They pulled her chair back and one grabbed her arm, the other sliding the chair away and grabbing her other arm. She tried to pull herself free, kicking at the guard’s legs, terror welling up in her quivering voice.
The vice chancellor said only, “The interrogation room.”
But Jeanell couldn’t help herself. “No, please! Please don’t!”
But he was disinterested, returning his attention to his meal while the two goons carried her off, dragging her down the hall, every twist and wrench only helping them secure their grip. She didn’t bother to beg those goons to let her go, to convince her of anything one way or another. She knew they didn’t care, it wasn’t their job to listen. It was their job to drag her to that interrogation room, and Jeanell was ready to make that as difficult as possible.
She kept kicking at them, wrenching her arms and pulling with all her dwindling might. But each big goon held her arms with both hands, one at the forearm, one above the elbow. There was a goon on her right and one on the left, and there was no way she could break free.
Soon enough, the point was moot.
The interrogation room was guarded by another armed man, who stepped aside and opened the door for the other two. Once past that threshold, Jeanell knew she’d be trapped, and tortured. What manner of pain, what instruments, what pleasure they’d take using them, Jeanell could only imagine and dread. But she knew that would pass quickly… and terribly …enough.
Unlike the rest of the rooms, there wasn’t a speck of gold nor a single tiny diamond in the whole interrogation room. Instead, it looked much like any medical examination room, with a big chair that looked a bit like a dental chair, except with cuffs at the arms and feet of the chair.
“No!”
The goons spun Jeanell around and threw her into the big chair. Jeanell cried out, panic in her voice as she struggled, the goons wrestling her arms into place and locking down the buckling straps over her wrists and forearms, just above the elbows. Jeanell leaned forward hard, trying in vain to thrust herself forward. Then she backed into the chair as far as she could, hoping to pull her arms out. They could hardly budge an inch.
By then, they had her ankles strapped in too, the goon lingering over the sight of her exposed legs. Her evening dress wasn’t designed for that chair. Unable to do much but unwilling to do nothing, Jeanell spat in the leering goon’s face. He pulled his hand back to give her a powerful smack across the face, and Jeanell braced for it. It would only be a taste of what was to come.
But the other guard stopped him with a sharp, “Orders!”
“Bitch spat in my face!”
“Orders!” He looked at her, bound to that chair, and nodded. “We’ll square things later. C’mon.”
The goon wiped his face and said to Jeanell, “Have a good time, sweetie.”
They left her alone. She strained at her bonds for a while, unable to free herself. She finally let out a long, shrill cry for help, and then another. It echoed around the little room, banging against the inside of Jeanell’s skull.
No, she finally had to tell herself, that’s what they want. This is psychological torture; they’re just priming me, getting me ready. I’m not gonna fall for it. I’m not gonna give right in, crack under pressure!
No matter what they do.
But Jeanell shuddered to think of what that would be. She looked around the room, white cabinets and sleek electronic machines dominated the walls and corners, big surgical lights fixed to the ceiling above the chair.
She knew then that she’d miscalculated terribly, that the chancellor’s regime was all that Ric said it was, perhaps worse. Or even if Ric couldn’t be trusted, the vice chancellor and his criminal crew certainly couldn’t. And that’s a lesson she was going to learn at a terrible price.
Ric. Where is he now? Does it make a difference? Maybe Reeves and the others are still back in Colorado. Ric’ll probably stay with them, cut his losses on me, get back to his life as usual. I’ve brought him nothing but death. I couldn’t blame him for turning his back on me. Even if he wanted to come for me, he’ll never get in here, not without getting himself killed. He knows that. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted, short but nice, like life.
And death is going to be terrible.
Jeanell’s heart pounded just dreading the pain, the prolonged agony that would soon be upon her.
Her arms and legs stiffened, muscles tightened, blood collected around her cuffed wrists, elbows, and ankles.
Finally, the door opened, Jeanell’s heart skipping in her chest, breath short in her lungs. It was the vice chancellor, still in his uniform. He walked slowly, wearing a devious little half smile and carrying a riding crop.
“Um, okay,” Jeanell said, nerves making her voice tremble. “I’m still not sure what happened back during dinner. I thought we were having a perfectly pleasant conversation.” He said nothing, approaching the chair and tapping his riding crop against the side of his leg. A lump rose in her throat.
Jeanell’s heart started beating even faster, fear rushing in her veins. “So, is this like, your thing? Because, y’know, it’s not so unusual. I get it, I really do.” The vice chancellor tapped the riding crop against her bare chest, hovering near to where the white dress barely clung to her round breast, heaving with her rising fear. Jeanell went on, “I even think it’s kinda… hot.” The vice chancellor tapped that crop down her arms, slow and menacing, lingering near her bonds.
Unsure what do say or do, Jeanell asked, “So, you want me to do? Should I… call you master or, y’know, whatever you want, I… we want to keep things light, right?”
He tapped the crop down her thigh to her knee and then back up, a few more intimidating taps making her legs quiver. Jeanell looked up at him, unsure of what the man truly wanted with her, or what lengths she could go to, or if she’d ever make it back.
“Um, do you want me to struggle or just lay here, or—?”
“I want you to tell me the secret of how you traveled here through a time hole.”
“I… I didn’t! I just wanted to meet you, because I heard how… how strong and masculine you are. I knew you could, um, put a girl like me in my place.”
“Enough of this whore routine, Miss Glenn. I know who you are and I know how you came to be among us.”
Jeanell swallowed hard and looked up into the vice chancellor’s cold eyes, his unmoving expression far past patience. “Okay, Mr. Vice Chancellor, I… I wasn’t going to deny it, I wasn’t. I guess I thought you wanted to do… all this too, like role play or something. And I wasn’t about to deny a powerful man like you.”
“Miss Glenn—”
“But I am Jeanell Glenn, and I did come here… somehow, from 2017.”
“Yet you lied to me.”
Jeanell chuckled nervously. “I was told it might be dangerous in, um, in certain circles.” The vice chancellor chuckled too. Jeanell went on, “You might have done the same thing, right? But don’t take it personally, I, um, I didn’t mean to disrespect your office.” Vice Chancellor Haines said nothing, turning to a small white machine, with LCD lights and other controls. Jeanell’s eyes were locked on it as the vice chancellor wheeled it up to the side of the chair.
She asked, “What’s that? What is that thing?” But the vice chancellor offered no answer. Jeanell went on, “Anyway, I was working on this black hole thing early on, that’s true. And I guess you could say I was one of the earlier researchers to stumble on a few key points, but… but we really never mastered it. And as for the time element, I’m really not sure how it happened. That idiot Brad scrambled up all the controls in a panic, there won’t be a way to recreate it. We stumbled our way through time, honestly.”
The vice chancellor picked up a small band with two wires connected to it. Without a word, he reached out and slipped it over Jeanell’s head. She jerked her head to the side, trying feebly to pull away. Then she jerked the other way, anything to avoid him slipping that band
over her head.
But she could only manage a few seconds of resistance before he secured that cloth band around her temples. She gasped in fear, the wires tracing down each side of her head. “If I knew, I’d tell you. I swear I would!”
He tapped a few buttons on the machine and smiled at her. “It’s a crude device, old fashioned. But some things never change, eh?”
“I’m telling you, it was just a scrambled mess! He panicked and just started pressing buttons like an idiot. I didn’t even see what he was doing! If anybody knows, it’s Brad, not me! Strap him down into this thing! That son of a bitch deserves it.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Vice Chancellor Haines said with a little half smile, “he’ll get what he deserves.”
He turned to her with a small rubber mouthpiece in his hand, shaped like a pair of teeth clamped over a short breathing tube. Jeanell knew where that was going. “No look, honestly—”
But it was all she had time for before the vice chancellor jammed it into Jeanell’s mouth despite her flinching and struggling. “This will prevent you from biting through your own tongue, my dear, keep all the teeth in your head from shattering to bits.” Jeanell shook her head as he held the mouthpiece in place with one hand and turned to push a button on the other. “You wouldn’t be very pretty then, eh?”
Jeanell’s vision went white, ears a dim hum as the electricity shot through her brain. Her jaw locked, biting into that hard rubber, panting through the breathing tube. Her head snapped back, muscles clenched, fists tight as her arms failed to pull free of the shackles. Her legs twisted, hips bucking as the jolt shook her body. But the vice chancellor knew there was nowhere for her to go and no way for her to get there.
He said, “Can you hear me, Miss Glenn?” Her heart was near to bursting behind her ribs, panting, jaws still locked. “Stay with us, Miss Glenn. It’s going to be a long night, and we’re just getting warmed up.” After another few minutes, he pulled the mouthpiece out of her clenched jaws. She was still panting, mouth dry, head pounding, muscles almost snapping under her sweating skin.
“Miss Glenn?”
“I… I just… I don’t know—”
He jammed the mouthpiece back into her mouth, nearly breaking her teeth. Another click brought another flash of agonizing pain, blinding and deafening, whole body shaking in that chair. Her hips nearly dislocated as her body twisted, frazzled instincts seeking desperate release and not finding it.
Vertebrae popped up her spine and neck, the bones of her skull grinding together like tectonic plates. Her throat contracted, shoulders arching up to her ears. She snapped back once and then again, her body straining to hold onto its grip on life itself.
The vice chancellor yanked the mouthpiece out of her mouth, her jaws clacking together, chipping two teeth. A tortured gasp spilled out as she strained for life-giving breath, tears rolling down her cheeks.
He shouted, “Why are you willing to die for what we already know?”
The words echoed in her memory, barely able to fashion a thought. “The… God Particle,” she said, barely recalling that her team would know that, they’d reasoned it out. And if Brad knew, the chancellor’s forces almost certainly did too.
The vice chancellor repeated, “The God Particle.”
Jeanell nodded, still straining to catch her breath, body cramping forward and then back, every fiber contracting, pulling her in every direction at once.
“That’s… that’s all… I… know…”
“That’s what your partners said,” Vice Chancellor. “But how? How do you make it work exactly? You must know, Miss Glenn. I have to know!”
She shook her head, still gasping for breath. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know… please, it hurts so much… I swear. I don’t know…”
He looked her over with a satisfied smile. “I believe you. There’s a certain place where a person reveals the truth, and I believe we’ve come to that place.” Jeanell nodded, her head falling forward and then rolling exhausted on her shoulders. “Do you think you could do it again?” Jeanell shook her head. “How can you be so sure? We can provide you with everything you need.”
“No,” Jeanell said, a dry sob rattling out of her throat.
“You cannot, Miss Glenn, or you will not?”
Jeanell knew what she faced, the choice she tried to escape—her destiny, a moment of truth she hoped she’d never face.
“Miss Glenn?”
“No…” she said, eyes refocusing on his, her voice low and wheezed. “Just… no.”
He smashed the mouthpiece back into her mouth and she screamed, body already tense to anticipate what was coming.
Then it came. It was a bigger blast than the others. Jeanell was hurled into unconsciousness, a wave of darkness overtaking her and sending her toppling into the empty void, a Great Darkness of her very own.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Twelve hours earlier in front of the cave, Ric reached out to grab Jeanell, but she vanished in Brad’s grip, black holed to New York City. Ric’s impulse was to grab their retrieved smartphone and follow, but he knew he couldn’t go straight into the chancellor’s tower without a secret code, and now his plan to invade the tower for a rescue mission was on his shoulders alone. And for one person, it would be impossible.
“What’s going on out here?” Ric spun to see Reeves and Brooke step out from deep within the cave, Reeves holding their only automatic rifle. “Where is everybody?”
“Holed out, I think,” Ric said, “Jeanell too, I’m sure of that. Brad grabbed her and holed back to New York, I suspect. Why weren’t you on guard?”
Brooke said, “Nobody knew we were here, we can’t be on guard forever.”
Ric looked at her, and then at Reeves, new information settling into his brain. “So you two were in one of those rear chambers… fucking?”
“You did it,” Brooke said. “You and that girl.”
“We weren’t on guard duty at the time!”
Reeves stepped toward Ric, his voice low and cold. “Brooke’s right; there wasn’t any reason to think we’d be set upon here. They must have just come and gone.”
“Happens in a flash, you should know that by now.” Ric paced around the cave entrance.
Brooke called out, “Truly? Honestly!”
“They’re gone, Brooke,” Ric spat out. “Prisoners of the chancellor!”
Reeves said, “All right then, what’s done is done.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Ric said. “But I suppose that’s right, we can’t undo it now. Funny, if we could go back in time… anyway, we must mount the rescue. There’s a bag of suits over there; find one that fits and put it on. He hole it in an hour.”
But Reeves said simply, “No.”
Ric stopped and turned. “What’s that?”
Reeves stood his ground, automatic rifle in his hands. “I said no.”
“Okay, sooner then.”
“No,” Reeves said, “we’re not going at all.”
“Reeves, it’s your fault this happened!”
“If we’d been out here,” Reeves shrugged, “they’d have holed us too. Wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“You could have shot Jeanell’s friend Brad before he made off with her.”
Brooke said, “Not much of a friend.”
“And you, Brooke, you left the kids alone!”
“I didn’t know anything would happen.”
“Now you do, and what’s happening is that we’re holing to New York, breaking into that tower, and—”
Reeves barked, “No!”
“Why?”
“It’s a suicide mission, I told you that from the beginning.”
“So what? What do any of us have to live for?” But Reeves and Brooke exchanged a warm smile, Ric rolling his eyes. “This is no time for that, you too!”
Brooke snapped, “Hypocrite! You want us to sacrifice our love just to try to save yours!”
>
“What about the kids,” Ric asked, “and the others?”
“That’s the way things are now,” Reeves said, hand craning around the gun. “Acceptable losses. But Brooke and I can repopulate—”
“Reeves,” Ric said, but had time to say nothing more.
“We’ll be safe here, we’ll have each other.”
Ric shook his head in disbelief. “How safe were the others?”
Brooke said, “If that Brad stayed to hole your girlfriend, then they don’t have any reason to think we’re still here or they’d have come into the cave to get us.”
Reeves glanced at his new lady love, impressed, turning back to Ric to say, “Affirmative.”
Ric said, “Brad and I saw each other, so they’ll know I’m here.”
Reeves shrugged. “Why should that be of any concern to us?”
“What about the twins, or the others who were here? You don’t think any of them will tell the chancellor’s men that you were left behind?”
Reeves and Brooke glanced at each other, worry in their eyes. Reeves thought aloud, “We’ll move on, deeper into the Rockies. They’ll search for a while, then give up. I was never the one they wanted, and Brooke sure isn’t. In fact, I think they got who they wanted.” Reeves looked Ric over. “Though you might still be a prized target.”
“If I am or not,” Ric said, “doesn’t matter. Because I am going to New York, and I am getting Jeanell out of there, and as many of the others as I can.”
Reeves barely twitched. “Or die trying.”
“Happily.”
Brooke said, “Does she mean that much to you? Do you love her so much?”
“Yes, I do,” Ric said without a second thought. “It makes me sick to think of what they’re going to do to her in that tower. She’ll never walk out on her own power, and if she dies there, I… I really don’t feel like I’d deserve to live. I certainly wouldn’t want to. But it’s not just about me. This is our only chance to stop the chancellor, to end this national nightmare once and for all. Jeanell is more than a victim here, she’s our secret weapon!”
Maruvian Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Book 5) Page 35