Read Armageddon Online

Authors: Kaitlyn O'Connor

Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Erotica, #Fantasy, #Cultural Heritage

Armageddon (4 page)

BOOK: Armageddon
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* * * *

 

Shock sent Lena’s mind instantly spiraling beyond any ability to reason. Nothing but disjointed words flashed in her mind, impossible to connect into a coherent thought.

Pure instinct spurred her to flee. Since the woman was blocking the only exit, Lena leapt backwards into the kitchen and beyond her view little more than a split second before an angry red beam seared a hole through the wall directly behind the position Lena had occupied an instant before.

Racing around the kitch in a mindless panic, Lena grabbed up and discarded a half a dozen items in a primal need to find something, anything, to defend herself with.

Turning up nothing even vaguely lethal, she whirled and hurled the bowl she held in her hand as she heard the scrape of a foot on the tile at the door of the kitch, diving toward her evil twin at almost the same moment.

Luck was with her. The woman jerked a hand up instinctively to shield herself from the flying object. Lena’s dive clipped one leg as she sailed through the doorway, knocking the woman off balance. Even as the satisfying thud of meat smacking solidly into tile reached her ears, Lena crumpled against the opposite wall of the hallway.

She barely registered the collision that would’ve been painful if adrenaline wasn’t pumping through her body like wildfire. Scrambling to her feet, she slapped her palm against the emergency button set into the wall. A hole appeared in the wall a fraction of an inch from her hand. Lena stared at it a split second and fled away from the fire, into her living room, once more cornering herself with no avenue of escape.

Her nemesis, instead of chasing her, planted herself firmly in the doorway between the hall and the living area, leaving Lena with no option other than to race back and forth at one end of the room, trying to dodge the blasts and hoping against hope that the home guard she’d summoned would arrive before the woman managed to get in a clean shot.

Almost on the thought a beam raked along her arm, turning the fabric of her sleeve and the outer layers of flesh it touched into ash. She screamed, scooping one of her prized possessions, an ancient stone African fertility god, from its display shelf as she dashed past and hurling it in the general direction of her assailant. A meaty thud, a scream, and the sound of a metallic object striking the floor rewarded her effort. Without registering much more in her mind than the errant thought that she’d managed to knock the pistol from the woman’s hand, Lena charged her attacker, slamming into her hard enough to carry both of them into the wall.

Her fingers curled into the tunic the woman was wearing as she felt herself falling. They hit the floor in the hall in a tangle of arms and legs, and fury born of sheer terror sent Lena into a mindless rage of clawing, pummeling, screaming, and biting. She was vaguely aware of receiving almost as many blows as she meted out, but shock cocooned her from feeling any pain.

It also shielded her from rational thought. The woman broke free before Lena realized she was trying to reach the weapon she’d dropped. Releasing a sound that was part scream and part animal growl with a mixture of anger and fear, Lean launched herself at the woman again before she could completely break free, struggling to grab the pistol first. Neither of them managed to do anything more than knock the weapon further from their reach.

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Giving up the effort after a moment, Lean managed to lever herself on top of her assailant, grabbed a handful of hair on either side of the duplicate’s head and used the leverage to pound the woman’s skull against the floor. The woman screamed, clawing at Lena’s hands and digging raw, bloody trenches across the backs. Gritting her teeth, Lena pounded harder.

Abruptly, the wiggling form beneath Lena managed to get a knee between the two of them, lifting Lena away and overbalancing her. She fell sideways, losing her grip on one handful of hair. The woman clubbed her on the side of her head with a balled fist.

Pain exploded in Lena’s head and she lost her grip completely, pitching into the floor with the second handhold.

Disoriented, Lena pushed herself up and launched herself forward as the woman made a dive for the gun again, but moments too late. Her doppelganger’s fingers closed around the butt of the weapon. A desperate tussle ensued. Lena managed to grab the arm holding the pistol, but she could not reach the pistol itself. The gun discharged as they struggled, shattering glass, furniture, ceiling tiles, and wallboard as each fought for dominance in a battle where they were evenly matched in strength, weight, and life or death desperation.

Lena’s focus on the gun hand cost her. Seeing she couldn’t break Lena’s grip on her arm, the woman began pummeling her again with her fist and finally jerked her knees up, managing to drive a knee into Lena’s side hard enough it knocked the breath out of her. It also pitched Lena face first into the arm she was gripping, however. As she fell forward, her weight drove the woman’s elbow into the hard floor, paralyzing it from elbow to wrist. The woman lost her grip. Even as Lena crashed, the pistol went skittering across the floor once more.

Both women scrambled to their feet and surged toward the gun again. Realizing the pistol had slid under her couch, Lena changed tactics abruptly. Trying to prevent the woman from reaching the pistol instead of beating her to it, Lena rammed her shoulder into her. The blow knocked both women off balance. As the woman staggered back a step, Lena fell against the woman and slid towards the floor. Coming down on her knees painfully, she grabbed at the woman, clawing along the woman’s clothing but failing to grasp a hold. Shoving herself to her feet again as the woman lurched toward the couch, Lena sprang toward her. The impact, when she struck, carried both them over the back.

They rolled, with first Lena on top and then the other woman. Beneath them, Lena heard the crunch of broken glass, felt sharp needles of pain. The woman screamed, bucking Lena off and then slamming her shoulder into Lena as they struggled to their feet again.

Lena staggered back a couple of steps, caught her balance, and charged again.

The second charge took both women through the shattered window of the living area. Shock and horror sucked the air out of Lena’s lungs as the realization hit her that they’d gone through. The woman’s buttocks hit the hip high iron railing of the faux balcony and both women teetered, clawing at each other as each tried to regain their balance. The woman screamed as her own weight tore her grip loose and the flipped over the railing.

Lena found herself staring round eyed at the face of the woman dangling by one arm from her balcony and the insect sized city streets far below. Abruptly, a large hand seized her, yanking her back into the apartment like a rag doll and releasing her so that she slammed into the floor and skidded.

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“Help me! Please! For god’s sake pull me in!” the woman cried in Lena’s voice, sending a shiver down Lena’s spine.

A dark, hulking mass stepped through the window, stared down at the woman hanging from the railing dispassionately for a split second and then, to Lena’s stunned disbelief, he planted the sole of his boot on her fingers and bore down.

The sickening crunch of shattering bones sounded loud and horrible in Lena’s ears, but not nearly as terrible as the woman’s high pitched cry as she lost her grip. She screamed as she fell, the sound seemingly endless and filled with absolute terror as it faded into the distance.

The man glanced at Lena where she lay on the floor as he touched a button on the shoulder of his uniform. “Done,” he growled. “We’re in, but this place is a fucking mess. You’ll need a repair crew in here asap.”

“You killed her,” Lena muttered in disbelief. “You murdered her.”

The man blinked in surprise. Striding toward her abruptly, he caught her throat, lifted her by her neck, and used his thick fingers to peel her eyelids back. “Fuck!”

He shook her furiously and dropped her to the floor. “We’ve got a problem,” he growled into his radio. “The clone just went off the balcony.”

Stepping across her, the home guardsman leaned down, caught the torn front of Lena’s tunic and slugged her in the face with his fist. Pain exploded in her face and head and blackness descended abruptly.

26

 

Chapter Four

Lena roused with the jolt that seemed to travel throughout her body. The sense of falling ceased and she struggled to open her eyes. A gray stone wall was all that greeted her gaze when she finally managed to focus her eyes. She stared at it without recognition, uncomprehendingly. Slowly, it was borne in upon her that it was real. The nightmare wasn’t a nightmare, but memories.

The drug still flowed through her veins, however, and she found she could not rouse herself to full alertness. Her head swam as she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling and for a moment, fear invaded her that she would keep moving until she hit the floor. Gripping the edges of the thin mattress she laid on, she closed her eyes until the room stopped spinning.

She
was
in prison. As difficult as it was to sort reality from dreams, she knew abruptly that she’d lived the nightmare not just imagined it.

Why the drugs, though? She was no threat to them now, if she ever had been.

Per the new, harsher laws enacted during the food riots, there’d been no trial, no chance to tell her side of the story, to tell anyone that she hadn’t killed someone. She’d done nothing but defend herself. The guardsman had committed the murder.

He’d thought it was her.

A cold shiver went through her.

He knew he’d made a mistake and killed her replacement. So why was she still alive?

Her mind seemed to wander for an endless time wrestling with that question.

Finally, an answer seemed to present itself.

They hadn’t managed to pry the information they were looking for from Morris before they’d killed him and replaced him. They thought she knew something.

She was still alive because of that, but she wouldn’t be once they figured out she didn’t have a clue of what was going on.

 

* * * *

 

No doubt the windowless cell in which Lena found herself would’ve made it impossible to gauge the passage of time even without the drugs that kept her off balance, but with them, she was most certainly lost, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Time passed. The sudden, sharp intrusion of metal scraping against metal roused her. She pushed herself up on her elbows just as two trays skidded across the stone floor, shoved through a narrow opening at the base of the wall. A hand appeared briefly, leaving behind two tumblers filled with liquid.

Lena’s throat closed with thirst. She could almost smell the water. Even as she rolled off the bunk, however, the woman in the bed below hers hit the floor and scurried toward the trays.

Lena narrowly missed landing on top of the woman. In the next moment, she was sorry she hadn’t flattened the bitch for as she struggled to her feet the woman grabbed the food off of both trays and began stuffing it into her mouth as fast as she could. Uttering a

27

feral scream, Lena dove toward the tumblers.

Alerted, Lena’s cellmate whirled to meet her.

The struggle was brief. Lena was too incapacitated by the drugs in her system to put up much of a fight. She hit the floor, but rolled over almost at once, scrambling frantically to reach one of the tumblers, both of which were now rolling around on the floor.

Her questing fingers snagged one, and for a moment a sense of hope filled her.

She discovered when she got it to her mouth, though, that little more than a few drops remained. The cooling drops didn’t do much more than dampen her mouth.

With a growl, the woman slapped at the cup in Lena’s hands, driving the edge into her tender lip and splitting it.

Blood filled her mouth. Pain completely disoriented her for a handful of seconds.

It was all the woman needed as an advantage. Grabbing Lena by the hair, she dragged her across the cell and slammed her into the wall several times.

Apparently satisfied when she saw Lena was unable to do more than slap at her, she released her after a moment and scrambled toward the food strewn around the floor.

Lena stared at the woman dully for a moment and finally pushed herself upright.

Except for the puddle on the floor that her cellmate was sitting in, the water was gone. Lena studied the gleaming liquid for a moment, struggling with the urge to charge the woman again and collect what she could off the floor. Finally, she merely turned to the bunk and, after several failed attempts, managed to climb onto the mattress again.

When she’d settled, she rolled onto her side and put her back to the woman before she thought better of it. Realizing, dimly, that the woman might attack her again, she switched sides so that she could watch her cellmate.

Nausea and anger swept through her as she watched the woman gobble the food, stuffing it into her mouth until her cheeks bulged like a chipmunk. “I hope you choke on it, you bitch!” she muttered.

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the woman coughed. Her body undulated, as if she was trying to disgorge what she’d just swallowed. Half chewed food fell from her mouth and splattered the puddle of water. Convulsing, the woman tipped over on the floor and drew her knees up, curling into a tight ball. As Lena watched with a mixture of satisfaction and horror, foam formed around the woman’s mouth, oozed between her lips and puddled beside her cheek on the floor. After jerking and twitching for several moments, she went still.

It took many moments for it to sink into Lena that the woman wasn’t moving because she was dead. The minute it did, bile rose in her throat. Briefly, she waged a battle with her stomach.

She lost.

When the spasms passed, she collapsed wearily on her bunk, but the tiny cell wreaked and the awful smell nearly made her throw up again. Grabbing her pillow, she covered her face, breathing through the fabric. Slowly, the urge to puke passed, but she wasn’t certain whether she merely became accustomed to the smell, or if the air circulating through the cell had finally whisked most of the odor away.

She suspected the former.

After her stomach ceased to revolt, she began to wonder what, if anything, she was to do about the body on the floor.

28

Would they think she’d done it?

Guilt teased at her. No amount of trying to reason it away helped. Even though she knew very well she couldn’t have
wished
the woman’s death upon her, she couldn’t dismiss the comment she’d made just before the woman choked any more than she could forget the sentiment that inspired it.

Despite everything, the drug eventually took the upper hand again and she drowsed. A metal scraping much like she’d heard before woke her.

“Fuck! You crazy bitch!”

The accusation in the voice jolted through Lena and she pushed herself up on the bunk just as the door to the cell opened. “I din’ touch’er,” Lena gasped, her voice still slurred from the drug. “She choked.”

The guard’s eyes were condemning. After a moment, he knelt, grasped one of the woman’s feet and dragged the body out, slamming the door again. Lena had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief when the door opened once more. Two dark figures seemed almost to fly toward her in the dimness. Something stabbed into her hip and almost immediately dizziness and blackness swallowed her up.

At first Lena thought the movement she sensed wasn’t actual movement but the effects of the drug in her system. She finally realized, though, that blood pounded against her temples. She roused enough to lift her head. She was hanging face down across a wide back. When the blackness parted a little, she saw floor and, just a little to one side, a wall sprouted from the floor.

She was in the hallway again. She realized almost instantly that they were taking her back to the interrogation room. Fear battled the drug, but the drug had too hard a grip on her to allow apprehension to take dominance.

The man stopped and the sensation of falling washed over her. Instinctively, Lena began flailing her arms and legs in an attempt to catch herself. The guard, either under the impression that she was trying to fight him, or simply annoyed by her attempt to catch her balance, let go of her, leaning down to punch her a few times when she hit the floor in an ignominious heap.

The blows barely registered except to disorient her further. She continued to flail around as she was dragged up, deposited in a chair, and strapped down.

“Feel more like chatting with us today?”

A day had passed?

How many days had she been here, she wondered?

Her mind wandered along that path for a time, trying to put together enough information to give her some idea of the time she’d been incarcerated. A sharp slap on one cheek that made her head fly sideways and her neck crack emphasized the question the man repeated. “Give us names.”

Names? Lena thought blankly. “Wha...?”

A hand grabbed her jaw bruisingly and a face swam into her view. “Don’t play stupid with me!” he growled, spattering her face with flecks of spittle. “Your father was right in the middle of the rebellion.”

“Fauder?” Lena repeated blankly. She could barely even remember her father. It had almost seemed to her that she and Nigel had been alone forever--scrounging for food, sleeping in trashcans--until Morris had found them and took them home.

“Frank Morris,” he growled, obviously frustrated.

29

Grief descended upon her as suddenly and devastatingly as if it was a thing of substance rather than pure emotion. Her face crumpled. “Morris. Wa’you do t’him?”

He slapped her again. It seemed to rattle her brains in her skull, but when her ears stopped ringing her mind felt a little clearer.

“Keep that up, you idiot, and you’re going to break her neck. Then we won’t get anything out of her! She’s drugged. All you have to do is keep asking her. Eventually, she’ll tell us what we need to know.”

“This fucking drug you’ve concocted is useless,” the heavy set man snarled.

“Pain and fear work best, and she doesn’t feel either when she’s flying on this stuff.

We’ve tried it your way, doc. Now we’ll try it my way a while.”

Fear flickered through Lena. He was wrong. She could feel it. Her mind simply refused to focus for more than a moment at a time.

Confusion filled her when he began removing the straps that he’d secured her with only moments before.

It seemed it had only been moments. Maybe he had finished the session and was taking her back to the cell?

She didn’t believe that. He’d said ‘pain and fear’, she remembered suddenly. She began to struggle when he released her wrists and ankles, slapping at his hands ineffectually.

Unfortunately, the fight was over before it had barely begun. He slapped her back, stunning her, more because she’d dared to try to fight, she suspected, than because she’d actually managed to cause him any pain. Grabbing her by one arm, he hauled her out of the seat and, when she could only manage a few wobbling steps, began to drag her.

They left the cell and headed down the hallway she remembered and hope surged through her that he was taking her back to her own cell. Instead, she discovered when the tube lift jolted to a stop and they stepped off, that she was on another level of the prison entirely. She wasn’t certain how she knew, but she realized after a moment that her ears were popping and she couldn’t remember noticing that sensation before that told her they’d climbed very high, very rapidly.

She began struggling against the guard’s grip. “Where you tak’ me?” she asked in a slurred voice.

He laughed. The sound scared her like nothing else he’d done before. “I’m gonna introduce you to some … real playful fellas. They’re gonna be your playmates for a while. Until you decide you’re ready to talk.”

Even as chaotic as her mind was, Lena sensed the threat on a primal level. She put on brakes, digging her heels into the slick floor. He continued to drag her as if he wasn’t even aware of her attempts to struggle against him. Her heels made squawking noises as her feet skidded along the metal tiles, but she couldn’t tell any difference other than that.

Looking around for a possibility of escape, Lena discovered the real difference between this floor and the others she’d seen. There were only two enormous holding pens instead of individual cells. Dark shadows clustered in both--many dark shadows.

“No!”

He ignored that.

“I’ll talk,” she babbled.

He stopped and looked down at her for several moments. Finally, a grin split his

30

face. “After this, if you’re able. I’m overdue for some entertainment.”

Lena began clawing at his hand. When that failed to produce the desired results, she sank her teeth into his flesh. He slapped her, twice. Ignoring the ringing in her ears, she clenched her jaws tighter. Finally, he merely grabbed her nose, squeezing off her air.

She struggled, twisting her head. Dark spots began swarming around her, the cloud growing until she could no longer stand it. She released her grip on him, sucking in a mouthful of air.

Grabbing a fistful of hair, he hauled her upward until he could wrap one meaty arm around her middle.

“Back away from the door!” he barked as he stopped at the cell door.

No one moved for several moments, but when he released his hold on her hair and pulled an electrified rod from his belt loop, the men in the cell began backing slowly away until they were packed near the back of the room.

“You’re not seriously planning on going through with this?” The doctor demanded abruptly.

“Pain and fear, doc. The best lessons include both, don’t they bitch?”

Stunned and disoriented for several moments, Lena began struggling again at that, beating her heels against the man’s shins, trying to reach back to grab his hair or claw at his face. A buzzer sounded and the door slid open. Before Lena could do more than scream ‘No!’ she felt herself flying through the air as he pitched her inside. Pain seemed to shoot through her from every direction as she hit the floor and skidded.

For several moments after she’d stopped, it almost seemed as if everyone was holding their breath.

“What’s the matter? You guys forgot what a female smells like?”

Someone uttered a roar that sounded more animal than human. The hairs on the back of Lena’s neck stood up even as she began scrambling toward the door. Someone kneed her. A body fell on top of her, crushing the breath from her lungs. It took Lena several moments to figure out that one huge man stood over her, pulverizing the other men that surged toward them.

She didn’t have much of a view of him from the floor, but she didn’t need one to know she didn’t want to wait around until he’d fought the others off of her. Wrenching free of the legs clamped on either side of her waist, she scrambled on all fours toward the door again.

The guard stuck his foot through the bars as she reached it, planting the sole of his boot on top of her head and giving her a shove backwards.

“You’re in luck, sweetheart,” the guard shouted over the racket of animalistic snarls and growls and the thud of fists, his voice threaded with avid amusement. “Black Stew don’t wanna share you.”

BOOK: Armageddon
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