Roxanne Fosch Files Collection

Chapter 17-1

We rented a room in the hotel, but both of us knew we couldn"t stay long, so I made the best of it and headed first to the bathroom. The thought of just one drop of warm water on my blisters caused my body to break all over with goosebumps, so I just 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—with the leftover money I took from Logan"s car. (There was no guilt or shame and I didn"t question myself). Sighing, I made do with the smelly ones I"d been wearing before.

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

“Let me see your hand,” he said, motioning 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 in the past.

“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 boiling skin and relieved some of the pain and, after it looked dry, he used another kind of ointment, this one bright yellow. Once he was done, he wrapped it with gauze, got up, and dropped my duffle 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!

“Oh, thank you,” I said earnestly. I extracted clean clothes from inside the duffle, jeans, underwear, a grey 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, debated upon an answer that wouldn"t be so 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 really concerned, and I sighed, feeling for the first time compelled to answer.

“There was this time, on my earliest days in the PSS, when they wanted to know my limits,” I began telling him.

“It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were labeled the experiment day. Dr. Maxwell waited for me in Building C with another scientist like he did every first Tuesday of the month. The scientist, usually one that was newly employed in one of the PSS"s 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 was escorted by the guard in charge of that shift to the back entrance of the building, where access to the swimming pool was easier and we wouldn"t need to bypass all the administrative cubicle mazes inside.

“Dr. Maxwell stood by the door, arguing vehemently with Dr. Michael Dean, chief director of the PSS, about something being too risky. The new scientist just stood by with pursed lips and listened. I just knew by watching them, whatever was about to happen, I would suffer badly.

“`You"ll do as I say, and I say the weights be used," Dr. Dean said.

“`Sir, if it doesn"t work, the result might be fatal," Dr. Maxwell had argued.

“At the end, Dr. Michael Dean got his way, just like every other time.

“They tied some heavy special-made dumbbell weights to each of my ankles, and they were so heavy I had to be dragged by the guard to the pool.

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

“They dropped me in the water and I sank to the bottom, some fifteen feet down. I tried to get the weights off, but they had some kind of thick metal bands firmly secured around my ankles. I broke my nails; I panicked and wasted precious oxygen twice as fast from the exertion.

“My vision blurred, dimmed then went black.”

The last sentence was said in a flat tone, carrying not a hint of emotion. I focused my gaze ahead at the road and realized I"d been so engrossed in my past I hadn"t noticed we weren"t moving. We were idling at the shoulder of the road, our slow breaths and the running engine the only sounds around us. Logan was watching me, eyes appalled.

“What happened then?”

“I drowned,” I said flatly. “When they realized I couldn"t breathe underwater, the guard dove 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 grey of heavy clouds. His anger warmed me, and I reminded myself his reaction stemmed from the knowledge that his friend might be suffering something similar at the hands of the scientists.

“Is that what they do when one doesn"t behave?”

Surprised, I shook my head. “No. I was cooperating by then.”

His eyes shifted up to my forehead or maybe just a fraction of an inch above my forehead, before he looked away, frowning. My heart skipped a beat. Did he just try to read my aura? According to Dr. Maxwell"s journal, werewolves couldn"t see auras. Could they?

“Why did they think you could breathe underwater? Are you a sea creature?” he demanded, still frowning.

Hmm. Was I? Not if I couldn"t breathe underwater. “Who knows the mind of mad scientists?”

Logan debated me for a moment before asking, “And when you didn"t behave, what did they do to you?”

I glanced around the desert, thinking. Remembering. “The first few weeks, I gave them hell every time they tried something. I punched, I kicked, I bit, I spat. And when I rebelled, experiment day happened three, sometimes four times a week. Then I started behaving, attempting escape only when I saw an opportunity.” Thinking about it then, I wondered if those opportunities were being thrown my way purposefully—to increase the experiments done.

I wished someone would be as concerned for me as Logan was for his friend. What kind of friendship caused such loyalty, such devotion?

We eyed each other for a while, Logan with simmering anger in his eyes, me with envy and hurt in my heart—perhaps even a drop of resentment. My expression was blank, the mask I"d used for half my life in place, no trace of the raging feelings entangled inside showing through. Logan looked away first, but I could tell from the hard set of his jaw and the almost tangible anger in the atmosphere he was far from calm.

I had rattled him.

“This Dr. Maxwell, he seemed to be on your side, the way he stood by arguing with the director, and the way he persisted at the end?”

I laughed, and it was bitter and maybe even a little hysterical. “Dr. Maxwell just didn"t want his experiments to be over. He"s cautious, he"s smart, but he"s not sympathetic, and he"s not above causing other people pain if he sees a reward at the end.”

I thought about all the times Dr. Maxwell brought me snacks and new magazines, the way he talked to me about the world outside. He"d tried to help me sometimes, but after the wolf incident I stopped believing he was a friend. He was a scientist above all else and, to achieve better and satisfying results, he thought ingratiating himself to me would help. Like I said, I was young and desperately needed sympathy. Dr. Maxwell knew that and, in the name of his research and project, he exploited that angle, bribing me to help forward the enhancement of his research.

No, Dr. Maxwell didn"t care about me as a person, but as a project, a special guinea pig.

“What if my friend could give them hell, but instead of kicking and spitting he actually manages to injure or even kill some of them?”

I doubted he could, but I considered his question carefully. I remembered the first time I had managed to injure one of the scientists by kicking and dislocating his kneecap, they shot me with tranquilizers, then proceeded with their test by injecting some sort of hallucinogenic spell in my IV while I was still out.

“First of all, you should keep in mind the PSS have this thing they call `the blocking bracelet", which they use on preternatural beings to prevent them from tapping into that something that makes them other. But let"s say your friend might be able to get to one—maybe two—guards. If he"s that dangerous, they"ll just tighten security, give him a mild sedative—enough to keep him aware but not able to do much harm—then they"ll surround him with more scientists to watch the phenomenon. If he"s smart, he would rather they experiment while he"s lucid.” If I had thought Logan"s anger had been overwhelming before, it all but suffocated me now.

“Is that what they did to you?” he asked in a low tone.

I remembered waking up after I had attacked the guest scientist. After I kicked him, one of the guards shot me with a tranquilizer. It was one of those rare experiments in which I didn"t need to be awake while they prepared me.

I remembered waking up in my room (the old one I occupied in my early days in the PSS), just a narrow bed, a small bathroom and—sometimes, a chair.

That day when I awoke, my mother sat on the back straight chair beside me. I was so glad to see her, I flung myself out of bed into her lap and cried my heart out. I could smell the jasmine scent of her lotion, the cinnamon scent of her hair. I cried, and she held me close, telling me everything would be all right. Then, three guards barged into the room. Two of them grabbed me while the other went for my mother. I was shackled and manacled with a special metal used for preternaturals, dragged to a small empty room in Building C; a room I had never been taken before. It was a bare, sterile room with only a two-way mirror. I knew instinctively that they were going to do something to me, punish me for misbehaving—so I was ready to plead and beg they didn"t let my mother see what was going to happen. But, instead of taking her to the room where she could watch me become a monster, they threw her in the room with me. I was horrified by the idea of attacking my mother, but they had something completely different in mind.