‘That statement,’ I say. ‘Put me on speakerphone. Here’s what it needs to say – and this is only for starters.’
41
HARPER
When I wake, everything feels … heavy. My head. My body. My magic.
My magic.
I lift my wrists – they’re beneath a thin blanket, I’m in a bed – and the handcuffs are gone. I can move my hands freely. But no power leaps to my fingertips. No sigil I shape springs to glowing life. Have they somehow already removed my Gift? Vivisected me while I slept, and cut it out?
I won’t believe it. Can’t let myself believe it, because otherwise I’d just curl into this bed and never rise again. Luka had clearly been in physical pain. Surely I’dknow?
There’s a large window covered by a mesh metal shutter, which tells me I’m not in a prison cell, at least. I lever myself up to go raise the shutter, but the minute I’m upright, I stagger beneath a disorienting pressure, like I’m on one of those simulated-zero-gravity flights when the plane pulls out of its floating arc, or on the deck of a sailing ship as it plunges into a wave’s trough. I grip the bedstead as I sway unsteadily. It could be concussion, but my whole body feels it. Running my hands all over myself confirms I’ve no obvious injuries. Yet something done to me, or something about this place, is seriously fucking me up.
The window shutter slots tight into a frame. It’s partblackout blind, part security grille – to stop me seeing and getting out, or to stop others looking and getting in? No amount of prising or pushing will shift it. Sodium light-bleed around the edge suggests night-time security flood-lamps outside. No noise reaches me, either from beyond the window or the other side of my door.
I rest against the wall, panting lightly beneath the strange and unaccustomed strain, heart protesting. I’m still dressed, though my shoes are gone. Now my eyes have adjusted to the thin, grey light I check the room. The bed I was in looks institutional – it’s fixed to the floor – but is too comfortable for this institution to be a criminal one. There’s no desk or other large furniture, only an armchair, low and heavy, and a narrow cupboard with a railed top section and shelving below, as if the room’s occupants are expected to stay, but only for a short while. There are plenty of plug sockets. A wall bracket for a television that hasn’t been installed yet. A small sink with paper towel dispenser, and on the side a plastic tumbler and two large bottles of antibacterial handwash and sanitiser.
Then I see it. At eye-height with the sink. What I’d imagined was a dado rail running around the middle of the wall is a wide strip of the same material that Michael Whitman shackled me with.
Fuck. There’s no mistaking what it’s for – and what its presence in this room means. It’s deadening my magic.
Whatisthis place? The vibes are part hospital, part budget hotel, yet everything has a rubber-and-antiseptic smell of newness. Have I been locked up in a private pysch ward, like the heroine of a Victorian thriller? Where’s my long white gown?
I’ve not wanted to try the door, lest it alert anyone outside that I’m conscious and roaming, but there’s no other way outand no more information I can glean from my surroundings. I press the handle stealthily at first. There’s no lock or keyhole. But it’s like the handle on the outside of a hotel door: just an unresponsive mechanism that moves uselessly in my hand. I slam it up and down a few more times, increasingly aggressive, but I’d bet nothing’s visible on the other side.
My stomach growls – loud enough that I fancy anyone outside would hear it. And I guess that’s a good enough pretext.
‘Open up!’ I shout, hammering on the door. ‘I’m hungry and I need to pee. Constitutional right to fair treatment during detention!’
I made that bit up. But I do have a constitutional right to a bunch of other things I’ve been denied. A lawyer. A phone call to relatives.
Mom. Dad. Surely they both know what’s happened to me by now? Maggie Knight was there when I was taken away.
The door opens. A young woman in pyjamas, her eyes sleepy crescents behind chunky glasses, looks over the shoulder of the person who did the unlocking, a security guy so wide he fills the frame like a door made of meat.
‘Can we help?’ the woman asks.
‘I’d like to leave.’
‘Sorry, it’s night-time. There’s no one authorised to evaluate you for discharge.’
Discharge. Evaluate. Definitely medical. And what I’d thought were pyjamas I see now are bamboo-green hospital scrubs.
‘Where am I?’
‘It’s natural you are feeling confused and disoriented.’ She pushes up her glasses, revealing she’s a trifle cross-eyed. Under other circumstances the effect would be adorable, but right now all I can think is that she’s not going to let me just walk out of here, and how badly could it go wrong if I tryand force my way past her. ‘Don’t worry and please try to sleep. You will be fully briefed in the morning.’
‘I’ve already been asleep for hours,’ I say. ‘Because I was drugged and brought here unconscious. Is that how people usually arrive?’
‘Everything will be explained in the morning,’ she repeats, stepping back. ‘Koa, please?’
The guard nods and reaches for the key card around his neck. Desperately, I throw myself against him. Knocking the guy even slightly off balance might create an opening. But the meat-door of his broad chest doesn’t budge even an inch.
‘Easy’, he murmurs, one massive hand gently pushing me inside like a farmer would an unruly lamb trying its small strength against the pen.
‘Breakfast will be brought at eight,’ the woman adds. ‘Only a few more hours. And there is a pan beneath your bed.’
