Born of Silence (Immortal Guardians) (3 page)

Danielle rolled her eyes, wondering just how much—if any—of her story was remotely accurate, and then wondered how many times she’d be able to revise it. Time meant nothing in the caves. Days and nights ran together,
and
she never knew what time of day it even was. She’d tried to keep track as best as she could, but with the scientists constantly putting her under, she’d wake up, not knowing how long she was out.

The prisoner moved.

Danielle squeaked and cowered behind her bed, her eyes focusing on him as he raised a single hand and rubbed his face. When he sat up, she sat stock still, not daring to move in case she brought on his wrath once more.

He moved much like the others that had been in his cell before. Everyone that came through behaved the same when waking up, as though they were reevaluating their surroundings. Even Danielle had done that for a while; but after however long, she’d finally accepted that this wasn’t a dream and that she was never going home.

Home
…
with her mom and dad, and her white, fuzzy cat, Whiskers. Karena was older by a year and a half. As the older sister, she’d taken care of Danielle, always telling her that they’d go home soon. She’d been the stronger one, always standing up to the “lackeys,” as she’d called them, trying to convince them to let them go. But each time she’d even muttered the word “home” someone would come in and beat her to within an inch of her life. And that was on top of the times she’d been taken from the room and would come back with fresh bruises and scrapes all over her body. The last time Danielle had seen her, Karena had been weak from blood loss and beatings. She’d had to hold her up since Karena couldn’t even sit up herself. She’d held her, and she’d been the one to tell her older sister that everything would be alright.

And then Karena had just stopped breathing.

Danielle ran her thumb over her wrist, feeling the thin, white scars as she thought back to that day. Karena had lain there, dead, for probably hours and hours as Danielle held her tight against her. When the lackeys came in to take her away, she had tried to fight them off, unwilling to let go of her sister. She hadn’t been strong enough and they’d carted Karena’s body off as if she was no better than a bag of trash.

They hadn’t even given her a break from the experiments that day. Karena had just been carted off and Danielle had run over to the door, pounding against the metal, demanding that they bring her back. Pyro, one of the regular guards,
had
responded to her ministrations, and c
o
me over to her door. He
’d
opened it and had folded his arms angrily, hissing at her to calm down. When she
’d
tried to run passed him, he
’d
stopped her and inserted a needle into her neck. She’d passed out immediately, waking up strapped to a freezing cold metal table with lights shining brightly down on her. More needles had been stuck into her veins and Danielle
had
only
been able to
watch in terror as the scientists had shot her up with a bright, glowing liquid.

She’d broken a promise to her sister that day. She hadn’t even made it a single day after her death before she started slicing her wrists. It was an urge that started just after she and Karena had been kidnapped, and she’d use anything and everything she could to take her mind off the things that caused her pain. Physical pain was so much easier to handle than the emotional kind. When the guards had unceremoniously dumped her in her cell after the scientists had had their fill of experiments for the day, she’d found a small pebble that had been cracked in half—one edge sharp like a
knife. She’d gone deep
. So dee
p. The cut hurt
, and yet it still felt better than the pain she couldn’t deal with. She’d
forced the sharpened edge in
f
a
rther, grinding it into her skin, both wincing and celebrating the pain it caused. She didn’t know how long she’d kept at it, only that as soon as a guard had caught sight of what she was doing, he’d rushed inside her cell and forced the pebble from her hand. But even after he’d left, she
’d
continued to dig at her wrists, preferring the pain there
to
the one in her heart. She
’d
kept at it until the lackeys had shot her up with a tranquilizer and she’d blacked out.

Every day since (or what she assumed was every day), she’d succumbed to the painful experimentations that the scientists and nurses seemed to enjoy immensely. Every day, the same guard escorted her to the same lab. Well, most days anyway.
Sometimes she’d wake up in a completely new environment, like she had the day before, just before her memory of being transported in a dark van. Pyro hadn’t arrived to take her to the lab today. He had merely wanted to “check on her
”
and make sure she was okay after being dumped in her cell a few hours before.
She wasn’t dumb. She knew a crush when she saw one and had considered flirting back a time or two to see if it would get her out of here. The only reason she didn’t try was because she thought it might make things worse
.

Danielle’s eyes lit on the other prisoner again as he attempted to stand. He was weakened, not showing the speed or strength he had earlier. He was, however, a lot stronger than she was. That was for certain. Though she had no concept of time, she knew that he was up and about a lot quicker than she ever was. Maybe that meant he was an “other.” She’d seen a few others during her stay, and it appeared that they were a lot tougher than she was. But, being that she was only a teenager, that was probably the case for almost anyone. In any case, some of the others had weird abilities that she’d only heard of in myths, and that’s why she’d deemed them “other.” This one may or may not be one.
Only time would tell
.

He followed the rocky walls, searching
again
for what she assumed was an escape route. He wouldn’t find one. Too many times she’d seen other prisoners do the same thing. No one ever found
the
ticket to freedom
hidden within the cells
. There wasn’t one in her room, and there wasn’t one in his. He searched the rock walls as best as he could, then slowly approached the glass. Inspecting it every bit as thoroughly with his gaze, he froze halfway through his quest. Danielle’s heart began to pound, unsure of what made him freeze so suddenly. She looked into his eyes, noticing that his
hazel
gaze was locked on her. She turned away, leaning low behind her bed. How could she have gotten so careless, letting him see her like that?

She turned
toward
him, looking around the edge of the bed. Her gaze met his for a brief second before she heard the locks on her door click and the door opened.

Pyro entered the room and stalked toward her. He wore his trademark black shirt and bagg
y
jeans, his long blond hair shaggy on the top of his head, barely covering the piercing that went through his right eyebrow. His dark brown eyes glowed as he neared her. “How’s my favorite girl?”
he asked
, grabbing her by the elbows and hefting her to her feet.

“Pyro.” She rolled her eyes. “Do we have to do this again?”
Though he was the only one she dared even speak to, the only one that even made an effort to talk to her, s
he was growing sick of his flattery, and she’d dealt with it for a long, long time.

He shrugged. “You know we can make it as easy as you want, or as hard.”

Her teeth gnashed together as he tried to pull her toward the door. She resisted. She wasn’t ready for another round o
f this. Pyro gave
her a warning glare before he grabbed her arm tight enough that it brought tears to her eyes.

“Ow,” she cried.

“I told you,” he barked
. “Can’t you just behave for once?”

He
continued to pull on her. He was a lot stronger than her, so even though she tried to resist, her bare feet still skidded over the hard ground. She wrenched backward, trying to break free of his vice grip. He released her and she fell backward, her head thudding on the ground. He was on her in a second, sticking an all-too-familiar syringe into her neck.

“Do you think I like to hurt you?” he asked, his voice cracking as though it had truly pained him.

She did think he liked to hurt her. Everyone here seemed
to thoroughly enjoy it
. Before she got the chance to tell him so though, she
blacked out, her vision darkening as Pyro’s form loomed over her.

****

Garrick could only watch as the woman was attacked and taken from her cell. He tried repeatedly to break through the glass in an attempt to rescue her, but it seemed there was nothing he could do.

The metal door slammed behind them, making no sounds at all through the thick glass that separated the two sides of the room. Now that he knew what was on the other side of this seemingly impenetrable window, he couldn’t believe he’d missed her before. It wasn’t until the guard came in that he could fully make out any of her features. She had messy, vibrant red hair and fair skin, the face of a pixie with a small, turned up nose. Her bright blue eyes were wide with shock as she fought against the guard’s hold. It was the expression on her face and all of the bruises and cuts on her skin that had kicked him into action, barreling into the window. He couldn’t hear a word that they said to each other, and he doubted that the guard could hear all the expletives Garrick had been calling him.

So now Garrick
sat
, watching his door for a while and then flipping over to
focus on
hers. There was simply nothing better to do but wait and watch. A million things ran through his mind: the pain he was in
,
caused by the godsdamned scientist
,
and the likelihood that the human woman could withstand that kind of pain. He knew that was where they took her, and he could tell she’d been on the table before based on the condition of her skin. He just didn’t know how fresh the wounds were.

The girl was carried back inside a while later. The same man who’d taken her from the cell had brought her back, laying her on the bed Garrick had first spotted her hiding behind. The guard looked down at her for a moment, just standing over her and staring. Slowly, he bent over and smoothed her hair out of her face, then placed a
kiss to her forehead. H
e pressed another one to her cheek an
d then a long, lingering one to
her lips. Then he stood and clipped from the room before
shutting the door behind him
.

Garrick shifted into a sitting position, watching and waiting. Only this time he waited for the girl to wake.

The girl had finally woken up and set to whatever normal routine she had. Which was staring frequently at him, if he had to guess. Garrick had lain back on the spring-ridden bed, looking up at the rocky ceiling
above
. The locks on his door clicked as the door opened and two guards rushed in and grabbed him. He fought, but they hadn’t even given him the shot this time. Instead, one had clubbed him over the head, and that had been enough to subdue him. When he’d roused some time later, he was back on the slab with yet another bright light shining down on him. The same science bastard that had worked him over last time was
peering
down at him through his black-rimmed glasses that made his eyeballs look massive. It might have been a funny sight if it weren’t for the fact the asshole
held
a scalpel.

That’s when Garrick realized he couldn’t move.

He could blink, that was
the extent of his mobility
. He felt the sharpened knife pierce his body and felt the pain as it skidded across his skin in a triangular shape. The agony from the scalpel’s slicing caused a sound to come from Garrick that he didn’t recognize. As soon as the cutting stopped he inhaled quickly, gasping for the air he desperately needed. The scientist then picked something off of him, and although he couldn’t move, he was able to see as a piece of his flesh was handed over to a female nurse. She took it and scurried off in a direction he couldn’t see.

“Oh, you’re awake then. Very good.” The scientist hunched over Garrick’s stomach, dabbing it with an alcohol swab. “Do you know how valuable your blood is? We’re learning a lot.”

Garrick could only hope that the “fuck you” he was thinking was obvious on his face.

It was apparently because the guy pulled back slightly. “That’s good news for you. It means you have more time.” He leaned in closer then, his gaze connecting with Garrick’s and finally giving his eyes the break they needed from the bright light. “Oh yes. I am sorry, but you are quite difficult to work on. Even in your sleep you were trying to fight me and we just can’t have that
,
you understand. We had to immobilize you.”

This time Garrick grunted his “fuck you” and the scientist laughed with mirth. “Yes, well, I’m afraid I am not into that sort of thing, but I do hear that Boris quite enjoys the company of men.
And from what I hear you have made quite an impression on him.
I’ll be sure to pass
your interests
along
to him
.” He looked up then, snapping his gloved fingers and gesturing toward Garrick. Two men appeared, one
on
each side of him
,
and lifted him off the table.