“Sure we can. Cooper isn’t going anywhere.”
Nico didn’t consider his cavalier words until his breath was driven from his lungs as Darius slammed him against the wall of the old supermarket they were camping next to.
“Easy for you to say,” Darius snarled. “What’s happening to him while he’s in there?”
“Nothing!” Zach tried to wedge himself between them, though he might as well have been trying to move a boulder.
“It’s okay, Zach,” Nico murmured, meeting Darius’s eyes squarely. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blithe. I know what Littlewood is capable of, believe me.”
Darius jabbed a finger into Zach’s chest. “You talked him into going in there, with a guy that you”—the finger turned on Nico—“say is a twisted motherfucker who needs to be put down. If any of y’all can’t keep up, I will leave your ass in the desert, but I’m gettin’ my boy out.”
“Damn right we are.” Xolani planted her hand in the middle of Darius’s chest and pushed him away from Nico. “But we need these two assholes. So let’s eat something and bed down so we can be on the road when the sun comes up.”
Darius still looked like he wanted to fight, but he stepped away and turned his back on Nico and Zach. Nico swallowed his irritated words. If Littlewood ever got his hands on Zach, he doubted his reactions would be any better.
Darius sat next to Xolani in front of the fire, his head slunk down like he was trying to duck his own thoughts. “What’s happening to him, Rasa?” he murmured, and at first Nico wondered who he was addressing. But he turned his head to look at Xolani, and she answered.
“We can’t think about that.” She shoved a wrapped piece of jerky at him. “This was Rhys’s choice. When he gets out of there, whatever he’s been through, we’ve got to be sure we don’t take that away from him. If he’s strong enough to handle it, we’ve got to be strong enough to let him.”
Zach cleared his throat. “They think he’s infected with Alpha.” Darius and Xolani jerked around to look at him, and Zach stood a little straighter. “I falsified the reports I was sending in.”
“Why?” Xolani demanded.
“The guy who was attacking men in the Clean Zone before the overthrow—the one we believe was Littlewood—he couldn’t perform . . . sexually.” Zach gave them each an uncertain look. “He would get increasingly violent because that frustrated him. Some of his victims said their attacker was trying to use the violence to arouse himself, but it didn’t work. They were all raped with a foreign object.”
A memory clicked into place. “Jesus. Yes. That night I was with him . . . I was sure he was on something because there was no way a man his age should be able to keep going the way he did. Probably Climaxxis or Khumitrol.” Memories of what Littlewood had done to him that night, over and over, battered at his consciousness, trying to pummel their way inside. He forced them out like he had hundreds of times since it had happened. “I thought that also explained some of his aggression, since it’s a known side effect, especially if you get it on the streets. That’s what my rich clients used to do, to keep it out of the national medical records database.”
Xolani looked appalled. “If the violence was always sexual for him, and then he couldn’t do that anymore . . . God, it must have infuriated him when he ran out of pills. Of course he escalated.”
Zach smiled weakly. “Yes, but my point is, if he thinks Rhys is infected with Alpha, even though asymptomatic, he’s not going to be able to be very violent with him. Littlewood can’t rape him, and he can’t abuse him.”
Xolani didn’t look thrilled by that revelation. “Which begs the question of what he can do. If Rhys fits Littlewood’s victim profile, he’s going to find a way. Or he’s going to take it out on others until he can get his hands on Rhys somehow.”
Nico’s gut lurched so suddenly he thought he might puke. “Oh fuck.” He saw the realization strike the rest of them at almost the same instant, a wave of horror rippling across their faces. “That’s why he wants the Alpha strain. In his mind, arousal and the ability to inflict pain and damage are all joined. If the Alpha strain can give him the latter, it can give him the former, right?”
“You think he believes it will give him back his virility?” Zach’s skepticism was almost desperate. “It can’t do that. Right?”
“I doubt it,” Xolani said bleakly. “And if he’s as psychotic as you say, that’s just going to piss him off even more, if he gets his hands on Alpha and it doesn’t work. And he’ll be a hell of a lot more capable of dealing out carnage when it does.”
“But Rhys isn’t infected with Alpha.” Darius gave Zach a pointed look. “Right?”
“Right.” Zach drew his knees up to his chest, as though he were cold despite the heat of the evening. “I falsified that to make the bait irresistible.”
“Does Rhys know this?” Xolani asked.
Zach shook his head. “After a point he said he didn’t want to know any more about what Nico and I had planned. He wasn’t sure he could lie convincingly enough to pull it off.”
Darius made a snorting sound that might have been a laugh. “Guess that’s true. If you’re right, this fucker Littlewood might just be in for a surprise.”
As promised, a guard was waiting for Rhys outside his cell that evening to lead him to Littlewood’s quarters. He was accompanied by Dr. Thanh, who was coolly polite as she asked, “Did you produce the sample we requested, Mr. Cooper?”
Rhys’s face flamed. “Um, no, not yet. I, um, I couldn’t . . .” He looked down at the floor, unwilling to meet her eyes in case she saw the lie there. His embarrassment at talking about it was genuine enough, but he’d peeked inside that footlocker in his cell and slammed the lid shut, refusing to open it again.
Obviously someone had put some thought into how best to enable him to donate the sample they required. A few of the items in the trunk were familiar enough—he’d become well acquainted with plugs of every variety during his early months with the Jugs. Even now, when Darius was back from patrol and on base at Fort Vancouver, he liked to fuck Rhys several times during the night and plug him up in the morning. He’d make Rhys go through his day that way, carrying multiple loads of Darius’s spunk inside him.
But that was where his familiarity with the aids they had provided ended. That pump-like thing that sort of looked like a mouth? He wasn’t keen on messing with it, even if it hadn’t been modified with tubing to be some sort of collector. Another one looked like an altogether different orifice, one he had no actual familiarity with, given the sum of his sexual experience was with men. Rhys could guess at its purpose, but he didn’t want anything to do with it.
In the end, he hadn’t been able to make himself use any of them. Performance and willingness issues aside, it was probably better that he not give them anything they wanted too quickly or easily.
Dr. Thanh’s mouth pressed into a tense line. “As you mentioned, Mr. Cooper, time is something of an issue here. The sooner you can give us what we need, the sooner we can all have our freedom.”
Did she really believe that? Because Rhys didn’t see how someone like Littlewood just let everyone return to their lives after this was all over and he had what he wanted.
“I’ll do what I can,” he muttered and hurried past her in the direction the guard indicated.
Littlewood’s quarters were far more comfortable than the cell they had put Rhys in. It was a lavish apartment suite on the opposite side of the compound from where Rhys was housed. The food spread out on the table was simple—smoked meat of some kind, and stewed and preserved vegetables. It was the same sort of fare they had been given when they were staying in quarantine outside the Clean Zone. Rhys suspected the Clean Zone was provisioning this operation out of their common stores, even if the general population didn’t know it. He’d certainly seen nothing resembling a garden on the premises.
“Thank you for joining me, Rhys.” Littlewood’s smile was charming, and it left Rhys feeling li
ke he needed to shower a sheen of oil off his skin. “Please, sit down. It’s not much, but we’ve all managed to learn how to make do since the pandemic, haven’t we?”
“Yes, sir.” How he managed to twist his mouth up into a smile, Rhys had no idea. He sat at the table and began picking at the plate Littlewood set in front of him.
“Call me Stephen,” the secretary entreated. He leaned back in his chair, plucking lazy bites off his own plate. “Tell me more about your time with the Juggernauts. We normal people know so little about them. I imagine they’ve become quite uncivilized, living as they do.”
“I suppose that depends on how you think they live . . . Stephen,” Rhys said tightly.
“As I understand it, they forced you to service them sexually several times a day. What else should I call them, if not uncivilized? Perhaps even savage.” Littlewood tutted. “And they kept you with them, even though it was no longer necessary to save your life. Tell me, do they all still force themselves upon you or has one of them claimed you?”
I’m sorry, Darius. If salacious details were what would keep Littlewood in a chatty mood, then that’s what Rhys would give him.
He bowed his head because he couldn’t quite manage to force a blush. “The leader of the squad that found me at the monastery. I belong to him.”
Even knowing he was deliberately saying it to misrepresent the situation for Littlewood didn’t stop the small thrill that zinged through Rhys at the words. Yes. He belonged to Darius. And that didn’t seem like a shameful thing anymore.
When Rhys looked up, Littlewood’s eyes gleamed, and he actually licked his lips. “Does he hurt you?”
“Yes.” Rhys glanced away again. He didn’t want to see Littlewood getting some warped pleasure from this. Nonetheless, he still caught the motion of the secretary’s hand dropping off the table and down into his lap.
“Is it distressing you to talk about it?” The man’s voice was breathless, almost dreamy.
“Yes.” No lie there, either. It was bothering the fuck out of him to act like these things, which were special between him and Darius, were something perverted and wrong in the way Littlewood wanted them to be.
Littlewood rose from his chair, rounding the table to approach Rhys. Under his lashes, Rhys snuck a glance at the placket of his trousers, which boasted perhaps a little bulge, though nothing remarkable. Littlewood rubbed the heel of his palm against it like he was trying to coax it into something more.
“I’ll be honest with you, Rhys,” Littlewood said huskily. “It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve felt the things I’ve felt when you tell me about what they’ve done to you.”
“I-I don’t know what you mean.” Rhys’s voice shook with the shudder that ran through him when Littlewood’s other hand landed on his shoulder.
“You don’t need to know what I mean. You just need to do what I say, the way you did what the Juggernaut who claimed you commanded. Forget about him. You’ll obey me now.”
“Obey?” Rhys blinked at him in disbelief. He made it sound so beneficent, as if he were doing Rhys a favor. Did this twisted fuck honestly believe he was a step up from Darius?
“I want you to strip.”
“What?” Rhys sprang to his feet and whirled to face Littlewood.
“Do it now, Rhys. I want to see the body they used over and over.” When Rhys stood there staring at him, a dangerous look narrowed Littlewood’s eyes. “Don’t make me get my cane.”
Cane.
Rhys swallowed against his rising gorge.
Oh fuck.
Of everything he and Darius had done together, every torment Darius had devised that somehow in Rhys’s strangely wired senses had become pleasure, using a cane was the one thing Darius would never, ever do. They’d never talked about it, but Darius couldn’t have missed, on those first couple of nights they were together, the hideous purple-black stripes—both fresh and fading—on Rhys’s backside and thighs. Xolani certainly hadn’t when she’d seen Rhys shower that first day at the monastery. She’d known them exactly for what they were. Father Maurice had always favored his cane . . .
“I can see that thought terrifies you. Good. You need to understand that I control things here. This whole facility is under my discretional authority.” Littlewood’s lips turned up in a tight smile. “Congress doesn’t want to know what goes on here, as long as they have hope that someday they’ll get what they want from it. They don’t care what we have to do to get it. The guards answer to me. You have nowhere to go and no choice but to do as you’re told. Now strip.”
Rhys’s hands went to the buttons of his shirt automatically, but a hot twinge between his shoulders made him pause. Oh . . . He’d forgotten about that.
He bowed his head to hide his smile and quickly opened his shirt. He didn’t bother to suppress the shudder of revulsion when Littlewood’s hand ventured down his unmarked torso.
“You look so clean,” Littlewood murmured. “Not polluted by their hands. Not some disgusting receptacle for them to pump their filth into. A sweet, innocent boy made into such a hideous whore through no fault of his own. How you must have suffered as they degraded you. Turn around.”
Gladly, Rhys thought viciously. He pulled his shoulders tight until he felt the scabs on his back crack open, and spun on his heel.
Littlewood’s gasp was almost masked by his stumbling retreat, the crash as he tripped over his own furniture and tumbled to the floor. Rhys whirled back around, sneering down at him as he jerked his shirt back over the oozing welts Darius had left on him the night before Rhys had let himself be taken.
“Like what you see now, you sick fuck?” Rhys spat.
Littlewood managed to get to his feet, but he cowered against the far wall, cringing, and Rhys advanced on him. Rhys got up close, right in his face. His hand shot down and gripped the flaccid lump in Littlewood’s trousers, giving it a brutal twist.
“You were so busy trying to work yourself up over what Darius and the Jugs had done to me that you never asked me one very important question. Want to know what that question is?”
Littlewood gibbered incoherently, his face ashen, and Rhys gave his ’nads another cruel yank. “Ask me!”
“What?” Littlewood wailed.
“You never asked whether I liked it.” Rhys licked his lips ostentatiously. “I loved it. Begged him for it. Couldn’t get enough of it. You want a victim? Fuck you. I’m not a victim, and I never will be. Not for some pathetic old bastard like you who can’t even get it up.” He released Littlewood’s junk and made a show of wiping his hand on his shirt. “You all thought I was safe, but you fucked up. Now you better hope your researchers come up with a vaccine fucking immediately, or in a few weeks, that pitiful slug you were trying to get to rise to the occasion is going to rot right the fuck off.”
He backed away from Littlewood, and with one last scornful look, left him whimpering as Rhys shut the door and left the secretary’s quarters.
Rhys had only been back to his own cell for twenty minutes or so when Dr. Thanh and Logan came pounding on his door, dressed in full hermetic suits.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were wounded? Do you know what you’ve done?” she demanded. She sounded shaken. Good.
“By the time I found out I was infected with Alpha, you and your guards had already been around me.” Rhys shrugged. “But here. I’m sure you want this.”
He crossed to the sink basin, which still had the mouth-like suction toy/device/thing with all its attached tubing in it, draining dry. He picked a lidded specimen cup full of milky fluid off the edge, tossing it to her. “Might want to hurry with that.”
She rushed from the room, leaving Logan behind. Rhys leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, and stared into the masked face. He smiled sardonically. “Bit late for the suit, isn’t it?”
He supposed it said something about him that Rhys couldn’t bring himself to be horrified by the fact that he’d infected all the people here. He hadn’t k
nown he was positive for Alpha, and they had abducted him, and with their complicity they had put a stamp of approval on Littlewood’s activities. They probably didn’t actually deserve what they’d gotten, but right now, with his skin still crawling from the brush of Littlewood’s hands, it felt like they did.
Or maybe he was just too fucking tired to care.
“I guess it is.” With the sound of seals releasing, Logan took off the hood and met Rhys’s eyes. He looked old, and tired, and weighed down with a tremendous burden. “You realize if she can’t deactivate the virus and synthesize a vaccine, we’re all dead. Even if she can, it might be too late.”
“Did I ask you to kidnap me and bring me here?” Rhys demanded. “This is your doing. How many years has this been going on? How many people have you kidnapped for your research? How many people have you put in Littlewood’s hands, knowing what he does to them?”
“How did you . . .?” Logan’s eyes widened. “You’re a plant.”
“Do you really think the Jugs would trust anyone from the Clean Zone enough to leave me unsupervised unless it was deliberate? They’re coming for me. They’ll be here within days.”
“How do you know so much about our operations?” Logan made himself comfortable on the edge of the bunk.
Rhys waved off the question. He wouldn’t blow Zach’s cover. “Doesn’t matter. The people you’ve taken, the ones suspected of having been sexually involved with Jugs . . . How many actually have been?”
“None. We’ve been seeking a source for the Alpha strain for years to no avail.”
“Why kidnap them? Why not try to get volunteers? Hell, why not ask the Jugs?”
“Volunteers? From among people who have spent potentially years in seclusion, then gone through quarantine, and finally found a home inside the Clean Zone? Do you think after all that, they would volunteer to leave their homes to go someplace where people might be working with live samples of the Bane virus and be experimented on?” Logan gave the question a skeptical twist. “Littlewood has convinced congress that our work here has to be classified, that there would be a public panic if the population knew we were trying to obtain Bane samples. In addition, pressing subjects into service in the lab provides him with a convenient cover for his extracurricular projects.”
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