The Gender War

by Bella Forrest

He didn’t understand how vital this was. “Then go to the garage without me. If Violet and I can’t get out, you and Ms. Dale have to get to the docks and warn Alejandro to get out of here. I have to save the people I can.”

  I didn’t tell him that Tim, Jay, and the eggs were on the boat too. If he made it that far with us, he would earn the right to know.

  We crept down the corridor, and Owen talked while I focused on his instructions on how to find Violet, hoping we wouldn’t be too late.

  2

  Violet

  “Isn’t this a bit cliché?” I asked, struggling against the restraints that strapped me to the table they had placed me on. It was like a hospital bed, covered in crinkly paper, but hard, and tilted at a steep upward angle about ten degrees short of ninety. My hands and feet already felt sore within the leather cuffs.

  Elena, the queen of Matrus, ignored me, as did Desmond Bertrand. They spoke to each other in furtive whispers, as if I didn’t exist. To my utter shock, I hadn’t been thrown back in my cell after my attack on Elena, Tabitha, and Desmond. The queen and Desmond had come in not too long after the guards had affixed me to this contraption, dismissing their attendants now that the crazy woman was safely restrained.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so it didn’t matter. To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention. My body ached from the guards’ rough treatment and my mind buzzed with manic adrenaline, so I stared at Elena’s nose, watching how rapidly it was beginning to swell and turn purple. Considering I had been the one to give her that bruise, I was quite proud. It was definitely broken.

  Hopefully it would heal crookedly and she would be doomed to snore for the rest of her life. For that matter, I hoped that life would be short and brutal.

  Although, given my grim surroundings, I was drawing a blank on how to ensure a much longer lifespan for myself.

  “Seriously, if Viggo has to rescue me again because of this, I’m going to be really mad,” I chimed in at a lull in their conversation.

  Once again they ignored me, and I sighed. Maybe my little outburst in Elena’s office had truly meant I was going off the deep end. I certainly hadn’t expected that kind of defiance to spew from my own mouth. Then again, I hadn’t thought that only one person would be responsible for all my misery in the last few months. Or that I would be meeting that one person after trying to save her life. Or that she would be the queen of Matrus.

  I felt entitled to that anger, and I had no regrets. Well, maybe one. But that was only because I loved him. I didn’t want to see him die because I had assaulted the queen, her sister, and Desmond in one fell swoop.

  Hell. If I survived this, I was going to tell that story to everyone I knew. It was too good not to tell.

  Still, my anger wasn’t helping me here, and neither was trying to find the humor in the situation. I had gotten this far on a blithe refusal to be afraid—but my knees hadn’t gotten the message that we were supposed to be projecting confidence. A part of me knew that something bad was in store for me—I just didn’t know what yet.

  Which meant I needed to implement a little Viggo-ness. If I could get them to spill their secrets to me, maybe I could learn what they had in store for both of us. I sent a silent prayer to anyone who was listening that he was all right. If they harmed a hair on his head, I was going to do horrible things to them. Things that would redefine the Violent Violet taunts I had received when I was younger.

  “Could you at least tell me if Viggo is okay?” I asked, hating the pleading tone in my voice.

  This time Elena stopped and turned to me, a look of disdain in her eyes. I resisted laughing—she looked like a pretentious clown with her nose like that. “If I were you, I would be much more worried about your own fate, Ms. Bates,” she said, drawing closer to me.

  I waited until she was close enough, and then lunged at her with my body, snapping my teeth at her. It was a childish ploy—I couldn’t move more than that—but I was gratified to see her take an involuntary step back. “Made you flinch,” I taunted. I watched the anger roll across her face like storm clouds gathering over a mountain.

  “Should I just kill her for you, My Queen?” Desmond asked, approaching us.

  I stared at the woman who had betrayed my trust—and the trust of the people she had recruited—and felt an intense stab of hatred. I had almost come to respect her. Then I had found out she was using us—not just Viggo and me, but all of the Liberators—to help her get to the genetically modified boys Mr. Jenks had been using in his experiments to create an advanced human. She had even sacrificed one of her own sons to the procedure, then used the false tragedy of his ‘selection’ as the foundation to create a rebel group of similar victims.

  Lies upon lies with a topping of despicable lies. I scowled at Desmond, unable to keep the displeasure from my face, but the older woman just smirked at me. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” I spat, taking pleasure from interjecting before the queen could say anything. “You can’t break me.”

  Desmond looked at me with something almost like pity glistening in her eyes. “Oh, my dear, sweet Violet,” she crooned, and I resisted the urge to gag. “Everyone breaks.”

  I sneered, but inside I was beginning to feel fear again.

  My suspicions were confirmed when there was a knock at the door and Tabitha entered the room.

  Elena and Tabitha were about as opposite as siblings could be. Where Elena was tall and elegant, Tabitha was solidly built, her bulging muscles rivaling a man’s. Her breasts had all but disappeared, and her neck was so thick that it was hard to discern where her shoulders stopped and her chin began.

  She was wearing a blood red outfit and carrying a black case with her. Elena greeted her warmly, but it seemed Tabitha only had eyes for me. Eyes that were wild with barely suppressed rage and open glee.

  That was not a good sign. I managed to maintain my calm façade, but my mind was desperately looking for a way out.

  “Try to keep her alive, Tabitha,” Elena ordered as she stepped through the door Desmond held open for her. “We won’t be able to have an execution tomorrow if she’s already a corpse.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Tabitha grated as she put her bag down just out of my range of vision—maybe on a desk—and began removing items from it. I watched the door close, and only barely overheard Desmond mentioning something about troop placement before it banged shut, sealing me in with the madwoman.

  Tabitha continued to remove items from her bag, and I could hear the click of mysterious objects being slowly laid out on the table. Each click started to get to me, and I felt myself flinching as each item was planted down.

  “You know, Violet,” Tabitha said, in a voice that would’ve been better suited for a dinner party than a torture room, “I normally like to take my time with these sorts of things. There’s a certain need for leisure to really… appreciate the moment.” She turned, giving me a maudlin smile. “I’m really sorry we’re going to have to rush this.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stared her down, until I noticed the bruise on her face. “Was it easy to wash my boot print off your face?” I asked, managing to make my tone just as conversational as hers. “You really should get it looked at—I was in The Green, after all. Who knows what I tracked back from there?”

  Tabitha’s eyes reflected nothing for a long moment, but I could see her hand tremble. “You’re trying to make me angry,” she said, and I gave a little shrug.

  “Of course not. That would be a terrible idea. After all, you’re really strong, right? If you got angry, you might kill me, and since I’m being relegated to the role of damsel in distress here, that would be very bad for the plotline.”

  “This isn’t a story, Violet,” Tabitha chided, turning back to the table. I watched her hold items up for consideration, showing me her collection of torture toys one by one. The variety of knives I had expected—it seemed standard torture fare to me. The hammer wasn’t surprising either, although I hoped
she wouldn’t use that first. The pliers made me want to curl my fingers up and hide my nails. And from there it just got progressively darker. Some of the devices I had no idea how to identify.

  “If it were,” I finally said, finding my voice, “how would you come out in it? Do you think you’d survive?”

  She turned back to me, her mouth opened to respond, and then paused, her lips curling up like a satisfied cat’s. I saw her reach out and choose a weapon. It made a long, metallic sound as she dragged it off the table and swaggered over, eyeing me up and down, her face contemplative. “We really don’t have time to talk,” she said with a smile.

  I resisted the urge to try to lunge at her. With Elena it had been childish, but mostly safe. Tabitha was holding something behind her back, something I didn’t even want to imagine, let alone become more intimately acquainted with.

  “Really?” I asked, watching as she stretched out her arm to my right hand, slowly pushing my fingers open. Even I could hear the tremor in my voice. I considered clenching my fist, but I knew that would be even worse. Tabitha was even stronger than she looked, thanks to the genetic modification Mr. Jenks had given her. It wouldn’t take much for her to snap my fingers like twigs. “I sometimes think the world could use more conversations. For example, if we took the time to talk instead of make war… what a lovely, lovely place it would be.”

  Tabitha said nothing in response. She only positioned my hand just so, and then, before I could react, slammed a knife into my flesh, right between the thumb and the rest of my palm.

  I screamed as pain erupted from the spot, my body jerking, trying to break free of the restraints and withdraw from the agony emanating from my hand. It took me a moment to ride out the pain—it was far more intense than anything I had felt in my life, even in all my days of brawling and my adventures in The Green. It felt like my hand had been ripped in half, and I was afraid to look at it, for fear that it had.

  I could feel blood, hot and wet, dripping down my arm, and I realized tears were streaking down my cheeks. Taking a shuddering breath, I slowly looked up to where the knife was now pinning my hand to the table, the silver point still buried in my throbbing palm.

  “Pull it out,” I begged.

  Tabitha gave me a pensive look, and then tapped on the knife, sending fresh hot waves of pain up my arm that manifested themselves in another scream from my throat.

  When I became aware of the room again, it felt intangible—like I was both there and in another place, completely wrapped in pain. Tabitha was watching me closely, her eyes calculating.

  She lifted her hand again, and I felt myself torn between begging her to stop and promising to kill her.

  It didn’t matter, because a knock sounded on the door and made both of us freeze. Tabitha frowned, and then crossed to the door, throwing it open. Desmond stood on the other side, an apologetic look on her face.

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” she said. “Elena needs you now. Something has come up.”

  Tabitha let out an irritated tsk, but then nodded, stepping through the door without looking back, as if she hadn’t just been in the middle of butterflying my hand. “Leave her like that,” she called out, as an afterthought, and Desmond threw me a pitying glance before closing the door.

  I rested my head against the wood of the table, trying not to move my shaking body for fear of causing myself more pain.

  “Viggo, if you get here and save me,” I whispered, “I will give you this save for free.”

  3

  Viggo

  I was going crazy trying to find Violet.

  I had followed Owen’s instructions, leaving the prison and going upstairs, toward the wings apparently devoted to the royal family. I’d emerged from what seemed to be the servants’ stairs into a small corridor off the main hallway. But this place was a maze—halls that bisected halls, stairs hidden behind doors—and the décor was always the same. Not to mention there were guards everywhere. I had nearly been caught twice, and had managed to save myself both times by darting behind one of the identical curtained alcoves that seemed to be everywhere. Still, the number of guards prowling these halls gave me a reason to hope—there wouldn’t be this many unless they were guarding someone important, and that meant the queen. Which also meant, I hoped, that Violet was in one of these rooms.

  I carefully pushed open a door and peered inside, trying not to feel disappointed when I found yet another servants’ closet, devoid of the dark-haired, gray-eyed girl who had come to mean so much to me in such a short period of time. I was slowly pulling the door closed when I heard footsteps approaching from one of the adjoining hallways.

  I retreated down the hall, ducking behind yet another velvet curtain concealing what someone might have thought was a charming cushioned seat under a high window. I sat and pulled my feet up onto the bench. I had to wonder about the functionality of the stupid things—they seemed only suitable for people who were sneaking around or looking for a good make-out spot. Either way, it seemed like an unnecessary and impractical design feature. Maybe there were such swarms of guards here that nobody expected an enemy to get so far into the palace.

  I was beginning to make out voices from within my cocoon of shadows, and I carefully pulled back the heavy brocade fabric, turning my ear toward the sound.

  A low, irate female voice snapped, “What the hell is going on? I was just getting started, and I—”

  “Mr. Croft has escaped and is clearly wandering around the palace,” came a clipped, authoritative voice, interrupting the first. “I’m sorry to pull you out, but I need you, my Head of Wardens, to arrange the search to get him back to his cell… What do you think people will say about my new minister if Patrians are allowed to go free in these halls? I’d hate to see my own sister lose her credibility so quickly after gaining the position.”

  I chanced leaning my head toward the curtains, just enough so I could peer out of the small gap. As I watched, a perfectly coifed, golden-haired woman strode past, her crown gleaming under the bright white lights overhead—Queen Elena. Another woman with similar facial features was with her, but looking at the two was like comparing oil and water; the second woman was big, thick, and all of it was muscle.

  It had to be a result of Mr. Jenks’ genetic modifications. We had learned that Queen Rina had allowed her own children to be the test subjects, but we didn’t have much information beyond that. Most of the information regarding them had been destroyed.

  The two paused just beyond my alcove, and I could see them turning toward each other.

  The muscular woman made a growling sound, crossing her arms. “I get it, I get it. I’ll look for him. Have you determined where the egg is?”

  Elena shook her head. “Not exactly, but Desmond is confident that the only way they could beat her operative to the temple is by going downriver. They’ve only ever used one captain—an elderly Patrian man. I suspect we will find the egg and the two missing boys with him.”

  The other woman scoffed, crossing her arms. “We should just kill them—it’s clear that Desmond will never be able to win their loyalty.”

  My throat dried out. They were going to get to the river before we did. Owen had better have found a way to contact Alejandro. I had to believe it.

  “It is foolish to underestimate Desmond’s ability to get people to do what she wants, Tabitha,” Elena chided. “Anyway, it’ll soon be over. Mr. Jenks’ team is on standby. When we recover the egg, you and I will be mothers of the next generation.”

  Tabitha groaned, and Elena gave her a sharp look. Tabitha looked back at her for a moment, and then shrugged. “What? I’m not looking forward to pregnancy—it seems disgusting.”

  “Would you rather not? I’m sure our lovely sister Carla would be more than happy to take your place.” Even from my position I could see Tabitha give Elena a thunderous look, and Elena responded with an imperious smirk. “There you have it,” she said sweetly. “Are the troops in place and ready to go?”

 
Tabitha nodded. “As soon as Desmond confirms the target is dead, we’ll be ready to go.”

  “Excellent. Now please, see to Mr. Croft. Ms. Bates seems confident he’ll rescue her, and I would very much like to disabuse her of that notion.” She touched her nose—it was swollen and purple, marring her elegant features.

  So Violet really had punched the queen. A smile grew on my lips. It was so much more satisfying to see that bruise than I’d anticipated. Only Violet could make someone that angry.

  Which, in turn, only made my concern grow. Violet had clearly harmed the queen, which might explain why they had brought her up here, rather than back to the cells—maybe she had been deemed too dangerous, so they had been forced to keep her contained elsewhere.

  At least, I hoped that was it.

  “And Tabitha, have someone get the security system working again—this is a most inopportune, very likely deliberate, time for it to go down. I’d not anticipated them having inside help, but I want to cover every possibility…”

  That meant the queen and her sister didn’t know Ms. Dale was out too—which could only be good for us. Although, I wouldn’t have minded a little distraction from being the prime target… I watched as the two women parted ways, and then held my breath, counting in my head until I reached sixty. I made a quick check to make sure the coast was clear, then moved down the hall, back in the direction the women had come from, silently checking doors.

  I had to duck into another alcove as someone else approached, and I was surprised to see Desmond breeze past. I waited until she was long gone, cursing at how much slower this was with the area under such heavy guard, and then stepped out into the hall, continuing to check the rooms as quietly as possible. They seemed countless, more sitting rooms, conference rooms, bathrooms, and laboratories than any person could ever hope to use. At least the excessive quantity of fancy, footed furniture gave me plenty of things to hide under.