“Help!” I screamed, as loudly and as shrilly as I could, drawing all attention to me. “Help me!” I waved my arms over my head.
A trio of armed guards stormed up to me.
“On the ground! On the ground!” they yelled. “Hands behind your head!”
I stretched out on my front in the dirt, laced my hands behind my head and turned my face so that I could fix my sniper’s eye on the darkness beyond the fence. In the distance, I saw the faintest flash of motion. My pirate needed just a little more time.
Thrashing about on the ground, I struggled as if about to rise, and screamed hysterically.
A punch of pain to the side of my head. A pop of light behind my eyes. I fought the blossoming darkness, squinted at the fence. Nothing. No one. Quinn was free.
My words came out as a mumble past the smile that twisted my mouth.
“What’s that you say?” a guard shouted down at me.
I lay in the dirt. Stones pressed into the softness of my cheek, and fear contracted my gut. My right hand was trapped beneath my chest, and I pushed down onto it, so that my fingers could trace the circle of Quinn’s silver earring beneath the soft fabric of the awful dress.
Circles never end.
“Failure — s’not an option,” I repeated. “I will not quit.”
End of Book I
Jinxy’s story continues in Book 2 of the series, Refuse, which is now available on pre-order here. Check out the first chapter of Refuse at the end of this book!
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all my wonderful beta-readers for their invaluable help and feedback, and express my special gratitude to James Bristow of Magnum Shooting Academy for his patient advice on weapons and shooting — any mistakes are on me!
REFUSE
(Book Two)
Chapter 1
Eyes Open
When I open my eyes, I am blindfolded, traveling in a vehicle, with my hands tightly bound together and lying in my lap.
I know that my hands are tied because when I try to rub at the tickle of something trickling down the side of my face, both hands move together. They must be secured to something else as well, because I can only lift them as far as my chest before some restraint kicks in. I yank hard, but it holds firm.
I know that I am in a vehicle of some kind because I hear the engine and feel my body lurch against the seatbelt when it accelerates and brakes.
I know I am blindfolded because I can feel my eyelashes brush against something as I blink, and even though my eyes are open, everything is still dark and unfathomable.
Kind of like my life.
I have never seen clearly, never fully grasped what is actually happening, even when it is happening in full view and all around me. I have been like a mushroom — kept well and truly in the dark and fed a load of crap. About my father, about ASTA, about Quinn.
The tickling sensation continues. It must be blood still oozing from the place where the guard hit my head. The fog clouding my brain begins to dissolve, only to be replaced by a throbbing headache.
“Hullo?” My voice is hoarse in my dry throat.
No answer.
I am not alone in this car or van. I can sense the presence, just about hear the breathing, of someone sitting to my left. I am totally alone, though, in my predicament. I helped Quinn escape, but it came at the price of my own capture, and I suspect that things are about to get rough.
At the thought of what I know must lie ahead, my heart kicks into a faster rhythm, and a flush of adrenalin tingles through my fingers. I am not brave, just an ace with a virtual reality gaming console and a highly skilled expert with a sniper’s rifle. But I have no rifle now. No rifle, no tranquilizer dart gun, not even a freaking pea-shooter. I will need to use my brain to get through the next few hours. Or days. Weeks? I swallow hard. I am more thirsty than I can ever remember being.
“Can I have some water?”
More silence.
“Please?” It can’t hurt to try the magic word.
“Shut up,” says a voice to my left. It is deep, male and completely unfamiliar to me. “We’ll let you know when we want you to talk.”
A bubble of fear releases itself from somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach and begins to rise up into my chest. I fight against it. I need to stay calm and clearheaded, concentrating on the present moment rather than on some possibly painful near future. And the skill of staying focused is one I have in spades. Accurate marksmanship was not the only skill that we sniping cadets were trained in by our instructors at ASTA — The Advanced Skills Training Academy of the Southern Sector. I force myself to slow my breathing, pursing my lips as I exhale to allow the air to trickle out gradually. Within a minute, my heart rate steadies.
I shift my attention to my senses, determined to register any details I can about this journey and our destination. At the Academy, the cadets in our unit were also trained to be exceptional observers, drilled to notice and memorize details. It’s time to kick that aspect of my instruction into gear.
The vehicle slows, turns, moves forward more slowly — down a driveway? — turns again, and then stops. The engine is turned off. Silence. The click of a seatbelt clasp and then I am yanked forward.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Duck,” says the voice.
A hand presses against the top of my head — I guess to prevent me banging it as I stumble out. So they do not want me hurt. Not yet. All pain will be inflicted deliberately and intentionally at the right time and for the purpose of extracting maximum information from me.
I drag my thoughts back to the present, force myself to concentrate on the details of our walk. Gravel crunches underfoot, then my feet are on a smoother surface — paving? I scan my senses. I can smell the sharp scent of male aftershave or deodorant coming off my captor, but nothing beyond that. The air is cool on my face, and I don’t hear birds calling, so it’s probably still night then.
“Four steps up,” says the man.
I make out the sound of a big car or truck somewhere not too distant. I reckon we must still be in the city, off the street, perhaps at the back entrance to some building where no one will see or wonder at the appearance of a sixteen-year-old girl with long blond hair tied up in a ponytail; wearing a pink dress, a blindfold and restraints; and being hauled, stumbling, up a set of stairs.
“Where are you taking me? Who are you?”
Aftershave says nothing, just shoves me through what must be a doorway, banging my arms against its narrow frame.
“We need to take her straight up. They’re already waiting.” A new voice, female.
I distinguish two sets of footsteps, apart from my own, clicking against the floor — marble or tiles, judging from the hard, smooth surface — and echoing through the open space. Are we in a foyer?
It occurs to me that we haven’t passed through a decontamination unit. Then I register, belatedly, that I am not wearing a respirator and, judging from the fact that the man’s voice does not sound at all muffled, neither is my escort. According to President Hawke’s government, the Rat Fever virus supposedly lies in wait, patient as death, on surfaces and in the air, ready to infect and reduce its human victims to gibbering, hemorrhagic bags of pus and blood. But we are not wearing even the most basic of protective masks.
We cross the open space and wait for a few moments, and then a chime sounds the arrival of an elevator. Three paces inside. The doors swish closed behind us, and I am spun around. Going up,
three soft pings for three floors.
Already I am noting our route and committing it to memory, forming a picture in my mind’s eye of our course through the building. The doors open, and I am tugged forward. Left on exit, twenty-one paces, right turn, a long walk of fifty paces, another right, seventeen paces, left, thirty paces and then we halt. I use the pause to memorize the route — L21, R50, R17, L30.
I hear a door open to my left, and I am pushed inside and onto a chair. Something fastens around my waist, tying me in place. A brief tug of hair at the back of my head and the blindfold is pulled off my eyes.
“Where am I?” I demand, squinching my eyes against the sudden brightness. My only answer is the sound of a slamming door and a clicking lock.
It is several moments before my eyes grow accustomed to the light and I can look around. It takes only one swift glance for me to know where I am. I have seen a room like this before. Was it just last night that I sat beside Quinn on my bed in my quarters at ASTA — my heart full of hope about the two of us, my head full of doubts about everything he had just told me — and stared with growing horror at the illicitly obtained video footage on the screen of his phone? I watched as a man I had immobilized with a tranquilizer dart was questioned and tortured in a room just like this. Perhaps it was this very room.
Now I am the one sitting under a bright light, on a steel chair bolted to the floor, in the center of an interrogation room.
Now I am the one about to be interrogated.
The story continues in Refuse,
now available on pre-order here.
Recoil Page 22
