“Now,” David orders. To who? I’m not sure. My mind is a black abyss, apart from one shining light within its depths.
Sabel walks across the room to the person sitting in the center of it. She fixes her gaze strictly on the mirror, looking through it and directly at me. Sabel reaches for the black sheet and pulls it off in one swift motion. My heart stops.
Sloane.
I jump up from the chair and charge the mirror, pressing my palms firmly against it. I stare at Sloane through the glass. So close, but out of my reach. Her bare ankles and wrists are chained to the steel legs. She’s wearing a business casual black dress. Her head is hanging down, red waves covering her facefrom full view. Her chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. She looks unconscious. That isn’t the most unnerving thing about the scene that’s in front of me, though. No, the most unnerving part of all of this is that there is a pair of fuckingheadphonescovering her ears.
I ball my fists, pulling back and taking aim at the mirror. Before I can make contact, I feel something cold and hard press against the side of my head. And then, I hear a click.
“Don’t fucking move,” David growls.
39
Sloane
I hear a low, humming vibration. It pulls me from the corner of the darkness that I’m in, and I want to stand and follow it. Except when I try to stand, something binds my ankles and wrists to the floor. No, not the floor. It’s a chair? The humming becomes louder, and it isn’t a humming at all but rather an annoying buzzing. I squint my eyes open, looking around but unable to see a thing through the film of black that surrounds me. I try to lift my head, but find that my neck is too weak.
Suddenly, the black veil that seeks to suffocate me is gone. I squeeze my eyes shut against the brightness of the room. I think that I faintly hear a loud thud from somewhere in front of me. Where am I? I come to, confusion sweeping over me for a brief second before I recall the events that led me here.
? ? ?
I arrived at Sonus Corp twenty minutes before the meeting with Sabel was scheduled to begin. I went up to Sabel’s office, and the secretary informed me that she would see me early. I followed Sabel to her private office, and we began the interview.
I started with the basic questioning of how she found herself in the business and what her vision for the future of Reverb entailed. She spoke of the business being handed down to her through family ties and how it was her legacy. She spoke of Reverb’s recent success and how she imagined them headlining tours across the world by summer. I pushed as to what she thought was the driving force behind such a sudden rise to fame, and she spouted off responses that sounded rehearsed and had nothing to do with the answers I was seeking. Sabel must have sensed the shift in my energy as I grew restless, and my hatred for the murderous women before me grew potent.
“Why did you come here, Sloane?” I recall her questioning me, her tone knowing. I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but I decided to answer her question with a very uninhibited one of my own.
“Why did you murder him?” I asked simply. I remember the way she tilted her head to the side like a curious pet, studying me.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Ms. Keenan,” she replied.
“My father,” I said. She started laughing, hysterically, tossing her head back as she did.
“Is that what you think happened?” she asked. The way she said it implied that if she wasn’t the one who did it, she knew the person who did. I wasn’t able to get another word out after that. She stopped laughing and pulled something out of the desk drawer to her right. She tossed a stack of stapled papers in front of me. I looked down at a printout of myrealoutlier results and knew in that moment that I was inrealdanger. I also knewthat it was too late to run. Sabel was fumbling through her desk drawer for something else, distracted, when I decided to do the only thing that I could think of in that moment.
I reached into my purse and sent a warning text to Riven, even though I still hadn’t heard from him since the morning prior. The text read “I’m in danger,” with a dropped pin for my location. I pocketed my phone in my purse quickly, and in time for Sabel to refocus her attention on me.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Sloane. I know that you’re an outlier, and I know how to fix that. I only need your cooperation,” Sabel said. Then, her gaze moved to something behind me, and I started to panic. Before I could get up and try to leave the room, two large hands found the tops of my shoulders and pushed me back down in my seat. Then, the person behind me placed a pair of headphones over my head. My mind caught up quickly, telling me exactly what Sabel was up to.
I instantly heard sounds. Different sounds filtered in through either earpiece, and soon I felt myself relax. I felt my anxiety seep right out of me, taking my inhibitions with it. I looked up and found that Sabel was watching me. I remember her huge, crimson grin. Her brown eyes were alight with sadistic delight. I remember that I didn’t feel scared at all. Instead, I had the strangest desire to reach across the table andhugher. Then, the delightful, harmonious sound seeping into my bloodstream stopped, replaced by Sabel’s low laughter.
“This was far easier than I thought it was going to be,” I heard her say. I seemingly forgot what she was even referring to.
“How do you feel, Sloane?” she asked.
“I feel …happyand relaxed. I love it here, and you. Everything is just so …beautiful.” I recall hardly recognizing the sound of my voice.
“Great. Why did you come here today, Sloane?” she questioned.
“I came to figure out if it was you who killed my father, and to find a way to stop you from using the Eden Frequency,” I blurted it out. I threw my hand over my mouth, horrified that I would give away the information so freely. The next second, though, the panic vanished, and left me with that foreign feeling of serenity. My response caused her to tense, and I was unsure what part of it elicited the reaction.
“Hmmm, it would appear that my suspicions were correct, then.” Sabel paused, as if she was considering her next words carefully. “Youareseeing him.” I wasn’t sure whether it was rhetorical, so I decided to remain silent. I also didn’t know who she was referring to at the time.
“Do you love Vantros?” she asked, looking me dead in my eyes and eagerly awaiting my response.
“No. I thought that for a moment there might have been something between us, but I ended it before it even started,” I said, finding that I was confused about why she would assume that. After answering her against my will twice, I knew that I was being affected by the binaural frequency forced upon me moments prior. I knew that Van was right.
Sabel eyed me with curiosity for several seconds. Her features then transformed into one of understanding.
