“Okay.” Woodrow set the remote on the table, but the screen had already gone dark. “Let’s get it done.”
Shaw lifted the steel ring from its formfitting padding, and I frowned when I got a better look at it. The blinking red light had come from a tiny LED bulb that sat flush with the surface of the steel. The ring was designed to swing open on a set of tiny interior hinges, which wouldn’t be accessible once the device was closed around...
Around what? The circumference looked about right for my upper arm, or my...
My neck.
Terror pooled in my stomach, like fuel set ablaze. That ring was a collar.
I instinctively tried to scoot my chair away from the shiny, high-tech device, but Bowman’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder. Vandekamp’s collar was much lighter, sleeker and cleaner than the thick iron rings Metzger had fitted around resistant centaurs and satyrs, but even diamond-encrusted collars are for pets.
Woodrow picked up the control device and used it to point at the collar Shaw still held. “I’m going to explain this to you once. That is an electronic restraint collar, which can be controlled by any of the remotes carried by the Spectacle’s staff. Those tiny spines will slide through the back of your neck and into your vertebrae, where they can deliver specialized electric signals with the press of a button.”
Shaw tilted the collar to show me that the inner curve of one half of the collar held a vertical line of three very thin needles.
I stared at the steel ring, trying to control panic as it clawed at my throat. “It’s a shock collar?”
“It’s much more than that.” Woodrow clipped the remote back onto his belt and met my gaze for what he obviously considered the most important part of my orientation briefing. “This collar can deliver a painful shock or temporarily paralyze the beast wearing it from the neck down. The settings prevent cryptids from using their monstrous abilities until those settings are changed, which only happens during scheduled engagements. Which means the sirens can’t sing, the succubi can’t seduce, the shifters can’t shift and the beasts can’t lift a hand in aggression. Until we want them to. So consider this fair warning.”
“The collar’s receptors also receive signals from every single door in the compound,” Shaw added. “Restricting you to any room or wing we choose.”
I could only stare, stunned. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it. “How can that possibly work?”
Shaw’s eyes lit up. “Vandekamp designed it himself. Receptors in the spines respond instantly to the spike in adrenaline and in species-specific hormones that—”
“Shaw,” Woodrow growled, and the handler’s mouth snapped shut.
But I’d heard enough to understand.
Woodrow stood. “Get on with it.”
“Okay, now, hold still.” Shaw came toward me with the collar, and panic lit a fire in my lungs.
“No.” I stood, and the folding chair scraped the floor then fell over, hanging from the cuff attached to my left wrist.
I can’t wear a collar.
“Sit down,” Woodrow demanded, while Bowman aimed his tranquilizer rifle at my leg. “That’s the only warning you’ll get.”
“Please don’t do this.” I backed away from them both, dragging the chair, though I had nowhere to go. “I’ll be reasonable if you will. There has to be another—”
Woodrow glanced at Bowman. “Do it. And don’t forget to write a report and log the spent dart.”
I turned to Bowman just as he fired. Pain bit into my left thigh. The tiny vial emptied its load into my leg before I could pull it out with my free hand.
As I backed farther away from them, my focus flitting warily from face to face, the edges of the room began to darken. The scrape of the metal chair against the floor sounded suddenly distant. My central vision began to blur. “Stay back.”
My legs felt weak half a second before they folded beneath me, and I didn’t even feel my knees slam into the tile. The ceiling spun around me as I fell onto my back. The chair clattered to the floor, and Woodrow’s weathered face leaned over me.
“Gallagher’s going to kill you...” I warned, but my words sounded stretched and distorted.
“Do it now, before the bitch wakes up again,” Woodrow said, as the world faded to black around me. “Looks like she’s going to have to learn everything the hard w—”
“Culminating in a narrow Senate victory, Congress has passed theCryptid Containment Act, which will allow cryptids to be housed and studied inboth public and private labs, for the purpose of scientific advancement.”
—from the February 4, 1990, edition oftheBoston Herald
Delilah
