Page 3 of Sergi (Of Blood & Dreams #7)
Chapter Two
I was pushed into my cell, barely able to walk as I dropped onto my sleeping mat, too tired to eat the cup of congealed stew that had been left for me. After five straight days, I was utterly exhausted from cleaning the bloody aftermath of the vampires’ failed experiments on shifters.
On my first day working with S-272, the only words he spoke were to tell me where the cleaning supplies and water basin were. Then he grumbled a word or two each time he assigned a new task after I completed the previous one. He could have just told me to clean one side of the lab, but for some reason, he broke the jobs down to a specific table or counter and then a narrow section of the tiled floor or wall.
He might have been testing me, or maybe he didn’t think I could understand simple directions. I chalked it up to him spending too many years in service to the vampires. They had always looked down on shifters as if we were nothing more than dimwitted apes and not the intelligent, pack-oriented species we were.
On the second day, as each cleaning area grew in size, it confirmed my earlier suspicions that S-272 was testing me. The next day, the tasks returned to his careful doling out of smaller tasks, ensuring each one had been completed to his satisfaction before assigning the next one. It took the fourth day before I understood he was waiting for me to complain with frustration and sloppy work.
Today had been different.
Each of the previous days, as we cleaned up the remains of one of our own, S-272 never showed any emotion. He’d either grown cold and indifferent with time, or he’d learned to mask his emotions.
I handled it much the same way. It wasn’t that I didn’t care that it was shifter flesh and bits of bone I scraped off the floor or cabinets. It was easier because I had no idea who the shifters had been—no facial image to haunt my dreams and no knowledge of the life they’d led that warranted such a horrendous end. It would catch up with me, and until then, I would keep my head down and do the work.
But today, S-272 kept to himself, and I only caught his gaze twice. Both times, his eyes brimmed with unshed tears. Each time, I glanced away. And I understood. This one. This shifter, who was nothing more than a bucket of remains that were dumped into a hazardous waste receptacle, had been someone S-272 had known. Possibly cared for.
It gutted me.
I had wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my blood-stained lab coat and continued the task before me. Now, all I wanted to do was sleep and forget.
Forget where I was. Forget my new assignment. Forget all I’d left behind. Forget who I had been.
I was S-473.
I tensed in weary sleep when I heard the billy club at my door. It couldn’t have been more than an hour or two since I’d dropped onto my mat. I moaned when the door burst open and a bright light from a lantern shone on me.
“Get up, girl.” Tallon stomped over and nudged my arm with the tip of his boot. When I didn’t immediately respond, he kicked my side, forcing me to roll over and cringe in pain.
I drew in a shaky breath and threw an arm over my face as I forced my eyes to adjust to the brightness.
Sour breath coated with liquor almost made me gag as he bent close. “I don’t know what you did to curry such favor, but you’re being moved to fancier quarters.” He ran a hand down my arm and over my hip, letting it rest there. “This might be the last time for us to get to know each other better.” He rubbed my hip before sliding his hand down to my thigh, squeezing the soft flesh before moving to cup the spot between my legs. “It might be worth whatever punishment they give me.”
I rolled away, but he yanked me back.
“One wrong move on your part, and it will be a long time before you see the outside of your cell again. Where you will remain under my warm regard and protection.”
He was locking me into no choice at all. I could either submit for one night or suffer the threat of him coming to this cell whenever he wanted. It wasn’t a choice at all, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight him. I would have to be smarter than the last time he tried.
Rather than roll away again, I slowly sat up and pulled my thin blanket around me. I stared at him, and my gut clenched at his leer and the crazed look in his gaze. He gripped my chin.
“Now that’s better. You and I can have a good time if you just cooperate.”
Cooperate. That was one word for it.
He leaned in, and I closed my eyes and held my breath.
“Tallon!”
He jumped up so fast that I was knocked to the side. I yelped when his boot tromped on my ankle.
“Yes, sir.”
“S-473 needs to be moved now. Find your pleasure with someone else.”
While I was relieved by the statement, I worried who that someone else would be. It was bad enough, or perhaps typical, that the chain of command didn’t care that females were being raped. I’d never had to worry about sexual abuse until Tallon came along. The guard before him preferred young male shifters.
I stood and wrapped the blanket tighter.
“Take her to the commissary and hand her off to the attendant who’s waiting for her.”
While I might have escaped his rape, Tallon had no problem squeezing my arm so tight he’d leave a bruise. Or, with his strength, crush the bone. He dragged me through the corridors and up the stairs as if I couldn’t remember where the commissary was. All the prisoners visited the place every three months to receive freshly-washed clothes and a pair of slippers.
Tallon’s rough treatment had nothing to do with whether I could keep up with his fast pace. His anger stemmed from his loss at brutalizing me now that I would be in a different ward. I would thank my lucky stars if they hadn’t deserted me months ago. The sad truth was that a better cell didn’t mean my new guard would be any less savage.
Regardless of what my new situation might become, at least I’d seen the last of Tallon—or so I hoped.
When we reached the upper floor, Tallon stopped in front of the attendant and stormed off. I didn’t give him a backward glance. Instead, I turned to the slim female with a beak nose and stern, steely eyes. Rather than speak to me, she nodded toward the plastic bucket that held my new clothes. I picked it up and followed her down a different set of corridors. Whether in the rock-hewn tunnels or these sterile white halls, they all looked the same, except for the plaques that either indicated a room number or arrows pointing to a different section.
I’d only been in this area of the underground lab when I’d first been captured. I’d been on smaller missions, but this had been the first truly important one. We’d been a four-shifter team. Our mission had been to locate the lab.
Well, we’d found it. Hurrah!
After we’d been darted and dragged inside, my attitude, a mixture of sheer rage and fear, had put me in the disciplinary ward for several weeks before being moved to this section. I’d only been an occupant for a couple of months before I shoved a guard away from a shifter he’d been beating during a work detail. That was how I ended up down on the third level.
These cells weren’t any larger than the rock-lined one I’d been living in. However, they were more civilized pens with four white walls, a small cot, and a curtained area for my waste. The doors had the same slit carved out at the bottom to provide food and water.
On a positive note, there would be more days of eating in the cafeteria, but most of my meals would still be eaten alone in my cell.
The attendant stopped in the middle of one of the shorter hallways. There were eight cells, all on one side with a plain wall on the other. My cell was the third one from where we entered the corridor. We were rarely let out in groups, so it was impossible to know who, if anyone, was in the cells next to us.
On the third level, the doors weren’t locked, just barred with a wooden crossbar. These doors were more advanced and opened with a key card. Each guard had one that could open all the cell doors, but with this hi-tech facility, I assumed someone in a heavily secured communications room would have access to all the locks from a single terminal. Not that the knowledge helped me in any way. The closer one was to the labs, the more they relied on the tech to keep us safely locked up.
When the door to my new cell opened, I walked inside without prodding. Yep. Exactly as I remembered it. The mattress on the cot was as thin as the one in my old cell, but the blanket was thicker. I’d be warmer.
“Someone will be here to retrieve you in the morning at eight o’clock sharp. Make sure you’ve eaten and relieved yourself. You won’t have another chance until your mid-day break.”
I set the bucket down and pulled out the clothing, laying each article on the bed. A new shift, this time, though the fabric was still rough, it was blue—or, various shades of it. The cloth had been bleached so many times the color had become a variety of hues, but it was good enough to signify I’d be working in the labs. The slippers were similar except for a thicker sole. There was new underwear and underneath the first set was a second identical one. The last item was a white lab coat.
It made sense. It was impossible to go an entire day without smearing blood on my lab coat. The shift would be mostly protected, but I’d have a second set available while the first was being washed, which, if I remembered correctly, was every third day.
A new lab coat was provided at the end of each day after the bloodstained one was dropped in a hazardous waste receptacle. In some way, it made me sad.
At least the blood added some color to the monotone environment.
I giggled at my macabre humor.
Perhaps it was my first step into madness.