Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion

by Elaine Levine

  Selena was a mere mortal human—unequal to the challenge of controlling Bastion. She didn’t know if he would leave her team alone now that she’d left—that meant believing he’d come for her, not her team. Time would tell who his real target was.

  She considered opening her mind to him, just to get it all over with, but the truth was that she, her new handlers, and her team were not individually nor collectively capable of fighting Bastion with any hope of success.

  She had to stay strong.

  Owen was playing for time, working some angle that he refused to reveal to her. She wondered if Jax or Nick knew what he was up to.

  Worse, she wondered if she’d ever be accepted back into her team.

  Selena stood up and started pacing around her closet. The space was bigger than many master bedrooms. Thankfully, it had no windows, so she wasn’t tempted to peek outside. Three days she’d been in there. Sit-ups, planking, pacing…none of it helped. The sensory deprivation was taking a toll on her mental health. She had no television, no reading materials. Only her music and headphones offered respite here and there. The constant effort of keeping her mind closed to Bastion was giving her a low-grade migraine.

  A knock sounded on the door to her room again. It was Spencer. He would leave her supper tray just inside her room, as he had with each meal.

  She didn’t rush out to get her food. Anxiety had robbed her of an appetite. Or maybe it was her persistent headache.

  Another knock sounded on her door. That wasn’t the pattern of the last few days. She was still operating under the belief that the fewer people she spoke to and the less she saw of the house and the world around her, the better off everyone would be.

  The knocking stopped. Good. She didn’t want to deal with anyone yet. Time was the only thing she cared about. Her team needed as much of it as possible. She heard the door to her bedroom open and close. The floors creaked as someone approached the closet. Damn it. Probably Jax. Her closet door opened. Sure enough, Jax stood there with Nick by his side.

  “You guys just bust into any old bedroom you want?” she asked.

  “You didn’t answer the door,” Jax said.

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “What are you doing in here?” Nick asked.

  “Hiding.”

  “Selena, you can’t exist like this, in the dark,” Nick said as he stepped into her closet. “Come out. Your body needs sunlight and your soul needs people.”

  “And my heart needs my team to survive.”

  “Come out and eat your breakfast,” Jax said. “We can figure this out.”

  “Not much into food right now,” Selena said.

  “Are you sick?” Nick asked.

  “Or pregnant?” Jax asked.

  Selena gasped. Was that even a possibility? Had Bastion tricked her into something she couldn’t remember? “Last I knew, a person had to have sex to get pregnant. Of course, the laws of nature as we know them may not work as they used to.”

  “Do you want to see a doctor?” Jax asked.

  “Fuck no. I’m not pregnant. I’m not sick. I’m hiding.”

  “Could you maybe hide with us?” Nick asked.

  Selena shook her head. “It takes all of my concentration to keep him out of my mind. If you distract me…”

  “We’ll fight Bastion with you,” Jax said.

  Selena scoffed. “You can’t even see him. How can you fight him?”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Jax glared at her. “We’ll die with you if Bastion comes for you, since you’ve pointed out how useless we are. You can’t exist like this. Come work out with us. That’ll at least help your appetite. Are you sleeping?”

  “I have drugs for that.” Selena had to admit a that hard workout would feel fantastic. “What’s the word from Owen? Any news from the Ratcliffs on how to handle Bastion?”

  “Not yet,” Jax said.

  Selena looked at Nick. “What about your trainer? When’s he getting here? He might know something.”

  “There’s been a snafu with that,” Nick said. “He found out about you and Bastion and decided to take a different assignment.”

  Selena hadn’t expected that blow. “Can he do that? Just cherry-pick his assignments?”

  Jax folded his arms. “Guess he doesn’t have a death wish.”

  I would not hurt you or yours. Bastion’s voice came through Selena’s mind like a clear radio signal.

  You said you would not hurt me, but didn’t provide that same guarantee to my team and friends before now.

  I will not hurt them. Tell me where you are.

  Selena wanted to believe him. His assurance promised her the peace she craved. But she had to see his words for the strategy they were; of course he would tell her the very thing she most needed to hear. And of course he would know exactly what that was.

  But damn, his voice was seductive, his promise compelling.

  “Is he talking to you now?” Nick asked.

  Selena nodded. “I told you I can’t be around both of you and fight him, too. You need to leave.”

  “Come with us,” Nick said.

  “No.”

  Jax took a step toward the closet’s door but stopped to give her a shake of his head. “Your choice, but Spencer isn’t going to be delivering your meals anymore. You want to eat, you’ll come downstairs.”

  Selena returned his hostile stare. “Works for me,” she said, wishing she could feed Jax to Bastion.

  A wave of humor came from the monster in her mind. I am no cannibal. Although I want to eat you.

  Selena sucked in a sharp gasp and looked at her closet door, grateful the guys had already left.

  Tell me where you are, Bastion said. I will get you out of there. And I will feed you.

  No. She wanted to ask him about that night after Addy’s party, the night she cut herself, but she also didn’t want to open a can of worms. Maybe she’d just imagined him in her room. It wasn’t that unusual that she’d grabbed the first T-shirt in her drawer or ditched her wet underwear. Her memory was spotty, but it often was after an episode.

  Your boss’s dad is a new mutant and needs a trainer. I volunteer.

  No. This has to stop. You and me…whatever this is.

  It won’t. Ever. We are bigger than you and me. We were chosen, me for you and you for me.

  Who chose us?

  Tell me where you are. I will come and tell you the whole story.

  You should know where I am. You’re in my mind.

  I am merely speaking with you. I can’t read minds. I can only read energy. Sometimes I can pick up on thoughts that are clearly broadcast, but you are very good at controlling our connection.

  Selena scoffed. If that were true, we wouldn’t now be talking.

  I’m glad we are.

  Bastion, Selena said with sigh, what is it that you want?

  You.

  16

  Exile didn’t sit well with Selena. The house she’d been stashed in was a luxurious mansion, but a gilded cage was still a cage. She didn’t like being confined. She didn’t like hiding. And she didn’t like being in a situation that had a beginning but no end.

  She’d lost track of how many days she’d been hiding in her closet. More than a week. It was night now, time to crawl out and go find some food.

  She went into her bathroom, intending to take a shower. So as long as she kept the window covers pulled, she couldn’t give too much away if Bastion were able to see what she saw.

  Her toiletries bag was on the counter. She stared at it a long minute, trying to resist everything it represented. Her past, her present, even her future. And the sickening relief she craved.

  She hadn’t cut herself since she been at Addy’s. She’d thought isolating herself in the quiet retreat of her closet would help her manage her stress. And maybe it would have, if Jax and Nick hadn’t broken into her sanctuary a few days ago.

  Are you pregnant? Jax’s question still haunted her. Was she? Could she be?

&nbs
p; She had so many missing and incomplete memories, thanks to Bastion, including the night she’d cut herself after Addy’s bachelorette party. He’d been in her room with her. But it had only been a projection of him. He hadn’t physically been there, so they couldn’t have had sex.

  She slipped down the wall next to the sink to crouch on the floor. A cold sweat blanketed her skin as she thought of the day her hell started, twelve years ago. Awful memories blew like a gale through her mind, breaking through the blocks she’d had in place all the years since it happened.

  She reached up and grabbed her kit, tucking it between her body and legs as she wrapped her arms around her knees. She was going to need it tonight. She rocked back and forth, tucked in a ball around her bag as she surrendered to the pull of her devils.

  The empty halls of her school. The broken mirror and its shards that sliced into her. The blood, everywhere.

  Selena opened her hand and looked at the thin scar between her thumb and forefinger, then bent her head to her knees and cried.

  How little she’d understood about the world in those days, about human males, about power and justice, about how little control anyone had in their lives.

  It was why she’d started cutting herself.

  Cutting was wrong. All the shrinks had said so—all but one. He’d said it was an outlet, not a healthy one, but an outlet nonetheless. He’d worked with her to find other healthier outlets, but time and again, she’d gone back to cutting herself.

  It was the one thing, the only thing, she could control.

  But she wondered now if she really did have control over her urges to slice into herself. If it was an urge, was any control involved at all?

  She shoved the bag away from herself, but still stared at it, craving the release it offered. She could cut herself. No one here would know. One small bar. And as long as she kept Bastion out of her head, he wouldn’t know either.

  Only she decided if and when to cut. She controlled that. Maybe only that, but it was entirely, and only, up to her.

  She’d used different instruments over the years, but once she joined the Army, she hadn’t wanted her secret habit to be mix with any of her service weapons. Whenever she saw her cutting tool, she’d start yearning for the relief it promised, and she didn’t want her head clogged with craving when her mind needed focus at work. That was when she bought her first box cutter, a tool she never used on the job.

  She stood and set the bag on the counter, then stripped in front of the mirror. She shut her eyes and put all of her attention on insulating herself from Bastion’s incursions. When she felt as if she’d adequately blocked him, she turned the lights on and glanced at her body, hating the curves of her breasts and their tight, upturned nipples. Her frequent workouts made her midsection taut, her waist thin, all of which made her hips too wide.

  While on active duty in the Army, she’d had to time her secret habit so that her wounds were healed by the time she went for her annual physicals, which, of course, had defeated the purpose anyway.

  The Army had taken control of her body from her.

  But it was hers now. She was free to give herself the relief she needed; even if it only lasted a few spare minutes, it was relief. Pure, beautiful relief.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. The cuts on the side of her left breast were still scabbed. She shouldn’t cut herself again so soon.

  Control. That was what this was about. She knew it. She’d joined a support group her senior year in high school. It had been fully anonymous, so no one knew her name or where she went to school. They weren’t allowed to talk about personally identifying details. They’d even had to anonymize relationships or assault details so they could be discussed freely without fear of being outed.

  It had helped. For a time.

  Her assault had been twelve years ago, when she was fourteen. She hadn’t told anyone she’d been raped by two guys, not that support group, not Ace, not even Greer, when he found out about her connection to the Omnis. Her parents knew—those details had been discovered when she underwent a physical examination that day.

  She looked at her disgusting body. Men wanted it. They’d wanted it when she was only fourteen. She should have cleaned herself up that day, explained away all the broken glass in the girls’ bathroom with a lie like she’d had a seizure and had fallen into the mirror then onto the glass. That would have explained all the blood.

  But it wouldn’t have explained the physical evidence the boys had left on and in her body.

  Her schoolmates had taunted her after that. Not knowing the facts of what happened to her, they’d called her Carrie, from the horror flick. She’d been bleeding all over, where her face had been smashed into the mirror, from the small nicks that seeped through her tee, from between her legs, from her sliced-up hand. They spray-painted “Carrie” all over her locker.

  Her parents had filed suits against her attackers, their families, and the school. Somehow, that glob of flesh she’d cut from one of the boys and had handed over had gone missing. And then the DNA evidence from her rape kit had been mishandled in its processing.

  It had devolved into a he said/she said. The judge dismissed the case.

  The principal asked her parents to send her to a different school. But it didn’t matter. Not at that point, anyway, not when so much else was crumbling in their lives. Her father had lost his job by then, and the whole town seemed to turn on all of them. They’d made the decision to move to a new state and start over—the first of many such changes.

  She’d ruined her parents’ lives. Her life.

  She went to the shower and stepped into the cold water, standing still until the heat came in.

  She should have died that day.

  She wished she had.

  And now she might be facing that same horror all over again. So what had happened that night she cut herself? Had Bastion raped her? She touched her stomach, wondering if she was pregnant. Could a mutant impregnate a human?

  No way to know yet, at least not without a trip to a doctor. That wasn’t going to happen.

  She shoved her toiletries bag into a drawer, then turned on the shower and stepped into the water, not waiting for it to warm up. She bent her head and closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t have to keep revisiting the same nightmare.

  It was terrible that something she hated had framed her entire life.

  17

  Selena was sick to death of hiding in her room, only venturing out at night to snag something to eat when she thought no one else would be around.

  Tonight, she’d showered and dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a sweater. Even though Spencer was forbidden from bringing her food, he still took her laundry away…and brought her a snack every afternoon with her wash neatly folded, both of which he left outside her door.

  If anything, it was he who kept her feeling somewhat sane in this weird limbo state she was in.

  There’d been no word on any progress toward fighting Bastion and his Legion. For all Selena knew, this was the new normal of her life—Nick had been right. She couldn’t hide in the closet forever.

  She started down the wide stone staircase in the main tower. Halfway down, she sat on a step. As much as she could tell, the mansion was shaped like a V, with towers at all three end points, the biggest of which being the one she was in. Paintings covered the walls, going up two oversized floors. Here and there, peeking out from behind some of the art, were darker patches of paint, as if the art had recently been rearranged.

  She wondered what was missing.

  Jax came into the big foyer. He was wearing a slim blue suit, a pale blue dress shirt, a patterned blue silk tie, and a complementary pocket square. He looked up at her and tugged his cuffs. His broad shoulders made the suit. The man was a tailor’s dream.

  “Selena,” he said, nodding at her.

  “Jax.”

  “Are you coming down?”

  “I don’t know. Thought I’d sit here for a while.”

 
; “There are more comfortable places to sit in the salon.”

  “Maybe I don’t feel like committing.”

  Jax grinned as he leaned against the wall. “Committing to comfort?”

  “To anything. You’re dressed for dinner.”

  “It’s what civilized people do, no?”

  “We didn’t at Blade’s place. I don’t have anything to wear”—she pulled at her sweater—“that’s not like this. I had to pack fast.”

  “Would you like me to order some outfits for you?”

  “Do you shop where Val shops?” Selena asked, thinking of her teammate back at their headquarters who seemed to know every haute couture boutique in the U.S. Maybe the world. If he ever stopped being a sniper, he’d have a lucrative career shopping for wealthy women.

  “I don’t shop,” Jax said. “I have shoppers.”

  Of course. “Well, thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Too much of a commitment?”

  “Way too much.” She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her hands. “I don’t plan on staying here long, so you’ll just have to put up with my civvies.”

  “The length of your stay hasn’t been determined.”

  “Shit, now you sound like Owen.” Selena’s boss had a cold and determined way about him that few dared run afoul of.

  “Need I remind you that there’s a mutant stalking you?” Jax asked. “Where were you thinking of heading?”

  “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

  “When your mutant’s been contained, we’ll let you know what happens next.”

  Nick, Selena’s other handler, popped his head out of the blue salon. “Having supper on the stairs, are we?”

  “No,” Selena and Jax said simultaneously.

  Nick held up a glass with an amber-colored liquid. “My daughter-in-law stocks Balcones.” He smiled, pleased with that discovery. “Want a glass?”

  Jax nodded.

  “Run along, you two,” Selena said. “I’m not done thinking.”