Dark Alchemy: Mind Games (The Children Of The Gods #106)

Chapter 1 Mattie

MATTIE

The paperback was a lucky find.

Mattie had discovered it in the back of the salvaged nightstand's top drawer, wedged behind a crumbling cork coaster and a pen that no longer worked.

The cover was faded and water stained, the spine was cracked, and the title implied historical fiction, which wasn't the kind of thing she would have picked up in a bookstore.

She preferred thrillers and crime fiction, stories where clever people solved puzzles and justice prevailed.

But beggars couldn't be choosers, and she needed something to keep her mind occupied while Dimitri was out with the Eight who called themselves Dave, strolling in the dark through the compound or sitting somewhere that was free of surveillance.

Darkness wasn't a problem for any of them. They were all immortals who saw perfectly well in the dark, even when the sky was overcast and clouds covered the moon and the stars. But the patrolling guards could see just as well, and that was a source of worry.

Trying to find a pose that would allow her to read, given her injury, Mattie propped up her bandaged hand on a pillow and balanced the paperback awkwardly in her left hand, but as she'd expected, reading one-handed was an exercise in frustration.

Every time she needed to turn a page, she had to set the book down on her stomach, use her left hand to flip the page, then pick the book up again and find her place.

It was annoying and made it difficult to concentrate on the story, which was surprisingly good.

The duke was trapped in a castle during a medieval siege, bartering with an enemy commander who wanted his lands and his young daughter's hand in marriage. The fight scenes were gory, the dialogue was sharp, and the tension was real.

Still, despite the engaging prose and fascinating plot, Mattie caught herself reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing a word because her mind kept drifting to the harbor and the real-life fight to the death she'd witnessed.

Somehow, fictional scenarios lost their luster when reality presented itself in all of its ugliness and futility.

She and Dimitri would have been murdered savagely if not for Dave.

As hard as she tried, she couldn't unsee the four warriors who had surrounded them, accusing Dimitri of murdering their friend Tarik, their faces twisted with rage.

The bald one in particular was etched into her memory.

The brutality of his attack, the way he'd grabbed her wrist and forced her to her knees, his boot coming down on her fingers with the full power of an immortal body behind it.

Worst was the sound that she had no doubt would haunt her for years to come.

She heard that wet, crunching sound every time she closed her eyes.

Her sweet, brave Dimitri had fought all four of them, his immortal body fueled by adrenaline and desperation. He'd been magnificent and terrifying in equal measure, moving with a speed and ferocity that shouldn't have been possible for a man who'd never been trained as a warrior.

Thankfully, his bruises had healed in minutes rather than days, and less than an hour after the life-or-death fight, he'd looked like nothing had happened, and the only remaining proof of his injuries had been his blood-soiled clothing.

She, on the other hand, was a cluster of aches and pains, starting with her ruined hand, continuing to her banged-up knees, and culminating in the raw scrapes on both her elbows from when she had dove after the phone Dave had given her.

Naturally, Mattie was glad that Dimitri wasn't suffering the way she was, but his rapid healing only served to reinforce the inescapable realization that the gap between them was growing.

She didn't envy his immortality. It came with a price she wasn't sure she'd be willing to pay.

Watching that fight, being part of it, had amplified her conviction that the immortals on this island had very little humanity left in them.

They killed casually, fought viciously, and treated human and immortal lives as if they were disposable.

Mattie just hoped Dimitri wouldn't lose his humanity as time went by.

Stop it. He is still the same person, and he always will be.

Dave, though, was unlike the others, in some ways worse, and in some ways better.

She couldn't stop thinking about the eight of him arriving at the harbor and tearing through those four trained warriors like they were made of paper.

Eight different faces wearing the same lethal expression, like violence was just another function their shared consciousness performed without effort or emotion, and as if hearts ripped out and left on the ground as a warning was just all in a day's work.

And then those same eight faces had smiled at her and asked her how she felt.

The contrast had been jarring. Still was.

What could the Eight possibly want from Dimitri, though?

She set the book down on her stomach and stared at the ceiling, turning the question over in her head.

She'd been doing it since he had left for the meeting, and she didn't like the conclusion she was arriving at.

Dave needed the enhancement drugs to survive, and Dimitri was one of only two people who could produce them.

That gave Dave a powerful incentive to keep Dimitri alive and cooperative, but after yesterday's deadly demonstration, she had a feeling that whatever Dave wanted from Dimitri would come with an implied threat.

Give me what I want, or I'll stop protecting you.

Maybe it was about changing the drugs?

Maybe Dave wanted modifications to the formula, something that would make the Eight even more powerful?

Or maybe it was about Losham and what he wanted Dimitri to do?

Perhaps Dave wasn't happy about Losham's idea to create enhanced humans.

Or maybe—

The lock on the lab's main door clicked open downstairs, and Mattie's pulse quickened.

She heard footsteps on the stairs and recognized the quick, light, slightly uneven cadence, as if Dimitri was taking the steps two at a time but trying to be quiet about it.

He appeared in the doorway, and her first thought was that he looked distraught. He wasn't injured, and he didn't look scared, he just looked stunned.

"Hey," she said. "How did it go?"

He came into the room, sat on the edge of her bed, and ran both hands through his hair.

"You're scaring me," she said. "Talk to me."

"Dave told me things." He dropped his hands and looked at her. "Shocking things about this island that I didn't know before, and then he made a request that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. Bizarre and unexpected don't begin to describe it."

"I doubt there's anything about this island that could shock me at this point.

What can be more shocking than an army of immortal warriors that no one outside this place has a clue exists?

Or a secret resort that is an enormous brothel with thousands of trafficked women who are serving those warriors and male guests from around the world? "

He chuckled, but he didn't sound amused. If anything, the sound carried a barely concealed edge of hysteria. "You'd be surprised, although this one is a combination of both the army of immortal warriors and a brothel. Turns out that the one we know about is not the only one on the island."

Mattie frowned. "You should start from the beginning."

"Before I do, there is a piece of good news that I want to share with you.

Petrov should hear this too, but since he's in his room and the door is closed, he will have to hear about it tomorrow.

" He paused, probably for dramatic effect, which was kind of absurd given all the preamble about that shocking thing he was going to tell her.

"Well? What is it?" she asked.

"Dave said that Losham ordered all the cameras in the lab turned off.

He did that before coming over to talk to me to keep that conversation private, but he decided to keep the surveillance off, probably because he doesn't want anyone to know what he wants us to work on, particularly the enhancement drugs for humans.

Instead, he posted guards outside the building, which is a mixed blessing.

It's good because we will be better protected, but it's bad because we will have less privacy.

The best part is that Petrov will have no more excuse to torture us with his Russian folk music. "

Mattie laughed. "I've gotten used to it and even grown to like it. Not at the decibel level he's playing it, though."

Dimitri grimaced. "I hate those songs. I've always hated them." He let out a breath. "Now comes the less amusing part."

Mattie braced herself and nodded. "Go on."

"Dave shared things about himself. The soldiers who volunteered for Zhao's enhancement program were all very young.

Boys, really. After the initial failures, Zhao realized that he would have more success with young, malleable minds.

Of the Eight who are Dave, the oldest was twenty-one, and the youngest was seventeen when recruited, and now he's eighteen.

They were born and raised on the island, never having set foot off it.

They were never deployed, never sent on missions, and their entire world was this rock in the middle of the ocean. "

"Was any of this news to you? I mean, you've been working with Dave for a long time now. Surely you knew their ages."

Dimitri shook his head. "The embarrassing truth is that Petrov and I were afraid to ask questions.

We went by Zhao's reports, and he only gave a range of the ages of the recruits.

I knew they were young, but I didn't know how young.

They grew up in something called the Dormant enclosure, which is the most shocking part of the story. "

"What's the Dormant enclosure?"

He let out a breath. "Have you ever wondered why there are no immortal females on the island?"

She nodded. "I thought that only males were born immortal." Her stomach dropped as an unsettling thought occurred to her. "Don't tell me that they kill the baby girls like they used to do in China."

"No, but it's almost as bad. They keep females who carry the immortal genes in what they call the Dormant enclosure, which is basically a brothel, but with the added cruelty of being bred to produce immortal warriors for Navuh's army.

The girls born to them stay in the enclosure and become breeders when they are old enough.

It's worse for them than for anyone else on this godforsaken island.

They are imprisoned there, forced to have sex with strangers that are chosen for whatever traits Navuh values, and produce children.

All the children are born human, but the boys can be turned immortal.

They are taken from the enclosure at thirteen, sent to the training camp, and induced into immortality.

After that, they are not allowed to visit their mothers and sisters again.

No immortal males are allowed in the Dormant enclosure. "

Mattie frowned. "I wonder why. That seems like an unnecessary cruelty."

"Who knows?" Dimitri shrugged. "Maybe they believe that the soldiers become tougher when they have no contact with their mothers and sisters.

Or maybe they are afraid that the soldiers will try to set them free.

The males are told that females are inferior, and that's why their god supposedly didn't give them the ability to transition.

Dave didn't sound like he believed it, and I don't believe it either. "

"It's convenient." Mattie felt the anger building in her chest, hot and sharp. "They keep the women powerless by telling them they're inferior, biologically and otherwise, so they don't fight back. They accept their role because they think it's all they're good for."

Dimitri nodded. "That was my read on it, too. Besides, it's irrelevant if they accept their role or not because they are imprisoned and forced to breed."

"How many women are we talking about? Hundreds?"

"I don't know. Dave didn't say, and I didn't think to ask.

But it must be a lot, given the size of the immortal army.

If the ratio of births is divided almost equally between the genders, as it is with humans, then a lot of girls had to be born in that enclosure.

Then again, the women have normal human lifespans, or shorter because of what they are subjected to, and the men turn immortal and rarely die, so they accumulate over the centuries while the women don't."

Mattie pressed her good hand against her mouth, thinking of those women. Generations of them, mothers and daughters and granddaughters, all trapped in the same cycle of enforced breeding, their bodies used to produce soldiers for the Brotherhood.

It was her story writ large. Trafficked, used, treated as property. Except these women had been born into it. They'd never known anything else.