Raging Sea (13 page)

CONTACT MAY LEAD TO SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH!

I reach out to the voices, and the water comes, popping a hole in the tank buried beneath the ground and asking it to rise up through the sand. I send it flying toward the fence, only to watch the whole thing short-circuit in an explosion of sparks and fire.

“Now, Lyric, that’s not nice. Those fences are expensive,” he says. “There’s no need for weapons.”

“I want my family and friends. I want you to let all the Alpha loose!”

“I hear you loud and clear. Keep coming, and we will discuss everything.”

I walk farther along the road and reach a curve that blocks my view of what lies ahead. I stop. I’m certain that walking around the bend will make me a perfect target. I need to be prepared when I do it. If I see guns, I’m drowning everyone.

“All right, girl. Get ready,” I say to the glove. The massive tank roars eagerly. There’s so much chatter in the water.

I take a deep breath and turn the corner, bringing the camp into full view. I don’t know what I was expecting. A collection of tents? Long stables filled with broken people? Some kind of space-age evil lair complete with a bald supervillain and his hairless cat? No, it’s none of those things. It’s more of an office building buried in the ground with a roof that sticks out of the soil. The shingles are covered in dirt and flowers and stones to look exactly like the wastelands that surround it, something a plane wouldn’t spot if it flew overhead. It’s actually very clever.

Standing out front is a large group of men and women, about forty in all. There are soldiers in desert camouflage holding M-16s, but most of them look like scientists, wearing long white lab coats and carrying tablets. Standing in front of them all is a tall, thin man probably in his early thirties wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a smart, wavy haircut. He’s got on a pair of black skinny jeans, a suit jacket with a hoodie underneath, and, to complete the look, a pair of white Chuck Taylors. He looks like an aging hipster from Williamsburg.

“Welcome to Tempest, Lyric,” he says to me.

“Let them go,” I demand, but it comes out squeaky and childish. I wave my glove around a bit so they can see it’s on and powered.

“Now, now, Lyric,” he says. “No one has to get hurt.”

“That’s really up to you. Let everyone go, and I won’t fight you. We’ll leave, and you’ll never see us again.”

“Now, I know you’re not that naive. I can’t let anyone out of here. These people, if you can call them that, are dangerous. There’s a creature inside that has poisonous spikes that pop out of his skin. I know this might be disappointing to hear, Lyric, but the simple fact is that everyone inside is here because they pose a danger to our country.”

“You’re torturing them,” I argue.

“Torture? That’s an ugly word. We prefer the term
enhanced interrogation technique
. Isn’t that right, David?”

The crowd divides in two, revealing another tall figure. David Doyle flashes me a sad look, a final reminder that all of this could have been avoided.

“We certainly had to pay enough to get everyone to use that term,” Spangler continues. “Besides, terrorists torture people, Lyric. We’re a corporation, we offer a service.”

Two soldiers charge through the front door of the building. One has Bex; the other, Arcade. They push the girls into the sand, revealing that each has a noose around her neck. The nooses are connected to long steel poles the guards hold tightly. Bex and Arcade look drugged. Neither of them puts up a fight.

Something explodes inside me. I can’t say what it is—maybe the last part of me that thinks people are mostly good. I came here to save people, and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone to do it. I am not a killer. I know that for sure. But that doesn’t mean I can’t really hurt them. My mind calls out to water beneath Spangler’s feet.

What would you have us do?

“Get creative,” I whisper back.

The ground rumbles and quakes as something huge pushes to the surface, but Spangler is not concerned. In fact, he smiles at me as he taps away on his tablet, and all at once it’s as if the power I feel all around me has been switched to the off position. I can’t hear the voice. The whispers have been silenced, and my control over the water is gone as well.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“All right, people. Let’s get out of this heat,” he says.

A soldier steps forward and hands him a Taser rifle.

“Spangler, we talked about this,” Doyle shouts at him.

“We tried it your way, David,” Spangler says. He fires the weapon and there’s a
pop!
I feel a stabbing pain in my chest, and I fall to the ground. When I look down, I see wires sticking out of the wound leading all the way back to the rifle. I try to pull them out, knowing what is coming next, all while studying Doyle’s face. He stares down at me, disappointed and frustrated. His eyes say,
I told you so.

I hear a
zap,
and suddenly I am on fire.

I
COME BACK INTO THIS WORLD SWINGING.
I am gnashing teeth and claws on throats. My body’s lust for damage burns like a dangerous fever. It takes several long moments of flailing before I realize that I am completely alone. Spangler, Doyle, and all their people are gone. I’m not even outside anymore. They’ve put me in a circular room with towering walls that soar high over my head. A steel door is built into a wall, but there are no windows on it and no windows in the room, either. The effect is not unlike being at the bottom of a well. Panic seeps into my thoughts. I’ve never been afraid of small spaces—I’m not claustrophobic in the least—but right now I want to scream and scratch and beg for help. My breath grows shallow. I start to wheeze. Everything is about to crush me into paste.

“Calm down, Lyric, calm down, Lyric, calm down, Lyric,” I say between short, staccato gasps. “You need to think clearly. It’s the only way to get out of here.”

Though I’m not sure there actually is a way out of here.

I’m lying on my back on a paper-thin mattress tossed onto a cold concrete floor. It’s the only furniture in the room—no sink, no toilet, nothing. Only a hole in the floor. There’s a single light bulb dangling high above me that is so bright, it’s hostile. I suspect it can shine right through my body to the other side. It sings to me:
Tick—tick-tick—tick—tick-tick
.

Suddenly, there’s a clang at the door.

“Inmate 114. Stand in the circle,” a voice barks, but, as outside, I can’t find the speaker.

“Where am I?”

“Stand in the circle,” the voice repeats with growing impatience.

I try to sit up, but my whole body revolts. I feel broken, and my limbs are uncooperative. My head is a soft avocado. On top of that, one of my shoes is missing and there’s blood on the big toe of my sock.

“I’m hurt,” I say.

“Last warning, inmate! Stand in the circle.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whimper, falling back to the mattress.

There’s a loud clank, followed by an electronic buzz, and all at once my body becomes a herky-jerky marionette, thrashing in agony. My teeth grind together, holding back shrieks until the buzzing and the pain stop.

“Stand in the circle painted on the floor of your cell,” the voice demands.

I hear him, but my brain and body are too busy rebooting to obey. My eyes, the only part of me that’s not in full shutdown, find a circle on the floor painted in bright yellow. It’s wide enough to stand inside, but getting into it feels like an impossible request.

“Stand in the circle, or I will shock you again!”

“Please, I’m trying,” I beg, then weakly crawl in its direction. Every movement is a Herculean effort, but I somehow manage to get into the circle. It feels like hours before I can actually stand.

“Confirmed,” the voice says, followed by a soft click, and then nothing.

“I need a doctor!” I shout.

There’s no response.

“Let me out of here!” I shriek.

I cry. I can’t help myself. The tears come out in violent convulsions, igniting a shaking fit that I can’t stop. Everything inside me rattles, bones crash against bones, organs shake like jelly, and my knees buckle. I tumble face-first, hard. Unable to brace myself, I hit the floor with a hard smack.

Now I’m on my side, half on the mattress and half on the concrete, and I’m still alone. I sit up and feel a sticky pull on my face and arms. The mattress is damp and has a big red stain with a brown border. It’s blood—my blood—and there’s lots of it.

I search my body, looking under my shirt, wondering if I really was shot, but there are only three tiny burns forming the corners of a pyramid. I gingerly remove my sock and see the nail on my big toe has been torn away. It wiggles when I touch it and delivers a shocking pain into my back. Still, there’s not enough blood to have caused what I’m seeing. I reach up to my scalp and slowly probe my hair until I find a lump as big as a hard-boiled egg on the back of my head where my skull meets my spine. There’s a lot of crusty stuff too, which I guess is dried blood. Running along the top of the lump is a wound. It’s angry, and even a soft graze from my fingertip sends daggers into my skull. I cry out, and when I look at my fingers, there’s fresh blood on the tips.

“I need a doctor!” I shout to silence. My stomach threatens an eviction of Henry’s breakfast.
No. Calm down. Someone will come. Spangler will send a doctor. I’m important.
Doyle said so. He won’t let me die. They’ll stitch up my head and clean me and bring me a new mattress and a pillow and a sheet. They will do these things because they are human beings.

“Hello?” I shout.

The only answer comes from the light bulb hanging over my head.

Tick—tick-tick—tick—tick-tick.

There’s a commotion at my door. I hear a rattle and the sound of keys. The slot at the bottom opens wide, and a silver bowl of food slides into the room.

I crawl toward the slot and peer out into the hall, but I don’t see anyone.

I have never been so hungry in my life. There’s bread and something that looks like mac and cheese, and two brown things in sticky syrup. When I look closely, I realize they are slices of rotting apple, but I am too ravenous to care. I tear at the bread and it crumbles in my hand, dry and stale. I nearly choke to death on it and have to slow down because they haven’t given me anything to drink. I eye the mac and cheese next and reach for a spoon, only to realize they haven’t given me that, either. I scoop it up with my fingers, feeling like an animal. It tastes gritty and definitely not like mac and cheese. I can’t place the taste at all. It’s a bit like Cream of Wheat, but there’s a vinegary flavor. I’m too hungry to care. I shovel it into my mouth and lick my fingers until I see something squirming on the tip of my finger. I eye it closely. It’s a maggot.

I wretch and everything comes up, burning through all that’s left of my energy. I lie back down, pull my knees close to my chest, and rock back and forth. If my mother were here, she’d rub my back and tell me jokes until I laughed.

“Where’s my mom?” I whimper. “I want my mom.”

Is she in a cell like this one? Could she be across the hall? I know I am not alone in this prison. There are shouts and screams seeping in from beneath the crack in the door. Someone is slamming metal on metal. I hear footsteps and an argument that turns into a fight that turns into an agonized scream. The noises never stop. They bear down on me, grind at my skull. Every shout is a punch in the gut. Every cry for mercy is a stab in the heart. They’re proof that I am not alone, but they are no comfort to me. I wonder if that person is Bex. What if it’s Arcade? What if it’s my father? What if it’s Fathom?

I failed them all.

I hear a rattling, and the slot opens. There’s a hum that terrorizes me. I brace for electrocution, but instead the bowl rattles around on the floor, then skids toward the door as if seized by an invisible hand. It slams against the door, bounces around a bit, then zips through the narrow space. The slot closes. Footsteps fade away.

I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly Spangler is in my cell. He taps on his tablet, but when he notices I’m awake, he puts it away.

“Lyric, do you know what an alpha is?” Spangler asks. “Not the people, of course. I’m talking about in the animal kingdom. Alphas are the leaders of the pack. Apes, lions, even birds, have them. Sled dogs are a great example of animals that have an alpha. They get their name because they are the most dominant animals in the group. The alpha isn’t born into the position. Usually it has to fight for its power, and then it has to train the others to be submissive using sheer aggression and intimidation. Every once in a while, one of the dogs on the sled forgets its place in the pack and it challenges the alpha. Do you know what usually happens? The alpha rips the other dog’s throat out. Here at Tempest, I am the alpha dog. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I nod.

“Good. Your parents didn’t get it at first. I’d hate for you to have to learn the way they did,” he explains.

My heart beats hard enough to blow out of my chest.

“Are they alive?”

“You could be a great help to our little sled-dog pack. I’m confident that you can learn to cooperate, but my patience will go only so far.”

“What do you want me to do?” I ask him.

“I want you to be a good dog.”

Panic attacks rise up and batter my mind. The trembling strips me of my strength even more. I sob unexpectedly until my face is smeared in mucus. I don’t have the energy to care. I curse myself for being here, for not having a plan, for not preparing myself for this kind of fight, for being afraid. I curse myself for assuming I would be killed if I didn’t rescue my people. I never thought I’d be locked up inside with them.

When I’m too tired to cry, I hoist myself up so I’m sitting against the wall. My cell can’t be wider than nine feet—just long enough for the mattress and a tiny bit of exposed floor space and that painted yellow circle, of course. I study everything closely, hoping for some way of escape. I can’t crawl up the wall to whatever is above me. It’s too smooth. There’s no lock on the door and it’s made of heavy steel. I peer into the drainage hole dug into the floor. I can’t see too deeply into it, maybe six inches at most. The light above will permeate only so far. It’s too narrow for my body to fit inside, but still, maybe there’s something useful about it. I lean forward, listening closely, praying for the familiar gurgle of water. Something shines down there. I activate my glove, realizing I can still use it as a flashlight, but it isn’t much help.