It told me to place my hands on the invisible wall before me. I did. Then it said to close my eyes.
Focus.
Okay, that was weird.
Did I say that to myself or had something else?
You’re in an alien land, I told myself. Better get used to weird.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry, and focused on what the little voice told me.
Focus on what? I thought.
I decided to focus on nothing. I let my mind go blank and…
Snap.
I hissed through my teeth and pulled my hands back. It felt like I’d been given an electric shock.
I caught movement out the corner of my eye from where my hands had been on the wall. A ripple swam across the surface like tossing a stone in a pond.
I turned to the room on the other side of the wall. The other scientists were bent over their monitors, busy with their work. None paid me any attention. Kren still lay on the chair.
He hadn’t seen me. But if I tried again, maybe he would.
“Okay,” I said. “You can do this. You did it once…”
I pressed my hands to the wall and focused. I emptied my mind and the sparks issued once more.
I squealed as the electrical charge ran into my arms and into the rest of my body. It was more uncomfortable than painful.
The wall crackled again and flashed, appearing one moment, and then disappearing the next. I stared through the flashing gap in the wall at Kren.
He double took, noticing something—me!—out the corner of his eye. He looked my way and smiled.
I couldn’t help but smile back, and for a moment, there was nothing between us.
The Supervisor straightened up. I got the sense he might peer over and see me standing there.
I removed my hands from the wall just as he turned to look over at me.
Had he seen me? Did he know Kren saw me?
The Supervisor leaped up from his stool and yelled, “Seize him!”
I guess so.
Kren bolted to his feet and struck at the first guard, but his blow was blocked and retaliated with a powerful punch to the face.
Kren went down. He was up again in an instant but it was already too late.
The other guard fired his shock rifle at Kren.
He writhed and shuddered like a fish out of water. He knocked a table over. It fell, smashing a monitor to the floor.
The other scientists screeched and backed away from the terrifying wild bolts of blue and white that made the air crackle and spark with energy.
The second guard fired up his shock rifle and joined the fun.
I slammed my fists on the wall and tried to open it the way I had before but it was impossible with Kren being tortured in front of my eyes.
I couldn’t focus. It was impossible.
“Now I have the secret of your ability!” the Supervisor shrieked with joy. “I no longer have need of you! You’re old news. Soon, you’ll be ancient history!”
He nodded to the guards, who stopped firing.
Smoke issued from Kren’s back where the electric pulse had burned him. He struggled to get to his feet but he couldn’t do it.
“Kren!” I screamed.
He managed to turn his face toward me. He couldn’t see me. His eyes rolled in their sockets and he could hardly move.
“Take him to the pit,” the Supervisor said. “Organize a Survivor tournament. It’s about time we had ourselves a new champion.”
Kren
The guards tossed me in the holding cell they usually used for large monsters. Occasionally, they carted them in for special events. A team of fighters was pitted against the poor beasts. When it came to cruelty, the Supervisor knew no bounds.
The guards slammed the door shut and marched away.
I rolled over and immediately stopped. The pain was intense from the shock rifles. They locked up your muscles and made your teeth clench. If you didn’t jam your jaw shut before the attack happened, you could easily end up with broken or snapped teeth.
I would have said I was lucky they hadn’t killed me on the laboratory’s floor but that would have ignored the fact that the Supervisor never liked to waste good resources, not when he could teach a lesson to the other inmates.
Other inmates.
I was the only innocent man there and I was going to die before all of them.
The Survivor Challenge was a death sentence. In all my years at the prison, I could only recall it happening twice. Once when a prisoner attempted an attack on the Supervisor’s life and the other when a prisoner somehow survived a successful escape.
Those mistakes hadn’t been repeated.
The cage was rarely cleaned. It smelled like festering dung and what little straw and dry grass there was tossed up enough fetid dust to clog my nose.
I leaned against the back wall and took stock of my situation. I’d gone into the Supervisor’s lab to learn Ivy’s location. I told the Supervisor the truth about my ability and what I could do.
Harper’s interruption came a moment too late. I could have avoided telling him everything. It would have done little save delay him. He had Ivy locked in her own cell.
He was never going to let her go.
It was hard to work out what kind of plan the Supervisor had developed with Ivy.
What was it? I wondered. Had she betrayed me? Did she really love me? Or was it all just a show?
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.
But when I saw her, when she managed to break through that barrier of her prison, my heart rejoiced.
She hadn’t betrayed me, I knew. Not with that kindly look on her face. And if she had, she’d paid for it by being locked up in that cell.
A cell in the laboratory.
Were they doing experiments on her? Was there something about her I didn’t know?
Or had she been deliberately put in that cell for me to
