Instinct Ascending: Rabids Book 2 (47 page)

But her Hybrid was nowhere to be found. Amiel was left alone to face the coming torture. Movement drew her eyes back to where Malinda watched, a front row seat to the coming torture. Any doubt Amiel felt about whether her mother held a shred of love for her was obliterated in that moment. Malinda’s grin stretched wider as Amiel’s muffled screams rent the air.  

Angel

Angel knelt over the body of the scientist, lip curled in disgust. Darvey: the spineless lout. He had served his purpose well enough, but he had had more to offer before he should have died. Her master would be displeased. Still, she felt the utmost pleasure at finding the man’s heart burst from within. It saved her the trouble of having to deal with his touch and annoying advances a day longer. She had played the part of smitten seductress for long enough. She wished she could have killed him herself, but the disappointment was dulled by the fact that he was ultimately dead and no longer her problem.

Rising to her feet, she glanced at the snapped necks of the Raiders around her, and then at the broken manacles on the bed. Whether the schedule of their plans had changed with the scientist’s death, matters were still well on a track of progress. Angel’s lip lifted in another sneer as she thought back to the girl who had lain on the bed earlier. She had only glimpsed her for a short time, but she’d seen nothing of import. At least the girl’s brother had been a delicious-looking thing. But the girl? Angel had seen nothing that would drive men to distraction. She saw nothing of what had prompted Darvey and Grim in their obsessions, nor her master in his.

Angel drew a deep breath, filling her lungs with the air in the room. It irked her immeasurably that Grim had been here, in this very room, after years of searching for him. She drew another deep, desperate, searching breath. Still she smelled nothing of Grim. The scientist and the girl had both sworn that Grim had been present, yet she could smell nothing. That meant either they had been wrong, or it was as she had long feared: Grim had found a way to mask his scent from her.  With a scream, she grabbed the small medical table and hurled it across the room. The bed and every moveable thing in the room soon followed. Despite her temper tantrum, Angel still felt no satisfaction. She had felt no satisfaction for the past eleven years. She would feel no satisfaction until Grim was back in her clutches. What she would do with him then, she wasn’t sure.

“You can’t hide from me forever, lover!” Her angry promise echoed against the concrete walls, sounding hollow and dissatisfying, just like all the similar promises she had made over the years. Furious, she stormed from the building. Even watching the building explode from the carefully laid explosives she’d left inside gave her little satisfaction. Her eyes burned with the reflection of the flames, an apt representation of the dark thoughts that stirred within her breast.

“They think you will bring them power,” Angel sneered, thinking back to the girl. “But they will find that true power has been beneath their noses all along. I will show them that power, as I wring the life from your neck.” That was a promise she fully intended to keep. And her promise to Grim? Grim would fall into place easily, once the girl was out of the way. 

Sia

Sia watched curiously as workers finished putting together another clear box much like her own. It would appear she was getting a neighbor. She licked her lips as she watched the men. They looked delicious. Her eyes zeroed in on their backsides: delicious in so many different ways. She chuckled to herself, enjoying her inner dialogue. The workers looked askance at her.

She pressed her chest up against the glass, and then, just to get another reaction from them, bared her teeth. They quickly looked away, working faster. She laughed again, moving away from the glass to sit cross-legged on the table in the middle of the small room. The chains slipped and clanked along the floor as she moved. Her own personal theme music. Her head jerked upright as a new visitor approached the box. She quickly slunk off the table, moving to press back against the glass.

“Charleen.” It was not often that her offspring came to visit. It was enough to make a mother think her daughter didn’t care. Sia grinned again. Sometimes she was far too entertaining for her own good.

“Sia.” Charleen nodded, not removing her eyes from the construction of the box.

“The proper phrasing here would be ‘Mommy’. Or perhaps even ‘dearest, loveliest Mommy’.”

Charleen ignored her, still staring at the box. This was new. Normally she had such charmingly hostile interactions with her daughter. Her own gaze shifted back to the new box.

“It would seem I am getting a neighbor. Whom may I ask for a cup of sugar?”

Charleen finally spoke, but it was not at all what Sia expected to hear. “My sister.”

“Come again?” Sia asked, attention perking up immediately.

“They have Amiel.”

“Amiel.” Sia tasted the name. “Is that what they named her?” She’d never been allowed contact, or any information on the name of the child that they donated her frozen DNA toward.

Just then alarms sounded, and the workers quickly stepped away from the now completed box. Two guards came out, dragging the limp and bloodied form of a girl. Her hair was shorn short, in much the same fashion as Charleen’s and Sia’s. Sia thought it was a shame. From what she could tell, the girl had healthy, beautiful hair, just like her father had had. But Foundation seemed to have a hatred toward long hair. That may have had to do with the time Sia had fashioned a rope from strands of her hair and strangled one of the guards. Another smile graced her lips. That had been a fun night.

The guards yanked open the empty box, tossing the girl inside. Immediately she pushed upward on shaky arms, dragging herself to the corner of her prison that touched Sia’s. Curious, Sia slunk toward that wall for a better look. The girl sat on her haunches, rocking back and forth slightly, what was left of her hair hanging in her face. Five bloodied wounds soaked through the thin, white cotton shirt they’d stuck her in, the sixth easily visible just at the base of her neck.

Sia’s eyes narrowed with interest. This was not the typical Hybrid implant formation. Hybrids received only one implant. The wounds on this girl were evenly spaced, all down the length of her spine: from skull to tailbone. This one must be a big threat to Foundation, for them to take such intense precautions.  Sia grinned, suddenly feeling the intense urge to get to know her second daughter.

“Hello, little one. I am Sia.” Her head cocked to the side as the girl’s head lifted, revealing large eyes: one green, one brown. Only the tiniest sliver of color remained, rimmed around the depths of dilated black pupils, the colors crosshatched with thin black lines.  A calculating and devious grin spread the girl’s cracked, bleeding lips.

“You may call me Bryn.”

Amy Cook- she’s just a small town girl with a penchant for creating wild imaginings in the midst of doing the dishes. Fortunately for her, she is able to turn those wild imaginings into the written word of entertaining proportions. When not up to her arms in soap suds, cleaning up the natural disaster that she and her husband call home, or chasing the four miniature wild savages that live within it, she does have a few hobbies. Gardening, drawing, crafting and insanely early visits to the gym are among these hobbies. If you would care to follow Amy on her future adventures in writing, visit her at the following locations.

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