The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)

Someone was talking. His voice was familiar, but muffled, as if I were listening to it underwater. I tilted my head slightly, and suddenly his voice was loud again, so sudden after its absence that it felt as if the familiar voice were shouting from inside my skull. Owen. I sagged in relief as I recalled his name. The recollection was strong enough to cut through the pain, and I clung to it. It was hard not to. It helped keep me in the present. Something was happening. I needed to be a part of it. If I could just figure out what it was…

I tilted my head again, only a little, determined to be ready for the burst of noise this time. The sound got louder, and I was prepared—focusing on Owen’s voice. Intensity and foreboding flooded his tone. He was conveying information, but his words were coming so fast I could barely understand them.

One word—a phrase—stood out. I hung on to it, repeating it like a mantra. Matrian patrol. I couldn’t recall why I knew it was important. It was more of a feeling, like having someone’s name on the tip of my tongue. The more I pressed, searching for the information, the more it eluded me, like trying to catch butterflies in a meadow.

I took a deep breath and then stilled myself. I let my mind relax, and the answer came to me. We were in serious danger. It was fear that had woken me.

Memories flooded me then—female guards bearing a crest. Explosions. Screams of terror and confusion. Gunshots. It was confusing and disjointed. Is any of this real? The thought frightened me, and I felt my hand tighten around something, a whimper escaping my throat.

Big hands on my shoulder and thigh squeezed back, reassuring me with their casual strength. We had stopped moving; I tried to look around, figure at least something out. My eyes slid around the room, overwhelmed by the jarring unfamiliarity of the things in it. Or rather, I recognized them, but my brain couldn’t supply me with the words to identify them. Some of them seemed to move in ways they should not. More than that, everything about this room felt wrong. It wasn’t where we were supposed to be.

A shadow passed before my eyes, and I blinked, trying to focus on the face near me. It was more a swirl of colors than a face, and it made me dizzier, my stomach turning again. I closed my eyes.

There was a muffled sound of thumping, of rasping, of voices—maybe a new one this time, but I couldn’t be sure, with how the sound kept cutting in and out. I kept my head still, trying to quiet my beating heart, which was thundering under my ribcage. We moved forward, Viggo clutching me tighter to him as he walked, then relaxing his grip. We stopped moving abruptly. I heard another muffled thump, followed by the repeated sound of wood sliding on wood.

Then silence. I risked opening my eyes again. It was dark now. So dark it took my eyes a long time to adjust, but at least it seemed less painful to focus. When the picture finally came into some clarity I realized I was looking up at Viggo. In the dimness, his eyes were hard and distant, and there was tension around his mouth. He was worried.

I slowly looked around, and my gaze found Owen, just a few feet away. From the little I could see, his mouth was turned down in an uncharacteristic frown. His mouth was moving. I licked my lips, narrowing my eyes. I should be able to hear him now, I realized.

Curious, I tilted my head farther, exposing my sensitive ear again, and flinched, reeling as his voice came through. Even the low sound encouraged the dull, aching throb in my skull to dial up to a sharp, stabbing sensation, one that felt like it was ripping my skull in two.

I couldn’t hear out of one ear. And at that moment, it was just too much. An icy rush of fear shot through me, causing my skin to feel too tight, sucking the oxygen from the room. All my thoughts of remaining as still as possible disappeared, and panic began to spread into my limbs. I jerked, trying to escape, trying to scramble away somehow.

Viggo grunted as I flailed, and I heard Owen murmur something, but I couldn’t stop—something was terribly wrong. I needed to get up, needed a gun, needed to fight—

But my body resisted the very idea of motion, betraying me. I felt my strength leaving me like water down a drain, and suddenly the darkness was back, beckoning to me. I tried to escape from it, the desire to fight and overcome still burning like a fire inside me.

The darkness didn’t care. It loomed over me like a terrible, ancient thing. My lips barely had the chance to form the word ‘no’ when it crashed down on me, dragging me back, deep into unconsciousness.





2





Viggo





Violet went limp in my arms, and it took everything I had not to panic. I carefully adjusted her until my fingers could seek out her heartbeat against her chest. I felt the steady thud against my hand and let out a breath I hadn’t even been aware I’d been holding, biting off a growl of irritation at having to move her again so soon. Too soon. But there was nothing that could be done about it.

We were in a dim, cramped space beneath a set of wooden stairs in the house of one Mr. Alton Kaplan. The dim space smelled like old sawdust, and I could feel the crunch of old spider webs disintegrating as I brushed against them. We’d stumbled across the man by chance a few hours after escaping from the palace. We’d been desperately driving around on the dark, dirty backroads of the farm country in search of not only a doctor, but fuel for our car, hoping some scared countryfolk would take some of our modern tech arsenal as payment for letting us siphon a tank from a tractor or unused vehicle.