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But then a tall, lanky dude with bright red hair and a face full of freckles and scars stepped towards Ryker.
“I guess that’d be me,” he sneered, looked Ryker up and down, and hawked a loogie into the dust at our feet. “Now it’s time for you to learn it.”
And with that, he launched himself at Ryker, and all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER4
At first itseemed like just his crew was going to join in, but the entire group got in on the action.
Thackeray laughed with glee and egged them all on from the sidelines. The guards lined up in front of him, their electronic black batons at the ready to handle any of the kids who got out of control.
And that’s all they were, really. Just kids like me and Penny and Ryker. None of them could have been older than nineteen, and a couple of them looked younger than me.
But they were rough, rougher than I’d thought at first. One girl, from the redhead’s crew, ran towards me and dove at my midsection. She knocked us both to the ground and straddled me, punching me in the head and shoulders as I held up my arms to ward off her blows.
It happened so fast that it caught me off guard and took the wind from my chest. I felt as if a hand was gripping my ribcage. I couldn’t fill my lungs with air, no matter how hard I tried to suck it in.
“You fucked it all up! We were supposed to have a few days off!” the girl howled, trying to claw at my face. I grabbed her wrists and twisted them, pushed hard, and spread her hands apart.
“We didn’t do a fucking thing,” I snarled back and kneed her right in the pussy. She grunted in pain but kept struggling against me. I kneed her harder and leveraged my weight, flipped her and rolled her onto her back. Her bright green eyes were wide with fear and her pale skin flushed with blotchy red patches. “They forced us here against our will!”
“Weallwere,” she hissed and fought against me. I thought she was about to give in and I was going to win, but another girl who leaped onto my back and yanked at my hair, blindsiding me.
A third girl slammed her foot into my side and a fourth tackled all of us, rolling us into a ball of fists, teeth, and fingernails.
I barely noticed Ryker being swarmed or Penny getting the shit kicked out of her, but they were in my peripheral vision. I registered their own attacks, and I couldn’t do anything to help. Ryker was holding his own, though, but Penny needed help.
Penny neededmyhelp. She was weaker than me, and hadn’t had enough time to mentally prepare for any of this. She needed me to be strong and keep fighting back.
So I tried harder. As the girls kicked and punched, something broke inside of me. Something snapped, like a taut cable fragmenting under the stress. Like the time I shot Reg, where something else took over my mind and changed me into a new entity. I lost control of my movements and let the darkness inside of me take control.
And I fought harder than I ever fought before. I punched and kicked anyone and anything I could contact. I channeled all the feelings I’d been holding back, everything I’d found out about Reg and Rick and the Organization. Every snide remark by somebody at school, every time I was pushed around or tortured by my classmates or even my family, it was all in there somewhere. Stuck, trapped, dying to get out.
And I finally had the chance to release it. Now that I was fighting for my life, I gave into my animalistic base instincts and fought with tooth and nail to keep all the bitches off me. To save myself and to save my best friend.
Somehow it worked. It turned out that not being super skinny, having done a lot of chores over the years, and being a runner gave me endurance and strength that I drew from to overcome the attackers.
I saw each girl like a new challenge to destroy, a new enemy to take down, and I methodically went after them, one by one.
The green-eyed girl was the last one. She was the smartest and held back while I spent my energy beating the others. I punched one girl in the face so hard I felt her nose give way under my fist, like a crumbling ruin breaking down under the blunt force of a hammer.
Another girl took a kick to the stomach, doubled over, and gave me the chance to bring my knee up to her face. She turned at the last minute, but I still connected with her temple and she went down, collapsed in a pile of flesh, bone, and grey silky lingerie.
I took others down in a blur. A half-formed image tinged red with rage.
And finally, the bitch, green eyes. The one who’d started with me in the first place.
“Come on, give up now,” she sneered and stepped around the five girls laying on the ground at our feet. “You’re just making the old man hard, you know.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, stepping around to match her movements, my hands up instinctually guarding myself and ready to strike. I’d watched enough of the Kings training and the Organization fight nights to have a sense of what to do. Now that I was actually doing it, and doing it well, the adrenaline curve just fueled the darkness.
“Thackeray,” she said, and nudged her chin in his direction. “He fucking loves this shit. He gets us to beat the crap out of each other all the time. I think it’s the only thing that gives him a stiffy at this point.”
“Ihaveto win. They’re hurting my friend,” I said, my eyes darting over to where Penny was desperately trying to fend off two girls at once time. “She needs me.”
“If you give in, you can help her,” green eyes said, softening and slowing down. “I promise. I’ll go easy on you and then you can go help your friend.”
I almost believed her and wondered if she believed it herself or if she was being deliberately deceptive.
