Page 36 of The Hive

3187 wasn’t gone very long, but by the time he came back with crumbs and grease stains on the front of his uniform, our cuts had closed and our bruises had started to heal. Every second of that wait had been excruciating, but we did our best to stay calm. The doctor reclined on the cot in his cell like he had nothing but time. Axion stretched out on the bunk in ours. Valyx and I sat on the floor by the barred gate, heads bowed, defeated.

Thoughts of our omega, bloody and broken at the hands of another alpha while we sat caged, ran rampant. My blood boiled with helpless rage. I had her, we all had, and she slipped through our fingers because we had been overconfident and underestimated the enemy.

If we got her back, I would never lose her again. Never again.

With excitement written all over his face, 3187 made his way toward the cell, flipping his baton on with a twang of electricity. We sat motionless, too defeated to care, and oblivious to the pompous bastard’s movements. He thought they had broken us. He thought we were beaten. But he was wrong.

The guard would never risk facing us on our feet, but I bet on the fact that wouldn’t miss an opportunity to kick us while we were down. So when he stuck his hand through the bars to jab me with his baton, we sprung the trap.

My team moved like a well-oiled machine. I grabbed his wrist, deflecting the ill-conceived attack while Valyx caught his ankle and yanked, sending 3187 toppling. His arm was inside the cell and it was quick work to snap it in such a way the jagged bone protruding from his flesh kept him from pulling it free.

His screams of anguish were the sweetest music. He’d threatened our lives, our freedom, but most importantly, he’d endangered our omega and no one gets away with that. The guard flopped on the deck like a fish. He gasped for air, and the mutilated, crooked length of his arm clanged against the bars as he tried to pull it free. I rose to my feet and stepped down on his hand pinning it under my weight.

“I don’t need you alive for what I have planned, but tell me the access code and I’ll kill you quickly,” I said, slow and clear. The command in my voice was unmistakable, even in his frenetic state.

“I can’t. They’ll know it was me that gave it to you.” He squealed like a pig as I ground my heel into his fingers and heard the snapping of bones.

“You can and you will.” My tone never wavered as I removed my boot from his hand and grasped the wrist of his trapped arm.

The stench of piss enveloped the room. He must have known what was coming. Fucking coward. I wasn’t even surprised. There was no time for games, so with a twist, crunch, and rip, I tore his arm free from his body. The immense strength of an enraged alpha trying to reach his omega was severely underestimated.

Using the barcode on the back of the hand I’d acquired, I unlocked the cell and kicked the howling guard out of the way. The blood loss would eventually make him dizzy, so while I stood over him, Valyx stepped on his spurting stump to slow the bleeding, not for long, just long enough to get what I needed.

“Tell me the access code, or I will let Valyx play with you.”

The dark-haired alpha had retrieved the charged baton and was flipping it between his fingers like he’d been using one his whole life. It was nice having a weapons expert on hand.

3187 was stupid, but after what he’d just been through, and with three alphas loose to do as they pleased, he knew we could make what remained of his pathetic existence so, so much worse.

“M-m-my security code is 31871234,” he stammered.

I nodded to Ax. “Check it.”

Axion was already at the control panel and punched in the numbers while the doctor watched on from the relative safety of his cell. There was a short beep and Ax looked up at me with a nod. “We’re in. Full access.”

“Looks like you fulfilled your end of the bargain,” I said, down to the writhing guard. “Let him up.”

Valyx moved his boot off the man’s stump, which continued to ooze blood.

As 3187 staggered to his feet, I addressed him. “You took us from our mate and put her in danger when she was at her most vulnerable. I should make your death long and painful, but I am a man of my word and I have no time to toy with you as you deserve.” I passed the mutilated hand to Valyx, and he walked away to free the doctor from his cage.

The guard cradled his pulpy stump against his body, whimpering with snot running down his face. I had no pity for him. He was a low creature with no remorse for the atrocities he had brought on the omegas he should have been protecting.

Disgust roiled through my veins as I reached out, driving my fingers into the soft spot under his chin and my other hand grabbing his collarbone. Using his jaw and top of his sternum, I tore his head straight off his body with a sickening pop. His lungs continued to slurp and suck through the ragged hole, gasping for air, not having received the memo that he was already dead. I threw the disgusting pile of meat to the side, and met my team at the mainframe access panel.

Ax flipped through feeds on the display. “I found where they took her, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at. The drone charged her and then it looks like they fell, but they are directly under the camera and I can’t really see what’s going on, just that there is movement. She’s still alive, but…” He left the rest unsaid.

I hoped she remembered the syringes I’d passed her. I hoped she had the time to use them but, whatever was done, we would help her. Whatever she needed, we would do it. As long as she was alive, there was a way to heal. We could do nothing less. “Fine. What else?” I couldn’t think about what the image on the screen meant. She was trapped with a rabid alpha and we were still prisoners on an enemy space station.

“I’ve been able to disrupt camera streams and delete the recorded files from here. They trusted that idiot with too much. His code has high-level access across every system. I can alter almost any security feature.” Ax’s fingers flew over the flat panel as if showing me what he was talking about.

Unsure of what he was demonstrating, and with no time to get into the details, I asked him what he would suggest, doing my best to keep a calm tone even though I was on edge and ready to kill anything that got between me and my mate.

Like a switch, Ax’s whole demeanor changed into that of the trained soldier I was asking him to be, rather than the friend I brought to save our queen. “I think we should disable the locks on drone clusters, brood chambers, and the military academy bulkheads and airlocks. Shut down the transport lifts and seal them. Then restart the system. When it goes down, all settings will lock into the last known working configuration until it comes back online. It’s the only way someone with higher security clearance won’t be able to change what we’ve done. And one other thing.”

He pointed to a screen that showed the Imperatrix, and the sullen younger version of her, surrounded by some of the biggest alphas I’d ever seen, all packed into lifts. The same lifts we were about to disable. She wouldn’t be able to send anyone after us. She’d be trapped in a cage of her own making.

I didn’t question it. Axion was a genius when it came to this sort of thing. He pretended to be a carefree trickster, but he watched everything. I trusted him with my life—all of our lives. “Do it.”

---