“It means you can’t use them. You’re in prison. Your right to magic and any other powers you have are gone, fiend.”
There’s that fucking word again. I winced, as if hearing it caused me actual, physical pain. And maybe it did. I didn’t know what the word meant, or why it affected me the way it did, but it made me want to scream at her—and worse.
“Why do you call me that?” I asked between my teeth.
“Because that’s what you are, isn’t it? A fiend?” Sanchez slapped on a pair of white gloves. “That’s what they tell me, anyway. I’m surprised you don’t know.”
“I don’t even know my own name or how I got here.”
Her eyebrow arched. “I’m guessing you killed someone, by the look of you. Bad life choice, killing a mage in Devil Falls. I hope it was worth it.” She stared at me. “I’m gonna remove the shackles around your arms, then you’re gonna take off your clothes.”
“My what?”
“Those rags. You’re gonna take them off, and you aren’t gonna try and hurt me. That won’t work very well for you.”
“I’m not taking my clothes off.”
My clothes were all I had left. The only things tying me to a life that existed outside of these walls. Even though I couldn’t remember it, I knew it was there. It had to have been, and it was probably better than this. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being thrown into a prison for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do.
Sanchez stared at me, one of her hands raised, still trained on me. “I’m only going to ask again,” she said, “Because unlike a lot of the other people in here, I have at least a little sympathy for you. But I’m warning you now. Don’t test my patience, and take off your clothes.”
I returned her stare, giving her my eyes, my full attention, and a curt nod.
With a flick of her hand, the shackles around my wrists unlocked and fell to the floor with a crash. My hands were free again, and even though I had a collar around my neck that had made my wings disappear, I didn’t feel any weaker than I had in the interrogation room.
I could’ve made a move on the guard. I could’ve taken my shirt off and tossed it at her, then bashed her face into the wall and made a run for it. It would’ve been easy, too. Sanchez didn’t exactly trust me, but I could hear her elevated heartrate, I could see the way her pupils had dilated. She was on high alert, ready to strike out at me if I tried anything, but even she couldn’t hide the pinch of fear she felt.
That fear would make her just slow enough that I could take her.
But then what?
Where would I go? I’d been ushered through three checkpoints just to get down here, each manned by guards and an electronically sealed gate. I needed to get out of this prison, but this wasn’t the way.
I stripped down, removing my shirt and what was left of my pants and tossing them into a ball on the side of the room. Sanchez was a strict professional, her eyes never wandered, but I felt like someone was watching all the same. Cameras? Another two-way mirror? There weren’t any, not in here.
But that didn’t mean no one was watching, and it did nothing to stop the hairs on the nape of my neck from standing on their ends.
She asked me to head into the center of the room, and I did. By the time I turned around to face her again, she had a hose in her hands and she’d unleashed it on me. A torrent of water roared from the spout. I put my hands up, shielding my body to keep the water from hitting me head on, but I wouldn’t squeal—I wouldn’t shriek.
This place was clearly trying to break my mind, but I wouldn’t let it.
The water sloshing off me in red and pink rivulets that spiraled as they reached the center drain before disappearing entirely. When there was no more blood to hose off, Sanchez tossed me a towel and pointed at a burgundy prison jumpsuit she’d left for me on a small table by the door to the room.
I dried myself off, slid into the jumpsuit and the black canvas shoes waiting for me, and then we were moving again. More checkpoints, more guards, only this time I could hear life coming from the other side of the cellblock doors we were passing.
Prisoners.
Inmates.
I realized, then, that this really was a prison, not that I’d had much of a reason to doubt the word of the people who’d put me in here. Until now, though, I’d only had contact with people wearing uniforms, and their word that I was entering the building I would rot and die in. Those voices floating through the doors may as well have been a death knell.
“There’s been a mistake,” I said to Sanchez. I had my hands pinned behind my back, and they were cuffed. She walked behind me, gripping the chain between the manacles to keep me from trying anything stupid.
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “This place is pretty harsh, but everyone in here is in here for a reason.”
“I don’t even know who I am. They say I killed a man, but they won’t tell me who I killed.”
“You really don’t know what happened?”
“No.”
“I guess that doesn’t surprise me. You Outsiders are supposed to be amnesiacs, aren’t you?”
“Amnesiacs? I don’t understand… and why are you calling me an Outsider?”
“Because fiends aren’t from Earth. You fell through a rift in the sky. Far as I’ve been told, the fall scrambles your brains, messes with your memories.”
Anger surged into my chest, but I bit my tongue to hold it back. I tasted copper in my mouth, but at least I’d stopped myself from doing something stupid.
I swallowed the blood. “None of that makes any sense. I’m not supposed to be here!”
We turned a corner and walked through a large, vault-like door that led into another, final corridor. More doors lined the walls, each of them huge, heavy, metal things meant to keep equally huge, dangerous people locked away inside. Each of them hiding a small prison within themselves.
Sanchez used her ring of keys to open one of the doors. It swung open with a metallic, grinding sound, revealing a poor excuse for a room. It was small, and tight, and dark. I opened my mouth to speak, but she shoved me through it. I lost my footing as I went stumbling into the shadows, but eventually my hands pressed against the wall at the back.
I hugged it to keep myself upright and glared at the guard from within the depths of the hole she’d tossed me into.
“Sleep tight, fiend,” she said, and then she slammed the door shut and locked me inside.
The sound of the locking mechanism sealing itself hung in the air. I was alone, in complete darkness, with no hope of getting out.
CHAPTER FOUR
The room—the box—was empty, and dark, and dank, the stink of it almost unbearable. I turned around, pressing my back against the wall and trying to control my breathing. Strangely, the darkness was starting to clear up. There was no light in the room, none at all, but as the seconds passed, I realized I could clearly see the door across from me, the rivets, the bolts—the wet patch in the far corner.
Somehow, the fact that someone had clearly used the corner of the room as a toilet wasn’t as important as the fact that I had… darkvision?