--XXXI--

"Monday

7:34 AM

Sent via SecureWeb

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN

Reply Forward Delete"

MONDAY

7:35 AM

Thornton Building

Almost obvious no-brainer: Delete.

But I refrained from tapping the delete button. Caleb might use this. I now had to decide whether to contact Wyatt first, to ask if Belinda knew anything about whatever was going on in the mines, or Kaylee.

Calling Caleb was out of the question. If he was wherever the assault was taking place, contacting him would further spur the assailant. One thing you learned working for the US: you gave information only to those on your side, only to those that deserved it.

I politely held a hand up to indicate to Ember that I needed a minute.

"Kayles," I said, telepathically.

"Yes?" she said.

"Where are you?" I said.

"Pacifico." Her mood changed from a forest green to an amber-red shade of alarm. "Chris. What's going on?"

"How many people did you say you spotted?" I said. "Back at the hotel?"

"One tripped the stringweed," she replied. "Four people. Medium height, average builds. One taller. One had wings."

"Talon?" I said.

"Possibly," she said. "Where are you?"

Weren't most Talon from V8?

Some were from V6, if I remembered correctly the things that Tiana Ambervi used to tell me about all the time. I didn't have much cause to really take notes, and I was no expert on hybrids of that sort- only an expert on survival in the Lowdown, where 99% of the enemy are humans that are so miserable, all they can ever do is force their own misery on other humans.

Actually, were they even human?

I pulled out my phone. I started scanning faces of other killers, holographs of suspects, most of whom were from the Lowdown and thus were assigned to me, facial composites wherever photographs were not available.

Just looking at those ugly faces made me want to vomit.

You know how you feel when you see a cockroach? Well, imagine that feeling multiplied by ten, by a hundred, by a thousand.

That was how I felt whenever I saw those people.

"Thornton Building, V4. Not far from you," I said. I telepathically spoke only half of my next sentence, before the most vehement interruption. "We need to get to the mi-"

A resounding blast. A quick flash of light that penetrated even this tiny shack of a room. Something, not far away, had seemingly detonated. Ember shielded his ears from the consequent static while I turned to exit.

"I know where to go," said Kaylee.

I was glad I left Caleb's jacket at home. Who knew what we were about to walk into? I was halfway down the hall when Ember's voice halted me.

"I have somethin' for ya!"

What, another deadly, addictive drug that was half of all of his profits? One that I couldn't even afford?

I didn't even bother to roll my eyes. Thoughts ran through my mind- thoughts I'd had before, from past interactions with him.

No thanks.

I wondered what he was selling me this time; I didn't stop walking.

To be fair, at least he's making death and misery a little bit more on the painless side, at least for some people, I remember thinking.

I felt sick.

I heard crates being knocked over, the rattling of a set of keys, and then hooves racing toward me from behind just as I reached the exit.

"We got something for the Christopher Midnight," Ember said, grabbing my arm. "From allzus nobodies here in V-fouwh. We wanted to thank ya. Y'know, f'reverything."

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Ember unlocked a green polyvinyl chloride door a foot away from where we stood. He gestured for me to open the door.

"You'll love 'em, I sweah." He smiled. "Promise ya."

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. There were two beings inside the small room- both of which had metallic brown collars on them which read, "FOR MIDNIGHT." A large, white Samoyed... and Happy the raccoon.

I looked at him with a look of disgust on my face. Disgust and disbelief.

"You imprisoned animals for me?" I said, unable to believe he could be so dumb.

"We stole 'em," said Ember, "from the labs."

"What 'labs,'" I replied flatly, and with no intonation- before realizing the answer.

Okay why on earth do I ask THE STUPIDEST questions

I wanted to cover my ears; I wanted to take the question back; I was shaking my head and I'm pretty sure there was a rainbow and a marshmallow and a blue sky-

"Same labs whe' they expeeyimented ahn us," said Ember. "I heard you been thyeah."

--

Nightingale

Day #4

Subprocedure Eleven

Like they hadn't injected enough stuff into us already.

They had us all in a circle facing away from each other. Kaylee spoke to me, telepathically.

"You're alive," she said.

I was concentrating too much on the burning glass tiles that shifted in front of me. They moved laterally. I remember thinking I just might survive- there was a method to their movement, a system; I was excellent at pattern recognition.

"Danny!" she screamed inside my head.

I responded back through the same telepathic connection, just through thoughts. I didn't know I was a telepath at the time, I didn't get it. It didn't matter to me.

"Kayles," I said. "The cracked tiles."

"What?" she said.

"The cracked tiles." I shifted my eyes, from my bare feet on the podium I was on- to the men and women who observed us from their glowing cinereous den, far away, to the left side of the behemothic expanse. "They move only if something around them gives off smoke."

The voice on the intercom flickered with the lights; flickered with the flames that lit half the space- the space below us.

"You will survive this test." It was a woman's voice that time. It still sounded like the voice of evil. Just like the other one. "Simply make your way to any of the marked-off green platforms attached to the far walls."

"All of these squares are on fire, Danny! And none of them even have any cracks in them!" Kaylee's telepathic voice vociferated in my head. "How... are we going to survive this?"

She was crying and I felt it in my mind, without even seeing her.

I responded with thoughts, unaware I was now communicating the same way she reached me- through telepathy.

"Kayles." My telepathic voice was mostly similar to my physical one: always silvery and mellow and soft, no matter what I did, no matter what song I sang. Only it was a touch lighter than it already was. It worked in our favor here. "Calm down, think, breathe, and look," I said to her, smoothly, and as soothingly as I could. I paid attention to the path I was going to take to the nearest platform. "Look, and I mean: really look. Closely."

In my mind I could feel her slowly calming, slowly coming to the understanding.

"We are going to burn," she said.

"We have burned before. That's why we're still here."

"What did they inject into us?"

"Can't think about that now, Kayles."

The gong sounded.

I somersaulted forward onto a tile and instantly wished that I hadn't- as the podiums all crumbled to dust that seemed to be blown away, by some wind that no one there could feel. It wasn't fire, at least not real fire; no fire sparked and sizzled and seared and hurt like this fire did.

My mind kicked itself into overdrive; the pain was blinding- physically and mentally. The latter was a problem because I needed to think clearly.

I heard other kids wail and scream and cry as the sound of bodies hit the poison-covered concrete far below us. I didn't look down.

Forward, or die.

A strange combination of yell, growl, and animal howl tore out of my throat and resonated in the seemingly empty space above tile-level. I was in pain, so much pain, a murderous amount of exceedingly unimaginable agony and sickness- like my Achilles' tendons were snapping themselves repeatedly on a frying pan- but I needed a few more seconds to identify the squares that had those insanely subtle markings- cracks- on them.

What an indicator. What a way to help us, help us stay alive. I didn't know what this was. I just wanted out.

Did I tell you there was no "out" and it wasn't over for three months?

"Move slowly," I said to Kaylee, through our minds. It was a tug-of-war between extreme pain, or death. "It's temporary, Kayles. The pain will eventually stop. Think about your next move-"

"I can't!" The sounds in our heads; her telepathic voice almost paralyzed me completely. Someone's pain could travel, you experienced it, when you communicated with telepaths this way.

"You can or you will die and I will lose you!"

I spotted my next glass tile as the beastlike, animal instinct to just survive, the instinct probably ingrained into my very being by generations and generations and more generations of people who liked to cause war, took over entirely.

It was a torture chamber, just one of many in the awful, awful thing they called Experiment Nightingale. That day it looked like a chess board: children made pawns in a fire of agony and shards and dust and blood; children made pawns under the hands of adult humans- the ones that were supposed to protect them.

Like I hadn't already been in that setup.

The corners of my field of vision were changing colors, from some deep shade of violet, and then a painfully bright white, and then back again and back again.

Left.

Forward.

Left.

Left-

Somewhere in all the pain, my two existing brain cells called out to me. I breathed as deeply as I possibly could- which was not deep at all because of the pain- and took one look around me, at the faint, faint little lines of the cracks in these dark glass squares.

"Kaylee!" I screamed her name, out loud, so that others that were still alive might hear me. "Left, left..." I lurched, sideways, gasping for breath and heaving my own body onto the next square. The glass didn't shatter, didn't crumble and burn to dust and then ashes and fall- but that had nothing to do with my weight. I knew, then. "Left, then forward! Find the ones with cracks in them- if one's in front of you, take it, and the next three correct tiles are always the ones on the left!"

Somehow in all this chaos, something caught my eye, just for a fraction of a second. Far at the den of the adult torturers- a man, it seemed like, I couldn't really tell for sure because they all wore masks or helmets- with long straight hair, almost scarlet in color... or maybe it just looked that way to me at the time. I wouldn't know.

Did I imagine it, or did he say my name? Call out to me?

I guessed I did just imagine it, because before I even looked away he had already walked out their little terrace, and back into... wherever. Whatever was behind the far walls. Laboratories, I assumed? I wasn't sure I'd ever find out.

Halfway between these thoughts, and clouds, and affliction, I performed my one last maneuver of that day- a front layout full in, pike out- and onto the marked-off green platform; the exact same one that I had set my sights on while still on that no-longer-present podium. I landed a perfect stick with both my feet together, not realizing they both were already broken.

--

Don't wait for my answer

Don't call back

Got none for you

More silver, no bullets

The wolf cries

When I touch you

Give it up when it all comes to an end

Because I'm not fighting for you

--