The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

Logan was next to her, her cell sandwiched between his and Owen’s, and he sat on his own bed, watching Amber pace back and forth. He looked fairly well, besides a bruise on his face. I suspected when the wardens discovered the two of them, they had been less than gentle taking them in. Much like they’d been with Tim and me.

Amber continued to pace, then suddenly kicked one foot out, rattling the cell door.

“We saved you from Elena!” she bellowed angrily, clearly addressing some unseen guards or cameras, and I flinched at the loud noise. “The least you can do is give us a proper room!”

Her voice reverberated down the halls, but other than that, there was no sound.

“Amber?” I whispered hoarsely, pressing the heel of my hand to my eyebrow. “Can you give me… an hour or two before you do that again?”

“There’s food on the floor, Violet,” Viggo said softly, pointing to a tray in front of the door. “It was hot, but now, uh, probably not. Also water. You need to eat.”

I shook my head, a wave of nausea hitting me, and lay down instead, curling up toward him. His bed was directly on the other side of the bars, and he lay down next to me, his hand reaching out to take mine.

“You need to eat,” he insisted.

“In a little bit,” I replied, tears beginning to prick my eyes. “Viggo… Ms. Dale… She—”

“I know,” he said, his face forlorn. His eyes were red-rimmed, and I could feel the pain radiating off of him. He clutched my hand a little tighter. “Violet… Thomas… He—”

“I know,” I whispered back, and then suddenly I couldn’t stop the tide of tears as they tore through me. I felt the loss of Ms. Dale and Thomas like a knife through the heart. Something special had been taken away, and I felt its absence, my world diminished, two people smaller, and that was a lot.

I cried for a long time. Viggo whispered to me and comforted me all the while, and I hated the bars that separated us. I needed to feel his arms around me, holding me when he said everything was going to be okay, even though none of us could be certain. We were in a prison, after all.

Once the tears had passed, I looked around and sniffled.

“Where’s Morgan?”

“We don’t know,” Owen said, his back to the bars and to me, but his voice carrying his concern. “Tim said she was carried away and they were giving her medical treatment, but then they knocked him out, so…”

I looked over at my little brother, still relieved to see him alive. He was sitting, his back pressed to a wall, on the other side of Viggo’s cell. I grimaced when I once again noticed the angry, deep purple, almost black bruises that seemed to cover his whole throat from when Elena had held him over the edge of the building. He scrubbed his eyes when I looked at him, fidgeting with obvious worry.

“Morgan pale. Breathing not good. They say intubate. That’s tube—”

“Down her throat,” Logan said irritably, and I felt a moment’s levity at the sight of Amber reaching through the bars to smack him on the head.

“Don’t take this from Tim. Let him talk,” she chided, and Logan glared at her, rubbing the back of his head. A moment later her hands went back through the bars and pushed his aside, feeling his head for injuries. “I didn’t actually hurt you, did I?”

“No,” Logan said, leaning into her touch with a sigh, his long hands coming back to wrap around hers and pull them to his shoulders. “And I deserved it. Sorry, Tim.”

“Is okay,” Tim replied with a shrug. He met my gaze and sighed. “Last I saw. Sierra okay, but… other boys taken away too. Somewhere different. Don’t know more.”

“None of us do,” Amber said sadly, pressing her face between the bars. “We don’t know anything that’s happening.”

“How long have I been unconscious?” I asked.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” Viggo informed me, and I turned my attention back to him. “You’ve been out for almost twelve hours. They checked us all out—” He rotated his shoulder with a wince, and I noticed the edge of a bandage under his shirt, my eyes flicking back up to his with questioning concern.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I’m going to have a pretty cool scar though.” He held up a bandaged hand and looked chagrined. “And one here too,” he added.

“That you got from jumping off a roof you were trying to blow up with crap gloves and not enough rope!” Owen barked, his voice rueful. I looked over at him, and he shook his head at me. “Your husband is insane.”

The corner of Viggo’s mouth quirked up and then dropped, and I could understand. Our hearts were heavy—too heavy to enjoy our usual banter, even with Owen’s joking words or with the realization that we’d ended up together again after everything. Elena was dead, her plan thwarted, as far as we knew. Presumably Viggo had done something to stop the boys, but that didn’t mean anything. We had no idea what was going to happen now, who was going to be in charge… or who the population was going to believe.

As it turned out… right now, nothing was going to happen. Or later. Or even later. We kept waiting for someone to come down and explain what was happening or tell us we were being convicted of regicide, but the only person we ever saw was a portly woman who delivered our food. She wasn’t a warden; or at least, she wasn’t wearing the uniform.

She was a good deterrent against our escaping while she served us. She was older, her hair streaking white, and walked laboriously with the rolling food cart. There was no way we would attack an elderly woman to escape, which meant our options weren’t good. The beds were welded together, as were the hinges. Owen, Viggo, and Logan spent the first two days halfheartedly trying to figure out a way to break through the door, but never succeeded.

In truth, maybe we just didn’t have the energy to break out. The women who had tormented us and hunted us were dead, but so were two of our closest allies and friends, with others back home in uncertain conditions. All of us were exhausted and heartsick and tired of fighting. Maybe, since we were together for once, able to keep tabs on our closest family, we all knew in our hearts that we would just have to wait and see what fate had in store for us.