When I woke up in the basement, I thought these monsters would kill me. But despite them pressing me for information, they'd given me pleasure, care, and now I was falling asleep in a soft, silken bed instead of chained to the wall.
I didn't know what to think of any of it, but exhaustion caught up to me all at once, and what I thought didn't matter. I fell asleep with a monster's arm holding me close, his soft breath fanning over my neck, and a strange but welcome sense of safety wrapped around me like a second blanket.
11
I'd been alone for twenty-six days. My hutch was so cold I shook, the ice burying in my bones, but nothing was as bad as the memory of my last kill. He hadn't looked like a monster, hadn't had writhing tentacles coming from his waist or huge, bull horns on his green head. He'd been a man, dark skinned and ordinary. When I'd hesitated to draw up my magic, to dissolve him into a puddle of gore and goop, the sharp electric spike of a cattle prod met the small of my back and I crashed to my knees with a scream.
When it burned through me twice more, I used its pain to pull up my power, lighting the small room in pink, and sent it slamming into the man's shoulder.
"Thirty years," I whispered, because hearing my own voice was better than silence. "Thirty years of killing monsters, but this time could break me."
"Hey," a soft male voice came from the hutch next to mine, and I jumped hard.
I spoke to myself all the time and nobody else ever spoke. Ever.
"Leave me alone," I breathed, wrapping my arms around my knees and pressing them to my chest. The bed under me was hard and scratchy, but I debated getting under the blanket just to hide from whoever was speaking to me.
He must have been new, or he'd have known that we weren't allowed to talk to each other from our hutches—only when we were supervised by the keepers in the rec room. If he kept speaking to me, we'd both be shocked by a keeper's cattle prod. I just hoped it wasn't my keeper; some only pressed the metal tip long enough for pain to shock through our ribs. My keeper kept it in place, ensuring it hurt far, far longer.
"What's your name?" the man asked again, his voice feather-soft. "I'm Vann."
"We're not allowed to talk," I hissed, pressing my face against my knees, distracted for the moment from the gruesome memory of the man I killed. The monster, or so the keepers had told me.
"No worries," he replied, and I let out a slow breath, glad he was leaving me alone. Until he said, "I'll just sing then. I bet there's no rules against singing."
There weren't … but it still seemed forbidden. This man obviously hadn't been here long enough to become scared of the shocks, the prods, the keepers.
He'd learn soon enough.
"How long have you been here?" he asked in a low melody. "I got grabbed a week ago, and the bastards slammed me in a holding cell before they finally locked me in this cage."
"Hutch," I corrected quietly, my heart hammering faster. It felt so wrong to speak, but I needed the distraction. Badly. "We call it the hutch."
"Because that's not creepy at all. What are we, guinea pigs?"
I snorted. He had no idea. I bet they hadn't sent him down to the lab yet; he hadn't met the doctor who never spoke but stared constantly, scrutinising and waiting for a reaction he could write on his tablet. I never really knew what they did to us in the lab while we were put to sleep, never knew what the doctor was waiting for, but I'd watched him tap countless notes into my file, and it made me nervous.
I'd rather face a hundred keepers than go down to the lab again.
I didn't reply to the man—Vann. He'd realise what it was like here soon enough.
"Seriously," he said, dropping the song from his voice. "How long have you been here?"
"Since always," I whispered, and rolled onto my side, staring at the dark concrete of the wall. At the bottom of the bed, the room was open to thick, steel bars. The keepers would be by soon to make sure we were behaving. "I'm done talking."
"Always?" he demanded. "How long is always? Hey? Talk to me! How long is always?"
I wanted to take pity on him and reply, but I'd done that before, and I still remembered the girl's screams. She was too young; the shock stopped her heart. Her silence was almost as loud as her screams had been, and it stayed with me far longer.
This man would thank me for ignoring him. If he stayed here long enough to know what it was like. If he wasn't one of the weapons who misbehaved and were gotten rid of.
"You didn't even tell me your name," he said, sounding closer to the solid wall between us.
It would be months before I did, before I told him how long I'd been here, before he swore to stay by my side and keep me safe.
He'd kept his promise to the end, and sealed it in blood and violence. His locket was all I had left of my only friend.
12