“She really feels no pain?” one of them asked as the man holding her physically threw her into the back of the truck.
Indigo oomphed as she landed, the air knocked out of her lungs, but she felt no pain. Her body just absorbed the impact and dealt with it, but the lack of energy she had worried her. Her ability to withstand large amounts of pain wouldn't save her life, the only thing that might was finding a way to fight, a way to escape.
“Apparently so,” the man who had thrown her said, although he sounded bored by the entire thing.
“Let’s try it out,” one piped up.
“We’re just supposed to transport her if we find her,” another said.
“You're not curious to see?” one asked. “Because I am. I want to see if she really can endure pain like she doesn’t even feel it.”
“Whatever, if you want to do it, just do it. Then we need to get moving,” the man who had carried her, who seemed to be in charge, said, still sounding bored.
“What should we do?” someone asked.
“Kick her? Hit her? Knife? Gun?” someone started rattling off suggestions, each one sounding worse than the one before.
If they weren't careful, they could still kill her. Just because she wouldn't feel anything more than an initial sharp rush of pain didn't mean she wouldn't still suffer from the injury. Her body healed at an accelerated rate, but the very fact that she’d been dying from infections when Voodoo and the others found her proved that an injury could still quite easily take her out.
“What about the stun gun?” someone suggested, and from the rush of agreements, she could see that idea was going to be the winner.
One of the men climbed up into the back of the truck with her, andIndigo shifted so she was huddled in the corner. Trust her bad luck to have her swim to shore right where these men were waiting for her. They had to have seen her floundering in the water, maybe followed her, probably would have come in after her if she hadn't managed to get herself out.
But if she’d stayed in the water, she still would have stood a chance.
A chance at escaping, a chance at living, a chance at getting back to Voodoo, a chance at … everything he’d been offering her. A home, a family, a job, one day even his love.
Now it was all slipping through her fingers.
What could have been disappearing with each breath she took.
All the hopes and dreams she had tentatively been allowing to form were now gone. Or they would be pretty soon. But honestly, she would rather have died in the river than be trapped there, a toy to be played with, and discarded eventually.
Reaching her, the man with the stun gun grinned at her with excitement in his eyes. She wanted to tell him that if he thought it was so interesting to be experimented on, have your body changed in ways you never agreed to, then he was free to tell Dr. Gardner he was next in line to be injected.
But she didn't.
Couldn’t.
Her voice seemed to have left her, and all she could do was curl into a ball, trying to make herself as small a target as possible.
Not that it mattered. The man leaned down, touched the stun gun to her side, and activated it. One sharp stab of pain, kind of like being set on fire, rushed through her body, then it was just nothing.
Nothing as in no pain, but the electrical current still passed through her, and her muscles jerked accordingly.
“Didn't even scream,” the man said, looking over his shoulder at his friends.
“Do it again,” someone called out.
“Yeah, maybe it was just a fluke,” another added.
So the man shocked her again. Then again. Then again.
Her body spasmed convulsively each time. She was flat on her back now, writhing as there was no relief from the shocks. But there was nopain. No physical pain anyway. Just a deep ache in her chest that was fear that Voodoo was lost to her forever, everything she’d never allowed herself to hope for, and yet had been unable to resist wanting the second she met him.
He'd changed everything, changed her, and now all she could do was hope that he never wound up trapped and imprisoned, an experiment locked in a cage.
Chapter
