According to his scouts, the mysterious giant creature had finally left the island—he’d moved north, talking to everyone he could, and when he’d reached the North Shore he’d just . . . walked into the sound, still heading north.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kira woke to the sound of dripping water. She tried to move, only to feel handcuffs on her hands and feet. The small chains rattled as she scraped her limbs across the floor, struggling to sit upright. Her face and body were wet, pressed onto something soft and damp, like a layer of slimy growth. The scent of mold filled her nose. She opened her eyes, but it was too dark to see.
She coughed, hacking up water, and tried to right herself. Her hands were trapped behind her back, and when she rolled faceup to get a real breath, her fingers squished deep into the soft something covering the floor. She coughed again, staring around wide-eyed yet blind. Dark shapes emerged as her eyes began to adjust: a wall, a window, a dim blue star. She looked away from it, trying to penetrate the inky black corners of her prison.
Something moved, slow and heavy.
“Who’s there?” Kira’s voice was barely a whisper, the words rasping from her throat with another cough and a spurt of filthy water. She retched and backed away, only to realize that she didn’t know where the sound was coming from; she might be backing blindly toward it. “Who’s there?”
Another movement, closer now. A dark black shadow moving in the darkness.
Kira tucked her legs up close to her chest and scooted her bound hands down past her hips and around to the front of her body. Her feet were cuffed too tightly to properly stand, so she crawled on her hands and knees to the wall with the window. Something was coming after her, moving much more quickly than she could. She stood up and found the window glassless and open. She braced herself against the sill, ready to vault out, but a pair of thick hands grabbed her from behind, one on her stomach and one on her mouth, clamping down over her scream, dragging her back to the floor. She kicked and thrashed, and felt hot breath on her ear.
“Stay down and be quiet. They’ll hear you.”
Kira kept kicking, fighting as hard as she could to get away. The man holding her was strong, and his arms were like iron bands.
“I’m on your side,” the man hissed. “Just promise me you’re not going to scream.”
Kira couldn’t escape, so she tried to hold still despite her pounding heart and the adrenaline surging through her like fire. She clenched her hands into tight fists, forcing herself to concentrate. Her mouth was covered, but she took a deep breath through her nose.
FEAR
The room was saturated with it. The man was a Partial, and he was just as scared as she was. She tried to slow her breathing, and finally nodded her assent.
The man let her go. She rolled away instantly, but only a few feet, and stayed out of view from the window. With her eyes better adjusted to the dark she could see him now, a standard Partial infantry model. His uniform hung in tatters, and his face, while difficult to see clearly, was covered in grime.
“You’re human,” he said.
She didn’t bother to correct him. “You’re not in handcuffs.”
“They don’t care about the cuffs,” he said dismissively, holding up a small metal key. “They just use them to transport us.”
“They don’t care if we escape?”
“Where you gonna go?” he asked. He scooted toward her, and after a moment she held out her wrists for him to unlock. “You’ll understand when you look outside. But be careful—if they see you awake, they’ll come back.”
He unlocked her, and she rubbed her wrists while he opened the cuffs on her ankles. “They want us unconscious?” she asked.
“They don’t care either way,” he said again. “But you’re new—if you’re awake, they’ll come for you. We may as well put that off as long as we can, right?”
