Silver Shadows (21 page)

In the same room, I discovered another tank with a
chemical formula I wasn’t entirely sure of, but I was betting it was a different substance, one I’d occasionally felt in my cell that made me agitated and paranoid. They didn’t employ it with the same regularity as the sedative, but I turned this valve off for my floor too, just in case. We didn’t need any extra incentive to be suspicious of one another.

With that work done, I hurried out and ignored my curiosity about the third mechanical room and
P
-marked doors. I’d achieved my goal tonight and needed to get back to my room before my spell wore off. That, and I knew Adrian would worry if I was very late. I took the stairs back up to the detainee living level and peered out the door’s window before opening it. No one was visible. I opened it a crack, so as not to attract attention on cameras, and squeezed my way out …

… and ran right into Sheridan.

She’d been purposely hiding in the indentation in the wall made by the elevator doors, out of visual range when I looked through the window. I’d been searching for people moving with purpose on their shifts—not someone looking for me. And she was clearly looking for me—or someone like me. We made eye contact, and there was no mistaking the recognition on her face. The spell was over.

“Sydney,” she exclaimed. That was the last thing I heard before I saw what looked like a taser in her hand. Then, I felt a jolt of pain, and everything went black.

When I woke up, everything was still black. For the space of a heartbeat, I thought I was back in my solitary cell. But no, this was different. There was no rough stone floor here, and I still had my scrubs on. Instead, I was lying down on a cool metal table, with my arms, legs, and head restrained.

“Well, Sydney,” a familiar voice said. “I’m sorry to see you here.”

“I know it’s you, Sheridan,” I said through gritted teeth. I gave my restraints an experimental tug. No luck. “You don’t have to hide in the dark.”

A tiny canister light in the ceiling turned on, shining down just enough to illuminate her lovely but cruel face. “That’s not what the darkness is for. You’re in darkness because your soul is also shrouded in darkness. You don’t deserve the light.”

“Then why am I here and not back in my cell?”

“The cell is to reflect on your sins and see the error of your ways,” she said. “You’ve put on a good show but clearly haven’t learned anything. Your chance at reflection and redemption is past. That, and we need some answers about your recent activities.” She held up my pilfered ID card. “When and how did you get this?”

“I found it on the ground,” I said promptly. “You guys should be more careful.”

Sheridan gave a dramatic sigh. “Don’t lie to me, Sydney. I don’t like it. Now let’s try again. Where did you get the card?”

“I already told you.”

Pain suddenly shot through every part of my body. It was a strange mixture of things, crawling all over my skin and setting my nerve endings ablaze. If you could somehow combine the discomfort of electric shocks, bee stings, and paper cuts, it would feel kind of like what I experienced. It only lasted a few seconds, but I found myself screaming out in pain nonetheless.

The light on Sheridan turned off, plunging us into darkness, but when she spoke again, it was clear she hadn’t moved. “That was the lowest setting and only a taste at that. Please don’t
make me do it again. I want to know how you got the ID card and what you were out looking for.”

This time, I didn’t lie to her. I simply stayed silent.

The pain returned at the same intensity, but it lasted much longer this time. I couldn’t form any coherent thought while it was happening. Every particular of my being was too fixated on that terrible, excruciating agony. One of the things I’d loved about getting intimate with Adrian—aside from the obvious, like that he was insanely sexy and good at what he did—was that it often proved to be a rare moment when my always-thinking brain took a break, allowing me to become all about the physical experience at hand. That was kind of what was happening now, except the physical experience in question was pretty much as far from what I’d had with Adrian as one could get. My brain couldn’t think of anything. All there was just then was my body and its pain.

I had tears in my eyes when the pain stopped, and I barely heard Sheridan rattling off her questions again. She also added a couple more, like, “How did you avoid detection?” and “How did you get out of your room?” I barely had time to answer, even if I’d wanted to, before the pain resumed. When it ended an eternity later, she came back at me with the questions. Then the cycle repeated.

During one of the brief respites, I managed enough coherent thought to understand her process. She was throwing different questions at me in the hopes I’d be so pushed to a breaking point from the pain that I’d blurt out an answer to something—anything. It probably didn’t matter to them at first. Getting me started talking was their goal, and I had a feeling that prisoners in my situation didn’t stop talking once those floodgates were
opened. There’d be a strong urge to tell everything to make the pain go away. I was certainly feeling that urge now, and I had to physically bite my lip to keep from telling her whatever she wanted. I also tried to mentally focus on the faces of those I loved, Adrian and my friends. That worked a little during the lulls, but once the torture started again, no thought or image could stay in my mind.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said at one point. I didn’t know how long it had been. Seconds, hours, days. Sheridan didn’t seem to believe me until I actually started coughing and retching. It was a different kind of sick from the purging, which was medically induced. This was my body’s response to more than it could physically handle. Someone came to me from the opposite side of the room from her and undid enough of my restraints to turn me on my side, where I choked up what little was in my stomach. I didn’t know if they were fast enough to have a receptacle to catch it in and really didn’t care. That was their problem.

As the worst of the vomiting subsided, I could barely make out Sheridan speaking quietly with someone else across the room.

“Go get an ‘assistant’ to help us,” she said.

A male voice sounded skeptical. “There’s no love between any of them.”

“I’ve seen her type. What she won’t give up for herself, she might for someone else.”

The sound of a door indicated her colleague left, and as I was re-restrained and wiped clean, her words triggered an awful realization.
Someone betrayed me!
Sheridan had been specifically looking for me, which was how the spell had been
unraveled. I’d been foolish to think making the salt ink would create some kind of bond between the others and me. The only upside to this was that I’d disabled the gas, as planned, but now what would the cost be?

That was as far as I could speculate because the torture began anew—and incredibly, it was worse. I didn’t get sick, maybe because my body couldn’t muster the effort, but I couldn’t stop my screams from filling the room. I hated myself for showing them that weakness, for admitting that they were getting to me … but it was all I could do not to tell them every secret I had during those pauses.
I will not talk
, I vowed.
If I’m going down for this, then I’ll do it with them knowing they’re not as powerful as they think
.

“Why do you make us keep doing this, Sydney?” Sheridan asked in that mock sad tone of hers. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” I gasped out.

“And here I thought you were making such progress. I was nearly ready to reward you for your good behavior. Maybe a visit from your family. Maybe this.”

The tiny spotlight appeared on her again, and something in her hand shimmered. It was my cross, the little wooden one Adrian had made me, painted with morning glories. They’d tried to bribe me with it when I first arrived, as though one material object was all it would take to break me. Seeing it now made my chest ache—though that could’ve possibly been an aftereffect from the torture—and my eyes blurred with tears of sadness now, not pain.

“You could have it now,” she said congenially. “You could have it, and we could stop the pain. All you need to do is tell us
what we want to know. It really is a lovely piece.” She held it up admiringly and then, to my complete and utter horror, she put it around her own neck. “If you don’t want it, I might as well keep it.”

I nearly told her it was made by a vampire but worried that might make her destroy it. So I stayed silent, letting my rage seethe within me—at least until the torture started again, and only agony seethed within me.

I lost track of time again until her colleague returned. This brought a reprieve from the pain, and a few new spotlights went on, including one shining uncomfortably in my face. The light also revealed the man hadn’t come back alone.

“Look, Sydney,” Sheridan said. “We brought you a friend.”

The man dragged someone up to my table. Emma. I nearly accused her of betrayal then and there. After all, she was the perfect candidate. She had her sister’s crimes to overcompensate for as well as her own. She’d gotten the salt ink from me already and had nothing to lose by turning me in, especially if she could convince them of her own innocence. She was also the only person who’d known for sure that I was out roaming the facility last night.

And yet … there was a terror in her eyes that kept me from making any accusations. Maybe she was the likeliest traitor, but on the off chance she wasn’t, I couldn’t insinuate she might be privy to any of my plans. “Who said she’s my friend?” I asked instead.

“Well, she’s about to share your experience,” said Sheridan. “If that’s not a basis for friendship, I don’t know what is.” She gave a curt nod, and Emma was dragged off out of my line of sight. Another assistant came forward, helping me to sit up so
that I’d have a better view of what was taking place: They were restraining Emma on to a table just like mine.

“P-please,” she stammered, as helpless in her struggles as I had been. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what this is about.”

“She’s right,” I said. “She doesn’t know anything. You’re wasting your time.”

“We don’t care what she knows,” said Sheridan cheerfully. “We still want to know what
you
know. And if the methods of persuasion we’ve used on you don’t work, perhaps you’ll be more forthcoming seeing them on others.”

“Persuasion,” I said in disgust. “That’s what the
P
on the doors stands for. We’re on the lowest level.”

“Indeed,” said Sheridan. “You went on quite the little tour last night, judging from all the doors you used that card on. Tell us why you did it and how you didn’t show up on any cameras, or else …”

She gave another nod, and in the split second before Emma started screaming, I understood what had happened. She hadn’t betrayed me. No one had. I’d screwed up on my own. I’d worried the guy whose card I had might report it missing and get it disabled. No doubt he had reported it, but rather than deactivate it, they’d waited to see if anyone used it. Their system would have recorded every instance it had been scanned. I’d been an idiot, laying out the perfect trail for them to follow, with only the invisibility spell saving me from immediate capture. I’d hopefully checked enough places to obscure my intentions, especially since the mechanical rooms hadn’t required card access. The odds were good no one knew what I’d pulled off.

But that didn’t save Emma from being subjected to the same torture I had been. My skin crawled, watching that pain wrack her body, and I felt ill in an entirely new way.

“She’s an innocent in this!” I exclaimed when they took their break. “How sick do you have to be to do this?”

Sheridan chuckled. “No one’s truly innocent—at least not around here. But if you do believe she is, it makes it that much sadder that you’re letting her suffer like this.”

I stared at Emma and felt torn with indecision. How could I give up all my plans? And yet, how could I let this go on? My deliberation was read as defiance, and they resumed the procedure. I couldn’t handle watching it, and when the next break came, I blurted out, “What do you think I was doing? I was looking for the way out!”

Sheridan held up her hand to halt whatever unseen torturer wielded the controls. “Did you succeed?”

“Do you think I’d be here if I had?” I snapped. “The only thing I saw was in your reflection control room, and you’ve got that pretty well guarded.”

“How did you move around without being seen?” she demanded.

“I evaded your cameras,” I said.

At Sheridan’s nod, Emma was subjected to more pain, her body flailing like a ragdoll’s as it tried to cope with the waves of agony coursing through her.

“I answered!” I exclaimed.

“You lied,” Sheridan returned coolly. “There’s no way you could have avoided all of them. No one noticed anything on camera at the time, but after extensive review, we found one small clip that shows what looks like a stairway door opening—just
barely—by itself. We almost missed it and only noticed on later replays. Explain.”

I stayed silent, thinking I could endure watching Emma be tortured again. But I couldn’t. Not when it was because of my actions. Her screams seemed to fill every part of the room, and she bucked against the restraints in a desperate effort to alleviate the pain. I tried reasoning with myself as those shrieks went on and on, that this was only a temporary discomfort, that Emma had known what she was signing up for when she started helping me. Surely the greater good was worth one person’s suffering?

That cold logic almost had me convinced until I finally saw tears streaming from her eyes. I cracked.

“Magic!” I yelled, trying to make myself heard above her cries. “I did it with magic.” Sheridan signaled for the torture to stop and looked at me expectantly. “I moved around with magic. Human magic. And if you think torturing her will get me to tell you more about that, you’re wrong. You can torture her and everyone else in this place, and I won’t say another word. Talking about it involves people on the outside, and next to them, the people here mean nothing.”