Page 15

They’re back.

For a moment, panic tries to surface. I can feel the shape of it, dark and hot, waiting just under my ribs.

Then another wave of warmth washes through me, soft and thick. I rest my palms flat on my own chest, feel how my heart pounds, fast and eager. I slide my hands down, the chains scraping the concrete, the sound harsh and lovely. I stop right above my ribs, fingers splayed.

“I’m flying,” I tell my hands. “Look at us. We’re flying.”

I’m not. I know I’m not. This isn’t that.

This is better.

The last clear thing before everything starts to melt: the elevator doors in the penthouse closing. Dr. Morales close behind me, too close, her perfume turning my stomach, that fake warm voice in my ear.

“Just a blood draw, Lana. You understand.”

I remember in my head, my own voice. “I swear I’ll kill you. You hear me? You are going to die for this.”

I shrieked it, over and over, while my throat burned. Then a needle slid under my skin.

I blink back into the present.

The puncture mark still sits in the crook of my arm, a tiny red dot surrounded by faint bruising. I squint at it, then blow on it, then kiss it, lips brushing the inside of my elbow.

“Traitor,” I murmur to my own vein. “Letting things in without permission.”

I try to remember the moment the drug took hold. Hard to find a clear line. One second my thoughts ran hot and jagged, full of murder, full of claws. The next, they blurred.

That must have been when the floor shifted under me. Or my body shifted, slumping against her assistant. Or both.

I remember the elevator doors opening again. Different light. Colder.

I remember concrete under my bare feet when they moved me. The first step out of the elevator. Then another. Then another. Corridor after corridor, pale and windowless.

“Where are you taking me?” I remember asking, my words slurring.

“No need to panic,” someone said.

“You’re dead,” I continued. “Dead woman walking.”

Her assistant had been there. The big one, with sausage fingers and a lab coat stretched too tight across his stomach. He’d held my elbow, pressure bruising my skin in a way I barely registered.

“You’re hurting me,” I tried to complain.

He didn’t answer. I laughed then, too. Somewhere in those corridors. The sound had bounced in the same way it does in here, three echoes, all of us drunk and silly.

The next slice of memory: metal door, heavy. The assistant unlocked it and swung it inward. A short, square room waited on the other side, all concrete, and shadows. He guided me in, half dragging, half supporting.

“Your new space,” he said.

“Not mine,” I’d spat, or tried to. “Nothing here belongs to me. All yours. You can rot in it.”

My limbs moved slower, though. Lips too, tongue sluggish.

Constraints went around my wrists first. Cold, hard, unforgiving. He buckled leather straps tight, fixed chains to the rings. He had to hold me still to get the ankle cuffs on, and I tried to kick him in the face.

I missed.

“I’m going to rip your throat out,” I remember telling him. “You and your ice queen.”