From Darkness Comes - Book 2 in the Ash and Ember Series

Captured

I awake to a dull constant throbbing. Ba bum ba bum ba bum. Like a heartbeat in my brain. The pain radiates from my cranium to the bridge of my nose then down the sides of my face, and back up again, permeating in my temples.

I hear two voices talking.

"Did you search her?" one says.

"Yes," says the other.

My head throbs as I roll it back and forth from side to side.

"Good morning #53. I hope your rest has been most satisfactory," a familiar voice greets me.

I blink as the figure comes into focus. I must be hallucinating. That hit to my head clearly did some damage.

"Don't worry," she says. "The man who hit you didn't do any long term damage. Like all of our mods, he's highly trained in where and how to inflict temporary versus permanent damage.

That voice, her voice, it's so familiar. I don't recognize the woman at first. It takes me a moment to piece it together. Well, that, and the fact that I have blunt force trauma to my head.

"I have to say, I've been looking forward to meeting you. You are quite a remarkable specimen. Unpredictable. Emotional. Impulsive. But nonetheless, remarkable."

"Who are you?" I ask, blinking repeatedly as the approaching figure goes from two people and melts into one. My head is ringing and her voice starts to become clearer, like when your ears finally pop after a long time of hearing life half-muffled.

"I'm the voice inside walls," she jests and I begin to wonder if that hit did do some permanent damage. She walks around me in a circle, trailing her fingers across the back of my chair.

"I hope you've had a most pleassssant rest," she says," holding the 's' in a snakelike way and that's when I realize how I know her.

"Rona? Is that you?" I blink.

"Took you long enough," she smirks. "I thought you knew me better than that."

"But how? Why? What are you doing here?"

"I think the better question is, what are you doing here?" a familiar voice says, stepping out from behind Rona. A sharp pain surges through my head as Cassius steps forward.

"Couldn't wait for me to return, my dear?" he asks sarcastically.

"Don't call me that," I assert, twisting and turning in the ropes that confine me.

"Ahh, ah, ah," he shakes his finger at me. "You should know by now that your refusal to cooperate only ends badly for you and for those you love. And your struggle to escape your bonds, only turns me on." He licks his disgusting lips.

I spit in his face. I don't know why I do it. Yes, I do. I do it for Wyler who is probably being tortured somewhere. I do it for Kelly who is dying alone, thinking that I abandoned him. But most of all, I do it for me, because I'm done playing Cassius's sick and twisted games.

"Oh, I do wish you hadn't done that. Correction," he smirks. "You will wish you hadn't done that."

"What more could you possibly do to me?" I yell in his wretched face.