Mercury's War

EPILOGUE

THREE WEEKS LATER

Jonas opened the door to the confinement cell and entered it slowly, his chest aching as he stared at the huddled form of the doctor he had really grown quite fond of over the years.

Her hair was mussed and lay over her pale face. Her tiny body was curled on the mattress in the padded room, and she looked fragile, incredibly breakable, as he crouched down beside her and watched her for long, long moments.

“We were all played with in the labs,” he finally said softly. “The drugs, for many of our females the raping of their minds and their bodies. Do you believe that what happened to them was their own fault? That they deserved such horror because they allowed it?”

She was silent for so long that he wondered if she was even going to answer him.

“No,” she finally whispered, her voice hoarse as she continued to lie with her back turned to him.

She was dressed in clean clothing. He had made certain she was kept clean; she would have never forgiven him otherwise. Ely was particular about her appearance. Though she might never forgive him for the fact that they had sedated her to make certain she was bathed and dressed before the madness took her again.

“Then it isn’t your fault, what happened,” he told her as he sat down on the padded floor and leaned against the wall behind him. “It happened because we were all not diligent enough. We had grown complacent in areas we believed were secure. It won’t happen again.”

He would make damned certain of it. He would have nightmares for years to come of Ely’s breakdown and the near loss the community as a whole had suffered when they thought they would lose her.

“It wasn’t you,” she whispered, still refusing to turn to him, but he could hear the tears. “They didn’t do it to you. They didn’t make you do those things.”

She broke off, and Jonas had to blink back the burn in his eyes, swallow past the thickness of his throat. Ely was such a proud little creature. With her velvet dark eyes and her pointed little chin that held such stubbornness. Even her sometimes contrary nature was little more than a woman’s pride as she fought to make decisions too heavy for her fragile shoulders.

“But it could have easily been me,” he told her. “Or Callan. Or even Kane or Tanner. Would you have blamed them, Ely? Would you have turned your back on them and ever blamed them for something that you realized you shared the blame in? We were arrogant believing the labs so safe and our greatest treasure invincible. It was our fault you were touched by that evil, not yours. Your job is to protect us when we’re brought to you. Ours is to make certain evil never invades your domain. The failure was ours, little cat, not yours.”

She sniffed and shook her head.

Ely hadn’t known the horrors of the labs. From birth, she had been the star child of the scientists who created her. The finest, most intelligent genetics had gone into her creation, and she had been treated with the utmost care to ensure she was never damaged.

She had seen the horrors. She had been horrified by them and fought to protect the Breeds she had been created to torture. But she had never experienced that pain herself. It had never been hers before now.

“You can’t look me in the eye and allow me to apologize, yet you so easily punched me in the face and called me a ‘fucking girl pussy,’” he chided her. “Really, Ely. Where’s the fairness in that?”

A tearful laugh escaped her lips.

“And I’ll never, as long as I live, forget the look on Jackal’s face when you grabbed his crotch. You know, Ely, that man has seen everything, done everything, but I do believe you nearly brought him to his knees.”

She moaned and covered her head with her hands. And perhaps others would call him cruel for reminding her of what he knew mortified her. But Ely was made of sterner stuff than that, he assured himself. Besides, others would never allow her to forget it, and preparing her now was for the best.

“Bastard,” she whispered tearfully.

He sighed. “FGP,” he told her. “Fucking girl pussy. You are aware that title is now being whispered behind my back, aren’t you, Ely? You really need to drag your ass off that mattress and get back to work so I can get a little strip of your hide in return.”

She almost laughed; he felt it.

“Ely.” He said her name softly. “Look at me, just for a moment.”

He waited patiently. Finally she pushed her hair back and lifted herself enough to turn and look at him. And he opened his arms to her. “Please, Ely. The guilt is killing me. I didn’t protect my favorite girl. Forgive me. Please.”

And her tears came now. From eyes bruised with fatigue and pain, as dry lips parted and the cries came. She burrowed into his arms, against his chest. She pulled her legs tight against him, and he wrapped her in his arms and fought his own tears.

Sweet Ely. How could he ever look himself in the mirror after what he had allowed to happen to her? If he couldn’t protect her, how could he ever protect anyone else?

He rocked her; he crooned to her, kissed her forehead gently.

“Never again, little cat,” he promised her tenderly. “Never again. I swear it.”