I glance at Trey’s handsome face. He can’t hide the fear in his violet eyes. “They don’t know I can’t swim, do they?”
He shakes his head no. He turns and runs to the front of his cell, pounding on it with his fist. I can tell he’s shouting, but there’s not even a whisper of it in my cell; I hear nothing above the roar of water. Wayra and Jax start beating their fists against the fronts of their translucent barriers. They can see what’s happening to me. They know what it means.
As the frigid water rises and swallows my legs, I try to find something buoyant enough to hold me above the water. There’s nothing that floats in this cell—not even me. The fabric of my clothing isn’t the right type to hold air in, so I can’t make a flotation device. Panting in shallow breaths, my heart is demanding more oxygen as adrenaline circulates through my system. I grasp my side with my hand, trying to control the pain as I attempt to breathe deeper. When the water is to my chin, I tilt my head up and look at the ceiling. Water still runs in unchecked, making choppy waves on the surface. Whimpers of fear escape from my lips; I remember what it feels like to almost drown. I’m not looking forward to repeating it. My palms reach out and flatten against the wall that connects my cell to Trey’s. I try to climb it, forcing my knees up against it, but my hands keep sliding down it.
I take a deep breath and hold it; the water closes around my mouth, and then my nose. With my eyes wide, I straighten my neck; my head submerges beneath the water. A mass of blond hair waves in my face. Trey’s blurry image presses near me, so close and yet a world away. I see him move away from the wall to his sink. He kicks it, smashing his booted foot on top of it until it breaks away from the wall. Water spouts up as he grasps the metal basin in his hands and rips it out of its housing. With a shovel-like piece of it in his hands, Trey runs at the wall between us, slamming the metal basin into it. Cracks form and spider along the surface. He winds back and strikes it again. The noise is a soft clang in the water. Liquid streams out from the cracks he makes, but its not enough to allow the level to go down so that I can breathe. I try to hold my breath as he winds back and hits it once more, but I choke in water. Reflexively, I cough, gasping, taking liquid into my lungs. It burns with an unnatural fire. In my confusion, I see Brigadets scrambling en masse outside our cells. They have their weapons drawn on Trey’s side, but on my side they’re rushing to the control panel. My lungs ache and my head feels like it will explode at any moment, but I can’t feel my extremities; my fingers are numb and cold.
I wish I could get away.
I slip out of my body and become a spectator to the events swirling around me. I stand behind the soldiers on the catwalk. The sweat on Trey’s brow slides over the curved lines of the tribal tattoo on his neck. Thick veins stand out on his strong arms as he continues to pound the barrier with relentless strokes. With one more swing, Trey shatters the dense wall that lies between him and my limp body. My figure spills into his cell in a tidal wave. Trey catches me in his arms, wiping the mass of blond hair back from my face. He pinches my nose and breathes into my mouth. Soldiers open both of our cells. The water rushes out of the opening and falls through the metal grated floor outside.
Trey lays me on the floor. My face is pale and my eyes are closed. He begins chest compressions on me, but a few soldiers grab him, hauling him back from my supine form. As Trey struggles against them, savagely fighting them off in an attempt to get back to me, he renders a few of them unconscious.
One soldier doesn’t join the fray; instead, he kneels down beside my unconscious body. With quick fingers, he pulls something from a shiny silver case. It squirms and slithers, wrapping itself around his hand like a live, albino snake. It’s not an animal; it’s a twisting, writhing snake-bot. The body is smooth and alabaster with pink lights within it that glow with an eerie fire. The Brigadet holds the gruesome sidewinder near my mouth. The snake-bot opens its wide mouth, clamping onto my face and ratcheting my mouth open. From inside the skin of the snake-bot, a smaller, slimy, internal snake-bot slides out into my mouth and down my esophagus. In the next moment, water is pumping out of the other end of the snake-bot like a primed hose.
Standing outside of my body, I’m a horrified observer of the scene. I know it’s me, but it doesn’t feel like it’s happening to me. I feel nothing. I feel numb. Next to me, a feminine voice says, “How do you like my gift?”
I turn my head; the lovely, fragile image of the Bee stares back at me. I recognize her as the priestess who blasted me out of the space station earlier today. Attired in the same waspish dress as before, she’s now made of light and air—a perfectly formed nightmare.
“How did you find me?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer my question but says, “I was told you can’t swim.” She watches as the medic inside the cell works to revive me. That battle doesn’t seem to be going well. Nothing he does is bringing me back to consciousness.
“You did this,” I accuse her. “You filled my cell with water.”
She gives me a maleficent smile.
The soldier extracts the snake-bot from my esophagus, looking grim. My lips and my skin have a bluish tint that bodes ill for me. When Trey notices the medic sit back on his heels and shake his head, he loses his mind. He becomes a raging bull, tackling the soldier next to him. Trey wrestles the tricked-out freston from the startled hand of the soldier. Turning the weapon on my limp form upon the floor, Trey fires a yellow lightning electro-pulse straight at my heart. The electricity flows through me, and then through the water as well, shocking everyone in the room. My spirit self is ripped from the air and stuffed back into my body with the force of a cyclone.
Wide-eyed, I gasp as my back arches in agony and I writhe in pain. My heavy, granitelike lungs don’t feel as if they can process air. Above me, the Bee comes into focus over the shoulder of the soldier who’s patting my cheek.
With a look of disdain, the Bee says, “You’ll live.” She sighs in frustration before her sapphire-blue eyes narrow in contempt. “If Kyon brings you back here, I will kill you,” she promises. “Run, little Kricket. Run far away.”
“Who are you?” I whisper through cracked lips, but I never hear her reply. She evaporates into the ceiling and is gone. The chaos of Trey’s cell becomes loud and disorienting. Soldiers who have roused from being shocked are trying to subdue Trey, who’s pointing his freston at the head of one of the soldiers he’s taken hostage. The soldier next to me has recovered somewhat from his shock as well. He pulls the trigger on a gunlike syringe he has inserted into my arm. As the drug he gave me careens through my arteries, I slip into darkness.
CHAPTER 5
THE DISHERY
I suck in my bottom lip as I awake to aching muscles and a stiff neck. A dull pain in my upper arm makes me lift my chin off my chest. A smirking soldier draws a gunlike syringe away from my skin. Trying to move, I find my hands are restrained above my head. I breathe faster through dry, cracked lips, and there’s a saliva trail running over one side of my cheek. I squint, disoriented, my eyes unfocused; I’m aware enough to realize that there’s a metal post against my back.