The Gender War

by Bella Forrest

  It seemed nobody had noticed the open door. I looked back at Viggo and filled him in.

  He nodded grimly. “That’s gotta be Ms. Dale. I hope Owen got to her. If we force those guards to take cover, we can get to them.”

  I surveyed my single handgun. I’d dropped the empty one on the floor behind us. “I’ve only got one clip left.”

  Viggo nodded. “Then we’ve gotta make it count. All at once—make them think there’s a whole company of us.”

  We looked levelly into each other’s eyes for a moment, Viggo’s sharp green gaze speaking volumes to me. I hoped mine said all the things that swelled in my heart for that tiny moment. Then Viggo signaled go, and the two of us burst out into the garage, guns firing.

  Thankfully, we didn’t need to aim. The effect of our unexpected attack was immediate: the group of guards scattered, some of them pulling back against the wall of the garage, some of them dropping to the floor of the metal catwalk and crawling back toward the next room.

  Viggo behind me, I took the few steps down to the garage floor at a run. I saw why none of the guards were by this door when the SUV’s driver’s side window, which pointed toward us with the windshield facing the guards, rolled down just enough that the point of a shotgun could be seen poking out.

  “Ms. Dale, Owen!” I shouted, waving my arms. “Don’t shoot! It’s us!”

  The window flashed a couple more inches down, and the woman inside—it was Ms. Dale, thank goodness—nodded. “We'll be right there!” Then the boxy SUV reversed suddenly, speeding out from behind the four-wheeler that had sheltered its tires, skidding to a halt beside us.

  By the time we heard both Owen and Ms. Dale’s voices shouting “Get in!” I’d yanked open the back door, abandoning my empty gun to grab the handle with my left hand, and toppled into the backseat, Viggo jumping in behind me. Bullets pinged off the vehicle as the door slammed shut; the guards had gotten back into formation.

  “About time you guys got here,” Owen said from the passenger’s side.

  “I’m sorry about the mess back there, kids,” Ms. Dale said conversationally. Viggo was already agape, staring at the duffel bag the two of us were now practically sitting on, which was bursting with a jumble of weapons and ammunition. “I didn’t have time to be tidy.”

  “Tidiness is overrated,” Viggo said, grabbing a handgun, cracking the window, and firing out toward the group of guards now in front of our window.

  “Seatbelts on?” Ms. Dale asked, as a fresh shower of gunfire impacted the windshield. I winced, but the Matrian technology showed only the barest cracks.

  “Just drive, woman!” Viggo hollered at her.

  Ms. Dale drove.

  As rows of cars flashed by us, Owen turned around to look at Viggo. “I got hold of your friend. He’s moving the… uh, the transportation for us. He said he’ll meet us an hour’s drive outside of town—I gave Ms. Dale directions. But we need to hurry—we have no idea whether Elena will go after them, or how long it will take them to mobilize and follow us.”

  Ms. Dale continued the briefing. “From what I’ve seen, Elena and Desmond are likely more focused on their master plan than us,” she said. “Regardless, whatever ideas you have for a plan, don’t talk about them in the car—it’s likely wired.”

  “Okay.” Viggo stared at Ms. Dale, who calmly continued driving. “Change of subject. How did you get down here? And where did you get all of these weapons?”

  Ms. Dale’s eyes didn’t leave the road, but she smiled a bit. “A good spy never reveals her secrets,” she said smugly. Then her eyes sobered. “But I’ve been in this palace hundreds of times. I know it very well. And I figured if I was going to officially betray my country, I might as well go out with a bang.”

  I looked at her, then out of the back windshield, noting the lack of cars pursuing us as we hurtled up a dimly lit tunnel that I trusted led to the outside world. The emptiness in the tunnel around us was unsettling; even in the stairs of the castle it had been strange. Faintly, we could still hear the palace alarm, but it was already fading. “Are you sure we’re not being tracked? Is there a tracker on this car? This feels… too easy.”

  Ms. Dale’s answer wasn’t comforting. “We can’t be sure. But it’s our only option.”

  5

  Viggo

  I didn’t say it at the time, but Violet was right. I couldn’t help but feel like our escape had been too easy. Since leaving the palace, there had been no signs of pursuit, and that alone was worrisome. I did not expect Elena to give us up so easily—not unless there was a reason for it. Yet there was nothing we could do about it now: staying would’ve certainly meant death for me and more torture for Violet. Even if Elena had further plans for us, we were going to have to risk it, because time was running out—whatever Elena and Desmond had planned, I was willing to bet they were already implementing it.

  Next to me, Violet was cradling her right hand, her eyes closed and a grim look on her face as she tried not to react to every jostle and bump of the vehicle. I looked at my makeshift bandage on her hand and frowned, making a mental note to ask Alejandro if he had a first aid kit when we got onboard his boat. Violet needed her wound treated properly—I was worried about infection. After all, the shirt I had used hadn’t been the cleanest. I had been wearing it since… yesterday? The day before?

  I couldn’t actually recall the last time I’d changed my shirt. Time was moving so quickly that all the days were blending together in my mind. It was a sure sign of fatigue, but I—we—couldn’t afford to sleep. We just didn’t have the time for anything more than catnaps in the vehicle. The sun was close to setting, and we had a long way to go.

  We had passed the border to the no-man’s land that was the riverbank nearly an hour ago, and Ms. Dale was using the armored SUV like the professional she was. She had stopped only long enough to switch into four-wheel drive, and then pulled us into the long grass growing by the side of the road, forging through the vegetation toward the river. It was slow going—it had to be—but I could see the break in the grass that meant the river was drawing close.

  Ms. Dale pushed us through the last bit of thick grass and we pulled onto the bank, where the ground was devoid of any life, thanks to the toxic waters seeping up from the river. The armored vehicle growled to a stop, and I scanned the river, looking for any sign of Alejandro’s boat.

  “Where is it?” Owen asked, his voice thick with urgency.

  I was just about to say that I didn’t know when I saw it—the beige-white boat floating toward us, the sickly water churning at its helm as it forged upriver. Pulling out a pair of binoculars Ms. Dale had acquired from her mysterious stash—I was assuming the palace armory—I held them up to my eyes, and was relieved to see Alejandro standing at the helm. There was no sign of Tim or Jay, but I could see Samuel’s sleek brown body sitting on the bow—he was staring right at us, his furry head cocked.

  “It’s there,” I said. I snapped out of my seatbelt and got out, shouldering the long duffle bag full of weapons. It was heavy, and the strap bit into my shoulder, but I ignored it along with that flash of irritation that came over me when I realized, once again, that I still wasn’t as strong as I used to be. The operation had set me back months, maybe more, and it was hard not to be bitter about it, even though it had technically been my fault that I had to have one in the first place.

  Ms. Dale shut off the vehicle, and the rest of our party exited it.

  “Okay, Viggo, you and I can head over there and check—” Owen began, then stopped in the middle of his sentence and gave me a considering look. He moved toward the boat instead, murmuring, “I mean, I’ll go check it out.”

  I realized I was glaring deeply. “Good. You do that,” I replied dryly, catching the sound of Violet’s chuckle as she came up to stand beside me.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, and she gave me a smile that seemed to chase away the lines of anxiety and pain that were etched into her face.

  “You are,
” she replied tartly. “Did you realize you were alpha male-ing with Owen?”

  “What, am I coming on too strong?” I asked, wondering if it bothered her. I’d barely even noticed what I was doing. I just hated taking orders.

  She looked at me thoughtfully, the smile still playing on her lips. “Maybe,” she said. “But honestly, I think it’s cute.”

  I glowered at that, adjusting the strap over my shoulder. “I prefer to think of it as masculine,” I grumbled, and she laughed again.

  Ms. Dale gave us an irritated look as she stalked by, her expression disapproving. “You two,” she said waspishly, “really need to stop flirting when your lives are in danger.”

  Violet and I exchanged smirks. It wasn’t the first time Ms. Dale had said something along those lines, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t.

  My anxiety increased as I scanned the tall grass that stopped behind us, several feet from the bank. Anything or anyone could be hiding in there, and even though it still pained me to agree with Ms. Dale, she was right.

  Placing my hand at the small of Violet’s back, I said, “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll catch up,” Ms. Dale told me, and I looked back to see her climbing into the seat of the SUV just long enough to start it, the driver’s side door still open, and slowly maneuver the vehicle closer to the drop-off into the river.

  “What is she…” The question died on my lips as the SUV’s tires began sliding on the mud of the bank and Ms. Dale leapt from the driver’s seat, landing awkwardly in sludge as the still-running car drove itself the rest of the way into Veil River. It made much less noise and splash than I would’ve expected, floating a moment before starting to sink with a horrible gurgling.

  Ms. Dale caught me eyeing her and shrugged. “Tying up some loose ends,” she smirked. Violet chuckled.

  Just a little way upriver, Owen was impatiently waving us over. “It’s him,” he called, rather redundantly, when we were close enough.

  I came up next to him, sighting the older man on the deck. My heart lifted just a little. “Alejandro! You made it!”

  Alejandro’s frown was barely discernable in the waning light, but his voice was clear as he shouted, “Aye, my friend! I barely got out before the docks were swarming with wardens. It’s a good thing nobody else has the kind of motors I do. But more will be on their way here, so we really need to—”

  “Hurry,” I finished for him, sliding the bag off my shoulder and tossing it to Owen. He grunted as he caught it, and I barely stopped the self-satisfied smile from reaching my face.

  Violet was already eyeing the gap between the bank and the ship with a dubious expression, her eyes scanning the contaminated waters, the fingers on her injured hand twitching.

  “How are we going to…”

  Her question was cut off as a blurry body suddenly came barreling down the deck past Alejandro, vaulted the boat’s safety rails, and sailed the six feet or more from boat to shore on sheer momentum, landing with a wet thump on the bank in front of us.

  “Violet! Viggo!” Jay exclaimed, a huge grin on his face. Beside me, I heard Violet let out a sharp sigh of what seemed to be relief. “Hi, Jay,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she sounded like she wanted to laugh or admonish him.

  On my other side, Owen seemed taken aback. “Jay… you left the Liberators, too? Desmond didn’t tell me that.”

  “Sounds pretty normal to me,” Jay said. “She never tells me anything.”

  The two of them shared a look of pain that quickly turned to sympathy, and then moved forward and clapped each other on the back. “I’m glad to see you here,” Owen said sincerely, and Jay echoed the sentiment.

  I felt a slight lessening of my dislike for Owen at how obviously he cared for Jay, but every moment we spent on this bank made me surer that our Matrian pursuers would appear out of the grasses. “Let’s get moving, guys,” I said. “We can explain more on the boat.”

  “All right.” Jay held up the end of a long rope he carried in two hands, the other end trailing over the water back to the boat. As we watched, Tim came up from the other side of the boat, holding the rest of the coil of rope, which he affixed to the boat’s railing. “Violet!” he called. “Eggs. Safe!”

  As Violet shouted her relief to her brother, Jay quickly scouted out a lone tree among the grasses of the bank and tied his end of the rope to it in a thick lump of knot.

  “We chose this spot to land because of the tree. Alejandro said the bank here is too shallow to get close enough to use the gangplank,” he explained.

  I felt myself smiling, despite everything, at the boys’ enthusiasm. I was glad to see they didn’t look too shell-shocked by their narrow escape from the wardens at the dock. Or at our narrow escape from the castle, at that. As they pulled the rope taut, though, I began to have my doubts about this method of boarding.

  Jay went back to the boat first, and he made it look easy. He simply leapt, caught the rope, and swung across easily, hand over hand, until he could grab the boat’s railings and hoist himself up pull-up style. He wasn’t even fully grown, and his casual strength continued to amaze me. I allowed myself a moment of jealousy. Only one.

  If I had that kind of strength, I could just carry Violet across in one arm… I looked at the gray-eyed girl beside me, worried she would overtax her injury. “Violet, can you—”

  “I got it,” she said, cutting me off, her eyes hard and focused. I kept the doubt off my face, knowing she was determined.

  “All right,” I said, taking a step back.

  She carefully swung her right arm around the rope, hooking it with her elbow. With a grunt, she lifted her legs off the ground, wrapped them around the rope, and began edging across, her left hand pulling her body forward while she hung upside-down over the water.

  It took her a few minutes—I watched with my heart in my throat, half afraid she was going to plummet into the contaminated waters below. But she made it. Of course she did. As I watched Tim throw his arms around Violet, his relief strong enough to put aside the pain he felt when he was touched, I felt doubly relieved that nothing had happened to any of them.

  Ms. Dale was next across the rope, and I couldn’t help but give her a grand, sweeping bow as she went past me. “Ladies first,” I said graciously.

  Her lips thinned as she gave me a look of disdain. “Don’t be an ass,” she chided as she swung up on the rope, crossing over quickly. Owen moved up next to me as we watched her scuttle across, extremely limber for a woman in her middle years.

  “I don’t get it—why do you two talk to each other like that?” he asked, his voice curious and light.

  I glanced at him, and then clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” I said, before hoisting myself up on the rope. I hesitated, and then went the way Jay had gone, using my hands only. I knew that I still wasn’t as strong as I used to be, but I still had my pride. My hands felt steady, but the sway of the rope and the sight of the gurgling waters beneath me were unnerving, and I was glad to finally catch a leg over the railing and swing myself aboard.

  Finally it was Owen’s turn, and he hoisted himself up, the bag of weapons swinging ominously over the water.

  “If you drop that,” Ms. Dale called from the railing, watching him closely, “I will cut the rope.”

  Owen made a sound of exasperation as he struggled to get to the boat. “You know, I get it,” he called, huffing and puffing as he pulled himself across. “You guys are—mad at me for following Desmond’s orders. But—oof—none of you knew about Desmond’s betrayal either. So if you would just—cut me some slack, that’d be great.”

  “I’m sorry—you want us to cut what?” Violet shot back, and I smiled, happy to see that she hadn’t lost any of her spunk in that torture room.

  Owen gave her an alarmed look, which was comical, considering he was swinging upside down, and then shook his head. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said as he pulled himself closer.
“Is it too late to go back to Desmond?”

  “Only if you’re super eager for a bullet in the back of your head,” Violet called out sweetly.

  Owen grunted, reached out for the railing, and carefully pulled himself onto the boat, heaving from the exertion. “I’m good,” he deadpanned, and Violet beamed at him in approval. He heaved the weapons onto one of the built-in benches in the bow.

  “Quit your yammering and cut the line,” Alejandro ordered gruffly, and I could sense my old friend’s displeasure at how long this was taking.

  Ms. Dale pulled a knife out of her belt and obeyed, and I heard the boat’s powerful engine growl into a higher gear as Alejandro began moving us away from the bank. I went over to the older man, noting the steely-eyed way he was glaring at the river, and how his knuckles were practically white on the helm of the boat.

  “You okay?” I asked, and he gave me a sharp look.

  “Am I okay?” he repeated, looking me up and down. “Boy, I was downright worried about you. Then I get a message from that one over there”—he shoved a finger at Owen—“telling me I had to move the boat—I thought you were going to stop him from killing the queen! I didn’t know what to think! It was damned lucky he was begging me to believe him. Otherwise I would’ve stayed in that harbor, and we’d all have been sunk!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and then hesitated. I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for—circumstances had been well beyond my control, and I’d done the best I could.

  He gave me a look and shook his head, echoing my thoughts. “Nah, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. So, what’s going on?”

  “It’s a long story… but basically, Elena was behind everything. And I do mean everything—even before Violet and I were involved.”