Children of the Veil (Aisling Chronicles)

by Colleen Halverson

  “Okay, like what?”

  “The name?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about…?” I blurted out the first thing I could think of. “Hermione!”

  “What?”

  “You never read Harry Potter? You know…before you came here?”

  She paused and a sad sigh echoed through the vent. “I don’t remember anything from before. I mean, nothing like that. No personal things. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, Hermione is a great name. She was a witch—”

  “A witch?”

  “Yeah, but she was a really badass witch. She was smart and powerful. She helped defeat this evil wizard and…well, okay, let me back up a bit. You see, once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived under the stairs…”

  …

  My three guards entered the room, and I smiled, tucking in my blanket. I had started making my bed, or cot, as it were. Hermione said that routines were important in solitary confinement. I woke up, brushed my teeth with the generic toothpaste they gave us, and ran my fingers through my hair. Time had passed. I wasn’t sure how much. Periodically, the hollow place in my chest ached, from my soul either healing or breaking, I didn’t know. But it didn’t match the horrible ache I felt for Finn, and as much as I tried to push the longing for him down, it rose up and consumed me like a tide of grief. Nights were the worst.

  Once a week, they left a sponge and some cold soapy water, and that’s how I counted the days in the facility. But even with that, my brain grew fuzzy, my mind shattering under the strain of confinement, the humiliation and terror of knowing someone, somewhere, was constantly watching me even as I bathed. At first I had awkwardly tried to wash myself beneath my army blanket, but after proceeding to soak my bedding and half the floor, I gave up, using the time to tell my captors all about my spotty menstrual cycles. In spite of everything, that copy of The Prisoner of Azkhaban never manifested.

  “Hey, there,” I said to one of the guards as he circled me. I named him No-Chin, because his jaw sloped into his neckbeard. “You are looking especially fine this morning. Did you do something new with your hair?” I made to run my fingers across his nearly balding head, and he slapped it away.

  “Mmm…feisty today.” With an exaggerated wink, I pressed my hips close to his. “But that’s okay. I like it a little rough.”

  The other guard, the mean one I called Neanderthal, bent my arm around my back at an unnatural angle, and I hissed in pain. The familiar pinch of the neurotoxin shot through my neck, and I struggled against his grip. I caught the third guard’s gaze, and his dark eyes softened for a moment, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. I called him Brown Eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I said to him. “Having some second thoughts? Maybe you’re wondering what it would be like if your girlfriend was in here. Your sister?”

  He blinked hard. Got him.

  “Wonder how your sister would feel being manhandled by this Neanderthal.” Said Neanderthal shoved me out of my cell, and we made the long march down the hallway to the double doors. I craned my neck to meet Brown Eye’s gaze. He was good-looking. Tall, with eyes too old for his youthful face. He had seen some shit, I could tell.

  “She’d probably be terrified down here,” I continued. “Away from all her family. No one to protect her. You’d probably want to kill the guy who roughed her up, wouldn’t you?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the Neanderthal growled in my ear.

  He kicked the doors open and Dr. Fade stood in the middle of the lab, smiling, clipboard in hand.

  “We’ll be starting the stress tests today,” he said.

  …

  The guards dragged me back to my cell and set me on the edge of my cot. My head immediately hit the pillow, pulsing aches overwhelming my body like the constant beat of a sledgehammer against my joints. A small whimper escaped my lips, and I turned toward the wall, listening to their heavy footfalls and the door slam behind them. A few minutes later, the trapdoor slid open and someone shoved a tray across the floor. I didn’t move, the pain killing my appetite.

  “Elizabeth,” Hermione whispered through the vent.

  For a moment, I considered faking sleep. I didn’t want to talk to anyone after what Dr. Fade had put me through.

  “Are you all right?”

  I paused, turning over to face the vent. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

  “Was it…?”

  “Yeah.” I forced myself to sit up, knowing that if I closed my eyes I might wake up and forget who I was. I had to fight through this. Hobbling over to the vent, I winced as I slid my bruised hips down to the floor. “Rough day.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I leaned my head against the wall, and for a moment I could almost feel Hermione’s body heat through the wall. The ache for human touch, for some real connection burned more than the twisting agony in my limbs. The dull burn in my chest had increased, and I massaged the space over my heart, letting out a long exhale. As time stretched out in the facility, I came to understand the constant ache meant my soul wasn’t healing in this horrible place, the isolation, the loneliness leaving it to fester.

  I cleared my throat, trying to force a smile on my lips. “So where were we when we left off? I think Hermione Granger had just been paralyzed by the basilisk?”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we not do Harry Potter tonight?”

  I sniffed, swallowing hard. “Sure, it’s just…”

  “Let’s do something different, maybe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me about you. Tell me about who you were before you came here.”

  “I’d rather not…”

  In order to survive, I had forced myself not to think about Finn or my mother or anything on the other side. If I fell down that black hole, I wasn’t sure I would emerge. It was better to imagine we were at some sort of bizarro Hogwarts, killing time between magic lessons. Reality seemed too grim, too hopeless.

  “Tell me,” she pressed. “That way, if you forget, I’ll know. And if you ever wonder, I can tell you, help you remember.”

  Some part of me, the lucid part, screamed at me to remain silent, keep my head on straight. The people in the facility were always listening, the red light in the corner constant. But what if Hermione was right? What if I forgot everything? Already I felt my past falling away in the quiet monotony of my confinement, hours bending into yesterday, tomorrow, forever. They already seemed to know everything about me anyway. Spilling my life story wouldn’t make a difference to them at this point, but it could ensure I keep some slip of sanity in this place until I find a way to escape.

  I nodded, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “Okay, well, The Chamber of Secrets is way more interesting.”

  “We’ll get back to it tomorrow.”

  I paused, curling my legs under me and folding my hands in my lap. “I guess it all started when I was working on this book…”

  The fluorescent light in the cell clicked off, but I didn’t stop talking. Once I started, the words spilled out of me, anchoring me in the endless darkness of the cell, the fear of forgetting my past overriding everything else. I told Hermione everything. All about Trinity, Bres, Tír na nÓg, Finn, the quest to find my mother. And as I spoke, I felt a surge of power building deep in my belly, my desire to return, to fulfill my destiny back on the other side taking flame and burning through the fog of captivity. I had to find a way to get to Finn somehow, find my mother before Amergin did. It was time to take action.

  “And so we were headed to London before I got caught,” I finished, and leaned my head back, visions of Finn swirling through my head. I wondered if he was thinking about me right now, what he was doing. Probably concocting some stupid plan to try to save me and get himself killed. My stomach gurgled loudly, and I contemplated reaching for the tray of food, but my limbs groaned at the mere thought.

  “Are you still there?” I said after a long pause.

&nb
sp; “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry if I bored you. I guess I…I guess I needed to talk about it.”

  “No,” Hermione whispered. “I’m glad you did. It’s quite a story. I doubt I’ll be able to forget it.”

  “I hope so,” I said, staring up at nothing. “For my sake.”

  We sat in silence for a long time, the minutes ticking by.

  “I need to rest now,” Hermione said.

  “Sure.”

  “Take care.”

  I heard her shuffle away, and I sat alone, wrapping my arms around myself. I needed a plan. If I stayed one more day in this place, I would go completely insane, start calling Dr. Fade Professor Snape or something. I rubbed my hands up and down my shoulders and past my elbows, my mind rolling over the routine, searching for chinks in the armor, gaps in the fortifications. My stomach rumbled again, and I stretched out my hand, wishing the tray would magically appear in my hand. It was just a couple inches away, but I couldn’t move, my arms burning with a dull pain.

  With a sly grin, I whispered a Harry Potter charm to summon it.

  The air snapped, a soda-pop fizzle crackling through my fingers, and before I could blink, the plastic edge fell snug into my palm. It happened so fast, I startled backwards, the tray clattering to the floor, cold applesauce splattering over my ankle.

  I didn’t make a move, my breathing coming out in quick pants. The movement of the tray had been so quick, so slight. Had they seen it? I trembled, looking in the direction of the door, waiting for the guards to rush in, grab me and inject me with the neurotoxin. But no one came.

  I suppressed a secret smile. My powers were back. Not a lot, but a little. I closed my eyes, willing to travel out, and I felt for a moment the tiniest hint of weightlessness, but then my body clicked back into this plane, as if pushed back by some invisible force. It didn’t matter, though. I shook with excitement, shoving the cookie into my mouth, swallowing it down with a pint of warm milk, feeling my body grow stronger and the pain fading away. The neurotoxin was wearing thin, or maybe my body was building a resistance to it. Regardless, I had something to work with, and by the end of the night, when the lights came back on again, I had a plan.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The door boomed open, and familiar heavy footsteps tramped across the floor. I kept my eyes closed and took a deep breath, running over my plan again in my head. My throat contracted, and I resisted the impulse to swallow the mix of overdone Salisbury steak, applesauce, and mashed potatoes stuck in my mouth.

  “Rise and shine, Princess,” Neanderthal growled, lifting me to standing. He smelled like cigarettes and burned popcorn.

  I allowed my head to loll forward, my hair falling in snarled tangles around my face. My ears strained to hear the tap tap of Neanderthal’s gaudy class ring against the vial as he rubbed it between his hands. I had to time it just right.

  “Is she okay?” Brown Eyes said, taking a step forward.

  Someone grabbed my face, probably No-Chin, peeling my eyelids open. I kept them rolled up in my head.

  “She’s not responding. We should tell Dr. Fade.”

  “I knew he went too far yesterday,” Brown Eyes muttered beneath his breath.

  “Shut up,” Neanderthal barked. A sting of pain burst in my cheek as his massive hand slapped my cheek. Once. Twice. I stifled a wince, keeping my body limp in his arms.

  “Fuck this shit,” Neanderthal said under his breath when I didn’t respond.

  Tap. Tap.

  With a horrible gagging sound, I spewed the slurry vomit mixture in my mouth, and it splattered across the room. Feigning a violent spasm, my head crashed right up against Neanderthal’s nose with a satisfying crunch. The vial crashed to the floor with a clink of shattered glass.

  Yes…

  “Son of a bitch!” Neanderthal shouted.

  He dropped me, and I fell to the floor in a heap of tremoring limbs, my mouth covered in last night’s leftovers. I let out a screeching, gagging noise.

  “We need to call Dr. Fade!” Brown Eyes crouched beside me, grabbing my hand.

  “Shit, the vial,” No-Chin said. “You’re gonna have to tell him.”

  “And get another mark on my record? Fuck that,” Neanderthal said. “She’s doped out of her mind. No one will notice. We have a meeting with pasty-ass in five minutes. This is the doc’s problem.”

  A pair of strong hands locked under my armpits and dragged me from the room. I continued to flop around periodically, letting out incoherent gurgling sounds. We passed through the double doors and someone lifted me up onto a gurney.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Dr. Fade’s voice wavered, thin and shaky.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Neanderthal snapped. Heavy footsteps retreated to the door.

  “You need to fix her,” Brown Eyes hissed, his boots echoing across the floor. The door closed with a rush of air and then silence.

  “Oh Jesus,” Dr. Fade said. “Okay. Oh Jesus. Oh Christ.”

  Paper rustled, the constant click of his pen sending shivers of rage down my spine. I cautioned a glance through my fluttering eyelids. It was so close. I could almost reach it.

  “Okay. Nurse,” he stammered, turning around. His fingers rested on the bed, his hand slack, the pen resting in his palm. “Nurse! I need two cc’s of—”

  My heart quickened, blood pounding in my ears. I lunged for the pen. The doctor let out a small, high-pitched cry. I grabbed his fingers and stabbed the ballpoint pen right through the top of his hand. A spurt of blood landed hot and wet on my cheek. The nurse screamed behind me. Dr. Fade made a shocked, whimpering sound, and our eyes met through the smudged lenses of his glasses for a moment before I slammed my fist against his nose. He staggered backward with a gasp, trying to capture the blood pouring from his nostrils.

  The nurse screamed again.

  Jumping from the bed, I grabbed the surgical tray and slammed it up against Dr. Fade’s chin. He fell back against the wall and didn’t move.

  “Shut up!” I screamed and threw the surgical tray at the nurse. It caught her hard on the shoulder, and she stumbled backward, her mouth rounded in a small O.

  I grabbed a pair of scissors and pointed them at her. “Shut the fuck up.”

  I darted over to her and grabbed her stupid little bun and pressed the scissors to her neck.

  “Take off your uniform.” I said.

  Her lips opened and closed like a fish out of water, and I shoved the sharp point of the scissors against her skin until a small bead of blood burst through and trickled down her throat.

  “Do it!”

  With trembling hands, she pulled off her nurse’s scrubs and threw them at me.

  “The shoes, too,” I hissed. “And your badge.”

  She threw me her nurse clogs and pressed the badge in my hand with shaking fingers.

  “You’ll never make it out of here,” she said through gasping breaths.

  I grabbed the surgical tray and slammed it hard against her head. Once. Twice. She fell in a heap on the floor.

  “We’ll just see about that,” I said under my breath, racing for the door.

  I swished my badge against the scanner and glanced down at it, wincing at the bright blond hair in the picture, before racing back down the hall.

  You’ll never make it out of here.

  Well, shit, I had to try.

  I passed Hermione’s cell and paused, the blood pounding in my ears. I had maybe seconds until either the nurse or the doctor woke up. I didn’t have time to help every Fae trapped in this godforsaken place, but goddammit, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to save her.

  I swiped my card against the scanner and the door buzzed open. I raced inside, ready to grab the girl I had spoken to last night, but I stopped short. Old chairs lined the edge of the wall, stacks of boxes filled with files piled up to the ceiling, and old medical equipment stood stacked one on top of each other in some Jenga exercise of cracking plastic and dust.

&n
bsp; There was no Hermione. No girl in the vent. No scared Fae.

  It wasn’t even a real cell.

  A siren blared through an intercom in the hallway, lights flashing on and off. Before I could puzzle Hermione’s disappearance, I turned and ran down the hallway and through another set of double doors, swiping my badge. A flight of stairs stood at the end of a long corridor, and I raced toward it, the nurse’s clogs tripping me up.

  “Stop!” a voice shouted behind me. It was Brown Eyes.

  I pumped my legs harder. Sunlight dappled the wall just one flight up, and I focused all my energy toward reaching it, stretching out my hands as if that would make me run faster. More shouts sounded behind me. I didn’t dare turn back. I had to reach the light. Closing my eyes, I reached deep inside my body, pulling out the single beating lifeline of my energy that would allow me to travel out of there. It was so small, but I could feel my aisling powers calling to me, wanting to break through whatever vestiges of the neurotoxin left in my body.

  A sharp pain exploded in my back, and I was on the ground, my knee banging hard against the linoleum floor. My body pulsed with voltage, foam dripping from my mouth in a small puddle. I crawled forward, but a boot pressed against my shoulder, knocking the air from my lungs.

  I closed my eyes, reaching inward again, but the pain in my side made it impossible to focus. Darkness crowded my brain, shadows pressing on my memories. I thought of my mother standing alone on a beach, staring at the blank sky above.

  You’ve always had the power, Elizabeth.

  A sudden blast of energy surged through me, so fast and overwhelming it overtook my whole body with a rush of force. I pushed the boot from my shoulder and, turning around, blasted the figure with all the strength of my abilities. Wide-eyed, he slammed against the wall and crumpled to the floor in a heap. Other soldiers rushed me, and I strained my mind, trying to channel my powers, but whatever flood of energy had fought through the shot seemed to have depleted. I banged my fists on the floor in a cry of rage. I had planned it all wrong, and I cursed myself, wishing I had given it more time, been more patient. Now it was too late.

  They dragged me to standing, pulling me back toward the double doors.