Through Glass(65)

“Travis?” I gasped, his face breaking into a wide grin before the image of him flickered and died.

“Travis!” I screamed, my body running toward him in desperation. I had barely made it halfway across the room before thick white smoke filled the cement chamber. The heavy plume of smoke sprayed in with a deep hiss. The dense smoke covered every inch of space around me in a matter of minutes.

“Travis!” I screamed again, my voice lost in the fog as the smoke began to tickle my mouth and nose. The fog smelled like over scented vanilla, the scent thick in my mouth, heavy in my head.

“Travis,” I said again, my voice weak as I fell to my knees, the heavy mist putting me to sleep.





I woke up on the same floor, the same cold cement against my skin, and the same goose bumps on my arms. I groaned as I pushed myself up, my arms shaking at the added pressure.

Everything spun as I moved. The residual effects from whatever drug they had used to knock me out still lingered in my blood stream.

Air rushed out of my lungs in an over loud exhale that rattled around me, the sound mirroring the pain I felt as my back leaned up against the wall.

They had knocked me out again. I wasn’t sure which was worse, getting shot or being drugged. They both felt the same, but I had a feeling this one was done in an emergency. Not only for me, but for my brother.

My brother.

Travis.

Everything tightened at the thought, at the memory of my much older brother in front of me. As if I needed proof that eight years had passed. I could see the gangly fourteen-year-old in the man I had seen before they knocked me out. Eight years, he would be twenty-two now, a grown man.

What I didn’t understand was why they had kept him away from me, why they wouldn’t let him talk to me. More importantly, how had he survived? Had anyone else survived?

The thought was a white-hot branding iron to my skin, the surge painful and oh-so-welcome. Travis was alive; the others could be, too.

They could be somewhere close.

I smiled at the thought, my eyes falling to the ground as rippling waves of excitement whipped through me.

Another red lunch tray had been placed against the wall, this one laden with a massive burrito as well as rice and beans. It was cafeteria food again, but I didn’t care. I didn’t wait as I dragged the tray toward me and started shoveling the rice and beans into my mouth with yet another plastic spork.

The heavy flavor of the food rushed through me; the taste strong and pleasant as it hit my tongue, the sugars rushing right into my bloodstream.

I bit into the burrito and was absolutely floored by the sour cream that hit my tongue. The bitter taste strong and pleasant. I had forgotten this flavor, but now I wanted it on everything. It was better than yesterday’s gravy. My adrenaline increased as the blood sugars pulsed through me; my veins loosening in appreciation.

At least I hoped that was what it was.

I hadn’t had the opportunity to even think about what Bridget had said before they had knocked me out again. About the blood in the food, the way the Tar changed people. About how they expected me to change, how I would change.

About Cohen.

The thought scared me. It scared me not only because of what they were doing to Cohen, but what might also happen to me. That I would change, that I would become one of them. The way Bridget had reacted to me. The way she had talked about it made it sound like a sure thing.

Like I was already a monster.

I couldn’t let that happen. I had fought so long. I wouldn’t simply give up and grow claws. They were all fools if they thought it was that simple. I would fight it, like everything else.

The worry disappeared as a grinding noise that sounded like the sliding of a stone rippled through the air around me and I jumped. My head spun toward the sound just as a dark, middle-aged man walked through the wall; his body emerging through the cement like it was made of water.

My eyes widened at seeing him, at the way he had moved through a solid block of concrete. The man looked at me, the coldness of his dark brown eyes matching his skin tone almost perfectly. The remoteness of his eyes never changing in the dim light of my prison. He wasn’t translucent like Bridget had been, this man was real. He walked in confidently, his well-tailored suit and greased hair looking out of place in the grey room I was trapped in.

“Hello, Alexis,” he said, his voice heavy with a Spanish accent. I raised an eye brow at him, an action that he only smiled at. He didn’t think I was that stupid, did he?

“You must be Azul,” I said as I narrowed my eyes at him, the look he continued to give me made me uncomfortable.

“No. Azul is a group, not a person,” he said harshly, his tone condescending and slow, causing my insides to jump. “My name is Abran, I created Azul after the sky was taken away from us.”

“You’re the leader, then?” I kept my voice level, low, in an attempt to hide the fear that was coursing through me.

I don’t know what it was about this man that was unsettling. He looked at me with raw hatred in his eyes, the anger coursed through me and prickled across my skin. Part of me wanted to trust him, the leader of the first truly human people I had found, but another part was terrified of him.

It wasn’t like with Bridget, when small spots of light peeked through her eyes and she told me she would trust me even though she thought I was dangerous, that she would kill me. This man loathed me.