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.”
It was kind of a bluff. I didn’t know if I could truly stand against mass torture of the other detainees, but Sheridan either believed me or had bigger concerns.
“I didn’t think it’d happen again,” she muttered.
“It always happens. Eventually,” said her colleague. He gestured one of the assistants in the darkness forward to Emma. “Get her up and back to her floor. There’s no telling what kind of damaging propaganda’s been spread. We’re going to have to do a mass re-inking.”
My heart sank. I’d only gotten to about half the detainees! The rest of the ink was still hidden in my bed.
“I didn’t convert anyone if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said.
“I told you, there are no innocents here,” said Sheridan. “Get Emma back to her level, and get Sydney back on the table.”
“I’ve told you everything I’m going to tell you,” I protested as the assistants came forward. Emma was dragged away. “Your torture didn’t work on me before.”
Sheridan gave a low throaty laugh, and all the lights went out again. “Oh, Sydney. Now that I know what you are, I don’t feel bad in the least about really turning up the intensity. We don’t know everything about human magic users, but there is one thing we’ve learned over the years: They’re remarkably resilient. So let’s get started.”