Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)(39)

Things are getting too comfortable and I’m beginning to panic.

“Put these on,” Warner says to me.

Breakfast in the blue room has become routine. I eat and don’t ask where the food comes from, whether or not the workers are being paid for what they do, how this building manages to sustain so many lives, pump so much water, or use so much electricity. I bide my time now. I cooperate.

Warner hasn’t asked me to touch him again, and I don’t offer.

“What are they for?” I eye the small pieces of fabric in his hands and feel a nervous twinge in my gut.

He smiles a slow, sneaky smile. “An aptitude test.” He grabs my wrist and places the bundle in my hand. “I’ll turn around, just this once.”

I’m almost too nervous to be disgusted by him.

My hands shake as I change into the outfit that turns out to be a tiny tank top and tinier shorts. I’m practically naked. I’m practically convulsing in fear of what this might mean. I clear my throat just the tiniest bit and Warner spins around.

He takes too long to speak; his eyes are busy traveling the road map of my body. I want to rip up the carpet and sew it to my skin. He smiles and offers me his hand.

I’m granite and limestone and marbled glass. I don’t move.

He drops his hand. He cocks his head. “Follow me.”

Warner opens the door. Adam is standing outside. He’s gotten so good at masking his emotions that I hardly register the look of shock that shifts in and out of his features. Nothing but the strain in his forehead, the tension in his temples, gives him away. He knows something’s not right. He actually turns his neck to take in my appearance. He blinks. “Sir?”

“Remain where you are, soldier. I’ll take it from here.”

Adam doesn’t answer doesn’t answer doesn’t answer— “Yes, sir,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse.

I feel his eyes on me as I turn down the hall.

Warner takes me somewhere new. We’re walking through corridors I’ve never seen, blacker and bleaker and more narrow as we go. I realize we’re heading downward.

Into a basement.

We pass through 1, 2, 4 metal doors. Soldiers everywhere, their eyes everywhere, appraising me with both fear and something else I’d rather not consider. I’ve realized there are very few females in this building.

If there were ever a place to be grateful for being untouchable, it’d be here.

It’s the only reason I have asylum from the preying eyes of hundreds of lonely men. It’s the only reason Adam is staying with me—because Warner thinks Adam is a cardboard cutout of vanilla regurgitations. He thinks Adam is a machine oiled by orders and demands. He thinks Adam is a reminder of my past, and he uses it to make me uncomfortable. He’d never imagine Adam could lay a finger on me.

No one would. Everyone I meet is absolutely petrified.

The darkness is like a black canvas punctured by a blunt knife, with beams of light peeking through. It reminds me too much of my old cell. My skin ripples with uncontrollable dread.

I’m surrounded by guns.

“In you go,” Warner says. I’m pushed into an empty room smelling faintly of mold. Someone hits a switch and fluorescent lights flicker on to reveal pasty yellow walls and carpet the color of dead grass. The door slams shut behind me.

There’s nothing but cobwebs and a huge mirror in this room. The mirror is half the size of the wall. Instinctively I know Warner and his accomplices must be watching me. I just don’t know why.

There are secrets everywhere.

There are answers nowhere.

Mechanical clinks/cracks/creaks and shifts shake the space I’m standing in. The ground rumbles to life. The ceiling trembles with the promise of chaos. Metal spikes are suddenly everywhere, scattered across the room, puncturing every surface at all different heights. Every few seconds they disappear only to reappear with a sudden jolt of terror, slicing through the air like needles.

I realize I’m standing in a torture chamber.

Static and feedback from speakers older than my dying heart crackle to life. I’m a racehorse galloping toward a false finish line, breathing hard for someone else’s gain.

“Are you ready?” Warner’s amplified voice echoes around the room.

“What am I supposed to be ready for?” I yell into the empty space, certain that someone can hear me. I’m calm. I’m calm. I’m calm. I’m petrified.

“We had a deal, remember?” the room responds.

“Wha—”

“I disabled your cameras. Now it’s your turn to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“I won’t touch you!” I shout, spinning in place, terrified, horrified, worried I might faint at any moment.

“That’s all right,” he says. “I’m sending in my replacement.” The door squeals open and a toddler waddles in wearing nothing but a diaper. He’s blindfolded and hiccupping sobs, shuddering in fear.

One pin pops my entire existence into nothing.

“If you don’t save him,” Warner’s words crackle through the room, “we won’t, either.”

This child.

He must have a mother a father someone who loves him this child this child this child stumbling forward in terror. He could be speared through by a metal stalagmite at any second.