42. Prison Break
PRISON brEAK
DAWN
The only people worth dying for are the ones who won’t let you.
FRONTIER VERNACULAR, ORIGIN UNKNOWN
Dawn cracked one eye open, but all she could see was a white glare. A band across her midsection held her flat on a table. She clawed for Talia’s brightness over the bond, but there was nothing there. Panic tightened in her chest. She was cut off. Alone.
Tubes ran from her veins to bags overhead that filled with that blue light. Replaced. Filled again. She tried to make a fist. Her fingers barely twitched. Well, fuck.
White coats drifted in and out of her field of vision. Someone laughed under their breath. Someone else scribbled notes, avoiding her eyes.
Dawn started counting. Three exits—two normal-size doors, one wider service entrance on metal hinges.
Four guards, standing at attention. Based on the uneven pattern of the footfalls, one of them walked with a limp.
Some kind of wards hummed at a pitch that hurt in her sinuses.
The far wall was lined with tanks and cages. She couldn’t see much flat on her back.
They wheeled a table past her. Some kind of fluxborn lay strapped to it.
Barely breathing. The researchers cut into it, no sedative that she could see.
The creature’s body seized against its restraints.
They pulled out wet organs that dripped into steel bowls.
Everything else—meat, bone, fur—got slapped into a bucket.
They rolled the mangled body away, and Dawn’s stomach twisted. Not at the blood—she’d gutted hundreds of fluxborn—but at the attitude. Indifference. Like the fluxborn were ore to be mined. She wondered what would happen when it was her turn.
“—told you that bath was too good to be true.”
A voice snapped her out of her daze. She twisted and saw Holloway smirking like a jester behind some bars. Relief hit so hard she almost passed out again.
“Ah, Dawn,” he said, all casual. “How’s the service? I’m giving it two stars.”
“Only two?” Her voice rasped.
“Well, the beds are small, and they never brought breakfast. But”—he gestured around—“this room is spectacular. Nothing says luxury like a wall of torture equipment.”
One of the white coats glared at him. “Shut up.”
Holloway shrugged and winked at her. He looked like shit, and his hands had a tremor. He was doing a terrible job of pretending he wasn’t terrified, but Dawn respected the act.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Few hours before you. I went back for the files.” His tight smile warned her not to say she’d told him so. “They’re holding me here for my own safety, of course.”
For your own safety. Sure. Not likely either of them would walk out of here alive.
The white coats came back with surgical trays and clamps. A crown of needles shaped like a halo from hell. They cut her nice new jacket away. Cold air licked her skin, gooseflesh rising. Pants next. What a waste. She wondered idly if one of them would enjoy wearing her hat when this was all over.
Across the room Holloway looked away. “Could use some music. Any requests?”
“Just something loud.”
He started singing. Boy had a lovely voice. Even the white coats paused, glancing up before they forced their eyes back to their instruments.
Dawn swallowed a lump in her throat. The damned music cut through all her emotional shields. “You think that’ll help?” she croaked.
He paused and grinned at her. “Better than screaming. Anyway, we’re not going to die in here. Lore will come.”
Lore. Not Talia. Not Riven. Not the gods he’d grown up praying to. The certainty in his voice caught her off guard. She wanted to believe him so bad, she almost did.
Holloway kept singing until they dragged him out of that cage. He fought, or tried to, but there were too many of them. They sliced his clothes away and heaved him onto another table. They pinned him down too. Naked, shackled. Another way to make them less than human.
When the white coats stepped out, Holloway twisted his head toward her. “Don’t look at them,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
He didn’t shut up. He told her about growing up in Vaelis. About his dead older brother. About sneaking into taverns and charming all manner of girls and boys with his music. The jokes got darker as the time crawled. Gallows humor dressed up as levity. Dawn hung on every word.
Her vision blurred at the edges. Just breathing felt like work.
When she tried to talk, her throat closed.
Four hundred years she’d been alone. Her choice.
Now, strapped down and dying, that felt like a mistake.
When the scholars came back with the needle crown, she was grateful for Holloway. At least she wouldn’t die alone too.
“Neural bridging requires direct interface,” one of them was saying, not to them but to the others. Explaining. Teaching. “We’ll establish connection through the device, directly on the brain stem.”
Dawn didn’t follow all the words, but she understood enough. They wanted to carve a bond into her skull. Her blood wasn’t enough. They wanted inside her head. The scream ripped out of her, shredding her throat. Fuck them. Fuck all of them.
The doors didn’t open. It sounded like they exploded. Silver light split the air, and there was a confusion of noises. She heard the guards and scholars shout and scream and fall silent. Talia yelled her name, and she recognized Lore’s laugh.
Then Riven was at her side. His blades cut through the restraints like nothing. The bands fell away.
The bond slammed back. It hit her straight in the chest. Not gentle. Not gradual. After hours of nothing, Talia’s stubborn sparkling energy hit so hard Dawn gasped.
“Took you long enough.” The words cracked in her throat.
She tried to stand and just sagged into Riven’s arms. A laugh and a snarl bubbled up together. She was alive. She wasn’t alone. Talia cut Holloway loose. He tugged on his pants, but his shirt and jacket were shredded.
“Well, this is happening,” he said, holding up the shreds of fabric. “Naked prison break. Totally normal.”
His ridiculous chatter didn’t annoy her so much anymore.
Then a wave of enforcers marched through the broken doors and spilled into a line.
Dawn counted twelve. Lore tossed her one of her revolvers.
She almost dropped it; her hands were shaking so bad.
But she braced herself on Riven’s shoulder and got it up.
The shot went wide but close enough to scatter the line.
Talia stood in the middle of the room, Lore at her side.
No weapon Dawn could see. She was about to shout for the girl to get down when Talia lifted a hand.
The first few enforcers charged, then stopped, eyes going glassy.
Their arms jerked like puppets with fucked-up strings.
The girl’s face was blank. Lore just stepped back to let her work, a smirk on his face.
That’s when the fight broke open for real. They fought like a pack. Talia pushed confusion. Lore broke their weapons, a fresh flux stone in both hands. Holloway propped himself behind the metal table with a rifle he’d picked up: aim, fire, reload. Riven sliced through anything that got close.
And Dawn—weak, shuddering—leaned on them. Let them fight for her. Hated it. Needed it. Loved it.
The room was a smoky hellscape when the last enforcer hit the floor.
Bodies piled in the stairwell. Gunsmoke and flux dust choked the air.
Dawn had swiped a lab coat from the rack, and the white front of it was splattered with—well, better not to think about it.
She cackled. The ragged fluxborn packed into that wall of cages growled and shrieked and slammed into the bars. She almost felt bad for them.
The sound of boots hit the stairs, and twelve more enforcers marched in.
They had to break formation to get around the broken doors and bodies.
They looked confused. Probably wondered how five random prisoners had done this much damage.
A figure elbowed to the front of the group with his hands up. He looked vaguely familiar.
“Talent! Stop this!” the man shouted.
The girl stepped forward. “Nadir, get out of here. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What are you doing?” he demanded, looking around with wild eyes. “I don’t understand. This was your work, and we were so close.”
Their group was moving, pulling together behind her in the middle of the room.
They cut quite the picture. Lore’s dark curls floated in a halo of flux static.
Holloway shirtless, splattered with blood and flux juice.
Riven looked like a statue, huge and square, and—was he growling?
Dawn hefted her revolver and aimed it at Nadir’s face.
“Can I take him?” she asked, pulling the hammer back. Talia raised a hand.
“We need to move, Talent,” Lore said, and his hand brushed her waist. Eww.
Talia waved them both off. “What do you mean, this was my work?”
Whatever Nadir was going to say was broken by a growl and a crash. Dawn spun around to see fluxborn pouring out of the cages. Looked like eight or nine of them had enough energy left to do some damage. The cages must have lost power in the attack.
She shot one, and Riven sliced another through the midsection, but the rest of the fluxborn flowed past and set on the guards.
They were small, ragged things, hard to tell what they’d started out as.
But they had teeth and claws. She watched Talia’s friend catch a raking claw swipe across his face.
Then Riven grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.
“Time to go,” he growled.
They fell back to a door that opened to a set of stairs, going up.
More guards were pouring into the room behind them.
Lore was the last one up. He waved a hand and exploded every light in the room.
Glass and flux and fire swirled at their backs.
But they were running up and out through a service door.
Cold winter air hit Dawn in the face. She gulped it in and collapsed against a wall. Blood and sweat slicked her skin under the tattered lab coat. The rush was fading. She could barely feel her legs.
Riven wiped blood from his blades. “Everyone alive?”
“Close enough,” she rasped.
Talia draped a big bulky jacket around Dawn’s shoulders, and she realized it was Riven’s old one. A little worse for wear, but it’d do.
They staggered through alleys, keeping to shadows. The stables were a mess of enforcers and stable boys. They slipped three horses before shouts rang out, then ran hard for the gates. Alarms rang behind them, but no one seemed to be in charge.
By the time they cleared Haven’s walls, highsun had peaked. They didn’t stop until the city was a white smudge behind them. Talia swayed. Riven caught her elbow.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice sounded thin, and a track of blood seeped from her nose. Her face was pale, with deep purple bruises under her eyes. She’d torn through dozens of minds that morning. Would have been a burned-out husk without the bond.
They’d escaped with the clothes on their back, except her and Holloway, who had less than that. Three horses and whatever was in the saddlebags. Lore looked to have stocked up on flux stones, and he’d grabbed Holloway’s harp case and both of Dawn’s revolvers.
“Well, this is a mess,” Dawn rasped. “Where to next?”
Talia stepped forward. Didn’t look to Lore. Didn’t wait for a vote. “Valrotala,” she said. “That’s our destination, and we’re close now.”
Lore’s smile curved, like he owned her. “I agree—”
But she was already walking away. Chin high, shoulders squared. Not waiting for praise or approval. Dawn blinked. The girl who’d been paralyzed by the simplest choices was gone. This one had shattered minds and fought through hell tonight. This one had teeth. When had that happened?
“Good plan,” Dawn said. “Love it. Let’s go.”
And for the first time in a long, long time, she felt the ground shift in the right direction.