Dark Future (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

M
y eyelids scraped open as if made of sand paper. I was lying on my side, cheek smashed against the concrete floor. A deep breath . . . white fire burned across my ribs. It hurt to breathe. It hurt everywhere. My fried nerves woke and sent messages of pain to my boggy brain. The world, fuzzy and out of focus, seemed strange, but oddly familiar. Familiar because this was my life now and had been for weeks.

I moaned and closed my eyes, hoping to lose consciousness again before full awareness set in. No as te Jensuch luck. I’d caught a glimpse of blood congealing around my face and pushed away, disgusted despite it being my own bodily fluids.

My gaze swept the surroundings for the thousandth time: four gray concrete walls, one concrete floor, and a pail to piss in. The stench of warm metal, strong urine, and fear had me glad I’d asked for the upgrade to a luxury cell. Here was my new home. Or I’d found the answer to one of religions’ most pressing questions. Hell wasn’t a place; it was a time, decades in the future.

The air was thick with heat and stench, but that didn’t stop the cold from seeping into my body, racking my bones with a deep ache. But that pain was mild compared to the throbbing mass that was my face. I forced my brain into “doctor mode” and tried to objectively access the damage. At least one of my ribs was broken and more than a few fingers smashed. Cautiously, I reached up to palpate my nose. A large bump had formed on one side. Again? My nose kept getting in the way of someone’s fist.

I didn’t think. I just pushed . . . hard.

A sickening crack. Blood, warm and thick, covered my top lip and chin. A potent wave of nausea rushed my insides. I closed my eyes until the light-headedness passed, and tried to breathe. With shaking courage I checked again, my nose seemed straight enough. There was a lot to be said about my vanity, which raised its ugly head even under the worst circumstances. Though I liked Owen Wilson as an actor, I didn’t want to look like him.

A blanket of hopelessness settled over me. What was the point?

Tears rolled silently from the corners of my eyes, finding a home in the hollows of my ears. Why was I here? Why be sent forward in time, why be tormented about a prophecy, why be sentenced to death? And why, most of all, did I meet ConRad?

I hadn’t forgotten what my future-self had said that night in my bedroom.
You have to save him.

Save him? I’d rather watch him burn.

ConRad. It all came back to him. Before, our situation was complicated. Him believing I was the enemy, and me not willing to trust him.

But things were much clearer now. No misguided emotions clouded my judgment. No naïve romantic longings. He’d claimed me, sworn to protect me, with his own life nonetheless, and hadn’t. Not even a cursory fight or half-hearted objection. No, I was freely given up without a second glance. Shame filled me at the memory of being so scared, so terrified that I’d called to him for help.

I controlled my relationships. I kept aloof, kept myself protected. But with ConRad, it had been different. Despite his warnings, I’d believed he would protect me as he had with the aliens, as he had with the other men in the compound. His ability to keep me safe struck me in a fundamental way. It spoke to something deep within my bone marrow. Something feminine that I refused to acknowledge. And to my lasting disgrace, I had believed him.

Why bother with the “for the rest of my life” speech? ConRad couldn’t marry, that privilege was left to the Elders and the ones in power. His words were a lie, and I’d sold myself like a hooker for a testosterone grin and a crappy line.

What had I expected? Weakness was a family trait. My father left my mother and us three children for a younger, more beautiful trophy wife. My mother—first place winner for cowardliness—couldn’t handle the embarrassment and gave up by putting a bullet in her brain. Considering my family, I could go nowhere but up.

Should I fight the darkness? Or do I give up like everyone else in my life had. Like ConRad had—on me.

Fear, I’d learned over the past weeks, was a funny thing. The key element to a good torture plan is the anticipation. The
knowing
is what makes the pain ten times worse. The knowledge of what is going to happen . . . knowing how much it’s going to hurt.

At first, I had been so scared. Every time the guards came for me I’d pleaded and begged. They had to drag me kicking and fighting because I soon learned that my cell was the safest place I could be.

Syon had been right. Here, every night was the longest night of the year. I hadn’t been conscious to see if the sun had come up that night. I was pretty sure it hadn’t. The night never ended, not here in hell. The sun had ceased its shining and the whole world existed only within these four walls.

Even though there was no light in hell, it sure had its sounds. And in the darkness my hearing heightened. Not a good thing. No, probably one of the worst things the darkness brought.

The screaming. It never stopped, but went on and on, sending lurid waves roaring through my head. I’d covered my ears, but it didn’t work. I could still hear them, the cries from grown men—trained for battle since infancy—who were stronger than I.

But the praye>Bu xml:lars were the worst. “I’m telling the truth . . . Oh please, God . . . Help me, Jesus!”

Prayers weren’t answered here either. In the beginning I had prayed. Asked to curl up and die. Just stop breathing, stop existing. At first I thought my prayers were answered. I felt nothing, was nothing. But then God had played me for a fool because there was something left inside my nothingness. A burning hot coal flickered inside me. The flame had a name, and its name was Hatred.

After that, all my tears turned bitter as something changed deep inside of me. Some gear clicked over and the light I carried in my soul fired red. Red with unholy anger at ConRad.

If I didn’t have courage, could I use something else?

People say strength comes from the heart, but that’s for heroes. Not for people like me. No, I needed to go beyond that faulty organ. So I dug deeper. I dug past the liver, pushed the kidneys aside, and went right on through to the small intestine. No, not there either, but deeper, in the bowels. I found my strength in the gut. Yep, there it was—down deep—my fury at ConRad paving the way.

My rage became a living, breathing thing—so powerful I’d almost choked on it. It kept me warm during the long cold night. Pushed me to keep myself strong physically and mentally. It gave me the courage to fight back and not to just lie on my cell floor and wait for the next round of beatings.

So I decided to live. I decided to eat.

The food here was brown mush and given on a tray that was slid through an opening at the bottom of the door. At first I could only manage to slither across the floor on my elbows and shovel the goop in with dirty fingers. I didn’t chew, didn’t taste, but swallowed before I lost the desire. Most times my stomach would rebel, pissed off at the force feeding after being idle for so long. The foul substance would crawl back up my throat. But desperation was a funny thing, so I covered my mouth and swallowed my own vomit.

Time crept and I healed. The beatings were regular, but not made of quite the same stuff as Syon’s. I did sit-ups, or the best I could with ribs in different stages of healing. One-handed push-ups at first, since during one beating I’d raised my arm in protection and got two bones crushed in my hand, which destroyed my hope of ever becoming a surgeon.

Only my changing body marked the passage of time. During a self-inflicted grueling series of yoga poses, I glanced down and didn’t recognize my own arms. Blood and sweat mingled together and flowed down forearms all sinewy with muscle. Veins and tendons stood prominently among bruises and cuts. I looked past clotted blood and whip marks and saw a physique that wasnphystha1emt my own.

This was me. I’d become the crazed, buffed out woman I remembered. My past finally caught up with my future. And now I was her, more animal than human.

Sure, I could hate Syon, and I did. Sure, I could hate all the other men who beat and tortured me, and I did. But ConRad was different than all of them. Not one of them had cherished me with their bodies or whispered words of endearment under the cover of intimacy. Not one of them had made me fall in love with them. And for that ConRad needed to pay.

So I nourished my rage, fed it a lush diet of hate-filled thoughts. And in return, the emotion filled me, warmed me, and gave me a purpose. The holy grail of purposes—revenge on ConRad. I was obsessed with what I’d say and do the next time I saw him.

And yet, when that day came, I did nothing.

Chapter Twenty-three

I
n my defense I was barely conscious. I’d just been through a particularly savage beating and hadn’t had time to heal. I was lying on the floor, drifting in and out of awareness.

The sound of muffled gunshots reached me behind my four walls, then a loud crashing outside my cell door. My dreams had begun blurring with reality, and I had a hard time distinguishing between what was real and what was fantasy. So I didn’t immediately believe my own senses.

My cell door broke open and there stood a terrifying warrior, appearing like he’d just crawled his way back up from the Underworld.

I dared not move, not even breathe. I couldn’t tell if he was some new form of torture I was meant to endure or Lucifer himself coming to drag me to another layer of Hell.

“Oh God . . . Kris?”

I inhaled sharply, recognizing the voice. Only one person on Earth ever whispered my name with such deliberate reverence—ConRad.

He was ConRad, but not quite him. He appeared different, more wild . . . more volatile.

The same piercing blue eyes stared at me, but from a more chiseled face. His hair was longer and plastered back with sweat and grime. His face was smeared with black and weeks’ worth of growth. His body, though never soft, was carved down to its most basic elements—muscle and bone.

A large bowie knife strapped menacingly to his outer thigh and a machine gun slung over his back. Ammo belts haphazardly crisscrossed his war-painted chest. A red blossom spread on his camouflage pants from a gaping wound in his right leg.

ConRad, who always wore the mask of the calm and the controlled, was teetering on the razor-sharp edge of crazy.

I didn’t know if he was here to save me or finish me off.

He stepped forward. With my remaining strength, I pushed my beaten body farther away.

“Kris, it’s me . . . ConRad.”

That didn’t change a damn thing for me. In the however long I’d been in Hell, I’d lost any fragile hope I had for the human race. I trusted no one.

ConRad stepped closer. I pushed backwards.

“Can you walk?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t figure out why he was here. Why give me up and then come in for a rescue? It didn’t make sense.

Without another word he picked me up, cradle style, in his arms. Pain exploded in my ribs, coloring my vision red. A scream died behind my clenched teeth. The shadows danced again, laughing.
Heehee Heehee. He’s gonna kill kill kill you.

We quickly exited the cell. ConRad crouched low, keeping his back to the walls. There was a shout and then a blanket of gunfire. He slung me over his shoulder into a fireman’s hold to free his hands and reach his weapon.

The pain broke me. I screamed loud and primal. I just alerted anyone who didn’t know to our whereabouts. But it didn’t matter, they’d already found us. My screams couldn’t be heard over the machine-gun fire anyway.

Bullets flew. Semiautomatic gunfire bounced off walls and metal doors. ConRad got hit, stumbled, and threw us into an adjoining hallway. I went flying from his hold andm hoff walls finally skidded to a stop when I hit the opposite wall.

ConRad flipped on his stomach and returned gunfire around the corner, while I laid in a stupor and fought for breath. A bullet whizzed by and nicked his shoulder. He slammed himself back behind the wall as he slapped another magazine in the lower compartment.

“Damn, they’re close,” he said, and then seemed surprised to find me still on the floor next to him. “Go, run down the hall! Quinn’s there.”

But I wasn’t quick enough because he grabbed my shirt like the scruff on the back of a dog’s neck and propelled me in the direction he wanted me to go.

The idea of escape finally snapped into place and I moved.

I pushed to my feet, took a step, and fell flat on my face. Apparently, I’d lost all control in my left leg. I looked down and was shocked to see I’d been shot just above my knee. Using my hand to stem the flow of blood, I once again struggled to my feet.

The hall was infinite, doors and doors of endless gray. I leaned against the wall for balance, my leg smearing blood along like a trail of bread crumbs in some twisted fairy tale. My vision faltered, at times showing me two hallways, and two paths leading out. I didn’t trust either, I just followed the wall.

I saw Quinn huddled by a black metal staircase and almost didn’t recognize her. She, like ConRad, had changed. Gone was the long flowing hair that crowned her innocence and youth. Gone was the seventeen-year-old I had known, in her place was a hardened soldier ready for battle. She was dressed in dirty army fatigues, hair chopped short under a black cap, and a machine gun, with the safety off, pointed at me.

Her fingers white-gripped the gun, and her eyes shimmered as she held back tears. I saw in her face when Quinn recognized me, and with a sigh of relief, she lowered her weapon. Which left me wondering how willing she was to shoot it. Playing female warrior didn’t seem to sit too well with her.

I couldn’t blame her, it was hardly a childhood aspiration of mine, but I felt left out being the only one without a gun.

“Where’s ConRad?”

I nodded back toward the hall. “He’s trapped.”

She nodded and turned to the two men who were kneeling behind her. I hadn’t realized there was anyoneereon Pro else with her, but when the two men stood, I recognized them from the compound. They were the soldiers I’d nicknamed Red and Tank.

“The Commander needs help. Leave him here for now,” Quinn said.

I didn’t know what
him
she was referring to. There was no one else here except us. Us and a pile of bloody rags the two men had left at her feet in their pursuit of ConRad.

Quinn dropped to her knees and murmured quiet calming things to the pile. It wasn’t until she stroked at something that looked like hair that I realized it wasn’t rags at all, but a human body at her feet.

In the emergency room I’d seen horrors. Knife and bullet wounds, bodies wasted away from drugs, and even the sickness of child abuse, but I’d never seen a human body mutilated to the point of what was lying on the floor.

My stomach churned at the thought. There was only one person Quinn would risk her life and come here to save.

Zimm.

Whatever torture they’d put me through, whatever beatings I’d endured, they were like slaps in the face compared to what they’d done to him.

“Is he alive?”

She nodded yes.

I didn’t feel comforted. The poor man would never recover from this. The human body could take only so much. Sickened and unable to watch further, I turned away.

I glanced up and saw the two soldiers and ConRad running toward us at the end of the corridor. Tank risked a look behind him and shot off some half-hearted rounds one-handed. Red supported ConRad as he limped down the hall.

“Run. It’s gonna blow!” screamed Red.

That was all I needed to hear. I hauled myself to my feet and hustled my butt toward the stairwell.

“Wait,” Quinn pleaded. “Help me.” She had one of Zimm’s bloodied arms around her shoulder, but couldn’t even budge him. Dead weight was heavy.

I looked up at the stairway with longing. There was no way the two of us could carry him up the stairs; I could barely make it myself. The chances of Zimm living after such abuse were nil. To ask me to drag a dying man up a flight of stairs, in my condition, was impossible.

I checked behind me. ConRad and the soldiers were barreling down still a few dozen feet away. But I heard ConRad as if he were shouting right next to me. “Leave him! There’s no time.”

Quinn had heard too. She sobbed, pleaded with Zimm to wake up. He didn’t move. Probably dead already.

I looked back toward the stairwell. I could make it. It would be close, but there was enough time.

My gaze caught sight of Quinn, sobbing on Zimm’s battered chest. I knew there was no way we could get him out.

And I also knew she’d die here before leaving without him.

Panic rushed my muscles; a split second of acute clarity. I was already dead. I’d died in that cell. My body just didn’t know it yet. Might as well make the death worth the sacrifice.

I kneeled before Zimm. “Get up!” I screamed right in his face, using my most commander-like voice. I grabbed what remained of his tattered shirt and shook him, snapping his head back and forth. If his C-spine wasn’t clear, then he was dead to us already. “Get on your feet
now
, soldier! MOVE!”

He moaned and began to come around; to help the process I slapped him . . . hard. “Get up off your ass and climb up those stairs. Now, soldier!”

Against all odds he moved. Quinn and I both pulled on each shoulder as he crawled up each step.

We’d barely made it to the top when ConRad swept down on me like a deadly bird of prey. He picked me up and hurled us through the door. He didn’t check to make sure anyone else made it out, just threw me against the opposite wall and covered me with his body.

The world shook.

For a moment I thought we’d made it out just to be buried alive. The entire dirt house we were in quaked and trembled, raining debris on top of us. A huge fire ball burst through the stairwell, incinerating anything on the stairs. No one would’ve survived.

I crawled out from under ConRad and tried to see if anyone else had made it. To my relief all four were huddled in the adjacent corner, singed, covered in dirt, but alive.

Shaken and disoriented, I couldn’t believe I was out of prison and alive. I’d accepted the only way I’d leave was with a blanket thrown over my body. Now, I couldn’t seem to process what to do next.

ConRad didn’t have any such problem.

Seconds after the fire cleared he began shouting orders. We exited the mud house, leaving the place in much worse condition than when we entered.

ConRad leaned on Red, and Tank had Zimm thrown over his shoulder like he was a mere inconvenience. They led Quinn and me to the three horses that were tied off in a struggling-to-survive forest. Tank tied Zimm to the front of one saddle, while Quinn slipped up behind Red. Zimm had mercifully gone unconscious, and I for one, was jealous.

It quickly became apparent that I’d be left sitting in front of ConRad. My mind positive
ly balked at the idea of being jostled on horseback. And being jostled so intimately next to
him
.

I hesitated.

ConRad gestured with his hand for me to come on. I contemplated asking Quinn to switch places with me. My intention must have showed, because ConRad’s face distorted to a whole new level of pissed. His teeth smashed together, his lips barely moved as he growled. “If I have to get down off this horse to get you . . .”

The threat was implied, yes, but effective nonetheless. With the old ConRad, I might have pushed things a bit. Doing so with new Crazy ConRad? Well, that was just stupid.

I couldn’t get up on the horse fast enough.