Chapter 44
The next thing Grace knew, she was waking up in the mass of wires, her wrists strung up tightly so her feet barely touched the ground. She didn't even remember blacking out, but it looked like the rest of the group had suffered similar treatment as she blinked her eyes into focus, seeing her father next to her, then Anne, then Hal and Maggie. Ben was on her other side, as was Weaver. She could hear them groaning, groggily waking up to a nightmare. She couldn't see the others but guessed they were somewhere behind her.
Tom lifted his head, dazed, seeing Anne hanging semi-unconscious beside him.
"Anne, are you all right?"
"Yeah," she said, breathing heavily. "I'm okay."
"I think it's safe to say Doctor Glass will never be okay again, Tom."
Karen's vexing tones emerged through the wires, followed by her smirking face.
"Don't listen to her, Dad!" cried Ben. "She's just trying to –"
Suddenly, the wires surrounding Ben wrapped around his head and gagged his mouth, making Grace jump.
"That'll be enough, Ben!" Karen chastised as poor Ben's muffled cries echoed through the chamber.
Grace felt her heart thumping. "Leave him alone!" she yelled at Karen.
Karen let out an infuriating giggle. "Grace Mason. Don't you ever learn your lesson? I warned you that you'd get more of your friends killed."
That stung. Dai's mangled body was still lying there, on the other side of the room. Those feelings came rushing back, like with Jimmy, like with Jamil. It was like poison. Had she not been lost in girlish fantasies of a boy she didn't even know, she could have seen the skitter that attacked Dai. She could have stopped it.
"Grace, don't." Her father warned her sternly, practically reading her mind. "Don't listen to her. It's not your fault."
"It is coincidental though, is it not?" smirked Karen, coming closer to Grace, circling her. "Poor mommy. Poor Jimmy. Jamil. Now Dai. Each of these people died by your side. And you did nothing? What is wrong with you?"
Grace felt the warm tears spill down her cheeks. She remembered each death so vividly, like they had just died with Dai. She'd been right there with all of them. Poison. She felt like poison.
"What did you do to me?" she cried furiously. She could tell Karen had put that poison there.
Karen laughed cruelly, circling her. With each step, Grace felt the anger bubbling up inside her, then Karen stopped in front of her, her malicious smile growing.
"Nothing. That's the beauty. We didn't put anything inside you, Grace. All I planted in there was self-doubt. You did the work for us. You didn't save those people because you're weak. And that's it."
"She's not weak," a voice behind her spoke up. Miles. She felt instant relief hearing his voice.
Karen glanced between them, a knowing smirk colouring her face. "Who's this, Grace?" She slowly walked behind her, Grace craning her neck to see her approach Miles who was hanging in the wires just like the rest of them. "I sense something between you…" She grinned, running her fingers across Miles' cheekbone as he glared at her. "Watch yourself, handsome. With her track record, you won't be around long."
Grace struggled, hating the thought of Karen touching him, especially to spite her. She pulled her wrists towards herself, hoping to snap the bonds, but the wires tightened around her, making her wrists throb with pain. She let her arms go limp in the wires, inwardly fighting away tears.
"It wasn't my fault," she sniffed quietly.
Karen shot back over to her. "Yes, it was."
She felt the poison swirling in her stomach, her chest, her throat, until she was spitting it back at Karen.
"None of it was my fault! It was yours. You did this. You and your masters. You invaded us, manipulated us, tortured us!" She seethed at Karen. "And I'll make you pay."
Suddenly, Karen grabbed Grace's throat and squeezed, making her choke and splutter.
"Karen, stop it!" Tom snapped.
Karen slowly released Grace, leaving her throat burning, and walked over to him.
"My master has tried to be so patient with you, Tom. But he finds you a constant nuisance."
"I'm glad to be of service," scoffed Tom. "Must have scared the hell out of him, though. What, was he afraid to show his ugly face?"
"On the contrary. He's right here."
Karen turned her head as a long arm pulled back the curtain of wires beside her, revealing the familiar overlord's flat, grey face, those sunken cheeks and forehead grooves making him look permanently angry. Grace was partly relieved when he retreated back into the shadows to observe. After what they did to him at the hospital, she feared his retaliation.
"He's quite curious how you found this facility and knew we would be here."
"I bet he is."
"You'll tell us everything."
Tom laughed bitterly. "You might as well just get it over with and kill me, 'cause I'm not gonna tell you a damn thing."
Karen seemed unimpressed. "You're going to die, Tom."
A skitter behind her clicked. Grace imagined it was chuckling.
"As will all of you. I'm afraid my master will insist on it."
Grace looked back at Ben, still gagged, the fear emanating in both of their eyes.
"But first, I'm sure you and your daughter remember this…" She turned to the skitter behind her and took a long glowing staff from him. "...and the pain it can inflict."
Grace breathed shakily. Oh, god. She recognised it. They used it to torture her on the airship. Tom recognised it too, his body recoiling at the sight of it. He struggled in the wires, but it was futile.
Karen slowly approached him, enjoying the obvious fear in Tom's body language. Then she poked the staff into Tom's chest, the electricity sparking and crackling. Nothing prepared Grace for her father's screams. She hadn't heard him scream like that since the alien bug was pulled from his eyeball.
She squeezed her eyes shut, crying. Anne was crying. Everyone was yelling. This was it. Karen was going to torture and kill them all. This chamber would be their tomb and they would never escape it.
"NO! STOP IT!" Hal bellowed furiously, struggling in his bonds, swinging hopelessly to get to their dad.
Karen did as he said, removing the staff and ending Tom's torture. But she wasn't done. Grace watched with horror as she slowly approached her brother, that smile still on her face.
"I've been wanting to do this for quite some time now," she sneered, pointing the staff at him.
Grace prepared herself for the crackle of the electricity, the screams of her brother in agony as the wires lowered Hal down towards Karen. But instead, Karen grabbed his head and pulled his mouth towards hers.
What the hell was she doing? Maggie screamed at her to get away from him as Hal struggled against Karen's forceful kiss, but she was soon met with the same treatment as Ben, wires snaking around her mouth, silencing her.
Grace could only watch in confusion as Hal stopped struggling and Karen finally broke her lips away from Hal's, looking disgustingly pleased with herself. Her gaze remained on Maggie, as if that entire act had been to spite her.
"Tell us everything you know."
"Go to hell," Tom's strained voice replied.
Grace kept looking at Hal, hanging there. His eyes were closed. Was he breathing? What did she do to him?
Karen walked away from him, everyone watching her, wondering who was next. She stopped in front of Anne, watching the fear light up in her eyes.
"We'll save Doctor Glass for last, I think. For old times' sake." Then she turned around to zap Captain Weaver. His screams echoed throughout the chamber.
"That the best you got?" he goaded, in typical Weaver defiance.
Everyone knew how Karen would react to that. He got a second shock from the staff, his yells making Grace wince as the captain's entire body lit up and convulsed.
"Is he enjoying watching you torture us?" Tom said angrily, noticing the Overlord's emotionless face observing them through the wires.
"He doesn't care any more about you than you would care about a mosquito buzzing around your face, Tom," Karen hissed. "You're just an irritant to him."
She slowly made her way back to Anne.
"I was hoping to avoid this."
Anne gasped. "No! Don't touch me!"
Tom pulled at his bonds, kicked, grunted. Sweat dripped down his face as he fought to get free.
Karen gently raised the staff towards Anne, then paused. Anne whimpered as Karen put her hand over the doctor's belly, then slowly lowered her ear to Anne's stomach.
"She's pregnant, Tom," she said softly, turning to look at him. "She's pregnant with your child."
Grace's breath hitched in her throat. That couldn't be right, could it? It was just another of Karen's tricks. But Anne was crying, shaking her head at Tom apologetically, rife with guilt. His face was pretty revealing in itself.
"Oh." said Karen. "You didn't know."
She turned to Anne again, raising the staff, the end glowing blue as it charged up to shock her. Except it wasn't just Anne she was hurting now.
"All right! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" Tom pleaded. "Just, please, don't."
A loud screech interrupted them as something launched into Karen. Before Grace could see what was happening, her bonds released and everyone tumbled to the floor. She instinctively found her dad in the mess of wires and they helped each other up, before he checked on Anne. Then they sprinted out of the wires and into the chamber to see what was going on.
Skitters were scrambling across the walls, chasing and attacking each other. The Rebel Skitters. Finally! One propelled right over their heads, making them duck to avoid it. Red Eye was battling the Overlord, scratching, biting, and hitting him as the taller alien grappled to throw him off.
In the madness, Grace saw Lee and Tector tied up next to Dai's body. She signalled for Miles to help her as they both ran to free them.
"Thanks, chica," Lee patted her arm before picking up a discarded rifle and joining the fight with Tector.
Grace was acutely aware of Dai's corpse beside her. She could hardly bring herself to look at him. Her friend. He didn't deserve this. Miles clocked her face and squeezed her shoulder, a little too hard. It pulled her back into the moment though.
She nodded at him and as soon as he moved, Grace saw her father behind him. He had the staff in his hands, covered in dark moisture. Blood. The overlord lay below him, mangled and crushed to death. By Tom.
It looked like the fight was already over, as most of the enemy skitters had either retreated or been slaughtered. The overlord was dead. And Karen…
"It's not over, Tom!" Karen screamed from across the chamber. "You'll never win!" She ran, or rather climbed, swiftly up the chamber walls to escape like the coward she was.
Grace ran to hug her father, only to realise that Red Eye had been one of the skitters to fall in the battle. Ben quickly took Red Eye's side, sitting him up, but his body was covered in blood. His clicks and buzzes sounded weak, but Ben seemed to understand him. His mouth, like a scaly ant's mandibles, softly opened and closed as if trying to communicate. He was almost human-like in death, holding his arm out to Tom like a wounded soldier would to his fellow serviceman. A strained fizzing noise emanated from him like a raspy whisper.
"Keep the fight going," Ben translated.
They watched the light in his one good eye start to fade, then his arm and head dropped, and the life was snuffed out.
A surviving rebel joined behind them, communicating something to Ben.
Ben got back up to his feet."We have to go."
Captain Weaver kicked back into action. "Anthony, Pope, get those charges ready. Everybody else, move to the cave. We're gonna blow this pop stand."
Grace let out a gasp as she remembered Hal. She turned to see he was still lying in the pile of wires. Maggie was trying to help him up. She immediately ran over to help, Miles in tow behind her and they lifted him up together.
"There's stretchers in the truck," Miles explained as they carried Hal back towards the caves. "There's one for your friend too."
Grace nodded, noting that Weaver and Tector were also carrying Dai back to the surface. She was grateful he wouldn't be buried here, under the rubble they were about to create to decimate this weapon. They were taking him back where he belonged. With his family.
Once they were far enough away, on the road back home, they blew the explosives. Grace could feel the blast, the heat of the fire and the white glow that lit up the sky. Then the sound of pure destruction as the building collapsed in on itself, but she didn't look back. She was riding with Hal and Dai in the back of the truck, her concentration fully on them.
Maggie was holding Hal tightly, her eyes watering as she held back the fear and worry she so clearly felt. Grace was beside them, with Dai's body on the stretcher in front of her. She took Dai's hand, a comfort he hadn't been able to receive in his last moments. She silently told him she was sorry, but not for causing his death. She no longer believed she was the cause. She no longer blamed herself for any of the deaths of her friends and family.
It wasn't her fault. Her only crime was feeling too much. The true enemy was out there, and they were counting on her self-destruction. Well, not anymore. The way forward now was to avenge every death the enemy had caused. She was going to come for them. She was going to make them regret ever stepping foot on this earth.
As long as she had breath left in her lungs.
She wasn't dead yet, but they soon would be.