by Martha Carr
Military Mustache gave her a strained, almost mocking smile. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Who are you?” This time, her mouth produced actual words.
“I’ll ask you the same question. Wanna go first?”
Cheyenne closed her eyes and swallowed, her throat dry.
Not giving my name today. Not here.
“Yeah, I thought so. For now, you can call me ‘Sir.’”
The halfling tried to snort, but it backed up in her throat and made her choke before she coughed enough to bring another round of blind agony stabbing through her head.
“What you’re experiencing right now is your body’s innate ability to heal itself, aided by our magical-healing formula.” Mustache looked her over, his mustache twitching as his lips twisted sideways. “But you don’t get the full dose yet. Consider this your first lesson. No pain, no gain. I’m sure you get the point.”
“I didn’t sign up for lessons or any of your other bullsh—” Cheyenne’s sentence morphed into a groan. All she wanted to do was curl up on her side and vomit all over the guy’s shoes, but she couldn’t move.
“Well, you gave up that choice when you crashed my guys’ sting operation. We don’t know if that was your intention or if my team of top guys are just lucky bastards, but you need us. We’re still figuring out whether we need you.”
Cheyenne swallowed her nausea, which made her throat rawer. “I don’t know what you—”
“Save it for when you have your head screwed on straight, halfling.” Mustache sniffed and nodded at the doctor, who was still checking the monitors and fiddling with IV fluid bags. “We can use skills like yours, however crude they are. We’ll talk more when you don’t look like a chameleon with a bad case of chronic indecision. When you can conceive what the right answers are, you’ll give us those answers.”
“This should stabilize her for the next twenty-four hours,” the blonde woman said with a curt nod.
“Good.”
Cheyenne groaned, tried not to heave. She gagged instead.
“All right, Doc. Better make sure that puke pan’s close by.”
“Sir.”
Without another word, Mustache turned on his heel and disappeared from Cheyenne’s view. She blinked against the floodlights in the ceiling that seemed like they were shining inches from her face. “Can you turn off those lights?” she croaked.
“You’ll get used to it,” said a male voice.
The doctor looked up at the new arrival, nodded, and left Cheyenne alone with another stranger. This guy wore black combat pants and a black undershirt, and his hands were clasped behind his back. Something about his eyes seemed familiar, but Cheyenne didn’t trust anything her body or mind was telling her right now.
“You have a real chance here,” the man said. “Whoever you are.” He was much younger than Mustache, his biceps dancing under the sleeves of his shirt.
Great. Now I’m hallucinating. Cheyenne blinked at him. “Chance at what?”
The man bowed his head. He leaned over her until he was a few inches away from her face. “You better accept I’m gonna be watching you from here on out. You know, just to make sure you don’t screw up.”
Cheyenne took a deep breath. She couldn’t come up with anything that felt worth the effort.
Her last visitor straightened, nodded, and turned away from the bed. “Get some sleep.”
Like that’s possible. Cheyenne wanted to laugh, but doing even that made her dizzy and nauseated all over again. As if the guy’s final command were a tranquilizer injected into the IV, all-consuming exhaustion overwhelmed her. She slipped away again, the heavy warmth of sleep punctured by wave after receding wave.
This is how Ember slept through the last three days. I get it.
The drow halfling’s eyes closed against her will, but when the brightness of the overhead lights faded, she welcomed it.
What have I gotten into?
* * *
Inside Cheyenne Summerlin’s apartment, the grad student’s open backpack sat propped up against the half wall of the kitchen counter. Inside, nestled between her laptop and the uneaten half of a lamb gyro, the copper puzzle box covered in hair-thin etchings of drow runes gave off a soft silver glow. A series of clicks rose from the mechanism at its heart, and two segments of the box detached from the latches holding the thing together and spun in opposite directions to form a new message for its intended witness. A new cycle had begun.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The first thing Cheyenne Summerlin saw upon waking was white—nothing but white. That wasn’t her general ambiance.
Her vision focused beneath the blinding overhead lights, and she remembered she was in a bed in a place pretending to be a hospital. Besides one stoic doctor, the other people she’d seen weren’t nurses, but some kind of special ops agents more concerned with her secrets than her health.
The drow halfling swallowed, her throat dry and raw. “Hello?”
It hurt to speak, but she’d said it loud enough. She didn’t receive an answer.
“Okay, is someone gonna tell me where I am, or do I have to—” Something metallic clinked when she lifted her hand to rub her forehead. Her hand didn’t make it more than four inches off the thin mattress of the hospital bed.
“What the…” Cheyenne jerked one arm away from the mattress, then tried the other. Neither moved far from the metal rails surrounding the bed. She jerked her head up and glared at the thick silver manacles around her wrists. “Seriously? What’s the point of helping me heal if you’re gonna chain me up?”
She jerked on the chains, filling the room with the frantic jingle of the bonds against the rails. “Get these things off me. Hey!”
The heat of Cheyenne’s half-drow blood flared at the base of her spine as she rocked against the mattress. In under two seconds, the twenty-one-year-old’s pale skin and High Voltage Raven Black hair disappeared, replaced by the dark purple-gray flesh of her drow heritage, bone-white hair, and pointy-tipped ears that betrayed her race, or at least half of it.
Cheyenne’s eyes flashed golden, and she shouted through gritted teeth, “I swear, if somebody doesn’t get in here and take these off me in the next ten seconds, I’m gonna blow this place off the map!”
Not that a place such as this is on a map.
She summoned the smallest bit of her drow magic she could control to her fingertips, except no hot rush pulsed within her. Cheyenne raised her head to check her hand.
No sparks. No magic.
What the hell is this?
“Hey! Hey! What did you do to me?” She tugged at the manacles on her wrists, bucking and writhing on the mattress. Her ankles were chained too, and the restraints made sitting up all but impossible. “Get me out of—”
The door at the other end of the sterile room opened, and a woman entered briskly. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat bun, the no-nonsense lines of her face accentuated by the thin frames of her glasses. She cradled a tablet in one hand and was scrolling through it with the other, not bothering to acknowledge the panicked drow halfling chained to the bed.
“You’re the doctor, right?” Cheyenne’s chest heaved. “Don’t you have some kind of oath about doing no harm?”
The woman approached the monitors near the halfling’s bed and studied the information.
“What did you do to my magic?” Cheyenne tugged the manacle one more time and tried to summon those purple and black sparks. Still nothing. “Hey, I’m talking to you. You have no right to chain me up like—”
“If you want out of that bed, I suggest you put that rage where it belongs until it’s necessary.” The doctor continued scrolling through the tablet. “Now.”
“Or what?” Cheyenne jerked on the chains, which clanked. “You’ll chain me to the bed and leave me here? Nice try, but we already covered that.”
The doctor turned from her tablet to the drow halfling, although her eyes never quite made it to Cheyenne’s face. They flickered over the
rest of her body instead with cold, precise detachment.
Like I am some dead butterfly pinned to a damn board.
“What did you do to my magic?”
The doctor took a deep breath through her nose, lifted her gaze to meet the drow halfling’s glowing golden eyes, and raised an eyebrow.
To be sure she made her point, Cheyenne snarled at the woman and jerked on the chains, then she dropped her head back onto the thin pillow with a sigh and closed her eyes. I’m not very intimidating without firepower. Breathe. Think of the deer.
After the few days she’d spent working on slipping in and out of her drow form, Cheyenne figured she had a pretty good handle on it. The memory she’d been using to calm herself and resettle into what made her look human worked like a charm. The heat withered out of her shoulders, neck, and back, and her purple-gray skin and white hair faded. Now she was all pale skin and loose pitch-black curls.
“So.” Cheyenne turned her head on the pillow to gaze at the doctor’s stoic, unchanging expression. “Do I at least get my one phone call?”
Someone knocked on the door, and the doctor turned halfway around. “Enter.”
An orderly in white scrubs stepped into the room pushing a stainless-steel cart. The halfling stared at the man. Looks like someone who works in a mental institution.
Without a word, the man left the tray behind the doctor and turned around to leave. He didn’t acknowledge Cheyenne’s presence in any way, and she snorted. “Yeah, nice talking to you too.”
The door closed behind him, and she eyed the cart. “So, Doc. I put it away. I believe this is the part where you hold up your end of the deal?”
The halfling wiggled the chains for effect. She’d given up fighting until she found out what was happening. And as long as that tray doesn’t have a bunch of torture implements or some kinda drug that’s gonna turn me into a zombie.
With a sigh of either irritation or business-as-usual—Cheyenne couldn’t tell with this one—the doctor pushed buttons on the monitors, read something on the IV bag dripping into the tube taped to the back of the halfling’s hand, and put the tablet on top of the closest monitor. She fished into the pocket on her white lab coat and pulled out two keys attached to a metal ring.
She unlocked the manacles around Cheyenne’s right wrist, performing the action with as much empathy and consideration as she’d give a locked cabinet full of controlled substances. The first manacle popped off the halfling’s wrist with a dull click, and a ribbon of cold, tingling energy flared up Cheyenne’s arm before fading.
What kind of cuffs are those?
Cheyenne watched the doctor step around the hospital bed to unlock the other manacle, and the minute that cold tingle faded, the halfling pushed away from the mattress. The act of sitting up made her head spin, but she fought it and kept her gaze on the doctor’s precise movements.
“Thank you.” She rubbed her sore wrists, chaffed in record time from her flailing, then she stopped herself and put her hands in her lap. “I’d tell you I appreciate it, but I’m guessing there aren’t many people who enjoy being chained up.”
The doctor grabbed the handle of the steel cart and wheeled the thing closer to the bed. She removed a metal lid that looked like a steam pan turned upside down and stuck it on the cart’s bottom shelf.
Cheyenne almost laughed. Well, I guess it’s not traditional torture implements.
On the cart was a plastic cafeteria tray, which held a rectangular plastic plate with square sections of various sizes: mashed potatoes, mashed peas, something that looked like pork that had been chewed up and spit back out, and a wobbling mass of radiation-green Jell-O. Cheyenne reached for the tall plastic cup of what she hoped was water. She wasn’t disappointed.
While she drained half the cup in two gulps, the doctor grabbed the tablet off the monitor and returned to its obviously important data.
“So.” Cheyenne swallowed, more grateful for the cooling relief of water in her parched throat than she expected. “You want me to keep calling you ‘Doc,’ or do you go by something else?”
Nothing.
“Fair enough. How about telling me why I’m here? Or, more specifically, why you had me chained to this bed?”
The woman stepped back and raised her glasses on the bridge of her nose—not by pushing up the nosepiece, but by using the edges of the frames to push them into place.
She’s taking all this pretty seriously.
“You know,” Cheyenne raised her eyebrows, “I’d settle for the time if you have it on that little tablet of yours. It shows the time, right?”
Without looking up from her device, the doctor pointed at the cart beside the bed. “Eat.”
The halfling released a dry huff. “Skipped the section on bedside manner in med school, huh?”
The reply Cheyenne got was a split-second of the doctor’s lips pursing before the woman turned and headed for the exit. It swung open, and the doctor disappeared into whatever lay beyond.
“Okay. Nice talk.” Cheyenne let herself rub her wrists a little, which weren’t too scraped but still stung. She reached for the plastic tray and winced. “What?”
That was when she noticed the paper-thin hospital gown covering her body instead of the baggy black pants with chains and the fishnet shirt she’d been wearing. “I better get those back.”
She had to lean in the opposite direction to tug the edge of the hospital gown—open at the back and tied together with thin strings below the base of her spine—out from under her right thigh. She lifted it to see a thick, square patch of white gauze stuck to her hip with medical tape. An experimental tap on the loose bandage made her grit her teeth. Right. I got shot. Or something.
Cheyenne peeled the tape away and lowered the top half of the gauze for a better look. Sure enough, the raw, red patch of skin was punctuated by twisted, puckered raised flesh the size and shape of a penny. She ran her fingers over the shiny new scar. It felt warm.
With a grunt, she ripped the gauze and the rest of the medical tape off in one swift jerk and tossed it onto the floor. She reached for the tray, brought the entire thing onto her lap, and picked up the plastic spork that came with it.
Yeah, I’m not touching that pseudo-meat slop.
The mashed potatoes weren’t bad if one enjoyed thick and sticky without any flavor, and the mashed peas tasted like freezer burn with a hint of green. She’d managed to slide a mouthful of almost-apple Jell-O down her throat before the door swung open. A man walked in this time, not in white scrubs like the orderly or in anything doctor-ish. He had graying hair and wore military fatigues, the bland colors crisply detailed, and black combat boots that thumped on the linoleum.
Cheyenne stab-scooped another wobbling sporkful of Jell-O and raised it to her mouth. I’ve seen that mustache before.
“Well, would you get a load of this!” The man clasped his hands behind his back, and his beady eyes surveyed the drow halfling from the tip of her black-dyed head to the points of her toes beneath the thin sheet. Cheyenne was aware the doctor hadn’t unlocked the cuffs around her ankles. “Now we know what you look like.”
The drow halfling stuck the next bite of Jell-O in her mouth and didn’t bother pretending to chew it before swallowing. “I’m always myself.”
“Oh, sure. That’s more than most people can say. I’m trying to figure out if that applies to the outside as much as the inside.” Mustache strolled to the foot of the bed and raised his eyebrows. His gaze fell on the raw, red flesh above the halfling’s exposed hip, which Cheyenne didn’t bother to hide under the hospital gown. He glanced at the discarded bandage on the floor.
“How’s the grub?”
Cheyenne dug the spork into the gelatinous green mountain and shoved the next bite into her mouth. “Sucks.”
“Yes, it does. You up for a little chat, halfling?”
The chains locking her ankles to the metal railing at the foot of the bed clinked when she rolled her foot to the side. “Well, I’ve got
a deep-tissue massage scheduled in half an hour, but I guess I can spare a few minutes.”
Mustache licked his lips, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll keep it short and sweet.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cheyenne scooped the last two bites of Jell-O into her mouth, then swallowed the jiggly mass and gave another grunt of pain when she leaned to return the plastic tray to the cart. Another two gulps killed the rest of the water, and once she’d set that down, she folded her hands in her lap and blinked at Mustache. “Where am I?”
“I don’t answer questions, halfling. I ask them.” The man rolled his shoulders, his hands still clasped behind his back. “You know, if I wasn’t standing here looking at you, I’d say you were nothing more than a fart in the wind.”
Cheyenne nodded at the tray on the cart. “I think you smell the meat slop.”
“We ran you through multiple recognition programs to locate a DNA match. Twice. Would it surprise you to hear nothing came up?”
“That’s a bummer.”
The man sniffed and dipped his head. “Who are you?”
They stared at each other for a moment. This guy must be pretty desperate if he’s laying this much on the table. Cheyenne offered him a little shrug. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Tempting.” Mustache lifted his chin, his eyebrows doing a weird little dance as he blinked. Seemed he couldn’t decide whether to frown or try another expression. “I guess I can’t expect you to remember much of anything from the last time we spoke. Well, I spoke at you. You flashed in and out of different skins and tried hard to be coherent. Let’s start with my name. To you and everyone else in this facility, my name is Sir. I’ll ask one more time before I bring Dr. Minkert back in with a sedative and a more outdated pair of dampening cuffs. Not so cutting-edge. A lot more painful. Who are you?”
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes. I wouldn’t put it past them to have some kind of advanced lie-detector test running in the background. Maybe whatever’s being picked up by those monitors.
