Page 173 of Silver Elite

Despite my better judgment, I pull on the door handle. It moves, the door inching open. I half expect an alarm to blare, but nothing happens.

I forget my objective. The mission. I enter the large room, which seems to be an entire ward of gray-gowned people. Around twenty of them. The ones walking around are completely oblivious to my presence. Across the room is a wall of cabinets and what appears to be a freezer. Through the glass I can make out tubes of blood and vials of clear liquid.

Drawing a breath, I approach the bed of a brunette with bony shoulders and long fingers she twists together in her lap. Her eyes widen at the sight of me, but I don’t think she’s truly seeing me. She senses my presence, though. Her dazed demeanor shifts into one of distress.

She starts speaking. No, mumbling. Repeating the same phrase.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shutup.”

Whimpering, she covers her ears with her palms and rocks cross-legged on the bed.

My heart stops when I notice her arms. The veins.

She’s Modified.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut upshut up shut up.”

Her veins are glowing and moving, undulating as if thin eels are slithering beneath her skin, but it’s not consistent. The silver flickers in and out. Stops and starts. Her body, her mind, is shorting out like an appliance.

The woman at the next bed is silently clawing at her own temples. Unlike her neighbor, she has a black band tattooed around her wrist to confirm she’s a Mod. No red band, though.

My gaze travels down the row of beds, the ones that are occupied. I can’t find a red band among any of the tattooed patients. These aren’t slaves.

But they’re Mods. Most of them, anyway. Not everyone’s veins are rippling, but I can’t be sure if that’s because they’re not using their gifts. The veins that are visible seem to be in a constant stop-and-start motion. Like flickering lights.

“Wren?” Kaine’s puzzled voice comes from the door.

I ignore him. I approach the next bed, where a young man with dark hair lies flat, staring at the ceiling with vacant eyes. It’s so eerie and unnerving that I hurry past him. The next patient is restrained. She’s incoherent, rambling under her breath.

“In the garden with the windows, but I saw—when he saw—sometimes in the mountains—Henry, but then no one. When she died—and then together, water for Keren…”

Literal nonsense.

Each patient seems more dazed and disjointed than the last.

“Darlington.” Ford’s voice now.

I spin toward the doorway. “What is this?” I ask the lieutenant.

I’m surprised to see sadness flicker in his eyes.

“Whatisthis?” I repeat. “Why are they here?”

“They’re fragmented.”

Understanding dawns. I remember sitting with Jim a long time ago in the Blacklands while he tried to explain what happens when a mind isn’t strong enough to withstand our gifts. It didn’t quite sink in back then, that opening paths and linking to other minds couldoverwhelm anyone, could break them. That some mind readers were unable to filter or link willingly, that their shields weren’t good enough to dam the barrage of voices from foreign minds.

Now I’m surrounded by an entire room full of people with fragmented minds, and the fear that weakens my knees is impossible to ignore. What ifmybrain hadn’t been strong enough? What if I’d ended up in a place like this?

Why are they in a place like this?

The question gives me pause. Yes. Why? Mental illness isn’t well tolerated on the Continent; the General considers treating it a waste of resources. Schizophrenia is probably the closest thing to what the fragmented experience, yet it’s rare to encounter a schizophrenic. If the General doesn’t tolerate mental illness in Primes, why would he keep Mods, of all people, alive in a hospital ward?

“Why don’t you just kill them?” I ask Xavier, but I’m able to answer my own question when my gaze returns to the wall across the room.

The freezer.

The blood vials.

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