“Temporarily,” he assured her.
She huffed in irritation. “Great. So when do I get it back? Like... never?”
Driver couldn't help smiling a little at her tone. “No, when we're sure we've gained your trust.”
She raised an ironic eyebrow.
“We have others' safety to think of.”
Jaz studied Driver's face, wondering what he meant by that. How many people were living here? It interested her but she was too exhausted to think any more about it. She looked away from his scrutinizing eyes, pressing her lips tightly together. Her gaze lingered on her bandaged hand. It tingled now and she was curious as to what the herb concoction was and how or if it even worked.
Her feet were aching like a mean bout of growing pains. She lifted one foot up onto her thigh and rubbed the top of it, not wanting to touch near her toes in case she made it worse. She still didn't dare look under the bandages. They were dirty now and were starting to stink.
“My parents will worry,” she mumbled.
“We'll contact them soon.”
“Am I ever going to see them again?” She squeezed the curve of her foot comfortingly, not noticing Driver approach until he knelt down in front of her. She reacted with a start, dropping her foot to the floor. It hit the ground harder than she'd meant it to and she let out a pained hiss through gritted teeth.
Driver frowned at her, scanning down her leg to inspect her injured foot. “You're not a prisoner here.”
“Really?” she asked sarcastically, her shoulders locked as she tried to contain her discomfort at his close proximity.
He focused on her flushed face. “My answer to your questions is the same as why you can't have your phone. Until then, you'll just have to trust me.” His voice was deceptively warm when he said the last line.
Jaz kept statue still.
“I'll get Skye to change those too.” He cocked his head down at her bandaged feet. “She's got a great remedy to help with pain and healing.”
Whatever happened to paracetamol or ibuprofen? she scoffed inwardly.
Driver studied her face a moment before gazing down at the ground by her feet. When he looked up again Jaz stared at him with distressed eyes. She was on the verge of tears.
“Why did you do it?” she questioned, her voice breaking on the first word.
He paused, hesitating. “Did you feel any strange, painful pressure in your feet and lower legs at any point?”
Jaz nodded, surveying him uneasily.
His eyelids lowered somewhere between a long blink and fully closed before they looked at her again. “We will tell you everything in time. You just have to believe me when I say that if we hadn't done it, you'd have been much worse off.”
“Done what exactly? What did you do to my feet?”
Jaz could see him choosing his next words carefully.
“We had to... cut the toenails away from the sides of the nail bed, otherwise the pressure of the new ones coming through would have curled them into your toes and damaged your feet for good... possibly crippling you.”
Jaz gaped at him, confused and repulsed at the same time.
He half shrugged. “Like I said, I don't expect you to understand it all right now.”
“New ones?”
“Toenails.”
Jaz stared. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You won't understand, or believe me, if I told you the truth. Not now.”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement and then irritation. “Try me,” she countered stiffly.
He paused, then sighed as if he was trying to teach a monkey to speak Japanese. She conjured up the satisfying image of snapping his neck.
He then said, “All I can tell you is that more things will happen to you... changes... physical and mental. Like your feet, and your extreme hunger.
“And like those things, you won't be able to understand or control them, if you're on your own.”
She stuck out her jaw stubbornly to hide her trepidation. “Are you crazy?” she cawed. “I mean you seriously expect me to believe this crap? All the shit that's happened to me started when you spiked my orange juice with who knows what! It was the orange juice, wasn't it?”
Driver gave no response, but he didn't deny it either. He stood up, studying her face from his towering position.
As if she hadn't questioned him he pressed on. “Believe what you want. You'll know soon enough.”
She hated how that sounded like a threat.
“It's why we brought you here. You're one of us.”
A harsh glare from her made him press his lips together.
“I'm not one of you,” she snapped.
He gazed down at her with unreadable eyes.
She evaded his gaze, kneading her aching forehead. After a moment she asked, “So if I'm not a prisoner here, I can get up and leave?”
“If you think you can survive alone,” he responded without even blinking. “Though you'd be a danger not only to yourself, but to others as well.”
She studied him; his face was unfathomable; his dark, piercing eyes were fixed on her, their windows sealed shut.