The Defied (The Permutation Archives Book 4) Read online

  The Permutation Archives Book 4

  The Defied

  By

  Kindra Sowder

  Published by

  Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly, LLC.

  Novi, Michigan 48374

  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The Defied

  Copyright © 2017 by Kindra Sowder

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Artist: Aurelia Fray of Pretty AF Designs

  Edited by: Elizabeth A. Lance

  EAL Editing Services

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  “Our torments also may in length of time become our Elements.”

  John Milton ‘Paradise Lost’

  Chapter

  ONE

  I was burning.

  I was burning from the inside out. The pain was all there was. Pain and complete utter darkness that wrapped me in a delicate cocoon of warmth. But the heat only continued to grow and there was no light to save me from the vastness so black I felt as if I were swimming in velvet.

  Beyond it, there was nothing. Finite and infinite all at the same time. Agony and pleasure. Sound and silence. Life and death. It was all there, all represented. All absent.

  None of it made sense and I bathed in it, letting it wash over me and down my flesh. My spirit. Through my blood as it flowed, valves opened and closed, and the nothingness filled my lungs.

  Then, in the silence, a sound began. It started out low, near a rumble, and grew until all that could be heard was a sharp, stinging screech. The hands that weren’t my hands shot to my ears, but I could still hear it. Then one single word shattered the noise and snapped everything into stark focus. A voice that I recognized, but didn’t all at the same time.

  “Clear!”

  The word pierced my eardrums and I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t. Heat grew at two points in my chest, turning from a dull warmth into a searing electric burning. It moved from those two points and came together, joining where my heart rested. Bright white light shattered the darkness into a million pieces as the pain ricocheted through every point in my body. Air shot painfully into my lungs and the gasp filled me with more suffering than I had ever experienced. That I would ever experience again. There was only one way to describe it.

  Mind numbing agony.

  Steady beeping came from above my head and a warm, gloved fingertip pressed on my throat.

  “She’s back. Now, let’s salvage what we can,” Doctor Devi’s voice filtered through the noise.

  “We need an emergency O.R. Now!” another voice, Doctor Aserov, shouted.

  A scream pushed past my lips without my permission. My eyes shot open and I was blinded by the light that flashed across my vision while blurry shapes moved around me. At least three or four.

  The visages of a scene that I could barely make out were hectic and chaotic, shouts coming from all directions and none. I didn’t understand anything but the pain. Cries left me as it continued to build, pushing past what I had only hoped was the plateau. Movement caused my head to spin and I squeezed my eyes shut while forms of people sprinted past me in our race to somewhere else. Words barely registered as each person around me yelled orders and obscenities at one another.

  Pressure began at my right knee along with the pain, which only made it worse. The pressure burned and it shot all the way up into my skull, almost enough to crack me open. Hot tears stung my eyes and squeezed past my closed lids to run down my temples. I opened my mouth to speak, but could barely manage to croak out the only two words that came to mind.

  “Help me.” Only a whisper came out, followed by the hitch of an intake of oxygen that attempted to escape me.

  Red splotches pooled in the darkness my closed eyes provided, a near sanctuary considering the scorching pain. Focus was a far-away notion. My breaths came in shallow gasps and my heart hammered in my chest. Sweat drenched my clothes, sending cold chills up and down my spine like a bullet train. And the world began to fade again. Unconsciousness pulled at the edges of my awareness and I tumbled, faster and faster down the rabbit hole than even Alice dared to go.

  My mind was a flurry of names and faces, unable to focus on any of them as dizziness and fatigue from blood loss continued to pull at me. The entirety of my body felt like lead that had been submerged in boiling water. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but lie there and allow whatever they planned to do to happen.

  Nothingness welcomed me into its open arms and I fell into them with no resistance, even though I knew it could mean my demise.

  It was a welcome respite from the agony even with death breathing down my neck.

  Chapter

  Two

  An agitating beeping sound, a heart monitor, was all I heard when I began to drift back into wakefulness. I felt groggy and my throat was sore. My entire body resonated with a deep throbbing ache, especially at a point below my right knee.

  My mother, my sister, everyone. Where were they? Had they made it off the island? Did we make it off the island? Where was I? I wanted the annoying beep to subside. I wanted someone to turn the machine off. My skull felt as if it were ready to crack open and spill my brains out onto the floor, leaving me an empty shell filled only with pain, self-loathing, and terror. Grief, but for what?

  Images, memories, flashed into my mind. Explosions and gunfire sliced through my recollection and speared the most prominent memory. The last thing I remembered before blinding anguish and utter darkness. I remembered. I remembered everything.

  My mother was dead, killed by Nero. The traitor. The post-modern Judas of the developed world. She was dead. She was gone.

  No. She was here. She was alive. It was a nightmare.

  I opened my eyes and was greeted by searing light that penetrated my retinas without prejudice. Squinting past it, I saw Julius and Ryder both at my bedside. Where was everyone else? Julius was the first to notice that I was awake, but, despite my confusion at everyone else’s absence, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain in my right leg. Every type of sensation that you could associate with pain was present. Burning, pressure, throbbing, stabbing. All there. And it was growing until it was all I could think about besides the ache in the rest of my body, dull in comparison to what was happening below the knee.

  “Mila? Are you in pain?” Julius gasped with realization.

  Ryder turned, but I couldn’t focus on his green eyes. Cecilia, who I hadn’t even realized was in the room at all, came around Ryder’s side and stood at the head of the bed. She pushed my hair away from my sweaty forehead.

  “Take it easy. You’re okay. We’re here,” she assured me.

  “She’s going to crash,” Ryder stated. “Mila,” he placed his hand on mine, “Try to remain calm. You’re safe.”

  But what about the others? Where was everyone?

  Panic replaced the haze of the drugs that had kept my pain at bay and left me unconscious, unable to defend myself. Unable to process what happened around me. I couldn’t stand it. I was confused, ignorant of everything from the time after the assault of King’s army. And Nero. Nero had taken my mother from me. We had begun to patch our relationship back together, and now she was gone. My sister. Gaia. Where was she? Had she met the same fate? Why did my leg hurt so much?

  “Where am I? Where’s Gaia? Where’s my mom?” I rushed.

  I knew the answer to the last question with a burning certainty. I had seen it happen, but I felt like, in my panic, the confirmation was more than needed. Especially since my little sister was nowhere to be seen in the room. And it was too bright. Too white. Too clean. Just like all the rest of the rooms I had ever been in.

  “I’ll get Doctor Aserov,” Julius muttered, then ran from the room.

  “My leg. Oh my God, my leg. It hurts,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks in a flood of heat, causing my face and neck to flush with the same intensity. Rage and sorrow filled me. Rage at the fact that my questions remained unanswered. Sorrow from what I knew had transpired and what I also believed to have as well, nothing confirmed. And the searing pain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The room began to tremble, sending a soft rumble through the floor, the machinery surrounding me, the bed, and the walls. The beeping of the machine monitoring my heart rate increased. Everything from the knee down on my right leg hurt and radiated through the rest of my body, converging with the other points of pain within me.

  Ryder placed both hands on the sides of my face and forced me to look him directly into his brilliantly green eyes so deep with mourning and heartache that they
were like endless pools.

  “Mila, look at me. I know you’re hurting, but I need you to listen to me,” he said.

  I nodded between his warm hands. “Uh-huh.”

  I breathed past the pain as best I could to listen to him and to focus, but it was more of a struggle than I would ever admit outwardly. I was strong. I had to be strong. Right? That was what I was good at.

  “We’re at an underground Fallen Paradigm facility in Myrtle Beach. King destroyed the one on Kiawah Island and took out half of the forces we had there. It’s all gone, Mila. All of it,” he explained.

  “My mom, she’s…?” the words drifted away from me, but from the look in his eyes I knew he knew what my next words would be.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he dropped his hands and took both of mine in them. “She’s gone.”

  Grief tore at my insides, obliterating all sense of self.

  “Gaia?” I pushed past my quivering lips. The pain in my leg only added to my sorrow and I couldn’t hold onto any of the emotions I felt, moving back and forth between my physical suffering and emotional suffering.

  “She didn’t make it out,” Cecilia cooed next to me, her soothing tone trying to soften the blow.

  My head began to shake— back and forth, back and forth. Denial. This wasn’t happening. It was a dream. A nightmare I couldn’t wake from. It had to be. They couldn’t be gone.

  The pain. It seared through my entire body like someone had lit me on fire. The ground began to tremble even more, shaking the equipment in the room and causing the light overhead to swing on its chain.

  “No, no, no, no,” I repeated like it would make it any less true. It wouldn’t, but it didn’t stop the word from leaving my lips repeatedly. “I have to see them. I have to get out of this bed. Where are they?”

  Swinging my legs out from under the covers toward where Cecilia stood, something felt off. I could feel both legs, but something was off with my right one. Despite the pain and Cecilia and Ryder’s reaching hands, I attempted to stand. I didn’t register the absence of my right foot until I landed on the ground so hard it made my teeth click together. My entire body wracked with agony, I looked down and screamed, my raw throat barely able to force the sound past a shrill croak.

  My right leg, from the knee down, was gone — only a stump left wrapped in white bandages spotted with blood. Horror compounded on top of anguish and uncertainty as I continued to cry out in mourning, not only for the loss of the only family I had left, but a part of myself I knew couldn’t be replaced. Not only had King taken people I loved from me, but he had taken a piece of me, whether he knew it or intended for it or not.

  Everyone rushed to my side, calling out my name at different pitches and volumes. Hands gripped my arms and Ryder’s arms moved around my waist. The only goal was to get me off the floor, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t remove my eyes from the portion of my leg that was missing, the searing ache even more pronounced because of the attention I was now paying to it. Even more tears streamed down my flushed cheeks, soaking the strands of hair that were plastered to my neck and chest.

  Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. I shook my head.

  “This isn’t real,” I repeated to myself. “This isn’t real. Where are they? What happened to me?”

  “Mila, please, you have to get back in bed. You’re not supposed to be up,” Cecilia shrieked.

  Both she and Ryder pulled me up from the floor, Ryder taking more of my weight than Cecilia had. He had more muscle and much more leverage from where he stood. I barely noticed as Julius pushed into the room with Doctor’s Aserov and Devi at his back, each pair of eyes wide at the sight of me. The floor shuddered again.

  “Mila, oh my God,” Julius shouted as he ran toward us with hands out toward me.

  Each person in the room spoke my name and exclamations of shock as well as words filled with irritation and frustration at my unwillingness to listen to what I was told. In my own defense, I didn’t remember being told that I couldn’t leave my bed, which was why I found myself being lifted from the floor because I hadn’t realized what had even happened to my body. Besides the ache, I would’ve never noticed my right leg was missing from the knee down if I hadn’t looked down at it. Or fallen.

  Placing me on my bed, Ryder picked up my one and a half legs and swung them back onto the bed, coming to lean over me and push my shoulders back and into the pillows.

  “Stop,” I yelled. “I have to get out of here. Where are they? Where’s Gaia? Where is my mom?”

  “Mila, look at me,” Doctor Aserov stood at my side with a penlight in hand.

  I stared into her deep brown eyes. Doctor Devi stood behind her, leaned over my bandaged stump, and checked for evidence of even more trauma. Doctor Aserov turned on the penlight and shined it in my eyes, sweeping the light into my vision and then away, checking my pupils. Everything hurt. My head hurt, my ribs were on fire, and my leg – my missing appendage – was in pure agony. Not even the agony pulled my attention away from those missing from the room.

  “Pupils are equal and reactive,” Doctor Aserov stated.

  “Where are they?” I probed again. “What happened to my leg?”

  “Everything down here is good, but I want to remove the bandages to be sure. It’s time for them to be changed again anyway,” Doctor Devi explained.

  The floor, the bed, and all the machinery shook around me again. Anxiety spiked and flooded my veins. The absence of an answer to my question, even if I already knew the answers, caused my unease to peak and made rage surface. It was a flurry of activity and noise around me, each statement made or each word shouted to another only blending together to an unfathomable racket that I couldn’t decipher.

  The room shook again, the walls quivering around us, but I seemed to be the only person to notice. I was causing it. I knew that. There was no way to dispute that. My hands pushed out in front of me and a curtain of shimmering silver tinged with blue erected itself between my outstretched hands and those around me. The doctors jumped away as quickly as they could, Doctor Aserov almost taking the brunt of the shield I had just put up.

  “Everyone, stop,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Please,” I sobbed, “please. Answer me.”

  The atmosphere in the room stilled, every person held their breath as they watched me with terror-filled eyes that so desperately wanted me to get better. To recover. But I needed the answers before I could do any of that.

  The pain. It was overwhelming. And not just the physical anguish. My mind was filled with the commotion of horror and grief beyond anything I had ever felt before. The shield fell, re-erected itself, and then fell completely, folding upon itself like a sheet and down toward the floor. Cries wracked my body and my shoulders shook uncontrollably as I attempted to process what was happening — had happened. Everybody in the room hesitated to come closer to me, all except for Cecilia and Ryder, who had both seen me at my worst whether it was before all of this or after. Cecilia had seen my life before King’s harvest. Ryder had seen it after. Julius had seen both with the events of the Spartan Compound to tie them together. But Julius only sat at the foot of the hospital bed. It was the closest he would come as Cecilia and Ryder moved closer to reply to my unanswered questions.

  “I’m so sorry, Mila,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Please.” I poured my soul out into the air, asking the universe to save me from what King’s actions had wrought. “It’s not true.” I shook my head – tears poured from my eyes, burning hot.

  “It is,” Cecilia’s hand came to rest on mine.

  Ryder grasped my other hand. His palm was far too warm. The room was too hot, almost like the bowels of Hell that I found myself in.

  I shook my head again. “No.”