Page 38 of Captured Immune

Ding!The elevator opens to a new floor.

I follow Katie down the wide hallways while the big guy tramps behind me in his heavy boots. I log as many details of this place into my brain as possible. White walls, gray doors, cream tiled floors. Behind a glass wall is a group of six rowdy men. Two are wrestling each other on padded mats while the other four cheer them on.

In a fitness room, two men and three women are running on treadmills or lifting weights. I don’t get a long enough glance to memorize any of their faces. I’m not even sure how any of this information is going to help me later, but I continue to memorize things anyway.

We pass a few more rooms, but they don’t have windows for me to see through. The signs on the outside say things likeFireball Throwing Practice,Terra Training, andArtificial Sunlight. I don’t know what any of that means.

Through a set of double doors, we enter a giant auditorium with a square boxing ring in the center. Empty rows of seats stretch from the boxing ring all the way up to the back walls. In the ring are a group of people having a conversation. One of them is Mustache Man, otherwise known as Victor, Trey’s uncle and the man who organized my kidnapping. The baby senses excitement from him instead of the frustration that was simmering in his gut earlier. Whatever he’s excited about can’t be good for me.

Katie stops at the bottom of the stairs leading into the boxing ring. She gestures for me to step up.

I don’t.

“Get in,” Victor orders.

Three. Besides Victor, there’s three of them in the boxing ring, and they’re all ready to do whatever it is they do to their captives in there.No thank you. Hard pass for me.

Victor snaps his fingers. “Craig, assist the girl, will you?”

I yelp when the big guard scoops me off my feet. Then he stomps up the stairs in his boots and drops me into the center of the boxing ring.

I don’t move a muscle as Victor throws a leg over the ropes to stand on the other side of the ring. Then he draws a circle in the air with his finger. “Surround her. One of you at each corner.”

As if they’re robots—maybe they are—all three people plus Craig migrate to separate corners of the box. I stare at each one, memorizing anything about them that can help the police identify them later.

Craig, if that’s his real name, is a forty-something white male with neck tattoos that seem to run all the way down to his fingertips.

Guy two is another white male, maybe late thirties, with muscles practically bursting out of his shirt. Short brown hair. No visible tattoos.

The other two are women. The first one is Asian—maybe Korean. She’s the shortest of them all. She also looks the youngest, maybe nineteen or twenty. She has a pixie haircut with blue highlights, plus floral tattoos running down her upper arm, and she’s chewing on a piece of gum.

Female two looks in her mid-twenties. Slender figure, long curly red hair, and lots of freckles.

Okay, now all I have to do is remember all that...

“Let’s try one at a time first,” Victor says from the sidelines. His deep voice echoes throughout the emptiness of the auditorium. “Derek, you first.”

The muscular guy steps forward and snaps his fingers in my direction. I glance around, looking for something coming at me, or something to fall onto me from the ceiling. When nothing does, he snaps again.

“Maybe I need to touch her.” Derek comes to my side. I think about running, but his stern gaze makes me stay in place. Besides, there’s nowhere for me to go.

I flinch when he grabs my arm and holds it. His grip gets tighter as I try to jerk away from him.

“Let go.” I yank my arm back until he releases me.

“What the...?” He gapes at me. “Pixie, come here for a sec.”

The Asian woman pops up from her squat. In mid-stand, Derek snaps his fingers, and she stills like she’s been paused in a movie. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t chew on her gum. I’m not even sure if she’s breathing. My mouth pops open as my eyes go wide.

“So my powersdowork.” Derek snaps his fingers again.

Pixie finishes her stand like the movie’s been unpaused. She must know what happened, because she narrows her eyes at Derek. With two fingers, she points at her eyes, then at him. “I’m watchin’ you, jackass.”

Victor waves a hand at the big guard. “Let’s keep this movin’. You’re next, Craig.”

As Derek returns to his corner, Craig points a firm tattooed finger at me. His strides are long as he closes the distance between us. The closer he gets, the more I back away.

“Don’t come any closer.” My voice betrays me. It comes out weaker than I wanted it to.

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