Armageddon (6 page)

So, the guard had taken her to the cell with all the men, expecting to enjoy some entertainment while they beat and raped her half to death. The huge cauc monster with stringy black hair that the guard had referred to as Black Stew had charged her like a randy bull, beating off the other men, but Dax had seen a possibility that she might help him get out of his cell.

That was it!

He wasn’t expecting her to escape and get to him and free him. He’d thought there was a chance the guard would bring her back for another ‘lesson’ and he’d hoped, if he could get her off the drugs, she’d have enough wit about her to create a distraction.

She considered that for a while and finally decided that must be it, but he was out of his fucking mind!

He was cute, and he was sexy, but he wasn’t
that
damned cute and sexy!

How was she supposed to create a diversion? And, supposing she thought of something, how was she supposed to keep from getting dead in the attempt?

For that matter, supposing they managed to get out of the cell, this facility was a monster. They’d never get out of it alive.

Maybe dead was better, but she wasn’t ready to accept that.

She was still mulling the memories over, carefully avoiding the particulars about what Dax had done and focusing on what he’d said, when a sound suddenly jolted through her abstraction. Pushing herself up on the bunk, she saw a tray being shoved through the narrow space at the bottom on the wall next to the door.

Her throat closed instantly with thirst. She’d been trying to ignore the effects of dehydration on her mouth and throat for hours--days, it seemed. When the hatch closed again, she eased off the bunk and headed toward the tray.

It’s in the food!

She stared at the bowl of disgusting brown muck and the bread for several moments and finally reached for the tumbler of water. After sniffing it suspiciously, she took a small sip.

The tiny droplets of water on her tongue only increased her need to desperation, but she could detect nothing but water. After taking a couple of sips, she set the tumbler down with deliberation and waited to see if she felt any strange sensations creeping through her. Finally, deciding the water was safe if only because it would’ve been nearly impossible to lace it with anything that couldn’t be detected, she allowed herself a few more sips.

The water was tepid and she longed for something cold, but at least it was wet.

As the worst of her thirst passed, the temptation grew to use a little of the water to sooth her face and bathe her thighs. She didn’t know when she’d get anything else to drink, though.

Finally, she carefully gathered the little bit of condensation that had formed on the outside of the vessel and patted her face gingerly. Blood had crusted beneath her cut lip and the little bit of moisture wasn’t enough to remove it.

36

She gave up after a few moments, knowing it was stupid to squander water her body desperately needed on the dubious comfort she would get from dabbing at the blood and dirt that smeared her bare skin.

The filth of the place was torture enough for anyone with a fastidious nature.

There’d been a time, in the dark past, when she and Nigel had lived on the streets, that she hadn’t given a thought to the filth she lived in. She could barely remember that time, though, mostly because she had tried hard to purge it completely from her memory after they had gone to live with Morris.

Dismissing it with an effort, she stared at the food on the tray, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger in her belly--trying to dismiss the temptation to welcome the limited awareness the drugs in it would give her.

She didn’t really want to have her wits about her, did she? Did she really want to experience the full measure of just how horrible this place was?

She killed the urge to appease her hunger and embrace oblivion. She had to get out, she realized. Serving life wasn’t an option and the prospect of enduring this sort of hell for years was almost worse than the possibility of being killed outright.

37

Lena was caught off guard and unprepared when they came for her again. The only thing that saved her from giving herself away at once was the fact that she was awakened abruptly from a deep sleep. Disoriented and uncoordinated from sleep, she was dragged from her bunk and hustled down the corridor to the tube lift before she was alert enough to realize luck had saved her so far, not her wit.

The surge of fear driven adrenaline that pumped through her with enlightenment made it nearly impossible to maintain the pose of a drug induced stupor. She struggled with it, fighting to maintain her breathing, to make herself remain limp instead of trying to catch herself. She was certain, nevertheless, that her pose would be noticed any moment for the poor acting it was.

Apparently the guard was distracted by his own thoughts, though, because he didn’t seem to notice anything different about her.

She slumped in the chair when he shoved her into it, focusing her mind on keeping her arms and legs limp as he strapped her in.

That was harder than anything prior to that point, because she’d still been groggy and uncoordinated when he’d been dragging her along the corridor. Fear again aided her when he began the questioning, because her mind was so chaotic with it she could only stare at him blankly when he jerked her head back to look at her.

“Give us names!”

She grappled with the demand, trying to put it together with other things he’d asked. Somehow, he, or rather the people he worked for, were under the impression that she was deep in the rebellion. “Morris?” she finally managed hesitantly, partly because she knew he was beyond their reach now and partly because she didn’t know of anyone else who even
might
be a rebel. She didn’t think that Morris was, or had been. She’d never believed it was more than talk. He was willing and his mind still alert, but physically, rebellion was beyond him anymore.

The interrogator’s response was a slap that slung her head sideways and nearly made her blackout. “We know about Morris!” he growled. “Who are the others? Who met with him?”

Dimly, through the blinding pain, an image of Dax emerged.

She couldn’t be any more certain about him than she was about Morris, though.

Furthermore, they
had
him. From what she’d seen of his face, they’d invested a good bit of time interrogating him, too, so she couldn’t imagine telling them his name would do her any good.

Besides, she felt ill at the thought.

“Don’ know names,” she managed to say finally.

He grabbed her by her hair, jerking her head back and smashing the back of her skull into the chair back. “But you’d recognize them?”

Lena swallowed with an effort, feeling her stomach heave as she tasted blood in her mouth. “Only know M-morris,” she stammered.

38

“Lying rebel bitch!” the man growled, pelting her with a barrage of blows that made the room dim and, thankfully, the lights go out.

A deluge of icy water brought her around. For several moments, she spluttered and gasped, trying to free her air passages of water to suck in a breath of air.

“Where do they meet?”

Pain was pretty much all Lena was aware of anymore. The question hardly registered in her mind. He repeated it, emphasizing the question with another slap that nearly made her blackout again.

“They?”

“The rebels. Where do they meet?”

He was going to beat her death, she realized dimly, if she didn’t give him something, but it was a battle to jog anything useful from her mind. “Underground,” she managed finally.

He grabbed her tunic, shaking her and the chair. “We
know
it’s the underground!

Where do they meet?”

“’Neath subway.”

He stopped shaking her abruptly. “Under the subway?”

Lena wasn’t sure of why or even how she’d come up with that, but an errant memory had surfaced of a system of access tunnels leading off the main vein. “Old town,” she added.

“When? When do they meet?”

“Random,” Lena muttered the first thing that came to mind.

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

Again, she babbled the first thing that came to mind. “Last Friday of the month.”

“Tonight?” His voice was threaded with excitement now.

Fuck!
But how was she supposed to have known that it was Friday? Realizing there was nothing she could do now to name a time that might have worked better for her, she nodded.

“If you’re lying to me, bitch, you’ll regret it, I promise you.”

She already regretted it, but she’d been beyond bearing anymore. She’d felt like she had to tell him something to get some respite.

Once he’d pitched her back into her cell and left her, she had hours to deeply regret that she’d been in no shape to think anything through. The underground she’d spoken of might well have worked in her favor if she hadn’t inadvertently left herself such a small window of respite. As the worst of the pain subsided, she knew why it had popped into her head.

People lived there--dangerous demented people. She and Nigel had been there when they were children, looking for a safe place to sleep out of the cold. They’d very quickly discovered that it was no safe harbor. The people who dwelt there were more animal than human, and extremely territorial. They were fortunate the denizens had been satisfied with just chasing them off.

Even so, it made her feel ill that she’d probably just signed their death warrant.

Whoever it was that wanted the rebels so badly would almost certainly send an army of home guardsmen down to cleanse the area. Trying not to think of the bloody battle she’d instigated, Lena focused on the forlorn hope that they would be so busy fighting they wouldn’t discover they were fighting tunnel people, not rebels.

39

Retribution wasn’t nearly as long in coming as she’d hoped. An hour, perhaps two, dragged slowly past and her aches and pains had only begun to dull to a low roar when her cell door slammed open again. “You lying cunt! You made me look completely incompetent!” the guard yelled, grabbing her and dragging her off the bunk.

She was too busy trying to get her feet under her as he jerked her around and dragged her along the corridor to think up a response that might mitigate his fury. “They weren’t there?” she finally babbled as he hauled her into the tube lift.

Venting his frustration in an animalistic growl, he punched her in the face. She almost lost consciousness. She might have except that the pain was too intense to allow her that respite. As the moments seemed to stretch out before her, she began to realize that he wasn’t taking her to the interrogation room.

He’d promised her she would regret it if she lied.

Was he taking her to Dax, she wondered, feeling a faint twinge of hope?

Dax had promised he’d get her out if she’d help him.

Struggling to push the pain to the back of her mind, Lena tried to formulate a plan, some plan--anything. Panic threatened to overwhelm her when jogging her mind produced nothing helpful, but she barely remembered the trip to the cell before. She couldn’t remember any details with any clarity.

She was still completely unprepared when she reached the moment of truth and the door of the lift slid open.

She was supposed to be drugged, and frightened.

Stumbling around wasn’t something she had to feign. She was dizzy and nauseated from the pain and she could barely see. Weakly, she flailed her arms--she discovered she didn’t really have to fake that either. Abruptly, she realized that the only real strength she had was her dead weight. With a conscious effort, she went perfectly limp. The grip he had on her arm wasn’t enough to keep her up. She sprawled in the floor, wrenching free of his hand. Still without any real clue of how she was supposed to divert the man, she lurched forward the moment she’d settled, trying to crawl away.

Grabbing her by the back of her shirt, the guard thwarted her feeble attempt to escape, wrestled with her briefly and then hefted her from the floor and slung her over his shoulder.

The blow of landing on that hard shoulder was enough to knock the wind out of her. She didn’t have to fake that either. As she was struggling to catch her breath, however, she saw the rod strapped to his belt loop and, abruptly, everything fell into place.

There was one minor, insurmountable problem. She didn’t know how to work the thing and it seemed certain she wouldn’t have more than a few seconds to figure it out.

He would feel it when she jerked it free.

She also didn’t know how to work the door of the cell.

One thing at a time, she told herself.

She allowed her arm to dangle just above the handle of the thing.

He reached back to grab it as they reached the cell.

She hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d used it before to make the men move back before he opened the door.

Shit!

Realizing it was now or never, Lena grabbed it first, yanking it from the holder.

40

As she’d feared, he knew it immediately. He swung her around in a dizzying circle, trying to grasp it and finally dumped her onto the floor. Her elbow slammed into the hard metal, almost jarring the thing from her fingers.

“The trigger’s on the handle!” someone--she thought Dax--yelled from inside the cell.

Even as she depressed the button, the guard grabbed the business end of the stick.

He let out a jagged cry as electric volts shot through him. He began to flop around on the floor like a fish out of water. He’d firmly gripped the thing, and Lena found she couldn’t pry it from his hand and was in imminent danger of losing her hold on it.

“Ease off the button. He can’t let go.”

She did, and then fought a round with her stomach, which was threatening to revolt in earnest at the smell wafting off the man. A hand reached through the bars, settling on her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “It’s me, Dax.”

She stared at him blankly.

“Open the door. I can show you the way out.”

She barely heard him. By now every man in both cells was yelling at the top of their lungs for release. Pushing herself up with an effort, she looked around, dazed, for any sign of a button that would release the gate.

“The control is on his belt,” Dax bellowed at her.

Still too shocked to work independently of the voice guiding her, Lena looked down at the man and promptly threw up. His whole body was smoking and the smell of burned hair and burned skin was too much.

When she finally managed to stop gagging, she found the control Dax had told her about and tugged at it.

The belt, she discovered, was looped through it on the back. She had to unfasten his belt to slip it off. Dimly aware that Dax was still trying to bellow instructions at her, she ignored him because it took every ounce of focus to figure out how to remove the thing.

When she’d finally gotten it loose, she turned around and looked for Dax. Dozens of arms were thrust through the bars, though, grabbing at the thing she held in her hand.

She curled into a ball, holding the thing to her chest protectively.

“The key code! Key in the code!”

“I don’t know the code,” she yelled at him.

“Give it to me!”

She tried, but the men around him were also jostling to get their hands on the control and she wasn’t about to give it to them. Dax meant safety. Dax meant help. She had no idea whether the other men would help her, stampede over her, or decide to drag her in and rape her as they’d tried before.

She still had the taser, though, she realized. Gripping it firmly, she swung at the men trying to reach through the bars and grab her. When they leapt back, she shoved the control into Dax’s hands. Like a wave, the men surged forward again. Again she swung at them. “Hurry!”

Gritting his teeth, Dax pressed the buttons, trying one combination after another.

Lena had just begun to think it was hopeless when the door abruptly opened.

Dax wasn’t the first one out. The moment the door opened, the men inside charged, bottlenecking the small opening. Black Stew waded through them, pitching

41

several through and knocking others to either side of him.

The stampede of men out of the cell galvanized Lena into moving faster than she would’ve thought she could. She leapt to one side, plastering herself against the bars.

The din, already enough to rattle her eardrums, grew nearly deafening as the men penned in the cell across the way began yelling and cussing and demanding, or begging, to be released as well. Dax, exiting at last, tossed the control toward the waiting hands. The men instantly fell upon one another like a pack of dogs, snarling and struggling to get their hands on the control unit.

The men who were already free had split up and were racing toward either end of the corridor. Dax halted next to her. “Are you alright?”

“Compared to what?” Lena gasped, unable to keep the indignation from her voice.

For just a moment, she thought she saw a glint of humor in his eyes. It vanished so quickly she wasn’t certain, though.

“We’re not out of the woods yet. You think you can make it?”

She didn’t know if she could or not but she damn well meant to try. Either way, she wasn’t about to voice any doubts. She thought it more likely his concern was that she would slow him down than empathy for her state. She nodded.