The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (27 page)

The pain as the slender bone that connected my right shoulder to the rest of my skeletal system shattered was excruciating, but I threw myself forward and slammed my forehead into the baton-wielder's face. I felt a moment of satisfaction as the third man collapsed to the ground, but I'd once again turned my back on the main body of enforcers.

The sound of footsteps behind me was all the warning I got, but I made the most I could out of what I had. My right arm was useless now. I spun to my left hoping I was fast enough to beat my next attacker, only to gasp a split second later as a knife entered my stomach and skidded off one of my vertebrae.

I slammed my knee into the fourth guy's crotch, but the guy behind him hit me in the chest with a rusty mace and I hit the ground. I meant to bounce right back up and continue fighting, but I was having a hard time breathing. No matter how hard I tried, my body refused to obey my frantic orders. I tried to roll out of the way of the kick I saw coming, but the enforcers had me surrounded by that point and there was nowhere else for me to go.

I counted four kicks before someone connected with my head and I lost consciousness.

Chapter 20

I probably should have died—I would have if not for my nanites. We were far enough off of the beaten path that nobody found me, but I woke up just as the sun started to go down.

For the briefest of moments I was confused by my surroundings, but then everything came rushing back. Williams and the other guard were both dead, and when I'd last seen Brennan he'd been on the ground, vulnerable and quite possibly dying from having his ribs re-injured.

I pulled myself up to my feet, and then almost fell back down as a wave of dizziness assaulted me. My nanites had managed to fuse my bones back into place so that I could use all of my limbs, and they'd repaired enough of the rest of the damage to allow me to regain consciousness, but I was still probably suffering from a concussion.

I took in my surroundings, and nearly threw up as I turned my head. Williams' body was still lying there where he'd fallen after being shot, but his rifle was gone. It was a good bet that the other guard was just around the corner, but I was too weak to drag either of them back to the headquarters building, and there was no point searching for him when I already knew that Piter's people had grabbed his rifle.

Brennan's wheelchair was still lying on its side, but there was no sign of the enforcers I'd taken down—no corpses to prove that I'd put up a fight—and there was no sign of Brennan.

The trip back to the headquarters building was a nightmare. There were several times when I thought I was going to fall over and puke my guts out, but the further I got away from the scene of the ambush the better I felt.

As I walked, I checked myself over. My dress was ripped and dirty, but all of the blood on it looked like it belonged to the guys who'd jumped me. That was good because it meant that I wouldn't have to explain away stab wounds that had healed in a fraction of the time they should have required.

My face was puffy—apparently the nanites had been too busy dealing with more severe wounds to get to the surface damage—but that was the least of my worries. I needed a reason why the enforcers who'd attacked us would leave me alive, a reason better than just sloppiness.

They should have taken me along with Brennan. If they were really smart, they would have taken Williams' and the other guy's bodies too. That would have left Tyrell and Jax with no real idea what had happened to us.

I tried to remember how many enemies I'd been up against there at the end, but it was all too fuzzy for me to be sure. There were flashes of things that were crystal clear, but the blows to my head had rendered most of the experience unusable.

Maybe they'd simply brought too few people to get the job done. They would have needed a couple of guys to carry Brennan, and another two guys to retrieve anyone I'd killed or severely injured. I remembered crushing the throat of at least one guy.

I stumbled back to the headquarters building as Tyrell arrived—obviously returning from the bore.

"Skye! What happened?"

"It's Brennan. We went to the condemned building on the south side of the compound, and we got jumped. There were enforcers who'd been hiding inside of it—they lured us close by making it sound like a child had been trapped inside."

Jax had also arrived while I was talking, and his face went white as he realized what had happened. He started to run towards the secure entrance—obviously planning on rounding up a group of guards to go after Brennan—but then stopped as he realized that leaving would mean he wouldn't hear the rest of my debriefing.

Tyrell followed my gaze. "Go get your men—I'll find out the rest of what you need to know."

Jax didn't need to be told twice. I watched him leave, and then realized that I was having trouble maintaining my focus. By the time I came back to myself, Jax had disappeared and there wasn't any way to know for sure how long I'd zoned out, but it was long enough that Tyrell noticed.

"Are you okay, Skye?"

"I—I took a pretty bad blow to the head, but I think I'll be okay. I'm just having a hard time keeping my thoughts headed down a single track. That doesn't matter though. They have Brennan. We need to get him back."

"Who has him? Do you have any idea who attacked you?"

I shook my head slowly, relieved that I didn't feel an overpowering urge to throw up. "They were armed, and most of them were big. I think a couple of them had rifles, but mostly they looked like enforcers from the other territories. They took out Williams with an arrow. No…first they killed the other guy. They waited until he was out of sight around the corner of the building, and then they took him out. Williams was next so that there wouldn't be any gunshots, and then they rushed Brennan and me.

"I tried to get him out of there, but the wheelchair was too slow. They hit me with a rock—knocked me down—and then it was too late to run. I killed one of them—I think I crushed his throat. I might have managed to get another couple of hits in, but there were too many of them. They knocked me to the ground and then the last thing I remember is being kicked in the head.

"I'm sorry, Tyrell. I tried to save him. Jax was right—we never should have let Brennan run around without more cover. I didn't even have a weapon."

Tyrell shook his head. "This isn't your fault, Skye. You did the best you could. To be honest, none of us thought that Brennan was really in danger inside of the compound—not that kind of danger, at least—not even Jax. Our precautions were mostly meant to deal with a disgruntled worker or a single agent from one of the other territories. The compound was supposed to be secure."

"It's still my fault. I should have been armed. I need a rifle—need to be a part of the rescue mission."

"No, Skye, that would be a very bad idea. You're obviously hurt and you've probably got a concussion. Jax and the others will handle this—we'll pull people off of the barricades if we have to. The last thing that Brennan would want right now is for you to risk your life for no reason."

He'd gently grabbed my arm while he'd been talking, and was pulling me in the direction of the secure entrance to the headquarters building, but I twisted my body and tore my arm free.

"No. With your blessing or without it, I'm going along."

The sound of a slide being racked behind me brought me around to find that Jax and Alan had just exited the building and Jax had his weapon pointed at me.

"I'm sorry if I'm not giving you enough credit, Skye, but you aren't going anywhere. At this point all we know is that Brennan is missing and you're the last person to have seen him. You're going to go down to your room and let Tyrell check your injuries while we go investigate the scene of the attack."

The desperate worry that had been driving me up until that moment didn't disappear, but it slid into the back seat as I stared coldly at Jax. The distance was right on the edge of doable. My adrenals were dumping adrenaline into my system by the bucketful, and I was going to be inhumanly fast. There was at least a sixty-percent chance that I could close and neutralize Jax before he could get an aimed shot off.

The tightly-controlled part of me that had sworn I would never be a victim again, that I would always maintain control of my environment, was screaming at me to do it, to take him down and then tear through the rest of the compound if that was what it took to get what I wanted. It was a seductive song, but I forced it out of my mind. Beating Jax to within an inch of his life wouldn't save Brennan.

There was only one other card left for me to play. I turned to Tyrell. "Please, this is a big mistake. I need to be out there helping bring Brennan back."

He considered for several seconds before shaking his head. "No, Jax is right. You need to be patched up, and it would be foolish for us to put a weapon in your hands before figuring out what really happened. I'm sorry, Skye, but you're going to have to let Jax and the others do their job."

I was shaking from the effort of overruling my desire to lash out, but I bowed my head in surrender. There wasn't any other choice—not really. If I wanted Brennan saved as quickly as possible, then I was going to have to let them lock me up.

"Fine. Confine me to my quarters, but I didn't have anything to do with him disappearing—I nearly got my head bashed in trying to protect him."

Jax looked like he wanted to gun me down right there and avoid the problems he'd been convinced I was going to create from the first day he'd seen me, but he just motioned for me to head inside.

"You'd better be telling the truth—about everything that's happened since the first day you arrived—or I'll execute you myself."

Chapter 21

Five minutes later I was sitting in my room wincing as Tyrell prodded the bone-deep bruises that were all that was left of the broken bones after several hours of my nanites doing their thing. He concluded the examination by using a small mirror to reflect light into my eyes.

"You're fortunate that you have such a hard head. You seem to have a mild concussion, but I think you're going to be okay once you've had a couple of days to rest."

I didn't respond. Jax and Tyrell could lock me up, but they couldn't make me like it, not while Brennan was out there needing every person we had to rescue him.

"If you can stomach it, you should probably get some food into you. You're hungry, aren't you?"

The truth was that I was famished. Lexis' visit earlier that morning had resulted in me missing breakfast, and I'd been unconscious for both lunch and dinner. I didn't want to give Tyrell the satisfaction of being right, but I also knew that I needed to keep my strength up. The nanites had been forced to gather building materials from elsewhere in my body to make their most recent round of repairs, and if I wasn't careful to keep up with the rate at which they were cannibalizing the rest of my body, I could end up in real trouble.

I nodded fractionally and Tyrell left to get me something from the cafeteria. As my door swung shut I confirmed what I'd been suspecting—a pair of guards had been stationed outside of my room to make sure that I stayed put.

It took Tyrell longer than I expected to return, but when he did, he was carrying a big loaf of bread so hot that it was still steaming. Back home plain bread would have been some kind of punishment, but I was so hungry I didn't even care that it didn't have any butter on it. I ripped big chunks off of the loaf and stuffed them into my mouth as quickly as I could chew and swallow.

Tyrell watched me eat for several seconds before moving away from the wall where he'd been leaning.

"There is a lot more to you than meets the eye, Skye. Don't think I haven't started noticing some discrepancies where you're concerned."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you? I'm overjoyed that you saved Brennan that first day outside of the pipe room, but nobody your age should be able to take down someone twice their size that easily."

"I never said that it was easy."

That earned me a cold smile. "You didn't have to. I talked to Beth about what happened. She said that you moved like—and I quote—'greased lightning'."

I shrugged, moving gingerly to maintain the illusion that I hadn't yet recovered from the beating I'd just received.

"I have to be fast. When you're my size, everyone is bigger and stronger than you. If I don't move quick and make sure that my first blow or two counts, then I don't stand a chance."

I smiled as I said that, trying to lighten the mood, but Tyrell didn't return my grin.

"I didn't just talk to Beth, Skye. Jax tested your skills out a couple of days ago and is convinced that you were holding back on him. He says that there's something about your fighting style that reminds him of something, but he hasn't been able to place it quite yet. Don't worry though, Jax is like a pit bull once he has ahold of something like this. He'll eventually figure out where you learned how to fight."

I was still debating the best way to respond when Jax entered without knocking and saved me from having to answer. Jax looked at me and frowned.

"If you're through with her, we should go talk."

Tyrell shook his head. "She's not going anywhere, so even if your fears prove right and it turns out that she was behind the abduction, she still won't be able to get word out to whoever she's working for. Go ahead and report—her reaction may just give us a clue as to her real intentions."

Jax still didn't look happy, but he nodded. The line of succession inside of a group like this was rarely very cut and dried, but apparently Tyrell had the lines of power all sewed up.

"It doesn't look good, Tyrell. We found the spot where the ambush occurred. The wheelchair was pretty beat up, and there were blood spots where they took down our people. I've got a team keeping an eye on the building, but I can't believe that they would take Brennan unless they figured they had a way back out of the compound—probably the same way they got in. I've got two more teams walking the perimeter of the compound, but I can't imagine that they'll find anything."