The Institute

by Kayla Howarth

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “It wasn’t all a lie.” That’s it, really? That’s his apology for putting me here? For hurting Shilah? For lying to me? How can he say that when clearly it was.

  He never cared about me. All the sweet things he ever did for me was because it was his job to get close to me, study me, and try to find a way to arrest me.

  The image of Drew kicking the life out of Shilah with me sitting by, unable to do anything about it, still haunts me. The sweet-faced Drew from Eminent Falls has been replaced with an arrogant, sadistic, scowling agent from the Institute. I can’t stop picturing his face when he talked about that night at the lake, the look of enjoyment he had watching me squirm when he mentioned it. I’m just glad I didn’t have sex with him that night. I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling now. I wish I could say the same about falling for him in the first place, though.

  His note is making it hard to sleep, and I just know they’re going to come to my door again soon. Tossing and turning, I just want to get the words out of my head. “It wasn’t all a lie.” They just won’t leave me.

  ‘Try and get some sleep, Allira.’

  Sorry. I guess I’m being pretty loud.

  ‘Well, you do have a pretty good reason to be angry, but dwelling on it right now isn’t going to help you in your current situation. They’ll be back for you soon, and you need to get your rest time in between. It’s time to think about you.’

  But—

  ‘No. No buts. I know it’s difficult, but you have to put everyone else aside right now, especially Drew. Actually, you can put him aside forever. Just focus on you.’

  It doesn’t feel like I get much of a chance to focus on myself before Ty, the guard, is here to escort me to breakfast. I’m segregated from the rest of the prisoners again, faced with another feeding of a brick of barely edible food.

  Ty watches over me as I eat, just as he did yesterday, but I’m so hungry, his presence doesn’t throw me off like it did the last time. It creeps me out knowing someone is right behind me watching me eat, but I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours, so I don’t care that he’s there. I just want to stop my stomach from screaming at me to fill it with food, any food—even this stuff. It sure does make me miss the fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm though, the food I took for granted for so long, even got sick of from time to time.

  I’ve almost finished my meal, but Ty’s getting impatient. He puts his hand on my arm to try to drag me away from the table, and I almost snap. With Drew’s note still fresh in my mind, and my lack of sleep, I’m getting really sick of this place. It’s taking away my choices, my rights, and now Ty is trying to take away my right to finish eating when I want to.

  I try to break free of Ty’s grip, but it’s too tight. My anger builds, and just when I think I’m about to explode, it happens—Ty literally takes off of the ground, bringing me with him and hovering at least ten, if not fifteen, feet high. Up in the air together, I can see a dash of pride in his eye, followed by surprise, fear, and then panic. He lets go of me, and I fall straight down to the ground, landing on my ankle and rolling it. Ty floats back down as though gravity doesn’t even exist.

  “What the hell just happened?” I ask Ty as his feet touch down on the ground again.

  “I have no idea, are you okay?” It’s the first time Ty has shown any kind of concern for me. He bends down to try to help me up, but my ankle is already visibly swollen. “We better take you up to the hospital—get it treated, maybe x-rayed.”

  Ty walks off, I assume to go get someone to help me. Looking around the room, all I see is shocked faces and awkward glances. I suddenly feel like I’m back in the halls of school the first day back at school after Ebbodine disappeared. Putting my head down to avoid the stares, I look at my ankle, pretending to assess it as if I know what I’m doing. It’s already bruised and aching more by the minute.

  ‘What just happened?’ I hear Tate ask.

  I have no idea, all I did was touch him, I wanted him to let me go, and suddenly we were up in the air. I thought you said he could only hover a few feet off the ground? It felt a lot higher than that.

  ‘It was a lot higher.’

  And I know this might sound crazy, but for a minute there, I thought I was doing it myself, I was levitating. Until he let me go anyway.

  Ty finally comes back with another guard, picking me up on either side. We start a slow and painful walk towards the stairs. I can’t put any weight on my foot at all, the pain is agonizing.

  ‘Allira, don’t tell them what you just told me, I think I may know what you can do, and if I’m correct and they find out, there’s no telling what they’ll do to you. Just don’t mention to them that you feel like you were levitating with him—he did it all himself, do you understand?’

  I don’t understand, but I trust you. I won’t tell them anything. Hopefully, I’ll be back soon.

  The guards eventually get me up the stairs and take me down new hallways I haven’t seen before.

  When I’m not focusing on the pain, I’m thinking about what Tate just warned me about. Has he figured me out? Has he figured out why I’m telepathic only when I’m down here? The voices always seem to disappear when I reach the top of the stairs. It makes no sense.

  I finally recognise where I am when they bring me into the hospital wing of the Institute. I’ve been here before, on those stupid yearly tours, only the halls are much busier than what they are when we visit. I’m taken to a nurse’s station where there’s two people on computers.

  “We’ve got an injured ankle,” Ty tells one of them. She looks up at us, annoyed that we’ve disrupted whatever she was doing.

  She huffs, pulling a clipboard out from the desk and studying it. “Bed four is free, take her there. It’s just down the hall, room on the right.” She looks back down and returns to her work.

  The guards start carrying me down the hallway, my foot still unable to bear any weight. There’s a person in a white lab coat at the end of the corridor. From here, it looks like Aunt Kenna.

  I must be going crazy. Shaking the thought from my mind, I tell myself it can’t be her. When I look back in that direction again, she’s gone. It couldn’t be Aunt Kenna anyway, she works in the city, and at night. I just ate breakfast, so it can’t be her. She doesn’t work for the Institute, she wouldn’t. Dismissing the thought, I realise I’m just missing home life—seeing her and Dad, seeing Shilah. I wish I could find out if he’s okay, where he is, and what they’re doing to him.

  It’s just my brain playing tricks on me, I rationalise. If I saw someone who had the same build as Dad, I’m sure I would swear it was him too. I’m taken to the room, and the guards help me up onto the bed.

  “Someone will come check you soon,” Ty says, and they walk out.

  The accommodations are much nicer in here: a big comfortable hospital bed with a remote to move it up or down and options to sit it up or lay it flat. The room is spacious, bigger than my own bedroom back home and easily three times the size of my cell. There are no windows though, and I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun. A TV hovers above the bed, attached to the wall, but looking around, I can’t find a remote to turn it on. I’m guessing they won’t allow me to watch the news and catch up on what’s happening in the outside world. To us, that world doesn’t exist anymore. Part of me wonders why there’s even a TV in here in the first place.

  My nostrils are assaulted by that solvent cleaner smell, reminding me of the day my blood test was taken. That blood test is the reason I’m here.

  Trying to push it from my mind, I take this opportunity to get some much-needed sleep. It seems to be that all I want to do here is sleep, but I guess it’s not like I’m actually getting much though.

  My body has the effects and exhaustion of sleep deprivation, even my mental faculties and cognitive function are suffering. I’m startled awake when the doctor walks in. It’s immediately obvious why I accidentally mistook her for my aunt. Her mahogany-coloure
d hair, her build, and even the way she carries herself reminds me of Aunt Kenna.

  “I’m sorry for keeping you waiting,” she says. I didn’t realise I’d been waiting at all, so maybe I fell into a deeper sleep than I thought. She walks over to me with a clipboard in her hand. “So you had a nasty fall, did you?”

  Well, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose. I nod. “Uh, yeah.”

  She looks at my ankle, pokes at it, prods it, asks me where it hurts, and then proceeds to push on the spots where I tell her I’m sore. She’s trying to be delicate and not press too hard, but I still flinch every time she applies any pressure to my foot.

  “It’s not broken,” she states. “It’s just a little bruised and should be fine in a couple of days. We might have to keep you here until you’re better.”

  I swear the look she’s giving me is trying to tell me something. I try to use my new ability, but I have no idea what she’s thinking—I hear nothing.

  “I’ll leave you to get some rest, but first I’ll give you something for the pain.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two pills. I recognise them, they’re the same pills Tate gave me the night he visited me. I take them without question. They were good at knocking me out last time. The doctor leaves the room, and I relax back into the bed, hopeful for more sleep.

  “You’ve made friends quickly.” Drew’s voice makes my skin crawl. “Moved on pretty quickly too, from what I hear.” He’s standing in the doorway to my room, leaning up against the doorframe. His usually casual, shaggy brown hair is styled with gel, and his green eyes are still as piercing as ever.

  I scowl at the sight of him. I haven’t seen him since my first interrogation, but I haven’t stopped thinking about him since then. It’s impossible to rationalise what he’s done.

  “Is that what you’re here to talk to me about? Or are you here to hit me too, like you did Shilah?”

  “I just don’t understand how you can be angry about it all. It’s obvious your feelings for me were less than genuine, since you already have another guy in your bed.”

  “Are you seriously in here saying this to me right now? Really?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What do you care? Your feelings were made quite clear when you were interrogating me.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d turn around and sleep with the first guy you met.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  I assume he’s talking about Tate and me, but no one is meant to know about that. I shouldn’t be allowed any interaction with anyone down there except for my guards.

  “Oh, just a midnight visitor to your cell. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know what goes on down there,” he says menacingly.

  I hope the guard who let Tate in didn’t get punished.

  “What, you want me to save myself for you, the guy who investigated me, arrested me, and even lied about his own name? Huh, Agent Jacobs?”

  This could easily be fixed by telling Drew nothing happened between Tate and me, but he probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. And why should I explain myself to him? He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason Shilah’s here, somewhere, beaten and bruised like I am. I don’t even understand why he’s in here acting like he’s jealous. If he truly had feelings for me, he never would’ve turned us in.

  “Did you get my note?” His tone is now calm and almost boyish, as if he’s just been told off by his mother for doing something naughty. He’s probably sensing my desire to punch him in the throat.

  “Yeah, nice apology. You think that makes me understand why you did it? Am I meant to forgive you because you scribbled two measly sentences on a piece of paper?”

  “You don’t understand what I’ve been through, Allira. If you just let me explain—”

  “I don’t want any explanations, I want you to leave me alone.”

  He seems genuinely remorseful for what he has done, but I’m not going to trust my instincts when it comes to Drew. I’ve learnt that lesson, and I won’t do it again. For all I know, it might be part of his ability, sucking people into believing him. I can’t trust him. I won’t let myself. I can’t believe anything he says.

  “You have to understand that when you go into a job like this at the age of fifteen, by the time you get to twenty-one, you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore. The defining line gets blurry, but you brought me out of that confusing haze, you reminded me of what it’s like to have a normal life, you reminded me of why I started this job to begin with, and what I was fighting to save: my family. They sent me here, thinking it was the best thing for me. They didn’t know what Brookfield was going to make me do, what he threatened—”

  “Hang on, you lied about your age as well?”

  “That’s what you got from everything I just said?”

  “Was anything you told me true? Your name, your age, when you found out you’re Defective, what else did you hide from me? I wish I could believe what you’re trying to sell, but I’m not going to let you fool me again, and if what you’re saying is true, what was with the attitude during my questioning? Where was Mr. Sensitivity then? All I could see was a snide, conniving, full of himself w—”

  “I know, I know,” he interrupts. “I deserve to be called every name under the sun. I wish I had a decent excuse for my behaviour, but I don’t. I have a reputation here for being the best. First Jax made me for who I am, and then I failed to bring you in on my own. I was getting ridiculed by everyone here. I needed them to know that I hadn’t failed, that I didn’t let you get into my head. They would’ve known that I lost focus if I hadn’t acted the way I did during the interrogation. I’ve never screwed up in the six years I’ve worked here, so I panicked. I was worried about what they’d do, how they’d punish me. I feel terrible for letting my ego get the best of me, but it was just an act because you did get into my head. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you and your family. I can’t apologise enough.”

  “Exactly, you can’t apologise enough, so you don’t need to be in here.”

  Drew hangs his head. “Actually, I do. I didn’t come up here to get into a fight with you, Allira,” he says dejectedly. “I was sent here to find out what happened down there. How did you hurt your ankle?”

  “I thought you knew everything that happens down there?” I retort.

  “Well, we know that you somehow levitated in the air about ten feet off the ground, how about you start with that, and then work your way to the ankle.”

  I sigh. “I don’t know what happened. Ty … the guard on duty was trying to take me back to my cell, he was getting impatient, and I hadn’t finished eating yet. I fought to break free from his grip, and the next thing I knew I was in the air. As soon as he let go, I fell to the ground. That’s what happened.”

  Drew thinks for a moment. “So you didn’t have anything to do with it? Ty did it all on his own?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Not that I expect you to believe me, none of you people have so far.”

  Drew gets up and starts to leave, but he turns just before walking out. “Shilah’s fine by the way, he’s upstairs in a more comfortable environment. You should consider telling them what you can do. They treat you a lot better if you actually cooperate.” His words are soft words of advice, not a demand. For a moment, I see the Drew I know, but no, I can’t fall for that act again.

  “Thanks, but I’m not going to let them use me just so I can be in a more ‘comfortable environment.’”

  “If you want to rot in that jail cell for the rest of your life, that’s your choice, but you have the option of having a better life than that, Allira. A relatively normal life—that’s not something everyone here gets. Just don’t write it off, just think about it.” Drew leaves, and I’m beginning to understand why Tate hasn’t told the staff here what he can do. I don’t want to tear families apart like mine has been, just so I can live a “relatively” normal life. What does that even mean anyway?