3. Mine Mine Mine
Seven
“ D id you hear? Twelve is off rotation—they’re saying she’s been impregnated.”
“Wow, that was fast. She’s only been here for … what, a month?”
I almost dropped my stack of plates for the second time that morning, which would have earned me a zap. The extra violent guards were on duty in the mess hall today. I wondered if it had anything to do with Baxter’s visit. Or with the towering blond male he’d been escorting.
Mine. MineMine.
I gritted my teeth against the swimming sensation in my head. The world-spinning, vomit-inducing, blood-boiling feelings coursing through me.
That word. Again. Same as the night in the forest.
What did it mean?
With hands that shook, I carefully set the plates down beside the sink, where the two females who were gossiping about Twelve’s supposed fecundity. They were younger than me, only just having settled into their immortality. I didn’t know their numbers. When they’d named Hundred, quite some time ago, I’d ceased caring. It just meant more of us to exist in this horror.
They seemed to be sending more and more hybrids into Rape Block. I wondered why, briefly, but the two started whispering again, and my ears twitched, listening hard.
“Yes, it happened so fast, and it was so strange … apparently it was almost like she knew exactly when it happened, too. Like, one day she was … you know … performing, like we all do. And the next day they sent a different male in to her, and she went berserk! They had to give her a triple dose to slow her down!”
The other girl’s eyes were like saucers. “Oh … she’s a Drinker, then?”
The first girl nodded, her lip curling. Even though we were all supposed to be one team, working towards eradicating Pures, there was something primal in us all, some competitive urge to dislike the other species.
“They’ve put her into isolation. Agent Mitchell asked me to take her meal to her this morning.” The girl leaned closer to the other. “I think they’re going to keep her in iso until the child is born.”
“How long does that even take?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve ever birthed hybrids naturally before since we were all lab-grown. I guess Twelve will be the guinea pig, then …”
The other girl nodded frantically, beads of sweat on her brow. The poor thing was terrified. I wondered how many rapes she’d had to endure so far.
“So … I guess at least we’ll know for sure how long it takes … if everything goes to plan with Twelve.”
“And … what happens then? I mean, when the infant is born, what happens?”
The first girl shrugged. And I realized I’d been standing frozen to the spot, so engrossed in their conversation that I’d been neglecting my duties. I should have had three more stacks of plates in for washing by now.
But I couldn’t help myself. My hatred, my fury, wouldn’t let me leave without saying my piece.
“Then they’ll rip that infant from its mother’s arms, and she’ll be raped again the following day. Can’t waste a fertile female when we all seem to be so lacking in that department.”
The two girls spun, twin looks of shock on their faces. I felt a pang of guilt, but I stifled it ruthlessly, stalking back out to the mess hall. Everything inside me felt like it had turned to lava. Boiling, overflowing, wanting to burst out of my skin lava.
Mine. MineMineMine.
My head throbbed, and I took a second to shut my eyes through the pain.
Why was this happening again? I’d managed to convince myself that whatever breakdown I’d had out in that moonlit clearing had just been too much fresh air or sensory overload from all the humans. Or that smell of blood that had sent me over the edge.
Mine. MineMineMineMine.
I jerked to a stop. I was halfway out the mess hall door, despite not having finished my lunch shift. How had I gotten there? It wasn’t even the corridor back to my room.
It was the one that Baxter had ushered the hulking blond through.
Shaking myself, ignoring the tingling in my fingertips, the ache in my jaw, my gums, that told me the meds were wearing off … early … I spun and headed back towards the male tables, where I’d been working clearing their used plates.
A group of males was clustered around one table … no, around one male. I approached, curious about who they were crowding.
I thought it was Nineteen, another recent arrival to Rape Block. I hadn’t seen him since the early days in G Block, so it was hard to tell if it was him. His skin was gray, his face was drawn. He looked haggard. Nothing like the cocky boy he’d been back then.
For the second time that morning, I froze to eavesdrop.
“What’s wrong with him?” one of the males hissed.
“Fuck if I know,” another replied.
“He impregnated Twelve. Or that’s the rumor, anyway.”
“Well, that’s good news! He’ll get to stay in R Block and fuck his way through his pick of females!” another crowed, slapping Nineteen on the back. He dropped his head onto the table, then jerked back, vomiting everywhere.
“Disgusting!”
“Move away!” one of the agents—a particularly brutal one—stuck his stick into the shoulder of the one who’d just patted Nineteen on the back. His body flew forward, knocking the other males to the ground. Nineteen’s head smashed into the edge of the table, blood splattering across the metal surface, mingling with the vomit.
I backed away before I got caught up in the frenzy as more agents rushed into the melee, electrocuting males until there was a pile of twitching bodies, and Nineteen, face streaked with blood, being dragged away.
There was too much going on, and I had to finish the breakfast shift and be back in my room in time for my ‘appointment’ with whatever male they sent to me today.
But instead of collecting an armload of plates, my feet started taking me in the direction of that same corridor again. The one I had no business going down.
HE’S down there.
Mine. MineMineMineMineMineMineMine.
I clawed at my forehead, groaning and dragging myself back to the mess hall, forcing myself to gather plates, take them to the kitchen. Return for more. Take them, too.
“She was bleeding?” The two youngsters were still gossiping by the sink. I stilled, thankful that the pair of them were too silly to notice that I was there.
“I just took her meal in, and there was blood running down her face, and she was vomiting into the toilet. She looked miserable!”
The other wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting … but they did tell us that vomiting is common in human gestation. Maybe that’s why she’s sick? I don’t remember them saying anything about bleeding, though. Maybe that’s a Stranger thing? Or maybe …” the girl mused, a look of wild, almost crazed hope lighting her eyes, “Maybe it’s just something that happens to Drinkers?”
I set down the plates with a crash, claws shooting from my fingertips. The girls jumped.
“Be careful how much you talk. You never know who is listening,” I warned them, balling my hands into fists to hide my claws. I tilted my head in the direction of the ceiling, where there was a well-concealed camera positioned so it would have a view of the entire kitchen.
The girls paled.
“That’s the last of the plates,” I said, heading to the clean-up sink and washing my hands. They shook under the water. My claws wouldn’t retract, and I had small, bloody marks on my palms from clenching my fists.
Normally I had to use everything in me to make them grow, to mark my days on the wall. Today … they were just there. And they wouldn’t go away.
What was happening to me?
“ I won’t fucking do it!”
I bit my lip, wincing as a tooth pierced it. My teeth and my claws had yet to recede. I’d hidden it from the agent who escorted me back to my room for my appointment with today’s rapist.
Today’s rapist was Nineteen.
I glanced over my shoulder to where Nineteen stood rigid in the doorway, looking paler and sicker than he had earlier. The wound on his forehead had healed, but there was still dried blood all over his face and his gray jumpsuit. The one that had a penis flap for quick and easy access. Just like mine had a crotch flap so that no one needed to be naked when we undertook the attempt at impregnation.
Apparently keeping my jumpsuit on was supposed to make me feel better about having someone else’s body part forced into me without my permission.
It didn’t.
But putting up with the humiliation was better than being fried with a stick and still raped anyway while they held my barely conscious body for the male to leave his seed. I’d had that done to me once. Never again.
“Get in there, half-breed, and get it done!” Marcus, an especially sadistic agent, growled, prodding him with the stick, but not activating it. Nineteen stood frozen in the doorway. His skin was still a sallow gray, but his eyes were almost black, and his mouth … his teeth were long and sharp.
Just like mine.
This was not normal. I started to stand.
“Back on your knees, bitch!”
“I will not fuck her!” Nineteen growled. I froze in a weird, hunched position halfway between the floor and fully upright. Not sure whether to defy orders and face the stick, or to get back on all fours and let Nineteen be the one to take the fall for his defiance.
But I wanted him inside me about as much as he wanted to be there.
For the first time, I wondered whether some of the males hated this whole fucked up process as much as I did. There were some who got off on the power it gave them over me. But there were others who came in, did what they needed to as quickly as possible, and left in silence. Maybe they were going through the motions, feeling just as violated as I did.
I straightened, turning to the guard.
“I don’t want him to fuck me,” I said. Nineteen’s face slackened for a second, then his jaw tightened, and he turned to Marcus, eyes determined.
“I don’t give a fuck what either of you want. You’ll do as you’re fucking told!” Marcus raised the stick, and even from the other side of my room, I could feel the hum of the electric charge buzzing through it. Not deactivated any longer.
“Fucking do it,” Nineteen snarled. “Fry me, and I’ll lie here unconscious. My dick is useless to you if I’m knocked out.”
Marcus’s face went from pink, to red, to purple. My fingers throbbed, my claws lengthening even further. I could barely keep my mouth closed around my growing teeth.
A low growl ripped from Nineteen’s throat. One glance told me his body was changing.
Shifting.
Marcus stepped forward, jabbing the stick into Nineteen’s stomach. The crackle of the weapon finding its target tingled through the air, but Nineteen withstood it, his other form too strong for the charge.
“Fuck! Backup! I need backup!” Marcus shouted as Nineteen advanced on him, his body twitching, wings unfurling from his back, tearing through the jumpsuit.
I scrambled back, his shift triggering something in me. My skin prickled, my body growing, shredding its way out of my jumpsuit. Fur sprouted. Gold and black and striped. Beautiful. I’d forgotten how beautiful I looked when I shifted.
Why are we shifting? We didn’t miss our morning dose.
Things are changing , insisted the whisper inside me . Let me help you.
So I did. I let go, merged with the whisper that was my beast. Until there was no me and it … but us.
“Take me to Twelve! NOW!” Nineteen roared, stepping forward, pressing the stick deeper into his stomach. His wings were glorious, silvery things. The electricity crackled off them like flames.
Our eyes sharpened. Everything became clearer. We inhaled, scents pounding into our nostrils. Marcus had pissed himself. We could smell his acrid urine. We could smell his fear . Our hands changed, thickening into paws. Our body lengthened. We fell to all fours, and for the first time in five hundred and four days, it wasn’t to submit to a male rutting at me.
It was to give ourselves freely to our shift.
“Where the fuck is my backup?” Marcus screamed as Nineteen wrapped his glowing hand around the stick and tore it from the agent’s grasp, tossing it across the room.
“Take. Me. To. Twelve.”
Grinning ferally with our feline mouth, we stalked closer to Marcus. A laugh snorted from our throat as he reached with shaking hands behind him, pulling out a handgun from his belt. Such a pathetic weapon.
We could have pounced. We could have torn out his throat before his finger so much as twitched on that trigger. But slinking closer, savoring the deliciousness of Marcus’s fear …
“Stay back, or I shoot!” Marcus’s voice trembled. Nineteen laughed, but there was a tense edge to the sound that made our paws halt in their slow stalk.
“You can’t kill me with that,” he said. But he sounded uncertain.
We crouched. We could easily launch across the space and rip the agent’s arm off. Maybe we should, because Nineteen was shaking beside us. He wasn’t going to do it.
“Backup en route, ETA ninety seconds!” crackled a voice through the intercom.
“Take me to Twelve. I need to be with her,” Nineteen pleaded. We froze. This enormous, winged Shifter was actually pleading with the frail human. We tossed our head, trying to make sense of it.
“I … it hurts!” Nineteen howled, clutching at his chest.
We shook our body, our fur rippling. What hurt? Marcus hadn’t shot him. We crept closer to the little mortal. The gun swung in our direction, Marcus’s eyes bulging at the sight of our shifted form.
“Fuck!” he squeaked, swinging the gun wildly back and forth between Nineteen and us. “St-stay back, you freaks!”
“Take me to Twelve!” Nineteen screamed, and his shifted voice exploded in our sensitive feline eardrums. We roared out our pain, throwing our head back.
A gun went off.
Wings, so large they spanned the room from wall to wall, crumpled.
Blood, rusty and cloying, pierced our nostrils. Panting out our pain and confusion, we backed away, the desire to feast on that blood horrifying us enough that the shift began to subside, the whisper retreating into my mind once more.
Nineteen collapsed, curling up on the floor. His own shift diminished. His hands clutched his stomach. Blood pulsed through his fingers and trickled to the floor.
An alarm screeched from the hallway, and I cried out as my already damaged ears started bleeding.
“All unencumbered agents report to the lab immediately! Twelve is down. I repeat, TWELVE IS DOWN!”
The shock at those words tore me out of my shift faster than it had ever happened before. I screamed as my bones, my muscles, my skin shrunk and twisted and reformed into my human body.
Nineteen roared incoherently. His beautiful wings were gone. The blood had stopped flowing, his immortal body was healing itself. The bullet Marcus had shot into his stomach lay in the middle of a very large pool of blood on my floor. Such a tiny little thing to make so much blood.
My ears rang, and my head throbbed, the way they did when I unsuccessfully tried to shift through the drugs.
Nineteen turned his head and vomited into the puddle of blood. And then vomited again. And again. And again, until his body was heaving, but nothing was coming out.
Marcus stood on legs that barely held him, shooting his gaze between me, clutching my head and moaning, and Nineteen, heaving up nothing.
No one else was coming to back him up. They’d all gone to Twelve. What had happened to her? Of course she would be the number one priority, being the first successful impregnation.
Marcus turned and rushed from the room.
And then Nineteen began to crawl towards the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked, wincing. My skull hurt.
“To Twelve,” he replied. “I need to … I need her.”
“Why?” I asked, standing and staggering towards him, not even caring that my clothes were tattered shreds on the floor somewhere behind me. “What is going on?”
Nineteen’s face crumpled, even as he dragged his body out of the room. “I don’t know. But I can’t … I need to be with her. She’s … Mine .”
I froze, horror creeping through my system at the word that had been on repeat in my brain all day. Nineteen reached the wall and dragged himself upright. Whatever had enabled us both to shift today, the drugs had belatedly curtailed it, and I felt like I’d been beaten within an inch of my life.
He looked back at me for a brief second, nodded once, and then limped off in the same direction as Marcus. Toward Twelve.
I stumbled over to my bed and fell onto it. I curled my knees up to my chest, resting my forehead on them. My body shook. My skin was clammy, and hot, and cold, all at once.
Shifting had never felt like this afterward. But then again, shifting had never happened since they moved me to Rape Block and started me on the suppression drugs.
What had changed? A bad batch of meds? Why had this happened to both Nineteen and me at the same time?
And why had he used that word? The word I wished never to hear again. The word that repeated on a loop inside my skull.
MineMineMineMineMineMineMineMine.
When an agent came to me, minutes … maybe hours later, with a syringe full of something stronger than the usual drugs, so strong I felt consciousness slip away from me almost immediately, I almost thanked them.
Because it stopped that word from echoing.