Undone

She bared her teeth at me—I would not call it a smile—and kicked the bundle toward me. “Dress,” she said. “Unless you prefer to stay naked. I don’t really care.”

She left, taking my clothing, and the vaultlike door closed behind her. I crouched and picked up the bundle. Unrolled, it contained a paper-thin jumpsuit of brilliant yellow, the color of reflective paint, and a plain pair of cotton underwear. No brassiere, but my body was lean enough that it wasn’t an important omission. There were socks, and a pair of flimsy shoes with the word PRISONER printed on the bottoms.

I would have manifested my own clothing, if I’d had power, but I didn’t, and I was cold. The vault had a chill to it, like a cave. Or a crypt. I imagined them sealing the room and walking away, leaving me to starve alone. A Dji

A human would find it fatal.

The clothing didn’t warm me much, but it made me feel less vulnerable—I supposed I had overestimated how much my human body had influenced me along those lines. A human of this time, this culture, needed coverings to feel safe.

As I unrolled the mattress, I found a folded thin blanket and a small pillow. The blanket I wrapped around me as I paced the room. I could sense Luis’s presence, dim and indistinct, on the other side of the wall. If I could touch him . . .

But they had gone to great lengths to be sure I couldn’t.

I pressed my hands to the wall, then my forehead. I could feel him there, possibly even making the same attempt at contact.

My eardrums fluttered, and then I heard his voice, in startlingly clear stereo. Cassiel?

“Here,” I said. I didn’t know if he could hear me, but I supposed he could. He had, even on the road. “Are you all right?”

That bitch Warden keeps filling me full of drugs, he said. He sounded angry and unfocused. Can’t keep myself straight. Withdrawal’s going to be a bitch. You?

“She left me weak,” I said. “I don’t think she found it necessary to drug me.” If I could find a way to touch Luis, she’d regret that, at length. “What do you know about these people?”

Nothing, except they’ve got a pet Earth Warden and some mad building skills. Luis’s voice turned dark. They have Ibby. They told me they’d hurt her if I tried anything.

Yes, the Earth Warden would definitely have time to regret her actions. “I found C. T. Styles,” I said. “Rather, he found me.” I explained about the ambush and the odd way the children acted. “I don’t believe they are themselves. I think someone is controlling them. Using them.”

Why kidnap kids just to run them around like guard dogs? I’m pretty sure there’s not a Doberman shortage.

Something the Earth Warden said returned to me. “Rejects,” I said. “They’re rejects.”

Rejects from what?

I didn’t know. I suspected that was the question on which so much hinged, including our lives.

Although he tried, Luis lost focus, and our contact dissolved in eardrum-splitting shrieks and growls of out-of-control vibrations. I stilled it hastily, but I continued to lean against the wall, and I thought that on the other side of the concrete, so did he.

“I don’t know if you can still hear me,” I said, “but if you can, save your strength. I will do the same.”

Practicality dictated that I curl up on the lumpy, uncomfortable mattress and sleep to conserve as much energy as possible.

I dreamed of Isabel, alone in the woods, and a bear.

When I woke, there was a tray being shoved through a slot at the bottom of my vault door. The food did not look appetizing, but that hardly mattered; it wasn’t food I craved.

I rolled out of bed, crawled to the slot, and seized the wrist of the man who was pushing the tray inside. He gave a startled yelp that turned to a harsh scream as I attempted to pull power from him.

He was merely human. I got only the lightest tingle of power, not even enough to fuel a single continuing breath, and then he broke my grasp and was gone.

I ate the contents of the meal tray slowly, with great concentration. It would help, but without an infusion of power from a Warden, soon, I would be in real trouble. Unlike a natural human body, mine was not self-sustaining. The equations did not balance, and energy leaked away with every beat of my heart.

All the proteins and carbohydrates on the tray couldn’t stop that drain.

Half the day passed in silence. I tried to contact Luis, but he didn’t—or couldn’t—respond. They might have drugged him even more, to silence him. I still sensed his presence, so I did not think they had removed or killed him.

I grew all too familiar with the confining, featureless space of my cell. Six steps across. Nine steps deep. The ceilings were twice my height, the light fixtures inaccessible behind reinforced panels. There were no windows, only a narrow opening in the door and the slot at the bottom through which the trays came.

Both were bolted shut, with massive vault locks, and I could not summon up enough power to matter against that.

I called on Dji

I was alone.

My captors allowed me to wait for two more days, in silence, in growing desperation, before the vault door finally opened, and I was put in heavy chains and taken outside, so weak I could hardly walk.

It was daylight, dazzling bright, and I squeezed my eyes closed against the glare as the soldiers prodded me along. I sensed no Warden abilities in any of them. If I had, I wasn’t certain I could have stopped myself from attacking them out of hunger, and that certainly would have ended my fragile human life; the soldiers were deadly serious in their guard duties, and would not have hesitated to shoot.

It was odd even by human standards. There were many people out in the streets—talking, walking to or from some unknown destination. All the rainbow colors of humanity, some dressed in military fatigues, some in simple human dress from a variety of countries. From the park in the central part of the compound came the shrieking laughter of children at play.

No one cast a look toward me, garishly costumed in brilliant yellow, chained, surrounded by armed guards. It was as if I didn’t exist at all. I wondered for a few moments if they had placed some sort of Dji

“Move,” my guard said, and guided me up the street.

“I want to see Luis Rocha.”

“People in hell want air-conditioning,” he said, which seemed completely off the topic I had proposed. “You’ve got a meeting already.”

As we came nearer to the main building, the one next to the park, I realized how much larger it was than the others. There were organic lines to the flow of the building’s long curves. Where everything else formed squares and angles, this building seemed more grown than constructed, and the material seemed more like mother-of-pearl and bone than wood and stucco.

A Dji