Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

Sure enough, he lets go my throat and scrambles back from me, thrashing as the acid eats into his intestines and thighs. Pools of red muscle bubble and soon I see bone. I keep after him, rushing around him to keep the pillow over his face as he tangles himself in the sheets from his thrashing.

“There’s a neutralizing agent,” I hiss into his ear. “Tell me where the Gold is, and I’ll use it.” I pull the pillow from his face. He tries to scream out for help, but I shove it back down before he can. “How are they gonna treat you if you got no legs? They don’t got replacements, I wager. You’ll be a freak. A crawling, leaking freak. Talk fast or you’ll have nubs, oldboy.”

I pull back the pillow.

“Can. F-f-f-fourth l-l-evel. W-we sealed her in the old jail. M-m-make it stop. Make it STOP….”

I pat my dress. “Sorry. Musta left it in my pants.” I push the pillow over Duncan’s mouth as the acid eats on. I don’t know why, but I leave his eyes uncovered so he can watch me watch him die. Just feels right.

The acid is something mean. In less than a minute, it eats through his intestines, then his spinal column as well as his legs.

Soon he’s dead.

I’ve got one tooth left.

I stand over his corpse slapping myself, trying to shake off the stupor of that damn wine. There’s no shaking it off, it seems. They drugged us good. I hope I got the Reds in the mines just as bad. How long will it take for them to start teetering? For Volga to get ahold of one of their pikes? How many of the girls will have had the guts to use the teeth? That’s the real concern. Freckles and Lion, sure. But the rest? I didn’t think of the timing. With as many Red Hand men as I’ve seen around here, they’ll be butchered unless I free Victra.

I gotta move.

I search Duncan’s body and strip his pistol, making sure the railgun’s magazine is fitted right. Scouring the house, I find a well-worn pulseRifle and an Obsidian axe. I leave the axe, and try to recall how Volga taught me to prep a rifle as we schlepped through the highlands. I get it wrong twice before relaxing and letting my hands remember on their own. The rifle makes a droning sound as it signals it is ready. Lovely.

Rifle shouldered, pistol tucked into my skirts, I head out the front door.

Six Red Hands stand waiting for me on the walkway outside. Tails shivers amidst them. She points at me with a finger, mumbling something inaudible.

Shit.

I STRAIN AGAINST THE ROPE that ties me to the mess hall table as the blood-crusted hammer hits my pinky. Pain explodes in my head. My stupor shatters into a thousand pixels. I reel back, gasping for air. The bone’s busted. The skin’s swelling and trickles of blood are leaking around the dent the hammer made. Harmony twirls the hammer and leans back. Several more of her boys prowl around the old Gray mess hall. They don’t seem to mind Duncan’s dead.

I could spit the last tooth in her face right now, but it’s not just my life I’d be trading.

“I’m waiting for your answer, girl,” she says. “You got nine more fingers. Ten toes. Two tits. One cunny. And then we get creative. How’d you kill Duncan?”

I do nothing, because I’ve been prisoner enough times to know doing something gets you hit again. “I hid a flask of acid in my shoe. Your boys didn’t check my shoes.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me. They’re your idiots.”

“And you just happened to have acid on you?”

“It’s war, ain’t it? Fun things floatin’ around.”

“Why’d you kill him?”

The woman seems to be expecting me to spout some ideology, or whimper about how unfair it is. Harmony’s evil creeps along my spine as I meet eyes with her and shrug. Figure she only likes one kind of person. “Don’t need a husband.”

She surprises her men with a laugh. A door creaks and she looks up. “Picker,” she says. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

He goes rigid, glancing at the other men, at the hammer. “What’s what, boss?”

“What’s what is that upstairs, poor Duncan’s guts are melted through.” She looks at me with a little smirk. “Marriage ain’t for everyone. But when I ask for breeders, it ain’t so I can lose fighters, is it, Picker?”

“No.”

“

No, what?”