UNCIVILIZED

  SUPER SOLDIERS

  REBECCA ROYCE

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Uncivilized

  Ebook 978-1-960447-03-6

  Print 978-1-960447-14-2

  Copyright @ 2023 by Rebecca Royce

  Cover art by Original Syn

  Print Cover Art by Original Syn

  Content Editing: Virginia Nelson

  Copy Editing: Jennifer Jones at Bookends Editing

  Final Proof Editing: Viv Jackson

  Formatting: Ripley Proserpina

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rebecca Royce

  www.rebeccaroyce.com

  Created with Vellum

  CONTENTS

  1. A Girl Named Raven

  2. My New Home…For Now

  3. Maybe I Can Be Helpful

  4. Fairytales Are Warning Stories

  5. Lavender Days

  6. Lightning

  7. The Man From the Mountains

  8. Reading the Signs

  9. Burn Marks

  10. Turning the Page

  11. Fever Dreams

  12. Back to Before

  13. The Weapons Are Behind the Bar

  14. Ransom Undone

  15. The Cabin Problem

  16. The Falls

  17. The Whore and the Bounty Hunter

  18. Just Trying to Survive

  19. Surprises, All Around

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  1

  A GIRL NAMED RAVEN

  The rain pounded on my head, making it harder than I would like to check my surroundings. Still, I made the effort. I’d come too far to be waylaid by a would-be assailant or some pickpocket with a hard-on for my coat. I was almost there—the weeks of travel to get to the small town on the edge of the galaxy couldn’t be for naught. I’d lived through broken- down vessels threatening to fall from space and sketchy cargo ship captains who spent too much time noticing my legs and somehow had managed to survive on the meager rations I brought with me when I escaped in the middle of the night to make the journey.

  All because I promised Amias I would deliver his message. I intended to keep my word—I would find The Five and give them the note in my pocket. It was the last thing he ever asked of me, so I wouldn’t let him down. He’d saved me a million times, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. The least I could do was find my way to the bar in the small town where I would hand over the note he’d been so desperate to have delivered in the end.

  So far, the coast was clear. No one tried to assault or stop me. Actually, out of the few people I passed on the street, none seemed to even care that I was there. Theirs was an enhanced planet, for the most part. That meant one of the places without authorities trying to catalog and watch their every move, lest they destroy the universe.

  Of course, monitoring by the authorities wasn’t a terrible idea. I saw firsthand what happened when we let the former Super Soldiers take over planets.

  The mark on my forehead was a forever reminder of just how badly things could go, but I couldn’t control any of that. I was one woman alone and likely to be that way forever. All I could do was put one wet foot in front of the other and deliver the note in my pocket.

  Afterward, I would have to go back to do what I could for the others for as long as I could.

  I stopped short, staring at the building in front of me. It was just as Amias had said it would be. The Frog and The Bull. Not that I could read the sign, but the picture of the frog seemed a good indicator, and it eerily resembled the picture he’d sketched for me. I’d spent hours memorizing it until I could see it in my dreams.

  From where I stood, I could hear music playing inside the building—it was the pub where The Five hung out, their home base, so to speak. Amias had explained all of it to me over the years. He, Stone, and I had talked late into every evening, even when Stone and I should have been sleeping to prepare for the next day’s heavy burden. Amias never needed to sleep very much, because the enhanced people needed so much less rest than the rest of us. Despite my being the third wheel, they never made me feel that way, not even once.

  And now they were both gone.

  Tears threatened again, and I managed to shove them down. I wouldn’t successfully manage to hold them back forever, but for the moment, I would keep holding on. Everything I knew about the small town was because Amias had told me about it. I’d never been in a bar or anyplace like one before. The Five did business there, though, and it was the only place Amias could guarantee they would return. I hoped they’d be in residence, as I didn’t have the time or resources to stay and wait for them to arrive.

  Not that hope ever really amassed much of a result for me in the past.

  It seemed likely everyone in that bar knew I was outside already. They could hear, see, smell, taste, and react better than I ever could.

  They’d been made to be that way. In labs. When those labs threw them all away, the rest of us had to learn to contend with the Super Humans who lived among us. Ruling us, hurting us, except in those few places that controlled them.

  And I had no idea how they managed it in those places.

  It didn’t matter. I’m one woman with no power.

  But I would deliver the letter. I flung open the door and walked in with more confidence than I actually felt. There is no point in showing these men weakness.

  I’d never experienced walking into a room and having everyone turn to look at me—realistically, I usually wasn’t even noticed. But a room full of what looked like enhanced people all turned to stare at me at the same time, practically in unison, and my heartbeat kicked in response to the weight of their combined stares. The music inside the dark pub blared louder in here than it did outside, jangling my already jagged nerves. How do these people, with their extra-sensitive hearing, stand this noise?

  Or maybe that was the point? Maybe they chose to blast the music so they didn’t have to hear the other parts of the universe they’d really rather just tune out. Either way, it bugged me.

  With my ears ringing from the noise, I stepped further into the room. I was wet, dripping, and on display, but not in the way that I usually was at home. Being dressed and stared at was somehow worse than what I was usually forced to do.

  I swallowed and walked toward the bar. The interior wasn’t a surprise, as it also matched my best friend’s description—dark, rundown, yet clean. Someone had made the floors shine, and the bar was immaculate. What they didn’t care about was keeping up the burgundy walls, which were peeling, and the barstools were taped together. I would have to be careful where I sat.

  A tall man worked behind the bar, and so far, all I’d seen were men. The planets that catered to enhanced men sometimes had women on them, like ours did, but no women had been invited to this particular meeting.

  Then again, there hadn’t been any female Super Soldiers. The three that had been made had all been killed shortly after birth.

  Or so the stories said.

  The bartender’s chestnut brown hair and neatly trimmed beard caught my attention, but it was his ocean blue eyes that held my gaze the longest. The only positive of living where I did was seeing that color every day out my window. I hadn’t been in the ocean since I was a small girl, but I could smell the salt and see the views in my mind. They saved me, daily.

  At least my sanity.

  Water dripped off my clothes, hitting their neatly kept floor in a puddle under my feet. I abruptly became acutely aware of just how wet I was. I swallowed, not that I could do anything about the dripping. If I’d had the means to stay dry, I would have done so.

  “Hi,” I said. The bartender ignored me. There was no way he couldn’t hear me. Hell, every man in the room probably could hear my heartbeat. Many found their senses intrusive, but I’d gotten used to it over time and it usually didn’t bug me anymore. Between Amias and the other enhanced that I dealt with daily, those sorts of things were commonplace for me.

  However, that usually meant I had their full attention rather than them completely ignoring me. First they all stared, and now no one will look at me at all.

  It was almost coordinated. They must have done this before.

  I tried again. “Hello. I…I need to find The Five. Can you please point me in their direction?”

  No one was looking, but boy did I have their attention again. The hairs on my arms bristled and stood at attention. They were listening to me. They don’t have to be looking at me to hear. Despite knowing they could hear me, their silence amplified my tension, making me utterly aware that I stood in a room surrounded by predators. If even one of them so chose, I would become their prey, so I needed to get out of there before that
happened.

  The bartender sauntered over to me. “Sorry, I can’t help you with that. The Five? Never heard of them.” He pointed toward the door. “Out.”

  This is bad. He was either lying—my preference—or things had changed so much in the past years that they were all gone. Surely, someone would remember them?

  That meant that this man was lying.

  I tried again. “Listen, if you are…declining to tell me the truth for whatever reason…and I’m sure it’s a good reason…I need to, please, ask again. I’m here on a task that I have to complete. I just have to.” With every fiber of my being. “I can go. I know I don’t belong here. I get it. And I don’t want any trouble. If you could just tell me who any one of them are, or where I can find them, I will go and never come back.”

  Chairs screeched and wobbled as several people—seven of them to my count—quickly left the bar. Were The Five among them? The joke of the whole situation was that there were now only four of The Five left. They just didn’t know it yet. I knew their names, nothing else.

  The bartender narrowed his eyes in what best could be called a threatening expression. “Let me give you a piece of advice, girlie. When someone like me tells someone like you to get out, you get out.” He pointed at the door. “Or there are consequences.”

  Tears threatened again. I tended to cry when I got really angry, like my signals got crossed in my brain, and I couldn’t tell the difference between anger and sadness. With the burden I carried, it was even harder for me to decipher the two feelings. I couldn’t start the tears. Wouldn’t. Not here. Not with these people throwing me out in the rain without even letting me do the last thing my best friend ever asked of me.

  I nodded, my lips wobbling despite my determination. “Okay. I’ll go.”

  “Ransom,” a man who sat in the corner said as he rose. He knocked twice on the table and even more of the bar exited, fast. I lost count of how many, but they left in a hurry, like a drove of fleeing enhanced men. That can’t be good.

  In the end, that left four men in the bar with me. Ransom was certainly one of The Five—I recognized the name. He was the youngest of them, and Amias had said he was like his little brother.

  Of course, the big, strong, intimidating man who told me to go didn’t look like anyone’s little brother. Not to me, at least.

  That meant the other three were Crew—and he was in charge. Gunnar. And Mace. I didn’t know who was who, but I’d guess the one who made everyone leave was Crew. I tried not to look at them. Now that I knew that Ransom was Ransom, I would simply hand him the letter and get on with it.

  Everyone would be glad to see me leave.

  I pulled the letter out of my pocket. It was dry, at least—the only thing I’d managed to keep that way. In what was absolutely not a swift move, I extended my hand to pass the letter to Ransom.

  He stared at me and didn’t move.

  The man who had spoken walked toward me. Like Ransom, he didn’t seem to be in the least bit of a hurry. My hand shook, and I dropped it, still holding the letter to my side. My stomach growled; I was hungry. It had been hours and hours since I’d eaten anything.

  “Who told you to bring that to The Five? That’s not a name we’ve used in a long time. Where did you hear it, and who gave you that note to give to us?”

  I turned to the man. He was as tall as Ransom, with longish black hair and green eyes. They were striking, but I couldn’t read anything from him. Barely there interest at best? He crossed his arms over his chest, like he was bored.

  My tears fled easily in that second. This was just…awful. I wanted to curse at him for being so cold and disinterested when I had come so far to do this job. I’d learned over the years to hide what I thought, and I schooled my features into careful neutrality, but I should really thank him. Just his one look saved me from the humiliation of sobbing in front of him.

  “Amias. He sent me here to give you this.” I held out the letter to him this time.

  They all shifted slightly at the sound of Amias’ name. I let myself look at the other two men in the room. One of them was blond, and the other more of a light-haired redhead, like a strawberry blond. They were as tall as I expected them to be—Super Soldier sized.

  “It has been a long time since any of us have heard that name. Where is he? Why did he send you instead of coming himself?” Their leader wasn’t bored anymore. No, he pulsated fury, his jaw hard, his gaze threatening to tear me apart.

  It is my job to deliver this news. I’m not sure how I made it that far without it ever occurring to me that I’d be the one responsible for telling them. I’d thought of the note…not about having to tell them why I brought it. Grief clouded my brain—I’d been just trying to put one foot in front of the other up until that point, rather than processing any of it.

  I let out a breath I’d been holding. “I’m afraid I have to tell you he is dead.” It was hard to speak the words, and my voice cracked on the word dead. “He died a little over a week ago, and his last request was that I give this to you.”

  The man I thought was likely Crew grabbed the note out of my hand. My fist clenched, but far too late to be of any good. His movement had been so fast, I barely tracked it, but the note was in his hand, and he read it quickly.

  I almost cried out as a sob caught in my throat. That piece of paper…small and delicate as it had been…represented my last link to Amias.

  With it out of my possession, the wave that I held off for so long struck me so hard, it might have knocked me over if I hadn’t been leaning against the bar. I blinked. How did I not begin to process what losing Amias and Stone actually meant?

  I had to get out of there. Turning on my heel, which squeaked because I was such a soaked mess, I ran for the door.

  “Wait.”

  I stopped. The power of his order rendered me practically unable to disobey him. He wasn’t a man that people didn’t listen to. I turned to stare at him.

  He held up the paper for a second before he passed it to the strawberry-blond who took it, read it, and then passed it to the one with white, blonde hair. He finally passed it to Ransom.

  “Did you read that note?”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t read.”

  Why teach women to read when we were only around for one reason? Men weren’t paying Clarke for me to read to them.

  White-blond man blinked rapidly. “Then how did you get here?”

  I pulled out another note. “Amias wrote down things, and I just matched his words with the ones I needed as I went. He anticipated what I would have to see. When it varied, and it didn’t much, I asked for help.”

  “You’re smart.” Strawberry blond smiled at me. It was a sad smile, like Amias’ death rode on the edges of it.

  “She’s a sex worker, ” Ransom supplied. “In case you missed the brand.”

  I touched my forehead, an instinctive move I made whenever someone brought it up. “I’m not a sex worker. I don’t go out on the street and sell myself. Yes, Clarke owns my body and gives it out as he sees fit. He owns all of us on our planet. None of us are free.” That thought spurred me forward. “I have to go.”

  I didn’t know why I even wasted the time to justify myself to them. What difference did it make what they thought about me? If a woman had to sell herself to survive, then that was her fate. I wasn’t better or worse than they were. It just was what it was.

  The leader spoke again. “I said wait.” He took a step toward me. “We haven’t heard from Amias in years. He vanished, leaving just a note to tell us he was never coming back. Then you arrive, and you’ve delivered this blow. It’s going to take a moment. What is your name?”

  I sighed. “I have to get back. There is no time to lose. I’ve been gone for a week. They can only cover for so long before it will be noted, and then everyone who helped me will be punished.”

  Ransom held up the note. “Do you want to know what it says?”