Daughters of Death (Postmortem Anomalies Book 2)

by Josiah Upton

  “I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with that!” Tran pleads. “You have to believe me!”

  “I don’t!” Caesar leans forward to scream. “You made a stronger pill, and Schutzhorne had it given to Rigg while he was in the Lock, because he knew at some point my father was going to open up his cell for a monthly audit. And when that happened, Rigg would be so uncontrollable that even a shock or entire mag of bullets to his body wouldn’t put him down. He just sent me in to retrieve Rigg, Ice Princess and the other Brains, to speed up the plan. And now my dad is dead.”

  “Why?” I ask. I catch Zaul’s gaze out of the corner of my eye. He must finally realize that I knew what he and Alice were doing in that room, because there’s a look of guilt and remorse on his face. I can’t deal with it right now, though. I also make brief eye contact with Alice, and get the sudden urge to smack her right in that mouth she used to kiss him. She must feel my Rage, because she looks away.

  I bring my focus back to the discussion that I’m surprised Caesar is allowing me to join. “Why would Schutzhorne want that?”

  “To make the containment system look faulty, and in need of shutting down. What better way to do that, than a perma-Lock Ugger coming out of his cell and killing the Director?” Caesar presses the gun harder against Tran’s head. “That was the plan, right?”

  “Okay, okay!” Tran yelps. “It’s true! He wants to dismember all forms of guardianship and containment, so that every Hybrid will be under the direct control of the APA headquarters. But I swear, I didn’t know he was going to use my formula to have Rigg kill your father! Not until after I made it for him! And I didn’t know it was going to be today!”

  “That doesn’t un-murder my dad!” Caesar yells. He quickly shoves the pill into Tran’s open mouth, but he spits it out frantically.

  “Are you crazy?” he screams. If he has to ask that, he obviously doesn’t know Caesar very well. Tran picks up the pill, pointing at it with his other hand. “We’ve never done human trials! This could have killed me!” He shakes his head, and puts the pill in his lab coat pocket.

  “Well, we don’t want that,” Caesar says. “The only reason you’re not dead yet, is because I might need you, too.”

  “He wants to dismember all forms of guardianship,” I say, echoing Tran’s words. “He had you kill my father, but wanted to pin it on me, to show that the guardianship program was flawed, and shut that down too… didn’t he?”

  “Genny,” Zaul interrupts, the hint of a question in his voice.

  Regardless of how wounded I feel, it has been so long since I’ve heard his voice that the sound of it demands that I look at him. My heart stops, then pumps with anxiety. I didn’t know I could hate and love someone so much at the same time. I meet his eyes for only a second. I can’t handle the gaze, so I look down.

  “Caesar killed your father?” he asks.

  I don’t speak. The first tear to escape my eyes answers for me.

  Zaul’s face hardens like stone, and he turns his wrath toward Caesar. “I will kill you. I will kill you!”

  The two larger males hold him back by the arms, and the smaller one gets in front to push against his chest. It takes all of their strength to restrain him, as he grunts and howls, shouting barely intelligible threats at Caesar. I’ve never seen this side of him before.

  “I didn’t want to kill her old man!” Caesar shouts. “But seeing what it’s done to you, Zaul, I’d gladly do it all over again. Serves you right for ratting on me to my Dad. Because of you, he’s dead!”

  “Liar!” Zaul screams. “Liar!”

  Caesar approaches Zaul slowly, confidently. Surrounding officers raise their remotes, but he pushes them down. I’m convinced this man wants to die. He starts counting down a chain reaction of events on his fingers. “You rat on me. I’m put in the Lock. Schutzhorne gets me out. He has me kill Gordy in exchange. His daughter runs and hides in here. Schutzhorne sends me to get her and all the other Brains. Rigg gets out. Rigg kills my dad.... You killed Robert Ortega. And I don’t really give a shit, but Gordy’s blood is on you, too.”

  He’s stopped two feet from Zaul, a mere lunge away from getting his face bitten off. But Zaul doesn’t go for it. He’s slumped down in the arms of the other Hybrids, his face heavy with thought. He’s starting to believe that he’s responsible for two deaths.

  “Your assumption of blame is grossly deficient,” Dr. Tran speaks up. “As is your sense of cause and effect. There were many more variables to the situation than that. And though I didn’t know the exact how or when of Schutzhorne’s plan, I’m afraid to say these deaths were inevitable. It didn’t matter what you or Zaul or anyone else did. You were all pawns, and the endgame was always complete control of containees.”

  “But why?” I ask. “Why so much death, just to get all the Hybrids in his henhouse?”

  “A few days ago, Tran showed the Brains Club a video from Schutzhorne,” the older female says. “His plan is to recruit containees into a Hybrid military force for the United State of America. Getting all Hybrids under his control would make that happen much more easily.”

  “Military?” Caesar asks, looking at everyone. All the members of the Brains Club, even the bleeding 1731, nod in agreement. He turns to Tran. “You want to put Uggers in the military? After my Grandad fought the Sludge, tooth and nail, until the very end of The End?”

  I can’t help but chuckle, hearing that lie again. I may not know exactly what happened 100 years ago, but it certainly isn’t the deluded fairy tale that Caesar has about his grandfather. “Don’t try to defend the honor of the USNA military, Caesar. Your Grandad was just as much a pawn as everyone else.”

  He moves the gun from Tran to me. “What did you say, Ice Bitch? Do you wanna die right now?!?”

  Zaul reacts, back on his feet and charging toward Caesar. This time he breaks away from the other males, but the officer behind hits him with a shock. Alice screams and attacks, and she is shocked too. The other Hybrids start shouting, along with the officers spitting threats, until everyone is screaming at each other.

  What stops it all is Krecker’s shooting several rifle rounds into the air. “Hey!” he screams, holding up Tran’s electronic pad. “Incoming call from Schutzhorne.”

  Caesar sneers at me, then snatches the pad and answers the call. Schutzhorne’s eerie face pops up. “Tran, are you…” He’s cut short when he sees that Caesar is on the other end. He clears his throat. “Ortega. How unexpected. I trust that Dr. Tran is nearby?”

  “He is,” Caesar answers, pointing the pad in the doctor’s direction, then rotating to show me and the other Hybrids. “Along with Ice Princess and all the other Brains Club members.” He points it back to himself. “But unfortunately, Benjamin Rigg couldn’t join us. His skull was pumped full of my bullets, right after Tran’s new and improved formula caused him to rip my father’s head from his neck in the Lock. But I guess we won’t need a Containment Director, after the entire containment system is recycled into an Ugger army.”

  Schutzhorne’s face grows sterner. “Then I suppose we’ll dispense with the pleasantries. Return Geneva Grest and the Higher Functioning Hybrids to the Lock within ten minutes, or you will be regarded as hostile terrorists to the United State. I will track you down within these walls and neutralize you with extreme prejudice. The Director and everyone else in New York won’t give a second thought to my actions. It will be deemed the very definition of necessary.”

  “You don’t get to make orders,” Caesar says, pointing to the screen. “I have what you want, and nothing to lose. You made sure of that when you killed Robert Elizondo Ortega.”

  “I still have an eye on the rest of your family,” Schutzhorne says. “Remember the little chat we had?”

  “You’ll just kill them anyway,” Caesar retorts. “I’ll bet you’ve already done it. You have no honor, you sick sack of…”

  “In any case,” Schutzhorne interrupts, “you’ll need to come to the Lock. There’s nowhere els
e to go.”

  “That’s right,” Caesar says. “But don’t worry. I’m coming right for you.”

  He turns off the tablet, and tosses it to Krecker. “New plan, Uggers,” he says, walking toward the Rec’s double doors. “The Hybrid that separates the Assistant Director from his agents and brings him to me gets a free pass. The rest of you get the privilege of dying all over again.”

  Chapter 45

  Zaul

  “Don’t worry about me, Zaul,” Opha says with wheezing gasps, supporting herself on Quinn’s shoulder. “I’ve only just been shot.” Her eyes gaze down the neck of her blood-stained uniform, for the tenth time since we left the Rec. She sighs. “Right through the boob, too. You lost your chance at the perfect Ugger set.”

  “I’d be more concerned about your punctured lung,” Quinn comments. “Fortunately, your Hybrid body has kept it from collapsing and killing you. Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped you from talking.”

  I merely glance at them from the corner of my vision. I’ve taken her advice to not worry about her. I witnessed Jensen getting a shotgun blast to both lungs and his heart, and he still kept coming. The miraculous anatomy of the Hybrid Reanimate. She’ll survive. I have bigger problems anyway, like wondering how we’re all going to make it out of here alive.

  And dealing with the other two females in the hall.

  Fifteen officers surround us, with guns pointed our direction, and another holding his belt remote. Caesar picked up every other officer he could find, male and female, along the way to the Lock. And it was either their loyalty, or the threat of a bullet for treachery, that bid them to join his ranks.

  “Why is that necessary?” I overhear Krecker ask Caesar, standing next to the door outside of the Lock. “It’s only going to make things more chaotic.”

  This is the first time I’ve seen Krecker since the day he helped Caesar torture me in the kitchen. Robert Ortega must have let him come back. But now Robert’s dead, along with Rigg. And Caesar and his men are about to lead us into a room where Schutzhorne and more agents with more guns await. A lot has happened today.

  “Just tell me,” Caesar says, his posture stiff and his pupils constricted. “Can you make it happen?”

  I hate him as much as I ever have. Especially after I learned he murdered Gordon, and was going to blame it on Genny. And then, he tried to convince me I was ultimately responsible. I’d rather just kill him now, and die right here, before we land in Schutzhorne’s clutches, and become his military slaves. End our pathetic excuses for existence – both undead Hybrid and hateful human – once and for all.

  But that won’t let me make peace with Genny.

  She knows what Alice and I were doing in the Lust Lounge. Somehow she saw it, because she hasn’t spoken to me since, or held my gaze longer than a moment. Not even when I asked about her father.

  She hates me, which in an ironic twist proves that she really did love me. And though it doesn’t explain her and Dalton’s kiss, it means I was wrong to believe Caesar’s lie about her letter. It’s all a giant, Rage-provoking mess. But I have to say something to her, before it’s too late.

  “Genny,” I utter quietly, eyeing the officers. They don’t seem to mind us talking, as long as we don’t move. She doesn’t look at me, but I know she’s listening. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” she asks, still staring forward. “That my father died, or what you were doing in that room?”

  I swallow loud enough to get an officer’s attention. His face tightens, along with the grip on his rifle.

  “Don’t apologize,” Genny says. “For either one.”

  “I saw you in the Lock, four days ago. With Dalton,” I say in a low voice. Feelings rise as I remember the moment, and all eyes of the Brains Club are on me. “I saw the kiss.”

  “So you knew I was here,” she begins. “You knew something had happened to my dad’s guardianship of me, and your response was to sleep with this girl?”

  Her words feel like a knife to the chest. After I had witnessed her and Dalton, all I could think about was my own pain, and doing whatever it took to numb it. My only thoughts towards her were of betrayal and revenge. I didn’t stop to consider what was happening to her, or that her world had fallen apart.

  “Don’t talk about me like that,” Alice says, and I groan. I’ve been dreading the moment these two finally engage one another. “I’m not some homewrecking fling. It was clear he loved you, but you threw him away. He accepted my invitation to that room after he saw that kiss.”

  “With a meat sack named Dalton,” Rich says. “What kind of dumb name is that?”

  “I had just seen my father get murdered,” Genny says coldly. “I was about to get locked up in a little box, not knowing when I was going to get out, and Dalton was just… there. I had only been a Hybrid for ten days, and the Lust was strong. I didn’t know how to handle it. It was a moment of weakness that I definitely regret.”

  “Hold on a second,” Opha interrupts, hobbling towards Genny. “Don’t you dare use Lust as an excuse. You don’t get to do that.”

  “Ophelia…” Quinn says with a warning.

  “Look at her,” Opha continues. “Beautiful hair and skin. Hybrid for less than two weeks, and you’re already talking. Kissing humans. And you actually remember your life from before? You’re not a Hybrid. You didn’t wake up alone, wondering who you were or what was going on. You’re not one of us, so don’t even pretend to be. Zaul deserves a real Hybrid woman.”

  Genny looks to me. “Who is this? Another one of your girlfriends? I guess you just couldn’t help yourself. It’s like a bang-buffet in here.”

  “There’s nothing going on between us,” I explain. I can’t believe I have to. “There never was.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Opha snaps. “I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

  “Oh, please,” Ezra says. “You think that about everybody. If you got to Hunger Hall, you’d probably believe the pig wanted you.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Genny says. “If I’m not a Hybrid, why don’t you just eat me!?”

  “Is that an invitation?” Walt says with a smile, and high-fives Rich as the two chuckle. Opha turns and punches him in the shoulder. He stops laughing and returns the blow, right next to her gunshot. She screams in pain and frustration.

  Everyone starts arguing around me, throwing insults and accusations, and an occasional punch. The officers do nothing, except take steps back to make room for the growing commotion. And instead of making peace with Genny, I’ve only managed to make her hate me more, and the rest of my friends angry at each other. It’s too much for me to handle. My Rage escapes as I roar at the top of my lungs.

  Caesar stops what he’s doing, grabs the remote from the nearest officer and sends all of the Brains Club to the ground with a rapid shock. “SHUT UP!” he screams, pointing his pistol at each of us. After fifteen seconds of tense silence, he resumes his discussion with Krecker.

  I look up at Genny, who is still standing. I observe the way she looks, so different on the outside now, yet who she is on the inside is almost exactly the same as before her transformation. Considering my actions today, I’m the one who has changed. I lost that humanity she told me to hold onto, and I’ve lost her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “For everything. I didn’t keep my promise.”

  Moisture forms around her eyes. Hybrid Reanimates can’t cry, but apparently she can. “I didn’t keep mine, either. I tried as hard as I could to get you out, but I only managed to get myself stuck in here too.” She wipes her eyes. “Did you read my letter?”

  “I didn’t get the chance. Caesar destroyed it.” I hesitate, afraid to confirm the one thing that has sent me on a spiral of destructive decisions. “What did it say?”

  Genny smiles, that same smile that she hid so often, yet filled me with light and warmth whenever she let it shine. That’s one thing her blue skin hasn’t changed. “Everything you wanted it to say. I promise.”

  By the doo
r, Krecker nods in agreement with Caesar. Their conversation is up. “I guess this is the end,” I say. I look around at the other Hybrid faces on the floor, unlikely friends that I’ve made during my short time here. And in Alice, something much more. What we almost had, could never have been, and never will be after today. If there is anything after today. The look on her face tells me she knows this too.

  I stand up, and the rest follow my lead. “Is the Brains Club ready for one last meeting?”

  Walt and Rich slowly raise their fist. Then Ezra, and Opha and Quinn, and finally Alice. I raise mine last.

  “What’s going on?” Genny asks. “Is this some sort of thing?”

  “Raise your hand, Ice Princess,” Opha says. “You’re one of us. Just for today.”

  “I really hate that name,” Genny says, her fist reluctantly rising.

  “Too bad,” Opha retorts.

  “Ready?” Ezra asks. “Brains Club on three. One, two…”

  “Shut up,” Caesar barks again, walking back to us. “It’s showtime, Uggers. I want Zaul and Genny at the front, with Tran. If Schutzhorne is gonna start shooting, his prized posessions will be the first to go down.”

  “You’re using me as a shield?” Tran asks.

  Caesar smiles, and uses his pistol to wave him towards the Lock door. Genny and I take our place next to him. Caesar nods to Krecker, who swipes through text and buttons on Robert Ortega’s blood-stained tablet. A moment later, I hear muffled music blaring from within the Lock.

  “What is that?” Genny asks.

  “Purge On, by Gerald’s Genocide,” Caesar answers with a sense of pride. “I think of it as my own personal anthem. I’ve started every shift with this for the last thirty-one years. Gets my head in the game. Preps me to deal some justice, and keep all you sick bastards in line.”

  “We’ve been spared that in the Fem-Com,” Quinn remarks. “I don’t envy you guys one bit.”