What wouldn’t Vash give to watch their army penetrate through the outer forces’ walls? He would have given a lifetime of torture to see that happen. “Regardless,” Vash continued, “you will die, eventually. We all will.”
Cassian beat him. Each blow his knuckles dealt to him pulverized his face like a juiced fruit. Swollen, disregarded, and left to die, Cassian swung the door open and roared with sanctimonious craze. “Close your eyes, dear brother. Fate has caught up to you.”
Vash didn’t dare move. For minutes, he didn’t make even a sound. Sucking in his pain, he spat out a molar and tasted the blood pooling inside his cheek. Every bone ached, but he would not be silenced.
Unlocking his wrists, he stretched his fingers against the stale air from the cell. A few were broken, but they’d heal soon enough. When he saw his reflection in the splotched mirror, he finally groaned in pain. He looked on the outside as Cassian did on the inside, disgusting.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
He spent the next hour listening to the guards’ footsteps outside his cell. He had no idea what they were doing to his pack brothers, but he actually believed what Cassian told him. They were useful soldiers with high kill counts, so sending them off to the war fields in the South wasn’t such a terrible idea.
But fuck that. They needed the girl. Now, too much depended on it.
When the guards’ conversations fizzled, Vash knew this was his only chance to escape. He took Cassian’s key and unlocked the cuffs that bound him. He dropped to his knees and peeked underneath the door. Strangely, the door inched open. The hallway was silent. Was this a ploy to get him killed?
No, if Cassian wanted him dead, he would have killed him right then and there. There was something else afoot—someone was leading him somewhere important, but he had no time to stop to weigh the consequences. Despite their issues, they were still family, and Vash knew he was the better brother. He’d kill him eventually.
The lights had been shut off as if the whole place had been evacuated. Running through the hall, he checked each cell. His pack-brothers were nowhere to be found.
“I am sorry it has taken this long to find a safe place to care for you. I didn’t want anyone to see you,” Cassian said.
Carefully folding the satin sheets over his mother’s body, he made sure she was comfortable. Not too warm. Not too cold. The facilities, he admitted, were not a place to live in, but her secrecy was a priority to him. There wasn’t a man in this world who loved his mother as much as him, and if anyone found out, it would have been another problem for him to shoulder.
“For now, this will do,” she said, eyeing the cryogenic chambers.
The women inside were silent with loving, blue lips and gentle eyes. Each copy was a terrible attempt at something beautiful and, perhaps, even holy, but she housed her thoughts very judiciously.
“You like them, don’t you?” Cassian asked. His finger traced the rough edges of her sheets.
Every now and then, she thought she saw one of the women peek at her, but she knew that was an illusion. She was now in her late eighties, and her every thought had to be dealt with caution. The one thing she could be certain of these days was that she hated the women with a passion. Although the copies were a magnificent first step of ending the alpha-omega dilemma, they were lackluster in the details.
“I don’t like seeing their faces,” she protested.
Cassian smiled gently and patted her sheets down one last time. “This arrangement is short term. We just need to sit out the rest of the war. Then, you will be moved.”
“Into a new body…” His mother could barely get the words out, but once she did, they gave her new energy.
Cassian stood back. “Long live the new flesh.”
His mother looked down at the prosthetic limbs protruding through the silk sheets. A mess of wiring and cables could be seen underneath the clear silicon abdomen, serving as a reminder she didn’t have much time left. She relied on the central networks of the machines inside of this new facility. In so many ways, she was just as helpless as the rest of the whores.
“Have you found your brother?” she asked with strange dynamism.
Cassian circled around her, hesitant to acknowledge the creases that engraved her face like old river trails. His father was the rightful ruler of the seven continents, but the fucker was dead. His mother was everything to him. She was the one who taught him the value of life.
“There was a minor setback,” Cassian admitted before anxiously clearing his throat and running to his own defense. He was constantly being reminded of his shortcomings, but this time, it wasn’t his fault. Rebel forces had opened fire on the prisons. There were more important matters to attend to. “That being said, we will find his corpse when the parasite consumes him.”
She raised an eyebrow but did not smile. Her eyes were bloodshot from the lack of sleep. “You have done what I asked of you?”
Had she been standing, Cassian would have knelt and bowed his head like a good boy. During times of weakness, she made him feel strong. Vash, on the other hand, never received the same treatment. Always on the outside, he was forced to cope with his conscience. It echoed Cassian’s weakness
and made him shake with violent drive.
“I have done it, mother. I have killed my own brother,” he whispered.
Abruptly, the realization sank into his fat gut. He had killed so many people during his lifetime of war that he’d never stopped to consider how it might feel to kill a family member. Despite the ease of the action, he didn’t anticipate the level of depression he might feel after.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered. “Surely, you will learn to move past this.”