Chapter Twenty-Three

Saki slid down the rope and landed, before racing to embrace Takada and Noriko. The Sirens held the tiny Kitsune girl tight. Natalia looked at Kay, her face and demeanor was calm, but Natalia’s eyes were pools of agony.

“What do you need us to do?”

“Help us carry supplies. Then help my brother get people settled in the barracks.” She looked at Rei, “You probably want to run ahead and make sure no one tries to set up in your room or in the storerooms.”

Rei looked at Natalia, but she was looking at her remaining people checking the Siren over. He understood, she wanted to make sure her team and family were alright, but there was something almost intimate about how she interacted with them that made him feel a bit jealous.

“All right. I’ll see you there.” he jogged off.

Kay looked at the newcomers, “Come on, I’ll have you all work on packing the infirmary I’ll show you where it is...” She led them to the med bay and watched as the four InSec agents moved together to pack everything essential. All of them had gone through basic EMT training and knew what was necessary and portable.

“Hey Saki, can we web this together? We would be able to carry more if it wasn’t so awkward” asked Takada his voice dull.

“Sure, let’s also put this in the pile that should fill a web.”

Kay saw how the three strangers were acting around the male Siren and pulled Natalia aside. “Do I need to worry about him?”

Natalia closed her eyes. “Almost our entire family died today, and his mate, his pregnant mate is in the Osaka research facility. If they’ve killed us they are probably going to kill her, if they haven’t already.” Natalia stepped away, not wanting to be over sharp in her grief, none of this was Kay’s fault.

“I’m going to check on your friend, once we get to the hidey hole I want all of you to come to me for an exam. You all probably have splinters that should be removed.” Kay walked off. They needed to be together, and needed to be alone to morn their teammates.

Natalia kept her face a mask of calm. Her people needed her to be strong, but her mind kept drifting to the rest of her family buried in stone. Quiet Haru and quirky Miyuki, somber Aaron the baby of the group, only fifteen and just out of training. Numbly she and her team moved medical supplies, and when that was done they moved food. People glared at her and the others angrily, she accepted their wrath as justified. Like her they had lost their home.

Finally Saki, and a few of the Deep Dwellers, blew all the tunnels. In a fog Natalia continued to work, hauling boxes of supplies into storerooms and helping to set up the medical facility. She ordered Takada and Noriko to rest and promised Noriko that she would wake the Siren woman before she went to sleep. Natalia worked until she could barely stand, until she couldn’t tune any more energy out of her battered body. She found an empty corner and slumped to the floor, her back against the wall and her head resting on her knees half hidden by boxes.

Gone. They’re all gone. No tears slid down her face, she didn’t feel that she had the right to cry. It was her job to take care of her family. Instead, she had led them to death. My fault. I should have researched the issue before contacting the office. Then I would have known… they would be alive. These people would not have been forced out of their homes. Rei…

She swallowed. It was so hard to maintain. So hard not to cry, she had been trained not to cry, to not show weakness. It was also hard to fight back the grey exhaustion that hung from her every limb. She did not want to go to sleep, she did not want the ghosts of her friends haunting her dreams, did not want the nightmares she knew Alexander’s probe and her counterattack had brought to the surface.

However, sleep would not be denied and whimpering, Natalia fell asleep curled into a fetal ball next to the concrete wall. A half hour later she started screaming, “No. no! no! NOOO! Please stop. It hurts! Please! Please! AAAAAH!” As she thrashed about her hair shifting to its normal red, bruises appeared on her wrists, throat, and ankles. She moaned, and it was the sound of someone who wanted to die, as Natalia became locked in nightmares, she was too weary to wake from.

Rei had accepted that things weren’t going to be normal for a very long time to come, although he couldn’t help resenting it. With a sigh, and a barely swallowed curse directed towards Alexander, he stubbed his toe on yet another bundle that had been tossed seemingly randomly on the barracks floor.

Unable to take the crowding, or the muttered sounds of crying and anger, any longer and unwilling to try and cross the room to reach his thankfully still private chambers, he slid instead into the small storeroom his sister had claimed for medical supplies.

It was, thankfully, empty of people and the lights were soft. Rei was somewhat astonished to find the room organized, especially compared to the mess the rest of his home was in. Of course, with his sister in charge, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

He leaned back against the door, closing his eyes. His mind drifted over everything that had been lost that day, and was thankful it wasn’t worse. Houses and clothing were easy to replace, given time, but no one had lost their lives.

Rei winced, his tired mind catching up with its own thoughts and reminding him that wasn’t the truth. Natalia’s team, or what was left of it at least, was walking around in a daze at the loss of the men and women they had worked with for years. The young girl, Saki, was doing the best of the group but Rei wasn’t sure if that was because she was a relative newcomer, just benefited from the resilience of all teenagers, or if she was by nature impervious to depression.

A sudden screaming plea jerked Rei from his musings. “Natalia?” He called out, recognizing her voice, above the sounds of a fight. He knew that some people held resentment towards the former InSec team, blaming them for the loss of the Deep and their homes. The thought of someone cornering Natalia with the idea of getting revenge chilled him to the bone.

He hurdled a low row of boxes, knives naked in his hands, to find Natalia alone and thrashing about as if she was fighting an invisible foe. It took him a second of shocked watching to realize her eyes were closed, and that she was trapped in a nightmare.

Stolen novel; please report.

Dropping his blades to the dusty concrete floor, Rei approached her cautiously. “Natalia? Natalia! It’s me, Rei!” He called, hesitant at first to reach out at the wildly flailing woman. Then one of her fists hit a stack of boxes, almost causing it to tip over on her. He swallowed and surged forward to capture her wrists and pull her towards him to trap them between their bodies.

“Shh… Calm down. I’m here, and no one’s going to hurt you. Shh…” He whispered into her ear, holding her tightly. He ignored her feet and legs, kicking him again and again. He accepted the pain, because she needed him to.

Rei was not the only one who had hear Natalia’s scream Saki ran in seconds after he had scooped her into his arms, then turned around and raced back out shouting for Noriko.

The albino was at the door within a minute and Noriko dropped to her knees beside Rei. “She was supposed to come get me before she went to bed!” Noriko growled as she placed one hand on Natalia’s forehead. The effect was immediate as every muscle in the nightmare plagued woman’s body went limp.

“What did you do?” asked Rei as “And what the hell are these bruises?”

“I soothed her, it’s a trick I have.” The exhausted looking Siren rubbed her eyes, The makeup she wore to hide the paper whiteness of her skin smeared. “I am considered a mutant. I have the ability to heal psionic wounds. Unfortunately, I can’t heal straight emotional trauma. All I can do is sooth it.” Natalia curled into Rei’s arms and Noriko’s eyes widened in surprise. “She should come to now.” As if hearing her words Natalia’s eyes fluttered open.

She surged forward, Rei instinctively held on to her and Noriko grabbed the Kitsune woman’s arm before she could attack.

“It’s alright! You’re safe.” Noriko’s voice was low and throaty as she spoke her words with her mouth and her mind.

“Oh God! I’m sorry!” Natalia whispered as her face turned crimson. She winced as she looked down and saw the bruising.

“You were supposed to come get me.” scolded the psychic.

“I wasn’t ready to sleep yet.”

Noriko looked at Rei, “Can you take her somewhere to rest? And put some food in her?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. I’m going to tell Takada what’s going on and check on Shido, after that I’ll come check on her, and make sure she actually sleeps without nightmares.”

Rei stood and picked Natalia up in his arms, she squeaked in protest as he carried her across the main hall of the barracks to his room.

Natalia was mortified that she had fallen asleep, that her nightmares had caused her to scream so loudly that people were still looking at her oddly. Rei helped her to his bed, and she sat on the edge. He pulled out some protein jerky and a can of water from his desk and handed it to her. “You haven’t eaten anything since the party, have you?”

“No.” she said taking the jerky and chewing it. “There was too much to do.”

Rei’s eyes were glued to the necklace of bruises at her throat. He sat next to her.

She knew he wanted to know what was going on, why she had screamed and why there were bruises on her skin where there had been no injury.

“I was ten when it was decided that I would lead my team.” Natalia stared at the can of water. “It was between me and Shido, but they decided on me.”

“Talia. You don’t have to-“

“I do. You deserve the truth, especially after all the trouble I’ve caused you. I was moved into an officer’s track program, which meant I was taking officer’s training on top of everything else that we had to learn.

We started working in the field under another commander when we were thirteen. We worked easy cases to start seasoning us, the Sirens were brought in two years later. That’s when we became a full team, but there was still training, still things for us to learn.

When we turned eighteen I was pulled from my team for a special officer’s training class.” Natalia’s voice had sunk to a whisper as she stared at the floor. “They didn’t tell me what the class was, only that I needed to tune my skin up and what classroom to go to…they blindfolded me and rubbed something under my nose so I couldn’t smell. Then…” she began to shake, her eyes closed. “They… took turns training me.” She dropped the can of water, unopened it rolled across the floor.

“Never cry; never show weakness, they hurt you more then. They recorded it. They made me watch while telling me what I had done wrong. Then… they did it again, and again, and again. I fought so much they had to bind me to a table so they could…” she touched the bruise on her throat. “So that they could continue…having…training me.”

“I was in training for about a month; I don’t know how many people…instructed me. I broke. I couldn’t take the training, it got where I would go catatonic as soon as the teachers touched me. Then they kicked me out of the class, they gave me my Majors brass then told me that was as far as I was going to go…”

“After I got back to my family, I think Noriko is the only reason I ever slept. She kept the nightmares away. Haru, Luke, Shido and the rest of my brothers did everything they could to make sure I could tolerate being around males.” Natalia sobbed and pressed the heels of her hand to her eyes as she thought about her dead brothers.

“About a year ago, I quit having the nightmares as often, maybe only once a week.” Natalia looked up at Rei. She hesitantly half reached for him before dropping her hands to her lap, clenching them into fists. “I haven’t had any nightmares since we met. Not until today. I had thought that maybe I was finally better. I mean, save for one panic attack, I didn’t freak out that badly when they told me I was being ordered to the breeding program.”

“What?” Rei barked.

“That was one of the things I wanted to tell you. Not that it matters now, I suppose. I was supposed to pick a mate out of the fifth or sixth dan Kitsune in InSec to breed a child with.” Natalia yawned, exhaustion was taking its toll, Rei could tell only through force of will was she still awake.

The tone of her voice told him the forced breeding was something she had accepted as normal, even though the very idea of it terrified her. Rei wanted to seethe, he wanted to lose his temper and hunt down those who hurt her, but he couldn’t. She needed him to stay calm, to soothe her. Revenge could wait, and a dark part of him admitted vengeance was probably a pipe dream at best.

He gently touched Natalia’s cheek, lightly and carefully. He did not want to bring back even a ghost of the nightmares that haunted her. “The dreams returning are probably because of… everything that’s happened today. I’ll help you through it though, I promise, and my sister may have an idea how to help more. But for now, you’re going to need to lay back and sleep. You still look like your dead where you sit.”

“You’re taking this more calmly than I would have expected.”

“No, I’m not.” He assured her. “If you had given me names, or told me where to find the people who had done that… I’d already be gone, halfcocked and all stupid. As it is I want to throw up just imagining what they put you through.”

“It was training for…”

“Stop.” Rei softly silenced her. “It was … rape… I don’t care what they called it, or how they justified it, they should never have done that to you!” He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. “You survived, that’s what is important. Together we’ll get you through these nightmares.” He pushed her, gently, down to a laying position. “Now go to sleep.”

“But if I sleep…”

“You might dream.” Rei nodded, reaching into a drawer in the small table next to his futon. He pulled out a packet of pills. “I have a talent for working myself up, so while I have no idea how you’re feeling I have some idea of how to deal with the dreaming. They’ll knock you on their ass, they have to for us, but even if you dream you sure as hell won’t remember them.” He assured her. “Now let’s see you take one.”

Reluctantly, and after a short staring contest, Natalia slid the small pills into her mouth and swallowed. Rei smiled softly at her. “Now lay back. I’ll sit here and keep an eye on you.”

“You’re going to keep me safe from my nightmares?” Natalia, already feeling sleep claiming her, asked groggily.

Rei, sitting back in his chair, nodded then realized she had already fallen asleep. He let himself begin to drift off too. He knew his dreams would be filled with the horrors she had described to him.

It was the least he could suffer, since she had been forced to live through them.