The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(83)

The rush of animation was like being plugged into an electrical socket, his body jerking and jumping against the shackles until the chains seethed and rattled like snakes. But instead of promptly leveling off, the burning buzz continued to build until he was shaking, great rushes of energy vibrating through his veins, his muscles, his limbs.

“Shit, I think you’re exploding from the inside out,” Apex said evenly. “You want me to hit you with a dart—”

The guards who ran into the chamber had guns drawn, and before Apex could respond, one of them hauled back and nailed him on the head with a baton, knocking him out cold. As he dropped like dead-weight to the floor, there was some conversation, but Jack couldn’t follow it. His teeth were clapping together like a set of castanets, and then there was the raucous sound of those rattling chains. The good news? He could move his head. The bad news? He couldn’t stop moving his head.

His vision was all over the place, vibrating around the chamber as his skull wobbled at the top of his earthquaking spine. He was in a tornado, but he was aware enough that he knew when the guards came over to him. They released his ankles first, and his legs danced free of the shackles with no rhythm at all, skipping, bucking—

When his arms were liberated, he flopped around the bedding platform, a fish in the bottom of a boat, the momentum carrying his body to the edge of the mattress. The guards, ever careful of his welfare, caught him before he ended up knocked out on the floor with Apex. Muscling him up to his feet, they dragged his spasming form over to the door, his feet skipping across the bullet holes the Command had put into the tile.

He wanted to fight, but he was no better off than he’d been before. On the tranquilizer, he’d had no control because he was paralyzed. Now, he had no control because his body was a lightning bolt.

From out of the chaos of his vision, he was fairly sure that the guards picked up Apex as well. And then he was out in the hall, being taken in the opposite direction from the work area, from where the transports left, from where he’d been praying Nyx would get out. When they arrived at the main tunnel, he had a passing thought that everything was very empty, and this proved especially true as he was brought into the Hive.

Just as before, when he’d come out of the fissure with Nyx, there was no one in it. Not one prisoner. And the only guards were those carrying him.

They took him down toward the dais, through the piles of trash and debris left scattered by the normal crush of inmates. There were six stone steps up to the platform, and his feet knocked into them on an ascension that ended at the middle of the three posts. As he was turned around, he heard the metal-on-metal chime of chain links while Apex was dropped like litter off to one side.

Jack’s arms were bent backward, his shoulder sockets straining, his wrists burning as they were once again shackled. The seizures racking him made him kick against the greasy, stained wood, and he knew he was going to be bruised.

Not that he was going to live through this.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he hoped Nyx had gotten free again somehow.

As Jack looked across the vast space of the Hive, he heard a rumbling off in the distance, one that rose in volume and gradually declined, like a massive vehicle was passing by somewhere close. When it happened again, his brain churned over the implications.

Double shifts called in. No prisoners in the main tunnel. No one here.

Holy shit. The Command was emptying the prison.

She was moving out everything . . . and everyone.



“What did you do with him?” Janelle demanded through the mesh and the iron bars. “The prisoner. What did you do with him.”

That furnished cell, Nyx thought. The one Jack had hesitated in front of.

Maybe he’d paused there not because he missed the female who lived inside, or yearned for her . . . but because she was holding him against his will and he didn’t know what to do about it?

Or how to get free, regardless of the relative autonomy he had around the prison?

“Which prisoner?” she hedged, to buy some time.

“The one my guards saw you with. The one you threatened to kill in front of them if they didn’t let you through.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re lying to me.”

Nyx shrugged. “I think the larger question is what you’re going to do with me. Everything else is just conversation.”

Janelle went silent. And then she slowly put the hood back in place, her face covered once more.

“I’ll answer that right now,” she said in a low, threatening voice. “Guards!”

As Nyx felt a cold rush of panic, Janelle turned away—and she did not look back as she left. The black-robed figure who used to be her sister just walked off, as if she hadn’t had a conversation with a close relative. Someone who she’d grown up with. Someone who she shared parents and a sister and a grandfather with.

In the wake of the departure, Nyx remembered standing in front of the Wall and seeing the bastardized version of her sister’s name carved into the slick stone.

One thing was absolutely clear.

The female she had once known as Janelle was well and truly dead.

I wanted to know what it was like to murder someone. I’m good at it.

Maybe that person had never existed.

The time for thinking ended as guards reentered the holding area and opened the cell. They were silent as they marched her out, one male at the crook of each of her arms, the three of them pivoting to shuffle through the doorway. Striding out into the tunnel, there was no wasted time. They took her directly to the Hive, and they entered through a side door—