Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

He laughed, and Bridget growled beside Grif, but the sound was drowned out by a loud buzzing. The cameraman whirled in their direction and for a moment Grif thought they were spotted. Bridget did, too; her tense limbs began to shake, but Grif put a hand on her arm, and could tell the moment she saw it. The camera wasn’t pointed at them but between them, at a space in the rafters occupied only by a giant ventilation grille.

“Not a grille,” he whispered harshly, his mouth gone dry.

“A cage,” Bridget finished, and the cameraman punched a control panel at his side. Every gaze below lifted, fastening upon the black metal frame, though the interior was velvet-lined from top to bottom, its contents entirely obscured. It lowered slowly, no doubt to build anticipation, until it was suspended above the bed’s center, and hovered there like a question. The plasma began to crawl across the floor… though that’s not why Grif jumped. Something moved inside the cage. “Is that…?”

“A woman,” Bridget said tightly as the cameraman moved again, and the black velvet curtain fell away.

But Charlotte couldn’t truly be called a woman, Grif thought, swallowing hard. Not by a long shot. Just as what she wore certainly couldn’t be called clothing. But the silken restraints were meant to approximate both, snaking along her limbs to wrap up and around her torso, ending in a knot at her neck. One tiny nipple peeked from between the bindings, a pink petal flare against all the black and white, while one thigh lay exposed, revealing the full of her smooth bottom. Grif wanted desperately to take off his jacket and cover the child up.

But worse than the bindings, worse than the overt objectification, was the look in her eyes. As the cage slowly rotated, giving every man in the room a full and measured look, her stare was as blank as a doll’s… and, of course, that’s exactly what she was to them. A plaything to be toyed with, used, and discarded when they were done.

Charlotte’s non-gaze remained locked above the heads of the gathered men, her body motionless even as her cage rocked. Crossing his feet at the ankles, Chambers lifted the microphone again. “Let the bidding begin.”

Electronic paddles lit up all around the room.

“Jesus, Bridget…”

But she was gone. Grif had been so focused on Charlotte, he hadn’t seen Bridget closing in on the cameraman and the control panel at his side.

Grif spotted the clouds forming even before she lunged. With a maddened cry, she didn’t just bring the cage to a halt, she reversed its course. Jerking it back up and flashing a blade Grif didn’t even know she carried, she gutted the man who had lowered it.

A gust of air rushed Grif, and from the corner of his eye, he spotted wings in the rafters. “Shit.”

A Centurion. Glancing back at Chambers’s confounded face, hearing the disgruntled murmurs from the men as Charlotte’s cage continued to rise, he knew that more were coming.

Chambers was now yelling from behind his palm, causing the headset in the dead man’s ear to go crazy with commands. Get it fixed. Do it now . But the cameraman was prone and twitching, and Bridget had eased back into the shadows. Grif didn’t dare move, but pretty soon there’d be nowhere to hide.

Then Chambers surprised him. Instead of continuing to rant, he dropped from his small dais and crossed the expansive room until he was centered next to the bed. Though he cast a quick, irritated glance directly up, he replaced the frown with a wide smile, and leaned against one spearing bedpost. “We seem to be having slight technical difficulties, but at least your appetites are whetted. That’s good. I was going to save this next surprise for after the bidding, a little something to make this night extra-memorable, but I see no reason to wait now. We have a very… special show tonight.”

The microphone tilted in Chambers’s hand, like an old crooner entertaining a rapt, admiring audience. And those gathered were rapt. “Now, you’ll have to excuse our next prize for any unseemly behavior. She’s never been this route before, but I have full confidence that she’ll take to it quite easily.”

Grif found himself leaning over the rail without even knowing how he got there.

“You should brace yourself for some rough play. She will resist, and she will also be restrained, and hopefully she will cry out. Let me assure you that no matter what it looks like, she is a volunteer. She wants this. She needs it. And do you know why?”

Chambers ceased pacing, and scanned the faces there like they were gathered in a boardroom. “Because that, my brothers, is her raison d’être. Her role is to act as victim to your conqueror. She is like a lion in the Coliseum, and being put down is her purpose.”

Then he nodded to the corner where the white panels parted to reveal five men, shirtless and hooded, very much resembling the gladiators that Chambers had likened them to. Entering the room, they stood equidistance apart, hands folded in front of them.

“Each of you has been preselected for this sport. You’ve all shown yourselves as trustworthy in the past, so this is my gift to you. Feel free to jockey for position. A little friendly competition always puts grit in your blood, and grants you the respect of your brothers who’ve chosen to watch. Perform well for them, but remember, the five of you are ultimately a team.” He gestured again toward the door. “Now, shall we bring out the prize?”

And the door, Grif thought, was proof that more rooms lurked behind this one. Bridget was already working on freeing Charlotte, and she knew the way out. Meanwhile, the men below would be occupied while he searched for Kit. Yet the plasma plummeted to the floor as the door swung wide, and though he already had one hand on the rungs leading out, Grif had to glance down.

Schmidt. First seen by Grif on a gas station’s security monitor, last seen fleeing Tony’s, there was now a bandage on his face where Anne’s bullet had grazed his cheek.

Detective Hitchens entered next, and Grif huffed, surprised but not. He’d sensed darkness in the man at the stables, and would lay odds that he was the one who’d killed Paul.

Yet pulled along after them, wearing little more than mascara smeared beneath tear-filled eyes, was the woman that Grif had placed in danger again and again.

And now again.

Pow, Kit… right to the moon!

And she might as well have been on the moon. Another flurried rush of wings sounded in the rafters, and Grif knew Courtney was in. Sarge was right. No matter how hard Grif had tried, nothing had changed at all.

Grif’s heart took up an ear-splitting thump, and his insides grew icy, same as when he’d landed on the Surface. Where were the decent men on this godforsaken mudflat? Where were the police, the Guardians…

He looked back at Kit and cursed.

Where was God?

Blindfolded again-and bleeding from the mouth where Hitchens had struck her-Kit was surprisingly coherent. It was as if the blow had brought everything into focus, and not just her vision but all of her senses. She felt the floor beneath her as she walked, different on the heel than the toe, just as the ache in her jaw from Hitchens’s fist was different than the swelling in her lip, or the looseness of her tooth.

Though so much for no bruises.

Kit also knew the instant she and Hitchens were joined by Schmidt, and, of course, it would be him. Hitchens was just muscle and meanness, but Schmidt had intelligence and ambition, and was doubly dangerous because ruthlessness was attached to both.

“I should have raped you first,” Schmidt hissed in her ear, arms sliding hard and rough along her exposed flesh. She remained silent, but couldn’t help the shudder that passed through her already stiff limbs or the way her heart hammered beneath his crawling fingertips. But she’d felt this fear before, hadn’t she? And Grif had been there then. So it was possible, if she held out hope…