Chapter 132

Mother Jaguar had the needle in her hand and was coming at Adam, ready to inject that chemical into his thigh. Normally, it would go in their buttocks, but he was sitting on his, and she wasn’t going to unstrap him for that. Flashes of images filled his mind. Bruises. Pain from the needle. The numbness that followed. The hard-on he wouldn’t be able to control. All of those women mounting him like he was an animal or a prop. Not a person but an inanimate object that they could use however they liked.
As Jaguar got closer to him, he could see her maniacal smile. She looked so pleased with herself that she could inflict one more round of torture on a man before the Mothers were blasted into oblivion. She had to know at this point that they couldn’t win, didn’t she? They were outnumbered, and the Quebecians and their allies had far superior weapons and more of them. So, why do one more sadistic act before she was sent to whatever hell awaited her?
“All right, Twenty-four C,” Mother Jaguar said as she leaned over him. The smell of her sour breath made him turn his head. She latched onto his chin with her vice-like grip, her fingernails digging into his face as she forced him to turn back to look at her.
Beady eyes, black as her soul, stared at him as her wrinkled face broke into a smile. She couldn’t be as old as she looked, but she hadn’t aged well. She was a miserable pathetic creature who needed to be put out of her misery.
Her red lips cracked into a smile, and she laughed in his face. “You’re going to make me come so hard, I’ll be screaming like a siren for all of your friends to come in this direction so Mother White can mow them down in rows.”
Adam couldn’t do much to defend himself, but there was one thing even her grip on his chin couldn’t prevent. With all of the strength he could muster, he gathered a wad of saliva in his mouth and spit right in her face.
Mother Jaguar leaned back, the string of slippery goo sliding down from her nose. “You bastard!” she cried, wiping it on her sleeve. She balled up her fist and slammed it right into his left cheekbone, right beneath his eye. Pain radiated throughout his face, but Adam didn’t regret his decision. If it meant having a broken bone in his eye socket to put a Mother in her place for once, it was worth it.
She was moving toward him again, the needle in her left hand, ready to stick it into his thigh. She wouldn’t be pausing to harass him this time. It was clear Mother Jaguar was done screwing around and was ready to get screwing him.
The pinch of the needle going in through his underwear hurt even more this time, maybe because it was in his hip and not his buttock, or maybe he’d just grown less accustomed to that particular sting in the last few months, but he refused to grimace or make a sound to let her know she had harmed him.
Jaguar smiled at him as she began to press the syringe. He felt the medicine going in and willed himself not to react. But he knew exactly what would happen and how long it would take. Rather than closing his eyes and pretending he was somewhere else, Adam stared at her defiantly, wishing a slow and painful death for her.
He heard the shot before he even realized the door had flown open. Jaguar stood upright, a stunned expression on her face. Confusion swept over Adam as he tried to ascertain exactly what had happened. Her dark eyes were wide now, her mouth lax as she stared at him for a moment and then turned to look toward the door. She staggered back a step or two, her military boots dragging on the ground, and then, she simply toppled over like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Unable to fully turn his head to see what was going on, Adam didn’t know at first who had taken Jaguar out, not until he heard his name in a high-pitched, frantic voice. He arched his neck the best he could to see Rain flying across the room, tears streaming down her beautiful face.
“Thank goodness,” Rain said as she came toward him. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“How did you get out of there?” he asked her as he realized Mist and Walt were there as well. The three of them quickly went about unstrapping him, Rain taking the needle from his hip and hurling it across the room. Adam saw that only a small portion of the vile injection had gone into his body. He hoped he’d built up enough of a tolerance to the substance over the years that it wouldn’t have any effect on him.
“Walt and Mist saved me. How did you get out of there?” Rain said, taking hold of his hand and tugging him up from the seat once he was free.
“I don’t know,” Adam told her. “She drugged me.” His uniform was on the floor. The others helped him throw it back on, Mist pressing his shirt on over his head while Walt held out his pants. He managed to stand up and get them up over his hips and buttoned despite the fact that the other medicine still had him woozy.
Adam’s weapon was nowhere to be seen, so Walt pulled the revolver from Mother Jaguar’s holster and handed it to Adam. He had used a similar weapon before, so he checked to see if it was loaded. The cartridge inside was relatively full. It looked like he had at least thirty rounds, which should be sufficient for a while. Hopefully, before he ran out of bullets, he could find another weapon to take from another Mother who met an end similar to this bitch’s.
“Are you okay?” Rain asked him as they hurried toward the door. “Did either one of the shots she gave you do anything?”
“I’m a little lightheaded,” Adam admitted, rocking a little with each step as they headed down the narrow hallway. It was obvious that Mother Jaguar would’ve been closely monitored by the Military Mothers calling the shots because she was a high ranking soldier in the army. He had no idea who was in charge of the situation here, whether it was President Violet herself or someone else. But he wanted to find out.
Ahead of them, there was a volley of gunfire that had them all stopping in their tracks. “We have to figure out a better way,” Mist said, stopping short right in front of Rain and Adam. “This isn't working. They’re expecting this.”
“What do you mean?” Walt asked, keeping his eyes trained ahead of them with his rifle drawn, ready to fire if the approaching gunfire migrated to their hallway.
“The Mothers are holed up in the center of the building. They are inviting all of us into their maze to become trapped like freaking rats in a laboratory. We need to find a different way to either get to them or get them to come to us.”
“But it’s not them we want,” Rain reminded her. “It’s just the records.”
“Right, but they have the records with them in the center of the building, I’m sure of that,” Mist stated.
Adam watched as Rain bit her bottom lip, a clear sign that she was thinking. He watched her eyes carefully, knowing that she was almost there. What she’d say, he had no idea. He only wished he could think as quickly as she could. With his head still swimming from the drugs he’d been given, he couldn’t even pretend to think of a solution.
“Wait--we don’t necessarily need to get to the records room to get the records we need,” Rain said, her eyes lighting up. “We just need someone who can access the records.”
“Who can do that?” Mist asked. Up ahead of them, there was another loud set of pops and bangs.
“Someone who knows the computer system and can hack in,” Rain said.
Mist got there before Walt or Adam. A smile came across the other girl’s face. “Right. Do you think she’s still here?”
“She has to be,” Rain replied. “I don’t think they’d kill her until they got every ounce of information out of her they possibly could, and you know she wouldn’t tell them everything.”
“Then let’s find her,” Mist said. “Where do you think they’re keeping the prisoners?”
She was looking at him and Walt now. Adam wasn’t sure, but he had heard about there being cells in the basement. “We should probably go downstairs,” he said, “but not the same way Rain and I just went.”
“All right. Which way?” Rain asked.
“I think I saw a door in one of the hallways we were in early,” Walt said. “It said something like ‘Lower.’ Maybe that means it goes down?”
“Lead the way,” Mist told him.
Walt took off, headed back the way he’d come, but before Adam turned around he had to ask, “Who are we looking for?”
Rain looked him in the eyes and said one word. “Lightning.”