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Chapter Nine

Creed

Mr Z wasn’t as forgiving as we had hoped. The motherfucker lied to her face when she went to the debriefing; he discussed what happened and how it escalated, then said he forgave her for the mission going awry. But here I am, strapped to a damn electric chair. This is the shit Laughn could withstand, not me. He wants to test if we have any of our siblings’ abilities, since we’re so closely linked genetically.

The huge fucker in charge of today’s torture turns up the voltage little by little, which is his first mistake. The one thing we have some training for is withstanding pain using meditation, but we haven’t mastered it completely. So at this stage, he isn’t quite getting the show he had hoped for.

“Turn it up, let’s have some real fun,” I spit, but I know he won’t. He’ll be following orders.

Over the next hour, he slowly turns it up, causing the pain to radiate through my body. My cock was painfully hard at the beginning of this torture session, but now it hangs limp, the pain of my blue balls mirroring the pain from the higher electrical charge. There is a very fine line between pleasure and pain, and the asshole is verging on pure pain. I’m not my brother; I have a damn limit. Throw me in a freezer any day— that I can handle.

He pushes the button with a menacing chuckle, and my muscles contract. I try to open my mouth to yell obscenities, but my jaw freezes. Each shock is like a kick to the teeth; I’m surprised I can still feel parts of my body at this point. Once he removes his finger, my body slumps, and my eyes close.

Before he can do any more damage, the door flies open, smashing against the wall. I can angle my head just enough to see Jolie storm into the room.

“What the fuck?!” she screams.

“Miss, you can’t be in here. We’re conducting tests.”

“On what? It looks to me like you’re trying to kill a member of my team. Unbuckle him now,” she demands, and I smirk.

“I can’t do that,” he says with a quiver in his voice.

“Okay then, we’ll do this the hard way. Make sure you tell Mr Z that you hurt his daughter.”

The guy’s eyes go wide with recognition. He stalks towards her, muttering obscenities, and she braces, ready for a fight. What the hell is she doing? I will my mouth to work, to tell her to run and that they won’t actually kill me. But when his big meaty arms try to grab her, she spins away from him. His arms close around her torso, and a glint catches my eye as she stabs him in the leg with a syringe. He lets go of her immediately and takes a step back, ripping the needle from his leg before falling to the floor like a lump of shit.

After making sure he is down and out, she races to my side and unbuckles my arms and legs.

Once I’m free, I try to stand up, but my legs give out and I fall to the floor. Rolling onto my stomach, I push myself up and use the chair to regain my feet.

“Mr Z is going to be pissed,” I manage to push out through gritted teeth.

“That’s the funny thing. He told me if I could save you, then you’re mine.” I smile at the way she looks at me when she says mine. “He didn’t make it very hard. Though Chester may be pissed when he realises I stole one of his tranquillisers.”

Tired laughter wheezes out of me. Those tranquillisers are for us—that poor guy will be asleep for a week. I’ll have to message Chester and get him to check that the guy doesn’t die.

My muscles start to loosen up, and I follow Jolie out a back entrance. The creepy pedo-van we used for our assignment screeches to a stop beside us. Jolie opens the door and helps me in.

“Hold on tight, fuckers.”

“Why is Colt here?” I mumble to Jolie.

“He’s the getaway driver, but we have a few more additions on the way out.”

I turn and look at the door when I hear it open and the rest of Colt’s team files out with Chester, Kai, Brennan, and Trace. Kai smiles at me and runs to the van.

Everyone piles in, and with how many bodies are in here, there is no free room. Jolie crawls into the front with Colt and Blayne sits on one of her guys’ laps. I want to say his name is Van, but I have never given a fuck enough to bother asking names. There are very few teams that would even interact with us; they know who we are and what we are capable of.

What Jolie doesn’t realise is she has shown them our weaknesses, ones they could very well use against us one day if Mr Z pits them against us. We’re not here to make friends; we can be friendly towards other teams, but everyone knows the score. It’s your team above all else and we are sworn to that. If any of these people had to choose between a team member or Jolie, they wouldn’t hesitate to take her out. But they’re not stupid enough to try unless they’re ordered to because our wrath wouldn’t be worth it.

Colt floors it and we all tumble into each other, our energy depleted after a gruelling twenty hours locked inside those walls. Our cuts and bruises are already beginning to heal, and in the extra few hours that we would’ve been locked in there, they would have disappeared. Only broken bones take a few days to heal; cuts and minor injuries take no longer than a day.

Brennan sits and hangs his head. I know days like this take it out of him; they make him memorise so much and then test him. His brain needs to rest, cataloguing that much information sends him into an overload. Trace is similar—facial recognition requires him to look over multiple files of faces. If he spots someone he has seen before, he’ll know the exact time and place. Kai, this is like a game for him. He likes to pull the piss and tell the security he can see their cocks using his x-ray vision. And Chester, that bastard gets off on causing pain, lashing out at whoever tries to run him through punishment. He refuses to use his gift; he thinks auras and telepathy are for pansies. But him having a good read on people really helps us, even though he can’t see it. His ability to be able to get into someone’s head is a gift he should be wanting to access, but Chester is a hard man to convince.

Colt flicks on the stereo and changes the station until “Eagle Rock” by Daddy Cool catches his attention. He and Jolie belt out the lyrics and laugh as we pull out of Olympia and onto the main road. He makes a pit stop to drop his team off to their cars, then we continue home, singing along to a bunch of old Aussie songs until we pull into my driveway.

We all groan as we pile out and head inside. “Um... so that problem in the morgue, you might want to attend to it straight away.”

I raise a brow at Jolie. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” She shrugs. “I just watered it and it smelt so bad. Colt helped me, though, to stop that problem.”

I look over at Colt. Damnit, now he knows. “Ease up, dude. No judgement here. I would have done the same thing. Actually, that’s a lie, I would have killed him there and had a huge mess to clean up.”

I turn my back on them and stalk down to the morgue, swinging the door open. The smell of vanilla burns my nose and see at least a hundred car air fresheners scattered around the room. The lamb chop song is on repeat through the sound system until Jolie squeezes past me and turns it off.

“He pissed his pants,” she mutters, twisting her nose up in disgust. “I saw a drain on the floor, so I hosed him down and found something to kill the smell. The guy at the servo must have thought I was weird asking to buy an entire box. Oh! Colt gave the guy a catheter, so he’d stop pissing himself. I could hear the scream from upstairs.”

I snort as I move into the room and closer to the table. Martin is still firmly strapped down. I remove the blindfold and the gag from his mouth. His eyes blink open in sheer horror.

“Make it stop,” he begs.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be meeting your maker as soon as I have a shower.”

I put the blindfold back on, shove the material back into his mouth, and secure it down with some new tape. Jolie skips from the room, clearly in a good mood. I hit play on the old MP3 player on my way out and shut the door.

“What are you going to do with him?” Jolie asks.

“Harvest his organs. There are buyers for them on the black market.”

“Do you even need the money?” she questions as we hit the top of the stairs and walk towards the living room.

“No, but the girls we save will need the money to start fresh. What a full cycle that will be.”

She laughs, the melodic sound carrying through the hall. We enter the living room, where the others are draped over the couches, and Jolie takes a seat next to Kai. He lays down, placing his head in her lap, and she runs her fingers through his hair.

“Well, I’m out. I’ll see you at school,” Colt says, jumping to his feet. I wait for a smart-ass comment from him, but he must realise no one is in the mood. Jolie waves and he waltzes from the room.

“So, I’ve decided I’m going to forgive you,” she announces to the quiet room. We all turn and look at her, waiting for the “but.”

“Is there a catch?” Kai asks, gazing up at her like she’s his world.

She sighs. “No, I just realised after today that you really had no control, especially if that’s what happens when you disobey an order.”

“Today was child’s play compared to what happens when a team really fucks up, Jolie. This was just a warning for us that there is no excuse, and using you as one will not be tolerated,” Brennan adds.

I don’t believe her. She is up to something—she has to be. Seeing me be electrocuted wouldn’t have made her change her mind that easily. She wants us on her side, but, Tenshi, two can play at that game.

“Let’s just focus our energy on bringing the man down. We can all agree that we want him gone, and I want to meet his brother. I don’t want to replace evil with evil. It makes no sense.”

“Jolie, what they do at Olympia wasn’t created for a good purpose,” Kai reminds her.

“I figured as much, but after our little mission, it has me thinking. If Olympia was restructured, it could be used for good, not just for those who have pockets of cash. Martin is a bad man and clearly the cops haven’t been able to catch him. Is creating humans to have superhuman abilities wrong? Possibly, but imagine how much good could come from it.”

Chester laughs. “Such an angel that you still want to see the good in monsters. We were created to be killers.”

“I think you were trained to be killers, but also that you were created to be able to beat them at their own game. You’re stronger, faster, and smarter than any normal human. I’m surprised that the government hasn’t tried to take over and create an unstoppable army.”

“They probably have, but first, let’s all go shower and get a few hours of sleep,” Brennan says, standing up. He still looks worn out, the exhaustion he must be feeling bringing him down. One by one, everyone else gets up. I lock eyes with Jolie.

“Wanna help me feed the snakes?” Her nose screws up at the thought. “I have dead rats. Laughn told me about your issues with live food after you took one on as a pet.”

Her and that damn rat. I hear her talk to it a lot, especially at night when she takes it out of its cage. There is a shed out the back where my brother was breeding them as food, not that I will tell her that. Instead, I pre-killed and froze some in case she insisted on making sure the snakes were fed and wanted to watch.

“Think I will pass—I need that shower. I can’t get the smell of urine out of my nose.”

Nodding my head, I agree that’s for the best. Maybe since they’re hungry, I can take them downstairs for a visit with my friend in the morgue.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I let myself into Laughn’s room. He has a nice collection of venomous snakes. I take his large-ass tongs and open the tiger snake’s cage. It really is beautiful, but one bite and it will cause pain in the hands, feet, and neck, as well as debilitating tingling, numbness, and sweating. Then all of that is followed by breathing difficulties and paralysis. The venom also damages the blood and muscles, leading to renal failure. I know I was going to donate his organs to raise money for the girls, but fuck it. I will donate the cash myself since this will be way more fun and is a legitimate way to die for his autopsy report.

“Let’s go, little buddy, and make this man snake food. I hope you’re feeling extra bitey today.”