Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 49
“Are you ready to beat the shit out of a superheroine?” Hector Garcia asked as he opened the door to Federico Black’s cell.
Black lifted his muscular frame from his cot and nodded, looking up at Garcia. The older man stood in the doorway, twirling a keyring around his index finger. Black stepped out of the cell to join Garcia and the third Cobra, Dizzy Lance.
“I had something else in mind besides beating the shit out of her,” Black growled. “Why don’t we have another kind of fun with her first?”
“Dizzy is having second thoughts about hurting her at all, let alone enjoying that hot body of hers,” Garcia said, gesturing over his shoulder toward Lance. “He says the warden is starting a fight club down here, and she’s the prize for the winner. Dizzy thinks the warden might get pissed if we ride that bitch before somebody wins her. And if the warden gets pissed, he might stop looking the other way with what we do down here.”
“Stop looking the other way?” Black said. “Shit, he’s already taken our keys. We're lucky a couple of the guards still play ball and hand over their keys.”
“He could make it a lot worse for us than just taking our keys,” Garcia said. “Don't forget, he's got Savage in his corner."
"Yea, I guess you're right," Black grumbled.
"We need to make an example of the blond babe, without stepping on the warden’s toes too much,” Gracia said. "So keep your dicks in your pants. The important thing is that the Cobras be the ones to knock Sapphire Angel down a few more pegs. We’re gonna cripple her. When we’re done with her, she’ll still be able to fuck, but she’ll never forget us.”
“Are you sure you just want the three of us?” Black asked. “The rest of the guys might want in on this. They'll want to brag that they messed up Sapphire Angel. We can go round ‘em up.”
"Nope," Garcia said. "Same thing. We can't disrespect the warden by having too many guys running loose. Besides, we don’t have time to round them up. Dizzy needs to get these keys back to the guard in an hour, before the guy finishes his shift and checks out. Otherwise, the warden will figure out he’s the one who gave ‘em to us, and that he’s one of our moles.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Black grumbled again. “Let’s go, then. I’m looking forward to hurting her bad.”
Beth tried to calculate how long she’d been in her cell. With no windows, she couldn't measure the passage of time, and she had drifted in and out of consciousness until about an hour earlier, further complicating any calculation. But as best she could guess, she had been in the prison less than twenty-four hours.
It felt like a lifetime, though. Her body ached all over, making each waking minute creep by. She tried to remain still, which kept the pain at its lowest level. This was an improvement over even a few hours ago, though, when she had found no way to reduce the agony. The thought of even a slight improvement made her remember the old woman’s words. The link is still there.
Her pain might be improving, if only barely, but her psyche remained at rock bottom. Savage’s beating had crushed Beth’s trademark resilience, leaving her battered and broken, with no hope of escape. Her costume and necklace were gone. In the span of just a few hours, Sapphire Angel had gone from legendary superheroine — adored by all and unbeatable — to being utterly defeated and destroyed. Finished.
She couldn’t muster the willpower to find a way out of this. In the movies, this was where the hero rose up, overcame all adversity, and prevailed. Beth had done so herself in the past, rallying from bad spots and coming back to save the day. But not this time. An even darker depression than before settled around her.
As she wallowed in her misery, a scraping sound alerted her to the opening of her cell door. From her position on her back, she turned her head to the side, expecting to see the old woman. Instead, a jolt of pure terror shot through her. A large man stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the dim light of the hallway. Gregor. He had come for her.
But then the man stepped inside, and she got a better view of him. It wasn’t Gregor, and he wasn’t alone, as two other men filed in behind him. None of the men were Gregor, but they all stared at her with similar menace in their eyes. The men wore the tattered garb worn by the prisoners on the balconies. Two of the men looked like wrestlers, with muscles bulging underneath their faded garb. The third man was older, but with wavy, dark hair. This was not a greeting party.
As they stalked toward her cot, she slid away from them across the thin mattress, forcing herself up against the wall. She pushed her arms underneath her, wincing with the effort as a whimper of pain sounded in her throat. The three men stood in a line a few feet from her cot. She looked up at them with panic in her eyes.
“Hey there, superheroine,” the older man in the middle said in a raspy voice. Up close, she saw the wrinkles creasing his face, as if life had worn him down. “We came to play with you.”
“Shame she ain’t in that shiny costume,” the man to the right said. “She don’t look like much of a hero in this outfit.”
“Yeah, you turned out to be quite the heroine, bitch,” the man to his left said with a snort. “They peeled you right out of your costume. We thought you were supposed to be tough. But you seem like a scared little girl to us.”
The third man stepped forward and his hand shot out, closing the distance and seizing her slender ankle.
“Come to papa,” he said with a laugh.
Sapphire Angel shrieked and tried to back away, but the man’s strength dwarfed hers, and he pulled her along the cot toward him. He stopped pulling before she could fall off the edge, but he didn’t release her ankle, which stretched off the cot toward him.
The other muscular man brought his right arm into view. He held a jagged club, perhaps hewn from a large chair or table, and he eyed her knee, which extended in the open air between the cot and the man holding her ankle. Exposed.
“You’re gonna be the wheelchair superheroine when we’re done with you, honey,” he said.
She tugged with her diminished strength, but couldn’t yank free. This was it. She wasn’t wearing her necklace, and doubted she would recover from this.
Never taking his eyes off her knee, the man raised the club above her knee and swung. It sped down, right on target.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
This is probably one of the most drawn-out, agonizing arcs in any of the novels thus far, beating out Raven Tristan’s torture sequence in “Power Play” and only narrowly beating out Roy Valik’s experimentation sequence in “Deconstruction”. I’ll let this slip, though; that was a smart plan for the Cobras to get their hands on the cell keys by planting a mole in. It’s like “pragmatic villainy”, you know? Like, you COULD go all the way with what you wanted to (i.e., here, they want to ride the heroine), but they still exercise some manner of self-restraint (for what it’s worth, anyway) so that they can continue to consistently do it. But you know what? It doesn’t matter how humiliating or traumatizing you make this arc; it’s NOT going to erode my assuredness that everything’s going to turn out okay by the end. (I can practically hear you saying “Challenge accepted” on the other end.)
Maybe Gregor will come in or something, before the Cobras can get their first hit on her. He’ll be all like “She’s mine” after he recognizes her, or he just outright beats up/kills the Cobras before taking Beth. We know how much he’d like to mess her up from their repeated encounters back in “Deconstruction”, and now would be as good of a time as any to try and pay her back for it. ……Or the Cobras might end up allying with him out of pragmatism. Of course, Gregor would have to accept whatever they have to offer first, which I think is highly unlikely.
OR the old woman from before can come back and deliver a hilarious beatdown to all three Cobras using just a cane or a walker or something similar, if you wanted to levy this sequence with a little comic relief (if it’s even appropriate at this point in time), and then she and Beth start making their escape.
Bottom line…..really hoping the Cobras get what’s coming to them. Gosh…..if she comes back and deals with them again later when she gets back to full strength…..that’d be SICK. Not going anywhere!