CHAPTER 30 - WELCOME TO HELL

There’s something hard pressing against my face. I try to reach out a hand and find out what it is, but something is stopping that too. I slide it up instead, feeling for the end of whatever it is. There is no end, none that I can reach at least. I open my eyes slowly and blink a few times. The light is harsh and bright. It reminds me of hospital lighting, so pure and functional. I move my head back a little and realize my mistake. There’s no end to the thing pressing against my face because I’m lying on the floor. A cold, hard cement floor. I raise my head up and look around. There’s a small bed, but no other furniture. The walls aren’t walls at all, they are bars. Big, heavy bars that look like they could have been taken from a dungeon in some historic fortress.

I sit up fully and look around beyond my own cage. There are cages upon cages here, all in neat little rows, and all exactly the same. Even the occupants look alike, everyone is dressed in the same brown shirt and loose pants, the only difference is how dirty they are.

“Welcome to hell,” a girl in the cage opposite mine greets. “Make yourself comfortable, you’re never getting out.” I look at her dirty hair and rough hands torn by the floor.

“This is the basement, isn’t it?” I ask.

“You’ve been upstairs?” Her voice is shocked as if the mere possibility of an ‘upstairs’ is as strange to her as we are to normal people.

“I heard people are released when they regain control,” I change the subject.

“You try staying in control when they poke and prod you,” she spits. “Like I said, you’re not getting out. No one ever does.”

“That’s not true,” I whisper mostly to myself.

“And you would know how?”

“I know someone who used be down here.”

“You know Boy?”

“Brody, yes.”

“That isn’t going to happen to you,” she assures me. “He was pulled out by a teacher.”

“Professor Holt, yes, I know.”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to get help from someone who’s no longer here, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean ‘no longer here’? I just saw him.”

“He was fired for hiding an Unassigned,” she informs me.

“How do you know?”

“You think just because we’re down here we don’t hear things? The doctors talk. They’re quite happy actually, no more Professor to interfere, to judge their work.”

“Professor Holt is gone,” I whisper. What then? That can’t have been part of his plan. That is, of course, if he actually did have a plan. Did he expect they would let him stay? They were accusing him of putting basically the entire school in danger; they thought I was out of control. I’m alone; again. On my own, and trapped. Well, sort of trapped, I suppose I could just divide my atoms again and fly out of here. If, of course, I can manage that again without killing myself. Right now I don’t think I could scatter a drop of blood.

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I reach out my hand and put it between the bars. No force field, at least none that stops physical movement.

“It’s no use; unless you can escape without the use of your ability you’re not escaping. Each force field is personalized to keep the occupant in, you have no way out.” Personalized force fields. Sounds like a dumber idea than most, what’s to stop me from helping someone else escape?

“How do they do that? How do they know how to personalize it?”

“Well, if you’re from the school your teachers will have explained your ability to them, otherwise they just map it out for themselves whenever you use it.” ‘Don’t do anything’ Professor Holt told me.

“You said my teacher was fired, they can’t get the information from him.”

“There are other teachers.” Of course, they know from the test they gave me before assigning me to Professor Holt. But the most any of them have seen me do is float a few pearls, only in the thousands, and summon cokes from across the island. Professor Holt and Brody were the only ones who knew how far beyond that I was.

“They don’t know,” I assure to myself.

“Then they will find out,” she promises me. Not if I don’t do anything. I just have to stay strong until I can find a weak point around here. I can get out, and I can make it on my own.

A door opens at the end of the rows. I turn to see the newcomer. In this light, their suits stand out more, and I notice the bluish quality of them. The silver emblem shines even brighter under the fluorescent lights.

“Catchers,” she explains.

“Did you find him?” A man in a lab coat comes from the other end to meet him. There are multiple doors down there, all marked with numbers, and with doctors coming in and out.

“Professor Summers says we are not to peruse him until he has missed an appointment again.”

“And you just let the little old lady tell you what to do? Did you not think that four days from now it might be too late? Haven’t you considered how much damage he might be able to do in the time? Last time he missed three consecutive treatments, he’s only had one since then, and you let some old hag convince you he was stable enough to go to school?” They can only be talking about Brody, can’t they? Though, the numbers don’t quite add up, I only hid him on two Wednesdays. The lab coat comes over, stopping right outside my cage.

“Come here.” He indicates for the man to join him where he stands. “See this? This is a job well done. This is a Langdale. A Langdale. She was caught in a classroom, in one try. Do you know what that means? You can’t find a single, friendless boy and bring him to me, you can’t get him even with his protector gone, but your colleagues managed to catch one of the most powerful beings in one day, and with only five men. They not only did their job like they’re supposed to, they prevented the fall of this entire establishment. You have heard about the Langdales, haven’t you? About their power? Their plot to shut us all down? They want to cleanse the world of the impure, or are you too dumb to understand that? It means they want to kill us all. Your colleagues managed to stop someone powerful enough to destroy the entire island, and you can’t find and bring me a single boy.”

“He’s in the teapot” I think to myself. “He’s in the closet. He’s in the forest.”

“Don’t do anything,” I recall. “Don’t do anything.” I stare at their shoes. Their shiny, black shoes with no marks from the floors, no scratches. I stare until one pair leaves and goes back to his hunt for Brody. The other crouches down next to me.

“You will not get the upper hand here. You are in my domain now, and you will not hurt anyone,” he warns. He studies me for a while, his eyes running over every inch of me, mapping me out. It’s not until someone from the torture chamber end of the room calls for him that he gets up. I look over to my neighbor, but her back is turned and she is showing no sign of even acknowledging that I’m here.

I look to the bed, but you can practically see the lice running over the brown blanket, so I lie down on the floor instead and close my eyes. “Don’t do anything,” I remind myself. “You can get out of here,” I assure myself. “You are Lizzy Langdale, you can get through this.” But what exactly does being a Langdale mean?