We reach the wall furthest from the door. The man swivels me around again so my head faces the wall and lets go of my foot. I try and stop it hitting the floor but strain causes more agony in my elbow. Clamping my teeth together I manage to slowly turn my head.
Ursula lies on the floor to my left but I hardly recognise her. She has always been so funny, so alive but now her face is rigid with shock. Her skin shines as her poor confused body tries to cool a heat that was never there. Her eyes do not register me.
A door grows to seal us in with the five men. They hesitate for a moment as if unsure how to proceed and then one leans down to pull at Ursula’s top. Another joins in; the top is ripped off and hurled away. The men crouch beside Ursula and fondle her breasts. One man grips Ursula’s hair and licks her face. Two others pull Ursula’s trousers down, which snag on her boots. The men punch Ursula’s legs furiously in frustration as if it is Ursula’s fault. Afterwards they yank the boots and trousers off together.
One man is left out. He’s not the smallest but he seems to lack even more than the others. His face twists in frustration as he looks down at Ursula. Then he looks over at me.
The other four walk out of their clothes, which remain standing as if worn by invisible men and make the room seem even more crowded. Two of the men are already erect. One gets on his knees and shoves Ursula’s legs apart; another crouches by her head.
The man looking at me walks over. He kneels down and tears at my jumpsuit.
“Fuck,” he spits.
The man between Ursula’s legs hesitates, his cock poised.
“For shit’s sake, what is it?”
“This slag has got armour on.”
“Just wait can’t you?”
“No!”
“I swear I’m going to… Rompy! Don’t you get in her mouth before I’ve… Honestly, I fucking…”
His words break into grunts of rage. He gets up, snatches a small cylindrical device from the pocket of his clothes and throws it at the man beside me. It bounces off his chest onto the floor; he scrabbles the device up and jabs it into my shoulder. There’s a snap and my jumpsuit becomes much lighter.
“Killed it,” he says happily, as if this is the one success he’s managed all day.
I kick at him; he punches me in the mouth and my lip suddenly expands. It’s nothing beside the almost deafening torment in my elbow, which is so powerful that every few seconds it blinds me although sadly not for long.
He grabs the front of my jumpsuit and tears it open. My shoulders hit the floor one after the other as I’m jerked from side to side. I scream as the impact jolts my elbow; he ignores me and doesn’t even pause. I try to pee so he won’t want me but I can’t. My legs twitch in panic; I want to throw up but nothing comes. He knows I can’t move so he takes his time.
My mind tries to outrun the horror but every loathsome detail is too clear. There is a rash on his neck and his breath smells rotten. In the background I hear the others breathe too, some louder, some faster. One man inhales through his nose with a faint rattle of dry snot; another clears his throat and then does it again. Someone’s knee clicks.
They shift around and close in on Ursula. There is a vile efficiency to the dreadful unthinking movement, which is accompanied by wet sounds and grunting. All I can see of my sister now is her left arm, which jerks back and forth, the hand flopping. Please let her stay unconscious, please…
Their lust is contemptibly small and ordinary for something so destructive. They don’t appreciate the value of the person they are violating; someone who loves Ursula should be holding her, touching her. The unfairness and waste are unbearable, the damage hideous. It’s nearly impossible to feel any emotion; just deep, silent rage like the beginning of a devastating illness.
The one on me is not in yet; he seems to like the delay as if feeding off the trauma of it. He stares into my eyes, his expression almost as dead as Ursula’s but energised by awful determination.
Suddenly his gaze darts to the right. All movement stops and the room falls silent.
“What was that?” one of the men who squats over Ursula says.
An explosion outside shakes the building. The man on me grabs my throat as if to hold me in place.
“Fuck or fight?” he snarls at the others.
“Fuck,” comes the reply.
He smiles down at me and tries to shove it in. I jerk my hips and he misses. He tries again.
“Don’t you struggle,” he says, more excited than angry.
There’s another explosion, this one nearer. From the other side of the room the sounds of friction and mean enjoyment intensify. I suspect the men want to finish before they are interrupted.
A third explosion sounds like it’s demolished the building next door.
“I’m suiting up,” one of the men raping Ursula says.
There is a general murmur of assent. The man on me watches them and his lip curls into a sneer.
“Pricks,” he says.
He thrusts at me again. From somewhere I find incredible strength and kick him so hard in the balls his breath stops. I nearly pass out with the effort; his groan is a faraway sound and I barely notice him slump against me. For a moment I feel like I’m drowning in air.
We recover at the same time with the unwanted synchronicity between victim and perpetrator and he looks up, his entire body puce with rage. He grips my right elbow and squeezes. A huge scream rips out of me and I throw my head back so hard I hit the back of it against the floor. He laughs. I slump back with nothing left except grief…
The wall with the door bursts inwards. The man rolls off me and jumps up. A tall figure in the smoke emits a red beam from one hand that knocks my attacker off his feet. He hits the floor to my left with a slap of flesh and clunk of skull. The remaining four men rush at the intruder but a white flash reduces them to red vapour and flying body parts that crash into the furniture.
The open eyes of the man beside me stare back into mine. I hold his dead gaze. Soon he sinks into the floor and I continue to watch his eyes even though they stare blankly at a point underneath me.
His skin dulls and shifts as the Basis gets to work. Its tiny machines travel into the body from all sides, shunting molecules, spreading them, making the lump of matter light enough to move. There is no gore and no brutality; the man simply expands until he is transparent and then becomes nothing. I wonder who he left his kilos to; if they will care he is gone.
The figure in the smoke resolves into Harlan. He walks over, kneels and gathers me gently.
“My beautiful,” he says.
The darkness of his face engulfs my vision until all I see is him and then nothing.
23
I wake up slowly, wary of that pause where the previous day is forgotten and everything seems all right. Soon the painkillers will wear off and the agony will commence. Soon the sickening assault will begin again. Soon I will start to scream.
I wait. Nothing happens. I let my mind focus along with my eyes. I’m under a soft sheet in a single bed. The room is dimly lit. I move gingerly but there is no warning pain.
I realise I am deliberately breathing shallowly. I inhale; in… in… all the way. I wait again. I breathe out. My memory twitches with snapshots of horror.
Foul breath, dead weight, crashing furniture, crashing limbs… And worst of all Ursula’s hand, jerking helplessly nearby with me unable to save her. I reassure myself that our attackers are all dead but the knowledge doesn’t make me happy so much as sick. I squeeze my eyes shut. Now Ursula writhes on the floor as the Blanks look on and the world ends in my elbow…
I shake my head and check the Aer. For a moment nothing I read makes any sense. I persevere with the familiar ritual and after a while my mind steadies.
I have been unconscious for five days.
I grit my teeth as I stretch my right arm but even in the low light I can see my elbow is healed. No scars, not even a mark show where Ashel 5 shot me. I touch my cheek and that feels fin
e as well. The swelling, the blood, the acid sting of my tears are all gone.
I hear slow breathing nearby and turn towards a second bed next to mine. I can just make out Ursula lying on her back under another sheet with tubes going into her arms.
Wary of enfeebled limbs I carefully climb out of bed and am surprised to find I stand without trouble. My hair tumbles into my face and I push it away. I expect a lank curtain but it’s glossy and smells sweet. Someone has looked after me.
I lean over Ursula. She is clearly not right. Although the awful frozen expression has gone there is a shocking vacancy to her as if she’s there but not there. The disquiet in me coalesces into a sense of loss so strong I gasp. I don’t know how Ursula will deal with this. I suppose that means I don’t know how I will deal with it either.
I want to get drunk and take drugs and pull men with her. Why did I never do any of those things? Maybe it was because of my precious career, my thwarted journey to perfection. I suspect that’s an excuse however. I think I feared if I misbehaved like Ursula then Mum and Dad wouldn’t want me anymore.
I put my hands to my face and sob, the tears jerking out of me. Soon I have to crouch by Ursula’s bed, rocking on my bare feet until my legs cramp. The tears flow on and on. It helps to lose myself in them, as if I am an Old World engine pumping hot salty water from a dark and terrible well.
Eventually, I just run out of energy. Exhausted, I slowly stand, rubbing my wet face on the sleeve of the gown. I climb into Ursula’s bed and the warm air under the cover is rich with her old familiar smell. I lie pressed against her; I want to hold her but she’s heavy and I’m wary of pulling the tubes out of her arm. Instead I stroke her warm cheek.
“Ursula,” I whisper, “Ursula…”
A door opens and I look across Ursula to see Harlan. He waits in the doorway for a while. I’m not sure what to say. His presence eases me but with it come confusion, questions and remembered fury at the betrayal that seems a long time ago…
“May I come in?” he says.
“Oh. Yes.”
Harlan walks towards me. I realise I’m so pleased to see him I want to smile but all I do is stare. Honestly, a spy? For the New Form Enterprise?
He stops by the side of the bed.
“Thank you for saving us-” I begin.
Harlan shakes his head almost angrily. He looks down at Ursula.
“We don’t know why she’s still in a coma,” he says.
“The Blanks made her access a full-on vix link of one of them getting burned alive.”
He looks genuinely shocked, but then he’s very convincing. I sigh.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“With the New Form Enterprise.”
“As a prisoner?”
“No,” he says. “You can leave any time.”
“I suppose you want Centria’s files on the NFE,” I say.
“You don’t have to give me the files if you don’t want to,” he says.
“Come off it Harlan. You didn’t save us just because you like me.”
Our eyes lock. My face feels tight.
“What do you think is happening?” he says finally.
“I think what you did to me was not much better than what those bastards in New Runcton were going to do.”
“You’re alive aren’t you?”
“Only because you want something.”
“You mentioned information about the NFE. You didn’t say what it was. Believe me, that’s not the reason I saved you.”
“You spied on me! You were using me!”
“True,” he says.
“If I’d brought you into Centria would you have killed me?”
“Like I killed you in New Runcton? As I recall I saved you and your sister, who has no value to me or the NFE.”
“I don’t understand.”
“All right,” he says, “I did want you so I could get into Centria and I would have let the rest of the NFE in. But we aren’t killers.”
“What was the Ruby War then?”
“A mistake.”
“I’ll say – you lost!”
“Hmm,” he says, contemplative rather than angry.
The slant of his eyes is perfect, their lashes long…
“Stop looking at me,” I say.
“I like looking at you.”
“Too bad.”
“You’ve got the best hair in Diamond City.”
Oh, that was low; right below the belt, right… there….
“I mean it,” I say, slightly out of breath.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because you’re the enemy.”
“How am I the enemy?”
“Because-because I’m from Centria and you’re in the New Form Enterprise.”
“You’re not from Centria,” he says, “not anymore.”
I go to speak and realise there’s nothing to say. I rest my face on Ursula’s chest and hold her tight. It should wake her but she doesn’t move.
Harlan stretches out on my bed. I try and pretend he isn’t there so I can get my thoughts organised.
I realise with sudden clarity that my thoughts are as organised as they’re ever likely to be. I’m recovering from something. I’m in trouble that remains stubbornly undefined. I love Ursula. I want Harlan. Things will probably always be like this.
I let go of Ursula and climb out of her bed, then walk over to Harlan and kneel on the floor beside him.
“Whenever I’m with you I just want to be stupid,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “You could do with more stupid in your life.”
I get up the mission files, take a breath and then send them to him.
“Thank you,” he says.
He rolls over onto his elbow and looks into my eyes.
“Check your Aerac,” he says.
My Aerac still reads 0. Harlan’s name appears in the sender field and my account level increases to 50,000 kilos.
“How rich are you?” I say.
“Very.”
“Thank you,” I say, hesitant.
He laughs.
“Stop thinking!” he says.
“I can’t help it,” I say.
I transfer half the kilos to Ursula for when she wakes up.
“It’s fine,” Harlan says, “but you think about things that don’t need to be thought about.”
I go to disagree but can’t because his lips are on mine. Unexpectedly, every sense floods to my mouth. The smooth floor under my knees, the gown’s rustle against my skin and even the weight of my hair become delightful, overwhelming.
I feel desperately triumphant. My just-liberated sexuality has not been destroyed. If that is intact perhaps everything else is too. I let the sensations rise and envelop me, a delirium sweetened by recollected trauma as if in reaction against it…
Harlan pulls away. He swings his legs off the bed and puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Jaeger wants to see you,” he says.
24
I walk beside Harlan along a white corridor with a large oval window and pause to look out. A broad surface curves down away from me, moving past diamond walls so high I can’t see their tops.
So the New Form Enterprise base is a mobile assembly. No wonder Centria couldn’t find it.
We pass enormous mezzanines jutting like shelves over an empty plain. The expanse down there is broken by a few massive but forlorn blocks, which perhaps indicate where something should have been grown but now never will be. There are no buildings or people visible, just unfinished architecture and eerie blue light. The view has a haunted quality born of emptiness and unseen horror.
We are in the Outer Spheres.
I wear my red and yellow jumpsuit again, giffed anew with armour intact. More comfortable and secure than anything I’ve ever worn it seems especially charged next to Harlan, who must recognise the outfit from when we visited Dodge69. Harlan has the same clothes on too. Perhaps he’s trying to tell me something.
Four men and two wom
en all wearing orange jumpsuits jog out of a side corridor. I stop with a gasp. I have been trained to fear and attack anyone in that uniform but I’m too confused to move. The six people disappear down a corridor. I stare after them.
Harlan puts his arm around my shoulders and guides me into an elevator. As the doors close he takes his arm away and my shoulders tingle where he touched them. Faint pressure through my boots tells me we are going up. I look at Harlan, who is uncharacteristically quiet. For the first time since we met I sense tension in him, as if he is apprehensive.
“What does Jaeger want from me?” I ask.
“He’ll tell you. Just be honest. He’ll know otherwise.”
“Anything else?”
Harlan hesitates.
“Best you find out for yourself,” he says. “It’s easier that way.”
The elevator doors open and Jaeger Darwin is right there.
He wears an orange NFE jumpsuit with no insignia to differentiate him from his troops. A big man although not as big as Harlan, Jaeger nonetheless seems incredibly compact. It’s as if his musculature has been built and compressed, then built and compressed again, over and over until he hums with daunting strength. Only Keris has a similar effect but with her it is abstract, almost spiritual. Jaeger looks like a weapon. His intelligence glares from the coldest, hardest eyes I have ever seen.
He is still. He could be a statue but for those grey eyes that seem to take in every detail of me. I sense him work out my depths, like light in a shadowy chasm. It feels revelatory, even soothing, as if Jaeger knows more about me from one glance than I’ve learned in twenty-three years.
I imagine his voice, ruthless and frighteningly reasonable as he evaluates how long I can fight for, my optimum position in an engagement, ideal weaponry for a female my size, whether I would ever give up and if so when… His aura of absolutism, of finality, terrifies me but I already want to follow him.
“Charity,” he says.
Jaeger’s actual voice is quiet and cultured but not that different from how I imagined. It brims with violence. He extends a hand. Inspired rather than cowed I take it, relieved my palms are dry. Jaeger’s hand closes gently around mine with the quiet but awesome strength of the walls holding up Diamond City.
Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) Page 16