Kev was running through a tunnel in the dark. Stumbling, slamming into dead ends, feeling his way. Trying to reach something, but he couldn’t remember what. He had to hurry, but he couldn’t remember why. Fear, teeth-grinding frustration. A rock sitting on top of his mind, blanking out everything in its blind spot. Crushing him.
Splash. Cold water slapped his face. He gasped, tried to open his eyes. Light pierced, burned. Hurt. He closed them again.
Slap, slap. Someone was hitting his face. He was disoriented. All he felt was pain. Every muscle was locked in a state of unbearable tension. He could barely breathe, his lungs were so tight. Every breath was like lifting a ton of crushed rock with his chest. Eyelids, too. So heavy.
He forced them open, blinked. Eyes stung, burned. A woman’s face swam into his vision, along with sparkles, halos, colored lights.
No sound. His ears hadn’t come back from never-never land yet.
It was the chick from before. Cheung. She’d changed her clothes. Was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt. Hair down. Shiny, blue black. The black widow spider who stung him. The hellbitch neuroscientist.
She was talking, her tilted eyes sparkling with glee. He couldn’t hear her. He tried to shake his head, let her know that the audio was off. Couldn’t. Whatever she’d pumped into him had paralyzed him. Semi-voluntary systems barely functioning. He’d smother if his strength ran out. Or if he no longer cared to fight for breath.
Smack, smack. She hit him again, with evident enjoyment.
“Wake up, you lazy slob.” Her voice roared suddenly, volume turned up horribly loud. Sonar shock almost made his head explode.
“You should be able to talk by now,” she said. “I wanted a chat before I play with my new toy. I like when they know exactly what’s happening. The inner resistance gives me a bit more traction.”
He formed the word carefully with stiff, trembling lips. “Wh-who?”
She tittered. “Who what? Who are you? Nobody, now. My new toy. Do you mean, who am I?” She smiled. “I am exactly who I said I was. I had no reason to lie to you, honey. You’ll never tell. I am Dr. Ava Elaine Cheung, to the rest of the world. But to you, I am God. Get used to it.”
He squinted at her. “Os…ter…man?”
Her eyes glittered. “Oh, yes! Dr. O! Your old friend, right?” She patted the scars on his face. “He really left his mark, hmm? Upon me, too, I have to admit. He was my mentor, my guru. Taught me everything I know. I miss him, you know. Since your brother murdered him.”
Brother? Kev’s mind choked on that. His first thought was of Bruno, but that didn’t fit, didn’t compute.
Then the blinding realization racked him, like an electrical shock. Too thrilling to be fear, too painful to be joy. “B-b-brother?”
Cheung’s eyes widened with mock surprise. “Oh, my. I almost forgot. You don’t know, do you? It’s the amnesia! Oh, that’s so funny.” She leaned closer. “To think that I know all about your former self,” she crooned into his ear. “Your family. Your history. And you know nothing. How awful, for someone else to have that information…and withhold it. Out of pure spite.” She giggled, tapping his lip.
He dragged a breath, and formed the word very carefully. “Name?”
She waggled her finger. “Ah, ah, ah! The dancing bear doesn’t get his treat until he’s performed his tricks.” She leaned close, kissed him wetly. Her tongue thrust deep into his numb mouth.
She was blocking what little air he was managing to get. When she finally leaned back, panting with excitement, he sucked in air, wishing he had enough saliva in his mouth to spit out the strange, bittersweet taste of her. He formed the words more easily now. Motor control was coming back. “Do that again, and I will bite off your lip and spit it on the floor.”
Her eyes tightened to glittering slits, as she raised her hand. Smack. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. “Wrong thing to say. You’ll pay.”
“I’m used to that,” he said.
She crossed her arms below her tits, shoving them higher. “Your precious Edie will pay, too.” Her voice was a mocking singsong.
Edie? Terror clawed at his guts. His fists were clenching, now that he was starting to feel them again. Where the fuck was he?
His head could just barely turn. He took in his surroundings. The room was bright, white, like a doctor’s examining room. Crowded with electronic equipment, bottles, vials. A table with several syringes was close by him. A pile of plasticuffs. A set of shears.
He was suspended from something, couldn’t bend his neck far enough to see what. Hanging by a set of plasticuffs. His hands were cold, numb, but quasi-functional. A short foam-and-plastic-covered bench was under his ass, which took some of the pressure off his wrists. There was a plastic band across his throat. It cut into his voice box whenever he swallowed. He couldn’t move his legs, or even feel them, but his balls throbbed, hard. A deep, sickening ache.
She sensed the second that he registered that pain, and reached down to grip his crotch. All he could see as he stared at her perfect smiling face was the grinning skull beneath. A death’s head.
“You have me to thank for the fact that your testicles aren’t a thin pink soup inside your scrotum,” she told him. “Ken was going to crush them. I stopped him, just in time.” She waited, as if expecting him to express gratitude. He said nothing. She squeezed his balls until he gasped. “I want you intact, for our games. When we have Edie. Mmm.”
He shoved that image away, negated it. “You won’t get Edie.”
“Oh, certainly I will,” she said. “She’s on her way home right now, as we speak, to the bosom of her family. Des told me. He was there when she called them. Edie’s little sister was sobbing on his shoulder.”
He hung there, air frozen in his lungs, staring at her triumphant smile. “What does Marr have to do with this?”
“Everything,” she said. “He’s my partner. My lover. Des is offering emotional support to the bereaved Parrish family right now, in their time of shock and grief. Oh, wait! You didn’t know, did you? How silly of me! You were asleep for that part! Charles Parrish is dead. Foully murdered. Poor Edie is now an orphan.” She clicked her tongue. “Sad.”
He tried to breathe, to fight the sickening waves of fear. “Dead? How? Who…who—”
“Who killed him? Oh, it’s an incredible story. It starts eighteen years ago. This mysterious amnesiac with a grudge, one of Osterman’s victims. He fixated on the CEO of Helix as the author of his woes, and boom.” She mimed shooting a rifle, and shook her head sadly. “It’s tragic,” she mused. “I mean, who is really to blame, here? That poor man never got any help. The system failed him, and everyone else, in a tragic chain reaction. A sort of modern Hamlet. Everybody dies.” She giggled. “Or will die, by the time we’re through with you all.”
Kev shook his head. “You can’t pin that on me.”
“He kidnapped and raped Edie Parrish, too,” she went on. “He brainwashed her, sequestered her, and then he set himself up in a construction site, and waited for his chance to take Parrish out with a sniper rifle. And today, he succeeded. Thank God poor Edie was spared. Who knows what sick, twisted stuff was happening in the poor guy’s brain. It makes one just shiver to think of it, doesn’t it?”
“You won’t get Edie,” he repeated, desperately. “She’s gone.”
“We already have her,” she taunted. “She’s on her way home, to comfort her sister. When she gets there, Des will be there to greet her.”
“No.” Denying it made it no less true, but he couldn’t stop bleating out the word, pushing that truth away from himself.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Des will be gentle. He’ll hold her while she cries. If she needs comfort, maybe he’ll even fuck her. Lucky Edie.”
That made his muscles tighten up with a jerk. He regretted his lack of control when her eyes lit up, thrilled to get a reaction.
“That wouldn’t bother you?” he asked her, hoarsely.
“Oh, not at all.” She petted his crotch again. “I give Des free rein. We have space in our relationship. Just as long as he brings her to me eventually. Like a dog, bringing a dead rabbit back to his master.”
“Let her be,” he said. “Forget about her. I’m the one you wanted, right? Nobody gives a shit if I disappear. She’s a Parrish. The whole world’s looking at her. She’ll be nothing but trouble for you guys.”
“Oh, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Oh, where do I even begin.” Cheung waved her arms. “Edie’s special. Like you. Like me. She’ll be my missing link. We have something in common, you know. We can take an X-Cog slave interface more than once without dying of brain bleed. And it’s my hypothesis that Edie can, too, based on her Haven test results and MRIs. I’d bet an exclusive X-Cog contract that she’s got the stuff.”
His soul shrank from the thought. “And…if you’re wrong?”
She shrugged. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. She dies in twenty minutes, bleeding out her orifices, and so much for that fantasy.”
“And they’ll be after you to the ends of the earth.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If she works out, we’ll control her completely. She’ll do anything we want, and when we don’t want to play anymore, she’ll conveniently drive off a cliff, or swallow a bottle of bleach. Whatever tickles my funny bone.”
Kev stuffed the fear into a small place in his mind, and fished everything she’d said out of his memory, looking for the sense, if there was any to be found. “Your missing link. Like you were for Osterman,” he repeated slowly. “You said he left his mark on you, too. Were you one of those kids that he experimented on?”
“The only one who survived.” Ava Cheung’s face froze into a mask. “I am a distinguished, prizewinning neuroscientist. I publish in professional journals, I produce multimillion dollar patents. I am the reason Helix stock is sky-high. Everyone in my field knows of me.”
And you mind-rape and murder people for fun. He thought it, but years in the kitchen with Tony Ranieri had taught him those moments when smart-ass sarcasm was not called for. Hanging from the ceiling with your balls in somebody’s fist was definitely one of those times.
“What did Osterman do to you?” he asked.
Ava Cheung’s brow tilted up. “You want to know? You can watch me do it to Edie. She’ll be my obedient, docile whore. And so will you.”
Kev tried to listen to her with his body. To see past his fear and revulsion, to catch a flash of the girl that she had been before she’d been broken, twisted into something barely human.
That girl was as lost to Cheung as his own boy self was lost to him. Even more so, because he had protected himself. He’d blocked that part, kept it safe. Safe even from himself, ironic though that was.
This woman had been wide open. Gutted. She was dead inside.
He looked into her eyes without wavering. “He hurt you,” he said. “He used you. That was wrong.”
“Don’t pity me. Or I’ll rip your entrails out before your eyes.”
“All right,” he said quietly. “All pity withdrawn.”
“I’m a million miles beyond that stupid shit,” she told him. “I’m a different order of human being. I’ve been forged in a crucible.”
He didn’t respond. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t result in testicle squeezing, or a tooth-rattling slap.
The wild glow was fading from her eyes. What replaced it was trapped, confused. Frantic. “How did you do it?” she blurted. The words sounded like they were forced out under tremendous pressure.
He stared into her eyes, feeling his way. “Do what?” he asked.
“Get away from Dr. O, and Gordon. Nobody got away from them, except for you. And your brother. Your goddamn, fucking brother.”
Gordon. The name conjured up nightmare flashes, rapid and elusive, but horrible. A thick, reddened gloating face, pale blue eyes close to his own face. Helplessness, humiliation, terror. Pain, as the red-hot-tipped iron came closer, closer…and—
Oh, Jesus. He winced away from the harrowing inner scream echoing through his memory, and grasped on to another thought, the only one that could keep him afloat. “Tell me about my brother.”
“Shut up! You’re never going to see him! You’ll never see anyone! Answer my questions! How did you do it? How did you break away?”
He considered his very limited options in that split second, and concluded that the truth couldn’t hurt him. No more than lies could help. Though he could very well be wrong. “I don’t know,” he said.
She slapped him. Sweat stood out on her forehead. Her eyes were wide and staring. “You lying bastard! You prick! Tell me!”
“It’s true. Those memories are blocked,” he confessed. “I did something to myself to block them, but I don’t know what it was. I blocked my own self out, too, in the process. I’ve never gotten back in.”
“Did you break the dominance?” Her voice rose to a shriek.
“I don’t know,” he repeated quietly. “Swear to God.”
She panted. “Don’t do that. I am God, for you. I’m a jealous, vengeful God. I’m going to make you crawl and lick the bottoms of my feet.” She socked him, splitting his lip. He licked it, tasting blood.
“I don’t know,” he repeated, having nothing else to say.
“Fine, then.” The whites of her eyes showed all the way around. “We’ll move on to the next item on my agenda. Maybe this will jog your memory.” She held up a syringe. “New, improved X-Cog. You’ve already tried some, at the Parrish Foundation. I wanted to see how you took it, and I’m pleased at the results. Just a supplemental dose, nothing like what I gave Parrish today. His dose would have felled a bull elephant. Probably had hundreds of broken blood vessels. Good thing his brain was liquefied, or the autopsy would be a big puzzle for the coroner.”
He stared at the syringe as if it were a venomous insect.
“You’ll be amazed, how much more effective the drug is now,” she said. “Dr. O worked hard all those years. It was X-Cog 2 or at most X-Cog 3, back in your day. This is X-Cog 19. There’s a world of difference. I’ll show you the trick you’ll be performing today. Wait here.”
As if he could wander away. He followed her as far as his head would turn, which wasn’t far with that hard plastic band cutting across his throat. A few minutes later, she reappeared, pushing a wheelchair.
A girl was in it, her hands plasticuffed to the arm rests, her ankles to the footrests. Gagged. Young, no more than eighteen. She wore a gray sports bra and shorts on her slender, curvy body. Her face would have been beautiful if it had not been distorted by terror.
The sick feeling of creeping horror intensified. Whatever she had in mind for him and that girl, it was sure to be bad. There was no end to how bad it could be. He knew about bottomless pits. He lived in one.
“Kev, meet Yuliyah. Fresh out of Latvia. She’s a musician. Plays the oboe. I have her audition CD in my car. I listen to it every day. A Mozart concerto. Stunning. She is going to be your new little friend.”
Kev stared at the girl. She stared back, eyes wild.
He wondered if he could consciously trigger the oubliette. He never had before, but Jesus. He had to find a way, if Cheung tried to make him hurt that girl. “What the fuck are you doing with her?”
“Oh, nothing terrible,” Cheung soothed. “We have big plans for Yuliyah. She’s destined for the next X-Cog slave interface the next time my client needs a big job done. We finally got a reliable supply line of subjects, but every single one of my girls is spoken for. I certainly don’t intend for you to hurt Yuliyah, or even leave a single bruise on her. I just want you to, ah…” She winked. “You know.”
Fear clutched nastily at his guts. “You can’t make me do that!”
“Oh, no?” Cheung’s smile thinned. “I can make you do absolutely anything. I don’t have a lot of experience in crowning men into sex, but it sounds like fun. And I love a challenge. Don’t worry, if you’re shy. I made arrangements for no one to disturb us.”
“It won’t work,” he told her. “You can’t regulate my blood flow, or hormones. You can’t control my glands with that shit. And violence and rape are a huge, dick-wilting turn-off for me. Don’t waste your time.”
“So you think being a man protects you from sexual compulsion? Typical male arrogance. The connection between master and slave crowns is more complex now than it was in your day. There’s more give and take, more exchange. And violence may not turn you on, but it sure does it for me.” She giggled. “My heart is racing, already. I’m breathless and hot. And once I put that crown on you…you will be, too.”
Yuliyah writhed against her bonds. Kev closed his eyes. He had to block Cheung out. He had no idea how he’d done it with Osterman. All he knew was the price that he’d paid for it. For eighteen fucking years.
“You know, I picked Yuliyah out of my stable on purpose, just for you,” Cheung said. “She looks kind of like Edie, don’t you think? I thought that might make it, you know. More exciting, for you.”
His guts churned. He had to stall her somehow, keep her talking, preening, gloating. “A stable? How many girls are you holding?”
“I just got a delivery last night,” she confided. “I was so excited. I have six, counting Yuliyah. All talented, all beautiful. They’re already booked up, though. Lots of jobs to do. I have ten more on order.”
Six now. Ten more to come. Jesus wept. “You’re like Exhibit A in Criminal Psych 101,” he said. “Dr. O tore you to pieces, didn’t he?”
She giggled. “It’s like Dr. O used to say about research ethics. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. The bummer is if you happen to be the egg, right? Right?” Her giggle got higher, shakier. She couldn’t make herself stop.
She slapped him again. The sharp smack cut off her own hysteria, and she swayed, mouth dangling open, panting. “Everybody takes their turn to crawl,” she said hoarsely. “You’re turn’s up.” She came up close to him, and whispered into his ear. “And if you’re good at your interface…if you’re very good at fucking Yuliyah…if you make me come in my pants…I might even tell you your real name. Think about that.”
She stabbed the needle into his arm. He gasped, arching.
The effect was immediate. Like a wasp’s sting. The monstrous mother of all wasps. A rictus of cramping, agonizing pain.
His face was locked into a staring grimace. His teeth ground. His tendons stood out. He felt blood pulsing in his temples, pressure in his eyes increasing. As if he were screaming inside, but no sound came out.
Ava Cheung lifted up a silver mesh cap, set it on his head, and leaned close to set the little dangling sensors at various points over his scalp. The contact points had adhesive on them. She put a set of goggles on his eyes. She set a similar device on her own head, placing the sensors on herself without taking her eyes off him. She put a pair of goggles on, and grinned. “Now we’ll see who’s the victim, Kev. Now we’ll see who’s in control.” She dragged in a deep breath. Her lips peeled back, her eyes closed. He was reminded of a mummified corpse.
She slammed into him. Oh Christ. Like being hit by a truck.
He fought, instinctively, as he felt her trying to make him move. But he soon realized that she couldn’t. That connection was severed. His will to move was located someplace else, a place she could not reach. Of course, he couldn’t reach it either. So what else was new.
He could feel her, flailing around in his brain. It hurt, but she couldn’t get a grip on him. The block still held. Yes.
The emergency rewiring he’d done eighteen years ago still worked. Thanks and praise to the great Whoever. She could cut him into pieces, but she could not make him rape that girl. Pressure built, but that armored part of his brain was like a nut she could not crack.
She stepped back, eyes bulging with rage. “You son of a bitch,” she spat. She grabbed another hypodermic from the table. Held it in front of his eyes, let him see the drop of liquid ooze out and shimmer on the tip of the needle. “Big, strong boy, huh? I guess you need more help than I thought. Let’s see how a double dose affects you.” Stab.
Another wasp sting. Incredible, that it could actually get worse. He hung there, rigid, enduring it. The realization formed, oddly calm. This shit would kill him. When the pressure got high enough, pop.
His only chance was the oubliette, but he’d always gone into it involuntarily. He’d never actually tried to get in.
Now was the time to figure out a way.
Of course, he might never come out. He might stay there in the dark until he wasted away, body atrophying, muscles and tendons shortening into the fetal position. Horribly conscious, waiting for death. Which would be long and slow in coming.
No good option. So be it.
He didn’t know how he’d gotten into the oubliette, but he knew how he had gotten out. His little angel. Maybe she could lead him back in, too. So hard to concentrate, to still his mind, with Ava crashing around in there like a maddened bull. He called up Edie’s image, her shining eyes full of light. He let it fill his conciousness, and the violence retreated into the background. Ava could flail around however she wished, in a room that was now empty. He took his leave, floated away.
Edie took form before him. She stood in the dark rocky tunnel that he knew very well, and beckoned to him. She glowed like a pearl.
He followed her into the darkness, letting her shining form lead him through the labyrinth. Ava pounded away, behind him. He no longer cared. He followed his love. Trusting her without question.
She lit up the tunnel with her inner light. She was his sun. He had no idea how far they went into the twisting darkness, but it was far.
And then, the door. Like something out of a medieval castle. Massive, made of heavy dark iron. Fastened with huge square bolts the size of a man’s head. Fortified, spiked, speared, armored.
A key appeared in Edie’s pale, slender hand. It gleamed in the light that came from her lambent form. She put it in the lock, turned it.
The door opened inward. She stepped back, beckoned him in. Inside was only darkness. Her eyes were so sad.
Grief clutched him. He was afraid to go in alone. He asked with his eyes if she could follow him in. She shook her head. No.
Do the hard thing. He steeled himself, walked past her, through the door and into the darkness. The door began to creak shut. Soon would come the hollow boom, locking him in the dark.
He turned to look back, though he knew he shouldn’t, that it would only weaken him, torture him. And saw it, transfixed with horror.
The enormous black widow spider stood behind Edie in the tunnel. Her huge gleaming black abdomen reflected back Edie’s light, distorting it. The fluttering shreds of its web clogged the rocky tunnel.
The way back was blocked. There was no way out for Edie.
Her eyes met his. Dark liquid dripped down her face from her eyes. A medieval madonna, weeping blood. The result of an X-Cog slave crown. She knew there was no escape from this trap. She was doomed.
Her eyes said good bye. The doors slammed shut. Crash. Dark.
Horror exploded inside him with the sound. Guilt, for dragging her into this, for not protecting her better. Terror and denial and fury.
He’d fucked up. The hard thing was the wrong thing. The worst fucking thing he’d ever done. Holing up in here to cower like a trembling mouse in a burrow, while Edie was in danger. What craven bullshit.
This was worse than death. He’d thought only of himself, leaning on her, counting on her to lead him through his darkness like the ferryman of the River Styx. Using her, when he should be saving her.
Those monsters would eat her alive.
He couldn’t stay in here. At the cost of blowing every last fucking capillary in his brain into mush, he had to get out of here. Right now.
The charge built inside him, and he stoked it, threw everything he had into it. All the nameless horror that he’d blocked from his mind, but not his body, or his heart. All the yearning and the loneliness, the mad frustration, those years of mute confusion. The towering rage.
The energy rose, like the gas pressure in a volcano about to blow a mountain miles into the air. Building, swelling—
Boom. The force of the blast knocked him out.
When his eyes opened, the pressure of the plastic band across his throat was throttling him. He was drowning. It took a minute to realize that it was blood, streaming from his nose down into his throat, clogging the air. Ava was on the floor. She, too, had a nosebleed. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, touching her head. Dazed.
Something was different. Night and day different. He was still locked in the jaws of cramping pain, but his mind…it was as light as a balloon. Like a huge rock had been lifted from it. The blind spot.
It was…gone. Gone. Oh, Jesus.
Images began trickling into that numb space. He saw Osterman, crowning him. Osterman, trying to force him to tell him something. But X-Cog compulsion was essentially useless for the purposes of extracting information, so Osterman had given him to Gordon to play with.
Gordon. Oh, Jesus. He remembered Gordon’s torture now, and he wished he didn’t. The burning, the cutting, the gloating. It floated back, chunk by chunk. Fragments of a screaming, bloody, endless nightmare.
Gordon hadn’t expected him to fight back, that last day. Gordon thought that he was played out. He’d told Kev that was the day they’d finish him. Put out his eyes, cut off his ears, cut off his tongue, his hands, his feet, his balls, his dick. If he didn’t tell them where Liv was.
Liv. Liv? Who was…he struggled, groped for it. Liv…Endicott.
Oh, God. Liv. Yes. He saw her, in his mind’s eye, outside the library, her gray eyes full of fear. He remembered telling her to take the notebook to Sean, and to get out of town before they—
Sean? Who the fuck was…Sean?
His brother. His twin brother.
Images unfolded, full color, full feeling. Sean. Davy. Con. Dad. The house, the mountains. The Midnight Project. His life. His self.
Tears streamed down, mingling with blood. One memory triggered a hundred more, crashing down on him. An avalanche of memories, feelings. The formless longing he’d curled around, tried to ignore for years, it finally had a name. It was for them. Brothers. Family.
He’d found a burst of strength that day, in Osterman’s lair. A lucky nerve pinch put Gordon down long enough to run, hotwire a car. He’d driven to Flaxon, God knows how, to blow the whistle on the Midnight Project. Bad call, choosing Parrish, the Flaxon rep. He should have gone to the cops. To anyone but Parrish. He hadn’t been thinking clearly.
They’d put him down. And Gordon came, to retrieve him.
Osterman had been furious. He’d tried to compel Kev to mutilate himself in punishment. In his desperation, Kev had done…something to his own brain. He’d triggered the block. Hidden in the oubliette.
That was all he could remember, but the rest was easy to reconstruct. Osterman got bored with an unresponsive chunk of meat. He sent Gordon off to dispose of him. Tony found him. And that was it.
Ava was slapping again, had been for a while, but he was too overwhelmed by memories to notice. She swayed, blood streaming from her nose. “…do that to me? You bastard! You hurt me!” Whack.
He flinched, blinked. Tossed in a heaving ocean of feelings, memories. He couldn’t process them all. Half a life had been more than enough weight for his brain, his heart, to bear up under.
“Don’t do that again!” She wagged her finger at him, and he would have laughed, if he could. As if he chose this crazy shit. He was driven by a herd of buffalo, all running off a sheer cliff. Story of his life.
Cheung slammed that truck into his brain again…oh, fuck…
It was all different now. He was naked in there now. He’d blown his protective mechanism all to shit. And now she had him. Her claws sank deep, into nerves, will. She made him move, jerking against his restraints. The harder he fought, the greater her control. She grinned, gleefully. Her teeth were blood streaked.
“That’s better,” she panted. “Now we’re talking.”
He couldn’t fight. He was a shambles, and she was loving it. Touching him from within, moving him, making the muscles in his groin clench and tighten against his will, as if he were aroused.
And he was. It was true. She really could make him hard, and he hated himself for it. His heart raced, his dick tingled and throbbed.
She reached down to pet it, well pleased. “Ready now, Kev?” she taunted. “Yuliyah is waiting.” She petted his penis, her hand lingering, squeezing. “Nice. I see why Edie’s so taken with you.”
Mentioning Edie stung him, sharpened him. Rage stabbed deep, dragging him into focus. His passive defense was no longer operational. She’d backed him into a corner. All that was left was offense.
That heinous bitch was going down.
He held Edie’s image in his mind, in case it was the last thing he ever thought of. Her shining body like a candle flame.
And stopped all resistance.
Cheung faltered at the sudden lack of purchase as he sagged in her mind, the mental equivalent of dead weight, and in that instant of disorientation, he leaped at her.
Ava flinched. She’d never been challenged by a slave-crowned subject. He followed up, drove her backward into her own self. No idea what the fuck he was doing, or how. Just clawing onward.
Her eyes bugged out. He was inside. Controlling her. The contact felt hideous, unclean, and horribly easy, too. She’d been groomed for years by Osterman for submission to mental dominance.
He felt echos of what she felt. Her self-loathing, which was so normal, so everyday, she no longer even perceived it. The distortion of the world seen through her mind; full of spite and danger. Stinking with corruption. Everything ugly, hated, despised, mistrusted.
It was like having his head in a vise. He forced her to move her arms, her legs. She was toppling. He forced her to catch herself.
There was a pair of clippers on the table next to the syringes. He forced Ava to stumble, stiff legged, to the table. To pick up the clippers.
She dropped them. He made her pick them up.
It took eight tries. Finally, she got a grip, lurched toward him. Her eyes darted crazily. Her mouth hung open, bloody mucus hanging off her slack lips.
First, the throat band, or he’d hang himself. He compelled her to lift the clippers to the plastic that bound his throat. He missed. Tried again. Missed again. Overshooting. Then he almost made her stab him in the throat. Narrow miss. Wouldn’t that just be as ironic as all hell.
Got it. He forced the muscles in her hands to contract. Snip. His head sagged forward, limp, but he could swallow again, and gasp in air.
Then the hands. He had to do it blind, because his head was hanging down on his chest, but he finally got the blades around the plastic cuffs that held one of his hands. Squeeze. Snip.
One hand flopped down like dead meat, swinging uselessly. He wished he could jerk the clippers out of her hand and snip the last cuff himself, but Ava’s arms were the only ones around here that worked.
Another long struggle, and Snip, his second hand fell free.
He fell, crashing full length, rigid as a toppling fir tree. He hit, bounced, teeth jarring, helpless and stiff, muscles rigid. He could see Ava out of the corner of his eye. Table. Syringes. With his last bit of strength, he forced her to pick up the syringe. Her hand. So clumsy, so numb. They fumbled, struggled, to get the device into position.
He/she stabbed it down into her thigh. Shoved in the plunger with her thumb. He could feel the echoes of the icy cold burn through her. Screaming despair, tearing her mind apart.
He stayed conscious, until he felt her fall, right on top of him.
Darkness closed in around a shrinking fading circle of light, until it was a shining pinprick—and then it winked out altogether.