Part 30 (1/2)

Chapter Three.

Leah wasn't sure what was worse, sitting alone in her cell and wondering what the army had planned for her, or knowing John was only a few feet away yet totally unavailable to her.

Either way, her depression and loneliness had her on the verge of tears. They were also making it impossible to sleep, despite the fact that someone had turned the lights off hours ago.

Of course, I slept half the day away, if not more than that, came the bitter thought, thanks to their drugging me.

Wait...

The drugs in the air had made her tired and sleepy, so sleepy she couldn't even muster the energy to use her Powers.

So why wasn't she sleepy now?

They've lowered the dose. The only question is, do they just do it at night, or did they decide they need me more awake?

The latter made more sense. If they wanted her to Cure something-or Kill something-she'd have to be alert. They already knew that if she was half-asleep she didn't pose a threat.

I still don't feel right, though. Her legs and arms seemed to weigh twice as much as they should. And while normally she'd have been full of pent-up energy and pacing her cell, the thought of making the effort to get off the cot seemed too much of a strain.

So they're still dosing me with something, just not as much. But my brain's working a thousand times better. That means my Powers should be too.

And that meant someone was in for a surprise tomorrow.

Captain Green showed up with coffee, donuts and a hard look behind his mask. The moment he entered the cell, he spoke to her in a loud voice.

And it turned out Leah was the one to get surprised.

”Ms. DeGarmo. Please don't try anything like you did yesterday. There are people watching us right now, and if you make any attempt to harm me, your friend John will suffer the consequences.”

He stood by the door, waiting on her response.

As tempted as she was to still go into full Death mode, Leah knew she'd been outmaneuvered.

”I won't do anything.”

It didn't help that the smell of the coffee and sight of the food had her stomach rumbling and her mouth salivating.

Food and love. That's all it takes to break someone, or at least me. Deprive them of food and love.

Feeling like a traitor to John and herself, she lowered herself into the same chair as the previous day and remained silent and motionless while Green approached her and set the tray down on the floor before taking the seat opposite her.

”Go ahead.” He motioned at the food. ”We've got a long day ahead of us, but if you cooperate, tonight you'll not only be eating dinner with your boyfriend, but sharing the same room.”

Leah frowned but refrained from speaking any of the comments that came to mind. She was well aware he was testing her, prodding her with veiled insults and threats disguised as friendly advice. ”If you cooperate” was another way of saying ”do as you're told or else”. And the offer to eat dinner and share a room with John was dangling bait, the same way a zookeeper would use a piece of meat to get an animal to follow instructions.

They consider me a guinea pig, a lab rat. They think they can tame me, train me to follow orders so I can get my reward at the end of the day. Well, I can play along for now. But sooner or later someone will slip up. And when they do, there will be h.e.l.l to pay.

Leah looked at Green and smiled as she took a bite of donut.

And that h.e.l.l will be me.

After she finished her coffee and donuts, Green called someone on his cell phone, and not two minutes later a woman in a white coat and a face mask like Green's had wheeled in a cart with two cages on it. One held a small mixed- breed with an unhealthy green glow surrounding it. Even without her Power, though, she'd have known it was sick. Its eyes were gla.s.sy, its tongue lolling and dry, and its fur l.u.s.terless. The other cage held a healthy, happy terrier pup.

”I think you know what to do,” Green said, as the tech left the cell. He pointed at the sick dog. ”It has late stage distemper.”

”I won't kill an innocent animal.” Leah crossed her arms and gave Green what she hoped was a defiant glare. Inside, she was worried. She'd promised to do what they asked in order to keep John safe, and now here she was refusing to cooperate before the first experiment even started.

But they wanted her to kill a puppy, and that went against everything she believed in.

”Ms. DeGarmo, you agreed-”

”I agreed to demonstrate what I can do, not kill healthy dogs for you. That's not how it works.”

”Don't bulls.h.i.+t me. I've read the reports. You take the sickness out of one animal and place it in another.”

”Your report isn't complete, then. After I Cure something or someone, I pa.s.s it on to an animal that I can't Cure because too many people know it's dying. I'm a doctor. You think I go around making healthy animals sick?”

Green's eyes narrowed. ”So what you're telling me is...?”

Leah let out a breath. ”What I'm telling you is that both animals have to be sick. One of them should be old and about to die anyhow, the kind of animal that if it suddenly appeared to get well people would be very suspicious. Understand?”

Green stared at her and she had a heart-stopping moment where she thought maybe she'd gone too far, been too sarcastic. Then he spoke into his phone again and asked for another animal to be brought to them.

That reminded Leah of one other thing.

”Wait! We'll also need something to put the dog down. Sodium pentobarbital, preferably.”

Green raised one eyebrow behind his mask.

”You want me to hand you a needle filled with poison?”

”You don't have to hand it to me. You can inject the dog yourself. But when I pa.s.s the disease to that other animal, it's going to feel a lot of pain, possibly for hours. I try to time it so that I pa.s.s it along right before the animal dies.”

”Fine.” He made another call and then hung up. ”Anything else?”

”No,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm.

During the five-minute wait, neither of them said anything.

The next animal to arrive was exactly what she'd asked for, and she remembered the old adage about being ”careful what you wished for, you might just get it”. Because it wasn't a dog.

The rhesus monkey was ancient, its gray fur balding in patches and its joints swollen to grotesque size by arthritis. Cataracts gave its eyes a bluish tint, reminding her uncomfortably of the way her own eyes looked when she transformed into her Death persona. It lay on its side, refusing to move even when she tapped on the cage door.

”Can we get on with it now?” Green asked, impatience giving his words an acid tone.