Silver Shadows

CHAPTER 15 Sydney

TIME WOULDN’T ALLOW ME to charm all the syringes at once, seeing as I could only do it in my rare moments of privacy. I managed five at first and distributed them to Emma and the select few Emma thought we could trust.

I felt emboldened after Adrian had told me he’d gotten Keith’s address from Carly, and I couldn’t wait to talk to him tonight about further progress. Knowing he and Marcus were advancing toward their goals drove home the importance of dealing with the “emergency protocol” situation as soon as possible. Equally pressing was knowing I would make the most progress if my stolen ID card was still working. For all I knew, once that guy reported he’d lost it, the Alchemists would disable it, and sabotaging an entire system was going to be difficult if I couldn’t even use the elevator. I needed to act fast.

Emma was impressed to hear I’d been in the operations room but had little help to offer with the larger problem. “The gas controls weren’t there?”

“The controls were,” I said. “Including the power to render us all unconscious at once, anytime and anyplace. But I need access to its more basic parts—like where the gas comes from in the first place. How it gets into those pipes in the ventilation system.”

She shook her head, looking legitimately sorry she couldn’t help. “I have no idea. I don’t know anyone who would.”

I did, and I brought it up with Duncan later in art class. Whereas Emma had been perplexed by my inquiries, Duncan was shocked. “No, Sydney, stop. This is crazy. Bad enough you disabled it in your room! The entire floor? That’s madness.”

We were still working on clay bowls, our assignment now being to make a set of identical ones, which went right along with the Alchemist ideology of conformity. “What’s madness is that with a push of a button, they can knock us all out within seconds.”

“So?” he asked. “They’d only do that if there was a revolt or something. No one’s that stupid.” When I said nothing, his eyes widened. “Sydney!”

“What, are you saying you want to stay here forever?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “Just play the game, and you can get out. It’s a lot easier and a lot less trouble than staging some ill-fated prank.”

“Get out like you did?” My retort made him flinch, but I only felt a little bad.

“I would if I could,” he muttered.

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “You’ve been here so long, you should know the game better than anyone else. You should be able to say and do exactly what it takes to get your walking papers, but instead, you do exactly what it takes to stay put! You’re afraid to act.”

The first glint of anger I’d ever seen in him flashed in his eyes. “To act on what? What is it exactly you expect me to do, Sydney? What’s out there for me? There’d be no security. They track re-educated Alchemists forever. To not get sent back here, I’d have to either push all my morals about Moroi aside or constantly watch my back to hide my true feelings. There’s no winning for us. We’re screwed. We were born into a system we don’t agree with, and we got caught. Here, out there, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing left for us.”

“What about Chantal?” I asked quietly. “Isn’t she out there?”

His hands, which had been so deftly working the clay, faltered and dropped to his side. “I don’t know where she is. Maybe she went to re-education in some other country. Maybe she killed herself rather than live a lie. Maybe she went on to some worse punishment. You think solitary confinement and monotonous art projects are the only weapons they have? There are worse things they can do to us. Worse things than purging and public ridicule. Being bold sounds great in theory, but it comes with a cost.”

“Chantal was bold, wasn’t she? And that’s why you’re afraid.” The grief on his face was so intense, I wanted to hug him … yet at the same time, I wanted to shake him for cowardice too. “You’re so afraid of acting! Of ending up like her!”

Swallowing, he returned to work on his bowl. “You don’t understand.”

“Then help me to.”

He stayed silent.

“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll figure out the gas control system myself and won’t bother you anymore. I suppose you might as well go ahead and throw this away too.”

I knelt down as though I’d dropped something and swiftly transferred a capped syringe from my sock to his, neatly covering it with his pant leg before anyone saw. “What’s that?” he hissed.

“The last of my current stock of syringes with the ink-repelling solution in them. I’d saved this one for you, but you’ll probably be happier not using it. In fact, maybe you should just go ask them for an extra-strong re-inking so you don’t have to think for yourself anymore.”

Chimes signaled the end of class, and I turned to go, leaving him gaping. That evening, while getting ready for bed in the bathroom, I was able to charm a few more syringes that I smuggled back to my room. I also did the gum trick again, sticking it in place in the door to disable the lock after lights out. I might not know exactly where the main gas controls were, but based on the explorations I’d done, I could make some educated guesses. Emma noticed when I stuck the gum in the door’s side and said, her voice barely audible, “You’re serious about this?”

I gave her a sharp nod and settled into my bed with a book for our prescribed reading time. When the lights went out later, I again waited long enough for the Alchemists on guard to fall into their shifts before I sprang into action. I rearranged my bed and pillow, murmured the invisibility incantation, and then tucked my stolen ID into my shirt before quietly slipping through the unlocked door. In the corridor outside, I was faced with a scenario similar to yesterday’s: little activity and the same guard stationed in the hallway nexus.

I crept down to the elevator and stairs, swiping my ID over the door to the latter. Its security panel turned green, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I still had access. Although the stairwell door wasn’t perfectly silent, I was able to carefully open it and slip through much more quietly than when I used the elevator with its telltale ding. I just had to be cautious in opening it the minimum amount needed for me to fit through. Once in the stairwell, I noticed something I’d also observed in the elevator. There was no way up. The only way to go was down.

How do we get out of here? I wondered for the hundredth time. It was the question I’d been mulling over since getting here. We had to have gotten in somehow, and obviously, the Alchemists who worked here got in and out. Duncan had explained to me that they had their own quarters elsewhere and lived there for months-long shifts until staff rotations replaced them. How did that happen? It was a puzzle for later, however, and for now I focused on heading to the operations and purging floor. I checked every door I reasonably could and found nothing matching the kind of mechanical room I’d been hoping for. Conscious of the time, I returned to the stairwell and reinforced the invisibility spell, buying me an extra half hour. I wouldn’t be able to do it all night, not with the energy it required, but it would at least allow me to check out the next floor down.

I hadn’t been on this floor in almost three weeks, and for a moment, I stood frozen as I stepped out into the hallway. This was the floor my cell had been on, where they’d kept me in darkness for three months. I hadn’t thought much about it since joining the others, but now, as I stood and stared at the identical doors, it all came back to me. I shivered at the memory of how cold I’d been, how cramped my muscles had grown sleeping on that rough floor. The memory of that darkness was chilling, and I was kind of amazed at what a difference the crack of light from the pocket door in my current room made. It took a surge of willpower to shake off those old memories and walk down the hall, remembering my goal.

I hadn’t noticed this when released, but each door was marked with the letter R and a number. Was the R for reflection? There were twenty of them in total, but I had no indication if they were all occupied. I didn’t dare scan my ID card and try to open one. Some gut instinct told me only someone with high clearance could open them to begin with, and besides, if they were monitored, any crack of light would instantly show up on a surveillance screen. So, I simply walked past them all, despite feeling sick inside that others might be only a few feet from me, suffering as I had.

Once I cleared those rooms, I came to stand in front of a set of double doors labeled REFLECTION CONTROL. Many administrative and operations doors had glass windows, but this one offered no indication of what might lie behind it. I was wavering on whether I should try to scan my card and slip in when the doors suddenly swung open, and two Alchemists emerged from within. I quickly moved out of their line of vision, and thankfully, they headed the opposite direction from me at a brisk pace. The heavy doors swung shut too quickly for me to get in, but I managed a good look inside before they closed with a clang.

Several Alchemists sat in little booths with their backs to me, facing dark monitors and wearing headphones. Large microphones were embedded in their desks along with a control panel I couldn’t read. This was where the solitary prisoners were monitored, I realized. Each prisoner must always have a watcher, with that microphone masking their voice and the panel allowing control of the gas and lights. I’d suspected they rotated personnel, and here was my proof. I hadn’t had time to get a full count, especially with part of the room blocked from my view, but I’d seen at least five watchers.

What I had also seen, with absolutely clarity, was an exit sign. It had been on the far side of the room, past the watchers and monitors, but there’d been no mistaking those glowing red letters. My heart rate sped up. This was it, the way in and out! For a few seconds, I wondered how easy it would be to slip in and stroll right out of this place. Not that easy, I soon admitted. For one thing, this wasn’t a simple room to infiltrate. Those doors didn’t allow for darting in and out, and they made enough noise when opened that someone would likely notice them opening by themselves. Even with no Alchemist directly monitoring them, some personnel were sitting far too close for my comfort.

There was also the likely fact that no one could just “walk out” of that exit. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were real guards, more card readers, and probably numerical codes for exit and entry. The Alchemists had already set up a considerable fire hazard in having so few exits to begin with. If they felt so strongly about prisoner security that they were willing to take that risk, they certainly weren’t going to leave that exit exposed.

Still, it was hard to walk away from that door, knowing what lay beyond it. Soon, I told myself. Soon. A further scan of the hall revealed nothing else of note, and I headed back toward the stairwell. As I did, its door opened, and Sheridan stepped out. I immediately flattened myself against the wall, averting my eyes downward. In my periphery, I could see her pause as though she were searching for something, and then she began walking again. When she was past me, I lifted my head and watched as she continued down the corridor, almost at a leisurely pace. At last, she reached the end, stood there a few moments, and then doubled back to the control room doors, which she soon disappeared through. I hurried into the stairwell before she came back, taking the last option left to me: down to the last level.

The elevators went no farther than this level, and the stairs ended here as well. This was the only level I’d never been on, and I couldn’t imagine what happened down here. What else was there for them to do? The doors I found offered no answer. They looked identical to the reflection time ones, and I almost wondered if I’d simply found another set of solitary cells. These were labeled with the letter P and numbers, however, and I found no corresponding control room to illuminate what that letter stood for. What I did find were three doors labeled MECHANICAL 1, MECHANICAL 2, and MECHANICAL 3. Behind them, I could hear the buzz of generators and other equipment. They had no card readers but did require an old-fashioned mechanical key.

Racking my brain, I recalled a key spell I’d once copied for Ms. Terwilliger, one that would open an ordinary lock. I murmured the Latin words, calling on the magic within me, hoping there was nothing too unusual about this lock. Power surged through me, and a moment later, I heard a click. Dizziness briefly swept me, and I ignored it as I began my exploration, unlocking the other doors as needed.

The first door revealed a room with a furnace and other HVAC equipment but nothing like what I expected for gas controls. The second room was where I struck gold. Along with a generator and some plumbing systems, I discovered an enormous tank labeled with a chemical formula that read very much like a sedative to me. Four pipes fed off it, each one labeled with a floor number. Each also had a manual valve that could be adjusted. All of them were currently in the “on” position.

I saw no sign that there was any sort of sensor to alert tampering at this level. Taking a chance, I turned the valve for the detainee floor to “off.” No alarms or lights went off. Emboldened, I nearly considered turning off the others but then realized I’d be exposing what I’d done. Maybe there were no sensors here, but the Alchemists would immediately notice if the gas was shut off on the level with the solitary cells. They controlled the gas there manually and were able to observe instant results. Turning off the gas on the detainee level would affect sleep right now, and that wouldn’t be readily obvious to the Alchemists. It might not even be noticeable to the detainees. They didn’t let us get eight hours of sleep anyway; it was unlikely anyone had much trouble falling asleep at night.

It was a hard call to make, abandoning the prisoners in reflection time, but there was nothing I could do for them right now. The status quo had to go on for them, and I needed that gas off on my floor as long as I could manage. Judging from the tank size, it probably went a while between refills, but eventually someone would come for a maintenance run and discover the valve. That was the timeline I had to worry about.

In the same room, I discovered another tank with a chemical formula I wasn’t entirely sure of, but I was betting it was a different substance, one I’d occasionally felt in my cell that made me agitated and paranoid. They didn’t employ it with the same regularity as the sedative, but I turned this valve off for my floor too, just in case. We didn’t need any extra incentive to be suspicious of one another.

With that work done, I hurried out and ignored my curiosity about the third mechanical room and P-marked doors. I’d achieved my goal tonight and needed to get back to my room before my spell wore off. That, and I knew Adrian would worry if I was very late. I took the stairs back up to the detainee living level and peered out the door’s window before opening it. No one was visible. I opened it a crack, so as not to attract attention on cameras, and squeezed my way out …

… and ran right into Sheridan.

She’d been purposely hiding in the indentation in the wall made by the elevator doors, out of visual range when I looked through the window. I’d been searching for people moving with purpose on their shifts—not someone looking for me. And she was clearly looking for me—or someone like me. We made eye contact, and there was no mistaking the recognition on her face. The spell was over.

“Sydney,” she exclaimed. That was the last thing I heard before I saw what looked like a taser in her hand. Then, I felt a jolt of pain, and everything went black.

When I woke up, everything was still black. For the space of a heartbeat, I thought I was back in my solitary cell. But no, this was different. There was no rough stone floor here, and I still had my scrubs on. Instead, I was lying down on a cool metal table, with my arms, legs, and head restrained.

“Well, Sydney,” a familiar voice said. “I’m sorry to see you here.”

“I know it’s you, Sheridan,” I said through gritted teeth. I gave my restraints an experimental tug. No luck. “You don’t have to hide in the dark.”

A tiny canister light in the ceiling turned on, shining down just enough to illuminate her lovely but cruel face. “That’s not what the darkness is for. You’re in darkness because your soul is also shrouded in darkness. You don’t deserve the light.”

“Then why am I here and not back in my cell?”

“The cell is to reflect on your sins and see the error of your ways,” she said. “You’ve put on a good show but clearly haven’t learned anything. Your chance at reflection and redemption is past. That, and we need some answers about your recent activities.” She held up my pilfered ID card. “When and how did you get this?”

“I found it on the ground,” I said promptly. “You guys should be more careful.”

Sheridan gave a dramatic sigh. “Don’t lie to me, Sydney. I don’t like it. Now let’s try again. Where did you get the card?”

“I already told you.”

Pain suddenly shot through every part of my body. It was a strange mixture of things, crawling all over my skin and setting my nerve endings ablaze. If you could somehow combine the discomfort of electric shocks, bee stings, and paper cuts, it would feel kind of like what I experienced. It only lasted a few seconds, but I found myself screaming out in pain nonetheless.

The light on Sheridan turned off, plunging us into darkness, but when she spoke again, it was clear she hadn’t moved. “That was the lowest setting and only a taste at that. Please don’t make me do it again. I want to know how you got the ID card and what you were out looking for.”

This time, I didn’t lie to her. I simply stayed silent.

The pain returned at the same intensity, but it lasted much longer this time. I couldn’t form any coherent thought while it was happening. Every particular of my being was too fixated on that terrible, excruciating agony. One of the things I’d loved about getting intimate with Adrian—aside from the obvious, like that he was insanely sexy and good at what he did—was that it often proved to be a rare moment when my always-thinking brain took a break, allowing me to become all about the physical experience at hand. That was kind of what was happening now, except the physical experience in question was pretty much as far from what I’d had with Adrian as one could get. My brain couldn’t think of anything. All there was just then was my body and its pain.

I had tears in my eyes when the pain stopped, and I barely heard Sheridan rattling off her questions again. She also added a couple more, like, “How did you avoid detection?” and “How did you get out of your room?” I barely had time to answer, even if I’d wanted to, before the pain resumed. When it ended an eternity later, she came back at me with the questions. Then the cycle repeated.

During one of the brief respites, I managed enough coherent thought to understand her process. She was throwing different questions at me in the hopes I’d be so pushed to a breaking point from the pain that I’d blurt out an answer to something—anything. It probably didn’t matter to them at first. Getting me started talking was their goal, and I had a feeling that prisoners in my situation didn’t stop talking once those floodgates were opened. There’d be a strong urge to tell everything to make the pain go away. I was certainly feeling that urge now, and I had to physically bite my lip to keep from telling her whatever she wanted. I also tried to mentally focus on the faces of those I loved, Adrian and my friends. That worked a little during the lulls, but once the torture started again, no thought or image could stay in my mind.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said at one point. I didn’t know how long it had been. Seconds, hours, days. Sheridan didn’t seem to believe me until I actually started coughing and retching. It was a different kind of sick from the purging, which was medically induced. This was my body’s response to more than it could physically handle. Someone came to me from the opposite side of the room from her and undid enough of my restraints to turn me on my side, where I choked up what little was in my stomach. I didn’t know if they were fast enough to have a receptacle to catch it in and really didn’t care. That was their problem.

As the worst of the vomiting subsided, I could barely make out Sheridan speaking quietly with someone else across the room.

“Go get an ‘assistant’ to help us,” she said.

A male voice sounded skeptical. “There’s no love between any of them.”

“I’ve seen her type. What she won’t give up for herself, she might for someone else.”

The sound of a door indicated her colleague left, and as I was re-restrained and wiped clean, her words triggered an awful realization. Someone betrayed me! Sheridan had been specifically looking for me, which was how the spell had been unraveled. I’d been foolish to think making the salt ink would create some kind of bond between the others and me. The only upside to this was that I’d disabled the gas, as planned, but now what would the cost be?

That was as far as I could speculate because the torture began anew—and incredibly, it was worse. I didn’t get sick, maybe because my body couldn’t muster the effort, but I couldn’t stop my screams from filling the room. I hated myself for showing them that weakness, for admitting that they were getting to me … but it was all I could do not to tell them every secret I had during those pauses. I will not talk, I vowed. If I’m going down for this, then I’ll do it with them knowing they’re not as powerful as they think.

“Why do you make us keep doing this, Sydney?” Sheridan asked in that mock sad tone of hers. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” I gasped out.

“And here I thought you were making such progress. I was nearly ready to reward you for your good behavior. Maybe a visit from your family. Maybe this.”

The tiny spotlight appeared on her again, and something in her hand shimmered. It was my cross, the little wooden one Adrian had made me, painted with morning glories. They’d tried to bribe me with it when I first arrived, as though one material object was all it would take to break me. Seeing it now made my chest ache—though that could’ve possibly been an aftereffect from the torture—and my eyes blurred with tears of sadness now, not pain.

“You could have it now,” she said congenially. “You could have it, and we could stop the pain. All you need to do is tell us what we want to know. It really is a lovely piece.” She held it up admiringly and then, to my complete and utter horror, she put it around her own neck. “If you don’t want it, I might as well keep it.”

I nearly told her it was made by a vampire but worried that might make her destroy it. So I stayed silent, letting my rage seethe within me—at least until the torture started again, and only agony seethed within me.

I lost track of time again until her colleague returned. This brought a reprieve from the pain, and a few new spotlights went on, including one shining uncomfortably in my face. The light also revealed the man hadn’t come back alone.

“Look, Sydney,” Sheridan said. “We brought you a friend.”

The man dragged someone up to my table. Emma. I nearly accused her of betrayal then and there. After all, she was the perfect candidate. She had her sister’s crimes to overcompensate for as well as her own. She’d gotten the salt ink from me already and had nothing to lose by turning me in, especially if she could convince them of her own innocence. She was also the only person who’d known for sure that I was out roaming the facility last night.

And yet … there was a terror in her eyes that kept me from making any accusations. Maybe she was the likeliest traitor, but on the off chance she wasn’t, I couldn’t insinuate she might be privy to any of my plans. “Who said she’s my friend?” I asked instead.

“Well, she’s about to share your experience,” said Sheridan. “If that’s not a basis for friendship, I don’t know what is.” She gave a curt nod, and Emma was dragged off out of my line of sight. Another assistant came forward, helping me to sit up so that I’d have a better view of what was taking place: They were restraining Emma on to a table just like mine.

“P-please,” she stammered, as helpless in her struggles as I had been. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what this is about.”

“She’s right,” I said. “She doesn’t know anything. You’re wasting your time.”

“We don’t care what she knows,” said Sheridan cheerfully. “We still want to know what you know. And if the methods of persuasion we’ve used on you don’t work, perhaps you’ll be more forthcoming seeing them on others.”

“Persuasion,” I said in disgust. “That’s what the P on the doors stands for. We’re on the lowest level.”

“Indeed,” said Sheridan. “You went on quite the little tour last night, judging from all the doors you used that card on. Tell us why you did it and how you didn’t show up on any cameras, or else …”

She gave another nod, and in the split second before Emma started screaming, I understood what had happened. She hadn’t betrayed me. No one had. I’d screwed up on my own. I’d worried the guy whose card I had might report it missing and get it disabled. No doubt he had reported it, but rather than deactivate it, they’d waited to see if anyone used it. Their system would have recorded every instance it had been scanned. I’d been an idiot, laying out the perfect trail for them to follow, with only the invisibility spell saving me from immediate capture. I’d hopefully checked enough places to obscure my intentions, especially since the mechanical rooms hadn’t required card access. The odds were good no one knew what I’d pulled off.

But that didn’t save Emma from being subjected to the same torture I had been. My skin crawled, watching that pain wrack her body, and I felt ill in an entirely new way.

“She’s an innocent in this!” I exclaimed when they took their break. “How sick do you have to be to do this?”

Sheridan chuckled. “No one’s truly innocent—at least not around here. But if you do believe she is, it makes it that much sadder that you’re letting her suffer like this.”

I stared at Emma and felt torn with indecision. How could I give up all my plans? And yet, how could I let this go on? My deliberation was read as defiance, and they resumed the procedure. I couldn’t handle watching it, and when the next break came, I blurted out, “What do you think I was doing? I was looking for the way out!”

Sheridan held up her hand to halt whatever unseen torturer wielded the controls. “Did you succeed?”

“Do you think I’d be here if I had?” I snapped. “The only thing I saw was in your reflection control room, and you’ve got that pretty well guarded.”

“How did you move around without being seen?” she demanded.

“I evaded your cameras,” I said.

At Sheridan’s nod, Emma was subjected to more pain, her body flailing like a ragdoll’s as it tried to cope with the waves of agony coursing through her.

“I answered!” I exclaimed.

“You lied,” Sheridan returned coolly. “There’s no way you could have avoided all of them. No one noticed anything on camera at the time, but after extensive review, we found one small clip that shows what looks like a stairway door opening—just barely—by itself. We almost missed it and only noticed on later replays. Explain.”

I stayed silent, thinking I could endure watching Emma be tortured again. But I couldn’t. Not when it was because of my actions. Her screams seemed to fill every part of the room, and she bucked against the restraints in a desperate effort to alleviate the pain. I tried reasoning with myself as those shrieks went on and on, that this was only a temporary discomfort, that Emma had known what she was signing up for when she started helping me. Surely the greater good was worth one person’s suffering?

That cold logic almost had me convinced until I finally saw tears streaming from her eyes. I cracked.

“Magic!” I yelled, trying to make myself heard above her cries. “I did it with magic.” Sheridan signaled for the torture to stop and looked at me expectantly. “I moved around with magic. Human magic. And if you think torturing her will get me to tell you more about that, you’re wrong. You can torture her and everyone else in this place, and I won’t say another word. Talking about it involves people on the outside, and next to them, the people here mean nothing.”

It was kind of a bluff. I didn’t know if I could truly stand against mass torture of the other detainees, but Sheridan either believed me or had bigger concerns.

“I didn’t think it’d happen again,” she muttered.

“It always happens. Eventually,” said her colleague. He gestured one of the assistants in the darkness forward to Emma. “Get her up and back to her floor. There’s no telling what kind of damaging propaganda’s been spread. We’re going to have to do a mass re-inking.”

My heart sank. I’d only gotten to about half the detainees! The rest of the ink was still hidden in my bed.

“I didn’t convert anyone if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said.

“I told you, there are no innocents here,” said Sheridan. “Get Emma back to her level, and get Sydney back on the table.”

“I’ve told you everything I’m going to tell you,” I protested as the assistants came forward. Emma was dragged away. “Your torture didn’t work on me before.”

Sheridan gave a low throaty laugh, and all the lights went out again. “Oh, Sydney. Now that I know what you are, I don’t feel bad in the least about really turning up the intensity. We don’t know everything about human magic users, but there is one thing we’ve learned over the years: They’re remarkably resilient. So let’s get started.”