Without Hesitation, Talia Jager [warren buffett book recommendations txt] 📗
- Author: Talia Jager
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When I woke I didn’t know how long I had slept. Could have been minutes or hours. My bruised and probably broken body was stiff from sleeping on the cold floor. A loud growl cramped my stomach, so I knew it had been long enough to get hungry. It was quiet and they didn’t come. Nobody came. I sat up and yanked at the chain. I kicked the wall. And when that didn’t work, I sat against the wall and stared at nothing.
The quiet made me think about things that I didn’t want to think about. The kiss I shared with Everleigh was among those things. It played over and over in my mind. I tried to push it down. Tried to block it out. Tried not to think about it. But the more I did, the more it surfaced, taunting me and making me feel guilty and naïve.
How warm she was. How soft she was. How perfectly our lips had fit together.
How could she betray me? Those kisses were nothing but empty promises. Nothing but lust.
I hung onto that anger when Caspar’s men finally came back and took off the shackles only to hook me up to different ones. There was no give in the chains that spread me out like an X. Then, for who knows how long, I was punched, kicked, and even whipped a couple times. When none of that worked, they got out a chain and whacked me across the back with it. My mind went to that hatred and betrayal I felt for Everleigh and stayed there. I fought to stay conscious so that I could hear what they were saying.
“What if she really doesn’t know?”
“Or maybe she was trained to withstand torture?”
“Let me have some fun with her, boss.” I think it was Lorcan who spoke, but my head was pounding so hard, I wasn’t positive.
I felt a hand on my butt, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“No. Give her some water, so she doesn’t die of dehydration. Let her go hungry a little longer, then we’ll up the tactics.”
The next thing I knew someone was pouring water in my face. I wanted to refuse, but I was thirsty, so I gulped it down.
They left me hanging there, but that was okay. I slipped into the darkness that had been waiting for me.
Chapter Six
Akacia
As the voices neared, I stayed still, wanting to get a sense of what was going on.
“I’m telling you, she looks better than she did before. She was all cut up, bruised, and swollen, but her skin looks almost flawless now,” a voice said.
I was rolled onto my back and someone’s rough hands pushed my hair away from my face. “Could it be…no…maybe…”
Caspar was close. I could smell garlic on his breath.
My eyes popped open. I lunged forward, grabbing Caspar by the neck and squeezing. I kneed him in the gut and forced him onto his back. I pressed harder and his face turned a deep shade of red.
Someone pulled me off of him. I caught a blow to the face and tasted blood. I waited for the next blow, but instead Caspar grabbed my face. “Watch that wound. Let me know how it looks later,” he wheezed. “No water or food today.”
When they left, I pushed myself against the wall and closed my eyes, welcoming the darkness again.
I was being dragged somewhere. I felt weak and hungry, but not in any extreme pain. They placed me on a cold table.
This was new. Now what?
“Run the machine,” Caspar ordered.
Machine? What machine? What were they doing? I didn’t ask though. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. A hum came from below and a strange blue light filled the room and they both disappeared.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Caspar said from somewhere to the far right.
My eyes darted to him wondering what he had just found.
“There was a rumor that your father had finally perfected nanites to be used for healing,” he said, almost in awe, as he examined my skin. “It was said that someone close to him had been mortally injured and he had fixed them. It must have been you. You were hurt, almost dead, and your father must have injected you with the nanites. They heal you. Not immediately, but quickly.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but my head was swirling with questions.
“I’m going to take a sample of your blood.” He pulled out a syringe and jabbed it into my arm and filled the vial.
“Lorcan, we need to change our methods.” Caspar looked back down at me. “Unless of course, you’re ready to talk.”
I turned away from him. I knew nothing, but he’d never believe me.
“Take her.”
This time I was put in some sort of choke collar, forcing me to stand. I was weak. Beyond exhausted. I no longer cared about anything. I was given only a few sips of water. Hunger pains gripped my stomach. Every time I fell asleep, my body would go slack, causing the collar to choke me, forcing me awake and to my feet once again.
I still had no answers for them when they came to question me.
“She’s still weak and tired, so the nanites do nothing for her there,” Caspar said to himself more than anybody else, like he was experimenting on me. “You can still die, you know.”
My mind wasn’t clear enough to think about what he was saying. I didn’t care. I wished they’d just kill me and get it over with.
They released the collar and I fell to the floor, too weak to stand. Lorcan grabbed a fistful of my hair, dragged me across the room, and shoved my face into a basin of water and held me under. My lungs burned. After a few seconds, he yanked my head out. I gasped for breath.
“Answers? No?”
My head was submerged again. I thrashed, trying to break free. He held me under a bit longer this time, until I started to kick and grab at his hands.
“Anything?” he asked, once he’d yanked me out.
I fought against him, but he easily overpowered me and plunged my face into the water again. Water forced its way past lips that I desperately tried to keep shut. It burned as it trickled down my trachea. The fingers in my drenched hair tightened and yanked my head out of the water. I tried to breathe, but all I could do was cough.
The next dunk was longer and my lungs screamed for air. Be strong. Stay strong. Don’t let them break you. I focused on the betrayal. My hatred. That was what kept me from just giving in.
Two more times he dunked me, and just when I felt myself slipping, Caspar yelled for them to quit.
“Let her think about this. Tomorrow, we’ll start cutting off fingers or toes, maybe taking some teeth. I suggest, Empress, you think about if protecting this information is worth losing your body parts.”
Lorcan dragged me over to the wall and locked the chain around my ankle. Wet and exhausted, I succumbed to the darkness quickly.
Chapter Seven
Everleigh
I sat up in bed gasping for breath. The nightmare had woken me up again. Akacia was falling and I couldn’t catch her. I couldn’t save her.
“Just a dream,” I said out loud to myself over and over again. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just a dream. She was out there, with that creep, and I was responsible for that.
At first, I tried not to let this torment me. I was the commander of the ship. I had made the best decision under those circumstances and I needed to move on. But the weight of the decision crushed me.
I had to fix this and the only way I could fix it was to kill Caspar.
My every waking moment was spent thinking up a plan to kill him. It wasn’t going to be easy and I might die doing it, but I had to try. It was the only way to rescue Akacia and keep my people safe. I knew she hated me. I doubted she’d ever forgive me. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.
“This won’t work, Ever,” Huxley said when I pitched a plan. “It won’t work. I know you’re hurting, but we can’t go in there with a half-assed plan like this. We’ll all get killed.”
“Screw you.”
Huxley sighed. “Ever—”
“What if you could rescue her? Kill him later, but rescue her now?” Briar interrupted.
I looked up at her. “What?”
“What if we were to take the Artemis, cloaked of course, get close enough to Caspar’s ship and jump. We could grab her and jump back out of there.”
I stared at her for a minute and then walked to the window. “His ship is ten times the size of ours. How will we know where to jump to?”
“I’m pretty sure I know where they would keep her. Well, I’ve narrowed it down to two places,” Briar said.
“How do we know he still has her or hasn’t killed her?” Zabe asked and I shot him a look.
“She is alive,” Briar blurted.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
She hesitated.
“What?”
“I didn’t know if I should show you—”
“Briar, just tell me!”
“I’ve been monitoring a few different things. Tapped into some conversations. Hacked a few databases. I discovered a transmission that was sent to Valinor demanding research materials or Caspar would kill her.”
“And?”
She sighed. “Zia, play video.”
Caspar appeared onscreen. “I have your Empress. She’s alive for now, but she won’t be for long, unless you send over all of her father’s research.”
The man Akacia had called Galton responded, “We want proof of life.”
“Of course.”
My hand flew up to my face as the camera flipped to show Akacia curled up in a ball on the floor, bloody and beaten, but alive.
“From this video, I was able to narrow the room down,” Briar said.
“You’ve been looking for a way to help her all this time?” I asked.
Briar bit on her bottom lip and shrugged. “I like her.”
“You never cease to amaze me. Thank you.”
“We all liked her, Ever. We just love our families,” Huxley muttered.
“I know! Don’t you think I know? You guys are my closest friends. You are my family. I don’t want to let you down. I don’t want to hurt you. But…this girl…she’s…” I searched for the right words but couldn’t find them. Thankfully they understood.
“We know,” Briar said. “And that’s why I kept looking.”
Huxley sighed. “You can’t go alone.”
“Bri needs to stay with the ship,” Zabe said.
“I’ll go,” Huxley said. “You and me. We’ll go get her.”
I smiled at him. “How long until we can get close enough?”
“We can be there in twelve earthhours. It won’t take long for you to get the Artemis close enough. Caspar has an alarm system on his ship, but I can hack in and let you know when you can jump.”
“Where do we go?” It had been a long time since I had been on Caspar’s ship. When he took us from our parents, we lived on his ship for years while he trained us. Just thinking about being there made me sick. I had blocked out so much of what happened there and I worried going back would trigger those memories.
Briar pulled up a map of Caspar’s ship on
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