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The Girl in the Box, Book 48
Robert J. Crane
Ostiagard Press
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The Girl in the Box, Book 48
Robert J. Crane
copyright © 2021 Ostiagard Press
1st Edition.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Epilogue
Teaser
Author’s Note
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
“Get the idea of peace on Earth out of your head.
“It is a fiction, a convenient lie told by people who are sheep, who want to believe in the inherent goodness of man.” Cruel, crackling laughter filled my ears as blood flew through the air like warm spray from a geyser. The scent of iron came with it, thick, rich, and heavy. “Humanity does not change. We are creatures of struggle, of violence, of hate – and those characteristics, which float to the top in but a few, are enough to steer the course of man toward chaos.”
I swung my axe into the throat of a screaming foe, his long hair and beard soiled by mud and blood as I split his skull and saw parts of his interior anatomy that modern man (and woman) were not intended to see outside of a surgery or an autopsy. Drawing back my axe, I hacked him again and finished the job, sending his head spinning, beard and all, from his body.
“This is the way, Sienna,” the voice intoned once more, powerful and ringing, almost drowning out the screams and battle cries taking place all around me.
“This...is chaos,” I said, swinging again, planting my axe in the guts of what seemed like a very angry man with his face painted blue who was trying to behead me with a sword. A dozen voices close at hand told me that my actions had stirred the desire for revenge in that man's fellows, and the slap of feet upon the muddy ground told me they were coming to enact that desire upon my very person. “How did I let you talk me into this?”
A thundering crack of laughter echoed in my head like it had been born there; it hadn't. It was placed there by the man who was sharing this battle with me.
Well...maybe not “sharing.”
A steely spear flew across my field of vision, planting itself in the torso of one of the angry men trying to kill me. He was bowled over, planted to the ground as surely as if a dart had stuck him to a dartboard. A huge figure landed beside it, planting a foot in the fallen man's chest and pulling the spear from the body. He bellowed over the field of war, and everyone flinched at once...
...Except me. I swung my axe and took five heads off while they were distracted. Then I leapt into the air, letting my flight powers kick in, and swept over a coming rank of men armed with bows and axes and swords, covering them over with fire and flame, burning them as though I were a dragon.
“Yes, that is the spirit,” the voice of Odin echoed in my head. “Savage men cannot be stopped by reason, by trying to 'civilize' them. For some, the brute nature is close to the surface. Untamed. You can only stop them with sword and fire.”
“I'm not even in Rome, but I'm doing as the Romans do,” I said, dropping into a thick patch of angry, blue-painted...Celts? Nords? Colts fans? I wasn't even sure who I was fighting, but they were painted up like Braveheart and draped in furs, their weapons not of the highest quality I'd seen. I sent out a shock of ice from my feet that froze legs, halting my enemies in place long enough for me to swing the axe again, ending the lives of several of them. “What's the idea here, again? 'Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill?'”
“The idea is to get your aggression out,” Odin said, now beside me again, impaling three dudes on Gungnir (his spear) like they were shish kabobs. “You live by the laws of man, but you know in your heart that this modern take on humanity, this idea that we can be perfected into peace and controlled into submission – it is a farce that only stands so long as someone with great strength does not defy and shatter the illusion.”
I swung again, taking the head of another Colts fan, clearly still pissed about Peyton Manning's leaving them for Denver. “Lucky thing I'm here, then, I guess.”
Odin's smile forced its way into my head though I wasn't looking at him, a peculiar effect of his power, the Warmind. I had it, too, but for me it worked as a sort of psychic disruptor, something that would knock an enemy back a few steps, distract them a few seconds so I could deliver a coup de grace.
For Odin, it seemed...bigger. Way bigger. Almost a sort of backdoor telepathy combined with a soul-crushing mentalist power if he chose to exercise it.
“This is what you do,” he said. “Fight to defend against the barbarians at the gates and in the city of man. Keep back the tide of those who would inadvertently haul it all down around our ears. For the destroyers of civilization come often in the form of conquerors who merely means to take it over. They are fools who stand up on the fortieth floor of a skyscraper and think themselves able to fly while they undermine the foundations all the way down.”
“That was kinda specific,” I said, ducking low and swinging high, missing a sword to the head and burying my axe in guts. “I will say – it seems to me this kind of fight is easier than what I do. Find new lands, pillage them.” I swung my axe upward, taking a man through the chin and splitting his face wide open. Didn't bother me, I realized dimly; in fact, I felt strangely alive in a way I hadn't since I quit drinking.
“It has always been easier to destroy than create...” Odin's eye found me, boring into my skull through the Warmind, a not-subtle pressure on my psyche as I killed three guys in rapid succession. “...harder to protect than to lay asunder.”
“Plus: thankless,” I said, ready to come up for another attack, but realizing that the battlefield was already fading around me. The dreamwalk was coming to an end, a faint buzzing in the distance pulling me out of the blissful slumber of slaughter and mayhem. “Aww. That went fast.”
Odin chuckled. He was fading, too. “Come visit me again soon, Sienna. It is a pleasure to conquer with you, even in dreams.” He looked into the distance with a thousand-yard stare. “It reminds me of days of old, with your grandmother at my side.”
“Yeah...you had to go and make this weird,” I said, slinging some guts off the blade of my axe. “Well...weirder.”
“Is it really so strange that you might find your fulfillment in the ways of old?” Odin asked, his voice rumbling even as his visage faded to black. “In my day...you would have been a goddess.”
I woke in my bedroom, the dogs beside me in my king bed, the first hints of light pouring in at the cracks of the shades. My phone was buzzing hideously against my bedside table, and the clock read 6:01.
With a touch, I silenced my alarm and felt the dogs barely stir before putting their heads back down. At the far side of the room I could hear Emma the kitten pawing around in her cage.
“Well,” I said, trying to push the sleepiness out of my voice, “there's not really a job opening for goddesses in this world anymore.” Grabbing my phone and my TBI badge, I sauntered toward the bathroom. “Guess I've gotta work for a living.”
Chapter Two
June Randall
The Cube
Dahlgren Township, Minnesota
December 22nd
7:18 A.M.
“Breakfast is over, you slobs!” Guard Kennebec announced in his usual no-nonsense manner. “Bus your trays and get back to your cells!”
“You know what I like best about Kennebec?” Amanda Gustafson said, dryness just crackling through her voice at the far end of the long table in the middle of the Cube's courtyard. June had come to appreciate Gustafson's wit since she'd arrived a few months back, along with what seemed to be her whole surviving family. “He's always in such a good mood in the mornings.”
“Matched only by his mood in the afternoons,” Madison Gustafson, Amanda's younger sister, offered. Slim, dark-haired, voice crackling like an acetylene torch as she applied it to her target. “You know, after the coffee has worn off.”
“You've smelled the stuff they call coffee around here, right?” Christy Custis asked, a tired smile on her youthful face. She'd come in with the Gustafsons, all part of some dumb – in June's opinion – scheme to piss off Sienna Nealon by convincing her they'd killed her friends and brother. Genius stuff right there. Oddly, though, this bunch didn't seem as stupid as their plan might have suggested.
Then again, June had landed in the Cube because she and her boyfriend Elliot had decided to rob their way across the state of Florida, so she probably shouldn't cast stupid stones in her glass house.
“Come on, come on!” Kennebec's voice echoed, and that prompted June to grab her tray. He never got nicer as the hectoring wore on. Darting may not have been a common practice in the Cube – which June thought was insane given every single prisoner had superpowers – but it wasn't unheard of, either. “Move your asses!”
A clatter to June's left drew her attention. There, next to her, tray emptied of all its contents, was Drusilla Cross. Face red, her bulging eyes filled with tears, the small girl looked like she was going to burst. Which...she sort of had the power to do.
“Don't sweat it, Dru,” June said, stooping to pick up the milk carton and fallen plate. She scooped hard flakes of scrambled eggs onto her own tray as Drusilla stood over her helplessly, her left arm – the only one she had left – dangling with her tray and the remaining contents of it carefully balanced.
“Thank you,” Drusilla murmured as June finished. Together, they followed the crowd toward the big trash bins strategically placed at the corners of the courtyard dining area. The Cube was two prisons, actually, one atop the other. The men’s prison was above them, through a layer of metal so solid June had heard a nuke would have a hard time busting through. Sometimes, when things really sucked here, she wondered what things were like up there.
Then she remembered how men were, and mostly she was fine with not knowing.
Besides, things up there were probably worse than they were here, she reflected, dumping the contents of her tray as her turn in the trash line came up. That done, she and Drusilla trudged back to the perimeter of the area, where cells lined each wall. Heavy doors packed with power-nullifying gel stood open for the day, though if Kennebec had one more conniption about people not moving fast enough, he'd probably lock them in for an hour or two just to demonstrate his ire. He'd done it before.
“Thank you, ladies,” Kennebec announced with excess sarcasm right about the time that June made it back to her cell. “All right, get those cells in order. Inspection coming – right now!” And something honked in the distance.
June knew that noise. It was the sound for prisoners to clear the main doors so guards could come pumping in from outside the cell block.
“Inspection?” Drusilla shuffled beside June, their cells only a couple apart. She sounded almost sick, a thing that usually happened right after she'd been dosed – heavily, always – with suppressant. “Today?”
