Page 31 of The Program (The Intergalactic Union #2)

Artemis

I planted myself in front of the barrier, ignoring Tarren and Katira on the other side. Holding my hands up, I pushed . My shield formed directly in front of me, but as soon as it hit the barrier it was clear I’d done something wrong.

The collision echoed throughout the small room and down the hallway after a bright white explosion of light, and I was tossed against the back wall. My skull cracked, probably alongside a few other bones, but I was too far gone from the head injury to notice as I crumpled to the floor. The impact blinded me, and I was pretty sure I had severed my spinal cord and paralysed myself from the neck down. Soon, however, I felt my nanites rushing to heal the damage. It was excruciating when sensation returned to my limbs, but it only lasted for a click or two. I held in my screams of agony through practiced techniques I’d long ago learned, but it was over quickly.

Hauling myself up onto my hands and knees, I panted through the last of the healing process while the buzzing in my ears dissipated to reveal a chorus of panicked voices. A glance up showed everyone crowding me, terror and alarm bleeding through their words as they all spoke over one another in a cacophony of noise. It made me wince, my newly healed eardrums too sensitive for the bombardment.

‘I’m fine,’ I promised as I let Bromm pull me back upright. He dragged me into a hug, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

‘Fuck, love. You can’t do that.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, stroking my hands down his back in soothing circles.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Cadmus. ‘You’re bleeding.’

Henrik rushed in to check me over, but I waved him away. ‘I’m fine. Bleeding’s stopped. I’m fully healed, I promise.’

A quick check of the brand on my arm showed it had turned a deep red. Accompanied by the sudden rumbling of my stomach, I knew I needed to eat to replenish the excess energy I had just accidentally expended in my first attempt. Maintaining contact with Bromm with one hand, I used the other to pull out one of the Nutri-Bars I’d stashed there for this very reason. When I noticed him watching, I realised I was probably being rude by not offering him some and gestured the question. He scrunched his nose in response, but I merely shrugged and took a bite.

‘Woman, you about damn near gave me a heart attack,’ Addy complained as she wedged herself between me and Bromm for her own hug. I kept one hand around Bromm’s waist while I let her cling to me for a moment, hugging her with my elbow while I continue to eat, but pulled away when Tarren’s frantic words broke through the moment.

‘If you’re going to break out, hurry up! Someone’s going to come to check what that was any moment now.’

I couldn’t say I was glad to see him, but at least he had actually come back with the carts. I stared at the six of the oversized bins on wheels and wondered how long I’d been out of it if he’d managed to acquire that many. It would have taken him six trips, one per cart.

‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking,’ I snarked, but I moved back to the barrier anyway, pocketing the leftovers and hoping I’d had enough. As I walked past him I accidentally made eye contact with T. He looked pained, as if he were restraining himself from restraining me.

‘What happened?’ he asked me instead.

I sighed, feeling even more idiotic at my mistake. ‘When you place opposing poles of two magnets together it cancels out the magnetic field. Apparently, I chose the wrong pole…’

His inhale was sharp as I stepped up to the barrier, my hands raised to try again. ‘Do you have enough control to flip it?’

I shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out.’

A chorus of alarmed yells sounded behind me, but it was too late. I was already pushing my magnetic field towards the barrier. Luckily, this time it worked.

I stepped through, pushing Tarren out of the way before turning back around, a smug grin on my face. ‘See? Totally fine. Let’s go!’

‘You’re insane,’ Urman muttered as he was the first to join me on the other side. The others were quick to follow, and I hadn’t really thought about it before but he might have had a point.

‘Probably,’ I admitted to him when the last of them finally exited. Tarren and Katira were standing well away from any potential health and safety hazards, hiding behind the group of giant laundry bins. Tarren peeked out first, but kept his distance when he realised we could suddenly attack him if we wanted to and there’d be nothing he could do to stop us.

No barriers to save him now.

Fortunately for him, he’d proven himself truthful thus far and I was less inclined to murder him. Torture still wasn’t off the table, however. If growing up inside The Program had taught me one thing, it was how to cause maximum pain and suffering, even without lifting a finger. He’d shown his cards, and his sister was his most obvious weakness. It wouldn’t be difficult to use her against him if I needed to.

‘Okay, let’s go get the children,’ I said, already pushing a cart and heading in their direction.

‘Wait, what? What children?’ asked Reece.

‘From The Program’s breeding program,’ Henrik informed him, sticking close in case he showed any signs of weakness from his injuries. He wouldn’t, but it was nice to have a medic on hand anyway. ‘They took all the babies and brought them here.’

He blew out a breath through pursed lips. ‘This just keeps getting more fucked up.’

I felt for him, I really did, but we didn’t have time for processing right now. I needed to get to Bal before they could hurt him.

‘We’ll talk when we’re off Nova Station and safe, okay?’ I told him. ‘I’ll explain everything then. Right now we’ve got a lot of kids to save.’

‘Right. Babies, escape, then talk. Got it,’ he punctuated with a jerky nod then winced at the strain the action caused. He and Adara both seemed less than stable, their legs still a little wobbly from what they had endured. What they were still enduring, really. Their bodies were going to take a lot more than a few turns to adjust to the changes, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Luckily, they’d survived the worst of it already, but if they collapsed then we’d just put them in the carts with the kids and roll them the rest of the way.

The echo of fast-approaching footsteps thundered towards us, and we were officially out of time.

‘Move, ’ I urged. My enhancements increased my speed, and I was well ahead of everyone else. I slowed down to keep them close, but they needed to pick up the pace if we were going to get those kids out safely.

The silver lining to the guards’ arrival was that there was no time for anyone to start something with Tarren. He was keeping up for the most part, though his sister was lagging behind a bit. So was Addy and Reece, for that matter.

Ah, fuck it.

I halted and addressed them. ‘Climb in, you’re too slow and we don’t have time.’

Reece looked like he was about to argue before thinking better of it, and Henrik helped him up and over the tall walls of my cart. I picked up Addy and lowered her gently next to Reece, and Tarren did the same with Katira in the cart Foryk was pushing.

With me and Foryk now pushing the slowest of our group, we moved a lot faster and were able to outrun the guards before they could catch us. We hadn’t caught sight of them yet, but I knew they were hot on our tail and it wouldn’t be long until we would have to fight our way through them.

I almost ran past the door we needed, and it was actually Tarren who called out to let me know. If he were anyone else, I would have sent him a grateful smile, but since it was him I settled for not punching him in the throat.

I shoved the cart through. Unable to really see over the top because it was so tall, I craned my neck to get a look at what we were working with and froze. Bodies and carts jostled me as they, too, entered the room, but it wasn’t until the door slammed shut behind us and the lock engaged with an audible click that I shook myself free of the horror that had momentarily paralysed me.

The room was cavernous. Lined with metal table after metal table, each one contained two small children all strapped down, white bands with subject numbers encircling their wrists. Machines beeped, substances dripped from bags into tubes that connected to the kids, but it was the lack of sound that was truly terrifying. Hundreds of toddlers were unconscious, all except one.

Scientists that had been roaming the gaps between the tables had paused to stare as we entered, and the guards stationed around the perimeter and the doorways were already pointing their weapons at us. But it was the familiar wail of a little boy that snagged my full attention.

There, in the centre of the room, was a single table on a dais. Instruments and machines surrounded the platform, and no less than four scientists were in the process of cutting into one, single child.

‘Bal, ’ I choked out through the emotion clogging my throat. There was blood dripping from the table onto the dais below, and two of those four scientists held aloft red-tinged scalpels.

‘Artemis…’ a voice spoke from behind me, though I was too far gone to process who it belonged to. When they reached out to touch me, it was as if the room un-paused and I snapped into motion.

‘Get your filthy fucking hands off of him,’ I growled, my voice almost completely mechanical. I didn’t dare chance averting my eyes for fear they would hurt him again while I was distracted, but the now-familiar tingle covered my entire body before abruptly ending, enough proof that I was now fully encased in the metal skin. But even though these fuckers couldn’t hurt me, they could still hurt my friends.

They could keep hurting Bal.

Demari’s face appeared in a hologram, hovering over the dais. I glared, knowing that he could see me even if he wasn’t actually in the room.

‘While I take pride in my success in your abilities, they are becoming rather troublesome in your possession, precious girl,’ he chastised, and if he were more than laser pixels hovering in the air I would have killed him then and there. The coward wasn’t even in the room, and he thought a floating depiction of him would deter me? I think fucking not.

In response, I merely stared him down. I could hear the others shuffling uneasily behind me but paid them no head. With those scalpels so close to Bal, we needed to play this carefully.

Demari’s dissatisfied grunt echoed through the speakers placed at intervals around the room, the result sounding like his voice was coming at me from every direction. Another power play, and one that I had to admit was working. It riled me up even more, and I had to remind myself not to do anything reckless for Bal’s sake. For my friends’ sakes.

He tsked. ‘Well, it seems you have given me no choice. You’ve been a very bad girl, Subject A-173, and bad girls get punished.’ The face adjusted in mid-air to point at the scientists beneath. ‘You know what to do.’

And then the hologram dispersed, leaving me staring wide-eyed in horror as all four scientists raised scalpels and other sharp surgical instruments above their heads, each point directed towards Baldr’s tiny body strapped to the table. They brought them down, almost as if in slow motion…

And I fucking lost it.

With a scream of pure anguish and terror, I thrust my hands forward. ‘NO!’

It took me a moment to process what I’d done. Where once there stood four scientists over a prone, helpless, screeching Baldr, now stood three. And a bit. Somehow, I had pushed my shield towards him more like a bullet than a defensive mechanism. It had collided with his head, exploding it on impact. Blood, shards of bone, and brain matter burst in every direction, splattering the other scientists with their weapons still raised.

The headless body collapsed to the floor. The scientists looked from the body to their bloody clothes, then up to me. I shouldn’t have taken pleasure in it, but as soon as the realisation that I could kill them even from this distance sank in, I smiled.

Two of them dropped the scalpels and tried to run, and for the moment I let them believe they would get away. Not because I wanted to play with them, but because the final scientist was continuing his efforts to follow out Demari’s orders. The first hit blew his hand straight off and obliterated the weapon at the same time, but I was already throwing another one at him before he could process the loss. This time, the force blew a hole straight through his chest and blasted open his back so I could see straight through to the other side. He gurgled as he fell, but his eyes were lifeless before he even hit the ground.

I got the last two in quick succession, aiming for their heads and their hearts. If it weren’t for the bloody mess left behind of said organs I wouldn’t have believed they had either.

The guards whipped into gear after that, the shock wearing off into true fear as they aimed all their guns at me. They fired shot after shot, but nothing broke through the barrier I had erected around me and the others. I waited them out until they were out of ammunition, mirroring the way I had done so in the facility on the Forbidden Planet only a few weeks ago.

Idiots. They never learned.

Once the last guards had emptied their chambers, I finally let the shield drop. Some tried to scatter. Others prepared to fight back. The smart ones prepared for death.

I picked them off, one after the other, until all that remained of them was blood, gore, and exploded limbs.

I felt a timid touch on my elbow, and I turned back around to face the group. Bromm was the one who had grabbed my attention, and his focus remained pointedly on me. His pale pallor and pinched features told me he didn’t want to look at the carnage, but his eyes held nothing but concern for me.

Cadmus was only a step behind him, looking unsure what to do. Further back everyone else stood huddled together. Addy and Reece were peeking out from over the rim of the cart, their eyes wide with shock. Tarren was hiding behind the cart his sister was in, who I heard sobbing from inside. T and Foryk were taking in the scene with critical eyes, unbothered by the gore, and Urman was hiding Henrik’s face in his chest, blocking the gentle-souled healer from the sight.

I took all of it in in the blink of an eye, but didn’t hesitate to leave them in their various states of shock and horror as I rushed to Bal. I slipped a couple of times on the puddles of blood and guts and kicked shards of bone out of my path on the way but reached him quickly. Tears sprung to my eyes at the sight of him, and my hands hovered shakily over his unconscious form, afraid to touch him in case I accidentally caused any more damage. He must have passed out during the time it took to dispose of the trash, the trauma to his little body too much for him to handle.

There were shallow cuts all over his body, proof that he was hurt only because I cared about him. They weren’t even performing any type of experiment or procedure, they were simply hurting him to hurt me.

I gently removed the needles and tubes from his skin, extracting the wires that were keeping track of his brainwaves and his heartrate. They left behind sticky patches and little red rashes caused by the glue.

A strangled sob broke free as I ever so tenderly picked him up and cradled him against my chest. I pressed my nose softly into his thin blonde hair and inhaled his sweet baby scent, needing it to ground me. He smelled faintly of soap and alcohol wipes, so I knew they were at least ensuring he was healthy and clean up until this point. But they’d still hurt him. They’d made him bleed. So, I vowed, I would do the same to them.

The Program was going down, and I was going to make sure it was as painful as possible.