The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

The room immediately began to decompress, but over the hiss of the air I could hear whatever was on the other side slamming against the door, trying to get in. The door began to shudder near the hinges that held it together—it was clear that the creature was targeting the weakest part of the door. How would it know to do that? I wondered, alarm racing all over my body.

“Open the door,” Violet loudly ordered Maxen and his group as the hissing sound of the pressure equalizing died down, and I heard the hand wheel of the opposite door spinning as the group opened it up. Everyone stepped through quickly, and Owen and I brought up the rear, swiftly closing the interior hatch door and sealing it.

One thing was immediately apparent: the air here was clear. No sign of the cloying mist. I ripped off my mask and sucked in a deep breath of air, and then switched off my subvocalizer and nodded to everyone.

“Air’s clear, but keep an eye out for dangers in this room.”

Then I stared head-on at Maxen, never taking my eyes from his face as he slowly took off his mask, my hand curling into an involuntary fist.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.





31





Violet





I tore off my mask with one hand but kept my gun pointed at Maxen. We were in some sort of monitoring station—screens hung around the ceiling in long rows, but right now they were dark. A series of desks made a circle in the middle of the room, terminals placed inside the tiny cubicles that separated workstations. The terminals were also dead, but Thomas was fiddling with one, unscrewing the back and plugging something in. Unlike the last room, this room had not two, but three airlock doors—the one we had just come through, and two others. Those two were located on the opposite side of the room from the entry door, approximately to the left and right of its position, angled to match the walls.

The king still held his own weapon. There hadn’t been time to disarm his group, with the sounds coming from behind us in the tunnel. I was pretty certain both groups were too scared to think about anything but getting through that door.

Luckily we had caught them unawares, so only Maxen and Peter had their weapons readied. Everyone else’s were holstered or tucked behind their backs. They were smart enough to realize they wouldn’t get to their guns before the shooting began. And we would go for the armed ones first—which included the king.

Who was currently glaring daggers at my husband.

“What the hell we are doing here,” the king pronounced, “is the same thing that you’re doing. Taking down Elena. Taking control. Getting rid of the monsters.”

Viggo’s voice came out as a growl.

“That’s not what this is about,” he said. “We’re here to take a criminal to trial for committing crimes against humanity and end this war. And I suggest you get out of the way before you get hurt. I’m not going to harm you unless I absolutely have to—but Elena, her wardens, and the creatures inside these labs will have no such qualms.”

I had to hand it to Viggo. Even furious and in such a compromising situation, he hadn’t lost his sense of justice. I was already biting back threats to the king of Patrus. I’d been done with his arrogance, terrible decision-making, and selfishness for a long time, and now the temptation to just shoot him was stronger than ever. But that wasn’t how we had chosen to go about this fight.

King Maxen looked back and forth between his group of men and Viggo. He still hadn’t put down his weapon, and he raised the gun now, as though to point casually at my husband.

“Mr. Croft, I think your days of threatening your king are over. It’s your group who should stand down and let the real authority take care of things.”

I couldn’t hold my tongue at that one.

“You lost any authority you had the day you used women and children as human shields,” I snapped, twitching my gun to remind him that I already had a bead on him. “Put the gun down, Maxen.”

“Your group would be nowhere without us anyway,” Viggo said. “You wouldn’t have found this place without stealing intelligence from us. Your group doesn’t know all the facts, and you don’t have what it takes to finish this mission safely. You need to leave now, before more people die.”

“Thanks for all your help, by the way,” Peter said, speaking for the first time, his voice just as arrogant and needling as I remembered it. We’d tangled with this man before, and he’d been left with the very raw end of the deal. I knew that incident was still in his mind as he eyed me, and it was going to make this encounter even harder than it already was. “Without your careful planning we never could have gotten into this place. All we had to do was take a boat across the river and wait for you guys to start causing chaos. We were able to drive through this precious little city without any of the… sweet ladies noticing at all. Oh, and that program your beta male made? Great. It’s too bad none of you thought to use it to its full potential.”

I heard Thomas take in a sharp breath as it was clear that Peter was mentioning him, and let my eyes flick to the side, where I saw the rest of our group. Owen took a careful step away from Morgan, into the shadows, his face thunderous. I realized what he was going to do in a moment—and I had to assume that Viggo knew, too.

“His name is Thomas,” I snapped, putting the full weight of my anger into my voice and willing them to look only at me. “And he’s a genius, so you’d better be respectful. Now put down your weapons—”

“And we’ll let you get out of these caves while you still can,” Viggo finished the sentence.

Indecision flickered in King Maxen’s eyes, but Peter’s voice made it die out.

“No way in hell. We’re not going to let you replace one psycho bitch with another.” He raised his own weapon, and I saw the barrel aimed straight at me.

If Viggo’s presence had been dominating the conversation before, now it seemed as though his voice filled the room.

“Reconsider where you’re pointing that gun,” he growled. “You’re pointing it at my wife.”

“So you married her?” Peter scoffed, shooting me a lecherous look. “Did you have an enjoyable honeymoon? Is there a chance she could be pregnant?”

I felt my face flush and a wave of sheer rage crash through me. Viggo’s voice snapped out like a whip.

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that!”

A smirk spread across Peter’s face—but before he could speak, Owen appeared behind him, his fist in mid-swing. The Patrian crew all jumped, twitching toward Owen, and I seized the opportunity. I lunged forward and spun, lashing out with my foot, catching the king’s hand and knocking his gun from his fingers.

I completed the spin in time to see Peter crumble, Owen standing over him, shaking out his hand, his face businesslike and hard. Peter landed in a pile on the ground, groaning softly, and Maxen scrambled across the floor, trying to open the door behind him—the one on the left.

“Don’t,” I said, the sharp edge of warning in my voice, and he stopped, looking at me. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of that door.”