Starship: Rogue

Chapter Twenty-Three

Rowan woke with a start, jerking into consciousness rather than coming awake. She lay on a cold, stone floor, and, when she tried to stretch, her hands only went so far apart before being stopped. She sat up and took stock.

She was fully clothed, still, in her fucking ballgown, but one of her heels was broken and the other was missing. Her hair, which had been pinned up, was tumbling around her shoulders, and her dress was torn all up the side, from the floor up to right beneath her breasts.

Her whole body ached, but her thighs burned, and her dress was covered in blood down there. The worst pain was between her legs, and she remembered Nash twisting the gun back and forth, and then the feeling of his hands, raining down on her body in anger, and the way his violent thrusts had torn at her flesh, and...

She threw up.

Her hands were cuffed together, and one ankle was shackled to a chain that was, in turn, nailed to the wall. Great. She let out a long groan, her head pounding at the sound.

From somewhere nearby, muffled, as though it wasn't coming from the same room, someone asked, "Who are you?" The voice was vaguely familiar, and then something in her mind clicked, and she let out a gasp.

"Dr. Beech?" she asked, her voice a hoarse croak. "Is that you?"

There was silence, and then the voice responded, more warily, "How do you know that? Wait, you're the girl from the party, aren't you? Rory, right?"

Rowan looked around the room. Where was his voice coming from? And then her gaze landed on the air vent above her head. "That's not my real name," she admitted.

"Don't tell me what it is," Dr. Beech said. "They're listening. They're always listening, child. But tell me, are you really a scientist?"

"Yes," Rowan said. "Sort of. I guess... I guess I have the equivalent of a PhD."

There was a long, long pause, and Dr. Beech said, "I think I can guess at what you are. But I won't say it here. Not with them listening."

Rowan started to answer him, but he cut her off. "Hush, dear girl. They're coming. Listen!"

Rowan did listen, and she heard boots clomping against stone. He was right. She hoped they came to her cell, not his, because she dreaded to think of what they would do to the old man. She could take whatever they dished out, but him? No, that was inconceivable.

They came for her, to a combination of her relief and her fear. She braced herself, though. She had done hostage drills in the past, where the only thing she'd been allowed to reveal was her name, and she'd excelled. But this wasn't the past. In the past, she'd been colder than ice; she'd been liquid fucking nitrogen.

Now? Now, though, she felt everything a thousand times more than she'd ever done before. Maybe it was because she'd realized what she stood to lose. Now, she rehearsed the information she would give them. Some of it would be true, some false.

My name is Rowan. I don't have another name, first or last. True. I'm an orphan. True. I have a brother. Partially true. Stark was basically her brother. I'm from Acantha. Big, fat lie. She was pretty sure that would be a better answer than saying she was from a cesspool like Indivia, though. I'm twenty-four. A lie. She was only twenty. I'm working alone. Complete and utter bullshit.

But she could bullshit better than almost anyone.

Still, she could lie through anything; she'd practiced for years. Truth serums, lie detectors, she could fool them all, even the extra-sensitive ones the Rangers used that no one else had access to. A combination of outright truths, selective truths, and absolute lies worked best, instead of just lying or just using selective truths. And the best way to mask lies was to set her body off-kilter, and the way to do that was pain.