Chapter 28
I heard myself groan and turned over. My skin stuck to something and I bolted upright when I realized I was untied, but then my head hit metal and my exploring hands and feet felt the confines of a box. I was inside a box with a grated door just big enough in which to squat. I could speak too, but my words made no sense and I couldn't call the coin forth. My chest hurt.
My fingers found the 4 x 4 pad on the right side of my breast up near the shoulder and under it a raised chunk of something hard. There were stitches. It felt suspiciously like a pacemaker.
I banged on the grate and kicked my feet. The only thing I noticed was that the cage merely shivered. I was hot, sweaty and naked. No toilet arrangements in this box and no more catheters stuck in my dick. I had no idea where I was or how long it'd been since I'd seen the Colonel. I wished him to hell, tried to speak the words to call the Seillach and a burning sensation started in my chest under the breastbone, traveled down my arm and made me nauseous. The moment I stopped trying to speak, the pain went away. I thought I was having a heart attack.
I reached instead for a string, and when nothing happened, gently tugged the silken cord until I felt a response. Capt. Kiannyn knew it was a summons and I hoped he could find his way to me. He was my one hope of rescue. I tried to touch others, but could not grasp them firmly. I'd felt the strings tingle, knew my cousin and friends were searching and hoped they'd reach my side.
Someone rattled my cage. The Colonel's face peered in and unlatched the door to haul me out where I fell to the floor of the lab and was not surprised to see other cages with animals confined within. There were science geeks standing around observing me.
"What did you get?" Brightarm asked.
"Brain waves peaked. Some kind of high-end Alpha and electrical energy like nothing I've ever seen before," one answered. It was a woman's voice. "Can you make the subject do it again?"
"Oh, I doubt that," the Colonel grinned, wolfishly "It's paired with a pain response, the beginning of a heart attack. We don't want him turning this lab into a bomb crater now, do we?
The device is how we control him."
"Does he speak? Understand English?"
"Of course. We have his vocal cords paralyzed, so he can't speak. If he speaks, he can access the power and we'll lose him. Not to mention, he'll kill us."
She looked startled, but then offered me a hand up. I covered up my privates and blushed a deep red that I felt all the way to my toes. She tugged at a lab coat hanging on a nail and covered me with it while the Colonel watched with amused eyes. "He's not going to be here long enough to get attached to, Dr. Joyce. I wouldn‘t worry about his feelings or sensitivities," he sneered. She gave him a look and turned to me as she pivoted me into a wheelchair. With restraints.
"What's your name?"
I tried to answer, and all that came out was a garbled grunt; the tube down my nose irritated the back of my throat and made me want to gag.
"I told you. His voice is paralyzed. His name is James, Jadewyn James."
"I don't need you for my tests, Colonel," she snapped. "You can leave the lab and the test subjects to me."
"Sorry, doctor. He‘s not to be left unsupervised or without guards."
"I‘m a black belt, Colonel; I think I can handle a skinny fifteen-year-old boy."
"He shrugged. "Jade, there are armed men outside these doors, and the lab is equipped with gas should we have to knock you out. You‘ re twenty stories underground. If you even make it outside this lab. They have orders to shoot to kill. Understand?"
I called him a fuck head and although the words didn‘t leave my mouth, he understood.
He left me with her and the other lab geeks. The experience wasn‘t much better than others were; I had blood tests, skin tests, electricity run through me and stuff just this side of torture. I‘m sure most of it wasn‘t legal. By the time they were done with me, I was nearly shell-shocked, my broken arm was hurting and I had a hard time keeping tears of pain and self-pity from messing up my face.
I‘d have thought the lady doctor had felt some compassion for me but it turned out she just had a hard on for the Colonel, and was using me to piss him off. They got through with me and put me back in the box only now it let me stretch out and sleep. I curled up around my hurts, tucked my cast arm into my stomach and rocked myself to sleep.