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I woke with a gasp, bolting upright. I didn’t know what had happened, where I was, but something inside me screameddanger.
My bare feet hit the hard floor, my body unsteady, my hands bound together. I glanced down to find them in cuffs with gloves that covered my hands. A fogginess in my head was far too familiar, and it took me a moment to realize the reason.
Right, I got shot with tranquilizers.
It meant that Kit’s toxin no longer worked in my system, though that was probably for the best. No doubt the guards had taken me in without much damage because they’d knocked me out.
I peered around the unfamiliar room, frowning. Rather than a bed, only a thin pad that could barely pass as a mattress sat on the floor. No windows, no chairs, no other furniture filled the room. The doorwasn’t solid metal, though. Instead, it appeared to be glass, though I’d bet it was actually some sort of specialized plastic.
No way would they trust some basic glass to keep in shades.
I went to the door and peered out at a long hallway and another matching door across the way. More doors lined the hallway as far as I could see. How many there were, and how many had shades trapped inside, I couldn’t guess.
I closed my eyes to listen.
Rustling came back, muffled steps farther down, but no speaking, no conversations, just movement. Then again, if each cell only held a single person in it, it made sense they wouldn’t speak.
A face appeared before me, on the other side of the door, and I couldn’t stop myself from stumbling backward. The man there grinned, his expression not in the least bit reassuring. He moved his lips, but a distorted sound came out.
It told me that the room must have some serious sound proofing. That was probably to prevent me from using my skills, to dampen sound waves and weaken me.
Still, I could catch the words. “Well, aren’t you a lovely little bird? We don’t normally get ones as pretty as you. By the time they get here, they’re all pretty used up.”
His words made me sick, but I refused to cower or look away.
His gaze moved to my throat, his smile widening. “They even took care of silencing you, huh? How kind. Makes our job a lot easier, though it makes you less useful. In fact, if I hadn’t seen the videos of what youpulled in the cafeteria with my own two eyes, I would never have believed it.”
“Quiet.” A different voice had the man pulling to the side as if put in his place by that one word.
And here I thought I was done with the Warden…
She shooed the man away with a hard look—a warning no doubt—before she turned back to me. “I find that I have mixed feelings about you being here. On one hand, I had hoped to keep you in the main population. More freedom there could offer more opportunities for us both. See, keeping you here will force us to change you, to make you a part of our special programs. That necessitates we remove you from most of our official files and limits how much I can use you as a card against your parents. However, after what I saw you do, I’m rather excited to see how useful a tool you can be.”
“What programs?”I signed in response.
“Don’t bother.” She waved me off. “I’ve never learned sign language. Honestly, I don’t much care what you have to say. I’ve been Warden here for thirty years, and I’ve found that unless a shade is reporting to me about a mission, what they say rarely matters. However, I can guess what you’re asking. You see, the North Tower is basically an entire lab. We take the worst of the worst here, and we make them useful.”
She turned her head to the side and signaled to a guard. The door slid open.
“Before you get your hopes up,” she said, “I’ll warn you that while security was good in Larkwood, it is nothing compared to here. You will not leave your cell unless tests or jobs require it. When you do leave, should you cause additional trouble, we will have tranquilizers trained on you. In addition, we havespeakers.” She pointed inside the room, then also at small boxes on the walls of the hallway. “They have a sound ready to go. Should you do anything we don’t like, they’ll incapacitate you.”
I narrowed my eyes, not trusting her a bit. While I’d heard of such a thing in the book Deacon had given me, I hadn’t witnessed it. Besides, I’d proven myself stronger than normal sirens, able to do things others couldn’t, so perhaps it wouldn’t work on me anyway.
The Warden smiled as though she’d read my mind. “You don’t believe it will work on you? Well, what better time than now to check?” She nodded down the hallway, toward a window that had a guard stationed behind more of that plastic.
A moment later, the world turned to static around me. I didn’t evenhearthe sound that came from the speakers, but it hit me like a wave, shoving me under. It scratched over every one of my nerves like sandpaper, and I couldn’t even string thoughts together.
As quickly as it happened, it went away. Or maybe it had taken minutes, and I just didn’t realize it. I really had no idea. I found myself panting hard on the floor with no memory of when I’d fallen, of how I’d gotten there.
Above me the Warden stood, her expression just as pleased as I’d ever seen her. “It does work. Wonderful to know. Take that tiny taste as an example of what will happen should you ignore my rules, if you act up, if you consider using those powers of yours for anything other than what I allow. Do we understand one another?”
I wanted to argue, to tell her where she could shove it. However, a memory of the agony the sound had putme through made me nod slowly before forcing my body from the floor, the action harder with my hands bound and my head still foggy.
“I’m glad we understand one another. Follow me, please.” She turned and walked without waiting to see if I’d follow.
The guards watched from the small room, but I saw no cameras. It was strange given how many were in the other areas of Larkwood. Then again, they probably didn’t want any hard evidence on the sort of things that happened here.
That fact made me gulp as I followed the Warden.
