As Cold As Ice

by Mandy Rosko

  Panic rose up inside her like a wild animal. Jessica managed to wiggle her wrist free before he could latch the chain onto her shackle. Their bodies were a mess as they tangled together, but she managed to spin around on the smooth tiled floor, putting herself on her back with the guard on top of her.

  He wasn’t wearing a helmet; none of the guards in the cafeteria were. The shouting from the other prisoners as they were rounded up was so loud that no one seemed to notice the fight happening between Jessica and this man.

  She slammed the heel of her palm into his nose. Even with the lack of space for her to draw back her wrist and really get a good, strong hit in, it was still painful enough for the guard to yank his face back and cry out. There was even a little blood flow.

  That was all she needed. Jessica hooked her leg around the back of his thighs and pushed hard. She spun them around, using the momentum to put herself on top of him, even with his superior weight.

  Rage took over. She didn’t think, just let her fists fly, and fuck the consequences of that. She’d been buried beneath this building for so long, forced to put on shows for the people who watched her, forced to kill to save her own life, and forced to try and forget that there wasn’t anyone watching her whenever she needed to use the toilet, or the tiny shower with no curtain to hide herself.

  She was filthy and tired, and her body was working without her brain to make someone pay for what she was put through. Someone was going to suffer, and this guy was the only one she had in front of her at the moment, so it was going to be him.

  The man couldn’t defend himself well, which was good. It allowed her to really get her aggression out. His nose was bleeding, and his blood got onto her palm every time she slammed it into his face. When he tried to lift his hands to defend himself, it splattered onto his fingers and uniform, as well.

  A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and another one on her wrist.

  Guards surrounded her, and Jessica flew at them, too.

  She was smaller than they all were, but not by much. All the same, the guard immediately behind her didn’t see it coming when she arched her spine and threw herself between his legs.

  She kicked him in the balls on the way through just for good measure. Guys were normally a lot more protective of their male parts than books or television led people to believe, so she figured it was a good time to get a shot in while the guard was stunned with her move.

  He bent over, clutching himself between his legs, and Jessica scrambled to her feet.

  It was too late. She was grabbed up by every other guard surrounding her, and there was no fighting them off. Her arms were latched onto, as were her legs and stomach. Five men were on her. Jessica struggled and screamed, one last, hard burst from her lungs, but it was done. She was caught.

  “Holy God, Bill. That little bitch!”

  Of all the angry faces in her line of vision, this one was the angriest as he came forward and slammed his fist down onto her cheek. The pain flared up and white splashed in front of her eyes. He might’ve hit her again; she couldn’t tell because she was a little numb at that point.

  “Stop that! Stop it!”

  The white faded away, which was a shame because that was about when the pain started to throb back to life. Hot and fast and angrier than any of the guards holding her down.

  Soren was there, holding onto the fist of the guard who’d been punching her, glaring at him with enough force and anger of his own that his white teeth were showing.

  It also seemed to shock the guard that Soren, a white coat-wearing lab rat, had enough strength in him to stop the guy from throwing another punch.

  Soren quickly tossed away the man’s hand, then proved to be not quite the savior that Jessica had thought him to be when he pulled out a syringe, uncapped it, and leaned down. “Hold her tight,” Soren said. The bastard didn’t even have the decency to look her in the eyes when he stuck her.

  Jessica spat at him. Soren still hardly moved, not until he pulled the syringe away. Only then did he wipe his face.

  “I hate you,” Jessica said. Well, she tried to say it. What came out of her mouth didn’t exactly sound like proper words, so it could have been anything. Mumbled gibberish—the drug Soren injected her with was that good—then she was sleeping.

  *****

  When Jessica woke, her mind was shockingly clear. Clear enough for her to immediately understand why those other three paranormals had immediately attacked her when they were shoved into the same cell as her.

  If the hatred she'd felt for the guards was anything at all to go by, then it only made sense for the people she'd brought in to hate her a thousand times more, regardless of whether or not they were actually innocent.

  She also saw someone by her bed. Her mind was clear, but her eyes were still a little fuzzy, and at first she thought it was Charles.

  No. Soren. She could make out the red-brown hair on top of his head. Charles didn't have that, and when her vision did clear up a little, the sorry expression on his face became noticeable.

  Jessica sighed. She was in a bed, and she could feel the leather straps holding her down. She wasn't in the mood for him, even when he pulled out his little pen thing and clicked it three times, effectively scrambling any and all bugs that might be listening in on them.

  It was the silent kind of scrambler, however. Soren had already explained to her how it worked. It wouldn't give off any obvious signals for anyone to chase after. It would just make sure that whatever she and Soren said was completely muted.

  "Sorry I spat at you," Jessica said.

  And why the hell had something like that left her mouth? She wasn't sorry. She was a little embarrassed, however. It wasn't like she was overly lady-like or anything, but she'd never actually spit on someone, and she didn't like that she'd done it.

  "Don't worry about it. That just made it all look better," Soren replied softly.

  Jessica frowned. "What?"

  Soren looked down into his lap before turning his bright blue eyes back to her face. "We didn't plan on that to happen, and it wasn't supposed to, but I convinced Charles there's a way to use it that would still get you out."

  Jessica's brows lifted, and her mouth parted slightly in shock. "Get me out," she said. It wasn't a question.

  Soren nodded. "Yes. Showing the other inmates that you were fighting back against the guards will help. We can arrange for an escape. A fake one. You and a couple of the other inmates will get out, and when you do, your assignment will be to follow them to whatever safe houses they go to."

  Jessica clenched her fists. "I asked you to get me out of here. That's not exactly freedom if I'm going to be hunting them all down again."

  Soren's lips thinned. "You didn't ask so much as you threatened me."

  "Like you wouldn't have done the same thing."

  "Not to you, no."

  Jessica clamped her mouth shut. So did Soren, and he stood up. Jessica hadn't realized he'd been sitting by her knees. "I know it isn't ideal, but it's the best thing I could think of, and you don't have to do anything once you get out anyway. Just run away and don't come back."

  "I won't have a tracker put in me?"

  "You will," Soren said. "I couldn't get around that. The guys upstairs don't trust you enough to not give you a tracker. The others will have trackers injected into them, too, but they won't know about it. Find a way to get it out or destroy it, then run."

  So he had been working to get her out. It just made Jessica feel guilty that she'd threatened to expose him, and she didn't even really know what he was yet.

  Something strong, that was for sure.

  "What about the others? If they're let out, they'll still have their trackers. They'll expose other people."

  Soren shook his head. Once Jessica really looked at him, she could see the bags under his eyes were worse. He was also keeping his head angled down. Not by a lot, but just enough to keep most of his features hidden from any cameras that were still watching them, e
ven if the listening part was broken by Soren's scrambler.

  He also wasn't moving around too much, not making any gestures or movements that would make him look suspicious while tech support was probably trying to find out what was wrong with their audio.

  "This has been in the works for a while. They were going to do this with or without you. Charles wants to prove that you're different. He wants you to be a hunter again and show that paranormals can be volunteers."

  "He also wants to get in my pants."

  Soren's cheeks brightened. He was actually blushing, though the line of his mouth became hard and his brows came down, making him look even older than he was.

  He really needed a nap and a shave.

  "He won't touch you."

  He couldn't guarantee her that. Sexual abuse was one of the secrets that everyone who worked in the building knew about. It was also another reason why Jessica and Ethan never took the papers of paranormals who weren't dangerous to other people, and if they did, then oops, what do you know? They got away.

  She tried not to think about that. Tried not to imagine any of those guards who'd been holding her down taking her clothes off and teaching her a lesson. Would they have done that?

  Probably if given the chance.

  Soren had stepped in, stopping what had been happening before it could turn into more than just angry punches, but what if he hadn't been there?

  Jessica had always hated her powers over cold and ice, but when she didn't have them, she felt like she was walking around without underwear on. It was a weird feeling she didn't think she could get used to.

  Soren sighed. "I won't let anyone touch you. You're part of the program now. The other inmates really think you're one of them. You're too useful for anyone to try that with you, and if I hear anyone so much as joking around about it, then I'll let them have it."

  "You'll give them a stern talking to, will you?"

  "I'll kill them."

  Jessica tensed. Soren looked away from her a little too quickly. Once again, she had to wonder what he was. What sort of power or gift was he hiding that made him strong and capable enough to make a threat like that? He'd certainly been strong enough to hold back the fist of that guard, and he hadn't looked too happy then.

  Jessica's throat closed, and as much as she'd been angry with Soren, she didn't want him to leave her side all of a sudden. Maybe it was the intensity in which he'd said it, but Jessica felt kind of safe with him now that she knew how serious he was about protecting her.

  "Thank you, but, don't get in too much trouble on my behalf either," she said, then added, "you're not much use to me if you get put away."

  God, that sounded bad. And kind of heartless.

  Soren lifted a clipboard she hadn’t noticed he’d had. He clicked his pen three times, effectively ending the scrambler’s block on the audio on the room, then started to write with it like it was just a regular pen, speaking to her as if everything was normal on his end.

  “Another day of rest and some more painkillers, and you should be well enough for your evaluation…”

  Chapter Four

  After another two days of being stuck in the clinic, strapped down, with almost nothing to do but watch the weather on the television and any rerun of some old program deemed suitable for her to view, Jessica started to wonder how long she'd been there.

  She'd thought she had a good grasp of the time that had gone by when she was in her cell in the basement of the building, but at that point, she wasn't so sure.

  At least being in the clinic, she knew for a fact whenever the sun went down and came up because she could see it through the window. She no longer had to rely on when she got tired and guessed how long she'd slept for.

  Not for the first time, she wondered where Ethan was. If he'd been caught, someone would've said something to her, right? Someone would have thrown it in her face that her brother had been picked up somewhere along the highway, making his way to Canada, and brought in for aiding and abetting a known paranormal.

  However, the fact that no one came to her and spoke to her about him, asked her where he was, if she knew of any hiding places, didn't make her feel so great, either. If they weren't trying to get information out of her, then did that mean they already had an idea of where he was?

  So confusing. She'd seen the way handlers used scare tactics like this to try and wheedle the information out of paranormals, working patiently to get them to confess if anyone else in the family could transform into a monster, breathe underwater, or make people do things with their minds.

  Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't, but no one was left alone so easily.

  Jessica tried to tune into what was on the TV, considering it was her only form of entertainment. She'd kill for a book right about then, instead of watching this propaganda garbage.

  It was a poorly written sitcom about a group of paranormal friends who struggled to live and work in a world outside of the protection of Head Office. It was basically like watching the show Two Broke Girls, only with a thousand times more fake laughs.

  It wasn't exactly a long-running series. There were only about five episodes, many of which involved the three friends struggling to hide their monstrous powers from the good people around them while they worked low-end jobs with even lower pay.

  At the third episode, the shocking twist was that the male of the group, a man in his early twenties who had gills behind his ears, turned himself in to Head Office and was awarded a nice, better-paying job working for search and rescue in the ocean. Those scenes, which would probably have been the only good thing about the show, were never shown for budget reasons, but the two women—one of whom made things blow up if she was angry, and another who couldn't speak too loudly because her voice caused pain if it was pitched too high—felt all betrayed about it. They considered running away for the next episode and a half, until the last half of the final episode where they both turned themselves in, walking freely up to the hunters they'd called to retrieve them—who smiled warmly and dressed nothing at all like real hunters—and finding happiness with the promise of a good life that Head Office gave to them.

  Aside from the weather, it was the only thing on. Continuously, morning, noon, and night. After three days of it, Jessica had everyone's lines memorized. And she wanted to spoon her eyes out and stick her head in a bucket of water to erase the memory of this terribly written television show. She tried to turn it off to spare herself the mental torture of feeling her IQ drop, but then everything in the room was too damned silent and weird, and that was even worse than watching propaganda TV.

  Which was what made it such a relief when the white door to her room opened and Soren walked in.

  Aside from her nurse, who hadn't smiled nearly as bright as the actors in the sitcom she was forced to watch again and again, he was the only real, live person she'd seen in days, and she sighed at the sight of him.

  "Oh, thank God." He was Prince Frickin’ Charming in that moment, coming to rescue her from the terrible, awful, cringe inducing drama on her screen.

  Soren abruptly stopped, and he looked behind himself as if expecting to see something there before turning and looking back at her. "What? Me?"

  "Yes, you. Please, tell me you have some good news."

  "I do," Soren said, stepping closer. He'd shaved. His jaw and chin were smooth, and the bags under his eyes weren't quite as dark.

  He might have even been smiling a little when he reached down and unlatched the leather straps that held her.

  "You have an appointment with Mark Layton. You know who he is, right?"

  He unbuckled the straps around her chest and waist before he moved to the ones that were around her wrists, just above her shackles.

  Jessica nodded. She was pretty sure he wasn't scrambling anything that might be listening in on them, so she decided not to say anything sarcastic or disrespectful about the man. Not yet, anyway. "I've met him a couple of times. This goes all the way up to him?"


  Mark Layton was the man in charge of The Head Office for Paranormal Containment and Study. The man was a billionaire before he was thirty, and some said he had more power than the president.

  Of course, politics being what they were, that wasn’t all that difficult when one lived in a world where the president couldn’t so much as keep the smallest of promises, but it sounded impressive to say it.

  Soren nodded. “It was his idea. I asked him to put you on the list of candidates for this project, and he might agree. He just wants to see you first.”

  Soren looked at her then, his blue eyes hard, but he didn’t say anything.

  A stern look on his face like that could only mean that he wanted to say something, but was being held back because of the recorders in the room.

  She figured it out on her own easily enough. Soren wanted Jessica to go along with the ruse that she had been planning to start a fight with the guards all along just for the sake of blending in with whoever they were planning on releasing.

  She hated it, but she bit her lips and nodded.

  Soren didn’t look away from her. Not for another three seconds. In the quiet of her clinic room, that was a long time.

  He finally blinked, as if coming out of a stupor, and he cleared his throat before turning around, giving Jessica his back. “I’ll be waiting out in the hall. Take a shower—it’ll be private—and get dressed. Your clothes are in that cabinet right there. I’ll be riding up to the top floor with you.”

  Jessica rubbed her wrists, scratching the spot beneath her metal shackles that had itched ever since she woke up, and she nodded. Soren didn’t even have to hear her say anything as he walked out the door, scribbling something onto his clipboard.

  *****

  The hot shower was the best part, as was being able to use the bathroom without having someone help her with it. Soren said there wasn’t anyone watching her in there, and she believed him. It was easy to believe him, easy to trust him. She’d always known him to be good to the prisoners, so if he said there was no one watching her, then Jessica could breathe a little easier.