Rebel of Scars and Ruin (The Evolved Book 1) Read online

  "We didn't take over. We helped. And we'll leave as soon as we're sure you can handle your own mess."

  "But that's just it." He grips the gun so tightly his tanned knuckles turn white. "You'll never be satisfied, and you'll never leave, because your father the Magnate doesn't really want us to be autonomous—he wants an empire. That's why we have to do this, to force him—" He stops abruptly, as if he's said too much.

  "That's why you took me," I say. "You want to force him to pull our troops out. You must know he'll never do that—not for me."

  "You're his daughter."

  "Yes, but with him, Ceanna has always come first. He'll try to find me, to save me, but he'll never give your faction what they want."

  "You're lying. My boss wouldn't do this unless he thought your father might give in."

  "Maybe he has a backup plan, or a set of lesser demands in case my father refuses to pull out," I say.

  He runs a hand through his dark hair, sweeping the greasy waves back from his face. "No, that can't be right. It's a full-scale pullout, or we kill you."

  "You're young, just a ground-level soldier," I say gently. "They probably haven't told you everything. My father tells me nothing at all, in case of situations like this one, so I can truthfully say that I don't know any secrets. I can't give anything away, even if I'm tortured." I pause after saying the word. "Do you plan to torture me?"

  He glances away. "I don't think so."

  "Rakhi. Tell me the truth."

  His eyes dart back to me. "It's Rak."

  "Rak, then." I remember my survival training for situations like this. Use the captors' names, get personal, make a connection. Build a bond. Although Vern also warned me not to discuss motives, religion, or politics with my abductors if I was ever captured—and I've already broken that rule. And I probably shouldn't have tried to escape as early as I did, without knowing anything about these people or my surroundings.

  But I'm eighteen, and I've never been kidnapped before. I think I'm handling this fairly well, considering everything.

  "Rak, may I have a sip of water?" I don't beg, or say please. I simply ask, looking right in his eyes.

  He rises and reaches down beside my chair for the same bottle I drank from earlier. He tips the bottle to my mouth and I swallow a few sips. "Thank you."

  Without answering, he replaces the bottle and sits in the same spot again.

  "I'm sorry you won't get to sleep tonight, Rak," I say.

  He raises his eyebrows, and his scarred mouth twists up at one side. "You don't really care."

  "Maybe not. But I feel bad for anyone who is tired and can't get the rest he or she wants."

  "Like you."

  "Yes, like me. I'm exhausted, I really am. And have you ever tried to sleep sitting up while hand-cuffed to a chair? Not fun, Rak." I smile at him.

  A shade drops over his face. "You can stop it now. It's not going to work."

  "Stop what?"

  "Saying my name so many times. Being friendly. Trying to get me to like you. It's not going to work."

  "You don't like me? But I'm such a fun person."

  Again that twitch at his mouth. "Do you ever stop talking?"

  "Not usually."

  "Listen, girl." He leans forward. "I might put up with this from you, but my commander won't. You need to watch your mouth around him."

  "I know. I was there when he hit me, remember?"

  "I'm sorry for that, and for what Mav did," he says. "But we're all under a huge amount of pressure. We need this to work, and we need you to cooperate."

  "How is Mav's little lust-fest connected to your scheme here? Am I supposed to excuse it because he's stressed? Is that what you're saying?"

  He glances down. "No."

  "Good. Because I won't be cooperating with that kind of thing, so if you had any ideas, you can forget it."

  "Ideas? No! I'm not—Mav is—he's different. He's a skilled fighter, but he—"

  "He's cruel and he doesn't respect women?"

  A short nod from him answers the question.

  "And you?"

  "I would never touch you, or any woman, against her will."

  There's a strange intensity in his voice, pain in his eyes, and I pry at it. "Why not?"

  He hesitates.

  "Come on, you can tell me. We have nothing better to do, and there's no one else to hear."

  He grips his gun tighter, inspecting the settings switch. "Vilor fighters raided my village back home, about five years ago. My mother and sister were—they suffered."

  "I'm so sorry. Did they survive?"

  "They're alive."

  He won't look at me directly anymore. Silence grows between us, and in that silence, I have time to think about the truth I've been pushing away.

  My father and mother had a suppressor installed with my skull-port. I've heard of such a thing a couple of times, but only in reference to Evolved criminals—they're fitted with blockers in case they try to use their abilities to escape. How is it that I never heard of suppressors being used on regular citizens?

  What about my friends back home? Vissa, my best friend since fourth level, and Reya, a friend from university. Could they have suppressors, too? What about all the children and young adults in Ceanna? How many of them have suppressors and don't know it?

  I've always accepted my skull-port; it's popular, convenient, fun to have. Every time my father suggested an upgrade to the latest model, I agreed. Who knows what extra trackers or modifications he was secretly including along with the base model and its native programming?

  Why did I trust the device in my head? It never occurred to me to question it until now, and that, more than anything else, makes me angry. There could be a thousand other secrets about skull-port tech that I don't know.

  Right now, all I have is questions upon questions. And the knowledge that my parents lied to me about my ability, that they decided for me when I should have been given a choice.

  For a while I stew about it, my thoughts churning furiously. Eventually my eyelids grow thick and weighty again, my head wobbling on my neck. Rak watches me, hand on his gun, waiting. Shaking the sleep from my head, I wince at the stab of pain from the hole where my skull-port was.

  Maybe talking to him will keep me awake.

  "Do you have a skull-port?" I ask.

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Few people in my village could afford them. And I don't want anyone hacking into my brain."

  "I thought of it as a necessity, you know? For communicating, and for fun. But the whole time it was controlling me, somehow." It's starting to sink in, how strong my Evolved power really is. I could probably overheat the circuits in these bio-cuffs, fry them and escape—but I won't try it, not yet. Not until the right time.

  "You're unnatural, you know," Rak says, his tone colored with suspicion. "Some among my people would kill you because of your power."

  "Why?"

  "Powers—abilities—they come from Darkness, in our religion. Those without them can be purified, but those with them are doomed to walk the Dark Path when they die." His eyes are hard, unreadable.

  I laugh. "You believe in an afterlife?"

  "Don't you?"

  "No. I think we probably end at death."

  "We just—end? You don't believe in a soul?" He narrows his eyes.

  "Maybe? I don't know. If you believe in souls and afterlives, why are you doing this? You should be out performing good deeds or something."

  "This is a good deed, from my point of view. Good for my people."

  As I'm about to respond, two men walk through the door. "You're talking to her?" says one of them, frowning. "Don't engage, Rak. Rule number one of guarding a hostage."

  Rak shrugs, never taking his eyes from mine. "I thought rule number one was preventing escape. Seems I've got that under control."

  "Watch your mouth, pup," says the new arrival. "Mav may have let you talk to him like that because you share a tribe; but when yo
u're with me, I'm your superior, and you'll show respect."

  Rak's jaw muscle flexes, and for a second I think he might challenge the other man; but he says nothing.

  The new guards take up positions near me, their guns ready and their eyes wary. No doubt they've heard what I did to Mav.

  Again I stew over how incredibly boring and uncomfortable it is, being held for ransom. Not terribly scary, except for the part when Temper struck me. Disgusting when Mav felt me up. But mostly it's dull and painful—my neck, aching from the weight of my weary head. My back and legs stiff from the hard chair. My skull faintly pounding with headache.

  Hours pass, and nothing changes. This is worse than torture, this endless waiting and discomfort. I'm hungry, and I need to pee again.

  The silence in the room is so thick I have to work up the nerve to slice it with words. "I'm entitled to bathroom breaks, I hope?" I say.

  Rak startles when I speak, and the heads of the other guards whip toward me.

  "Bathroom break. Right," says Rak. "I'll take her."

  "Not alone," says another guard, the one who fussed at him for talking to me. The guy's eyes are small, set far apart, like a frog's eyes. He has a wide, drooping mouth. He practically nicknames himself—the Frog.

  Rak approaches me, reaching toward the cuffs. His scarred mouth is set, his gun hand tense. He's scared of me.

  "I'm not going to hurt you, Rak," I say soothingly.

  He thumbs the bio-scanner, and the cuffs spring open. "Get up."

  Rak walks in front of me, Frog behind. Located across the hallway from the room where they're keeping me, the bathroom is a concrete closet with a toilet and a bottle of sanitizing foam and a door—nothing else.

  I step inside and close the door. It doesn't lock, but at least I have privacy, and relief. Funny how much I appreciate little things like a toilet, now that everything else has been stripped away. This plain yellow receptacle is dramatically different from the pristine white bathroom I share with my roommate at university, but it does the job just as well.

  When I'm done, I open the door, coming face to face with Rak.

  He's a few inches taller than me, lean and hard, dressed in khaki military pants and a sleeveless khaki shirt, with three or four belts and straps crisscrossing his body. An odor of grease and sweat and salt wafts from him. Disgusting.

  But I need him to like me. He's the only one who seems new to this, vulnerable, open to talking. So I reach out and touch his hand, a light brush to the back of his fingers. "Kind sir, return me to my throne."

  He raises the gun, twitching away from my touch. "Walk."

  As we cross the hall again, a rasping scream from somewhere in the building shocks my ears, and my heart jumps into double time. I freeze. "What was that?"

  "Probably your friend," says Frog. "The blond one. We grabbed both of you."

  Vern.

  "You—you're hurting him! Why?"

  Frog sneers. "He knows things. Now go."

  I had no idea they took Vern, too. "I want to see him."

  "No."

  "He really doesn't know much of anything. He's just a friend."

  "He's the head of your security team," says Frog. "We're not idiots. We can look up a profile."

  True. That was a stupid lie; of course they would be able to find out who he is. "But he only deals with me, not my father," I insist. "He doesn't know anything of importance to you."

  "That's for us to decide," says Frog. "Shut up, or we'll gag you."

  "People keep threatening me with a gag," I say. "You rebels really don't care for conversation, do you?"

  Rak leans close to my ear and says, "Stop talking."

  Once I'm back in my chair, cuffed securely, the rebels relax. Soon another three guards come to watch me while Rak and the others leave, probably to get some sleep. My prison feels emptier, bleaker, less safe; and after a minute I realize it's because Rak is gone. I wonder if I'll see him again. Probably not. I'd better start working on building a rapport with another guard or two.

  But of the three men who watch me for the next shift, none are as talkative or responsive as Rak. In my head, I name them Watcher, Ghost, and Pig-Eyes—the last because he keeps raking his eyes up and down my body. I'm actually grateful for the loose T-shirt, although that doesn't seem to deter his gaze.

  But there's no way I can safely leverage Pig-Eyes' attention, so I ignore him. Instead I focus on Ghost, who's so pale he looks as if he hasn't seen the sun in months, maybe years. Even his hair is such a pale blond it's almost white. There's a tribe somewhere in Emsalis with physical attributes like his, but I can't remember what they're called. I don't like his hair. It reminds me too much of my ex-boyfriend's.

  The third guy, Watcher, has coloring like my grandmother on my mother's side—rich dark skin and long black locks. Unlike my grandmother, though, his face is a somber mask, and his emotionless eyes flick back and forth, from the doorway to me, again and again.

  My grandmother. She died not long before this tour, taking with her the only sanity in my crazy life. Through my mother's moods, my father's indifference, my friends' drama, my university studies—she was there, always. Smiling. Cracking a joke at someone's expense. Not afraid to say what I needed to hear.

  Grandmother was the only one who supported my love of aeroball. To my father it was all a waste of time, hours spent on sports that should have been spent learning about economics and politics and the financial sciences. He doesn't care that playing aeroball makes me feel alive, that I have incredible aim, that I understand how to spring through a crowd of challengers better than almost anyone I've ever played.

  Playing at the professional level was never an option for me. Had I tried to defy my father and taken it up in university, he would have stripped my allowance and my school funding. I never had a choice. It was a political emphasis or nothing, so I chose to study Management of Modern Society, as the least political of all the political majors.

  I'm a year into the program, and I hate it. Do any of my professors actually understand how to manage a society? To me it sounds as if they're regurgitating facts from a vid that someone made from a book that was written by someone else who might maybe, possibly, have interviewed an expert. By the time it gets to me, the information has passed through so many mouths and hands that it's practically useless.

  When I told my grandmother how I felt, she offered to talk to my father about my study emphasis. And then she died before she could. Not that it would have made a difference, but at least she cared.

  It's good she's gone, so she doesn't have to know what's happening to me.

  I'm fading into sleep again, my grandmother's face softening in my mind, transforming into the faces of my friends back home—Vissa, my loyal friend for years, smarter than most men. Reya, soft and smiling. Vissa says Reya has the voice of a Sky-born, one of the mythical winged creatures in the Valadarstvan storybooks we used to read.

  My friends' faces, voices, laughter float through my mind. They are far, far away, and safe. Do they miss me? If I die here, how long will they cry for me?

  I imagine myself, a translucent ghost, drifting behind them, following them at parties, dances, dinners, classes. Always in the background, wistful, never able to speak or touch—

  I snap out of the half-dream, back to the gray room and the three silent guards. A sound in the hallway, a scuffle and a groan.

  Temper ambles into the room, his blue eyes half-lidded, smiling lazily. "And how are you today, Miss Remay? Slept well, I hope?"

  "Never better." I fake a smile.

  "I was told you wanted a visit from a friend." He gestures behind him, to the doorway through which two men drag a limp figure. The man wears a bloody T-shirt and boxer shorts, blond head hanging down, his mouth trailing drool and blood onto the floor.

  "Lift him," says Temper.

  A guard shoves the end of his gun under the man's chin and tips his head up. Even through the bruises and swelling, I can tell it's Vern.
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  Through swollen lips, Vern tries to mumble something. I stare at Temper's hideous smiling face. "Why would you do this?"

  "Why? Well, he's useless to us except for a few scraps of information. And I think we have all we need. So we're going to make another little vid, starring both of you."

  The guards haul Vern to his knees in front of my chair, his back to me, facing Temper.

  "Masks, gentlemen," says Temper, and the guards swath their faces in dark cloth. Vern's shoulders slump forward, as if he has lost all will to fight.

  "Vern, I'm so sorry," I say, my voice breaking. When he doesn't answer, an irrational anger surges in me. "Vern! Don't just give up."

  "The man knows when he's beaten," says Temper, adjusting his vid device and projecting the holo-screen. "Now, Zilara, tell your parents how serious we are. Warn them that we'll do anything necessary to achieve our goals. And then I want you to say these words exactly—'You have forty-eight hours, or your daughter will look like this.' "

  I swallow.

  "Are you ready?"

  Licking my dry lips, I nod.

  "Speak."

  "Mom, Dad," I say. "These guys are serious. They will do anything, whatever it takes to achieve their goals. You can see what they did to Vern." I stare at the back of his disheveled blond head. "And they want me to tell you, that you have forty-eight hours, or your daughter will look like this."

  A searing stab of light, a smell of singed hair and burnt flesh. Vern topples sideways slowly, the hole in his temple steaming. The guard who shot him lowers his gun.

  I can't breathe, can't scream.

  Like this. I thought they meant they were going to beat me up, torture me. But no.

  In two days I'll look like this.

  Vern is dead. Vern who has been my companion since I was twelve. First my crush, then my annoying robotic shadow, but always someone who had my back.

  There's a hole in his head, right through his brain.

  He's gone. Just like that.

  I grip the arms of my chair, and heat flows into the metal, pulse after pulse of energy and motion. The bio-cuffs are growing hot, but they don't burn my skin; I control where the heat begins and ends.