Page 58 of A Soul’s Awakening

“Oh, I already have a plan for that.” His cold smirk sent a shiver down my spine.

“What would you like me to do with him?” Mandy asked. Despite the amount of magic she must have been using to contain me, it didn’t seem to phase her one bit.

“Keep experimenting on his magic.” Alistair flicked a dismissive hand at Peter as he turned to leave. “Gather any information you can get while we prepare for the final test. We’ll need it for what’s next.”

The room felt colder once Alistair disappeared.

“Shall we try poison next?” Peter was already rifling through a cabinet of glass jars. “Or maybe we should cut off some fingers. Can you regenerate limbs?”

The chains continued to siphon my magic as Peter kept increasing the pain threshold to make me exert it. For hours, I swallowed poisons that turned my veins to fire, erupting in my bloodstream like liquid shrapnel. My muscles seized, my back arched against the chains. And yet, my death magic surged to neutralize it as the chains drank it all in.

When poison was no longer enough, Peter turned to trauma. He brought out a basin of black water. It looked harmless until Peter touched a rune and the surface rippled unnaturally, vibrating with a low, hungry energy.

“Submersion test,” he said simply as he pushed the basin into the array. Mandy forced me to kneel beside the basin, then without warning, the chains yanked my arms outward while the other coiled around my neck, dragging my face down. My mouth broke the surface first.

The black liquid flooded in, thick, invasive, crawling down my throat and into my lungs like it was alive. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cough. It filled me completely, cold and suffocating. Each passing second without air had my heart pounding faster inside my chest until my magic erupted, a violent pulse blasting outward and vaporizing the liquid from my lungs in a burst of scalding steam. I collapsed to the side, choking on air that burned just as badly.

“It’s adapting,” Mandy surmised. I had long lost the ability to control my own magic. Whatever was happening now was the will of my magic trying to keep me alive.

“That’s good,” Peter responded. “It means we’re getting closer.”

Closer to what? I didn’t know anymore.

All I knew was that every time the magic flared to keep me breathing, it felt like it was burning itself away to do it. And beneath the exhaustion, beneath the pain, a deeper horror settled in.

If they drained enough of it … Would there be anything left of me when they were done?

26

For two entire weeks, the experiments continued. They scorched my skin, stabbed me with sharp objects, and used me as a test subject to see how I reacted to the other violent types of magic. I was the perfect test subject. Each time I endured, but not without a hefty cost. My death magic, even enhanced by the magic Caspian gave me, could only do so much. At this point, it was being pushed to its limit, barely able to keep me alive let alone heal my injuries.

I lay back on the narrow cot shoved against the wall of my storage closet. It was hardly wide enough to stretch out on, the mattress thin and unforgiving, springs pressing through the padding like dull teeth. The space was cramped and windowless, the air stale and faintly metallic from the pipes overhead. Still, it was the only place in this building where no one watched me. The only place that felt remotely like shelter.

The concrete walls leeched heat from my skin, seeping through the thin fabric of my shirt. Bandages had been wrapped around nearly every inch of my body. Layer upon layer of gauze bound my arms, my ribs, my thighs. My dislocated shoulder joint had been popped back into place, my wrist splinted, my torso bandaged so thoroughly that even shifting an inch tugged at half-healed skin beneath the dressings. The fabric scratched when I moved. Dried blood had stiffened parts of it, pulling uncomfortably at scabbed wounds. Given the number of injuries I had, I wasn’t even allowed to properly shower, resorting to Mandy having to wipe me down with a cloth each night before bed.

The smell was suffocating. Antiseptic. Herbal salves. Burn ointment. Something sharp and medical failed to mask the metallic tang of blood.

The scent clung to me, soaking into the gauze and my hair along with the thin pillow beneath my head. I could almost taste it at the back of my throat. Every inhale reminded me how wrecked my body was beneath the wrappings.

How much longer could I go on like this? Was Ren going to come save me?

The original plan had fallen to pieces. I may have succeeded in returning the phantoms back to the Nether, but the core problem, fixing the veil, was still a threat. Alex couldn’t do it alone, and I was in no condition to help, trapped here under the Syndicate’s surveillance.

Alistair kept telling me this was only the beginning, and I cringed at how this could possibly get any worse. The technicians were planning something even bigger, evidence of the massive array I caught glimpses of every time they dragged me half-conscious back to my room at the end of the day. Another version of Caspian’s array, although this time, it sounded like they had planned to use it for its original purpose: to search for someone or something.

A soft knock came from the other side of the door. “Theo?” Mandy’s voice was gentle as ever, but I knew now that she was just as deceptive as the others. “I have your breakfast. It’s time to start your day.”

The cot creaked when I shifted, and pain flared throughout my entire body as I sat at the edge of the bed. “Give me a minute.” My voice was dry and scratchy, not from lack of water but from the invasive poisons that had burned away my insides.

Mandy had left me with a new set of clothes when she’d locked me in the room last night, but I couldn’t be bothered to change. It hurt to raise my hands over my head, to lift my legs into a pair of pants, so I stayed in the bloodied, ripped sweatpants and t-shirt I was in.

When Mandy entered the room, her face paled as she set down the tray of food and sat beside me. “You poor thing. Let me help.”

I would have slapped her hand away if I had the energy to do it. So I let her remove my shirt, wipe me down with a damp cloth, and reapply some bandages that had been soaked through with blood.

“Eat this.” She handed me a bowl. “It’s oatmeal. I know your throat hurts, so I thinned it out and let it cool for a while. I mixed in some medicine too.”

Maybe it was my own fault for always looking for the best in people, but I'd convinced myself there was compassion buried somewhere inside her. That beneath all the lies and manipulation, there was still a part of her capable of caring about someone other than herself.