Chapter 26
“Fairchild. Hey, Fairchild. Wake up…”
Gwain Dutton watched in silence as Reece called to the unconscious woman.
It seemed almost cruel to rouse her from her slumber, considering the situation they were in.
But then, she was going to have to deal with it sooner or later.
Better to get it over with, so they could start working on a way to escape.
They were in a rectangular room with blank metal walls. Bulkheads, technically. They were no longer on Calyxia. They were on some sort of ship. Even with dampening systems in place, Dutton’s enhanced nerve endings could detect the faint vibrations of the propulsion system.
He had come willingly, more or less.
Reece was there too. So was Nash. The three of them had been stripped naked and bound to identical, upright slabs.
Fairchild was in front of them, also naked and bound, but she was reclining in a metal seat.
The kind one might find in a physician’s office.
A pair of metal stirrups held her legs open at a wide angle.
She had a fresh bruise on one side of her mouth, and the sight of that bruise made Dutton’s blood boil within him, but he kept his rage in check, for now.
There was no point in losing his cool, not when so much was at stake.
What mattered was this: Fairchild was alive.
Dutton intended to keep her that way.
He’d been hanging out by the swimming pool at the foot of the hotel tower when Slayn’s guards had approached him.
A cadre of large men in suits and shades.
They’d asked him to come peacefully, and he had.
It wasn’t because he was afraid—not for himself, leastways.
The guards were big and tough-looking, sure, but Dutton could have taken them in a fight, no sweat.
The problem was Fairchild. A few seconds before Slayn’s men had shown up, her beacon had winked out.
One second, it had been there in Dutton’s specs; the next, it was gone.
One wrong move, Slayn’s men had said, and she would die.
Maybe they were bluffing, but Dutton wasn’t about to test them.
Too risky. If Fairchild got killed because of his actions, he would never forgive himself. He’d decided to go quietly instead.
Once they were away from the pool and in a secluded section of the resort, Slayn’s men had injected him with some sort of tranquilizer. Must have been some heavy-duty stuff to get past the defence nanites in his bloodstream.
When he’d woken up, he’d been bound to this metal slab, in this blank, windowless room.
His internal clock told him he’d been out for a whole twenty-four-hour cycle.
Same for Reece and Nash. They’d both woken up about the same time as Dutton, both bound to identical metal slabs.
Fairchild was still unconscious in her chair.
She must have been given a bigger dose. If Dutton found out who had given her that bruise, he was going to rip the fucker’s arm off and shove it up his ass.
Or her ass. Dutton had a feeling the big blonde was the one who’d done it. The one they’d seen in the restaurant, and later in the theater. As a rule, Dutton didn’t hurt women, but in this case he was willing to make an exception.
From the other side of the room, Reece called to their unconscious teammate again.
“Fairchild. Hey, Fairchild.”
At last, her eyes fluttered all the way open. She glanced around briefly, taking in her surroundings. Then she looked at the three males in turn, first Reece, then Nash, and finally Dutton himself. His heart panged when he saw the hurt in her eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “No…”
“I’m afraid so,” Reece said. “But we’re all alive. That’s what matters. How do you feel?”
“Groggy, but otherwise okay,” Fairchild answered, looking around again with clearer eyes than before. “They captured you too,” she said. “All three of you. How?”
Dutton had never been much good at talking, so he let Reece explain. The team leader filled her in, and Dutton watched as her face shifted from disbelief to naked indignation.
“You let yourselves be captured?” she halfway shouted. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
Reece shrugged. “It was the easiest way to get close to you. Storming the hotel was too much of a risk. They might have killed you.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Reece said. “We can argue about it later, once we’re free. Right now, it’s time for a sitrep. What happened with you and Slayn?”
Dutton listened intently as Fairchild gave them a rundown of what had taken place in Slayn’s penthouse. The decoy. The tasers. The true identity of Slayn’s companion.
“Are you fucking serious?” Nash said angrily. “That bitch is really a Merc?”
“Was a Merc,” Fairchild said coldly. “My old teammate.”
“You’re certain?” Reece asked.
Fairchild nodded.
“Damn. That means they had us made from the moment they saw us in the restaurant.”
“Yup,” said Fairchild. “And we walked straight into their trap. Only, you guys didn’t have to do that. You should have made a run for it.”
“And leave you behind?” Dutton said, breaking his silence. “No chance. Anyway, we’re here now, and I’d say we’ve got an advantage.”
“An advantage?”
“That’s right. We’re still breathing. If Slayn wanted us dead, he would have killed us already. That means he must need us alive for some reason. That tilts the odds in our favor, no?”
Fairchild looked doubtful.
“I appreciate the optimism,” she said, “but that still leaves one pretty big question… why? Why does he want us alive?”
Dutton didn’t have an answer for that.
But he had a feeling they were about to find out.
A door whisked open at one end of the room, and Slayn entered, accompanied by the blonde woman, Rook. His lips were turned up in a gloating smirk.
Dutton wanted to strain against the bonds that were holding him.
He wanted to snarl, to spit. But he didn’t do any of those things.
He wasn’t going to give Slayn the satisfaction.
Dutton had dealt with his fair share of bullies growing up.
He knew better than to feed their desire for domination.
It was better to stay cold—and strike hard, when the opportunity presented itself.
Slayn looked at Fairchild, and his smirk darkened.
“Ah, you’re awake,” he said. “Good, good…”
Dutton stared at the man. He was dressed in a dark gray business suit, no tie.
The top few buttons of his shirt were unfastened, revealing a slash of deeply tanned skin.
Dutton noticed there was a splint on the middle finger of his right hand.
That hadn’t been there yesterday. Fairchild’s work? Must have been.
Before Dutton had a chance to question that injury further, Slayn spread his hands in a dramatic gesture of greeting.
“Welcome aboard my ship! How do you like it?”
He paused for a beat, as if waiting for an answer. When he received none, he continued unfazed.
“I’ll admit,” he said, glancing around at the bare, steel walls, “this room may not look like much, but I assure you, it has seen more action than any other part of the ship. Oh, if these walls could talk.” He sighed, wistfully. “You see, this is my interrogation room.”
“A torture chamber,” Dutton said.
“If you want to be crude about it, I suppose…”
Slayn strode up to Dutton and tapped him on the forehead. He used his left hand for the task. The one without the splint. He looked, to Dutton, a bit like a spoiled brat poking a tiger through the bars of its cage. A brat who had already lost one finger, but still hadn’t learned his lesson.
“…Don’t worry,” Slayn went on. “The information I’m after isn’t stored in your head. It’s in your cells, in your DNA.” He smiled. “As you know, I’m a weapons dealer. And now, thanks to you, I’ll be able to sell the most dangerous weapon of all. Purebred, full-blooded Mercs.”
He began to pace across the room, talking as he went.
“There’s only so much you can achieve with nanites and augmetic implants.
You Mercs, you’re built different. Your fighting spirit, it’s been bred into you for countless generations.
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that.
You’re the offspring of Mercs, and soon your own offspring will belong to me.
Along with Ms. Fairchild here, the three of you are going to breed me up my own personal army of super soldiers. ”
“There’s more to a Merc than just a bloodline,” Reece said. “You’re forgetting about training.”
“Ah, but that’s where Rook comes in. She will teach your children everything she learned from the Guild.
” Slayn crossed the room to where the blonde was standing and caressed her sculpted cheek.
“I originally had similar intentions for Rook, you know—her genes mingled with my own—but, alas, that was not to be. It turns out she is infertile. Oh well. Nobody’s perfect. ”
Slayn withdrew his hand, and Dutton saw a look of hurt dance across Rook’s face. He might have actually felt sorry for the woman, if she weren’t a traitor.
Slayn turned to Fairchild, where she sat naked and bound on her examination chair. She’d been quiet for the past few minutes, probably because she was still recovering from the drugs she’d been given, but now she pulled back her lips in a snarl as Slayn brushed his fingers along her inner thigh.
Dutton felt like snarling too, but he held it in.
“On the other hand,” Slayn continued, “Ms. Fairchild here appears to be quite fertile. Quite fertile indeed. And we’ll soon find out if that’s the case, because you three are going to impregnate her for me… or die trying.”
He dipped his hand inside his sport coat and drew something out—a small, cylindrical pill bottle.
Fairchild’s birth control.