The Clinic

by Cate Culpepper

  Brenna handed the photo back to Camryn, who returned it carefully to her pocket. They walked on. The rainwashed mountain air was sweet and still.

  “So what’s your little sister’s name?” Camryn asked.

  “Samantha. I call her Sam. She’s not so little, though. She’s going to have a baby.”

  “Yeah?” Camryn’s quick grin held genuine delight.

  “Yeah. I’m going to be an aunt.”

  Brenna allowed her shoulder to brush Cam’s arm once as they crested a low rise. They looked at the moonlight shining on the sparse grass at their feet brightly enough to illuminate a pair of shadows they both found familiar. Their shared silence was still silence, but it was easier.

  *

  Jess didn’t even see Kyla fall. Much as she would curse herself for it later, it wouldn’t have mattered if she had.

  Kyla’s feet shot out from under her so abruptly, she was sliding down the steep, muddy bank before she could even scream.

  Jess’s immediate whickering whistle snapped Camryn’s head up. “Bloody hell,” Camryn spat. “Brenna, go east!”

  And she was gone. All gangliness fled Cam’s body as she flew through the brush at a western angle, in a flexible, cat-like crouch.

  “Camryn,” Brenna yelled, and then ducked and looked around, furious with herself for the strident noise. “Camryn,” she whispered fiercely.

  When there was no reply, Brenna hesitated, then ducked into the brush and began her own angle east.

  Jess snugged the knot around her waist, yanked the rope to test its hold, and stepped back into open air.

  The first drop was only ten feet or so, and the ledge was well padded with mud, but Jess could imagine that, at best, it had knocked the breath from Kyla. Even braced for it and securely roped, her entire abused body jerked when her boots hit the ledge.

  The slope itself was so slick with mud, she would be flailing helplessly without the rope to anchor her. Kyla couldn’t have hoped to catch herself, or even slow her plummeting slide, for the first hundred yards.

  Jess bit back the urge to call out and descended as fast as the wet muck would allow. Her mind was white noise. This was Dyan’s blood-sister, Camryn’s adonai. Artemis, guide my hand.

  Jess caught herself halfway down, her scratched hands clenching around the rope. She crouched on her perch, panting, listening with all her strength. She recognized a voice.

  *

  Kyla came to rest on her back at the bottom of the muddy hill with her shirt and light jacket racked up almost to her neck and an absolutely miserable wedgie. She stared stupidly up at the blanket of stars above her, her heart pounding in queasy surges.

  Her trembling hands moved over her sides. She tried flexing each leg, without any killing pain. She was intact, she decided, just bruised and breathless. Jess would come for her, Kyla was sure of that. Then Camryn would bark her face off. She tried to lie still and let the rest of her wits catch up with her.

  The silhouette of a silver-haired woman was haloed against the full moon as she loomed over Kyla, who shrank back instinctively.

  “We haven’t met, Kyla.” The woman’s voice was cultured, friendly. “My name is Caster.”

  *

  “Jesstin?” Caster’s amplified voice clanged against the dark hills, jarring the night’s silence. “You’re aware that one of your little Amazonlettes has joined us, yes?”

  There was a pause. Jess waited. And her hands clenched again on the rope, because she knew what was probably happening to Kyla.

  Whatever form the pain took—an arm wrenched behind her back or her hair twisted around a fist—Kyla used its energy to broadcast her message with maximum venom. “Fuck this banshee, Jess! Get out of here!”

  Jess closed her eyes as a thump sounded. Her knees bent as she felt the blow in her own solar plexus. Jess straightened and made herself focus. She reviewed her options, and then she moved.

  *

  Brenna crouched behind a bank of boulders, still shivering with the adrenaline rush, trying to spot Jess somewhere on the hillside in front of her. She couldn’t see Kyla among the dense trees at the bottom of the hill, and she couldn’t see Cam, who should be coming around the slope across from—

  Brenna felt the cool hand slide around her face and clamp over her mouth, and she threw herself backwards, sirens going off in her skull.

  Someone caught her thrashing body easily and held her still.

  “I don’t know you.” The musical voice was calm. The hand lifted slightly.

  “I’m Brenna,” Brenna gasped.

  The woman released her. Brenna spun and found herself swimming in a pair of extraordinary gray eyes.

  “Hello, Brenna. My name is Shann.”

  *

  “Of course, I’m no military strategist,” Caster told Kyla, “but I assume your compatriots have scattered hither and yon by now, in the surrounding hills?”

  “They’re digging up our stockpile of machine guns,” Kyla panted. She was still breathless from the blow to her stomach, and Dugan and Stuart had to struggle to get her arms and wrists pinned to the grass at Caster’s sturdily booted feet.

  Kyla assumed the other two orderlies standing watch were Clinic staff. The greasy jerk tying her ankles looked almost spastic with nervousness, but the big guy’s greedy gaze on her body chilled her.

  “A pity I don’t have the manpower for a proper night search in rugged terrain.” Caster watched Kyla fight the ropes for a moment. “But perhaps that’s fortunate for you, dear, in more ways than one. You’ll have only four men to satisfy while we wait for your sisters to join us.”

  “Five of you, four of us.” Kyla tried to snarl, but sweet Gaia, she was scared. “Rifles or not, your odds suck, lady.”

  “On the contrary, little Amazon, I would say luck has definitely sided with the interests of science tonight.” Caster studied her prisoner. In this moonlight, the girl could be clearly seen from the watching hills. “I’m afraid your matriarchal deities have failed you rather miserably, Kyla. Perhaps you should learn to question goddesses whose benevolence delivers you virtually into the lap of your enemies.”

  “I’d hold off on gloating, if I were you,” Kyla snapped, loathing for this Clinic scientist overcoming her fear. “Jess is not just going to come strolling in here—”

  “Of course she is, dear, and we both know it.” Caster smiled. “I knew once I had one of you, recapturing the others would be fairly straightforward. You’re bait, little Kyla. You’ll help me reel the others in. I finally have a use for this adanin-fixation you Amazons share.” She reached for the girl’s soft hair again and narrowly missed having her fingers bitten off.

  “In some ways you’re not unlike that coarse medic you’ve befriended, girl. She, too, snapped at the hand that fed her. She’s no Amazon, of course.” Caster’s voice grew flinty. “Brenna is a traitorous little sheep led about by her vapid young vulva.”

  Jesstin, Kyla thought. Please, adanin, run.

  *

  Jess knew two things as the rope ran out and she sidestepped freestyle down the slope. She knew Caster would hurt Kyla if she didn’t surrender as ordered. And she knew that together, she and Kyla had to buy Cam and Brenna time to maneuver.

  Jess straightened at the base of the hill and caught her breath. She held her arms slightly away from her sides as the two men on watch spotted her and yelled, snapping their rifles up to cover her.

  Kyla moaned and turned her head in the grass when she saw Jess emerge from the trees.

  Jess’s eyes went flat when she saw Kyla’s body, helplessly spread beneath the eyes of several men. She stopped at the entrance to the enclosure.

  Then Caster nodded at Stuart, and the carefully scripted capture began.

  It didn’t go at all as Caster intended. Stuart was supposed to start stripping the girl on the ground, for one thing. Ripping her shirt open would surely cause Jesstin to make a rash move, but the cretin chose that crucial moment to go clumsy. He knelt and fumbled
with Kyla’s shirt, his hands shaking.

  Caster had wanted Dugan to do the stripping, but the burly guard had refused in favor of subduing Jesstin. Some macho resentment of her Amazonian prowess, apparently. He and the two other orderlies waited until Jess broke and dived for Kyla, which was the second thing that went wrong. They should have moved much sooner.

  Jess broke Stuart’s neck with her heel as she flew over Kyla’s pinned body, then flipped once in a tight arc. She landed well but staggered, the ache in her lower back sudden and immense. The injury she’d received days ago in the Clinic’s arena awoke with a snarling burst of pain.

  Kyla yelled, pistoning her knees as much as the ropes would allow, trying to shift Stuart’s slumping bulk off of her as Dugan and the others finally took Jess down.

  Caster picked up the megaphone again and crouched beside Kyla. She wrapped her hand around the girl’s throat and held her as the men beat Jess. After a minute or so, Caster raised the megaphone. “Camryn, dear? Are you watching?”

  *

  Brenna was never clear how they found Camryn. She concentrated on following Shann’s cloaked figure, dodging slapping branches as they twisted through trees and skirting exposed areas of rock as they moved steadily west. When Caster’s call reached them, Brenna froze in place, her mind going blank with shock.

  “You know that voice?” Shann was short of breath, but her words were low and calm.

  Brenna managed to nod. “It’s Caster. She’s a scientist at the Clinic. She heads the Tristaine study.”

  “All right, tell me more later.” Shann’s warm hand clasped Brenna’s arm. She noticed the intertwining lines of color adorning the older woman’s wrist as she adjusted the heavy pack she carried. Then Shann looked up sharply, and at the same moment, Brenna heard the snapping of brush ahead of them.

  Camryn was running blind, covering ground in great ragged leaps. She raced through the trees to their left, and even Shann’s low, urgent whistle didn’t slow her down.

  “Brenna, stop her!”

  Brenna was running before Shann’s words were out, and unlike her quarry, she wasn’t weakened by Prison field work and poor rations. She caught Camryn after a rough sprint and snatched the back of her shirt, but when she twisted free, Brenna simply threw herself at her.

  Camryn’s flailing elbow punched into Brenna’s stomach, and breath gushed out of her lungs as they rolled on the marshy ground. Somehow she managed to hold on to the thrashing girl.

  When Shann reached them, she laid a hand on Camryn’s back. “Be still, little sister.”

  Brenna felt the wave of recognition move through Cam’s body, and she let go of her in stages, both of them gasping for breath.

  “Shann.” Cam got to her knees and grabbed Shann’s hands. “Lady, it’s a City patrol. They have Jesstin and Kyla.”

  “I feared as much.” Shann knelt, too, and looked up into Cam’s face. “Are you all right, Camryn?”

  “Yeah, and so is Ky, but Jesstin’s taken some bad hits. Shann, we have to move!”

  “Not yet, adanin. We can’t help them by racing into an open trap.”

  To Brenna’s astonishment, Camryn made no attempt to refute her leader. She stared at Shann mutely and then sat slowly back on her heels, still pulling for breath.

  Shann motioned Brenna closer, and their small circle closed, shutting out the suddenly menacing darkness.

  Camryn peered over Shann’s shoulder. “Where are the others, lady?”

  “I’ve come alone.”

  “What?”

  “I have much to tell you, and more to ask. Let’s find a base to monitor Caster’s camp and then hold council.” Shann’s tone gentled. “Take a moment and rest with me, little sister. I haven’t seen your face in far too long.”

  Some of the fierceness drained out of Camryn’s body, and she sighed. She surprised Brenna a second time by leaning into Shann and resting her head in her lap, then wrapping her wiry arms around her waist. Shann stroked her back and kept a careful watch on the silent hill.

  For a moment, Brenna had an irrational desire to take Cam’s place. Jess’s absence was an aching void in her heart, and her hands were cold with fear.

  They were in position an hour later and ready by sunrise.

  *

  Dawn.

  Jess hadn’t been sure she’d live to see it, and she wasn’t sure she appreciated having done so. She stood, after a fashion, close to Kyla, her wrists tied tightly between two trees. Even when her knees buckled, as they did frequently, the pull on her arms kept her stiffly erect.

  The savage beating had continued until Jess passed out. Her kidneys were still intact, she thought, feeling the first warm rays of the sun touch her battered face. No bones were broken, but she was probably a sight to frighten young children. When they’d strung her up, Kyla had wept just seeing her face by firelight.

  “Jesstin?”

  Jess heard the anxiety and exhaustion in her younger sister’s voice, and she forced her eyes open again. She and Kyla had talked in the last hours, briefly and quietly, whenever Jess was conscious.

  “How are you doing?” Worry was obviously winning over weariness.

  “I’m upright,” Jess croaked.

  “Jess.” Kyla was silent for a moment. “She’d get rid of Brenna, wouldn’t she?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking.” Still lying staked to the dew-soaked grass, Kyla was shivering, and not entirely from cold. “I know this fancy doctor bitch wants the three of us back. But she wouldn’t have any use for Brenna. Right? If Brenna’s captured too, would she—?”

  “Probably.”

  The “p” sound hurt her split lip. Jess didn’t think Caster would have much use for her, either, if she had Camryn. All the Clinic needed was a new matched pair to resume the study with the current protocol, but Kyla didn’t need to know that yet.

  “What would we do, you and me?” Kyla’s voice was soft. “If it were Cam and Brenna here, and us out there? I’ve been trying to imagine what Dyan would say. What would she tell us to—”

  “Not this,” Jess hissed, and she straightened abruptly.

  Kyla turned her head on the grass to see Brenna, in full view, stepping out of the trees and into the camp.

  *

  Given a choice between vomiting and her knees giving out, Brenna thought she would rather not throw up. She hoped neither would happen, and she’d just keep making her way over the uneven grass toward Jess and Kyla until someone spotted her.

  She caught Jess’s eye and quickly learned that was a mistake, so she concentrated on Kyla instead. An unexpected burst of anger swept Brenna when she saw Kyla’s convulsive shivering. She spotted a folded blanket abandoned on the grass nearby and made a side trip to pick it up.

  She took the opportunity to survey the rest of Caster’s camp behind the two captives. Three pup tents, stacks of supplies. Nothing human stirred. Then she saw an orderly, a bearded face she vaguely remembered from the Clinic, rifle folded in his arms, supposedly keeping watch, but he wasn’t looking toward them.

  Brenna knelt beside Kyla in the wet grass.

  “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Kyla growled.

  Brenna put a calming hand on the girl’s side. She could feel Jess’s glare burning a hole in the top of her head. “Drawing attention. If the damn guard ever wakes up.”

  She shook the army blanket out and spread it over Kyla. “Did they hurt you, Ky?”

  Kyla’s eyes closed as Brenna’s hands smoothed the soft warmth around her. “You better have a bomb taped to your chest.”

  “Answer me, Kyla. Are you injured?”

  “I’m fine. Just shook. You mother me worse than Shann. You better look at Jess.” Kyla shivered again. “You and Cam do have some kind of plan, right?”

  Brenna glanced up at Jess. “As a matter of fact, Shann’s here. She had to come alone, but she’s—”

  “About bloody time,” Jess snapped above them. She kept her vo
ice low and craned her neck painfully to see the arena around them.

  “You knew she was coming?” Kyla’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do you think you might have mentioned that, Jesstin, some time in the last two days?”

  “No, I didn’t know Shann was coming, but it makes sense,” Jess replied. “It’s what Dyan would do.”

  Still no movement anywhere in the camp. The orderly on watch actually seemed to be dozing. The corner of Jess’s mouth lifted mirthlessly. Caster’s goons wouldn’t last ten seconds against Amazons if it weren’t for the rifles.

  Brenna made herself stand and face Jess. She looked fully into her bruised face. “Well, I knew you’d look something like this,” she said, and then burst into tears, which startled them both.

  “Get a grip, Bren,” Jess said quietly.

  “I am.” Brenna shook her head once. “It’s just nerves. I told you that.” She rested her hands on Jess’s sides, blinking until she could see again.

  “Turn so I block the guard’s view,” Jess whispered, but Brenna shook her head.

  “No, he’s supposed to see me,” Brenna said, wincing at the tightness of the rope cutting into Jess’s wrists. “Shann wants a general shift of attention toward this side of the camp, around us.”

  “How are you with knots?”

  “Slow down.” Brenna opened Jess’s black shirt, which was hanging in dusty tatters. “This is as close as I’ll ever come to having you tied up and at my mercy again, Jesstin, so I’m going to take advantage of it while I can.”

  “Brenna—”

  “There’s nothing we can do until Shann and Camryn move, Jess. Stop snarling at me and let me look at you.”

  “Yep, she’s Shann all over again,” Kyla observed from the grass.

  Jess sighed as Brenna curled her hands around her back. Great, she thought. Brenna would probably probe areas that were so tender Jess might yell out loud, in front of Kyla.