Stormwielder (The Sword of Light Trilogy Book 1), page 28
As her eyes caught on mine she looked away. I thought I saw a flash of anger in their crystal depths, as though I were the reason she was here – wherever here was.
The silence stretched out, the whispers of the other voices forgotten. Every so often her eyes would flick back in my direction, as though I might have vanished. Then, seeing I was still there and had not in fact vanished, they would return to staring at those grey concrete walls.
Finally I released a long breath and opened my mouth, ready to ask the questions racing around my head, but no sound came out. I paused, mouth open, trying to form something… words.
But whatever those were, my ability to make them had apparently been forgotten. Swallowing, I closed my mouth, frustration growing, and looked around to examine the room in which I found myself.
Prison.
The word came immediately to my mind, without doubt or hesitation, and I knew it was true. The ceiling, the floor, and three of the walls were solid concrete without doors or windows, empty of all adornment. But it was the fourth wall that gave the truth away, that revealed my predicament.
The fourth wall was not made of concrete or plaster or even wood, but thick steel bars. Their cold, grey metal ran from floor to ceiling, interspersed every few feet by cross-bars locking them in place.
Outside was a wide, empty corridor lined by the steel bars of other prison cells, the pale faces of their occupants staring out, the confusion and anger plain in their eyes.
What the hell am I doing here?
“What?” I jumped as the word – and suddenly I knew what words were – croaked from my throat.
“We don’t know,” a whisper came from across the cell and I turned to stare at the girl.
She sat on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest. Its bleached white sheets had been twisted into a ball and she had tucked the pillow behind her, allowing her to lean back on the wall.
My mouth gaped as I struggled to find another word, but mind whirring in desperate search for some answer in the black box that was my mind.
Nothing.
“All we know is, we’re trapped,” she paused, wiping a tear from her eye and drawing in a breath. When she continued, her voice was steady. “It’s been hours since I woke. Longer for some of the others,” she tried to smile. “Be patient, the words will come.”
I nodded, the gears of my mind grinding slowly within. I cast another glance around the room, spying a stainless-steel toilet in the corner.
When my eyes returned to the girl, another word had come to me. “Name?” I croaked.
She shrugged, her eyes downcast. “We don’t know,” breathing out, she reached down and pulled up the sleeve of her shirt and held out her wrist. “There’s only this.”
I looked down at the pale underside of her arm and swallowed hard. Black lines formed a small rectangle on her skin just below her palm. The thickness of the lines varied from thin slivers to thick splotches. Around the mark her flesh radiated a painful red.
Tattoo, bar code.
Even as the words slivered into my thoughts I began to feel a throb from my own arm, and I knew.
Tugging up my own sleeve, I stared at my mark, at my bar code. They had marked us, whoever had put us here, branded us as though we were no more than a box of granola in the grocery store.
Staring at my barcode I noticed a number had been printed beneath the lines.
One hundred, I read the number in my thoughts, unsure of its significance. Then I glanced at the girl, and saw she had been branded ninety-nine.
“Ninety-nine?” I whispered, the words turning from thought to sound without the chance for conscious intervention.
The girl shrugged, her eyes flicking to the mark and back to me. “I guess so…” she bit her lip, as though struggling to expand on the thought. “Do you remember?” she asked at last.
“Remember what?”
“Anything?” her response came out as a hiss, almost a shriek, and I saw again the fear in her eyes.
“No,” I shivered, my thoughts still whirring, trying to piece together the mystery in which we found ourselves.
The silence stretched out between us, though the dull whisper of the other prisoners continued unabated. I stared down at the floor, studying the cobweb of cracks crisscrossing the concrete surface.
What am I doing here?
The question echoed through my mind, repeating itself again and again like the words of a song. But I could find no answer amongst the cracks in the concrete or the walls of my cell, not even in the eyes of the girl opposite me.
I wasn’t even sure if it was the right question to be asking. After all, there was another question still begging to be answered.
Who am I?
I shivered, rubbing my hands against my shoulders for warmth. Wherever we were, whoever I was, it didn’t seem like answers would be forthcoming anytime soon. And whoever had put us here had not put much thought into our comfort. The frigid air ate at my lungs and the beds on which we sat were little more than slabs, the mattresses thin and hard.
Eventually I could not sit still any longer. Forcing the cold from my limbs and pushed my legs beneath me and climbed to my feet. Cartilage cracked in my knees and shoulders as I stood, stretching my arms as though it were the first time in forever. As far as I knew, it could have been.
Shivering, I turned and moved towards the bars and the corridor outside. The cell was tiny and it only took three steps to reach the bars. Leaning my head against the cold steel, I looked out at what, for all I knew, could have been the entire world.
The corridor stretched out to my left and right for as far as I could see. Of course, under the circumstances, that wasn’t actually all that far. The view from my cell limited my vision to about ten cells in either direction, and I could only see those on the opposite side of the corridor.
Still, presuming our side of the prison matched the other, that meant there were at least forty cells attached to the corridor. And in those cells, I could see faces of my fellow inmates. A melting pot of humanity stared back at me – the young and old, male and female, dark and light and every colour in between. And in the faces of every one, fear.
I jumped as a siren suddenly began to shriek and red lights flashed on the ceiling. Screams broke out amongst the other prisoners as they retreated from the bars, their hands raised to cover their ears.
I stumbled backwards, the high pitch screech stabbing through my head like a knife. I slapped my hands over my ears but it made no difference. The sound seemed to pierce right to my core, stealing away my strength, sending my fleeting conscious back down into the darkness.
When the noise finally ceased, I was little more than a curled-up ball of flesh on the floor of my cell.
I don’t know how long it took me to recover. When I finally staggered back to my feet my head ached with a throbbing pain, an agony that started in my neck and bored into my skull like a red-hot poker. My vision spun and my stomach swirled, forcing me to place a hand on my bed for support.
When my vision finally settled, I drew in a deep breath and glanced at my cellmate. She was already on her feet, her eyes wide at staring at me.
I stared back, blinking in the bright light, my pain racked mind struggling to find a word.
“What?” I managed at last.
“It’s open,” she whispered back.
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Aaron Hodges, Stormwielder (The Sword of Light Trilogy Book 1)
