Free Armageddon by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

catch herself. She was certain, nevertheless, that her pose would be noticed any moment for the poor acting it was.

    Apparently the guard was distracted by his own thoughts, though, because he didn’t seem to notice anything different about her.

    She slumped in the chair when he shoved her into it, focusing her mind on keeping her arms and legs limp as he strapped her in.

    That was harder than anything prior to that point, because she’d still been groggy and uncoordinated when he’d been dragging her along the corridor. Fear again aided her when he began the questioning, because her mind was so chaotic with it she could only stare at him blankly when he jerked her head back to look at her.

    “Give us names!”

    She grappled with the demand, trying to put it together with other things he’d asked. Somehow, he, or rather the people he worked for, were under the impression that she was deep in the rebellion. “Morris?” she finally managed hesitantly, partly because she knew he was beyond their reach now and partly because she didn’t know of anyone else who even might be a rebel. She didn’t think that Morris was, or had been. She’d never believed it was more than talk. He was willing and his mind still alert, but physically, rebellion was beyond him anymore.

    The interrogator’s response was a slap that slung her head sideways and nearly made her blackout. “We know about Morris!” he growled. “Who are the others? Who met with him?”

    Dimly, through the blinding pain, an image of Dax emerged.

    She couldn’t be any more certain about him than she was about Morris, though.
    Furthermore, they had him. From what she’d seen of his face, they’d invested a good bit of time interrogating him, too, so she couldn’t imagine telling them his name would do her any good.

    Besides, she felt ill at the thought.

    “Don’ know names,” she managed to say finally.

    He grabbed her by her hair, jerking her head back and smashing the back of her skull into the chair back. “But you’d recognize them?”

    Lena swallowed with an effort, feeling her stomach heave as she tasted blood in her mouth. “Only know M-morris,” she stammered.

    38
    “Lying rebel bitch!” the man growled, pelting her with a barrage of blows that made the room dim and, thankfully, the lights go out.
    A deluge of icy water brought her around. For several moments, she spluttered and gasped, trying to free her air passages of water to suck in a breath of air.
    “Where do they meet?”
    Pain was pretty much all Lena was aware of anymore. The question hardly registered in her mind. He repeated it, emphasizing the question with another slap that nearly made her blackout again.
    “They?”
    “The rebels. Where do they meet?”
    He was going to beat her death, she realized dimly, if she didn’t give him something, but it was a battle to jog anything useful from her mind. “Underground,” she managed finally.
    He grabbed her tunic, shaking her and the chair. “We know it’s the underground!
    Where do they meet?”

    “’Neath subway.”

    He stopped shaking her abruptly. “Under the subway?”

    Lena wasn’t sure of why or even how she’d come up with that, but an errant memory had surfaced of a system of access tunnels leading off the main vein. “Old town,” she added.

    “When? When do they meet?”

    “Random,” Lena muttered the first thing that came to mind.

    “You’ll have to do better than that.”

    Again, she babbled the first thing that came to mind. “Last Friday of the month.”

    “Tonight?” His voice was threaded with excitement now.

    Fuck! But how was she supposed to have known that it was Friday? Realizing there was nothing she could do now to name a time that might have worked better for her, she nodded.

    “If you’re lying to me, bitch, you’ll regret it, I promise you.”

    She already regretted it, but she’d been beyond bearing anymore. She’d felt like she had to tell him something to get