Royal Replicas 2: Royal Captives

by Michael Pierce

  Noise came from another corner of the room. Four shabby and dirty-looking people were gathered around a square, wooden table. One of them appeared to have my cell phone, and the man was staring intently at the lit screen. A small wad of cash was strewn about on the table and I assumed that was also mine, the remainder of what Lady Ramsey had given me before leaving for the 1st Ward.

  Of the four strangers sitting around the table, one was a woman—and she looked oddly familiar. It didn’t take long, even with fighting the dissipating fogginess, to realize she’d been the woman I’d been trying to help by the fence. I felt incredibly stupid and naïve.

  “Oh, lookee here, it seems our little princess is finally awake,” the woman at the table said. It sounded like her voice was still raw from crying and screaming last night, but maybe her voice just had a natural raspiness. She got up from the table and ambled over to me. She had cleaned up her face, and potentially her hair, but her shabby clothing remained the same. She smiled, revealing the gaps I remembered from the night before, though I didn’t remember her face looking so rodent-like.

  I wanted to say something, but the gag didn’t allow for much more than a groan.

  “She’s going to bring us a lot more than the nomad tribes,” one of the men said from the table. He picked up a newspaper and followed the woman over to my confined corner of the cabin. “Little lady, you’re going to make us rich,” he said and stuck the front page of the newspaper in my face.

  And there I was on the train with Kale and Prince Byron. The picture was black and white and grainy, but to me it was unmistakable. But…

  I groaned more, trying to speak. The woman sighed and pulled the gag out of my mouth.

  “You think I’m Princess Amelia?” I asked. “No, no, no. You’re terribly mistaken. I’ve heard the reports and seen the pictures myself. I can see where her appearance does resemble mine a little bit. But that’s definitely not me.”

  The woman ripped the newspaper from the man’s hand and shoved it closer to me. “You saying this ain’t you? As I think she looks exactly like you.”

  “It’s not. I swear.”

  “Whose numbers are these?” the man fiddling with my phone asked. He waved it in the air to grab my attention.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “The phone isn’t mine. I found it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the last guy said, also still at the table. “She should still fetch us a premium over these two with the tribes.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you want with me—with us?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to clean her up,” the woman said grabbing a fistful of my golden gown. “She ain’t gonna fetch no premium lookin’ like this.”

  “Where’d you come from dressed like that?” the man who’d held the newspaper said.

  “It’s none of your business,” I said with a scowl, glaring at his sun-damaged face.

  “I still think she’s the Princess,” the woman said, turning back to the guys at the table.

  “Maybe she needs a little convincing, is all,” the guy near me said. “You ever been in the Outlands, little lady? It ain’t nice out there. But you’ll see soon enough… unless you are the princess, then we might have more to talk about.”

  They were planning to sell me to some Outlands tribe of outlaws. I didn’t know much about the Outlands, and sometimes it felt like the fence was keeping us in, but I knew it was also keeping others out. If I was sold off outside the fence, I probably had very little chance of seeing anyone I cared about ever again. Perhaps giving them what they wanted was the best choice. I guessed I didn’t have much to lose at this point.

  “Okay, okay…” I took a deep breath. “I am Princess Amelia. I am the girl in the picture. One of those numbers will call Queen Hart directly. She will pay anything you want to keep this quiet. You want to become rich, then this is your lucky day.”

  “I knew it!” the woman squealed. “I told you, Buckley! We nabbed ourselves the ultimate payday!”

  “I’ll try the numbers again,” the guy with my phone said. He dialed and put the phone up to his ear. After a long moment of silence. “That lady didn’t pick up this time. Are you telling me I actually talked to the Queen before?”

  “I think you did,” I said.

  The guy almost looked giddy with excitement. “I can’t believe it! Now I’m nervous.” He slid the phone across the table to the other guy. “You call next time.”

  “You’re pathetic,” the other guy said, picking up the phone. “We’ve got the upper hand. We’ve got the Princess. When she realizes we really got her—that this ain’t no prank—she’ll give us anything we want. Remember that.”

  “When she pays your ransom, then I want the kids too,” I demanded.

  The four adults looked over at the kids shivering on the far side of the room. The young girl was awake now.

  “They’re extra,” the woman said. The tone of her voice made me cringe.

  “Then add them into your price. I don’t care. I just want them to come with me. You’re not selling them off to some tribe of barbarians. They’re innocent children.”

  “Not anymore, they ain’t,” the man standing closest to me laughed and kicked me in the thigh.

  The kick wasn’t hard, but it hurt all the same. Seemingly amused by my reaction, he bent down, lifted the skirt of my dress to get a peek at what was underneath, and placed a grimy hand on my bare skin.

  “Hey! Don’t touch me!” I yelled and tried to slap his hand away, but my movements were hindered by my bindings.

  “She’s a feisty one,” the guy said to his friends, still playing with the hem of my dress, presumably just to agitate me more. “She’s already roughed up. Look at these lines on her legs. I’m sure the Queen won’t mind if she’s roughed up a little more.”

  “Wait,” the woman said. “Let me get the camera first. Never know when some good ol’ fashion pictures might come in handy.”

  “Some pretty inspiration,” a guy at the table said.

  “Shut your dirty hole,” the woman snapped as she found the camera in a pile of mangled electronics on the floor. She took a few pictures of me bound to the floor, and then said, “Let’s also get a shot of those scars on her legs.”

  The man closest to me forcefully rolled me onto my stomach and hiked my dress to my waist. Again, I was thankful I had worn shorts, though they could very easily be taken from me with the position I was currently in.

  “Those musta hurt,” I heard one of them say.

  Several camera clicks sounded.

  I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. I thought of what I had escaped in the back of that limo—with Master Ramsey and his friends—what they had wanted to do to me if I hadn’t been prepared. I refused to believe I had only escaped that situation to exchange it for this one.

  This can’t be happening…

  “Look—they go up past her shorts,” the guy standing over me said.

  “Then take them off, so we can get the full picture,” the ratty woman said.

  “She ain’t fighting now,” another guy said, his voice getting closer.

  “She likes to show off the goods. You all do, don’t ya, Darla?”

  “If ya got it, damn straight,” she answered. “And I got it, don’t I, boys?”

  There was laughter as the camera continued to click. Rough fingers reached into the waistband of my shorts and panties, which were about to be ripped away when an explosion of shattering glass sounded.

  “What the hell?!” Darla yelled.

  There was a huge commotion as a canister rolled across the floor, spewing plumes of noxious gas. It had been thrown in through one of the cabin windows.

  I began coughing—as did everyone else. What started out as casual, quickly turned to violent fits of coughing, wheezing, and gagging. Then I began to feel lightheaded and my eyes burned like they were catching fire. The thick grayish-green gas spread and soon filled much of the cabin.

  All my captors had
at least dropped to their knees, two now fully sprawled out on the floor, as I assumed their dizziness was matching mine. The door burst open and a tall man in a gas mask stood momentarily at the threshold, then marched in with obvious purpose. He held a pistol in one hand, another gas mask in the other.

  Just as I was about to lose consciousness, I heard a deafening gunshot and then a mask was placed over my face. I took a deep breath and the compulsions to cough steadily lessened. The flow of clean oxygen was glorious. My vision also began to clear.

  The masked man stepped up to each of my fallen captors, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

  4

  Byron

  I was thoroughly disturbed after my conversation with Mackenzie. I had been afraid for Victoria ever since she left the palace, but not more so than now. She needed help, but not from that maniac. She needed the help of someone who actually cared about her. I wanted to go after her myself, a gesture of how much I loved her after my inaction during the Choosing Ceremony. But I couldn’t just follow him; he’d stop me in an instant. And I had no idea where to find her on my own. However, I had a feeling I knew someone who did.

  I ventured into a not-so-secret part of the cellar, into a section that held the unpublicized detention rooms. They were basically jail cells, but the Queen hated for them to be called that.

  There were four identical, small rooms in this section and only one was currently occupied. A small window of bulletproof glass was set into the door, and I peered in to see Kale lying on the cot against the wall. Only the palace supervisors had keys to these rooms, but I’d been told about a spare set, as there was a supervisory position needing to be refilled. I would only have them for a short while and return them before anyone knew they were missing.

  I unlocked the door to Kale’s detention room and stepped inside.

  He glared up at me from his position on the bed. “What the hell do you want?”

  “It’s not what I want, but what Victoria needs,” I said.

  This got his attention and he sat up, rolling his feet to the floor. “I’m listening.”

  “It seems she didn’t make it to your guy on the phone,” I said, stepping farther into the room and allowing the door to automatically swing closed behind me. “She got herself into a little bit of trouble instead.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Kale stood up, concern all over his face.

  “It seems she got herself captured, and those responsible are now holding her for ransom. The Queen has tasked Duke Mackenzie with rescuing her, but I don’t trust him. I’d like to help her myself, but I don’t know where to find her—and frankly, I doubt she wants to see me right now anyway. I want to do the best thing for her. And I think that’s sending you.”

  “What’s the catch?” Kale asked. He was keeping his distance.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and tossed it to him. “The Queen was tracking her from her cell phone—the cell phone you gave her. I’d like to think you could call your contact and have him do the same.”

  Kale skeptically gazed down at my phone and then back up at me. “This isn’t mine,” he said.

  “I know that. It’s mine. The Queen still has yours,” I said. “The material on the Princess hasn’t been released yet even though Victoria didn’t make her rendezvous.”

  “Of course not,” Kale said. “I never gave him the information.”

  “It was a bluff?”

  “It’s dangerous information,” Kale said, still looking at the phone.

  “I know that, but Victoria had her life on the line for that information.”

  “And if she hadn’t believed it, she wouldn’t have pulled it off—but she did.”

  So, Victoria had attacked the Queen with an unloaded gun and she hadn’t even known it. A part of me wanted to punch him in the face for deceiving her. But then again, I was in no position to remain seated on my high horse. Everything had gone horribly wrong and all I could do now was try to slow the bleeding.

  “Can you track her or not?” I demanded an answer.

  “Yeah, I can find her, but I’ll need your phone for a while.”

  “Done.” It was never that important to me like to other members of my family. I didn’t want to always be accessible—or found. “Let’s get you out of here. There’s no time to waste.”

  “What are you going to tell the Queen about this?”

  “About your escape?” I asked slyly, backing toward the door. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re not going to get away with this so easily,” Kale said, following me out the door.

  “You worry about what’s on your plate and I’ll worry about what’s on mine. Go into the staff locker room and get changed. There’s an open locker waiting for you. Then use the service elevator to the main floor. Gabriel will smuggle you out. Then you know what to do.”

  Kale stopped and turned to me. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I repeated.

  “Thank you.”

  “Take care of her.”

  “You know I will.”

  And I did know that, which made me regret my decision to help him escape. It felt like every decision I was making was wrong… and leading me further away from the woman I loved. But I didn’t stop Kale despite my growing passion to do so—to wrestle him back into his cage—and I ultimately allowed him to walk away.

  5

  Victoria

  I watched the masked man calmly and systematically murder my four captors, each with one shot to the head. He didn’t waste a single bullet. He didn’t need any extra shots.

  I feared who he was, but he’d given me the gas mask and put his pistol back in its holster when he was done with my captors, so he obviously wasn’t here to kill me. He may have been sent by the Queen, though I thought that he’d arrived way too soon if that was the case.

  The man had taken a ring of keys from Darla’s dead body and removed my shackles, then circled the room to open the remaining windows. The smoke was dissipating fast.

  With my newfound freedom, I dashed over to the two kids on the far wall, now completely unconscious. I felt for a pulse on each child, and each one still had a strong heartbeat.

  I tried to pick up the girl and carry her outside, but she was heavier than she looked or my strength hadn’t fully returned. I started to drag her instead, but the man walked up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

  “Here, put this on her,” he said in a low, gruff voice.

  He offered me his gas mask, and when I saw his face, I recognized him immediately and scrambled away, dropping the girl who’d been propped in my arms. She fell and rolled to the side with a thud. My scream was muffled by the mask, now fogging up from my erratic breathing.

  “Whoa, calm down,” he said. “I’m only here to help. Queen Dorothea sent me to get you out of this mess. That’s all.”

  I remembered him from the night in the limousine with Master Ramsey and his friends. He had been there; Master Ramsey had called him Mackenzie. He’d been the one to hold Master Ramsey back and to tell me to leave, but still, he had been there—and, like the others, he was probably eager to do unspeakable things to me. Alone and without any leverage, this man evoked fear in me that the four captors had been unable to do, even with me chained to the floor.

  Mackenzie’s hands were up in surrender. “It’s obvious you remember me,” he said.

  I removed my gas mask. “You could say that,” I seethed. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

  “I won’t. This visit is strictly business, not pleasure.” He lingered on the word pleasure and smiled as he said it. He probably fantasied about how he’d anticipated that night in the limo to go.

  My stomach churned.

  Mackenzie bent down and placed his gas mask on the little girl’s face. “Toss me yours,” he said. He then placed mine over the boy’s face and turned his attention back to me. “They’ll be fine.”

  “The Queen really sent you?” I asked
, my voice thin and cracking.

  “Yes. She knew I could get the job done discreetly.” Mackenzie strolled over to the table, picked up my cell phone, and lobbed it to me. “Call her and let her know you’ve been freed and you’re back on track with your mission.”

  “What do you know about my mission?”

  “I know several people’s lives hang in the balance—including that of my Constance.”

  “You were Constance’s guardian?” I was feeling sicker by the second.

  “Yes, Constance has been mine for the last seventeen years and it was difficult to give her up. But with how things are developing, hopefully, I’ll get her back soon,” Duke Mackenzie said with a wolfish grin.

  “She’s never going home with you,” I said, finding some inner strength. My body shook just from being in his presence, especially being alone with him in this secluded cabin.

  “There, there. Don’t poke the bear,” he said. “Business can turn to pleasure real quick. Ramsey told me about your punishment before leaving for Capital City. May I see what marks remain? I know he does beautiful work.” His expression was absolutely glowing. “I won’t touch you. I just want to look—a little peek.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and shivered. I was not going to willingly show this man anything. I would fight with every ounce of strength I had. But still, the way he was looking at me, brought up gooseflesh all over my body.

  His eyes broke away from me at the sound of the kids stirring. The little girl had rolled over to her side, and the boy was attempting to sit up. He peeled off his gas mask and peered up at Duke Mackenzie with an apprehensive expression. Then he noticed the dead bodies of the four captors sprawled across the floor, blood spattered about on the wood flooring. He gasped.

  The girl had now removed her gas mask and was also taking in the carnage.