Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
He should be on his knees, begging for my mercy. Instead he is lurking about my bedside looking surprisingly guilty. Or something. It is hard to tell precisely what emotion grips him. I imagine he is furious with those who shot at me and almost ruined his fun before it began. They have already taken the torturous wind out of his sails. Now I am riddled with wounds and absolutely soaked in painkillers. I am drugged and broken, and now if he does anything he wants to do to me it will be no fun at all.
“You know this was inevitable, don’t you. I cannot be contained, Starlight. You’re not just going to hurt me. You’re going to kill me. This brutal prison is barely survivable by simple humans. The notion of such a location is…”
“You’re going to be just fine,” he cuts in. “Mouthy as hell, aren’t you.”
When you spend thirty days locked away in a human-sized travel crate, you host a lot of arguments in your mind. You have a lot of time to refine exactly what you would say to your enemy and precisely how you would say it. But it’s not working out the way I planned, so I fall silent and choose to ignore him. If he is so rude as to interrupt me, he will not be given the benefit of my attention.
“How are you feeling?”
I turn my attention to the doctor who has just entered the room. His pass declares him to be called Doctor Champion. What a name.
“Well, thank you. How are you?”
“You were shot several times with arrows,” he says.
“Highly illegal conduct, may I add,” I point out. “Nothing about this is legal, though, is it? Abducting people, illegally repatriating them, then proceeding to imprison them. When this is exposed, you’ll all be considered co-conspirators. You’ll find yourselves on the other side of the bars sooner rather than later.”
“Feeling well enough to threaten me, that’s good,” Champ smiles.
He’s quite charming, the archetypal blue-eyed, blond-haired All-American doctor boy. I wonder what he did to end up working in a place like this. It’s not exactly a reputable facility. Everybody here is flawed somehow. They’d have to be.
“What medical school did you flunk out of? Or what hospital were you barred from?”
“And sassy,” he adds.
“Real livewire,” Starlight comments dourly. He’s giving me a steely look. Doesn’t care for my attitude. I couldn’t give less of a damn. Whatever painkillers they’ve given me are now working. Maybe a little too well. I feel a little lightheaded and a lot silly.
“I’m being imprisoned against my will, and against the Geneva convention.”
“That’s for prisoners of war.”
“I’m going to get Amnesty International to do a letter writing campaign. I’m going to tell the internet about this secret prison in the desert, and they’re going to come and storm it.”
Starlight
She’s cute when she’s loopy. It’s actually hard to tell with Katie. At first she just seemed like her usual strident and opinionated self. Now it’s more apparent that she is quite high. I shouldn’t be surprised she gives lectures when she’s sedated. Katie is used to being in control. She’s a powerful woman and would be whether she had angelic blood or not. There’s not a submissive bone in her body, which is why I will enjoy making her bend for me. Perhaps even break for me. But I am the one who will do the breaking. Not the chumps on my payroll, the alleged highly-trained guards whose first instinct was to shoot to kill.
“You’re going to suffer, Starlight,” she says. “I’m going to put you in a matchbox for sixty days.”
She’s clearly still bitter about the transport conditions. They couldn’t be helped. She had to be fully and properly contained. Transporting someone with the ability to sprout wings and fly away takes a certain amount of care. I took a lot of care. And I wanted to humble Katie. I wanted to show her what I was capable of in hopes she might show some gratitude for later kindnesses.
“We’ll keep the meds up,” Champ says. “They seem to be working.”
He’s enjoying this too much. I have cultivated an air of authority and menace over the years. It really only takes one mouthy brat getting away with sass to start eroding that reputation.
“Drop the meds. It won’t hurt her to be in more pain.”
“It will, actually. That is somewhat the definition…”
“Lower her meds. I want her to feel the discomfort associated with trying to escape. She’s hurt. She should know that.”
Champ turns to me, holding the clipboard with an air of what I am sure he imagines is authority. “I’ve given her an appropriate amount of pain relief. She’s been through surgery. You’ll have to save your sadism for when I discharge her.”
I stand up. I am significantly taller, broader, and infinitely more bad-tempered than the doctor. I glower down at him, while Katie giggles in bed. She is enjoying the tension in the room, as her rebellion starts to spread, her angelic presence and influence are presenting danger.