by Lucy Smoke
There’s a beep and a pop as the cuffs release and my arms fall forward. I turn, suspicious, rubbing my wrists. Oren tosses the cuffs to a nearby Tank and advances towards me. I take a hesitant step back.
“I can’t have you using this,” Oren snaps, grabbing the wrist with my scanner still on it. “It’s not fair for what I have planned for you now.” Oren drags me across the room, past Kida who tries to shakily get to her feet. “No, no,” he says as we pass by. “Don’t get up on our account.” His booted foot makes contact with the back of her knee as he strides by and she falls to her side, face slamming into the hard, tiled flooring. Even Haze flinches as he watches on from behind us. His teeth clench and his eyes promise retribution, though Oren isn’t looking.
Stopping in front of his dais, Oren raises my wrist high and with a small smile, he brings it crashing down before I realize his intention and slams my wrist into the dais. I choke out a broken scream. The face of the scanner cracks and Oren smiles as he keeps me from yanking my wounded wrist out of his grasp. He gently pries open the clasp and lets the shattered scanner fall to the floor.
“There now,” he grins. “All better.”
I suck in air through my teeth trying not to whimper as he takes my wounded wrist and uses it to steer me back towards the middle of the room. The men shift on their feet, eyes hungry—for what, I don’t want to even imagine.
My pulse throbs in my injured wrist. I force myself to flex the fingers of my hand anyway and nearly cry in relief when my fingers tingle and move without more pain shooting through my joints. It’s not broken at least. The bone might be fractured, but at least it’s not fully broken. I don’t know what Oren is planning, but given the pleased smile on his face, I know it can’t be anything good, and I will likely need to be able to use that wrist.
“Bricker!” Oren calls with a deep authoritative voice.
A young Tank, as equally muscled as the others, jolts and steps forward. Looking at him, my lips curl in distaste. He has a tattoo on his bare arm, a mirror image of the tattoos that many other Tanks have. They all stand around, their arms crossed, their eyes watching and bloodthirsty. Bricker leers at me as he stops beside Oren.
“Sir?!” he answers without drawing his gaze away from me.
Oren releases me to clap him on the shoulder. “Bricker, you like women, don’t you?” he asks.
My whole body begins to shake. Fuck. Fuck. No. He wouldn’t…
Bricker looks at me and grins. “I do, sir.”
“You won’t like me,” I promise with venom.
“What do you like to do to women, Bricker?” Oren asks, turning to look at me with his hand still on the man’s shoulder.
Bricker cracks his knuckles, understanding Oren’s suggestion. “I like to teach women their place in life, sir.”
“And what is their place in life, men?!” Oren calls.
“On their knees!” the men in the room bellow.
“Maybe you should teach my sister something about her place, eh?” Oren slaps his back and steps away while Bricker begins to circle me.
“NO!” Kida yells. Her voice is rich with some of that furious spark in her that has been absent.
Haze’s reverberating growl rises as my heart rate leaps into my throat. I back away as Bricker comes closer, narrowing my gaze and dropping my hands—attempting to ignore the tingling pain in my wrist. I hear Oren say something to the men, though I can’t make out the words, and their responding laughter. My chest pumps up and down, my breath comes faster.
“He’s backing you into a corner, Cass!” Haze’s words of warning are followed by a grunt as another Tank kicks him in the stomach. My ankles hit the dais and Bricker leaps forward, a meaty fist aiming straight for my face. Twisting, I trip and land on my back behind the Tank. Bricker turns and frowns at me in disappointment.
“Women are good on their back,” he says.
My elbows and feet scramble to flatten to the floor and I scoot back as he advances on me. “But as Oren says, you are going to be so much better on your knees.”
I roll just as he dives again. As his fist connects with the floor I jump to my feet. “You want to see my knees?” I ask, grabbing the back of his head with both hands, bruises already forming across one arm, and bring his face down as I jerk my leg up. My knee connects with his face and the cartilage of his nose cracks under the force. He chokes as blood comes pouring down into his mouth. “Enjoy, motherfucker.”
Bricker growls, one wide palm covering his mouth and nose. When he moves to rise, as one of his knees hits the floor and the other foot slaps the tile, I bring my leg back again and kick him squarely in the balls. He howls and hunches over protectively. I back away whirling to face Oren. I freeze. Oren presses the barrel of a gun—one that looks well kept, obviously military grade rather than a poor man’s antique carried over from the first of our ancestors that had boarded the cities—against Kida’s temple.
Her face is drained of color, but she stares at me with hard golden eyes. Bloodlust and anger seep out of her broken expression.
“I had hoped to teach you a lesson, Cassie,” Oren says regretfully. “I had hoped Bricker could make you understand. But the young ones are a bit too merciful, aren’t they?”
He looks at someone behind me before nodding his head. I spin, but the Tank that moves forward doesn’t touch me. Instead, he grabs Bricker, one hand on the back of the man’s head, the other just under his chin. The younger Tank’s eyes widen, and he reaches up to his comrade’s arms, trying to pry them away.
“No–” I gasp as the older Tank twists, snapping Bricker’s neck without a second thought and the younger man’s body falls lifeless to the floor.
“Now, here’s what I want,” Oren states as if a man hasn’t just been killed and his body isn’t lying on the floor less than half a room from him. “I want Vincent to come in here, where we have the upper hand and you, Cassie, are going to do that for me.”
I’m still very much aware of the quickly cooling body behind me that was living only seconds before. Haze’s face, as he kneels between Oren, Kida, and me, is impassive. He doesn’t even flick a glance towards Bricker’s body. It’s as if his indifferent and unsympathetic expression is there specifically to tell me that I shouldn’t care. Bricker would have beaten me bloody just to impress Oren. He probably would have killed me to gain my brother’s favor.
Just as Oren opens his mouth to explain how I am to execute his plan, the building goes dark, alarms trigger and crash through the room. I don’t hesitate a second before ducking down and sprinting towards my brother. I plow into him in the dark, sending the both of us sprawling across the floor and I hear his gun hit the ground and skid across the tiles.
Oren’s fist connects with my face a split second later and I grunt under the impact, my lip splitting. He shoves me off and makes a break for his gun. I dive for his legs, catching him before he can stand, and it plummets back to the ground. Tanks yell in the dark, trying to get the lights back on. I hear Haze’s grunt somewhere in the obscurity and Kida frantically searching for the gun. I don’t know what they are going to do if the lights come back on and they’re still cuffed.
My worries are cut, and my hopes met when the doors to the main room slam open and I hear the deep baritone of Vincent’s voice met with Tilde’s excited and crisp timbre. They direct their agents around the room and the emergency lights finally flicker on. I can finally see much better, just in time to see Oren bring his elbow back into my chest, sending me backwards. The back of my skull slams into the floor and stars dance before my vision.
“Fuck!” I gasp, one hand shooting up to the sharp throbbing at the back of my head. My fingers come away wet with my own blood.
One of Vincent’s agents—Levi, I see through a blurry haze—unlocks Kida’s and Haze’s cuffs. Once Haze is free, he grips the nearest Tank and slams his face straight into his fist. Kida takes a taser gun from her godfather and like the badass I’m used to seeing, starts picking off the
most resistant Tanks—which is all of them.
I stand on shaky legs, searching the room for Oren. I recognize the tattoos on the strong hand that comes down on my shoulder. Aaron stands a head above most of the normal agents now spreading throughout the room like fire over paper, taking down everyone in sight. His other hand comes up to my face and I flinch when he makes contact with my bloody lip. He pulls away and frowns at the blood.
A Tank barrels forward and without blinking, Aaron sinks his fist into the man’s face. The cartilage breaks under the force of the blow. I still don’t see Oren anywhere. I search the ground for his gun and it, too, has disappeared.
“It’s my brother!” I yell at Aaron over the noise. “My brother is the Tank’s leader!”
Kida jerks to a stop alongside us, trying to yell over the cursing and grunts around the room. “Vincent said–”
“You think this is it?!”
The whole room continues with the mass chaos, but the strong, frenzied voice screaming across the room has all of my attention. I turn away from both Aaron and Kida as Oren stands, feet firmly planted on the cushioned seat of his throne, gun cocked, but not aimed.
“We were only the beginning Vincent Diamond!” Oren’s face is flushed red and there’s a mark along the side of his face. His shirt is ripped on one side as though someone had caught him as he was trying to move away. Across the room, at the doors, Vincent’s dark expression is zeroed in on my brother.
Oren smiles gleefully. “You have no idea what you’re in for,” he laughs. “What you’re all in for. It doesn’t matter if we go to containment, it still continues.”
“You’re not going to containment, Oren,” Vincent calls over the crowd. “You’re not going into exile either.”
“Well then,” Oren says, not perturbed by the obvious death sentence staring him in the face. “I better make the last of it count, shouldn’t I?”
And with that, he points his gun at me and fires. The blow to my chest shoves me off balance and I stumble into Aaron, Kida’s scream echoing through the room and my mind. Red bleeds into my vision as I hear several more shots fired over my head as if from somewhere far away. My legs can’t hold my body up anymore and my strength disintegrates. Somehow, I’m still awake, but there’s no air in my lungs. My mind races.
Shouldn’t I feel the bullet?
Shouldn’t I feel the pain?
Shouldn’t I feel anything?
Aaron’s arms catch me as I fall. He and Kida sink to the ground with me, wetness pooling beneath my body. Kida’s voice is harsh and shrill, her fingers on my face both burning hot and freezing cold. I can’t decide which. Her lips move, but I don’t hear the words. In fact, I don’t hear anything anymore. I blink once, twice, three times and after every blink it’s harder and harder to reopen my eyes. I keep blinking until I can’t anymore, and then there is nothing.
Thirteen
Impossible Love
“Stand back, give her some room!” the sharp voice of Commander Tilde intrudes into the silence of my mind, pulling me back to the surface.
“Cass!” I hear Levi call.
“She will be fine,” Noaz says. “You need to let Tilde work.”
“How come she gets to be in there with her and we don’t?” Levi asks.
I assume he means Kida and not Tilde, because as I open my eyes Kida’s face is the first thing I see. She gasps when she sees that I’m awake and her hand touches my cheek.
“Baby,” she whispers, bending down to brush her lips against mine. “Don’t worry, Tilde will fix you. She’s an emergency medic. She’s dealt with things like this so many times.”
Considering that I haven’t asked a damn thing, I figure she’s trying to reassure herself more than me. It takes a lot of work to nod, so I just open my mouth and croak out a weak, “Okay.”
“What the fuck?” I hear Levi ask. “She’s a lesbian? I thought…”
Kida turns and flicks a deadly glare over her shoulder. “Can you go fuck off somewhere else? You’re disturbing her.”
Instead of heeding an angry Kida, Levi bounds up into the back of the square, medical, hover vehicle, peeking over her shoulder at me. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks, likely recalling when he kissed me.
“No chance,” I croak. “Besides…” I grip Kida’s hand in mine, holding it weakly. “It doesn’t really matter to me.”
“Come on, man,” Thayer’s gruff voice sounds close by as a big hand grabs Levi’s shoulder and pulls him out of the vehicle.
Tilde ignores all the chaos and hooks a bag of clear fluid to the top of the vehicle. “Alright,” she announces. “We’re heading to the medical center. Only one more can come with us the rest will have to catch rides elsewhere.” Her no nonsense tone is met with quiet, but the hover vehicle dips as a big tattooed body crawls into the back and settles next to Kida.
Aaron’s enchanting blue eyes rove over me with concern. When he meets my tired gaze, his eyes catch fire. He glances at Kida’s figure hunched over me, clutching my hand as if it’s the only thing keeping me here and he realizes exactly how I knew he liked Levi and exactly why I understood so well.
Neither of us speak, but he inclines his head ever so fractionally and I do the same before the car starts. I close my eyes once more, letting exhaustion pull me back under.
When I wake next, I feel much better. The area of my chest where the bullet broke skin is sore and covered in bandages that wrap around my entire upper body. There’s an odd tugging at my back under the bandages when I attempt to rotate my shoulders. An exit wound, I guess.
There is a gorgeous bouquet of colorful flowers on the nightstand to my side. Flowers are expensive since they are only grown on the sky villages, so whoever purchased them spent a fortune. They are the first flowers I’ve ever received. I admire them as the sunlight pours in through the square window of my medical center room and hits their vase, sending a brilliant cascade of iridescent colors around the room.
The door opens and Kida backs in, carrying a tray. “You’re awake,” she states as she comes to sit in a cushioned chair, one of the only other pieces of furniture in the room aside from my bed. She places the tray in my lap and pulls away the cover, setting it on the ground at her feet.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, coughing when my voice comes through my throat wrong.
She grabs a glass of water from the nightstand and quickly hands it to me. I gulp down half of the glass before I feel like I’m finished dying and can hand it back to her without my hands shaking.
“I asked them to give us time to ourselves,” she answers my question, setting the glass back down.
“And they were okay with that?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” she says, inclining her head towards the elaborate bouquet.
“Why did you want time to ourselves?” I take a sip of the soup on my tray, realize how hungry I am and shovel more in.
“I can’t spend time with my girlfriend after she’s been hurt, and we haven’t seen each other in weeks?” she asks defensively.
I pause with a scoop of soup in front of my mouth and lower the spoon back to the bowl on the tray in my lap. “I didn’t say that.” I push the tray back and turn to her, hiding my inward flinch when my chest and back start aching. “I am happy to see you. What’s wrong? Why are you acting like this?”
Kida’s eyes bounce around for a moment or two, refusing to meet mine for several seconds. Then, with a great sigh, she meets my gaze with angry eyes. “Those guys really like you,” she says. I wait, keeping silent, knowing there’s more bubbling beneath her surface. I can tell by the way she taps the tips of her fingers against her leg and watches me as if waiting for a reaction. When I don’t offer any, she continues. “They were all over you when you first got here. I could barely get in the door.” She frowns and looks to the side, biting the inside of her cheek.
Quietly, while she regains control over her emotions, I examine her. Already her color has improved, and she doesn’
t look quite as haggard. She’s clearly had a bath since I’ve been unconscious and changed. But she still carries the look of drained sleeplessness. Beneath one sleeve there is the barest hint of white bandages.
“I have to ask, Cassie,” she says, finally turning back to look at me. “Are we…not okay anymore?”
“You’re asking if I cheated on you?” I clarify.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she replies. “I know we’ve been having our issues and you didn’t really know where I was…”
I push the tray away and sit up fully, rather than leaning back into the cushions at my back. “The guys have been really good for me,” I say slowly. “I didn’t really know if I could trust them when I first met them, and I ran. When I did finally get to know them, and I got used to them, I started trusting them a little more.” With every word, Kida’s face grows farther and farther away as if she sees a zipcar heading straight for her and she can’t step out of the way fast enough. I decide to change tactics.
“Do you remember when we first met?” I ask. She blinks as if confused by the new direction of the conversation, but she nods anyway. “And do you remember what you told me right before you snuck me out of the detention center?”
“I told you that all it takes is a chance for you to change your circumstances,” she said. “And that even if you didn’t have a family, you could build one.”
I nod. “You gave me that chance and then months later, we became more than just friends. And I thought it was impossible, but I love you. I’ve loved you since you first took my hand, since you became my best friend, since you kissed me under the stars.”
Her lips twitch as she remembers the way I had sniffed and cried and told her all of my worries and fears, and how I didn’t want her to leave me behind, and then she had kissed me and told me that it didn’t matter because I would grow, and she would help me.
“What happened with the Tanks only proves that I was right, and you were right, I can build my family and I started with you.”
“Even if I can’t be the same as…” Her eyes hold mountains of worry, of insecurity.
