She gave up after a few moments, knowing it was stupid to squander water her body desperately needed on the dubious comfort she would get from dabbing at the blood and dirt that smeared her bare skin.
The filth of the place was torture enough for anyone with a fastidious nature. There’d been a time, in the dark past, when she and Nigel had lived on the streets, that she hadn’t given a thought to the filth she lived in. She could barely remember that time, though, mostly because she had tried hard to purge it completely from her memory after they had gone to live with Morris.
Dismissing it with an effort, she stared at the food on the tray, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger in her belly--trying to dismiss the temptation to welcome the limited awareness the drugs in it would give her.
She didn’t really want to have her wits about her, did she? Did she really want to experience the full measure of just how horrible this place was?
She killed the urge to appease her hunger and embrace oblivion. She had to get out, she realized. Serving life wasn’t an option and the prospect of enduring this sort of hell for years was almost worse than the possibility of being killed outright.
ChapterFive
Lena was caught off guard and unprepared when they came for her again. The only thing that saved her from giving herself away at once was the fact that she was awakened abruptly from a deep sleep. Disoriented and uncoordinated from sleep, she was dragged from her bunk and hustled down the corridor to the tube lift before she was alert enough to realize luck had saved her so far, not her wit.
The surge of fear driven adrenaline that pumped through her with enlightenment made it nearly impossible to maintain the pose of a drug induced stupor. She struggled with it, fighting to maintain her breathing, to make herself remain limp instead of trying to catch herself. She was certain, nevertheless, that her pose would be noticed any moment for the poor acting it was.
Apparently the guard was distracted by his own thoughts, though, because he didn’t seem to notice anything different about her.
She slumped in the chair when he shoved her into it, focusing her mind on keeping her arms and legs limp as he strapped her in.
That was harder than anything prior to that point, because she’d still been groggy and uncoordinated when he’d been dragging her along the corridor. Fear again aided her when he began the questioning, because her mind was so chaotic with it she could only stare at him blankly when he jerked her head back to look at her.
“Give us names!”
She grappled with the demand, trying to put it together with other things he’d asked. Somehow, he, or rather the people he worked for, were under the impression that she was deep in the rebellion. “Morris?” she finally managed hesitantly, partly because she knew he was beyond their reach now and partly because she didn’t know of anyone else who even might be a rebel. She didn’t think that Morris was, or had been. She’d never believed it was more than talk. He was willing and his mind still alert, but physically, rebellion was beyond him anymore.
The interrogator’s response was a slap that slung her head sideways and nearly made her blackout. “We know about Morris!” he growled. “Who are the others? Who met with him?”
Dimly, through the blinding pain, an image of Dax emerged.
She couldn’t be any more certain about him than she was about Morris, though. Furthermore, they had him. From what she’d seen of his face, they’d invested a good bit of time interrogating him, too, so she couldn’t imagine telling them his name would do her any good.
Besides, she felt ill at the thought.
“Don’ know names,” she managed to say finally.
He grabbed her by her hair, jerking her head back and smashing the back of her skull into the chair back. “But you’d recognize them?”
Lena swallowed with an effort, feeling her stomach heave as she tasted blood in her mouth. “Only know M-morris,” she stammered.
“Lying rebel bitch!” the man growled, pelting her with a barrage of blows that made the room dim and, thankfully, the lights go out.
A deluge of icy water brought her around. For several moments, she spluttered and gasped, trying to free her air passages of water to suck in a breath of air.
“Where do they meet?”
Pain was pretty much all Lena was aware of anymore. The question hardly registered in her mind. He repeated it, emphasizing the question with another slap that nearly made her blackout again.
“They?”
“The rebels. Where do they meet?”
He was going to beat herto death, she realized dimly, if she didn’t give him something, but it was a battle to jog anything useful from her mind. “Underground,” she managed finally.
He grabbed her tunic, shaking her and the chair. “We know it’s the underground! Where do they meet?”
“’Neath subway.”
He stopped shaking her abruptly. “Under the subway?”
