a thud to my heart. I shuddered. The accompanying imagery her mind projected brought bile to my throat. She liked to use pain in both a medical context and in her personal sexual life. The Alpha bitch before me was the worst form of abomination I’d had the displeasure to cross paths with during my time of incarceration.
As quickly as the imagery arrived, it crumbled, and I saw past it and into her depraved brain where her request to test me further had been denied.
Smirking, she took her seat at her desk and leaned back to study me. I remained standing. I had no authority against an ordinary military member, and certainly none against an Alpha elite.
She’d been away, only returning a few weeks ago. Rumor had spread like wildfire through the soldiering ranks. Jenda was not well-liked, and the minds of personnel had been rife with first the importance of her mission, then the subsequent failure. Even General Cohen, who had desperately wanted the Singular Omega Jenda was tasked to bring in, suffered mixed emotions on hearing the news of her failure.
“How was your mission?” I asked sweetly.
Jenda’s mind splintered as my words triggered a memory. A beautiful Omega strapped to a medical cot while the Alpha electrocuted her. My mind recoiled as more scenes bombarded me. God save us from her monstrous designs. What had Jenda done to that poor woman?
The next image flashed grainy like it was derived through a monitor feed. Wait? Was that… telekinesis? The speed and force with which the tiny Omega sent the metal rod spinning, astounded me. It hit the huge Alpha, sending him crashing to the floor in a heap.
As quickly as the mental carnival arrived, it disappeared.
Lillian Brach. I didn’t know much of Lilly beyond what I had learned since her capture a few months ago. The daughter of a governor, she’d been snatched from the Empire’s cultural capital, Chimera, after her betrayal at the hands of a corrupt Theta. Taken by the terrorist organization Salvation, she’d been bound for the Empire’s hellhole, Lyus.
Tenuous alliances were forming. They could tip in any direction at any time.
The Theta dynamics had long envied the Alphas’ stranglehold on power and were the real masterminds behind Salvation. However, their control had slipped, and the terrorist organization had grown bold enough to declare independence.
Salvation was the scourge of the known universe and would sell anything and anyone for a profit. They had granted Jenda rights to experiment on the Omega while bringing Lilly to their home-world. Here she was to be offered up in a competition in the infamous Lyus Pit. The profits from such an event were huge, and the Uncorrupted unprepared to spend the exorbitant cost to buy the Omega outright.
Of course, they’d enlisted their own Alphas in the competition seeking to obtain her by fair means or foul.
The blame for Lilly’s subsequent escape when her Controllers extracted her had landed with Jenda as the senior Alpha elite on the operation.
“You’re bold today, Omega,” Jenda said. Her lips twisted as she inspected my petite body as though she could see beyond my functional blue tunic. I was unremarkable for an Omega, I’d been told. Plain, was the word most often used in my reference. I wasn’t beautiful or even pretty in the way an Omega was meant to be.
I thought I’d been passing pretty once, long ago before I became an Omega, and my gift revealed. I didn’t bother with mirrors anymore. The tired grey eyes that stared back at me might as well have belonged to a stranger.
My spark had gone. I had seen it disappear from other Omegas over the years, but none in the profound way that mine had.
“Are you due for your heat?” Jenda tapped the console before her without waiting for my reply. She was their resident Omega expert, and a doctor before being administered a high viral dose during Cohen’s first foray into the once forbidden path.
I was newly arrived at the time, so the nuances of how Cohen had gotten approval were lost on me. He wasn’t a man who lingered in the past. His mind was too focused on the now and the future. I suspected he had blackmailed, bribed, or threatened someone higher up into approving the request—it was his usual style.
Such tactics were part of everyday Uncorrupted life among the ruling and military elite. Once his plans for the Uncorrupted’s viral awakening were underway, and the first Alphas turned, everything changed.
That I was