Ramshackle (Raegan of Ruin #3)

10. Raegan

Chapter ten

Raegan

Most of the building’s inhabitants retire to their rooms around ten o’clock, but I wait until midnight before moving from my bed. I slip the knife I stole from dinner out from under my pillow and change into the black GE uniform to blend in more easily if anyone is still up and about. I don’t bother with shoes. I trust my feet to be softer on the floor than the heavy boots I wear for training.

When I open the door from my room, I’m careful to keep the latch from making a sound. My door hasn’t been locked since the first day. Gordon was testing my resolve in the bargain I made at first, and now he’s cocky in his control over me.

I can’t really argue that, considering I’ve been doing everything he’s asked without hesitation for the last…I’m not sure how long. A week? Two?

Time stopped meaning anything to me a long time ago. I couldn’t even guess how long I’ve been here. It feels like a year, but again, I can’t trust my sense of time anymore.

I cast a quick glance back into my room through the glass wall, checking that the clothes under my bedspread look like a body is in there. Satisfied, I hurry quietly down the hall to the stairwell.

I could take the elevator, but I don’t like the unknown of the doors opening and finding someone on the other side. Or how it could alert staff that another person is awake and wait to see who it is.

So the stairs it is.

Which, if I’m being honest, is a terrible idea.

I’ve only been to Gordon’s room twice to bring him something when he was too lazy to get it for himself, and it’s on the twentieth floor.

I’m on the thirteenth.

That sucks already. But with my shattered and poorly healed knee? I’ll be lucky if I can drag myself to his room once I make it there.

Deep breath. One step at a time.

I’m finally getting rid of the man who has tormented me for most of my life.

I’m taking back my freedom.

I’m going to see them again.

Aiden. Kellan. Jackson. Dane.

I grip the railing and begin. Even though my heart is racing and adrenaline is pushing me to get this done and over with, I pace myself. I don’t actually want to be crawling to his room by the end of this, so it does me no good to wear myself out too early.

Half-way up, I take a break.

My knee is throbbing and has been shooting sharp stabs of pain the last few flights, so I decide now is as good a time as any to rest.

I sprawl out on the landing to catch my breath. Every noise sends my heart into overdrive, and panic grips my lungs. I have to talk myself out of it each time, finally deciding that there must be plumbing running along one of these walls and I’m just reacting every time someone uses the toilet or washes their hands.

No one here willingly takes the stairs . Only an insane person would take the stairs when there are two sets of elevators per wing. I think I may be partially insane at this point with how fucked my head is, so the reasoning still stands.

After the pain in my knee begins to subside, I take a deep breath, suck it up, and keep moving.

Onward and upward.

I take another break, albeit a shorter one, once I reach the floor I need behind the door. Even with the pause, my knee is not having it anymore. No amount of sitting or lying down is helping it this time. So, when I decide it’s not going to improve and I may as well get this over with, I stand and limp into the hallway.

Gordon’s room, or suite, is at the end of the hallway in the corner unit. I move quietly inside, once again thanking his arrogance that he wouldn’t need to lock his door. Even on the island growing up, the only locked doors were the ones in the labs or certain offices. They felt no need to fear the children because the children all wanted to be there.

Or so they thought.

Gritting my teeth against the pain in my knee, I take another step toward freedom.

It may not be freedom from GE or this island, but the only one that really matters to me right now is my freedom of self. I can only get that back with Gordon’s death, and then after that, I have no clue what I plan to do.

I can imagine Aiden’s voice chastising me for not being prepared with a plan.

I have never been great with thinking things entirely through. Some of what I think Aiden tried to tell me a bunch of times, but I refused to listen.

Pushing thoughts of him and the others from my mind, I try to focus solely on my task. Most of the suite is open, and I can see all the rooms without barriers and a doorway in the back. I hobble through the rooms carefully. I have to avoid a bunch of furniture in the dark, which isn’t easy, but at least all of the windows in his corner suite allow for more moonlight, and I can see the basic shadows of shapes to avoid.

My gaze catches on a map sprawled across a table with penned markings by Gordon. Taking the extra seconds, I memorize what I see before moving on.

I peek through the opening into the bedroom. There’s a shape in the bed moving up and down slowly. No sign of a light to say he’s still up.

Perfect.

The clock on his bedside table shows just after two in the morning. It took me over two hours to get from my room to his. That doesn’t bode well for my escape, but maybe I can find something in his room to help me off this island.

I creep closer to the bed. My hand is raised with the knife at the ready. He gives the slightest motion aside from breathing, and I’m stabbing him immediately. I move into position over him, staring at his prone form as he sleeps peacefully.

How can a man so evil sleep so well? How can he look like just an ordinary man when he sleeps after all the things he’s done? After all the things he’s made others do for him?

My hand shakes as I look at him.

Do it.

Do it .

Fuck, why am I hesitating?

I think of Mallory. Of the words he’s whispered to me on repeat for what feels like half of my life. I’m alone. Worthless. He’s the only one who sees anything in me. The only one who says I can matter.

The shaking intensifies. I’m not sure if my body is having a full-on seizure standing here as I have a mental breakdown about what I’m going to do.

I think I’m hyperventilating, which only throws me further into a panic as I struggle to get some form of bodily function under control. I bring my other hand to join the first on the knife as if having two hands on it might help me drive it downward.

This man…he’s ruined me. Taken everything from me. Broken me and remolded me into what he wanted. He deserves to die.

Now!

His eyes fly open, and my arms swing down.

The knife buries itself in the mattress after it passes right through him.

Fuck. He used his gift.

Fear crawls up my spine and down my limbs like paralyzing webs.

“You bitch! ” Gordon snarls. A foot kicks me in the face and knocks me to the ground. I try to lift the knife, to swing at him again more in defense than anything else, and he grabs my wrist and yanks the blade from my hands. His leg swings and hits me in the gut without holding back. I gasp and choke, but he keeps kicking me repeatedly while cursing and calling me slurs. His attacks don’t discriminate as he pummels me from my torso up to my head.

I raise my arms around my head to protect it, and he stomps those as well until I hear a grotesque crack .

My arms drop, and my body surrenders.

I wake to pain.

Pain that’s so sharp and cutting that a scream is ripped from my lips before my brain clicks online that I’m awake again.

It lances across my back and burns in the wake of whatever just happened. Before I can register that the pain is from something striking my back, I feel another one slicing into it from another angle. But it crosses over the first, and the gargled shriek that leaves my body isn’t human.

Whatever is doing this stops after those two, and I force my eyes open to take stock of what hell I’m waking up to.

Gordon stands in front of me and watches me critically as I fully come to. I’m a bit higher than him for some reason, but a quick turn of my head shows that I’m strapped to some sort of massive X. There’s no headrest or anything for my head to do other than hang down and look at Gordon.

“I’m so very disappointed, pet. You were doing so well, and now this.” He shakes his head.

Another strike lashes across my back, and I can only imagine it as a whip of some kind. I cry out again on reflex. There’s nothing I can do to hold it in when the pain is this bad. The rest of me already feels like something’s not right, and my wrist hanging from one of the restraints is completely numb.

He steps closer to me and strokes the side of my face. “I know what this is, though. You were so close to being completely mine. I’m sure this is your stubborn self trying for a last-ditch effort to fight me.” Gordon shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “It’s a wasted effort. You are my pet now. Accept that, and we can finally move forward. And then you’ll know peace and happiness again.”

A part of me reacts to the promise of peace. Of that numbness I’d felt before in not wasting energy on feelings and just doing what I was told.

But the rest of me, the real me, bucks and fights against every word he speaks.

I collect the blood in my mouth and hock it in his face.

His fist slams into my jaw, and I’m lights out.

Something warm presses into my temple, and I’m drawn back to looking at Gordon’s stupid mug. A man steps back from me and moves to the corner, his head bowed and hands folded in front of him.

“Heal her back so it scars. I want another reminder to my pet of what happens when I’m disobeyed or unhappy.”

The man scurries to do as he says, and I can feel the healing warmth on my back. But it’s not enough. Just when my back is starting to feel better, he pulls away, and I can still feel the ache there from a wound that’s not fully healed.

“Good. Now, lash her again. I want five more before I’ll be satisfied,” he orders to someone else behind me.

I grit my teeth before the first one lands, screaming but trying to keep it to myself even as the tears pouring down my face show Gordon how much pain I’m in.

He begins to talk again. I really wish he wouldn’t. Why can’t he just let me be punished in silence? But he never does. He always has to use his words to drive home his punishment in ways that no healer could ever fix.

“Oh, I should probably tell you while I have your attention. That little girl you saved? Or, thought you saved, I should say.”

Another lash with the whip.

“Did you really think that girl sought you out when everyone was afraid of you? That she stood up and decided to be your friend one morning?”

My teeth grind together, but I don’t say anything. He chuckles and continues, “Well, it was her assignment to talk to you. To befriend you. She was absolutely terrified of you when I asked her to do it, but she did it. I needed…”

Another lash.

“…an insurance policy, you see. For you to care about someone enough that I could threaten them when you refused me. I knew you might be difficult when we switched to training your gift with people, so I had to put her in place before then.”

Something in me snaps. Breaks. My head drops. I can’t even manage the effort to keep it up to glare at him, but he lifts my face so he doesn’t miss out on whatever expression I’m wearing now. Defeat? Anguish?

Gordon smiles. “So no, my pet. You never had any friends. No one cares about you. No one but me. That girl could care less what you do so long as you stay far away from her. You probably should have let her die back then, but I can’t very well blame you when she did such a good job with her sweet and innocent act.”

The last strike of the whip flares with pain like the others, but I don’t scream. I don’t feel it. I feel nothing . And just like nothing and a nobody, I close my eyes and find that place in my head where I can float and feel nothing at all.