Page 175 of Rage

“Fight back!” Cyrus yells in my face. “God, baby, please fight me!” He sounds so tortured, my Cyrus. It’s good I never told him, I think. It’s good I didn’t tell him I could be pregnant. My eyes slide closed.

“I love you.”

“No—” Cyrus’ denial is cut off, nothing but a choked grunt as his hands release me. My eyes shoot open to find that my handsare wrapped around a broken leg of one of the chairs. The metal tip implanted in Cyrus’ stomach. His hand goes to the end of it and I release it, shocked. He stumbles back before cursing. His controller is trying to get it out. He can’t take it out, I think, he’ll bleed out.

His controller obviously doesn’t realize that, because the metal leg comes out of his gut, and Cyrus groans long and low. He’s gritting his teeth in pain, palming the leg as my controller slowly forces me to my feet. Cyrus’ eyes widen a split second before I realize what’s happening. He throws the leg, and I scream, sinking to my knees as it embeds itself into my own stomach. Cyrus collapses, face down. I’m laid out on the floor, the bright fluorescent light burning into my eyes.

“I … lov e… you … too.” Cyrus’ last words echo in my mind as the darkness encroaches and then fills my vision, and I descend into the darkest depths of the void.

Chapter Five

My mind comes awake before my body does. When my body does finally come around, I can feel all the aches and pains. I feel like one giant bruise, and when I manage to crack my eyes open, it’s to a sterile room with more fluorescent lighting. I’m lying on an exam table. It’s cold under my naked back. At least there’s a hospital gown over my front. I try to sit up and find that my senses are both woozy and sharp. My vision is shot to shit, everything blurry, but I can hear the water running through the pipes in the walls, the click of shoes along the tiled floor outside the room. My hand goes to my stomach as something violently horrifying takes root.

I pull up my gown. There’s a long stretch of faded pink skin where the metal chair leg had pierced my skin. It’s a little startling to see. Even though I feel like shit, my body doesn’t look any worse for wear. Imperium’s doctors are very good at hiding all scars, and the entire organization likely has ways to accelerate the healing process for bruises. The asswipes wouldn’t release it to the public. Of course not, not when they can make so much money on other products.

I let the gown drop but keep my hands settled over my stomach. I wonder if … if they were able to stitch me up enough that I wouldn’t scar if they might have been able to…

Would my child still be there? I look down at my stomach with hope. Tears flood my vision, blurring my poor eyesight even further. Cyrus took it out. He took it out, and he was probably dead for it.

The door to the room opens, and Director Devine walks in. He doesn’t look happy to see me and, truth be told, I would very much like to give him a reason not to be. The door swings shut behind him. My vision clears as I reach up and wipe the tears away. I don’t want to show weakness in front of this fucker, but he already noticed where my hands had been.

He shakes his head at me and, with a sigh, moves further into the room. “I expected better from you, Eris,” he says. “You very nearly didn’t make it. And you can be damned sure that—” he gestures to my stomach. “—wouldn’t have.”

I choke on a gasp. The sound never leaves my lips. Both of my hands come back up and cup my stomach. The image of a tiny Cyrus is set aflame in my mind. The Director scoffs—I don’t know what at—my devastated expression maybe, the way I clutch at my stomach, the way I can’t seem to breathe as I begin to dry heave. Pain wraps its long tentacles around every nerve ending in my body and screams through my veins.

Dead … Not just Cyrus, but every memory I had of him. I stare down at my stomach.

“You don’t honestly think I would have let that thing live, did you?” he asks, shaking his head. “No, it’s good this happened. It lets me know I’ve become a bit lax if things like this could happen. I assume the father was Number 1? He did seem to resist quite violently. His vital signs were all over the place while the test for our investors was being performed.”

“His name was Cyrus,” I snap, growling his way. The room feels impossibly cold, and I let the chill sink into me as one side of my heart cracks.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, now does it?” A fissure creeps up the other side of my heart at his words.

“I don’t want this,” I find myself saying. It’s useless. He will never understand. I’m proven right when the Director speaks again.

“Your DNA makes you perfect for this experiment, Eris.” His eyes light up when he moves closer to me. I don’t flinch away, but internally, I pull so far into myself that I’m wrapped around my breaking heart. “A child would have been nothing to you. Don’t worry. I’ve ensured it won’t ever happen again.”

Despite the wounds and damage to my heart, it was still beating. It comes to a quick and painful stop. “What did you say?”

“I ensured you’ll never be pregnant again, dear,” he says flippantly. “A child would ruin your future career. Don’t worry; you’ll be much more successful now.”

The words are coming out of his mouth, and I hear them, I understand them, but … I can’t … move. He’s just informed me that not only has my first child been killed, but I will never be able to have another. The chance will never be there. I’ll never be a mother. All I will ever be is what he makes me.

Slowly, I raise my gaze to meet his. He looks so very satisfied with himself, and I can’t understand it. “Why…” I choke out the word. “Why would you do this to me?” My hands rest over the barren wasteland that is my abdomen. Nothing will ever grow there. The fissures in my heart fracture further.

Director Devine’s face goes impassive, almost bored. “Because, darling, you may have taken your mother’s last name, but you are my child,” he replies. “I’m borrowing these other children—they’ll eventually be sold to the highest bidder as well-trained operatives, killers, assassins for whoever can pay the right price—but you’ll always be mine. I own you. I intend for you to be the best, and you can’t very well be the best with a baby in your womb.”

I swing my legs over the side of the exam table, staring down at the tiled floor. Director Devine—my father—takes that as his cue to leave. He says something else I don’t hear, and then the door is closing behind him, and I’m left alone with a strange burning sensation rising in my throat, filling my lungs, spreading outward until I cease being Eris. Suddenly, I’m someone else entirely—somethingelse.

My veins are frozen under my skin. My heart continues to pump blood, but I don’t feel anything. My gaze slowly rises, and I see myself in the metal cabinets across the room. My face is pale, dark purple half-moons under my eyes. I stand and walk towards my reflection. My eyes are his eyes, the Director’s … but they’re also Cyrus’.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I scream, loud and long. I scream until my throat collapses and air struggles to get out. The door to the room swings open, and a woman in a lab coat rushes in. I don’t think, don’t take a minute to contemplate what I’m doing. I just act. I grab one of the glass containers on the counter in front of me and turn, smashing it against the side of her head. The woman goes down, her eyes rolling to the back of her head. I reach down and snap off the access card hanging around her neck before I stride out into the hall.

Five hundred and forty-seven days of training, of vaccines, surgeries, and experimental drugs—my senses are better. I’ve been controlled because I didn’t know better. Because, in truth,I had something to lose. I had Cyrus. Now, I have nothing, no future except what I make, and I won’t stand another second in this hell with these people. I won’t have to worry about being identified and sent back. I almost laugh when I realize how easy the Director has truly made it for me. When he inducted me into the program, they lasered away my fingerprints, erased my existence, stole … everything.

When I come across one of the guards, he stops and tries to question me. I don’t speak. I couldn’t if I wanted to—my throat is shredded. There are tear tracks on my face, but my vision is finally clear. I can see perfectly fine now. I attack the guard, leaping onto his chest before he can so much as blink. I snap his neck with my bare hands. I take his access card as well and then his gun and stunner. There’s a small pocket knife in his pants, and I take it. I reach behind myself, right in the center of the brand they forced on me when I was first inducted, where I can feel the control chip. I slit my skin and dig it out, letting the chip fall to the floor before I move forward, my blood sliding down my back.

Director Devine may think he owns me—he may think he has me captured—but he’ll soon learn that I’m not a bird for him to torture. I’m a weapon, but never his. I’ll never be his weapon again. I shoot the next person who stands between me and the exit, then the next and the next. They send out droves of guards, handlers, and I kill them all. I walk through the blood until my footprints leave streaks of red with each step.

I stomp all over the cracks in my broken heart as I make my way out of Imperium’s labs. It’s streaked with blood, shattered beyond repair by the time I finally emerge from the Imperium building built into the side of the mountain. I take my first step out into the sunlight in months, not knowing where I am. There are hills far and wide and the sun is setting in the distance. The day is ending. I’ve been under Imperium for far too long.

Five hundred and forty-seven days.

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