Page 65 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

Choice

M ahakal’s words echoed in my skull. Even an untrained dog can be bred.

“No.” My voice constricted on the word.

Mahakal nodded to Kane, who left the room, the thick door creaking on its hinges. Acid filled my mouth.

Kane came back with a small, rickety table that he placed just out of my reach. Mahakal pulled me up by my hair, forcing a kneel. My vision turned over in dark seas, settling on the tablet Kane placed on the table.

“You should be excited,” Mahakal purred as the screen flickered to life, revealing a grainy image that flickered into focus when the lights came on. Video from a prison cell, similar to mine.

A tattered figure hunched in the corner, a woman—dark skin, matted with blood and grime. No . Mira? But as the hunched figure shifted, a shock of auburn braid tumbled free.

“Ruan…?” My rasp echoed off the stone. I’d assumed she was dead, burned with the rest of the bodies in Nunbiren, my snarky and fiery friend.

My eyes clamped down. When I found the strength to look, Mahakal smiled down at me. He whispered a name I didn’t recognize into the comm at his ear, his voice clipped and cold.

On the video feed, a soldier entered the cell, slamming his boot into Ruan’s curled body, the dull sound echoing through the feed.

Ruan reacted with a feral snarl, her body twisting in the corner against her manacles.

I leaned in. It was a primal response—angry and devoid of fear.

I studied her on the feed as she continued to rail, striking up at the soldier, mouthing unintelligible curses.

“She’s still got a ruren-sa in her. Can you cure her?” I didn’t know which answer would hurt more. Faruhar believed there was no cure but death. If she was wrong, then I’d killed people who could have been saved.

“No, this is all that is left of her mind.” Mahakal’s voice was smooth, savoring my pain. “But SBO is a virus, not a mod. Her flaw will not carry to future generations.”

I stared in mute horror at Mahakal, my breath catching in my throat. “Have you touched her?”

I could have drowned in despair at Mahakal’s smile. “Would you want to touch that, Kane?”

Kane huffed.

Turning back to me, arms crossed, Mahakal said, “I give my squad first choice of the spoils: traitors whose code is more virtuous than their deeds. No takers on your friend, I’m afraid, although I don’t mind offering my feral dog the scraps.”

I felt the weight of his gaze as I watched the screen. The guard kicked Ruan again and again. Her snarls grew guttural, a wounded animal cornered. I clenched my fist, and forced myself to watch, to not leave her alone by closing my eyes.

“I’ll give you a chance to save her and her line,” Mahakal said, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “If you’d like, we’ll move your chains to her cell. Breed the bitch, or if you prefer, we’ll kill her.”

I dry heaved, tears stinging my eyes. “No.” My world narrowed to the screen, Ruan’s snarls and screams distorted through the speakers.

“As you wish,” Mahakal said, a laugh in his voice. Mahakal picked up the tablet, typing, taking a moment to give me a broad grin before turning it around.

Another video feed; another cell. I recognized the vivid red hair, golden skin; the maze of intricate scars etching a map across her sleeping face.

No.

There was no hiding my reaction. Kane and Mahakal loomed, savoring my pain. From the looks of it, they’d already beaten her to the brink of death. All the air in my injured lungs left in a strangled gasp as I looked at the woman I loved, broken.

“How—”

Plan B failed too. Faruhar would track me to Mahakal’s lair, and the Underground would attack. There was no Plan C.

“See, friend,” Mahakal’s voice was soft, taunting in its tenderness.

“As smart as you thought you were trying to sow division in my battalion, I am smarter.” He gestured toward the screen.

“My ravens saw her coming. Their cortex is synched to command. I told you I wanted her too. I always take what I want.”

On the screen, Faruhar lay crumpled and vulnerable on the stone floor, her lip split with crusted blood.

“What did you do to her?” I demanded.

“Oh, look at that fire.” Mahakal’s voice was honeyed poison. “The mutt is not worth breeding. But she’ll be helpful to train you.”

This was it. I’d failed her. Faruhar’s breathing, shallow and uneven, was the only evidence of life. Shame burned in the depths of me, a black hole encroaching on my last vestiges of hope.

“Tell me,” Mahakal said with an intake of breath. “Do you believe she lives up to her name? Is she a demon to you?”

“No.” The truth slipped out, emptying me further.

“I worried as much. The things she’s done, the good lives she’s taken: I could multiply the crimes you’ve witnessed a hundredfold, show you all the evidence, and I doubt you’d believe a word.” Mahakal flicked his eyes to Kane. “But I think we know how to make you understand.”

I closed my eyes as Kane hummed his agreement, leaning on the wall.

Mahakal twitched his mouth into a sneer. “I didn’t know before you told me that there was a paper leash on her demon, just a journal she used to contain her worst impulses. Time to slip that leash off.”

I held my breath, biting down.

“You see.” Mahakal leaned closer. “We’ve made sure she slept well. Sedated and woke her again and again. The last round should wear off shortly, and you get to meet who remains. It will be a hard lesson for you, but you will learn.” He studied me, swallowing.

I looked between Mahakal and the video feed with frantic eyes.

Shaking his head, he touched the comm in his ear. “Open the door.”

A metallic clang echoed through the tablet speakers. Mahakal tapped the display to split the view: one camera on Ruan, another on the sleeping Faruhar, a door opening between cells.

The weight of my helplessness pressed down on me, and I pulled at my manacles in impotent fury just as Ruan did, both of us unable to reach the sleeping Faruhar with her bruised face and split lip. Ruan cursed and railed.

Faruhar stirred, eyes still closed. Her lips moved, forming a sound I couldn’t make out over Ruan’s angry screams. Every shallow breath she took in the video was a shard of glass in my lungs.

Faruhar opened her yellow-green eyes, alert.

Then it happened. In a single, horrifying breath, Faruhar burst up. Two strides, then she launched herself atop Ruan’s back with animalistic grace. A crunch filled the audio feed before Ruan’s body fell.

I watched, my body numb, my heart shattered in my chest. Faruhar, my Faruhar, hunched over Ruan in a primal rage I refused to recognize.

“Ruan was dead already,” I said. Faruhar’s screams echoed in the confined space, a chord of pain and fury.

The screen flickered. So did the lights in the room. It barely registered in my numb state, I was just glad not to have to watch as the screen flicked off. Mahakal cursed under his breath, touching his comms.

“Command, repeat that please.” Mahakal’s face contorted in frowns as Kane’s did the same. They exchanged worried glances.

Then, without another word, he and Kane strode out the door, leaving the tablet abandoned on the table.

It flicked back on.

I surged forward. My hands wouldn’t reach, the chains groaning in protest. I was able to reach the table edge with a toe, inch it closer. There—I had the tablet in my hands. Maybe I could interface with something, a control.

I found a grim array of video feeds, grainy dim-lit cells. Most of the prisoners were women, many visibly pregnant. Horror gnawed at me, putting together the details of what Mahakal and his personal squad really did here.

A mechanical whirring filled the air, followed by a series of clicks. The prison cell groaned open a crack, but my mechanical manacles held. The video feed flickered off and on again.

It took forever for that tablet to reboot, and I was grateful there was no login prompt.

I flicked through the menu, desperate for any clues. It might be an attack—Telesilla and the Disciples of Reic. My heart lurched.

I found the video feeds of the cells again, all doors cracked open. Lights flicked on in every room, bodies lying on the ground, presumably sleeping. I kept scrolling until I saw the blood. A pregnant woman, abdomen ripped open. I looked away.

They weren’t all sleeping.

I found Faruhar’s cell—the same cell number in the top left corner: twenty-two. I scanned it, empty. Gone.

I found her in a frame, red hair flying as she crashed into a chained girl too young to call a woman, hands on her neck and twisting, then exiting the cell in a flash.

I shuttered my eyes closed with wracking breaths, grateful for the pain in my lungs.

When that girl’s heart stopped beating, Faruhar crushed mine too.