Through Glass (31 page)

“Travis?” I gasped, his face breaking into a wide grin before the image of him flickered and died.

“Travis!” I screamed, my body running toward him in desperation. I had barely made it halfway across the room before thick white smoke filled the cement chamber. The heavy plume of smoke sprayed in with a deep hiss. The dense smoke covered every inch of space around me in a matter of minutes.

“Travis!” I screamed again, my voice lost in the fog as the smoke began to tickle my mouth and nose. The fog smelled like over scented vanilla, the scent thick in my mouth, heavy in my head.

“Travis,” I said again, my voice weak as I fell to my knees, the heavy mist putting me to sleep.

I woke up on the same floor, the same cold cement against my skin, and the same goose bumps on my arms. I groaned as I pushed myself up, my arms shaking at the added pressure.

Everything spun as I moved. The residual effects from whatever drug they had used to knock me out still lingered in my blood stream.

Air rushed out of my lungs in an over loud exhale that rattled around me, the sound mirroring the pain I felt as my back leaned up against the wall.

They had knocked me out again. I wasn’t sure which was worse, getting shot or being drugged. They both felt the same, but I had a feeling this one was done in an emergency. Not only for me, but for my brother.

My brother.

Travis.

Everything tightened at the thought, at the memory of my much older brother in front of me. As if I needed proof that eight years had passed. I could see the gangly fourteen-year-old in the man I had seen before they knocked me out. Eight years, he would be twenty-two now, a grown man.

What I didn’t understand was why they had kept him away from me, why they wouldn’t let him talk to me. More importantly, how had he survived? Had anyone else survived?

The thought was a white-hot branding iron to my skin, the surge painful and oh-so-welcome. Travis was alive; the others could be, too.

They could be somewhere close.

I smiled at the thought, my eyes falling to the ground as rippling waves of excitement whipped through me.

Another red lunch tray had been placed against the wall, this one laden with a massive burrito as well as rice and beans. It was cafeteria food again, but I didn’t care. I didn’t wait as I dragged the tray toward me and started shoveling the rice and beans into my mouth with yet another plastic spork.

The heavy flavor of the food rushed through me; the taste strong and pleasant as it hit my tongue, the sugars rushing right into my bloodstream.

I bit into the burrito and was absolutely floored by the sour cream that hit my tongue. The bitter taste strong and pleasant. I had forgotten this flavor, but now I wanted it on everything. It was better than yesterday’s gravy. My adrenaline increased as the blood sugars pulsed through me; my veins loosening in appreciation.

At least I hoped that was what it was.

I hadn’t had the opportunity to even think about what Bridget had said before they had knocked me out again. About the blood in the food, the way the Tar changed people. About how they expected me to change, how I would change.

About Cohen.

The thought scared me. It scared me not only because of what they were doing to Cohen, but what might also happen to me. That I would change, that I would become one of them. The way Bridget had reacted to me. The way she had talked about it made it sound like a sure thing.

Like I was already a monster.

I couldn’t let that happen. I had fought so long. I wouldn’t simply give up and grow claws. They were all fools if they thought it was that simple. I would fight it, like everything else.

The worry disappeared as a grinding noise that sounded like the sliding of a stone rippled through the air around me and I jumped. My head spun toward the sound just as a dark, middle-aged man walked through the wall; his body emerging through the cement like it was made of water.

My eyes widened at seeing him, at the way he had moved through a solid block of concrete. The man looked at me, the coldness of his dark brown eyes matching his skin tone almost perfectly. The remoteness of his eyes never changing in the dim light of my prison. He wasn’t translucent like Bridget had been, this man was real. He walked in confidently, his well-tailored suit and greased hair looking out of place in the grey room I was trapped in.

“Hello, Alexis,” he said, his voice heavy with a Spanish accent. I raised an eye brow at him, an action that he only smiled at. He didn’t think I was that stupid, did he?

“You must be Azul,” I said as I narrowed my eyes at him, the look he continued to give me made me uncomfortable.

“No. Azul is a group, not a person,” he said harshly, his tone condescending and slow, causing my insides to jump. “My name is Abran, I created Azul after the sky was taken away from us.”

“You’re the leader, then?” I kept my voice level, low, in an attempt to hide the fear that was coursing through me.

I don’t know what it was about this man that was unsettling. He looked at me with raw hatred in his eyes, the anger coursed through me and prickled across my skin. Part of me wanted to trust him, the leader of the first truly human people I had found, but another part was terrified of him.

It wasn’t like with Bridget, when small spots of light peeked through her eyes and she told me she would trust me even though she thought I was dangerous, that she would kill me. This man loathed me.

“That is one way of putting it, I suppose,” he said and smiled.

He smiled and I could tell it was meant to be warm and welcoming, however, it shot through me like ice, the look never hitting his eyes. I smiled back, my lips straining at my discomfort. I wasn’t sure if he could tell or not, yet his smile left awfully quickly, leaving his hate filled eyes to bore into me.

“I like to think of us more as a republic than anything. I’m just one of the many heads.”

“And the other heads?” I asked as I turned to face him, narrowing my eyes at him. I looked at him with my own brand of hatred, needing to know, to have someone to trust. Right now, I didn’t trust anyone and this man wasn’t helping me with that.

“They are trying to figure out what to do with you, my dear.” He smiled at me again, the sneer in his lip making my insides curl. He leaned up against the wall directly across from me, his legs crossing over each other as if we were merely having a casual conversation. Even I could tell it was otherwise. He was leading up to something, something that made my insides squirm. I sat up straighter, preparing myself for what was coming, knowing that it would be anything other than casual.

“What about me?” I asked, regretting that I asked almost instantly, but I had a feeling he would tell me anyway, whether I asked or not. Judging by the look in his eyes, he wanted to share his distaste.

“A little girl, picked up out of the dark, starved and already turning.” He pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against, his tall frame towering over me as he began to walk toward me. It didn’t matter that I stood, he was still an oppressive menace. I squared my shoulders, standing my ground. My mind was already working to find ways to attack him, to get past him, even though I knew it wasn’t going to do any good.

“You had more poison in your blood than anyone we have picked up to date.” He looked down at me, his lip sneering in hatred. “So much poison…” he whispered, his voice soft as he carefully licked his bottom lip. The action turned my nerves uncomfortable. I stepped back in a desperate attempt to move away from him, not wanting to find out what he really meant by that. I took another step only to hit the wall with a heavy thump that rocked through my spine. I cringed against it, the fear that his gaze was giving me rippling through me.

“What are you saying?” I gasped out the words, my chest tight from the fear he seemed to have infected the room with.

“That you are more monster than human, my girl. You are already changing. It’s only a matter of time before you’re gone and a monster takes your place. Is that so hard to believe?”

I tensed at his words, the same uncomfortable fear prickling over me. Bridget had told me this before, that I was going to become one of them—an Ulama. I hadn’t accepted it as much as I did now with this man’s dark, angry stare cementing it into place. The same look that Bridget had given me before, only more disgusted.

He smiled again and turned away from me, back toward the wall he had leaned against only a moment before. My insides loosened the moment he moved away, my lungs remembering to breathe almost immediately.

“Where is my brother?” I asked, letting the question I so desperately needed an answer to flow off my tongue.

He turned and narrowed his eyes at me like I had soiled myself before moving away with his hands behind his back as he began to pace the small floor of the cell.

“Ah yes, Travis.” He spoke my brother’s name like he pitied him. “What an unfortunate turn of events that was for him. His older sister, now younger, reunited with him only to be marked for death.”

My shoulders tensed at his words, even though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had a feeling Bridget hadn’t told me everything. I think Abran had just filled in the missing pieces.

“What are you saying?” I asked as my brain slowly put everything together. I asked the question, even though I knew. I didn’t need the answer, I just wanted him to say it.

They were going to kill me.

“You asked me where the other leaders of Azul are and that is where. In trial, listening as Travis begs for your life to be spared.” He stopped pacing as he looked at me, his hate filled eyes boring into me as he spoke of my impending death as though it was a joyous occasion.

“Spared?” I asked the word like a question, but it was a question I didn’t need the answer to. I already knew what he was saying.

“My, my, you ask a lot of questions. Is it so hard for your little, poisoned brain to follow what I am saying?”

I let the hate of his words wash over me, the disgust lodging itself into my heart as I let the truth behind his words sink into me. I sat still as I stared at him without knowing what to say and not trusting myself to move.

“Yes, it seems it is,” he said when it became clear I wasn’t going to say anything, his lip turning up into a sneer. “So, I will tell you simply. There is a cold place in Hell for monsters like you and I am going to see to it that you get there.”

My own hate bubbled over at his words. I couldn’t even focus as the numbness took over, my desire to act on the strong emotion almost too much. I fought the need to rush him, knowing just by the way he looked at me that he would gladly kill me now. Something I was sure he could do. Even knowing that, I didn’t care.

After everything, this place was just another death sentence and this time, I had no weapon to use against them. I was a prisoner in a box… but then, I had been a prisoner in a box before and I’d had no weapon then, either.

I had to find one.

I had to defeat them, to defeat myself.

I just needed to find a weapon and fight my way out of here. I needed Travis.

I looked up to him, my eyes wide as I searched him for answers, for a way beyond him.

“Why?” I asked, my breath catching on the word and sending it away from me unwillingly.

“You see, little girl,” he began as he leaned toward me, his suit wrinkling perfectly as he bent himself, “you ate the food too long, walked in darkness so long that your blood is poisoned.
You
are poison. One slit to your skin, one spill of your blood and once you bleed out you will become one of the Tar. In fact, I am surprised it hasn’t happened already. Not that I am not happy for it. It is so much easier to see what makes your kind tick before the change has happened.”

I froze, the idea of finding Travis vanishing as fast as it had come. A new, much scarier reality taking its place. Bridget’s words traveled through me like lightning, the small piece of conversation coming right to mind.

Some cut themselves.

I had thought it then, but now the truth of what they had told me cemented itself into me. I would become one of them.