Racking my brain, I recalled a key spell I’d once copied for Ms. Terwilliger, one that would open an ordinary lock. I murmured the Latin words, calling on the magic within me, hoping there was nothing too unusual about this lock. Power surged through me, and a moment later, I heard a click. Dizziness briefly swept me, and I ignored it as I began my exploration, unlocking the other doors as needed.
The first door revealed a room with a furnace and other HVAC equipment but nothing like what I expected for gas controls. The second room was where I struck gold. Along with a generator and some plumbing systems, I discovered an enormous tank labeled with a chemical formula that read very much like a sedative to me. Four pipes fed off it, each one labeled with a floor number. Each also had a manual valve that could be adjusted. All of them were currently in the “on” position.
I saw no sign that there was any sort of sensor to alert tampering at this level. Taking a chance, I turned the valve for the detainee floor to “off.” No alarms or lights went off. Emboldened, I nearly considered turning off the others but then realized I’d be exposing what I’d done. Maybe there were no sensors here, but the Alchemists would immediately notice if the gas was shut off on the level with the solitary cells. They controlled the gas there manually and were able to observe instant results. Turning off the gas on the detainee level would affect sleep right now, and that wouldn’t be readily obvious to the Alchemists. It might not even be noticeable to the detainees. They didn’t let us get eight hours of sleep anyway; it was unlikely anyone had much trouble falling asleep at night.
It was a hard call to make, abandoning the prisoners in reflection time, but there was nothing I could do for them right now. The status quo had to go on for them, and I needed that gas off on my floor as long as I could manage. Judging from the tank size, it probably went a while between refills, but eventually someone would come for a maintenance run and discover the valve. That was the timeline I had to worry about.
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.”