Oculus (Oculus #1) (20 page)

Humid.

Suffocating.

I distinctly remember the day that I begged my dad for a garden. Our unit has a small patio just off the back door. I wanted so badly to grow lavender and mint and basil and all the things that my keen nose could enjoy far better than most people. It took me a month of pestering but he relented.

Had I known that the supplies we needed were going to cost him so much time I would never have been so persistent. Thinking back on it makes me feel terribly guilty. The plastic fifty-gallon rain barrel was the most expensive item because it wasn’t something readily available at our Procurement Facility. Dad ordered it and filled out the special request to obtain rain water, which I now think is absurd. That barrel, that stupid chunk of plastic cost him three weeks of time. Time that he owed Fenra. Hours upon hours of work in the lab to pay for a stupid gardening phase I was intent on trying out.

Hours that he was working off when I decided to water my seedlings alone.

I held my breath for a pretty long time when I first went in. Dad had fashioned a sort of scoop from a plastic carton that dehydrated potato flakes came in. It worked well because it floated right on top of the surface. I had felt for it, careful not to accidentally sink my water scoop. I wasn’t careful enough. I reached for the scoop and heard a glug!

Before thinking better of it, I plunged my arm down into the barrel but I was too short and the submerged scooper was sinking to the bottom. I rose up onto my tiptoes and pulled myself up and over the edge of the rounded-plastic edge. My fingers grazed the scoop and I held on tight. Getting back off the barrel was far more difficult than getting onto it. The hand I was using to brace myself began to slip. The harder I tried to hold on, the more the muscles in my shoulders and arms burned and shook. Then…

“I said strip!” The caveman agent bellows as he shoves me hard between my shoulder blades, sending me forward a few steps. My bare feet slap down in the water on the floor. It takes me a moment to snap out of the memory of the day I nearly drowned in an oversized bucket.

“What?” I splutter, only just now aware that he has removed one cuff from one of my wrists.

“Chief says you need a shower. Says you’re filthy and hotheaded. Says a shower ought to cool you down,” he jeers, winning a laugh from his companion. “So strip or I’ll do it for you.”

“I—no!” I cry out, appalled and in disbelief at what’s happening to me. My protest barely makes it past my lips before a sickening blow resonates from my ear clean through my head. Both ears begin to ring, temporarily rendering me without yet another sense.

“I said no!” I scream like a banshee hoping that anger will see me through.

With a sickening
oof,
his fist lands explosively against my stomach.
I double over in pain and work at breathing, but air simply won’t move. A raspy whine escapes as I collapse with my cheek pressed against the stone floor. A barely there layer of water covers my cheek. An eternity passes before the smallest gulp of air makes its way into my abused body.

“I won’t,” I whisper to the floor.

“Have it your way,” the agent says as he steps forward and claps the cuff back around my wrist and yanks me angrily to my feet. He lifts the hem of my shirt and toys with it. The sound of thread ripping echoes all around me. The fabric covering my body, a body that
I
haven’t even seen, a body that only Sic has seen, is tossed aside baring me to both men. The urge to be ill torments my empty stomach.

“Well, look at that, would ya?” he grunts and jerks me violently forward. I struggle against him but he overpowers me easily. The sound of spraying water sends me tumbling into a full panic.

His grip at the nape of my neck squeezes forcefully, sending me to my knees under a torrent of stinging, ice-cold water.

“Shower!” He yells then releases me and I scramble from under the spray, gasping for air. He catches me by the ankle and drags me back to the water and holds me in place by my neck. “I said shower!”

The frigid water slips over the surface of my body but my mind is guarded. My mind is a safe place.

Sic’s hands. Sic’s scar. Sic’s long legs striding over the ground at his feet.

I’ve dreamed of him for so long. Under normal circumstances, it’s simple to retreat into my mind and summon past dreams of a perfect stranger that I know so well. Right now? It’s all I can manage just to focus hard on him, to employ every cell in my body, so that I may conjure a phantom.

Sic’s hair. Sic’s voice. Sic’s touch. Sic’s lips. Sic’s breath on my skin.

Drenched and shaking and naked, I’m lifted to my feet. My muscles shake so violently they begin to burn. The sound of another set of footsteps approaching barely registers through the fog that has enveloped my mind. I cling tightly to the image of Sic in my mind. He’s running faster than I’ve ever seen him move, the image of agility and athleticism.

“What in the fuck is this?” Ingram growls, distracting me from thoughts of Sic. I attempt scrambling away from the direction that his voice has come from.

“She wasn’t complying,” the ogre with his hand around my upper arm offers.

“You stupid asshole! Look at her!” Ingram barks. The two agents don’t say anything, the grip on my arm growing tighter the only sign of tension. “Fix this mess and bring her to my office and don’t take the main corridor for the love of god! I’ll leave the rear door in my office open.”

“Yes, Chief,” the men say in unison. I listen as Ingram walks away, leaving me alone with my abusers. “Bitch,” the agent near me grits out as I’m dragged away from the room.

Ingram’s office has a couch in it. It’s firm and uncomfortable against my tender body but I can’t stand. I can’t do anything but think of Sic.

What will he think when he finds out I’m here? Where is he now? Have they captured him too?

The door slides open and though my swollen eyes are shut and I lie motionless on Ingram’s couch dressed only in an oversized prisoner’s jumper, my senses go on high alert in the presence of my predator.

He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason I’m not floating after an amazing night with a man that I have longed for, for so many years.

Ingram sighs and walks across his office. Stopping, I hear him pour liquid. His footsteps come nearer and his scent inundates my nose making me flinch and back away. “Drink,” he orders, placing a glass in my hand.

“Fuck you,” I rasp, taken aback by my own insurrection following an assault unlike I’ve ever dreamed of having to suffer.

“Don’t give me reason to hand you over to Agents Krause and Flynn again,” he threatens successfully. I bring the glass to my dry lips and sniff before taking a gulp. The water slakes down my dry throat and lands heavy in my empty stomach. “I have food for you, as well.”

“How generous. When can I leave?”

“As soon as this investigation is wrapped up.”

“I did nothing wrong. You can’t hold me like this.”

“I can and I am.”

“What do you want from me?”

“The same thing I wanted since the first time I saw you begging to see the dean. Anger suits you, but so does vulnerability. Maybe that’s why I want you so badly.”

“Even bruised and banged up… you… I want you.” Ingram grabs my hand and forces me to touch the bulge at his crotch. I jerk my hand away and stifle the shiver of disgust that spreads through me.

“Yeah, well, I agreed at first but now I’ve changed my mind so forget it.”

“Ah. Yes.
Agreeing
. It was so entertaining letting you think you had a choice in the matter,” he whispers as his fingers drift over my collarbone. “But as it turns out, you don’t.” In spite of myself, my heart hammers hard in my chest and anxiety builds. “As if you could deny me,” he whispers softer still. “You asked me when we would make good on our deal, well, I told you I’d work it out, didn’t I?”

Realization hits me like lightning and I grimace, the dried blood on my cheek cracking. “You planned this?”

“Well, I can’t take all the credit. With Benson’s death still so fresh, my superiors demanded that I do something to assure the public that Security has control over our cozy compound. The raid was a convenient way to get you here, in custody and at my mercy. So vulnerable and furious. They truly make you more stunning than you already are. I can’t resist.” Ingram snakes his fingers around the nape of my neck and pulls me to him. His mouth covers mine in a suffocating kiss that I fight hard to break away from.

I bite his lip hard, drawing blood. “You set me up! I told you I’d do what you wanted. I agreed!”

“Yes. You did. But these circumstances suit me far better. Who would believe you now? After all, you’re a suspected Resistance Sympathizer. You’d try anything to get yourself out of trouble. What do you look like insisting that you were exploited by a respected Fenra Security Official? You, a Resistance Sympathizer? No one would believe you and I get credit for keeping our compound safe from Dark Land animals and better still, I get you in all your blind, vulnerable, angry glory.”

Rendered speechless, I hold tightly to the seat beneath me as my mind reels, thinking back on the last few days.

“Now, bite me again and you’ll regret it,” he threatens as he pulls me to my feet and guides me to the other side of his office and through the door that Krause and Flynn used to leave me in here.

“My quarters are back here. Let’s go.”

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” - Herman Melville,
Moby Dick

I
’M HANDING CADE A PACK
of dried potato slices when terror rips through me. It’s like a thousand jagged shards of glass driving deep into my brain. My hand crushes the pack, blasting Cade in the face with a cloud of pulverized spuds. I ignore his cry of surprise, the questions he calls after me, the shouts from the other members of the Junior Resistance. Without hesitation, I sprint away from them toward the source of my agony.

Iris.

Something’s wrong. She is in trouble, and I’m out here delivering groceries to a bunch of fucking idiots. Her terror spikes and I hear her voice in my head.