Even though the room was dark, I could still see the scary fixtures on the walls. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend it was just a friend’s basement, overstuffed with cheap decorations for Halloween. I’ll wake up tomorrow, go home, and think of this sometimes, cry about it, maybe, but mostly, believe it was a terrible nightmare; the kind that, when you wake up, you suddenly appreciate everything in your life—even the bad things.

But the lonely skeletons of terrors past smiled down at me with gaping jaws, their hollow eyes sardonic, greeting me to the gateway of their eternal loneliness—infecting my hopes with truth…truth that this is no basement. This is it for me. This is my life now until I join them. I’ll lay here, alone, until Jason comes back to finish his list—then, he’ll hand me over to the Council and they will…they will…

My brow folded tight in the middle, liquid pooling along the outer corners of my eyes.

David must be so worried—then again, he probably thinks Jason saved me. He’ll never know what happened; he can only imagine what Jason’s done to me, and I know his mind, for all the masochistic things he’s done in his own life, will imagine much worse than has already happened.

A sudden shock of electric panic rushed through my limbs, forcing my heart into my throat as footsteps scuffed down the steep, echoing staircase.

I wish I could be small, invisible, so he’d come in and not be able to find me. What tool will he be carrying, what thoughts does he have in his mind right now for what he knows he’s about to do—how he knows I’ll cry when he does?

“Ah, you’re awake.” Jason peered over me and sniffed thoughtfully. “Well, then we can begin.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

He walked across the room with a flaming torch in hand and spread light to another one on the wall. “I need to test your instinct for survival.”

“What does that mean?”

Light warmed my face when he set the torch down on a pillar near the table of tools. “It means I need to see if you can escape—when pushed to the limits.”

“Escape?”

He cupped the seat of the chair and pushed, rolling it up to sit. “Yes. When strong, the four guards I have standing at the entrance should be like ten-pins to you, but, given your current state of deterioration, I doubt you’ll have much fight left in you, but I need to test it anyway.”

“Why? You’re going to kill me, what does it matter?”

“Well, we still have a while to go before we kill you. The scientists need to know what methods of restraint to use. We can’t test that in the lab, or you might destroy expensive equipment. So—we do it here.”

My head twitched, a tight trembling resonating from my neck. “How’re you gonna do that?”

He stood in front of me and pushed his black sleeves up over his elbows. “Same as I would any other animal.”

Animal? My fingers flexed when he reached for my arm. “What are you doing?”

“Shh.” He rolled the fastening crank on the cuff, and one came loose; my hand flew to my lip, smearing the itchy blood away at last with the soothing, ice-cold of my fingertips, then scratched my head, my neck, my knees—like a flea-infested animal.

Jason stared at me with one brow arched, his fingers hovering over the other cuff. “Feel better then, do we?”

I nodded and watched him wind the crank. “Why are you doing that?” The cuff came loose; I rolled my scabbing wrist between my fingers.

“Because I’m going to hit you, and you’ll need your hands to block, or fight back.”

“Hit m—Ah!” The dull clap of flesh on bone thundered through my head as I flew back in the chair, pain turning to tears in my eyes. I bawled, wiping a shaking hand across my upper lip. My nose felt blocked, like I had a cold.

“Break free!” he growled.

I wriggled my toes. “How?”

“Break free!”

“I can’t.” I traced the walls with my gaze until I looked into his. “My feet are tied. How can I possibly—” Darkness consumed the room, forcing me into an imaginary black cave as my eyes shut tight with the crack of a deep blow across my brow. Crunching vibrations, like biting sand, resonated out through the back of my head—ringing in my ears.

My mouth opened, but only saliva came out, gathering in the corners of my mouth, mixing with blood as it dribbled down my chin; I pressed both hands to my head, howling silently with raging agony.

“Come on, Ara,” he said, “I’m giving you a fair chance here. Get up. Fight.”

The gaping cut on my lip flapped when I shook my head. Cringing, I touched my fingertips against it, drawing them away when I felt the wide gash.

“Open your eyes,” he ordered. “Now! Or I will hit you again.”

Fighting against the pulsing tightness in my temples, I forced my eyes open; everything was blurry, and though I could only hear a rushing of white noise, like wind through a seashell, I knew I was crying aloud—really loud.

“Stop whining.” Jason’s voice reverberated through my ears. “Fight!”

“No.” My eyes slammed shut, my head whipping away from his sudden movement—but he didn’t strike.

Cautiously, I inched one eye open. Where did he go?

Cold hands fumbled around my ankles before Jason stood and grabbed my wrist, shouting “Get up” as he swung me to the wall beside the stairs.

My weak legs failed and I stumbled, catching the wall, but the oozy slime attacked my grip and sent me sliding down, jolting my head back as my nose grated a brick. Blood burst out over my chin and slithered behind my teeth as I hit the floor.

“Get up. Escape.” Jason stood over me. “Show my guards how strong you are.”

Holding my forearm to the smarmy wall, I managed to clamber to my knees, pressing two fingers over my severed lip, folding the flesh back into place.

Please, Jason. They’ll hurt me if I go out there.

“I’ll hurt you if you don’t.” He ripped my wrist away from the wall, forcing my shoulders into a spin, my back hitting the ground, then, dragged me behind him, my lungs tight with the position of my arm above me, my breath restricted. Jagged pieces of rock under loose dirt ground into my hips and spine until Jason ditched my arm forcibly, sending me face first to the dirt floor. I cried out, pressing up on my hands, rolling the soil from my throat with my tongue, then coughing it out. My mouth dried so bad I couldn’t even make enough saliva to spit, and the gash on my lip could only bleed away the dirt jammed deep within the cavity.