The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

  The Human never so much as glanced at Amelia the way someone with any sense of empathy would do. Stephen couldn’t take his eyes off her—she was an image burnt into his mind now; the broken tips of her wings glistened with a dark hue, snapped and splintered bones stuck out. He was glad she hadn’t felt Lee do that to her—she was free now, free to fly to wherever the hell she wanted.

  When the elevator arrived, Stephen and Joey boarded it along with the Human, and the man hit the button B.

  “When you die, I hope it is painful. I hope you cry for your mother.” Stephen stepped closer to Human. “If it is by my hands, I will even make your mother watch.”

  The doors opened into a dark cavern. B for basement, Stephen supposed. It was dark enough, although not so dark that it was impossible to see. There was light ahead, and someone had a radio playing.

  “A job?” an older looking man asked as they approached. He wore a boiler suit that hung from his slender frame. His hair was missing from the middle of his head, and there was a mixture of black and white wires that stuck up from his scalp. His fingers were stained black, and his nails were caked in whatever … Stephen was sure he didn't even want to know. He had a desk, and there were three computers on it.

  “Yeah, this one tried to escape.” He laughed when he said it and then reached into his top pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He tapped it and pulled one out. “Not that she got very far. You’d think they’d know better by now.”

  The boiler-suit Human shoved a piece of gum into his mouth. “I’d kill them all if it were me.” He screwed the wrapper up and threw it into the rubbish bin next to his desk, then he leaned down and typed something into his computer and pressed enter. “Hey, did you catch the race this weekend? Fucking Nurgger. I swear, they should suspend that guy.”

  The Human pushed the trolley to the table, and when it was lined up, he kicked the brake on. “I know, right? Did you see the thing at the end where they interviewed him? He was so pissed. I swear to God he was more tanked up than an alchy at a meeting.”

  If Stephen’s jaw dropped any harder, they would have heard it, and then they would have shit themselves to realise he was standing right behind them. Escape? That was what they called it? From where he stood, it hadn’t looked that way to him. He wasn’t sure escape was how he would describe being dragged from her cage and murdered.

  “Wow, I did wrong when I left the bus.” He could have got part way out like Amelia had and then they would come, and he would have killed him. "Next time," he promised himself. Killing Lee brought light to his heart just to think about it, but then he saw her there again, and his heart leapt into his throat and passed any desires for murder. Lee could wait, not for long. They could not be allowed to do this again.

  Boiler-suit Human went to the trolley, and he had a small knife in his hand. It was dirty and stained and no doubt highly unhygienic. Stephen frowned, unsure at first what the Human’s intentions were.

  The Human who had brought her down puffed on a cigarette and got himself out of the way to let the boiler-suit Human do his job. He pushed her completely onto her stomach, lifted her gown and then pushed his blade into her back and flicked the tip to force out a small, back pill. He took it to one of the computers and put it under what seemed like a supermarket scanner. The screen lit up with Amelia's details, and absent-mindedly Stephen ran fingers over the tattoo the Humans had put on his wrist.

  A moment later Amelia’s picture flicked up on the screen, a few actually. Some of them had been taken when she was a baby, some when she was a toddler, and then there were pictures of her as Stephen had seen her in the cage. She’d been in that cage almost all her life, and that hurt his heart more than anything else. She had been alone, alone and locked up. “You bastards. You absolute fucking arseholes.”

  Further down the page under her general biographical information and her doctor's details was a column titled designation. Under that, her’s read ‘flight’. Stephen could only guess that it was something related to what she was, something that could fly … how imaginative of them.

  “Created by Dr Miller. Mengele Project,” was stamped across the bottom of the scanned document and then it had the signatures and handwritten notes. Stephen had no idea who Dr Miller was, or what the Mengele project was, nor did he care. What struck him the most, and perhaps bothered him even more, was the created part. The word blinked at him as a beacon that made bile rise in his throat.

  Created.

  "Oh, Jesus." Realisation dawned on him like a slowly sinking cold penny that started at the top of his head and went all the way down his spine. His own children. They had been extracted from him and created in the test tube and then implanted into Helena. She was then treated and given the series of drugs so they could have every function the Humans wanted. “It wasn’t just me who was going to die at the end of that bus journey, was it?" He glanced down at the boy, not that he expected any answers, but he just needed somebody to say it too as he untangled it all in his mind. They would kill Helena too when they got the children.

  “I will kill you all.”

  There were more pictures in the girl’s file, her parents, but they had numbers and no name.

  The boiler-suit Human stripped the torn dress from the girl and tossed it toward a barrel Stephen hadn’t noticed at first. Her rags weren’t the only ones, and some of the others had missed the pile and lay haphazardly on the floor. There were clothes of different sizes strewn across the place, and one shoe—dusty and blue, and three inches long.

  Without so much thought, boiler-suit Human pulled on thick and heavy gloves to cover his delicate fucking hands. He went over to the thick steel door in the middle of the wall and opened it; it was an oven, a fire pit. There were no emotions across his face when he picked up Amelia’s body and tossed her into the flames. In fact, he and the other Human continued talking about the race last night. They laughed at their own jokes and nodded at each.

  Back at the computer, he typed the word ‘terminated’ across her file, closed it and then dropped it into a folder on his desktop.

  Images of Nikita came into Stephen’s mind. He had met her; he had held her, and he almost choked now at the thought of Norton getting anywhere near to her and her brother. Lee would die first.

  As he went to leave, his eyes caught sight of the little black pill on the table, and, as his memories tried to dig through the many things that had happened while he was held captive, he ran his hand over his own back. There was a piece of skin, it was smooth now, as smooth as the rest of him, but he pushed his fingers in, vaguely remembering a wound there at some point. There was a lump. Under his skin.

  Shit.

  Chapter 23

  When Stephen opened his eyes, at least it felt like he opened his eyes, he wasn’t sure what it was really, more like a blink in his consciousness—like he'd been daydreaming and suddenly come out of it, and then he found himself somewhere else, doing something else. He couldn’t even remember what it was he’d been doing. There was a fog in his mind, and it was thick and heavy and grey, was that anything he’d seen in real form? It held him down with smoke-filled limbs as he stumbled out into the darkness.

  Norton’s … that was where he was, outside the main facility. It was darker than when he had come earlier. Most of the cars were gone from the car park. A few dotted around the place, but then this was a 24-hour building. Subjects—victims, he corrected himself, needed guarding in case they attempted escape. Stephen kept himself in the shadows of nothing and stared into the darkness. Lee's car was gone. Joey was gone, and somewhere deep inside himself, so was he.

  Not knowing which way to go, and only the image of Helena in his head, Stephen stumbled through the darkness. He had to get to her. If he gave up … if she gave up, it was all over. The Humans would win, and no one would be left to fight for the Others’ race. He let out a frustrated growl, bordering on animal as he pushed himself on. He was a hunter. He was not prey that would lay down in the dirt
and just take it. No. He walked, and if he fell, if he got lost, he would get back up. Every path he took, took him to the next one and the next, and in the end, he found his way home.

  Staggering, he almost fell to his knees and let out a relieved growl at the sight of the house. It was undisturbed and unhurt.

  “Thank god.”

  Rubbing his back again, he felt across the smooth skin and arched a little to push the tips of his fingers in to find the black pill. Maybe it didn’t work because he wasn’t in his real body? The more he pressed, the more he was damn sure it was there … it was everywhere … every bump, every lump and every mark.

  “It’s just a pill.” Stephen sucked in a breath and stared steadily at the house. The fact that the house was secure and there was no sign of the Humans, meant Lee didn’t know about this place. He couldn’t. If he had known, he would have been there straightaway, to take what he believed he owned. A man like Lee was not one for patience, but the black pill … it couldn’t be a tracker. If it were, the Humans would have been all over them by now.

  “Missed a trick there, didn’t you?”

  Letting his body rest awhile, Stephen sat on the bottom step. Helena was there. He could almost feel her. She had a connection to him in some way. He wasn’t sure how they were connected, but he was sure it wasn’t in the same way that Cade connected to people. Most shifters had secondary powers—abilities, but not all. Cade had the potential to link through minds. He could do it so well, over distances too. He described it as having a plain white room in his head where he went and found the person he was trying to connect to. It worked two ways, too. If Cade had already made that connection at some point, it was a way to get a message to him if needed, like the channel was always open.

  Just thinking about it made Stephen put himself into that room in his mind. It created a yearning in him, a need to reach across the waters to his friend and tell him he was alive.

  As much as his mind screamed at him to make the full connection, he kept himself on the edge, hiding. It would be too dangerous to let Cade know what happened. It would be too dangerous for Gemma too because she would come looking for her brother, and as much as Stephen wanted that … as much as he missed her, he knew she was better believing he was gone.

  Closing his eyes, Stephen allowed himself to open that part of his mind only slightly. He never felt so lost in everything. He wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t this person who didn’t know what to do, and he certainly wasn’t used to being so damn helpless.

  “Cade …” he said in his own mind, his voice a whisper as if he could breathe the word out. It wasn’t hard to find Cade. He was there, as always, except this time he was on his knees, literally on his knees with his head down. Stephen pressed himself into the shadow of his own mind, so he was out of sight, the suffocating weight coming from Cade reached out to him. “Cade?” He dared to whisper his name, not enough that they might connect, but enough that he would know he was there.

  “I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  Stephen did the only thing that came naturally to him, and he knelt in front of his friend, unseen and unheard. He peeked at the pieces of his old life, Stephen Davies, not Nicholas Mason, and shook his head because there were so much sadness and sorrow at home too. Cade had to be the strong one now. He silently reached out to him. “Don’t you dare give up.”

  With those words, Cade raised his eyes, and for a brief second, they locked gazes. Stephen's heart jackhammered as he gasped and yanked himself back from the place in his mind and away from everything he’d lost. His own words were an echo on his lips, and his heart pounded so wildly in his chest at the sight of his friend.

  Shit.

  He cursed out a reprimand at his own selfish stupidity. He shouldn't have gone to that place, should never have reached for him. Stephen could only hope Cade would brush that connection was nothing more than a mere memory, but some part of Stephen wished he knew.

  Don’t you dare give up.

  And that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? Not just for Cade, to know what he was going through, but for himself too … for him and Helena.

  Fuck.

  Making himself stand, the heaviness of his heart tried to pull him back down, but he refused. “I am Stephen Davies." He pressed his fist against his chest and stood firm. "I can do this. I swear to fucking god, I can.” His voice was a deep, growled-out promise, but he needed it. He needed a good kick in the backside to stop his self-pity and a reminder for what he was fighting for.

  When he got into the house, it was no surprise to see Joey. He gave Stephen an acknowledging smile and then went back to sitting by his father. He seemed content just to do that. Xander was sitting on the sofa at the coffee table with the book spread out before him again. He was scribbling something, stopping to read and then taking more notes. He didn’t look old enough to be Joey’s father, but there was no denying it.

  When he found Helena, she was lying on the bed again. She had got changed, and she'd moved her bed even closer to his, and the machines were on the other side and out of the way. She held his hand, and there was a cushion under her belly. Her other hand rested across the most swollen part. She was so peaceful, so perfect … his.

  He moved so he could be as close as possible to her, and he swore with every part of himself that he could feel her. She was a warm buzz against his skin … a presence that invaded his senses, and yet, when he went in and inhaled, there was nothing.

  “I miss you so damn much.”

  Maybe she didn't realise, but between both hands, she was holding everything that meant the world to her. She was holding everything that meant the world to him too. He had to throw off his mental seals before he lost it at the unfairness of everything.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll find a way to fix this … all this.”

  The machine bleeped just the same next to his stupid and useless body. He stared at it for a long time as if doing so might just give him answers on how to get back into it. He would too, the idea of being captured, of his children being caged … God. She had to know what she was fighting for. She had to understand what she was saving them from because if Lee ever got hold of them, they'd never see those children again. He was confident of that.

  Not too much later, Eden came into the room. She was getting ready to take more blood. There was a bag hanging near Helena. She must have had all that Eden had taken so far, and that was okay. He wanted her to take it. He wanted her to do whatever she needed to be strong.

  Stephen nodded as Eden pushed the needle into his arm to draw blood. As the breath went out of him and peace washed over him, he sat back near to Helena. This would pass. He just needed to live long enough to come out of the other side.

  Chapter 24

  Stephen rolled onto his back, letting his arms flop at either side. He stared up at the ceiling and at the low-level bulb that gave out a soft yellow glow. It wasn’t like at Helena’s clinic, where he had first met her, with the bright white lights and the oddly comforting feeling he had got from them. No. This was more warming, more like home than a clinical environment.

  The machine attached to his body was almost a white noise now. He could only hear it if he bothered to tune in and when he did, the sound coming from it matched that with the pace of his own beating heart. Somehow, he was still connected to himself. Maybe that was a good thing … or perhaps not.

  When he pushed himself, so he was sitting upright, he was glad the sway of his body had gone, and the turn in his stomach had vanished to nothing more than a blip on his radar. He lifted his legs, bringing his knees up so he could rest both elbows on them, and then he let his head sag down between them, and ran his hands through his dark hair as if he might find the answers if he waited just a little longer.

  Then he realised, Helena was not on the bed. In fact, no one else was in the room with him. As his brain woke up more, he realised sounds were coming from the floor above … laughter, chatter, the sound o
f normalcy … the very sound his entire body yearned for. He gave himself a moment for those sounds to wash over him and calm the mind that could only see Amelia and her other broken companions.

  By the time he got to the stairs in the hallway, Stephen was ready to roll back and sit again. Shit. It shouldn't have been this hard. He had recovered, but not entirely. He sucked in a breath and made himself stand. Each step was like wading through water with concrete in his shoes, but he was not giving up. No. He took a step, and then another. The sounds above him, in the rooms, in the house … they were home, and they were his battle cry. He ground his jaw and pushed himself, holding onto the laughter that filled the air. He needed this.

  His senses were off, though. When he got to the top of the stairs, he thought they were in the room at the back, but they were in a larger room at the front, one that overlooked the street below. It was bright, spacious. The sight of them all brought a swell to Stephen's heart. They were stripping the walls. The sorrow in his heart took the feet from under him when he realised what they were doing. They were making a room for the babies … for his children.

  He blinked away his emotions. He had never dreamt he would be a father. He never thought he would be a husband. His entire life he had trained to take his father's place one day. He was a fighter, a soldier. Out in the wars, out fighting for what Society believed in, he could do that. But this … biting back his emotions, he let out a breath. This was supposed to be his job … his.

  Helena was propped on a stool as she casually rolled a paint-roller across the wall. Aiden was down, crouched near the bottom of another wall. Not that he was much help unless by help it meant Helena had asked him to write across the wall and decorate it with handprints. Maybe they could leave those there, his own little mark on the world … the marks of a big brother.

  While Stephen could appreciate the young boy’s unique decorations, he wasn’t so sure Helena would be as keen. Perhaps she would paint over them later. Although, she didn’t seem to mind. A slight smile played on her lips as she watched him. He had more paint on himself than he did on the walls, but then again, Stephen thought, wasn’t that the fun of it?