Page 20 of Heir of Ashes

Logan paused, processing my words. “So, let’s say that my friend, under the circumstances, is considered more dangerous than you. Hypothetically speaking, if he’s also something special, what would they do to him?”

Any answer I gave would stem from my own experience. I eyed Logan for a moment. I didn’t think he was fishing for information about my treatment back at the PSS, but any response I gave would be exactly that.

“If he’s as dangerous as you think he is, then he’s in deep trouble.” My answer didn’t satisfy him in the least, but he let the topic drop, at least for now.

Chapter 8

We rented a room at the hotel, but we both knew we couldn’t linger. I made the most of it and headed to the bathroom first. The thought of one drop of warm water on my blisters sent goosebumps rippling across my body, so I cleaned myself with a warm sponge. Eyeing my bloodstained, rumpled clothes, I wished I had gone to the boutique first and bought myself some new ones. Sighing, I put them back on and unlocked the door.

When I emerged from the bathroom, my eyes zeroed in on a small CVS plastic bag dangling from Logan’s index finger.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, motioning for me to sit beside him on the bed.

I looked at the plastic bag warily. I was always suspicious when drugs and strangers were involved, but I relented after searching the bag and finding no needles. He examined the blisters and charred skin, then began expertly cleaning my hand as if he’d done it many times before.

“How fast do you heal?” he asked.

“Faster than normal.”

It seemed to be the right answer because he began peeling away the burnt skin with tweezers I hadn’t seen in the bag, revealing angry, dark pink skin underneath. I shifted every time a small piece came off but didn’t complain. Then Logan applied an ointment that cooled the burning skin and relieved the ache. After it dried, he used another kind of ointment, this one bright yellow. Once he was done, he wrapped my hand with gauze, bent sideways, and pulled something from under the bed … and dropped my duffel bag in front of me.

“Oh,” was all I could say. I opened it and saw that he had tucked my purse inside. Beneath the purse, a baby-blue color caught my attention. My Prada jacket!

“Oh, thank you,” I said earnestly. I extracted clean clothes from inside the duffel—jeans, underwear, a gray shirt—and hurried back to the bathroom to change.

***

The sun was setting when we left the town, both of us clean and full. I admired the sunset in the desert. It was so different from the sunset in the city, where it only served to emphasize the passing of time, the demarcation between night and day. Here in the desert, it was the subject of poetry, the way the sky exploded with colors atop an endless sea of brownish-yellow. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

“Tell me what kind of things they’re doing to my friend,” Logan said after we had been driving for a while in comfortable silence.

I thought about his question for a minute, debating an answer that wouldn’t be too revealing, but kept hitting the same blank wall. “It really depends on his circumstances,” I said lamely.

His eyes narrowed at the road, and his lips compressed. He was genuinely concerned, and I sighed, for the first time feeling compelled to answer.

“There was this time, during my earliest days in the PSS, when they wanted to know my limits,” I began. “It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were labeled as experiment days. Dr. Maxwell waited for me in Building C with another scientist, as he did every first Tuesday of the month. The scientist, usually one newly employed in one of the PSS bases around the world, would visit for a lecture, a brief preview of the subject they’d be experimenting on, and later, if they were lucky, would witness something extraordinary. Except this time, instead of being in a lab, they were waiting by the pool.”

I remembered being roused earlier than usual, then escorted by a guard to the back entrance of the building, wherewe could access the swimming pool without needing to navigate through the administrative cubicle maze inside. Dr. Maxwell stood by the door, arguing vehemently with Dr. Dean, Chief Director of the PSS, about something being too risky. The new scientist just stood by with pursed lips and listened. I could tell just by watching that whatever was about to happen, I would suffer for it.

“You’ll do as I say, and I say the weights are to be used,” Dr. Dean had said.

“Sir, if it doesn’t work, the result might be fatal,” Dr. Maxwell had argued.

In the end, Dr. Dean got his way, just like every other time. They tied some specially-made heavy dumbbell weights to my ankles. They were so heavy that I had to be dragged to the pool.

“I protested,” I murmured. “I begged them not to do it, but they wouldn’t listen. They said fear and the need for survival would trigger my other nature, and they wanted to know if I could breathe underwater or, at the very least, get free of the weights.”

I remembered being pushed into the pool and sinking to the bottom, about fifteen feet down. “I tried to remove the weights, but thick metal bands firmly secured them around each ankle. I broke my nails; I panicked and wasted precious oxygen twice as fast from the exertion. I remembered when my vision blurred, dimmed, and then went black.”

We were idling at the shoulder of the road. The only sounds were our slow breaths and the running engine. I’d been so engrossed in my past, I hadn’t noticed that we weren’t moving.

Logan was staring at me, his expression appalled. “What happened then?”

“I drowned,” I said flatly. “When they realized I couldn’t breathe underwater, the guard dove in to get me, but the weights were too heavy. It took him a while to remove them, and by then my lungs were full of water. They did some CPR and Dr. Maxwell wouldn’t give up until I was breathing again. Then I spent a couple of hours in the infirmary.”

Logan’s eyes darkened, now the gray of heavy clouds. His anger warmed me, and I had to remind myself his reaction stemmed from the knowledge that his friend could be suffering something similar at the hands of the Scientists.

“Is that what they do when one doesn’t behave?”

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