Spark Rising (9 page)

“Mama.” She raised her head. To her right, unmoving on the floor, her mother’s back and side curved. The edge of the bed hid her head. “Mama!” Her mother’s bloom pulsated, the painfully bright then dim flicker of a light about to go out.

Lucas stood a foot away. He didn’t move. He watched Lena, a curious satisfaction written upon his face.

“Please!” Lena didn’t know to whom she directed the imploring word. None of the men would do a thing. “Please, please, please….”

Reyes darted around Lucas to crouch beside her mother. He turned her body over, half into his lap, cradling her neck and the back of her head in one hand as he checked for a pulse. Lena stilled, her neck straining, stretched against the limits of the straps around her chest. Her breath came in harsh sobs. She stared at the slowing flick-flick-flick of her mother’s bloom.

“Put her down, Reyes.” Lucas’s command came, sharp and cold. “The protocol is three shocks in rapid succession. They’re about to get another.”

“No, they damn well are not.”

Reyes leaned over her mother, his fingers still at her throat. She stared at him.

“Do something.” The words from Lena’s throat were a thin thread of sound.

Reyes’s shoulders moved helplessly. His eyes tracked the pulse of the flickering light. He looked over his shoulder to Hernandez, ignoring Lucas. “Get a medic.”

Hernandez sighed, and Reyes half-rose.

“She’s not a criminal, she’s a citizen of this city. Get a fucking medic!”

Her mother’s dark eyes were wide and staring, only slight movement in them. Was she trying to turn them to Lena?

“I’m here, Mama.” She strained against the straps. They bit into her skin and her rigid muscles. “Please don’t go. I’m right here.”

Her mother’s lips moved. A breath of sound escaped. The pause between glimmers grew long now.

“Please fight. Mama, just fight.” Her words turned to a hoarse moan. “I can’t lose you, too. Fight, Mama. I’m here. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll do what they want.” She turned to Lucas, to Hernandez, desperate, gasping. “I will do whatever you want. Please go get a doctor. Please don’t let her die.” She strained against the straps. “Please. Please, please.” Her eyes fell back to Reyes. His head bowed in regret. He lowered her mother to the floor.

Lena stared at him. “No! She’s not gone. I can help her, Reyes. Get me off of here. Reyes!”

Her mother’s bloom didn’t pulse back. Lena could help her if she could get off the damn bed. Her mother blurred as tears rose.

She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound building within her chest caught in her throat. Her muscles slackened. Her watery view of her mother, of Reyes placing her upon the floor and closing her eyes, faded away as her body sank back. Her mouth hung open, the scream still caught, beating at her vocal cords, waiting for an exit.

She sagged onto the bed. A memory flashed into her mind: crying as her mother brushed her snarled hair. The brush caught; Lena’s breath stuttered with it. Her mother’s hands stilled as she held the snarl in her fingers and gently untangled it, urging Lena to recite the Spark’s Rede, the code that all of the Spark children learned in their earliest years. She began, voice quavering, high and pained, “I will do no harm with my power. I will follow the will and the good of those without. This gift is my virtue; My Councilor is my guide.” By the time she’d finished, the knot, and with it the pain, were gone. Her mother had told Lena many times the act of focusing on the words could keep pain at bay.

Her lips moved. The Rede came back to her, as if she were young again. The pain didn’t recede.

Lucas’s voice intruded, disgusted. Put upon. “I should have sent for the sister.”

The Rede stuttered in her mind.
I will do no harm….
But they could? They could do whatever they wanted to the people she loved? No more.
I will do harm. I will be free.

She focused the grief inside, rage making her immune to the effects of the current. Dust swarmed to answer her. The scream howled free. With it, white light arced across the room, seeking the men. Her electric-coated shriek of rage and grief released something within her. She convulsed, her body arching up in a corona of white light that flashed up and across with a concussive boom of sound that drowned her out. It sucked away her breath, and her voice died, the electricity following it back, crackling away into nothing.

When her eyes fluttered open, the windowless room was dark. The brilliant after-flare of the branching white heat etched her vision, glowing in the black. From somewhere nearby, a metal fixture squeaked as it swung. Voices shouted from outside. Someone banged at the door.

No sounds came from inside. She pulled her body up to the right, trying to roll to the limits of the straps, but they didn’t hold. As her body pressed against them, the leather cracked and fell away from the buckles with dry pops and faint metallic tinging. Waiting for the pull of the taut, thick restraints, she rolled up and almost off the bed. She caught herself with one shaky hand.

She leaned her face over the edge, vainly searching past the vivid memory of light into the darkness below. Her mother was down there. She’d freed herself to go to her mother.

“Mama?” It hurt to make even the faint, hoarse sound she managed.

No response.

She pushed with her hand and eased up to sit, pulling her legs free of the cracked restraints to swing over the edge of the bed. She turned in the darkness. Something brushed her head, and she jumped back from the sound of swinging metal. Pushing her hand out in front of her in the dark, she reached up, searching. Her fingers made contact with one of the metal lights that had been trained upon her when she woke. It hung down over her now, loose and broken.

What had she done?

She eased her way back to the edge of the bed and slid her legs down. “Mama?”

Her feet found the floor, a coating of dust and small hard pieces of rock spread over it. Lena slid to her knees and reached her hands out, searching. She made contact with cloth, and then with the firm resistance of flesh beneath it. She ran her hand lightly up, crawling along. She’d found her mother, yes, but she was wrapped in Reyes’s arms. His body curled around on top of her as if he’d tried to protect her from the electrical arc before the blast.

She pushed at him. She had to pull her mother away. She could restart her heart. Reyes was heavier than he looked and solid. She pushed harder, the motions becoming short and hard with desperation.
Get off. Get off. Get off.

“Get off!”

He coughed. He coughed again then rolled away from Lena’s pounding palms. Barely a second later, his hand shot up through the black and caught her hand. “Stop.” The command was low, his voice even more hoarse than usual. He made a soft, guttural sound as if trying to clear his throat with the least amount of noise. He coughed again. “Listen.”

In spite of her panicked need to reach her mother beneath him, she stilled. What was she listening for? The shouting in the hall? Someone called for a saw, a gun, anything. The door must be well and truly warped into the frame. They should have been able to access the room already. What else should she hear?

“Reyes, please…my mother.” She pushed at his shoulder.

He didn’t move.

“If I’m awake, they might wake, too. We need to get you out.”

Get her out? But he’d brought her in?

She shook her head in confusion before she remembered he couldn’t see her in the dark. “No. You were on the floor. They were standing where the blast—”

His hand moved up her arm to her neck and slid around the back of her head. He pulled her forward with gentle pressure, moving her head toward him. “I can’t hear you. My ears. But don’t speak louder, speak closer.”

Her lips touched the side of his head. She felt his ear, wet with fluid. Blood? The concussive noise had burst at least one of his eardrums.

She tried again. “You were on the floor. They were beside me and took a direct hit. They’re not waking up now. Maybe not ever.” She wasn’t sorry. She regretted that Lucas wouldn’t have suffered. “Reyes. My mother. I can restart her heart. You have to move.” She pushed again. “Move.”

“No. You can’t.” He shifted away, his hand out, keeping contact, bringing her head with him. “It wasn’t her heart, Lena. It was her head. I saw her face. Her brain bled.”

She made a small noise of negation. He had to be wrong. She could do it. Now that he’d moved, she would. She reached out for her mother, felt the soft, cool skin of her mother’s face under her hands.

“Lena.” Reyes’s voice denied her hope. “Even if you start her heart, her brain is gone. You can’t fix this.”

“I can!”

“You can’t. And if you don’t get out of here right now, they’re going to kill you, too.”

She sat. Her hands fluttered over her mother’s face, fingertips feeling the familiar shape of eyes, prominent cheekbones, delicate nose and jaw. She had always been jealous that Teresa got to look like their beautiful mother.

“I can. I have to. You don’t understand.” She shook her head back and forth, her hair brushing the side of his face. “I have to. She’s all I have.”

“No, Lena.” He gathered her up then pulled her across him and away from her mother. “You have your sister. Your brother. You have people you’ve never even met.” He set her on his other side.

He released her, and she sat, sobbing quietly. The banging on the door directly behind her had shifted, become methodical as they smashed something heavy against it.

Debris rustled as Reyes crawled away in the darkness. He pushed something large and heavy away, the grit on the floor scratching beneath it. One of the other men? Reyes grunted. After a pair of thumps, small rocks pattered across the floor. He made a hiss of satisfaction. A moment later, he returned, scrabbling in the dark as he crawled back across the floor. He sounded like he was right on top of her mother.

“I’m here,” she said sharply, forgetting for a moment that he probably couldn’t hear her. She should swing her arm out to catch him and lead him back. She didn’t. It didn’t matter what he was doing. Her mother was gone.

He came back to her. His reaching hand found her bare stomach. His fingers slid up to her face. She shivered, and then shrank away in shame. Reyes dropped something over her head, pulled it down to her shoulders. Fabric. Clothing?

“What are you doing?” And why? The bastard had done this to her. She shook her head. Nothing made sense.

“You’re naked. You can’t get away like this.” He took up each of her numb arms and slid fabric onto them then pulled it down over her torso, letting the leftover cloth pool around her hips on the floor. It smelled of sweat and fear and a familiar soft musk. Before she could identify it, he slid his hands back up to her head and pulled her close. The warmth of his breath tickled her ear.

“That thing you did?” His voice was a bare whisper of sound in her ear. “It weakened the ceiling and the walls. The exterior wall is cinder block. It’s ready to go. Do it one more time, and the wall will fall. Behind it is—”

“Do it again? I can’t do it again. I don’t know what I did the first time.”

“Be quiet. Listen. You will do it again. Behind the wall is a side street that leads to the rear of the building. Stay away from there. Follow the side street up behind the next building over. Block and a half up, turn right. Across the street is Citizen’s Park. Get across it. Keep moving. It empties into Market Square. Do not stop. Get to Ace. Tell him to hide you until I come. I will come.” He pulled away as a particularly violent thump against the door caused debris to rain down. He pulled her up then, dragging her by the hand across the room. “Do you understand?”

“I understand. I understand. But I can’t. Reyes, I don’t know what I did—”

He stopped. He must have found the wall again. He yanked her around him, pushed her in front of himself, and pulled her arms up to stretch out and make contact with the wall. He spread her palms flat against the wall, his own hands pressed against the tops of hers, holding her down.

The pressure of his hands above hers hurt. Her fingers ground into the wall. The pain caught her attention, lit a fluttering something inside of her. It was too close to that feeling of being restrained, the helplessness and rage she’d just escaped. She tried to pull away. He held her fast, pressing his hands and his body hard against hers. She scooted forward to escape him, but he followed her until her arms bent and her body pressed against the wall. He held her there.

Her breath came in small, panicked puffs. Why had she trusted him? Why had she listened?

He spoke then, his lips pressed against her skin. His hot breath puffed her hair away from her ear, his quiet, hoarse voice laced with menace. Her heart stuttered.

“Councilor Three killed your mother, Lena.”

She stopped struggling. Cold wrapped around her. The heat of rage chased it away.

“We hauled her in, sick and weak. Put electrodes on her head and charged her until her body couldn’t handle it, and she bled out.”

He crushed her in tighter. The dusty grit coating the wall bit into her forehead and chin. The pebbled surface beneath the paint pressed her breasts and belly and thighs. Her breath sawed in and out of her raw throat. She tried to fight, pushing back against him. Dust swirled across her skin in agitated reflection of her anger and confusion.