Page 19 of The Omega Trials: Part Three

The omegas aren’t here. It’s just the trial alphas and the Cyan and Azurite Elders standing at the front of the theater. We naturally file into each row by pack, but no one sits, too on edge while we wait to learn more. Perturbed glances are passed around when servants come in, each rolling two IV poles withthem. Clear bags of liquid hang from the hooks and cords and tubes dangling off them.

“Tell me this isn’t going to be some mad science experiment . . . ,” Ecker mutters under his breath. My stomach churns because that’s exactly what it looks like.

“Alphas, please be seated,” the Azurite commands, outstretching his arm as if greeting us in church, not their next torture session. “Physical strength can come and go throughout one’s life until it finally evades you with great age. Even among nobles, it is never a guarantee. Which makes one’s mind more important than any muscle.”

A servant quietly asks me to push up my sleeve while the Cyan Elder continues, “Superior mental fortitude is what differentiates a merely strong man from a great man. This trial will not break your bones nor risk your life, but it will still be your greatest challenge yet. Three pharmaceuticals will be administered: a paralytic, a hallucinogen, and a truth serum.”

The servant wraps a tight rubber band around my upper arm. His fingers are cold under the latex gloves as he gently prods my elbow for a vein. It feels idiotic to allow this mystery cocktail to be shot into me. Who knows if it’s even what they say it is?

I look at Titus and Ecker and they seem just as apprehensive as I am. Ecker is the first of us to have his needle inserted. He lifts his brows with a look that sayswell, here goes nothing.I take a deep breath as the needle punctures my skin.

Here goes nothing indeed.

“Throughout the next hour, you will relive in vibrant detail the worst moment of your life,” the Azurite says while our IVs are finished being set up and the rubber band is untied from our arms. “It will be painful, of course, but the true test of your fortitude won’t come until later, when a few days from now, you will be asked to put yourself through it all over again.”

“It may sound like an easy task now, but do not doubt that when the time comes, sitting back down in this chair will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” As usual, the Cyan can’t keep the sadistic glee from his voice. It’s subtle, but it’s there. His perverse obsession with making others suffer isn’t something he can hide behind a mask. “Under your seat, you will find a headset.”

Along with everyone else, I reach under the large chair and pull out a pair of what looks like noise-canceling headphones.

“Put them on.” His mouth flickers with an evil smile. “And let the Trial begin.”

I swallow deeply before sliding the headphones on. As I do, the servant opens the clamp on my IV and the drugs begin flowing.1

The first thing I hear is a distant and faint androgynous voice. I can’t make out their words, but they call my name over and over followed by instructions I can’t decipher. I can’t keep my eyes open, and darkness consumes my vision.

The voice gets closer and closer, the whispering scratchy and feathery. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge and chills run down my arms.

My arms. I can’t move them. I can’t move anything. Are my lungs still inflating? Is my heart still beating?

The disembodied voice continues to call to me, theirs’s hissed like a snake, a monster. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach like right before you reach the top of a roller coaster. There’s a loud whooshing noise like a powerful gust of wind, and then the voice is right behind me, so close I can feel their icy breath on my ear when they whisper with chilling clarity, “Save them.”

Suddenly, I’m falling. The roller coaster has tipped over the edge and I’m rocketing down, down, down. I fall through blackness and stars and galaxies. I fall and fall until I’m sure myvoice must be hoarse from screaming, but there’s no sound. Just the haunting echo of the voice.

Save them. Save them. Save them.

I land on something unforgivingly hard. The wind is knocked out of me. My body aches from my head to my toes. I think I could lie here forever. Am I paralyzed? Did the fall break my neck?

No, that can’t be right. If I were paralyzed, I wouldn’t be able to feel the throbbing pain in every one of my bones.

Save them.

The voice’s words come back to me with a jolt of panic. My heart pounds. Where am I? Who am I supposed to save? Anxiety claws at my nerves.

I force my eyes open. The first thing I see is the pooling yellow of a streetlight. It illuminates the pavement of a road that I must have fallen onto. I hear screams for help and roll my head to the side to see where they’re coming from.

My stomach bottoms out at the sight of crunched and twisted metal. A black cargo van is crumbled and smashed, turned on its side from what must have been a horrifying crash.

Where are the other cars? The emergency response? It’s quiet except for the desperate but faint pleas for help and creaking of metal as the van settles. There are no sirens, no flashing lights. I must be the first one here.

How did I get here and why does that van look familiar? I stagger to my feet. I don’t know anyone who owns a black van.

I take a few stumbling steps toward the wreck. It vaguely occurs to me this could be some sort of trap. But laid by whom? The answer is on the tip of my tongue, bouncing around in my head, but I’m unable to pin it down.

It’s the black van. There’s something about it. Something . . . And then it hits me. I know where I’ve seen it before. The vanthat took our parents away was a black cargo van just like this one.

“Help,please,”someone inside the wreckage calls, and this time, it’s a voice I instantly recognize. It turns my blood ice cold.

“Mom.Mom!”I try to run toward the sound of her cries, but my legs give out.

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