The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(5)

She was wearing a blood red outfit and carrying a black case with her. Elena greeted her warmly, but it seemed Tabitha only had eyes for me. Eyes that were wild with barely suppressed rage and open glee.

That was not a good sign. I managed to maintain my calm fa?ade, but my mind was desperately looking for a way out.

“Try to keep her alive, Tabitha,” Elena ordered as she stepped through the door Desmond held open for her. “We won’t be able to have an execution tomorrow if she’s already a corpse.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tabitha grated as she put her bag down just out of my range of vision—maybe on a desk—and began removing items from it. I watched the door close, and only barely overheard Desmond mentioning something about troop placement before it banged shut, sealing me in with the madwoman.

Tabitha continued to remove items from her bag, and I could hear the click of mysterious objects being slowly laid out on the table. Each click started to get to me, and I felt myself flinching as each item was planted down.

“You know, Violet,” Tabitha said, in a voice that would’ve been better suited for a dinner party than a torture room, “I normally like to take my time with these sorts of things. There’s a certain need for leisure to really… appreciate the moment.” She turned, giving me a maudlin smile. “I’m really sorry we’re going to have to rush this.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stared her down, until I noticed the bruise on her face. “Was it easy to wash my boot print off your face?” I asked, managing to make my tone just as conversational as hers. “You really should get it looked at—I was in The Green, after all. Who knows what I tracked back from there?”

Tabitha’s eyes reflected nothing for a long moment, but I could see her hand tremble. “You’re trying to make me angry,” she said, and I gave a little shrug.

“Of course not. That would be a terrible idea. After all, you’re really strong, right? If you got angry, you might kill me, and since I’m being relegated to the role of damsel in distress here, that would be very bad for the plotline.”

“This isn’t a story, Violet,” Tabitha chided, turning back to the table. I watched her hold items up for consideration, showing me her collection of torture toys one by one. The variety of knives I had expected—it seemed standard torture fare to me. The hammer wasn’t surprising either, although I hoped she wouldn’t use that first. The pliers made me want to curl my fingers up and hide my nails. And from there it just got progressively darker. Some of the devices I had no idea how to identify.

“If it were,” I finally said, finding my voice, “how would you come out in it? Do you think you’d survive?”

She turned back to me, her mouth opened to respond, and then paused, her lips curling up like a satisfied cat’s. I saw her reach out and choose a weapon. It made a long, metallic sound as she dragged it off the table and swaggered over, eyeing me up and down, her face contemplative. “We really don’t have time to talk,” she said with a smile.

I resisted the urge to try to lunge at her. With Elena it had been childish, but mostly safe. Tabitha was holding something behind her back, something I didn’t even want to imagine, let alone become more intimately acquainted with.

“Really?” I asked, watching as she stretched out her arm to my right hand, slowly pushing my fingers open. Even I could hear the tremor in my voice. I considered clenching my fist, but I knew that would be even worse. Tabitha was even stronger than she looked, thanks to the genetic modification Mr. Jenks had given her. It wouldn’t take much for her to snap my fingers like twigs. “I sometimes think the world could use more conversations. For example, if we took the time to talk instead of make war… what a lovely, lovely place it would be.”

Tabitha said nothing in response. She only positioned my hand just so, and then, before I could react, slammed a knife into my flesh, right between the thumb and the rest of my palm.

I screamed as pain erupted from the spot, my body jerking, trying to break free of the restraints and withdraw from the agony emanating from my hand. It took me a moment to ride out the pain—it was far more intense than anything I had felt in my life, even in all my days of brawling and my adventures in The Green. It felt like my hand had been ripped in half, and I was afraid to look at it, for fear that it had.

I could feel blood, hot and wet, dripping down my arm, and I realized tears were streaking down my cheeks. Taking a shuddering breath, I slowly looked up to where the knife was now pinning my hand to the table, the silver point still buried in my throbbing palm.

“Pull it out,” I begged.

Tabitha gave me a pensive look, and then tapped on the knife, sending fresh hot waves of pain up my arm that manifested themselves in another scream from my throat.

When I became aware of the room again, it felt intangible—like I was both there and in another place, completely wrapped in pain. Tabitha was watching me closely, her eyes calculating.

She lifted her hand again, and I felt myself torn between begging her to stop and promising to kill her.

It didn’t matter, because a knock sounded on the door and made both of us freeze. Tabitha frowned, and then crossed to the door, throwing it open. Desmond stood on the other side, an apologetic look on her face.

“I’m sorry, Princess,” she said. “Elena needs you now. Something has come up.”