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“And yet you were talking to him in that building. We felt his presence.”
“Then you’ll know he disappeared long before you got there. And he didn’t tell me squat.”
“You lie,” the presence said. “That is unwise.”
“That is the truth,” I bit back. “You bastards turned up before he could tell me anything useful.”
“Another lie,” he said. “It would appear you prefer not to cooperate. We shall try other means.”
“Wait!” I said, almost frantically.
But he didn’t.
This time the pain came as a sledgehammer rather than a knife, and it knocked me not only sideways but damn near senseless. I lay on the concrete and battled to breathe as my body quivered under the assault and my brain felt like it was on fire.
But this wasn’t just a psychic attack. It went far deeper than that. It felt like they were pulling me apart, atom by atom. It felt like every part of me was screaming—every part except my mouth, because the sound seemed to be stuck somewhere inside my throat.
I have no idea how long I lay there, writhing and twisting and silently—endlessly—screaming, but it seemed like hours. Days even.
Eventually, it stopped, leaving me tenuously holding on to consciousness as my whole body ached with a ferocity I couldn’t even begin to describe.
“She is very resistant,” a distant voice said.
Or maybe it wasn’t distant. Maybe it just seemed that way.
“Unusually so,” the original voice said. “But she has been in contact with Hieu. There is a text we must seek—it may aid our search.”
Oh God, some distant, still-functioning part of my brain thought. I had to warn Ilianna. I had to warn her mom. They might only have a copy of the text, but I’d put both of them in danger by asking them to translate it.
Yet I couldn’t move. I could barely even manage to breathe.
“Anything else?”
“No. But you may wish to try yourself while her defenses are weak.”
No, no, NO!
But again, no one was listening. The pain this time was razor-sharp, and it flayed me inside and out, tearing me apart as they looked for answers. I quivered and shook and pleaded for them to stop, but no one heard my words—voiced or unvoiced.
It went on and on, until I felt raw and battered and bruised, and my skin ran with rivers of blood that pooled underneath my body—a warm halo that gradually grew bigger. Just as instinct had seen earlier.
Eventually—mercifully—I blacked out.
When I came to, I was alone. My muscles had stopped quivering, but just about everything else felt like it still burned—my head, my body, my soul.
I carefully rolled onto my back. It was sticky with dried blood, but, oddly enough, the pain I felt came from the energy that had lashed the inner me, not the outer. If my flesh had been cut, then it had healed.
The cell was still wrapped in darkness, and I couldn’t see the rough-cut ceiling high above me. But the rainbow shimmer was still present, which meant the magical barrier was still in place. No surprise there, I guess.
I tilted my head back a little and looked at the door. It, too, was closed. I had no sense of any other presence in the room. I was alone. At least for the time b
eing.
I scrubbed a shaking hand across my face, and wondered just how successful they’d been in getting the information they wanted. Surely the fact that I was still alive meant I’d managed to hold on to at least some secrets. Not that I had a great many, because I really didn’t know much.
Maybe that was the reason I still lived. Maybe they simply didn’t believe I knew so little.
But they would be back. I had to get out before then, because I very much doubted I’d survive another onslaught.
