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14 | Echo
Dark City Highway Line
Adrenaline and my heart slamming against my ribcage keep me awake even though I can tell by Adam’s heavy breathing that he passed out a long time ago.The moment they got him — us — onto the stretcher.He trusts them. The thought freaks me out. And that terror doesn’t go away as we make it out of the forest and to a place I’ve never been before — that I’d never have dared go out here in Paradise Hole.Dark City Highway Line.
Scavengers only travel by Highway Lines to die. That’s where Alphas roam.
On the Highway Line leading to Dark City, Whiskey pulls a huge brick of a radio out of the thin survival sling she wears over one shoulder. Surprising me, she’s able to get a connection. That doesn’t happen often in Paradise Hole. I’ve only ever seen Trash City use walkies, and they’re only short-range. But she must connect to somebody, because after about an hour of jogging down the road — and yes, I meanjogging while holding up a Berserker in his beast form and amalnourished Omega — a caravan of vehicles cruises up to us.
Alphas carrying guns swarm out of the trucks and immediately set up a perimeter, as if awaiting an ambush at any second while the redhead who Whiskey calls Peate makes everyone put on masks. He talks about separating Adam and I into two different cars but I start to cry the moment he suggests it and the sound must wake a sleeping Adam, who roars out a battle cry that’s so terrifying it makes me pee a little bit.
Peate is a sneaky bastard, though, because he pulls a needle out of his back pocket and plugs the pointy end into Adam in a dozen places. Then he and some of the Alphas who’ve joined us move Adam into another car. For me, I just get the one shot, but it’s enough for my muscles to turn to soup and my body to fill with the most wonderful euphoria.
It doesn’t knock me out though, at least not right away. I’m wide awake in the back of an SUV barreling down the Dark City Highway Line when I glance up through the tinted window and see Dark City’s massive stainless steel wall, pocked and scarred and burned in places from rebellions long past. And then the gates embossed with a massive name, DRAGNOVIC, swing open wide enough to devour before swinging shut, caging me in.
I force my eyelids to stay open and see everything. The city doesn’t start for a while, and that surprises me. There are houses out here, stores, low buildings that look like they’re saloons from another era. We pass through suburbs, too. Industrial areas that have actual industry, and then industrial areas that have been converted into more restaurants and stores and living spaces. There are people in them. Buildings, grocery stores, pharmacies, even a school. I don’t see very many kids on the playground right now, but there are some. They’re laughing, playing, like they have no idea what goes on outside of these walls.
I’m crying again and I don’t know why. Peate, kneeling on the floor of the backseat beside me, continues cutting me out of my clothes. He’s been cussing like hell and trying to do what he can to doctor me with the supplies he has on hand, but when he notices my tears, he asks me if I want more drugs and I shake my head, then, at the sight of the first skyscraper, nod.
I’m so overwhelmed.
I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s insane. It’s huge. Beta compounds are nothing like this. Paradise Hole is nothing at all. We drive until the main part of Dark City — the downtown — passes and suburbs pick up again. We drive up to a gate and then through it, down a driveway that lasts miles and up to a house… I don’t see much of it. Everything’s getting dark.
“What did you do?” I croak.
“Just a mild sedative.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Too late for that.” His eyes flash to me. They’re light brown, maybe hazel. He’s a pretty man. Too pretty. He doesn’t have any scars. Not like Adam and me. “Besides, you need to sleep.”
“Where’s Adam?”
“The Berserker needs to heal.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“You’re not alone,” he lies to me. He gives me an awkward pat on the shoulder, a piss poor excuse for comfort. I cringe away from it and he chuffs, “Promise you, we won’t hurt you, Omega. You’re our Berserker’s Omega…”
“You’re gonna use me. He’s gonna let you as soon as he wakes up.”
Peate chuckles low and gravelly. “He’s been waitin’ for you his whole life and talkin’ about you ever since we got the report that an Omega with red hair had been spotted in Paradise Hole. Poor bastard was shittin’ himself with nerves, tryin’ to guess what you’d be like, the shit he’d buy for you to make you comfortable here. Doubt he’d let anybody use you for anythin’ other than worshippin’ — though y’all were gone a long time. You do somethin’ to piss him off?”
Only a hundred things. “He’s gonna put me in the dungeon.” I start to get all weepy because, well, I guess that’s just the kinda week I’m having.Weeks. Ten of them — or has it been twelve by now? It feels like I’ve known Adam for a lifetime.
“Doubt it.”
“I knew his sister’s name. The man in the cave told me…”
“Jesus Christ. Gonna up the sedative.”
“Just give me my knife.”
“Your knife?”
“He gave me a knife. It’s mine. I want it.”
“Sorry, kiddo, we searched the grounds, but we didn’t find any knife.”
