Chapter 13
“Hold the fucking light straight!” Maryanne’s heart was beating so fast from the amphetamines she’d pumped into her veins that it was skipping beats like it might stop.
Mouth dry, jaw locked, breathing very unsteady, the Alpha female leaned into the wired, narrowed tunnel vision of drug-induced hyperfocus, her fingers flying over the wires as she dug through another Central data relay, burrowing her arms in the twisting cables to attach her hardwire tap.
One of fifty-seven devices that would give her access to Bernard Dome’s systems remotely without triggering surveillance logs or lockdown flags.
And though she had not built them, Shepherd had understood the assignment.
The Follower tech was downright scary—far better than anything she could cobble together from spare parts and stolen bits.
But the beam of light was jittering, Georges shaking so hard he couldn’t keep it pointed where it was needed.
It was the screaming.
Sobs, pleas, a woman begging in Spanish. “Por favor… ayúdame… no más…”
The maintenance shaft was right under her rape, the tight space filled with distorted echoes and fractured shrieking of the worst kind of violence.
The screaming from above distorted into hideous echoes as it saturated Central’s maintenance tunnels. And fucking Georges couldn’t hold the godsdamn light steady.
One panel separated them from the Omega being brutalized by Alpha violence. A few screws, a few moments of effort, and they could help her. And Georges wouldn’t shut up about it.
Because Maryanne refused.
No one could know they were there. There could be no trace, no hint. Nothing. Not if they wanted to save everyone. Not if she….
“He won’t kill her.” Said in a voice that sounded nothing like the absolutely terrified and desperate woman Maryanne was deep down. A voice very much like Shepherd’s. “Try to interfere, and I’ll shoot you here and leave your body to rot in this tunnel.”
Which she also could not do. Rotting corpses smelled. Men dressed in sweaty, dirty pajamas festering in a maintenance tunnel would draw attention, and her device would be found. She needed the Beta to stop being… decent.
This was war.
And Maryanne would just have to live her life with that unknown woman’s screaming in her head forever. Because she was going to fucking live.
Where Shepherd would never be able to reach her again.
But first…
The tunnel around them shuddered, the sound of grinding gears and clanking metal.
Lockdown protocol had been initiated fifteen minutes and two relay points ago—malfunctioning thanks to the Central factions’ unfinished code rewrites in preparation for their upcoming coup. Just as Marianne had warned.
The system was caught between competing commands, its programs stuttering—sector seals opening, closing, or jamming halfway shut in unpredictable patterns.
Hopefully distracting Oversight from noticing what she was doing.
Or what she would be doing if she could see the wires she needed to access.
“I swear to the Gods, Georges, if you don’t hold the fucking light still, I’m going to throw you into the square for the Alphas to find!” She didn’t mean it. Couldn’t help it. Maryanne’s mouth had always been vicious under life-or-death stress.
But the Beta man… he was crying.
And pale. Hyperventilating. Tormented. “You brought those women here. You knew this would happen.”
No point beating around the bush. Not when she was desperate to strip and crimp the proper wires in an infrastructure entirely new to her. “I did what had to be done.”
Horror for his part in it, Georges’s voice sounded like he might vomit into his breathing apparatus. “There were one hundred women on that ship….”
“All of them won’t make it, so just start wrapping your head around that now. But if we don’t get these relays installed, everyone might die. Do you understand what is at stake? They… They signed up to come here.”
A blood-curdling scream came from the woman a few inches above them.
Hands shaking so hard she almost mussed up a vital connection, Maryanne chanted under her breath, “Just don’t think about it.”
And that was when she heard the scrape, looking over her shoulder to find Georges starting to unscrew the panel above them.
Maryanne’s hand shot out, gripped the Beta’s wrist hard, her brown doe eyes all wrong from the drugs. A minute shake of her head, a silent warning, as she pulled his hand down slowly.
He spoke the truth in a horrible, stuttering whisper. “You… You’re a monster.”
Maryanne had been called worse. But she’d also never felt so worthy of the title.
Don’t think about it.
The sounds of the rape were brutal, the panel above them creaking in time to disjointed Alpha thrusts. Harsh male panting, aggressive snarls of a male who may not understand he could just produce an Alpha growl to subdue her.
The man using violence instead.
A roar.
And then it was over. Whatever had been done to the Omega… she was silent now.
Inhale caught on a sob, Georges’s whisper was loud in the suddenly quiet tunnel. “Is she alive?”
I hope not. And Maryanne was not going to think about it. Ever. “The light, shine it here.”
In his shock, he obeyed. And though the beam of light shook, it was steady enough for her to finish her work. For Maryanne to seal the console, her hidden device buried in cables, hidden away. For her to lift up one of their heavy bags and stand over the traumatized Beta.
“Hey. It’s…. You need….” What words could she say?
Threats would only get her so far before she totally broke him.
And he was damaged already. Before she realized what she was doing, she parroted one of Shepherd’s stupid fucking philosophical quotes.
“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
Disbelief and disgust from the Beta. “What?”
Exactly. That’s exactly how Maryanne had looked when Shepherd said it to her the first time. Like a guppy. Because, who the fuck cares?
“Look me in the eye, Georges. Look at me. Brenya will die if we do not get this city prepared for war. Your brother and sisters will die. Millions will suffer. So, pick up that bag and show me how to get to the next access relay. I’ll do the…
ugly things. You just show me the way. And for fuck’s sake, hold the godsdamn light still next time, so I can see my work. ”
She’d never seen a male cry like that. Like he meant it, like suffering beyond his own mattered. But he also picked up the heavy pack, drugs wreaking havoc on him just like they were her, and he pointed which way they needed to run. Which was good.
Maryanne didn’t want him to see.
Blood was leaking through the access panel above them. Blood scented of slick and Alpha cum. One droplet falling on Maryanne’s cheek like a tear, wiped away before Georges might notice.