Captive (17 page)

Regan stepped on Max’s chest and raised his arms in victory. The hologram paused, faded out, and replayed from the battle’s beginning.

Addy couldn’t stop watching it. It sickened her and mesmerized her at the same time. Two men fighting to the death. Yet the one who had died was now moving around the room below.

“You okay?” The top of Max’s head was a foot away from the top of hers. Mesmerized by the battle images, she hadn’t realized he’d climbed back up the rope.

“Uh, yeah.” Addy pulled her head back inside the duct.

“Here.” He handed her a tube of cream, a pair of dark gray boots, and goggles. “Strip down, rub this in, and put the boots on. Save the goggles for outside.”

“You want me to undress right here?”

He pulled off his T-shirt. “Hell, woman, its not like I haven’t seen you naked before.” He squeezed the tube and rubbed white cream on his chest.

Hot anger flooded her body. If she had been outside, she’d have melted the street. Grinding her teeth together to keep from yelling at him, and risk someone hearing them, she turned her back to the jerk. Scooting away into the darkness, she unhooked Duncan’s cloak and peeled off her thermal suit.

“Apply the cream thick. Don’t miss any skin, including toes, scalp, nose, and eyelids.”

It didn’t take long before the thermal cream started working. Heat covered her body like an electric blanket, and by the time she donned the gladiator suit and lightweight boots, sweat had broken out on her forehead. She wiped her brow, turned around, and caught Max taking things out of her backpack.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“You have too much shit in here. It’ll slow you down. Take only the essentials.”

“These
are
the essentials.”

“You’re carrying too much food.”

“I’m pregnant. I need all this food.” Addy grabbed the bag and stuffed her things back in. She was barely able to close the zipper. So what if his pack was half full and lighter? What would the guy eat and drink? If he thought she’d share her food with him…

“Climb down the sheets. I’ll drop the backpacks to you.”

“No way. You’re going to leave me.”

She heard the annoyance in his exhale. “I need to untie the rope and replace the vent.”

“Oh. Right.” She climbed down, praying a Hyborean wouldn’t walk in on them, trying not to think about what would happen if one did.

When the rope fell to the floor at her feet, she looked up to see Max hanging by one hand and covering the hole as best he could with the other. He let go and fell to the floor with a loud thud certain to draw attention. Her heart sped.

Max stuffed the rope into his backpack, gathered their discarded clothing, and then sublimated a two-foot square hatch on the wall. A rotting stench wafted up.

“After you.”

“You want me to climb into the garbage chute?” Images popped into her head of Luke, Leia, and Han Solo in the trash compactor. “What if the Hyboreans decide to compact it while we’re in there?”

“Don’t worry. They don’t do that.”

“They don’t?”

“No.” Max climbed into the shaft legs first. “They incinerate it.”

“What?” she said, but he had slid out of view.

Addy glanced back at the repeating holographic pictures of violence and death. If she stayed, that could very well be her baby’s fate. Heck, if she stayed that could very well be
her
fate.

She climbed into the chute, held her breath, and slid down. A light at the end grew brighter and brighter before she splash-landed in liquid and garbage.

“I wasn’t sure you’d follow.”

“What, and miss out on bathing in this lovely stench?” Pinching her nose and breathing through her mouth gave little relief. Her stomach convulsed and she dry-heaved. The refuse reeked to both moons orbiting this damn planet.

She snapped on her lightstick, pointed it in every direction looking for rats or other Hyborean garbage-eating animals. Perhaps only three-quarters of the garbage had been bagged in what looked like thin burlap; the rest had been mixed together, forming a brown muck. At least nothing seemed to be moving or gnawing in the dark.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Now, we wait.”

Chapter Nineteen

W
ait for what?” Addy asked.

“Divine intervention.”

“Do you have to be so cryptic?”

“Trust me, it’s better you don’t know.”

Trust him? She didn’t trust him as far as she could pitch him. Though nothing would please her more than throwing him headfirst into a slimy Dumpster wall. But, for now, she’d have to go along with him. What other choice did she have? If he’d leave her behind for not keeping up, what would stop him from leaving her behind for making him mad?

“So how long will it take before we are
intervened
?” If she hadn’t been holding her lightstick, she would have put air quotes around the word.

“Two hours. Maybe four. Get some sleep—tomorrow’s a long day.”

Two to four more hours of this stench? Her stomach convulsed again. “You actually think I’ll be able to sleep in this? I don’t even want to be standing in it.”

Snapping off his lightstick and resting his backpack on his chest, Max settled into the garbage and leaned his back against the wall. “Suit yourself.”

After a tiring hour standing in thigh deep refuse, circling her lightstick like a lighthouse beacon, Addy picked up Max’s discarded pants and shirt and arranged them on a more stable-looking pile of garbage opposite him. She pulled on her thermal suit hood as well as the hood from the cloak to protect her hair from the sludgy wall, and sunk into her makeshift chair, backpack on her lap and lightstick in hand.

Dampness saturated the cold air, white breath clouds formed around her, yet her body felt warm—perhaps even a little too warm.

Max had said without the proper gear no one could survive the outside temperatures. If she had escaped alone, how long would she have lasted before freezing to death without thermal cream? Assuming no aliens caught her after the choker alarm had informed them she was outside. And that assumed she’d actually made it out of Ferly Mor’s apartment in the first place. His observation walls had probably been unbreakable.

Queasiness due neither to pregnancy nor garbage churned her gut. Like it or not, the man she despised was the one man she needed in order to survive.

Max’s chest rose and fell in a steady, peaceful rhythm. What tortures had the guy experienced to make sleeping in garbage not bother him?

“Max?”

“Hmm.”

“Why did you change your mind about helping me escape?”

“You were right,” he breathed, half asleep.

“About what?”

“Only dying once.”

Xanthrag’s hologram flashed in her mind’s eye. She’d never forget Max’s savage murder. Or his emaciated body on the examining table, the whip marks streaked across his back, his bones broken.

How could he be okay now? How could he look so strong and solid and healthy after only two weeks? His wounds had healed and he’d gained weight, though he was nowhere near as muscular as he had been in the breeding box.

“Max?” she asked again.

“Hmm.”

“What happened to you after they pulled you from the breeding box?”

“It doesn’t matter.” His words were no longer sleepy.

“I was scared for you.”

“You were scared
of
me.” His eyes popped open and pierced her with a menacing glare that sent chills down her back. “You still are.”

“And yet here I am.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. Why did alpha gladiators thrive on scaring the crap out of everyone? “I have to know something. Exactly what are your expectations?”

“I expect to get out of here.”

“I mean from me. In return for your help, you must want something.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Then why help me?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I know how you feel.”

“Excuuuuse me?”

Blood simmering.
Remain calm, Dawson.
Boiling now.
You need him to escape.
Steam rising like a hot geyser.
Don’t say anything you’ll re—
“How dare you look me in the eye and say that? You have no idea how I feel. You violated me, Max. Knowing you’re my baby’s father makes me sick.”

Nice going, Old Faithful. Watch him leave you in this Dumpster.

*  *  *

“You have every right to hate my guts—”

“You’re damn right I do.” Her words echoed in the receptacle.

Why the hell did she insist on beating a dead gladiator? “How many times do I have to tell you, woman, I did
not
rape you.”

“Then how’d I get pregnant? Immaculate conception?”

He shot to his feet and stomped back and forth through the garbage. She couldn’t leave it alone, could she? She had to keeping bringing up one of the most humiliating things the Hyboreans had ever done to him. Unable to control his anger, he kicked his backpack.

“Why won’t you admit it?”

“Hell, woman,” he bellowed. “Because you’re not the one who got raped.
I
am!”

Silence. Finally. Apparently she was too stunned to speak. Or blink, for that matter.

For several minutes he paced, debating how much more he should tell her. His humiliation was unbearable, but if they were to escape together, he wanted no doubts on her part about what really happened in the breeding box or after.

Unable to say it to her face, he turned his back to her and rested a gloved hand on the slimy wall for support. His head dropped.

The inhaled breath of decaying garbage didn’t give him the courage he’d hoped for. “When they took me from the breeding box... the Hyboreans... they held me down and—”
Be a man and say it already.
He wiped his free hand over his face and stared at the slimy wall. “They manipulated me—a goddamn alpha gladiator stud—so they could impregnate you.”

He’d tried so hard to forget the degrading way the Hyboreans took their hands to him. Fighting hadn’t help. They had overpowered him and milked him like a goddamned animal because he wasn’t man enough to get a woman pregnant. And here he was explaining it to that woman and reliving his shame.

“I’m so sorry, Max. I didn’t know.”

He half-shrugged one shoulder. He had nothing more to say.

“After they pulled you from the box, they brought me into an exam room and drugged me. I didn’t understand why. It all makes sense now.”

Artificial insemination. That was what his existence had boiled down to. The only thing he had left of value was his sperm.

“I...I don’t know what to say.” Her words were soft, almost a whisper. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me the truth that night in the rain?”

“I couldn’t.”

“I pelted you with apples.”

“I deserved it.”

“But…you were innocent.”

He turned to face her and realized it was a mistake. The unshed tears in her eyes were like a swift kick in the gut. “Hell, woman, don’t look at me like that. Don’t you dare pity me. I accept the consequences for my stupid decision to act like a man in the breeding box. I knew better. I knew I was nothing more than, as you’d so precisely put it, a ‘fucking animal.’”

“But you aren’t, are you? You stopped, Max. We both know you could have done anything you wanted to me. You chose to stop. An animal wouldn’t do that.”

Tired, he sat back down in his spot opposite her, rested his elbows on drawn-up knees, and raked his hair with all ten fingers. “The women I’ve bred with in the past were Hyborhus. They understand this world. They’re accustomed to it. They willingly accept their roles as broodmares. But not you.”

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize for your strength. Your assault by Regan, and then all his taunts, made me think about what the Hyboreans did to me. And it paled in comparison to what he and other alpha gladiators will do to you the rest of your childbearing life. Your spirit challenges them. It excites them. And they’ll continue breaking it until it dies. Just like the Hyboreans killed my spirit years ago.
That’s
why I’m helping you escape.”

“And what about you?” she asked gently. “Why are you escaping?”

“In my fifteen years here, I’ve been humiliated, tortured, beaten, starved, whipped, stabbed, mauled, drowned, and thrown off a fifty-foot cliff. I’ve been killed more times than I can count. And every time I think it’s the last, every time I think I’ll finally get some peace in my grave, the bastards reawaken me. They reset bones, grow new tissue and bring me back to life. For what? So they can gamble on how many gladiators I slaughter before I die again.”

Max leaned forward and held her gaze. “You want to know why I changed my mind about escaping? It’s because you were right. Out there you can only die once. Here, you die over and over and over again.” He slumped against the wall. “And I’m fucking tired of dying.”

“I’m sorry for everything you went through, Max. But I thank you. For stopping. For telling me the truth. And for getting me out of that zoo.”

“You do realize we haven’t left the building.” He closed his eyes. “Get some sleep.”

*  *  *

VZZZZZZ. Swack.

She hadn’t realized she’d dozed off until dropped garbage splashed muck across her face. Goop the consistency of raw egg slid down her chin. “Eww. I’m going to be sick.” She wiped the thick gel from her cheek. “How much longer do we have to stay in here?”

“Not long.”

A loud clunk reverberated and echoed in the receptacle. Addy jumped to her feet. “What was that?” The room jerked, almost knocking her face-first into sludge.

Max threw on his backpack. “Time to take out the trash.”

Addy shrugged into her pack, barely getting her other arm through the hole when Max yanked her to the sidewall. A blast of white vapor rose from the muck in the center of the receptacle. The floor began swallowing the disgusting mixture of liquid and garbage.

“Hold on to me. This is one god-awful ride.”

“Nuh-uh. No way. I can’t go through there.” She clung to Max and cursed the contents spilling through the floor.