FORTY-SEVEN #2
“You understand me?” she tries again, trying to lure a response out of me. I’m an expensive inconvenience, though, so I do nothing.
The man beside me laughs. “Look at her. She doesn’t understand anything.”
My right hand closes around nothing.
Not useful.
My left wrist turns slightly inside the restraint.
Pain sparks.
Useful.
There’s a little give.
Not enough to get free but enough to become a problem. And that’s honestly the best thing right now, because I love being a problem.
The woman straightens. “Keep her stable. The buyers want an Omega with intact heat response, not a corpse.”
“And the science unit?”
“They get the drives first. Her later, if leadership approves.”
“And if Haven Ridge comes?”
A pause. Then the woman looks toward the door.
“They won’t,” she says, but her voice is thinner now. “The Commander said her pack would be contained.”
Commander. That rotten name again.
Hale’s betrayal settles over me, colder than the metal at my wrists. I hope Kaito gets to him first. No. Actually, I hope Maine does. Wait, no. I hope they take turns. Yeah, that sounds much better.
The guard beside me shifts closer, too comfortable, too sure I’m nothing more than straps and sedatives. His hand drops to my wrist restraint, checking the lock. The baton at his belt brushes the side of the chair.
Close.
Too close.
My body is slow.
My timing has to be perfect.
Unfortunate, really, because perfect and drugged don’t tend to tango very well.
He leans across me.
I move.
Not big.
Not dramatic.
I twist my left wrist until the restraint bites skin, hook two fingers around the loose edge of the strap, and yank my whole arm down with everything I have left.
Something tears.
Maybe skin.
Maybe muscle.
Maybe dignity.
The restraint doesn’t break, but it jerks enough to pull the guard off balance. His hip hits the chair but my knee can’t lift far since my ankle is still strapped down. I do manage to turn my foot outward, though, catching the edge of the cart next to me.
I kick and the cart slams into his legs. He curses, stumbling away from me. I snap my head forward and sink my teeth into the soft meat between his glove and sleeve and he screams so loudly my ears ring with it.
Beautiful.
Wet.
Surprised.
I bite harder.
The woman shouts and the rifle guard raises his weapon. The man tries to wrench away, but I keep my teeth locked until blood floods my mouth, hot and coppery and disgusting.
Then I spit it in his face.
“Call that responsive, you bitch,” I rasp.
My voice sounds like the old sound of a car driving over gravel, but it’s totally worth it, even as the guard backhands me. Pain cracks across my cheek, bright enough to make the room tilt. The bonds flare so sharply I almost choke.
Ewan.
Kaito.
Fletcher.
Closer. Definitely closer. Unless I really am hallucinating. That would suck. If I am hallucinating, my hallucinations are extremely angry and smell faintly like murder. It’s the prettiest smell I have ever inhaled.
A siren chirps once somewhere outside and everyone freezes.
One short sound, then nothing.
“What was that?” the rifle guard asks.
The woman turns toward the camera screen. “Infected in cage three.”
The bored man clamps a hand over the bite on his wrist. “It malfunctioned yesterday.”
A light above the door flickers.
Once.
Twice.
Then dies.
The room is flooded with a red emergency glow.
My heart kicks hard.
Outside, someone screams.
Not Zed.
Human.
Brief.
Cut off.
The woman’s face changes and I start laughing. It hurts a little, but what doesn’t right now? I laugh anyway, right before I rasp, “Oh, shit. Looks like you really should run.”
The rifle guard points his weapon at me. “Shut up.”
Another sound comes from beyond the door.
A thud.
Then a softer one.
Body hitting wall.
Body hitting floor.
The three bonds surge so hard my back arches against the restraints.
There.
There.
There.
Close enough now that hope stops feeling like a hallucination and starts feeling like something I can actually latch on to.
The door opens and the older man from the tunnel steps in. His black mask is gone now, showing off his hard face and gray hair. He’s also wearing clean gloves. Of course he has clean gloves. After all, men who call women cargo always love clean gloves.
His eyes move from me to the dead light, then to the guard’s bleeding wrist.
“Still lively, I see,” he says, almost blandly, like he’s as emotionless as his exterior would lead you to believe.
I bare my bloody teeth at him and rasp, “You should see me with breakfast.”
He studies me like I am interesting and I hate that more than fear.
“You could have been handled gently.”
“People keep saying that right before doing the opposite.”
“You are valuable, Miss O’Reilly.”
“Heard that sales pitch, too. Not interested in hearing it again.”
His mouth tightens and that emotionless exterior splinters only a little. It’s enough to show the ugly he’s hiding right before it spills out of his mouth. “You are cargo. Cure, womb, leverage, asset. Choose whichever word makes you feel most human.”
The room goes very still and for one second, fear tries to own me. Not borrow or visit, but fully own. It slides its cold fingers around my throat and whispers every nightmare I have ever had since I learned what being an Omega meant after the world ended.
Cage.
Heat.
Hands.
Blood.
No choice.
No name.
No.
I lift my head.
It takes every scrap of strength I have.
Every bond.
Every memory.
Every ounce of rage Maine taught me to survive with.
“My name,” I say, voice shaking, “is Dakota.”
The older man steps closer. “For now.”
The door behind him explodes inward.
Not opens. It fucking explodes.
Metal shrieks and bolts tear free. The older man turns, and the rifle guard gets one startled half second to raise his weapon before something slams into him from the other side.
Fast.
Violent.
Gloriously Welsh and wearing headphones around his neck like they’re just an accessory he can’t be without.
Ewan.
He hits the guard like a storm wearing human skin, driving him into the cabinet hard enough to crack the glass. The rifle clatters away and Ewan’s knife flashes once, then the man drops.
The woman reaches for a syringe and a blade pins her sleeve to the counter before she can even lift it.
Kaito steps into the room behind Ewan, face quiet and terrible.
Fletcher is a shadow at his shoulder, gun up, cedar and leather flooding the bond so strongly tears sting my eyes.
Maine is behind them with a shotgun and an expression that makes every person in the room look suddenly less confident about living.
And Xeon.
Xeon enters last.
Silent.
Blood on his cheek.
Eyes locked on me.
No bond.
No thread.
But he’s right there.
Right there.
The empty place inside me aches so sharply I forget how to breathe.
Ewan reaches me first, because of course he does. Not because the others are slower, but because he’s the sound I need before the room disappears under panic and the NOVAC hijacker that keeps coming and going in my brain like we’re dueling for the steering wheel.
“Tiny Terror,” he says, voice rough enough to break something in my chest. “You look like absolute shit.”
My laugh comes out as a wheeze.
“Rude,” I rasp. “I even did my hair.”
His hands shake when they reach for the restraint panel, but only once. Then he steadies them.
“Looks like you tried to accessorize your outfit to match, too,” he says, eyes bright and furious as he works the release. “Blood, metal chair, attempted trafficking. Very in season. Should be put in magazine ads. I hate it all.”
The first cuff snaps open and my arm drops. Pain shreds through my shoulder so badly my vision whites out and a breath hisses through my clenched teeth. Ewan catches my wrist before it falls too hard. Gentle. So gentle it actually hurts worse.
“Stay with me, Tiny,” he says.
Through clenched teeth and agony, I hiss, “I’m a little busy for that right now.”
“How? Busy being dramatic?”
“Just casually being kidnapped, actually.”
“That’s over now. What’s your next excuse?”
The second cuff opens and I almost believe him.
Then my body gives up on pretending it has bones, and I fall forward into his arms. Every single bond in me crashes home like a UFO landing into a goddamn wheat field for the first time.
Ewan holds me like I might vanish if he gets it wrong, hands trembling once more as he holds me close.
Kaito’s hand touches the back of my neck, steady and warm.
Fletcher’s voice rumbles somewhere above me, low and lethal. “I’ve got the door.”
Maine says my name like it is the only word he remembers.
And Xeon says nothing. He only steps close enough that I can see him when my eyes flutter. Close enough that the silence doesn’t feel empty anymore.
I try to lift my head.
Fail.
Try anyway.
“Hat?” I whisper.
Ewan makes a sound that might be a laugh if it hadn’t been dragged through hell first. Rude, if you ask me.
Maine appears in front of me, pale and shaking, his old faded hat clenched in one hand.
“Got it,” he says.
My eyes burn.
“Oh, good. Good, good,” I mumble.
Ewan presses his forehead briefly to my hair.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Still in there, aren’t you?”
I manage the smallest smile. “Unfortunately for everyone and their mother.”
And then the room fills with gunfire.