“You would have the leader of the resistance in your hands.” Granted, we didn’t call ourselves that, but for him, that was who we were.
“I already do,” he stated. “But I want you to work for me, not play childish games.” Taking a step back, he took out his tablet. “I think you are in need of the right type of motivation.” Drumming his fingers on the screen, he scrolled through the records. “As he—I believe his name is Zion—is unconscious, we’ll start with Kali.”
He tapped a button on the device, and the speakers crackled. Raising his voice, Adder instructed, “Please escort subject number thirty-thousand-and-fifty-four to our guests.” Finished, he flashed me another smile. “If I have mispronounced Kali’s or Zion’s names, I sincerely apologize. When I was a teenager, I had to get larynx surgery. Long story short, it’s harder for me to vocalize certain syllables.”
I wished to punch those syllables off his tongue and make him choke on them.
But before I could act on it, the lanky man began unchaining Kali. She didn’t resist when he freed her ankles, didn’t let out a sound when he removed the last of the restraints and accidentally brushed her breasts, didn’t combat him when he grabbed her.
But when he maneuvered her arm to lay over his shoulders to haul her up, my patience ran short.
My jaw creaked from how hard I was clenching it.
Kali could barely walk. Supporting her weight, the doctor had to drag her out of the room—out of my sight.
“Where are you taking her?” I demanded.
Adder moved around me. “I’ll show you.” Opening the door, he waved me through.
The walk down the hallway stretched into eternity as the strip of the same glass stretched along one wall. Adder entered something on his tablet, and the screen became clear, giving a glimpse into what was happening behind the wall.
The male doctor was practically carrying Kali as her feet failed to find purchase.
“You can see her, but that’s it,” Adder pointed out. “For her, it’s a mirror.”
Once we reached the end of the passage, he paused by another white door and entered a code into a keypad. “This is the observation room.”
Reluctantly, I followed him inside. Like the others, this space too had one wall made out of glass, which Adder immediately turned transparent.
One look was enough for the dread slumbering in my gut to explode.
On the other side of the barrier, six men from the broadcast lounged on the cream suede couches. The amber-colored liquid in their glasses sloshed as they raised them in a toast and sipped on what probably cost more than what a black-banded citizen made in their lifetime.
“Those are my colleagues,” the Head of Ardaton explained. “Our government.”
The six Heads who led the half a dozen divisions that owned and controlled everything in the city, from shops to service points to hospitals to apartment buildings.
Playing with his tablet, Adder murmured, “Let me see if I can— Oh, here it is.”
The static settled, and the voices from the dripping-in-opulence room flowed in through the speakers.
“Will Gedeon agree? That’s the question we should be asking ourselves.” The youngest man of all, of a similar age to mine, rested his elbow on the couch’s armrest, the sleeve of his black button-up shirt rolled to his elbow. “Or will we have to fight on two fronts? Their…compoundsand Coriattus? Our resources are highly limited. It won’t be a feat easily achieved.”
So he was probably their Head of Military.
“That’s why we don’t allow the Matches to raise their children. There isn’t much a man wouldn’t do for his family.” The oldest, boasting a sun-spotted complexion and graying hair, refilled his glass from one of countless crystal decanters lining the bar. “But once he learns what we plan to do to his partners, he’ll do whatever we want to?—”
A black door retracting into the wall cut off whoever had been speaking. Without stepping over the threshold, the male doctor shoved Kali inside.
As she collided with the floor, so did my palm with the glass. Her whimper accompanied the sparks of ache radiating in my hand.
“Ah, finally. Our doll has arrived.” Looking straight where Ardaton's ruler stood beside me behind the glass, a middle-aged blond nodded. “Thank you, Adder.”
“What have you done?” I growled at the City Head.
He clapped my shoulder. “I gave you the motivation you lacked.” His footfalls quietened as he strode toward the exit. “We’ll talk more in an hour,” he said before closing the door and leaving me alone.
The lock beeped as it engaged, caging me inside the observation room, as Adder had called it.
