Chapter 78 Zion
ZION
Sand abraded my corneas as I peeled my eyelids open.
Immediately, a hammer struck my head, retreated, and then did it again.
And again.
And again.
Repeatedly.
Was this how Gedeon’s migraines felt? The pulsing was worse than what I did to my playthings in our basement.
I blinked and blinked, but it didn’t help. Darkness ruled wherever I was. Swallowing the dryness in my mouth, I flexed my muscles—
A grunt lodged in my throat. That same hammer returned, rebounding off my skull ten times before granting me a reprieve.
If you could call it that. My wrist smarted, my cheek was on fire, my nape stung, and my temple throbbed.
And a million other spots in my body were simultaneously stiff and tender.
At least the flare-ups of pain helped me to feel my way around.
Based on the sheet of metal under my ass, my bent legs, and the thin strips of something cold cutting into my wrists and ankles, I was locked in, bound to a chair.
A sturdy one at that. Probably bolted to the floor.
It wouldn’t wobble no matter how many times I threw my weight to the left or right.
Taking a short break, I combed my memory for any clues.
Red patches on uniforms. Scarlet city emblems on military trucks. Adder’s public announcement about the slaughter of Ilasall’s government. Gedeon hiding behind a silver car. Kali being dragged by a group of soldiers. A mass of them swarming me. And then…nothingness.
Ardaton had invaded Ilasall. And its military had likely brought me to Ardaton’s prison, deep underground, where offenders were thrown in to never experience sunshine’s warmth again.
Squinting, I attempted to scout the space I was—
Bright light scorched my retinas. Illumination incinerated my nerve endings, and I ducked my head to slow the onslaught of sensation.
But the harsh lamps didn’t fully cover the surface of the white vinyl floor. Shadows swirled in the corners, and the farther from my scuffed-up and bloodied boots I looked, the more sparkles bounded across the floor.
When I lifted my head, dread settled in my gut.
My room wasn’t the one with the lights on.
A glass wall, without any frames or seams, stood before me. And behind the spotless barrier, in an identical room to mine, a woman sat strapped to a polished metal chair.
A woman I would’ve given anything to trade positions with.
Stripped naked, Kali tracked the movements of two individuals dressed in white, their loose pants and tunics as pristine as the entire space—not a speck of dirt. Even Kali had been washed clean, and I doubted she would’ve done so of her own will.
Especially when her limbs were secured so tightly, the chains dug into her flesh, her hands splayed on the wide armrests, each finger tied separately.
A familiar sputter signaled the engagement of speakers on my side of the transparent wall.
Someone must have noticed my state of alertness.
“So what can we do?” the taller of the two figures asked, striding to the milky table near the exit in Kali’s room.
As he rummaged in the few open boxes, his thin, synthetic clothing shifted, the rustle so jarring it blew my eardrums. Yet I couldn’t help but continue listening as the man rattled off, “We can’t toy with her sight or hearing, or anything fun in general. What does it leave us with?”
The smaller but curvier of the two adjusted the white mask over her face. That and the cadence of her voice betrayed she was female. “Our orders are to keep her generally intact. To not cause permanent damage or anything else that could hinder breeding her.”
Joining her friend in searching the boxes, she selected a meat cleaver gleaming in the rod-like lights hanging from wires.
Adrenaline spiked in my bloodstream from the awareness of how such a weapon could be used.
Leaning against the table, the taller one crossed his arms. “Or affect her appearance too much.”
My pulse thrummed as the prospect of Kali going through torture made me thrash in my restraints. Chains pinched and ripped the thin hairs littering my skin, but it was the pounding in my head and the steadily climbing flame in my broken wrist that convinced me to calm down.
I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I passed out again.
And from how Kali didn’t so much as glance at the clear wall dividing us, I guessed she had no clue she wasn’t alone.
She couldn’t see me. The glass was one-way.
“But they only said she has to look appealing enough.” The curvy woman’s remark chilled me to my core. Sauntering to Kali, she said, “I hope you rested in the break we’ve so gracefully afforded you, but it’s time to get back to business.”
“Good luck.” The woman’s colleague propped himself on the corner of the milky table, content to watch the show instead of participating. “Though, if she didn’t talk after I beat her up, I don’t think she will spill her secrets now.”
Beat. Her. Up.
My blood boiled. The cuffs sliced my flesh as I strained forward, as if my proximity alone could protect her.
Feet slipping, they failed to find purchase on the floor, but I twisted and turned, writhed, rattling the restraints, ignoring the blinding spasms blooming from my fractured wrist and spreading, connecting with the multitude of gashes decorating my body.
Although dark patches of skin weren’t spoiling Kali’s flesh, bruises didn’t appear instantly. And the swelling… If you knew where to hit, you could minimize it to the point it’d be hard to spot.
Now I knew why Gedeon constantly ground his teeth. When you were bound, physically or otherwise, it was a way to pacify your wrath, clear the muddle in your mind, and focus.
But the rising temperature inside me refused to go down. Sweat broke out along my hairline, the filling-me-to-the-brim heat doing nothing but warding me against the chill saturating the windowless room.
Wielding the meat cleaver, the woman asked Kali, “Tell me, how many of you managed to slink into Ilasall and how many remain outside the city?”
My eyebrows drew together. They didn’t know the numbers.
Ardaton must’ve kept Ilasall’s gates closed, too wary of any intruders. They didn’t have a hunch that only about half of our people had ended up in Ilasall, the rest cut off by the slam of the gates and Ilasall’s military blocking the catacombs.
Kali batted her eyelashes at the interrogator. “Zero, and zero.”
The woman heaved a sigh. “Fine.” As she shook her head, her low ponytail swished across her back, the raven’s strands a stark contrast to the bright outfit. “But don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”
Her thin smile accompanied the knife drawing a high arc in the air—
Clunk. The sound of steel striking steel stopped my heart mid-beat.
Without hesitation, she removed the meat cleaver, the weapon hanging heavy at her hip. Red specks dotted the blade, so tiny compared to the flow of drops running away from Kali’s limb and leaping to the floor.
Kali gaped at her hand. Then a feeble whimper escaped her. A cry. Finally, she threw her head back, screeching as her shoulders shook, the tremors spreading all the way to her toes until she quivered in tandem with her sobs.
A freezing sensation crawled up my legs, seeping into my pores, numbing me.
Yet I couldn’t look away as the curvy woman picked up Kali’s severed pinky, the small digit dribbling blood on the immaculate white floor. “It’s a good thing you don’t need fingers to carry a pregnancy to full term.”
No response slipped past the pain consuming Kali. A sheen of sweat shone on her forehead, but she rolled her lips together, stifling her cries at her mutilated hand, her resolve to keep quiet non-wavering.
“Told you,” the man resting on the table said to his colleague.
“I have barely started,” she retorted, dropping Kali’s pinky into one of the boxes.
Rotating the meat cleaver, admiring how the sharp edge glinted, the woman returned to Kali’s side.
“Tell me how many of your people are still out there, and I will release you.” She pressed the tip under Kali’s chin, urging her to look up.
“Of course, you will still have to do your duty to Ardaton, but that’s a woman’s purpose. You’ll survive like all the others.”
Survive.
I twisted and turned, fruitlessly testing the strength of my shackles as guttural sounds emanated from deep in my chest—growls disguised as grunts.
Kali had survived enough. For more than five lifetimes combined.
“Like you did?” Kali scoffed. “I’ve noticed your wristband is green. Your city uses the same system as Ilasall. I know you’re assigned to someone. That they own you.”
The woman tugged her medical mask to cover her nose, as though a whiff of the foul stench—the blood and sweat—was making her nauseous.
Unless… That roundness of her stomach wasn’t from fat accumulated due to access to good nutrition, the opposite of what black-banded were graced with.
“The Head of Labor,” she proudly stated. “He’s been my Match since I graduated school.”
I gagged. The broadcast in Ilasall had depicted Ardaton’s Head of Labor as a balding man in his sixties who boasted a belly so large it’d hung over his belt.
Kali laughed, the roar of her mirth so unhindered it coaxed my lips to curl. She was a fighter, through and through.
The female torturer scowled at Kali. “What’s so funny?”
She smiled. “The level of your stupidity.”
“Providing for the human race is not stupid.” Between her sputters, the woman accidentally brushed the bloody knife against her white tunic, ruining her pristine appearance, and her scowl widened my smile.
She was marking herself in a pattern I was going to carve into her flesh.
Slice by slice, I was going to flay her along the crimson smears decorating her clothing and then weave the strips of her skin into a rug.
Laceration by laceration, I was going to gouge her muscles out.
And minute by minute, I was going to enjoy her screams until the last one zapped down my spine in an electrifying pulse.
Kali crinkled her nose. “But being okay with having no choices and allowing someone to fuck you at their disposal so they can climb the career ladder is.”
All three cities had established the motivational system long ago. The more babies the Match produced, the higher position the man could occupy in his chosen governmental division. An abhorrent practice, but effective, nevertheless.
Checking his wristwatch, the slender man crossed his ankles. “Can we speed this along? My lunch break is scheduled in less than half an hour. And we have…another to tend to.”
“Fine.” The woman rested the edge of the meat cleaver on the wide metal armrest, right where Kali’s pinky used to be. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
Kali glared at her. “And I’m not going to.”
The knife moved so quickly I lost track of the blade—
As it hit the steel, the thunk echoed, and the sound together with Kali’s scream shattered my bones, the shards mincing my insides, acid spreading all over, eroding my flesh.
Lifting Kali’s fourth finger, the sadistic bitch launched it toward a box like a crumpled piece of paper.
The chopped-off digit bounced off the wall, leaving a red streak, and fell into its final resting place.
Beats of silence accompanied Kali’s inspection of her limb. Her face glittered in wetness as scarlet streamed in the grooves of her armrest. Drip, drip, drip, her blood splashed onto the floor, soiling the white-as-snow shoes of the weapon wielder and coloring Kali’s ankles in red.
But just as the eleventh drop struck the vinyl tiles, her endurance reached its end. Unable to look away from her deformed hand, she broke, quivering, twitching, gasping.
But it was the lack of crying that pushed me over the edge.
I lost it.
Writhing, I yanked and tugged and pulled on the chains binding me, yelling profanities, damaging my broken wrist beyond repair, ignoring the hammer smashing my skull and the blaze in my cheek as the gash stretched out.
Shouts and bellows poured out of me like arrows, all of them bouncing off the glass wall with no effect.
Nobody heard me.
Or simply ignored me. Because somebody had turned the speakers on so I could hear what was happening in Kali’s cell.
Swallowing my pride, I resorted to the last tactic a man in my position could employ.
“Please let her go,” I whispered. “Torture me instead.” I faced the speaker installed in the ceiling.
“Chop off my fingers, my feet, my eyes, I don’t care,” I begged until my voice cracked. “Please… Don’t touch her.”
In response to my prayer, the lights in my room flickered on. The glass wall…rippled, and suddenly, Kali’s eyes widened.
Zion, she mouthed, her acknowledgement muffled by the speakers cutting off.
She could see me.