There was no retort, the graphic violence on the wall sickening.
“But first…” At his back, Jacques’s cell door opened, a man in black walking in as if nothing about Jacques Bernard intimidated him in the slightest. In his grip, he had a bowl of dripping red flesh he shoved into Jacques stunned hands, as Jules said, “You’re going to eat this. That’s what I took out of her. I saved it just for you, and you’re going to swallow that mistake and taste all of it.”
The bowl was filled with what had been cut out of Brenya. Scar tissue, disease.
“Eat up.”
And that was when Jacques began to cry.
13
“Hold the fucking light straight!” Maryanne’s heart was beating so fast from the amphetamines she’d pumped into her veins that it was skipping beats like it might stop. Mouth dry, jaw locked, breathing very unsteady, the Alpha female leaned into the wired, narrowed tunnel vision of drug-induced hyperfocus, her fingers flying over the wires as she dug through another Central data relay, burrowing her arms in the twisting cables to attach her hardwire tap.
One of fifty-seven devices that would give her access to Bernard Dome’s systems remotely without triggering surveillance logs or lockdown flags. And though she had not built them, Shepherd had understood the assignment. The Follower tech was downright scary—far better than anything she could cobble together from spare parts and stolen bits.
But the beam of light was jittering, Georges shaking so hard he couldn’t keep it pointed where it was needed.
It was the screaming.
Sobs, pleas, a woman begging in Spanish.“Por favor… ayúdame… no más…”
The maintenance shaft was right under her rape, the tight space filled with distorted echoes and fractured shrieking of the worst kind of violence.
The screaming from above distorted into hideous echoes as it saturated Central’s maintenance tunnels. And fucking Georges couldn’t hold the godsdamn light steady.
One panel separated them from the Omega being brutalized by Alpha violence. A few screws, a few moments of effort, and theycouldhelp her. And Georges wouldn’t shut up about it.
Because Maryanne refused.
No one could know they were there. There could be no trace, no hint.Nothing. Not if they wanted to save everyone. Not if she….
“He won’t kill her.” Said in a voice that sounded nothing like the absolutely terrified and desperate woman Maryanne was deep down. A voice very much like Shepherd’s. “Try to interfere, and I’ll shoot you here and leave your body to rot in this tunnel.”
Which she also could not do. Rotting corpses smelled. Men dressed in sweaty, dirty pajamas festering in a maintenance tunnel would draw attention, and her device would be found. She needed the Beta to stop being… decent.
This was war.
And Maryanne would just have to live her life with that unknown woman’s screaming in her head forever. Becauseshewas going to fucking live.
Where Shepherd would never be able to reach her again.
But first…
The tunnel around them shuddered, the sound of grinding gears and clanking metal. Lockdown protocol had been initiated fifteen minutes and two relay points ago—malfunctioning thanks to the Central factions’ unfinished code rewrites in preparation for their upcoming coup. Just as Marianne had warned.
The system was caught between competing commands, its programs stuttering—sector seals opening, closing, or jamming halfway shut in unpredictable patterns.
Hopefully distracting Oversight from noticing what she was doing.
Or what she would be doing if she could see the wires she needed to access.
“I swear to the Gods, Georges, if you don’t hold the fucking light still, I’m going to throw you into the square for the Alphas to find!” She didn’t mean it. Couldn’t help it. Maryanne’s mouth had always been vicious under life-or-death stress.
But the Beta man… he was crying.
And pale. Hyperventilating. Tormented. “You brought those women here. Youknewthis would happen.”
No point beating around the bush. Not when she was desperate to strip and crimp the proper wires in an infrastructure entirely new to her. “I did what had to be done.”
