Chapter 6: Loyalty

Calix woke to a stunning pain across his left cheek. The pain didn't appear to be anything new. Everything about him was pain right now.

His right arm felt as if razors were cutting into it; his left just throbbed, getting itself into the act. There was something wrong with his face – something beyond whatever had just struck him; he could literally feel how swollen it was and he wasn't sure it wasn't going to just pop.

A throbbing pain in his left leg down near the ankle reminded him that he had legs. The right leg just felt – hot; burning hot. As a matter of fact, aside from all of the aching, burning was what hurt the worst; chest, neck and parts of his arms and legs. He wasn't sure what, exactly was wrong with him, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

He was also sure that he didn't have any clothes on – his body was cold and he could feel the chill of a slight breeze. Someone had pulled off his armor.

"Wakey, wakey, eggs n' bakey," someone in front of him guffawed. The voice was mid-range and crude, the words slurred and indistinct. He wanted to open his eyes and see who was talking to him – and hitting him – but his eyes didn't feel like opening just then; check back later.

Another explosion of pain to his cheek; he heard the impact this time. His ears were working but not well. Everything sounded far away and indistinct, almost as if he were hearing through water but that couldn't be it.

"I knows you awake, asshole," the voice made that last word two separate and distinct phrases, with the last phrase extended for two or three beats. "Now open you goddamn eyes!"

Cal tried, he truly did. It wasn't easy. His left eye didn't want to open for anything. His right could barely get to a squint.

If he had known what was waiting for him, he would have kept it shut. The man in front of him was butt-ugly. Long black hair left wild around a face that only a mother could love. There were brown eyes there but they seemed to look off in different directions. He supposed that knob of flesh had once been a nose – but it had long since succumbed to any number of breaks which had it going in lots of different directions – sometimes all at once. The lips had a huge scar going through them on the left side – and it seemed like the lips were somehow bigger on the right side than the left. Add in some nasty looking, jagged, brown and green teeth and a fetid stench for breath and Calix wondered if it were too late to go back to sleep.

He locked down. His right hand wasn't – at least, it didn't look like a right hand anymore; it looked like a bloody stump with white bone sticking through in a few places. His left arm was scarred pretty badly. Both arms were bound tightly to the chair with long, thin wire; maybe piano wire or fishing wire. He shifted a bit; his legs were tied too. Maybe even his chest; he couldn't lean forward very far. He was bound well – and well and truly fucked.

Another large smack followed by exploding pain answered that question for him; it was far, far too late to go back to sleep. If he did, he might not wake up. Ever.

He recognized the face, unfortunately. It was his opposite number in the Bruisers – their enforcer. It didn't make sense, though. The Bruisers' territory was large but not that large. It didn't extend downtown. And he was pretty sure he had been downtown.

It came flooding back to him. The GlobalTech Tower. The party. The theft. The pick-up. The Marines. He wasn't quite sure what had happened; he'd remembered seeing the Marines teleporting in at the end, just before he reached his motorcycle. Sadly, he might have imagined that. He wasn't too coherent after going through...

The interdiction field. He'd gone through an interdiction field. That's where most of this damage came from. It was good to know that his theory had worked. Sad that it caused so much freaking damage; he was going to have to come up with a way to fix that if he ever tried that again. Then he chuckled; if he lived to a million years old, he was never going to try that again.

"Wha's so's goddamn funny?" Old fetid breath asked him. Stratton, he remembered suddenly. The guy's name is Stratton. "I don' think you's takin' this as seriously as ya should."

"Funny," Calix echoed but it was almost as if his words were being pushed through molasses. He was so tired, so tired. He just wanted this over with so he could fall back to sleep. If they were going to kill him – and he was fairly certain they were going to kill him – he wished they'd just get it over with. "That's the same thing your sister said last night when you was trying to fuck her."

Pain exploded on his left cheek again but he'd been expecting it and managed to roll with it a little. He deserved that but damned if it wasn't funny. Here, at the end, he was reduced to making jokes. He wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of seeing him cry or beg, though.

"Alright, smart ass," Stratton sneered. "Le's get ta tha main event, den." He reached out and grabbed Calix by the chin, raising his face to look up at him. Calix nearly gagged; Stratton wasn't the cleanest guy in the world and his hand stank almost as much as his breath did. "Where da fuck is da alien stuff?"

Alien stuff? Why would they ... then he remembered the theft last night. He'd stolen some alien tech. It was in his backpack ... wasn't it? Had they not found it? That didn't make any sense unless...

The Marines had taken the tech and just left him there. They must have pried off his backpack when he collapsed then, having gotten what they wanted, they'd just left him lying there. The Bruisers might not have even been downtown. Someone might have noticed him and given him up – or, more likely, sold him. He was sure he'd fetch a pretty penny from the rival gang.

"Alien probe," he whispered, letting his eye close.

"Wha'd ya say?" Stratton demanded.

"Alien probe," Calix spit out. "The alien tech is an anal probe and they shoved it right up your ass."

The beating went on for a while but it was never hard enough to put him out, damn the luck. He started calling them names and cursing, questioning their parentage, their family's parentage and their relationship with them, and even accusing them of things which he wasn't completely certain were a physical possibility. He was goading them, trying to make them angry. He wanted them to end this. If they wanted, they could drag this on for a very long time. Calix didn't want it to last a very long time. Especially in as bad a shape as he was in; he remembered the burn damage and the mangled mess that was his hand. There was no coming back from that; at best, he'd be an invalid.

"Stop!" The voice cracked through, bringing the beating to a halt. Calix was disappointed, the boys were really starting to find their rhythm. He was pretty sure another three to five minutes would have been enough to put them over the edge.

"Kevin paid good money fer him," the voice said from behind him. He didn't have the energy to try to turn to see who it was. "He said not to kill him all quick like. He wants it to last – get his money wirf."

Calix chanced opening his eye. Stratton appeared to be thinking, a look that was definitely out of place on his ugly face. It only took a moment for him to come to a decision. "Fine. Put him inside wit da udder bitch."

They untied him which, normally, would have been a mistake. Now, it was just pathetic. He could barely move and when he did it was just non-stop pain. They had to drag him through a door off to the left.

The room he'd been in was dirty and there were holes in the wall where the plaster had either crumbled or been cut away. The floor was bare, scratched and worn. The house was old but then all of the houses in Southwest Detroit were old. He turned his head a little, enduring the pain, but he could see no windows – just doorways. Only the one they led him through had a door on it, though. The door had been made to look like wood but Calix could see where someone or something had scratched away some of the paint; it was metal; the frame too.

They tossed him into a corner underneath a boarded up window; he grunted in pain as he contacted the floor. Thankfully, he'd managed to twist at the last moment so he landed on his left side; he had to protect what he could on his right side. It saved him some agony but meant he was facing the dirty wall. Someone had wallpapered the room and then painted a dozen or more coats over the wallpaper. He could tell because the wallpaper was peeling in several places at the bottom floorboard. He counted at least a dozen colors; it could have been more.

Calix turned his head a bit and could see the sun through gaps in the boards over the windows, so it was morning or at least sometime during the day. He could also see heavy metal bars on the windows. Again, nothing useful; damn near every house in Detroit had metal bars over the windows. You only got to keep what couldn't be stolen from you in the city.

After a while, he rolled carefully over onto his back; that was when he noticed he wasn't alone. There was a hand lying over the edge of the bed near the top; what looked like toes at the bottom of the bed, too. He stared at the hand for a moment but it didn't move. The hand could belong to a dead body – but the skin didn't seem pale enough.

"Hello?" He whispered out tentatively. "Anyone there?"

"Who are you?" The voice came back strong. The high registers and the delicate seeming hand told Calix it was probably a girl or woman.

"Cal," he responded. He was struggling to get up; it wasn't easy. Every move brought new lessons in pain. It seemed he couldn't even breathe without pain shooting through him. He tried to stand but managed only to get his ass a few millimeters off the floor before falling back.

"Octavia," she replied. From his seat against the wall, Cal could make out the woman's form but it was covered in shadows from the semi-lit room. It looked like – well, it looked like she was naked but he couldn't tell for sure because of the shadows.

Then he kicked himself. Of course she was naked. The Bruisers usually just killed people outright. When they took male prisoners, they were usually beaten for a while and eventually killed – and not necessarily in that order. Female prisoners, though, could expect to be the main event in some sick parties. They would be gang-raped a few times and then, when their novelty wore off, they'd be killed. Occasionally, it was all rolled into one; they were gang-raped to death. Calix had also heard that the gang members weren't all that choosy; sometimes, they might be gang-raped some more after death. The Bruisers were some sick motherfuckers.

His second attempt at getting up wasn't much better than his first but the third time was the charm. Leaning heavily against the wall, he was able to get his good leg underneath him enough to push him all the way up; well, the leg he could stand on, anyway. He didn't really have a good leg at the moment.

He looked over at the bed and grimaced. Octavia had been used hard. Her body was a massive bruise with intermittent scratches thrown in here and there. Dried, nasty stuff was flaking off all over her body but was mostly concentrated around her mouth and pussy.

"That bad, huh?" Octavia asked facetiously.

"I think that's going to leave a mark," Calix muttered. His lips and tongue were dry as he stumbled his way over to the bed.

"Yeah, well, you're not looking so healthy yourself," the young woman replied in a hoarse chuckle. Calix was amazed she could laugh after the abuse she must have suffered.

As he drew closer, Calix was able to see the woman underneath the bruise. She was rather pretty; without the spunk of a thousand men on her, she might even be beautiful. She had long, blonde hair that was matted and tousled around her head. Her face seemed to be a rounded oval though it was difficult to say for sure around the contusions. She had stunning blue eyes and a nose that was probably dainty at one time but currently looked to be broken. There was blood leaking from it down her chin ... until Cal realized it was a few separate streams. Her nose was bloody but her lips were cut open in several places.

She was full breasted, though the mounds were currently shifted off to the sides a little bit. She wasn't fat, not even a small roll around her middle, and her arms and legs were nicely sculpted and muscular. She was completely hairless below her neck, either the result of genetics or a good razor; it was impossible to tell which at the moment. Uncomfortably, Calix gritted his teeth as he felt himself start to harden; how the hell could he be in this much pain and still get a hard? He closed his eyes and tried to will it away; he knew he was just a hormonally charged teen but certainly his body shouldn't respond in this situation.

As he continued to try to will himself soft, he took a good look at the female lying on the bed. There was something about her that was familiar but he couldn't immediately place it. He had seen her before, he was sure of it. It wasn't a friend or even an acquaintance but he had seen her somewhere before. He racked his brain searching for it but couldn't come up with anything.

He began to reach for the ropes around her ankle with his right hand and quickly pulled it back when she flinched. It hurt a little; in his assessment of her, he'd forgotten the damage to his hand. "Sorry," he mumbled, grabbing the rope with his left hand and working at the knot one handed.

"No, I should be sorry," Octavia replied mournfully. "I just couldn't help it."

"I can imagine," Cal rejoined thoughtfully. "I don't imagine you've had an easy time of it. Seeing something like – well, this – about to touch you must have been a bit over the top."

The knot finally came loose and he shuffled to the top of the bed. He bent to work on the knot on her wrist; his bending took most of her body out of his line of sight, leaving only her face. When her face became isolated like that, the memory in the back of his head finally came forward.

Calix jumped back, almost tumbling back down to the floor. "You were there!" He exclaimed, hopping to regain his balance. The pain of hopping, subjecting his entire body to the bouncing motion, was excruciating. "A-at GlobalTech. You were there. I saw you in the main lobby. You – you were in uniform. You're a Marine!"

"Yeah," she said softly, her eyes narrowing. "I was there. Navy, though, not Marines; an easy mistake – they wear green fatigues, we wear black ones. Lieutenant Octavia Capstan. I-I didn't think you'd recognize me. Hell, the way you were jumping and somersaulting around, I didn't even think you'd seen me." She looked at Calix and then glanced down at her arm meaningfully. "Does that mean you're not going to let me loose?"

Cal clenched his teeth and moved back towards her hand before stopping. He paused again as he was bending down. "If I let you loose, are you going to kill me?"

"Kill you?" Octavia said in some surprise. "Why would I kill you?"

Cal narrowed his eyes trying to quickly think his way through this. Unfortunately, his brain wasn't firing on all cylinders just then. Regardless, he was going to set the woman free – no one deserved what the Bruiser's had done to her and were likely to do to her; he would just take better precautions if her intent was to hurt him. "I'm 16," he started slowly, bending down to pick at the knot, "and I don't have a CAP card."

"Why would we kill you for that?" Octavia asked with some surprise. "The president is the one who said CAP testing was mandatory, not the Confederacy. Then, he couldn't get the votes to make it a federal mandate. It was left at state level – and I have no clue what Michigan's law is. Nor do I care."

Cal continued working at the knot, going over what she'd just said. The rumor was that being of age and not having a CAP card was a capital offense; she could be lying. Or the rumor could be wrong.

He sighed in frustration. Actually, it made no difference in the end. He couldn't leave her here either way and he was hurt so bad that any precautions he took would have no hope of stopping her if she truly wished him harm. Besides, he wasn't so confident he could make it out of here all by himself.

She pulled her left hand free as soon as he worked the knot open enough. She immediately twisted to work on her right hand and Calix couldn't help but gasp. The bedding under her was a bloody, sodden mess. Someone had taken quite a lot of time whipping the flesh from her back.

He shuffled to her right foot and began working on that knot. He freed her leg just after she finished freeing her other hand.

She winced and gasped as she sat up.

"Bad?" Cal asked, shuffling to her side as fast as he could.

"I-I think there're some broken ribs," she admitted. "I'm having trouble breathing, honestly." She moved a little and gasped again. "I think my hip may be dislocated, too." She turned to look at the young man in front of her. "I don't think I can make it on my own."

Cal grimaced and nodded once. He started chewing on his lower lip, weighing his options. The door was out; neither of them seemed in very good shape for a fight. He might – might – be able to take one; with her military training she might be able to account for one or two more – but he had to assume there was a whole lot more than just three people in the house.

"Door or window?" She asked and he almost chuckled. Maybe great minds really do think alike.

"Has to be the window," he nodded. "The door is suicide."

She nodded and quickly moved to the other side of the bed. Grabbing a small wooden chair, she jammed it under the door handle. "That might buy us a few seconds, just in case."

He nodded and started pulling at the boards covering the window. Even at full strength he would have been hard pressed to pull the boards out – they were nailed pretty solidly – and he wasn't anywhere near full strength. As it was, it took him nearly a full minute to wiggle one back and forth enough to finally pull it free.

"Just step back a second, Cal," the young woman said, touching him on the shoulder. He flinched back; even her gentle touch hurt.

"Sorry," she muttered, pulling her hand back. She stepped up to the windows and breathed deeply for a few seconds, then started grabbing boards and pulling them off. She was making short work of them.

"I'm a bit stronger than I look," she explained, sheepishly.

"I guess," was Cal's only reply, his brow tight in confusion. The Marines last night had been hulked out behemoths but there was no evidence of any kind of steroid use. Her body looked – normal. Hot in a muscular kind of way - but normal.