21. Jersey
JERSEY
Dark is disorienting enough on its own.
When you’re drugged out of your fucking mind, it’s ten times worse.
My heart thrashes wildly as my mind drifts somewhere beyond my body.
I force my eyes to focus on the narrow strip of light spilling in from beneath the door in front of me.
It’s the only way to anchor myself in this pitch black room, the cold from the concrete stinging my back as it seeps through, embedding itself in my marrow.
I can hear them out there, drunken and cruel. Laughing, clinking glasses, whistling for the other Assets.
A tremor ripples through me. Then another.
I’m shivering, I realize.
Or maybe my heart’s just beating too hard. It’s kicking in the depths of my chest like something buried alive, my palms clammy against my bare thighs.
He said he was going to come back.
I don’t want him to come back.
My head drops back, the heels of my hands digging into my eye sockets as I try to will myself to feel normal again. Then the door suddenly opens, the glare of light from beyond it bleaching the room in harsh white and momentarily blinding me.
“Enjoy your time out?” Harris asks mockingly, bending at the waist to scoop my leash up off the floor. “Come on, little doggie. It’s time to teach you your first lesson.”
I yelp as he yanks on the leash, leather biting into my neck as my head snaps forward. My body can’t help but follow. My hands meet the concrete, grit coating my palms as I crawl from the shadows and into the light.
For a split second, a sense of relief washes over me– but as the glare fades and my vision adjusts, relief curdles into dread. As the room comes into focus, I realize the darkness was doing me a fucking favor.
Scathing looks send heat creeping along my spine and spilling across my cheeks as Harris parades me through the crowd, leading me over to the platform in the center of the room.
Kenzie’s face remains carefully blank, but pity settles in her eyes, and my stomach drops.
With a snap of his fingers, the other Assets scramble down from the platform, dispersing from his sight.
He looks at me, then flicks his chin toward the platform. “Up.”
My bottom lip trembles, tears starting to blur my vision as I hesitate.
He heaves an irritated sigh, roughly jerking on my leash.
I grit my teeth against the pain as he forces me to climb up and puts me on display.
He crowds closer, my chest heaving while I scrape together the last shreds of my courage.
“If you insist on embarrassing me in front of my friends and colleagues, you leave me no choice but to show them how I bring my bitches to heel,” he snarls, venom dripping from every word as he jabs a needle into my arm.
My mouth hinges open in shock, wide eyes darting down to the syringe as he depresses the plunger.
“A little something to help make you more compliant,” he drawls, winking.
My stomach churns, a tear carving a path down my cheek as I choke on a gasp and my body relents.
My knees wobble beneath me before all my limbs turn to jelly, the world tilting on its axis as I collapse onto the platform.
I don’t know if it’s spinning, or I am, but the acrid taste of bile rises in my throat and I start to retch.
What did he give me?
Oh, no, no, no…
Vomit spills from my mouth, and I’m still coughing and sputtering as he rolls me to my back. I shudder a breath as the lights intensify, colors deepening and details sharpening. I reach above me, so badly wanting to touch the soft patch of blue dancing across my vision.
“This one doesn’t have a proper tag of ownership yet,” Harris announces to the crowd.
“Claim the bitch!” a male voice calls, sordid chuckles rising across the room.
“Should I use my cock first, or my blade?” Harris jeers, popping the button on his fly.
Laughter rumbles from all around me, my head lolling to the side as I glance out to see so many eyes watching. Waiting. Morphing. Sharp white teeth sprout from their smug faces, gleaming as they snarl and sneer. Wolves.
No.
This isn’t right.
I shouldn’t be here.
I need to go home.
I shove up on my elbows, my gaze frantically pinging around the room in search of a path, an exit.
“Not so fast.” Harris clicks his tongue, his hand clamping down over my shoulder as he shoves me onto my back again. “You want this, pet. You know you do.”
I stare up at him blankly, the signals in my brain misfiring.
“I do?” I slur.
“You’ve been begging for it all night.”
“I don’t–” the thought flutters away as my body relaxes back against the plush surface.
Harris smiles, slipping a knife from his waistband.
He holds it up, light glinting off the blade like diamonds.
I’m momentarily mesmerized, eyes fixed on the shiny metal as he slowly lowers it to my belly, right above my pubic bone.
The tip pierces my flesh as he presses down, the blade slicing into my skin.
I jerk as pain seizes through me, my hands flying up to clutch his arm.
“No,” he admonishes, shaking his head. “Bad girl.”
He presses down on the blade again, a scream tearing from my throat as he drags it upwards.
I try to thrash, but my limbs are heavy, my movements uncoordinated.
He lifts the knife, crimson dripping from the blade as he brings it to his mouth, moaning as he licks it clean.
Then his face splits with a smile, my blood coating his teeth.
“Delicious.”
Humming softly, he lowers the knife again, and the burn beneath my skin is molten as he resumes carving into me.
The drugs have my mind and body at war, alternating from back arching as the blade sinks deeper, then morphing to white hot pain that wrenches me away from it.
With a satisfied nod, his lips curl around his teeth.
“Go on,” he coaxes. “Take a look. See how pretty you bleed for me.”
I curl up, eyes landing on the blood smeared across my abdomen. The darkest of it is oozing from a series of three cuts, two vertical and one horizontal. All together, it forms a shape.
A letter H.
“I have a feeling you’ll be earning the other letters soon enough,” he says, setting the knife aside. Then he shuffles in closer, shoving my thighs apart and lowering his zipper.
My brain catches on a second too late.
I open my mouth to scream, fear cinching around my throat and drawing tighter with every breath, but then it suddenly stops. Everything goes dark.
… did I die?
Murmurs of voices ripple around me, joined by surprised shouts and muttered profanities.
Not dead.
The power’s just out, and from the way it sounds, it’s not on purpose.
Harris grumbles a curse under his breath, and I feel him shifting away, moving off the platform to investigate whatever caused the power outage. I blink into the darkness as I sit up, hands tracing over the rug beneath me until one of them closes around something cold and sharp.
The knife.
This is it– my chance to run.
I shove up to my feet with a burst of adrenaline, surging forward blindly. I make it four steps before colliding with someone, my free hand fisting the fabric of some expensive suit. My other hand swings in, the blade of the knife sinking into the guy’s fleshy side.
He shouts, and I pry it back out with a squelch, shouldering past him and taking off again.
“Rabid bitch fucking stabbed me!” he chokes.
My bare feet slap against the cement, a soft tug pulling at my neck as my leash drags against the ground.
I can make out the outline of a door, and I go for it, misjudging the depth and smacking into the metal.
I stumble back in a daze, then lunge forward again, blindly reaching for the knob.
My fingers close around it, and like an actual fucking miracle, it turns in my grip, pale moonlight slicing inside as I shove it open and spring out into the night.
I stumble a step, sweeping my gaze around before taking off towards a thicket of brush ahead. There’s a field beyond, dense walls of trees framing each edge.
The woods, thank fuck. If I can just make it to them, I might actually lose him.
Adrenaline mingles with the drugs in my system, something chemical and volatile reacting, contorting my thoughts into tattered pieces that stitch together impossible things.
Like that when I ran out of that building, I saw a familiar hulking form lurking in my peripheral.
A six-foot-something callous blond Repo Man with a jawline that could cut glass.
It’s fucking bizarre that my mind has turned him into a savior during this drug-induced delusion.
Why the fuck would I want him, of all people, to come save me?
It’s not like the night he broke into my cell was the first time in years my needs were put before someone else’s.
Like me and my pleasure actually mattered when he made me come, giving without taking anything in return.
Nope.
Haven’t given him a second thought.
Repo Man, who?
The sound of my own footfalls grows louder, the cadence increasing, until I’m sure someone’s chasing me. I whip my head around, meeting a set of icy blue eyes and a familiar predatory grin that ignites something low in my stomach. Riggs.
Is he real, or a hallucination?
I can’t tell the difference until he’s lunging towards me, arm banding roughly around my waist as he tackles me to the ground.
Real.
“Found you, little stray,” he growls, his weight sinking onto mine to pin me down. His hard-on prods at the apex of my thigh, throbbing with excitement as he grinds it against me.
I blink up at him in a daze, fingers brushing over his face before threading into his hair. “Are you real?”
He pauses, lips pressing thin. “What’s wrong with you?” Then realization dawns, his nostrils flaring as murderous rage etches into his features. “Did he fucking drug you?”
A giggle bubbles from my throat as I muss his hair. “I think your hair looks sexy pushed back.”
He mutters a string of curses, the muscle in his jaw feathering as he shoves to his feet, hands brushing off his pants before bending forward again. One thick arm slides behind my back, the other behind my knees, and then I’m suddenly towering above the ground.
Am I a giant now?
No, he’s lifting me, carrying me, taking me…
“I wanna go home,” I whisper, curling into his chest, the faint scent of artificial citrus filling my nose.
To my dad, to our shitty apartment in the Fringe, to who I was before my agency was stripped away, my entire existence reduced to being a commodity for trade. Tears prick behind my eyes as I squeeze them shut, darkness rushing in to greet me like an old friend.