Change of Chaos

by Jacinta Jade

  ‘You can either come quietly or be dragged and knocked around until you become quiet. Your choice.’

  Siray stayed as still as possible, the icy sting at her throat a keen warning of what these people might do.

  They took her stillness as an answer, and the sharp blade was slowly lifted from her neck.

  Siray counted to five before spinning swiftly to face the body she could feel on her left side. Aiming by the mental picture in her head alone, she shot out with her hand to grab a handful of cloth and pulled the person wearing it towards her. Bending her arm and turning her body to the side, she intended to pull the person out of her way and remove the thing covering her face, so she could see as she made a run for the room’s exit. Instead, as she swiftly brought her arm up to tear off the cloth covering her face, she felt her elbow connect with something hard enough to make her elbow go numb, and a new voice cried out.

  But Siray was already moving, stumbling in the direction of what she hoped was the exit, even as she fumbled with the covering on her head.

  In the middle of taking another step towards freedom, she was already off-balance as another voice growled nearby just before a sharp pain exploded in the back of her head. She staggered again, and this time she was unable to offer any resistance as her arms were once more pinned behind her and she was dragged roughly upright. Her head pounding, Siray felt herself being half carried, half dragged across the room, and her mind seemed to spin in time with the tiny blinking lights that had appeared in her vision.

  She tried a couple of times to get her feet under her, but each time she gained her feet, she was cruelly jerked forwards. She could hear several people walking close behind, which gave her the constant horrible feeling that her dragging limbs would be trampled. Her arms were being held excruciatingly tight, and the muscles in her shoulders and back strained to support her sagging weight. A throbbing in her head made her wince, and she closed her eyes against the pain as her enemies continued to drag her along with them.

  When she opened her eyes again some moments later, she found she could see just a tiny crack of light through the blackness covering her face. Breathing quickly, Siray relaxed her neck and shoulders as much as possible, letting her head sag even further. Doing so caused her right eye to press against that tiny hole in the material that covered her face, and as she tried to stare through that gap, she thought she could see something black. And a flashing blur that might have been someone’s foot.

  She closed and opened her eyes again as she attempted to blink away whatever it was that was obscuring her vision. When her eyes still remained blurry, she wondered just how hard she had been hit. She still kept an eye out for the foot she had seen to reappear in her narrow view, and, turning her head carefully so as not to lose her view, she eventually found its blurred shaped again as it flashed in and out of sight.

  The foot was not clad in the blue uniform of the masters or attendants of her city. Instead, she thought the owner of that foot might have been wearing a black boot with bits of gold. Or something like that. It was hard to tell when the world insisted on being this blurry.

  She continued to watch that foot flash in and out of her vision as the floor swept by underneath, and she was becoming inexplicably drowsy when the floor altered and tiled squares began to flash past beneath her. She blinked. She recognised those squares. Was almost sure that the tiles of the centre’s hallway were the same.

  As the squares continued to speed past, she grew nauseous, which only intensified as she was pulled in seemingly random directions at various intervals. She could feel her boots click over the edge of each of the tiles as she was expeditiously dragged through the facility, their constant click, click, click giving her the sense that she was being taken a long way from the room with the scanner.

  At one point in the journey, she gasped as she felt herself fall forwards, and panted in relief when her feet smacked down onto the step behind her. She was being hauled down a flight of stairs.

  As her captors moved beside her with quick steps, the lighting around them began to dim, and she could hardly make out anything through the small gap in the cloth.

  A banging sound ahead made her snap her head up, but she couldn’t see anything at all as she lost her position against that hole in the material. Her feet had ceased thumping behind her, and at the same time she realised that they were moving over flat ground again, she also became aware that she could no longer feel the click of tiles against her booted feet.

  When she was abruptly brought to a halt, her heart began to race again, and she wondered if this was where they intended to kill her, though for what crime, she couldn’t fathom.

  Hearing a heavy rumbling noise before her, she attempted to get her feet under her to fight, but she was less coordinated than she’d anticipated and was slow to gain her feet. By the time she had, a ready and forceful hand upon her back shoved her violently forwards. As Siray felt her body stumble and begin to fall, she twisted so that her shoulder would hit the floor first and cradled her arms protectively around her head.

  The fall, which was made more frightening by the fact she couldn’t see it happening, was painful, but she managed to roll a little and absorb some of the impact.

  As soon as she had stopped rolling, Siray pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and ripped the thick covering from her head.

  Hearing a rumble, she raised her head just in time to watch a heavy door close and seal her in total darkness.

  Well, it wasn’t completely devoid of light. While it was certainly gloomy, a sliver of light from under the door meant she could just make out the shape of her hands as her eyes slowly adjusted. Using that fragment of light, she studied what she could see of the walls that rose up around her from where she was kneeling.

  Siray could tell the walls apart from the general shadows, as they were blacker than her surroundings and emanated cold. She put her hands to the wall in front of her, its chill seeping into her skin while her fingers rasped over its rough texture.

  She turned in the dark, her knees scraping on the floor through her uniform, and saw the looming shadow of the opposite wall, not more than a body length away. Standing shakily, she approached it and, pressing her hands to it, felt the same rough and uneven texture. Turning towards the door that she had been ungraciously pushed through, she walked over to examine it closely and, stretching out her right hand, traced a finger down its length.

  She knew that material. An unyielding metal that supported the buildings of her city, it sat almost flush with the floor and ceiling. Squatting in place before dropping to her hands and knees, Siray tried to get a glimpse through the crack beneath the door. Still unable to see anything, she dropped completely to her belly, placing her head on the floor so her eyes were level with the gap beneath the door—and tried not to think of how she had done something similar within the scanning machine a short time ago.

  Small clouds of dust were raised by her warm breath as she tried to make out shapes in the darkness. Through the slim crack, part of the hallway outside her cell was visible, and what may have been another cell directly across from her. She couldn’t see much of anything else when she moved her head, and when she listened, all was silent.

  Dissatisfied and relieved at the same time, she pushed herself back to her knees, then lurched to her feet, the painful throbbing of her head becoming harder to ignore now that her heart wasn’t trying to escape her chest. She rotated where she stood, peering down the length of the dark and narrow chamber. The muscles of her left arm shook slightly as she placed her left hand on the wall and, keeping it there, slowly walked the length of the chamber until she touched the back wall. Unable to see it in detail, she placed both hands flat against its surface, forming a mental picture of it as she ran her hands over its face. Stretching as high as she could upwards by extending her arms and standing on her tiptoes, she ran her fingertips along the length of its seams with the walls. It had the same rough texture as the other walls, but t
here were no gaps or holes, and no hints of a breeze.

  Siray’s heart had begun to work harder again, and she shifted to rest her back against the wall’s cool surface as she felt sweat prickle her under her arms. Gazing back at the door, she replayed the evening in her mind—the scanner, the brief flash of hooded figures, the darkness, being dragged down hallways, and then being forced into this cell.

  Why were they doing this to her? Were they terrorists? Maybe they were planning on taking down the entire city. Yet, the cold voice had said that his … lordship … had a special interest in her. Why, she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to hang around to find out either.

  Feeling her way to the wall across from her, Siray finished examining what she could make out of the room they had thrown her into. It was a short examination. The room was longer than it was wide, enough so that two people could lay down end to end. There was only one exit, the heavy door she had been pushed through. And which was now shut tight. She couldn’t feel the surface of the ceiling, which was beyond her reach, but even without seeing it, she knew there was no escape that way. They had walked down too many stairs for her to think that she might be aboveground.

  The room wasn’t a room. It was a cell, and she its prisoner.

  The thought numbed Siray, making her legs weak, and she sank slowly to the cool ground, hugging herself as she recalled the voice she had heard speaking in the room with the scanner. The voice she knew. The voice she had trusted.

  You’ll be fine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN SIRAY AWOKE, she was greeted by a stomach that felt like it was twisting within her. Then she remembered.

  She sat up quickly, blinking at the darkness. She had fallen asleep! Panic shot through her, and she scrambled to her feet, looking around wildly for a moment. From what she could see, which wasn’t much with the depth of the darkness, everything looked the same. Glancing at the entrance of her cell, Siray took a few hesitant steps near and reached out with one hand to push against it. It didn’t budge.

  Sighing with frustration and hopelessness, she turned back around to face her cell, leaning her back on the door as she tried to slow her accelerated heart rate. Becoming a quivering ball on the ground would not help her, and she swallowed against a throat that suddenly ached, blinking to fight a slight sting in her eyes.

  Refocusing as her breathing settled again, she moved away from the door slightly before folding herself down to the ground. If nothing else could be done, then she should rest as much as possible, to save her strength for when she might need it. Breathing in and exhaling again slowly, Siray let her head drop and pulled her knees up to her chest. The gnawing at the base of her stomach told her that a significant amount of time had indeed passed since she had last eaten. Altering her position against the wall, she straightened and stretched her legs out before her in an effort to ease her stomach cramps. In fact, she realised, she hadn’t eaten since before she and her cycle class had been on Ceremony Hill, with most of them too nervous even to eat the morning of the ceremony.

  Glancing upwards at the ceiling of her cell, she could just make out several black cracks high above her head. Her eyes must be adjusting to the darkness, she thought, as she hadn’t noticed these earlier. She traced their jagged paths with her eyes as her thoughts focused on her captors. What were they going to do with her? She shivered as she remembered the cold voice talking about tests. Something about that voice made her think that the tests he spoke of would be different to the ones she had most recently gone through.

  Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, she hugged herself and tried to think about other things, but she couldn’t block out the images her imagination forced upon her.

  The rumbling of the door proved to be an excellent distraction, and she was jolted from her thoughts. Swiftly, she pushed herself to her feet, keeping her back pressed against the wall. As the door slid all the way open, Siray twisted her head away as the light, dim as it was, flooded in. When she glanced back, she could make out two figures standing there, faces hidden in the shadows cast by the hoods they wore. From their muscular frames, though, she could tell they were both males. As one of them stepped through the door and beckoned to her, and she saw that he was wearing a uniform of black with flashes of gold.

  ‘Come with us,’ the male said, his voice deep and commanding.

  She didn’t move. These were guards, then, like the ones who had dragged her here in the first place, doing the bidding of someone else. She made up her mind that she wasn’t going anywhere with them.

  The guard who had spoken didn’t hesitate but strode swiftly into the cell when she refused to comply with his order. Snapping out an arm, he gripped her cruelly around the neck, the strength of his hand causing her to freeze, while the pressure it applied to her vulnerable neck rendered her helpless. The guard spun her body to face the door while still maintaining that cruel grip and shoved her forwards. Her stumbling steps took her close enough to the door that the other guard was able to reach through the doorway, grab her arms, and pull her roughly forwards into him. After slamming into that hard-male body, Siray tried to pull away, disgusted at being so close to either of them.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped at them.

  When the guard pulled her towards him again, she whirled and tried to push and kick him away. A loathsome chuckle came from behind her just before her other arm was grabbed. The guards’ grips were so tight as they dragged her from the cell that she felt her arms going numb.

  Siray looked around wildly as they dragged her down the hallway from her cell, but she didn’t recognise this part of the building. She wondered if she should scream, yet she remembered all the stairs they had descended to get to this level. It was doubtful that any cries would be heard, and, even if they could be heard, the guards would find a way to quiet her before she drew any further attention. Her mind raced as she sorted through her options. She couldn’t escape through force, so she would have to trick them. Better to act defeated and try to escape when they were less alert.

  Playing the part, she allowed a soft sob to escape and let her body sag in the guards’ grips, her head drooping. Her face hidden from them, she scanned the parts of the hallway she could see. The hallway floor to the sides had a coating of dust, but a clean avenue had been made down the centre of the hallway from the passing of many feet. This told her that the level she was on had not been in use much. Not a good sign for her.

  Sounds coming from somewhere ahead made her look up again. Light shone from a doorway ahead to her right, and her stomach tightened as she realised that was where the guards were taking her. A couple of heartbeats later, she was dragged through the door and into the room, and she saw that the sources of the sounds and the lights were from research equipment that looked like they might have been taken from the machines she had seen yesterday. Yesterday. Already it felt like it had been days.

  As the guards pulled her to a sudden stop and held her up between them, she saw that there were others in the room, and like the guards who had dragged her here, they wore black-and-gold uniforms with hoods. Yet now that the room was so well lit, Siray stared in equal parts fascination and shock as she saw their faces for the first time. Then she realised. Cruel and hard, their faces were almost exactly the same.

  Masks. They all wore masks.

  In addition to her guards, there were five others in the room, and when a cold voice began speaking, it was hard at first for her to tell whom it came from. Until he moved. He seemed to glide forwards, and she knew from the drawn-out way he spoke, as if he were a feline playing with some object of interest, that his was one of the two voices she had heard when she had been trapped in the scanner.

  As he worked his way between his silent minions and through the room to stand before her, she saw his mask was silver rather than black like the others.

  ‘So, it would appear that you are our newest … subject.’ The male tilted his head, and Siray felt goose bumps rise on her arms as a
pair of intense blue eyes stared at her from behind the mask.

  ‘Why am I here?’ she managed to say. She wished her voice had come out stronger, but a quaver had taken the heat out of her question.

  The male’s silver-covered face tilted the other way, and Siray saw his striking eyes shift to the guard who was holding her left arm.

  A flicker of movement from the corner of her left eye was all the warning she had before a wall of flesh slammed into her left cheek, spinning her around and driving the air from her lungs so she couldn’t even cry out. She fell and hit the floor on her right side, her face burning and eyes stinging as she gasped for air.

  The guards seized her arms with a pincer grip once more and yanked her back upright, the room swaying a little around her as she shakily found her balance again. Then she lifted her already swelling face to look at the silver-masked male.

  He raised a hand and slowly wagged a finger at her. ‘No, no, no. I’ll do the talking for now.’

  He strolled leisurely up to her, close enough that she could see just how clear and piercing those blue eyes were. But there was no emotion there. Only a cold amusement.

  A sweat broke out over her body as she watched his head move slowly, his eyes traveling down the length of her body.

  ‘Well, you are a striking one. And feisty. That, your age, and your abilities, makes you ideal for our purposes.’

  Siray stuck her chin out defiantly. ‘And just what are those?’

  A flicker of motion from her right, and another fist connected with that side of her face. Again, the guards dropped her arms so the force of the strike could spin her around.

  Falling to the ground once more, Siray’s head throbbed with pain as both cheeks burned, but she was ready now, and used that moment of freedom to push herself up and scramble for the door. Yet she didn’t get halfway there before a strong hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. This time, a fist connected with her midsection, and pain exploded through her even as her lungs were once again deprived of air. She doubled over, and the guards released her again as she dropped to the floor in a heap for a third time.