Three of them pinned me to the wall as they marched Red from the room.
She was wrestled into a chair and held there while a guard picked up a pair of garden secateurs from the table beside the chair. They shone.
“Clean metal. But I guarantee this will hurt a lot.” Ted grinned.
I stayed silent and only tried to kill him with my glare.
“Yeah. This room is pretty soundproof, especially with all the balcony doors shut, and then of course we have four floors of nobody who will say a fucking thing if they hear screams. Still. Gag her.”
They strapped a full gag onto Red – one with a dick-shaped internal protrusion. That would stop most noises and clog her tongue. They held her down even harder, two men at her, while the other one sauntered in with the secateurs. From his cruel snigger, and the way he fucked her with his eyes, this man liked cruelty.
He would’ve made a great mesmer. I bucked against my captors. I would murder him and smear him to the floor.
They weren’t after Red’s tongue, so where? When he aimed the secateur at her hand and settled it on a finger, I stared at her, willing her to not feel this.
Even I could not remove all the pain.
Her scream was muffled, and the way her body jerked and arched off the chair was almost more than the men could handle.
Blood squirted a meter before they staunched it.
“There. We bandage it now.” Ted smiled, pointing as they wrapped a white bandage over the gushing stump. Her head lolled backward.
Hate thrived, rose in me to heights I had never felt before. I dug the hate from my bones, tasted it on my tongue, and reveled in this raw power.
The hate oozed and flooded my head, thumping, thumping.
My mesmer senses leaped and curled, wriggled dark tendrils, and I freed them and whipped downward through the tower, questing. My eyes were seeing a blur of two scenes: Red in her agony, the blood; and the walls peeling past me, the floors, the ghosts of men.
Find them.
They finished the bandage and left a torniquet on her finger.
“Take that off in a few minutes or she will lose that stump too,” someone said.
I ceased my search but kept a hold on the power, that bundle of wriggling tendrils. Stay with me.
Dragged back into the room, I watched them make her stumble inside then they dumped Red at the back wall beside me. My handcuffs were unlocked, and the guards backed away to the door and locked us in again.
She was weeping and clutching her maimed hand, still with that gag strapped on and digging into her cheeks. I freed her from it, tossed the gag, then pulled her to me and kissed her tears.
The rage flailed and filled me still – too much to allow me to say anything of comfort. I contented myself with making soothing baby noises and clutching her to me.
After a while, I undid the tourniquet and observed her hand. Whatever blood vessels were cut, they only oozed at first. When more blood flooded the bandage, I reapplied it.
I did that over and over for an hour until the bleeding stopped. Undo, observe, bleed, reapply. By the end, the floor was bloody, my hands were, Red was. She had lost a lot of blood but seemed okay. Alive anyway.
Her cries when I had to compress the stump to stop some of the bleeding, again it tore at me inside. I had some sort of heart after all, I decided. Deep inside me was compassion.
None of our enemies would ever know this. None. I would obliterate them.
Fuck them.
Finally, after eons had passed, I croaked out a few words. “They will be sorry.”
Red snuggled into me even closer. I felt her trembling. “What can you do?”
I eyed the damn camera with its blinking red light. “Something.”
I ground my teeth, set my jaw. I stared at Red, my beautiful red-haired maiden now bloodied and maimed and torn by other men.
Then I activated these new, stronger powers. I reawakened them.
I reached again as I had done several times, down through the floors, down. The strength of my anger, and perhaps the lack of Keppra, let me invade the fifth floor with my seeking tendrils, twisting like vines of black smoke through walls and doors.
Nothing. Yet.
I grimaced and imagined myself as a gigantic octopus with a thousand tentacles.
It helped. I poked through doors and walls, and prodded girls awake. I saw their eyes open and blaze with the knowledge I fed them, Suck from me, take my ire, my vast cruel rage. Feed from me.
Or maybe I was a spider? The analogy was evil. That much I recognized. Which nicely suited my intentions.
Tomorrow would be too late. I needed this finished now.
Arise and come to me.
Female after female woke to my call and sat up in bed, or from sofas and chairs. A few had to kill their companions before they could come to me. They came to the stairs and gathered there in silent, swaying ranks. The doors between us were blocked. The elevators ditto. I had an army, and the way was blocked.
I’d never tried to hold so many to one task, never orchestrated females in such huge numbers. More than ten… My eyelids flickered as I counted them. When past thirty in number, I gave in. Enough.
Only Ted was left to be discovered. He was no longer up here with me. I sent a squad searching for him.
My solution to the blocked doors? Go around. Crawl. Climb.
This tower had opening windows. If any fell, the cops would come. Do not fall. This must be swift and irresistible, and precise.
As they opened windows and
