The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) (38 page)

“We will not wait for her,” Brody-1 responded after calling her name twice. “I will round her up. Cullen, join your brother and get back home. ”

Good,
she thought as the ramp hinged up and locked in place, then moved out of sight.

Do not wait,
kept running through her mind as she watched them leave.

Fine,
Brody-1 thought, she and Leader Sala would return alone in the second SHORT, leaving seven with Mistress Breen. At the second unit, she remembered there would be no loading without that ramp.

“Yates, open this ramp or I will rip you in two, maybe three pieces.”

She pounded on the back panel, willing it to open. Leader Sala could fend for herself. No response. Irritated, she started around to the driver’s side.

With no warning, the ramp dropped down, aided by the weight of a double line of a dozen soldiers running as the dust settled. One line moved to surround the SHORT, while the other split into groups. Two groups of four then split off to guard their parameter.

Total surprise had Brody-1 stumbling to her knees. She was not prepared when four spear points nudged her back to the ground.

“Since you called me several times, I am here. Please surrender your weapons.”

Leader Sala strolled casually down the empty ramp. Her head was bare, with her soft curls arranged close to her scalp. The worn traveling clothes she had worn yesterday replaced by a soft brown jumpsuit. A bright blue scarf, crisp, neatly knotted, was looped around her neck.

Brody-1 released her grip on her sword, letting it settle the inch or two to the roadway. She did not suffer delusions. She was more than the best at fighting, but not against this overwhelming force.

“The two knives at you back also Miss,” ordered the soft male voice connected to the brown spear shaft with its point digging intently under the stacked armor plates covering her heart. No jumpsuit, he wore brown battle gear—light weight, made for running.

She tipped slightly to the side and felt her knives leave their soft sheaths.

“For now, you can keep the two small stilettos under your uniform,” he said with a grin.

For the first time, she looked at him as he stepped back. She could pick him up under one arm and carry him away, then stuff him in her kit bag when she was done with him. Pale eyes, soft as the voice attached to that spear. Unlike the spear, those eyes made her heart race. They flitted softly over every inch of her...ignore those eyes.

“That is David Proctor, the Commander of our Army. Please call me Sala or Director. As of yesterday, I am no longer a Leader,” she said as she reached to help the huge woman rise.

“Are we under arrest?”

“No. You are my prisoners. Prisoners of war.”

Instead of taking the offered hand, Brody-1 edged away on her elbows.

“You have joined the Crossers?” she asked. “How could you. We would have smelled it on you.”

“Did you smell Crosser on David?” Sala smiled as she would with a small child.

“Yes, he is Crosser by birth. Now we are a joint venture called The Blue. We must head home. I will explain everything to your team when we arrive.”

Sala spoke into an almost invisible C-link connected to the high collar of her jumpsuit. In seconds a third SHORT appeared, quickly backing into place alongside and dropping its ramp.

The security force helped load the upright Brody-1, confined in chains and led up the ramp with the much smaller David making sure she did not stumble. As he settled her onto the hard bench seats, the back ramp slowly closed leaving the two of them alone.

Why am I afraid?
Brody-1 asked herself. She had the answer instantly. When she was a child, being in small spaces were a way of life in Middle Level of Number 1 Building. Her mother had wanted to keep her a secret so she could raise her herself, so there were countless very small hide-holes, to stash a small child. Brody Rose had escaped her mother and sought the roving bands of child snatchers. Anything would be better than those small spaces. Luckily, she wound up with a wet nurse in the Battle Group’s trainings rooms.

“It is a little tight for me in here,” David said when he had her settled. He moved to the center of their metal tomb and, with only a small amount of noise, opened hatches; flooding their small space with morning light, and a cross breeze.

First things first, she reached for her water bottle: gone. “I need water,” Brody demanded.

The small man ignored her as he removed the chains from her ankles and set them aside. Next her wrists, the chains quickly following the others. He looked up at her from his position. After a moment he stood.

“I need water,”

He ignored her again. “Your small knifes are behind my back. I will turn and you will retrieve them,” then he spun ever so slowly, offering the twin hilts to his prisoner.

“What is the downside here?” she asked, water forgotten.

“No down side for you, only for me.”

“Which is...?”

“Very simple, I will not see where you keep those stilettos hidden.”

“I could kill you before you blink.” Ignore those eyes

“Maybe...”

She snorted. This little male seemed full of himself. She reached forward with her left hand and watched his muscles ripple before she placed her fingertips against his spine. With her right hand, she retrieved her two knives. As she sat back, she knew one thing—he had seen, without looking, every move she made.

She watched him uncoil and slide to the seat across from her, then turn half way to face her while flashing that disarming grin she was sure he thought would work with anyone.

“I must add a small tidbit to Sala’s statement. I was not born a Crosser. Informed physicians in your own Number 2 Building dumped me in the basement when I was two weeks old. I did not cry, as a healthy baby should. David and Elise Proctor, my father and mother, raised me as their own. I bear his name: David Proctor.”

Maybe he is right about that grin.
Brody edged away.

“One other thing; I will call you by your family name, Brody Rose.”

She heard him, but his lips had not moved. How could he be in her head? Only females, Queens and above in rank, communicated with telepathy yet he was inside without her feeling a thing. She blocked, frantic, fighting him off. She had not won, yet he was gone—or was he—leaving only a musty tremor of violation in his wake.

“Brody Rose.”

She remembered parts now. Fleeing down an endless hallway...clothing torn beyond repair...caught and pulled into a room by an old woman in robes the color of ebony blue. Running footsteps thundering passed a closed door. Frantic pounding as the door opened...old woman yelling.

“Brody Rose. Remember. Do not fight, it happened to you.”

A negotiation, something she wanted to distance from her soul. She had lost, agreed to join and kill human beings. No! She was exempt because of her parent’s position on the Wicca’s council. She had to trade her obedience for their continued wellbeing.

“No more, Brody Rose. All of you will return in due time.”

I am not Brody Rose.

She cut him then, the man called David Proctor. Brody stuck him with hard underhand thrusts straight across the short distance to his belly, then a second time preparing to jerk her blades up and gut him.

“Stop Brody Rose, look down. Look at your hands.”

She looked to her distant hands expecting her knives, blood and body parts—none. I have three times more strength, yet I must kill him again. Only empty fingers, drained of life, clutched in his vice-like grip. The uniform stretched tightly over his belly was not even rumpled; she had not scored killing wounds with her—empty hands.

“My parents did not come to save me from that old woman,” Brody said sounding like a petulant child.

“When they heard you were captured, they came for you before the tale was complete. Their elevator fell thirty floors with them and four others inside. That had never happened before or since.” David gently relaxed his grip on her wrists, knowing bruises would soon appear.

“Mistress Ann told me they were done with me. She told me they said I must have done something that set the men off. No wonder I never saw them again.”

There was no room for tears. Only anger could ever help and only blood would wash it away. Could she go back to killing for the Wicca? It would come down to a final decision. She hated final decisions.

The sight of Mistress Breen killing her former lover from ambush was a more important lesson. Now she desperately needed to know why David had done this to her.

“I will explain why Mistress Ann did...”

“Stop doing that. I have not asked my question yet,” her voice scared her as it vibrated back and forth inside the SHORT. Open hatches did not help. He looked at her empty hands. He had planted knifes only in her head.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Something inside her broke and she felt like her head was her own again.

“Brody Rose, I...” David rephrased as he saw her brows leap to her hairline.

“Brody, we need your help in Number 1 building.”

Chapter 16. Hurt things

Brody-1 knew it was only this morning when she had left David and the building called One Nine, but it seemed hours before the emptiness behind her eyes allowed her to think again. The doctors had scrawled Severe Dehydration on her hospital chart, the cause for her stumbling from the rubble across from the entrance to Number 1 Building.

A ‘V’ cut deeply into the flesh of her shoulder proved her Battle Group had been another victim of the mutineers who had been escaping from all five buildings during the past week.

From her bed, she had given Mistress Ann details of the fictional slaughter of Breen’s force by traitors and their Battle Groups called The Blue. Everything she related was truth except the ending death of all, including the small force that had fought their way out of One Nine.

Brody-1 used the new name, Number 6 Building. Mistress Ann had cautioned her to strike that name from her memory, her scribe had known not to add that to his report.

Directly, Mistress Ann appointed Brody her Security Commander for Number 1 Building. With that new title, the numeral “1” disappeared from her name, replaced by her new title.

Commander of all of the buildings would follow, but that had to be by Wicca Decree. Mistress Ann would see to that. In one stroke, a current hero was reborn from an old legend. She became a hero for all Builder troops.

Her former reputation as Giant Queen had new, added layers.
Very handy, considering my promise to my murdered parents,
Commander Brody smiled. Mistress Ann was as good as dead.

Only securing the position remained. She faked more weakness than she felt as Mistress Ann’s tailor dressed her. This old man complained about dressing her in the “dirty, smelly piece of junk” she insisted on wearing. Reluctantly, she had allowed him to strip away the torn sleeve and half the shoulder material to artfully display the angry red “V” and heavy wrist bruises.

The old boy was a showman. He demonstrated how to hold her new Commander’s battle helmet, under the good arm so the bruises to that wrist added pathos to the whole. What she portrayed was overwhelming personal strength trumping the suffering of torture.

No one questioned her tattered and dirty uniform with the new battle helmet.

Commander Brody issued her first order. “Withdraw Number 1 Building’s Battle Groups from the blockade
Across the Street
. They are needed for defense of our building.” Her second order dismissed two Queens and their Hunters, assigned as her bodyguards. She would pick her own—two former Hunters from Lower Level.

Other names included ten former Troopers from Middle Level; the list planted by David. All of her selections had only one thing in common: Mistress Ann had dismissed them personally. Which meant their beliefs would not change with orders from the Wicca. That was all the recommendation Commander Brody needed.

Unarmed, with her two Hunters at her back, she had marched through Lower Level seeking other names on her list. She gave each the code given her by David and continued on to Middle level. Here she exchanged Hunters for Troopers and continued the process.

In less than two hours, she and her four newly formed Battle Groups were in control of Number 1 Building.

* * *

At the same time in Number 2 Building, Kitty tried unsuccessfully to sink her needle like fangs into Edith’s wrist. Even with the added advantage of her two delicate paws equipped with all those tiny claws, she could make purchase only if Edith chose not to constantly break contact. Each time, Kitty mewed in annoyance.

This little bundle of energy came as a present just minutes ago, an unexpected present. A gift from the biggest man she had ever seen whom now sat watching over her. He did not try to hide his hungry glances at her breasts as it simmered from the corner of his eye.

Edith had yet to adjust to Dog and Cat, the two half-wild animals that seemed part of him.