This knowledge was the only thing keeping my sanity intact.
Chapter 2
When we finally landed for the second time, it was almost night again, and I was fucking exhausted.
The pilots got off first, and as soon as they disappeared from the helicopter pad, the dude who’d smuggled us on whipped his head toward us. "We need to debrief with the leader," he said. "It's standard practice, but since the earlier team with... your guy"—he cleared his throat—"will have already reported in, and the others will be logging the dead soldiers, it should be short and brief. Follow me."
He spun on his heel and stormed off into the growing darkness, clearly much more confident back in his own territory. Jordan and I followed, cataloging everything as we walked.
The helicopter pad was on the top of a building, and the last rays of sun were visible off in the distance. "Skyscrapers…?" I murmured, slightly confused about where we were.
"It's a compound," Jordan whispered, leaning close to me. "See the fence way out there?"
He pointed to his right, and I followed that line until I saw the glint of a tall chain link fence. Between us and that fence were dozens—or more—of tall, shiny buildings.
"Why the fuck did I think they were living in huts or underground," I said, shaking my head. "This is modern... as modern as America and Arbon Academy."
Jordan was about to say something else, when the resistance asshole turned back and snapped, "Hurry the fuck up. They're waiting for us, and any delay will look suspicious."
His voice shook, and from the way he fidgeted back and forth, I could tell he was desperate for us to move. And that might have been because he was worried about getting into trouble.
Or... another reason.
"Be ready for anything," I murmured to Jordan before we picked up speed and hurried to where the dickhead was waiting at a door that led into an internal set of stairs.
"This is Red East's main headquarters," the guy explained as we stepped inside, the metal door slamming after us. "The very top resistance members live here; the rest of us are spread out further within the compound."
"How many of you are there?" Jordan asked as we all started down the surprisingly wide staircase. It was fancy, and as everything else I'd seen, super modern and sophisticated.
How much fucking money did they have?
"Ten thousand here, twenty thousand in the Red West camp, and probably a million spread over all the resistance camps."
A. Million. People.
Fuck's sake. How were we supposed to find Rafe in a million people? I mean, my hope was that he'd been taken here, but maybe we'd been lied to from the start and now we were stuck in the Red East compound.
No. Just, no.
I couldn't let myself go there. I needed every ounce of my focus, and being beyond tired was not helping. I couldn't do the Rafe-might-be-dead-or-far-away-from-here thing as well.
The guy was silent for the rest of our journey down many, many flights of stairs. An elevator would have been a welcome sight, but since we appeared to be in some sort of closed-in stairwell, there was no way to tell what lay beyond.
When we reached the bottom level, we exited through the only door and found ourselves in a room filled with black-clad individuals.
The asshole who had been leading us spun at the last second and shouted so loudly it hurt my ears: "East target! East target!"
He was pointing at us, and everyone in the place erupted, diving forward, weapons out as they pointed swords and guns and other fun shit in our direction. Jordan and I moved closer together, our hands held out in front of us because there was no way we could take on this many armed people and survive.
Our only chance was to talk our way out of this.
Jordan got there before I did, ripping his mask off. "I'm a resistance member," he said with all the authority that a prince contained—spoiler alert, a fucking lot. "And I demand you take me to your leader."
Someone moved in beside him, swinging his gun barrel to crack Jordan in the head. My prince was ready though, swiftly smashing his hand against that person's forearm, dislodging the weapon, and then uppercutting him in the jaw so that the only person going night-night was the idiot who’d thought it wise to attack.
Also, Jordan could fucking fight. I'd be fanning my face right now if we weren't in complete mortal danger.
Someone else moved forward, and I kicked into gear, breaking their nose with a well-placed jab to the face. He backed off screaming, and I resumed my position at Jordan's six.
"Don't hurt the target," someone shouted from the back of the lot. "Red East leader will kill whoever harms her."
Her?
They're waiting for you...
Fuck, guess that confirmed it—I was definitely the target and they couldn't hurt me without consequences.
This was going to be fun.
Jordan and I fought back to back, and we took down dozens of them before they overwhelmed us with sheer numbers. I saw the final strike coming, slamming against his temple, and when Jordan's gaze met mine, his eyes fluttering as unconsciousness crept across his face, I screamed out my fear and frustration.
"Don't hurt him!" I cried, fighting to get to his side, but far too many resistance fighters stood between us. They had just not stopped coming. Over and fucking over.
We'd fought strongly, but two could not beat an army. Not today anyway.
Chapter 3
The door clanged, and I didn't bother to lift my head. Same fucking routine, day after day, and there was no point in reacting.
I’d been here for three weeks.
Three weeks trapped in a cage, allowed out once in the morning for the bathroom—when they occasionally let me shower in freezing water—and once in the evening. Between those two outings, all I got was some nice torture as they attempted to break me. The orders to not hurt me had ended after that first day, but they had at least stopped short of sexual assault or rape. So far anyway.
"Good morning, little bug," my toilet warden said. The woman was in her sixties and had a taser she was not afraid to use and a kink where she chained my hands and feet up so I wouldn't fight her. There was no reason to hurt her again though. The first time I'd knocked her out, I’d gotten into the next room—the only way out from here—to find thirty armed resistance members standing around like they were expecting me.
Some of them hadn't been back the next day, but the number of these fuckers was limitless. They just kept replacing the ones I broke.
Since then, I'd been learning as much as I could and cataloging everything. Brute strength wasn't going to get me out of here. I had to be smarter.
"Is Jordan alive?"
That was always my first question of the day.
"Yep," she said in her heavy accent of indeterminate origin. I had no reason to believe she was telling the truth, I had not seen or heard him in twenty-one days, but it made me feel better whenever I heard that yep.
"Where is Rafe?"
Always my second question, and not because he was less important than Jordan but because I didn't even know if he was here.
She didn't reply, the same as always.
Fuck this place. Maybe I'd just knock her out anyway for fun.
But by the time I’d been returned to my cell—clean, starving, and exhausted—I couldn’t be bothered attacking her. So she got a stay of ass-whooping today. Who knew about tomorrow.
"Red East leader will be by shortly," the woman told me, shaking her ample hips as she wandered out the door.
I didn't reply. What the fuck could I say?
The Red East leader was a short man with pale skin, white hair, and red-rimmed blue eyes. He had a heavy, harsh accent, his words cutting off short and sharp. He also had heavy fists, ones he used when he chained me to the walls and beat the fuck out of me every day.
Today he entered at the same time as my breakfast, so I didn't get a chance to eat before he was gesturing for me to walk to the wall. The large gun he had pointed at me, not to mention the second gun pointed by the man behind him—a different one each time—was enough to have me moving toward the cuffs.
When I was there, he locked them on, and I braced myself. "Are you ready?" he asked.
I tilted my head, for the first time not letting anger control me—instead staying calm and focused. "What is the point of this? You ask me no questions, you tell me no information, and you don't kill me. Is there an end game here?"
He paused, fists elevated as he prepared to lay into me. "What do you know," he said in a similarly calm tone to what I'd used. "You might just be ready to talk now."
"You were breaking me down?" I asked, my fuzzy brain trying to piece it together. "But you never even asked me any questions. How did you know I wouldn't talk before now?"
He leaned in very close, voice a low whisper, breath foul as it washed over my face. "Your temper has always been your downfall, Violence. You will not survive this world unless you learn to ride the calming waves, the ebb and flow of the tides, the push and pull of the sword. Not everything requires a reaction. Sometimes it just is."
My gut dropped, and if I could have moved my hands, I would have clutched at the pain in my chest. I’d heard those words before...
"You know my sensei?"
The Red East leader smiled, his teeth the least white part of him. "He wants to see you," he said, and just like that, my chains were released. "But if you cannot attend this meeting with a calm heart, you will go right back into this cage, for it's when you have nothing and are broken down to your base nature that you will find—"