“We’re not that high up in the pecking order,” Merrick answered stiffly for everyone. “We don’t know anything.”
Mwende lunged and jabbed Merrick in the chest with the weapon. He curled inward, grunting. After the initial punch of electricity, he straightened and stared at her while she zapped him. Other than his nostrils flaring, he didn’t move a muscle. He watched her, the whites of his eyes blazing.
“Wrong answer.” Voice as flat as her expression, Mwende finally broke eye contact with Merrick and threatened Tess again. “Last chance or she gets another shock. Maybe in the face this time.”
Jax stared in horror. He looked at Tess, then at me. Was Mwende bluffing? I didn’t agree to torture. None of us did. As Bridgebane, I could stop it. Should I?
Own that uniform. Believe it.
“Lieutenant.” Ice-cold. Ruthless. Dead eyes stared out from me. “I want this room blacked out for interrogation.”
“They’ve seen worse than a shock wand in the monitor room,” Mwende said.
I could imagine. “I have special plans for this group.” I picked up a hammer. A knuckle-breaking blunt-force primitive basher. Might come in handy. “Do as I ordered.”
“Yes, General.” Mwende strode to a control panel on the wall and typed out a code I wouldn’t have known. It’d been a guess, but it looked like taking down the AV for a messy questioning wasn’t that unusual when you were General Bridgebane.
The little red light on the corner camera stopped flashing. The surveillance device retracted into a box. The front panel closed, sealing with a click that would’ve scared the shit out of me if I’d been chained to the table and about to be tortured. At least now we could talk without riddles and stop electrocuting my girlfriend.
Mwende lowered the zapper. “No wonder you call him cupcake,” she muttered to Tess. Her gaze spiked to me. She shook her head.
“You didn’t have to torture her,” I said, furious.
Mwende scoffed. “That was one shock.”
“A long one!” I snapped.
“That hurt more than the bullet in my ass.” Tess scowled. “Seriously, Sanaa, I didn’t agree to that.”
“Well, I guarantee your reaction looked real to the people watching from the surveillance deck.” Mwende waved a hand toward the now-hidden and turned-off camera while glancing at me again. “But Softy here had a good idea with that.”
I huffed. Softy. I hoped that nickname wouldn’t stick.
Someone rapped on the door. “Enter!” I barked.
One of the guards from earlier opened the door. Another two entered, hauling Shiori between them. Her legs dragged on the floor.
My chest jerked at the sight of her. So small and fragile. Head down, gray hair in strings, her wrists bound with old gauze. Rusty stains left a gruesome slash of color across both bandages. The soldiers threw her down on the interrogation room floor. Shiori gasped and barely caught herself on hands and knees that cracked against the hard surface. Her head lifted. Milky eyes stared sightlessly ahead, pointed toward the bottom shelf of the torture cabinet.
“Shiori,” Tess whispered.
“No.” The old woman’s face crumpled. No tears came, just a look of utter anguish as she turned toward the voice she recognized. “I told you not to.”
“Shut up, you old dog.” The head goon kicked Shiori and sent her crashing into the table leg in front of her. I flinched. Tess yelled. Merrick rattled his chains, growling, and Jax looked fucking terrifying. Even Mwende seemed shocked, although it barely lasted a second.
Blind fury coursed through me. Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed the goon’s neck and slammed him up against the wall. Breathing hard, I squeezed until the man’s face turned purple. I was bigger, stronger, and right now, I was fucking General Bridgebane, and this insect was going to piss his pants in terror.
“What did I say about leaving me the first hit?” I snarled.
“I-I’m sorry, General,” he gasped out.
I was about to put the fear of the cosmos into this asshole and save my cover. I carried him by the neck and threw him into the hallway. He landed flat out on the floor, wheezing. I stomped hard on his ribs and ground my heel down until I heard a crack. The guy squealed like a piglet. I kicked his broken bone, and he passed out before he finished rolling over.
“Get him out of my sight,” I ordered. The other guards left immediately, hauling the unconscious man between them.
So this was power. Unquestioned. To use or abuse in any fashion. No wonder Bridgebane was such a dead-eyed bastard. How could you do this every day and not hate yourself?
Shiori knelt and groped above her, feeling for the tabletop. She found its edge and pulled herself to standing. Calling for her, Tess banged with her chains. Shiori followed the sound. She reached out and wrapped her hands around Tess’s, the metal ring between them. Tess’s sudden sob broke my heart ten times over.
“Why, child? And now this…” Shiori’s trembling voice had half the strength that I remembered. “If I’d died, you wouldn’t be here.”
“If you’d died, I’d have lost even more of my family,” Tess answered.
“We missed you, Shiori,” Jax said.
“Jaxon, too?” Shiori squeezed her eyes closed, but even blindness didn’t shut out the worst views. “I’ve failed you.”
“No, I failed you,” Tess said. “You and Miko. This is all my fault.”
Shiori spread her hands, showing her bloody bandages. “I tried. I tried to stop you.”
“By killing yourself?” Tess’s tone hardened. “Then it’s a good thing you failed, too. And this… It’s not what it seems.” Guards trooped outside the door again. Tess lowered her voice. “Now hush and don’t move.”
Someone knocked. Shiori’s face went blank, her paper-thin skin waxen and static. If it weren’t for the unhealthy spots and the tremors she couldn’t control, she’d have looked like a doll. Still. Small. Powerless. Except she wasn’t. With the rest of her face expressionless, her blind eyes held more than I’d ever realized. Love, hate, determination, and a hardness that said anything she’d done in here wasn’t about giving up, it was about fighting back. Always.
She froze the second Tess told her to stop moving. Shiori was a damn good soldier.
My breath gusted out. “Enter!” I shouted.
Shiori turned her head a fraction. She cocked an ear and saw. In that moment, she knew me, and my insides clenched in a way that said family could be given and taken away, and sometimes, it was found.