“She’s alive. She’s breathing, I can’t see much else, but he’s with her, so no one will get within spitting distance without him consuming them. Take a breath, Gryph, she’s alive.”
He doesn’t look any better at that news. “Well then, where the fuck is she? Don’t tell me to calm down when she’s gone again.”
When the phone finally clicks as Gabe answers, I hear Bassinger snarling down the line, “So now you lot want to call us? Well, you’re too fucking late!”
Gryphon’s eyes snap to mine, too wide and glassy, thanks to the push he’d given his connection with his Bonded.
I snarl into the phone, “What the fuck has happened? We’ve been gone less than twelve hours—”
Gryphon cuts me off, snarling, “Where the fuck is she, Bassinger? I will come back there and tear your fucking spine out of your throat, if you had anything to do with this!”
Bassinger scoffs at him, a savage sort of sound, and snarls back, “Your useless, fucking asshole second took her, and they haven’t come back! I will fucking kill you all if she’s hurt. I’ll gut that fucking dickhead Black too.”
Chapter Two
Oli
I wake up strapped to a chair, the smells of smoke, body odor, and despair hitting my nostrils, and my stomach turns as I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. There’s rustling and quiet murmuring of two women in here, the noises a sign of them cleaning something here in the tent up, and I don’t want them to know I’m awake yet.
It’s hard to keep the disgust off of my face.
The stench here is familiar, a particular blend of gross that I’d been hoping to never come across again, and I have to choke back the bile that creeps up the back of my throat. Kieran and I were separated right away but not before I’d been forced to watch three guards beat the shit out of him.
No one lifted a finger against me, but I already knew they wouldn’t.
Once he was bleeding from about ten different places and there was a rattle in his chest that suggested some serious internal injuries, Kieran had been dragged away to one of the holding tents unceremoniously by a couple of low-level thugs.
I had been escorted to the priority tent, somewhere I’ve spent way too much time.
“Why the fuck are we waiting on some sheep-bitch? It’s demeaning, she should be eating slop in the cages with the rest of them.”
There’s a quiet grunt and then the other woman replies, quietly but in a rougher, aged voice, “She’s a VIP. Her gift means she gets real food, a bath when she needs it, and she’s off-limits to the men for a bit of fun. Don’t worry about it, she’ll be torn up good by Davies just the same as they all are.”
Gross.
For one, I do not want to hear his name, but there’s also something about the women talking so casually about the horrors that happen here, like it doesn’t even matter to them what happens here after dark and in tight quarters, that makes my blood run cold. I guess I don’t have to feel guilty about killing them all when the time comes. Does that make me just as bad as them?
I hope not, but I’ll also accept it if it does.
“VIP… what does that even mean? Is she a Neuro? Davies doesn’t usually keep those around for long.”
Of course not, they’re competition for him. Okay, they’re not at all, because I’ve never heard of another Neuro who can do the shit he can, except Gryphon. As strong as my Bonded is, he’s no match for that man.
I’m no match for him either.
It’s terrifying.
I know how much power is pumping through my veins, so much that my body still can’t use it without taking a three day nap to recover, and he could end my world without a second thought. Our gifts might be eons apart in ability but there’s too many parallels with the destruction we’re both capable of.
The woman with the rough voice mutters, reluctantly and somewhat reverently, “This girl, this little white-haired bitch who looks like nothing special, she’s the Infinite Weapon. They’re going to use her to end the war and finally let us Gifted take control of this country like we deserve. No more making nice with the non-Gifted. No more living shackled to laws that shouldn’t apply to us because we’re above them. No more sheep in control, living in their mansions while the rest of us struggle to survive.”
Fucking hell.
I’d almost forgotten how delusional they all sound, as though they’re going to love living in the Wild West Dystopia that they’re all gunning for when really… they’ll all probably die for the cause. That man wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice them all to get what he wants.
Ultimate power.
There’s more movement and then I hear one of the women walk away, rustling the tent flap, and then the smell of hot chicken and gravy hits my nose. My stomach rumbles and a wave of nausea hits me, the same as it always does when I wake up from one of these power-use naps.
I blink my eyes a few times as they stream against the harsh lighting and I get a look at both of the women. I don’t recognize either of them, but I catalog their features anyway, storing away as much information as I can, in case I need it later.
Doing that has saved my life many times before.
The older woman is holding out the plate of food and with a downturned mouth, she says, “I’m not going to free your arms to eat, but if you try to stop me from feeding you, I have orders to force it down your throat with any means necessary.”
I shrug and open my mouth. As obedient as it may look like I’m being, the eyes she gives me says she doesn’t believe it one bit.
Hilarious, because I’m too hungry to bite the bitch or attempt to mess with her.
The other woman, who only looks a few years older than I am, watches us both with her hands fisted at her side as though she’s ready to fly over and break my jaw the second I prove myself to be the unruly ‘sheep’ they think I am.
They really have no idea.
I eat the entire plate without a word or complaint, chewing the delicious chicken and gravy while keeping my face blank. I don’t want them to know how much I’m enjoying it, how much I wish I could have seconds. Once the plate is clean, the woman holds a bottle of water to my lips and lets me down the entire thing. It feels like the elixir of life to my dry tongue and chapped lips.
Then the women both leave without another word.
I take a second to look around, but the tent is bare, completely empty, other than me and the chair I’m chained to. It feels a little too familiar. I wouldn’t put it past these assholes to have brought in the exact one I’d spent two years parked on just to mess with my damn head a little more.
That’s kind of ugh, Silas Davies’ thing.
As if my thoughts conjured him, the tent flap parts and the man, the nightmare, himself steps into the space with me.
After so long of forcing myself to not think about him, to not even acknowledge that he exists in the world, it’s weirdly uneventful to see him standing there in his carefully put together outfit. I know for sure that he puts in a lot of thought about how he dresses, a lot of thought on what color he’ll be donning for the day, because I never wanted to see him on days where he’d wear white.
He enjoys the patterns of blood spatters, and there was always a sense of pride in him when he would leave the torture tents covered in the fruits of his labor. I think it also helped keep the other Resistance members in line because between that and the manic grin on his face, he definitely looks like the crazed torturer you wouldn’t want to mess with.