going on, it would be better to act first and beg forgiveness later.

  Sliding the belt through the loop of my pants, using my wrists more than my hands, I lay on my side next to the bench and began poking the buckle’s metal prong into the little divots on the screws, trying to get them to catch and hold. After a minute of cursing and slipping, I realized that I was going to have to use the prong as a pick instead. It wouldn’t be as easy as using the screws, but it would have to do.

  Sitting back on the bench, I spent precious minutes trying to figure out how to hold the belt between my thighs and slide the prong into the hole near the base of one of the cuffs. Finally, with a few delicate manipulations, I heard the tiny mechanism click. I pushed that side open and went to work on the second. It took me a full twenty seconds to get this one off, which felt aggravatingly pathetic.

  Still, the handcuffs were off, which moved the escape plan to stage two: defeating the cell door. The lock on this was bigger, and I stared at my belt prong dubiously, convinced it wasn’t up for the task. Even in my anger, I’d been watching my captors’ patterns. A guard patrolled the corridor here like clockwork—every fifteen minutes one would walk by to check on me. I doubted I could pick the lock in fifteen minutes. Not from the inside, reaching around the bars to the front of the door, with such a complicated lock and such a flimsy piece of metal.

  And yet... it gave me an idea. I knew I only had a short time before the guard showed up again. I waited. I breathed, brushing the crust of blood from where I’d been kicked off my aching forehead, using each minute to nail down a lid on
the rage that was still boiling in my stomach.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later, I heard the guard’s repetitive footsteps echoing down the hall, growing louder as she approached. Quickly, I reached out around the cell bars and slid the thin piece of metal into the lock.

  As the guard rounded the corner, I froze, as if I had been so absorbed in the task that I hadn’t heard her approach. She locked eyes with me, her blue ones narrowing in irritation. I slowly stood up and backed away, the belt in one hand.

  If the guard noticed I wasn’t cuffed anymore, she seemed to be putting more thought to the problem at hand. “Give it to me,” she ordered.

  I stared at her, a challenge in my eyes. I was banking on a lot of things going right, but I was desperate. If she were experienced, she’d pull the gun, especially since I was holding a prospective weapon in my hand.

  She reached for her gun, and I cursed internally. “Bring it to me,” she said as her gun slid out of her holster.

  I kept my mouth closed and slowly walked to the bars. She hadn’t stepped back, save to draw on me.

  “Throw it through the bars,” she commanded, her eyes reflecting her burgeoning desire to shoot me.

  “My pants will fall down,” I whined, and the guard blew out an irritated stream of air through her nose. She took a step forward and thrust her free hand through the bars.

  “Give it to me now,” she started to say, and by the tone of her voice, I knew there was an ‘or else’ attached to it.

  It didn’t matter, because I never gave her the chance to finish. My hands snapped out and I grabbed her arm, giving it a hard yank. The breath in her chest huffed out, and her gun clattered to the floor when her head slammed into the bars. Her body followed, and her feet flew out from under her as I yanked her shoulder down to the ground like we were wrestling.

  Adrenaline rushing in my veins, I whipped my hand through the bars, grabbed her hair, and banged her head against the metal as hard as I could. Once. Twice. Thankfully, that was all it took. Her body thrashed, and her gun hand tried to reach me, but eventually she slumped to the floor.

  It took me a harrowing few moments of yanking and tugging through the bars before I managed to reach the set of keys on her belt. Turning the key in the door felt like it took years.

  The lock clicked, and I stepped out into the corridor, taking a moment to drag the guard’s stirring form into the cell and lock it behind me. I’d searched her for a handheld, but no luck. With her gun in one hand and my belt in the other, I moved toward the area she had come from. I remembered a small office that they had brought me through at the end of the hall. There had only been two guards when I came in, and now one of them was taking an involuntary nap in my cell.

  I was hoping the lack of any alarms meant the other guard was not paying close attention to the video cameras I had seen here and there as they brought me through the prison area. But I didn’t want to rely on just luck. I paused just outside the door and tested the handle as quietly as possible. It was locked, but I still had the guard’s key set.

  Only four keys. Thankfully. It took less than a minute to figure out which one I needed. Still, as I inserted the third key into the lock and turned it, I was fortified by the continued quiet. I slowly pushed open the door and stepped through.

  All my caution had been wasted. The guard was fast asleep at her desk. I felt a little pang of pity for her as I pulled her head back and wrapped her in a chokehold, ensuring through her struggles that her nap would last a little longer.

  A bank of screens lined the wall of the office, the rows of grainy video feeds showing… I paused as I used my belt to cinch the unconscious guard’s hands tightly behind her back. Static pulsed and flickered on all the screens. Could that be normal?

  I had no way of knowing. Cautiously, I punched a few common buttons on the keyboard in front of the computer. Nothing happened. Disappointment flared in me—a part of me had been hoping that I’d be able to use these cameras to find Violet’s cell… if that’s where she was.

  There was no time to be disappointed. I went out into the prison again, determined to make a thorough search if I had to.

  The halls of the prison were eerily quiet and the cells mostly empty. I assumed a stance of calm indifference, padding down the corridors before the other prisoners as though I belonged there. I couldn’t stop to wonder about their stories.

  I was tense as a coiled spring, prepared to face reinforcements for the two unconscious guards, so when I heard footsteps around the corner and Owen appeared, I barely avoided shooting him.

  Still, I kept my gun trained on him as he slowly held his hands up. The man was younger than me by a few years, and he had a kind face, with blue eyes and blond hair. I didn’t know him well, but considering I’d just wrestled a bomb meant to kill the queen away from him, I wasn’t letting my guard down.

  “Viggo!” he began. “I was just on my way to get you—”

  I cut him off. “Owen,” I said, my tone tight, “what are you doing here? Are you here to finish your mission?”

  “No,” he said softly, his gaze turning downward. “I…uh… Well…”

  I kept the gun leveled, my anger mounting. I knew this man had just been a pawn, and wasn’t truly my enemy, but I couldn’t trust any of the Liberators anymore. “Why aren’t you in prison? You just tried to kill the Matrian queen with a bomb. What are you doing here if not working for Desmond?”

  “Desmond?” Owen’s voice cracked, and the carefully neutral face I’d always seen him wear slipped for just a moment. “Desmond used me for her false ideals and threw me away,” he snarled.

  I took one step forward, my head reeling. There was something here I was missing… something very serious. “False ideals? What are you talking about, Owen? I need to find Violet, and I don’t have much time. If you’re not going to help me, know that I will take you down.”

  “I’m here to help, Viggo! I know the general area of where they took her. We have a plan.”

  I stared at him, unconvinced. “We?”

  He kept his hands in the air. “Ms. Dale sent me! She knows this whole place by heart.”

  Ms. Dale? How had she gotten mixed up in this whole equation? I was tired of asking uninformed questions and getting haphazard answers. The feelings on Owen’s face when he’d mentioned Desmond… a look of rage and sorrow… it had looked sincere. I made a decision.

  “Owen,” I growled, “you’ve got thirty seconds to explain this whole thing from the beginning. Don’t make me regret not shooting you on sight.”

  The young man breathed out, and his face calmed. “Okay. When you guys took the bomb, I managed to get away from the crowds and followed you back to the palace—it was the longest time I’ve ever used the suit successfully, and it hurt like hell.”

  I glanced down at the suit he was wearing—it was a Liberator design, the one that worked like active camouflage via invisibility—and then back up at his face, keeping my expression impassive. “Fifteen seconds,” I said, my tone brusque.

  “Right. I made it all the way to the queen’s office. And Elena and Desmond were there… together. They were talking to Violet. Elena told her…” Owen hesitated, his eyes filling with pain. “She and Desmond have been working together the entire time.”

  I absorbed this. I could feel a puzzle piece clicking into place… and the whole puzzle was bigger than I’d even imagined. Too big to think about right now. Guards could be coming toward us at any time.

  “And Ms. Dale?”

  “She must have been faking unconsciousness. When the guards took Violet away, Elena, Desmond, and the other princess, Tabitha, went with them… They left only two guards with her. She took them down before they even knew what was happening.” There was a slight look of admiration on his face as he imparted this tidbit.

  That made one piece of information by which I was completely unsurprised. That wily old spy. I couldn’t be completely certain he was telling the truth—that Ms. Dale was out there on o
ur side was almost too good to be true—but it was my only lead.

  I lowered my gun and started down the corridor. We had to get moving before the guards returned. “Walk and talk,” I snapped. He kept pace with me immediately.

  “I knew that talking to her was my only chance if I wanted to escape... Now that I failed her bombing mission, Desmond will… probably have me killed.” Owen looked down for a moment, a private war showing on his mild face. “Ms. Dale went to take the security system down. She said to meet her in the garage and she’ll get us out of here. She sent me to find you and get Violet. She’s worried… she’s worried they’re going to do something very bad to Violet.”

  I shook aside the idea that all my fears were being confirmed. Act now. Feel later. I remembered the static screens in the guards’ office, and my belief in the young man rose a little. “How the heck do we find the garage—”

  “Ms. Dale said it’s the lowest room of the palace… All we have to do is keep going down.”

  I nodded as we kept walking, ducking into an empty room as we heard the clatter of feet coming down the corridor. When they’d safely passed by us, Owen exhaled, and said unexpectedly, “Violet—she punched Elena in the nose.”

  I felt a grim smile crack my lips. “Of course she did,” I said, my determination redoubling. “Tell me how to get to her,” I demanded.

  “I’m going to show you—”

  “Tell me where Violet is, and I will find her. Owen, if you’re on our side, I need you to try to radio Alejandro, the Patrian riverboat captain, and tell him to move the boat.” With a rudimentary escape plan forming, my mind was already leaping to my friend and the two boys on the boat—our only way of getting out of territory that, if Desmond and Elena were truly working together, was incredibly hostile.

  Owen blanched. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I lost most of my gear. Without one of Thomas’ secure handhelds, anybody might track that signal.”