Beyond the Horizon

33. Terminated

Shion hurtled out of sleep. He felt like a drowning man suddenly breaking the surface of a deep lake. His heart pounded, his body ached, and for a moment he couldn't believe that he was still alive.

          Was he still alive?

          Shion didn't recognize the dull, dingy place before him. It looked like some sort of dungeon. The walls were thick gray concrete, so dark and cold-looking he wouldn't be surprised if his hand came away damp when he touched one.

          Shion shifted and realized he was lying on a rough, concave bed, almost like a hammock. But—no—when he sat up, he realized that it practically was a hammock. The bed was some kind of collapsible canvas cot, of the type a camper might bring on trips.

          Where was he? And why did his body feel like he had just been hit by a truck?

          His head pounded with every beat of his heart, making the world fuzz at the edges of his vision. The muscles in his neck felt taut and sore. Shion touched the side of his throat, and his fingertips met the cottony texture of bandages. His clothes were gone, replaced by a pale green jumpsuit in the style of a janitor's uniform.

          Shion remembered him and Nezumi leaving the cabin. Nezumi looked so sad, as if he might break, but Shion couldn't do anything to help him, because his own heart had been in shambles. They stepped out onto the porch, the sun glinted like daggers off the fresh powdered snow, and then Shion felt a terrible pain in the side of his neck and a cold, bitter numb spreading through his veins.

          Shion's breathing shallowed. We were attacked.

          The Lab. He and Nezumi must have been found and ambushed. The pain in his neck must have come from a tranquilizer dart, or some other neutralizing agent.

          Where is Nezumi?

          Shion swung his legs off of the cot, ignoring the groan of his locked joints. He had to pause for a moment when he stood. His body trembled badly from whatever cocktail of drugs the Lab had shot him with, and bright spots of light bloomed in his vision as his body warned him not to overtax himself.

          A low toilet stood to the right of his bed, completely exposed and confusing to his eyes. Shion turned away from it and settled his attention on the door at the far end of the room. Though the door was the same gloomy gray as the walls around it, Shion could see it outlined in pale yellow light. Shion stumbled for it—and yelped as his head smacked into an invisible forcefield.

          He blinked at the air in front of him and reached out a hand. It squeaked across the surface of a very hard, clear pane of glass. The clarity was so perfect that it appeared as though there was nothing at all separating Shion from freedom.

          This was not just a dungeon; it was a cage.

          Panic crawled up Shion's throat. Nezumi had not known the details of what happened to the subjects in Horizon Labs, but he knew it was bad. Enough that his parents chose to kill over capture. He would be experimented on, prodded and injected and caged again and again like a lab rat.

          No. I won't let them.

          Where is Nezumi?

          Shion's nerves screamed in worry. He needed to find him. He couldn't take the thought of Nezumi somewhere else in this building, hurting and frightened, and alone, and wondering if Shion was also feeling those things.

          I'll destroy the glass.

          After what happened at the Yoshidas', Shion was wary of using his powers, but in this case, he thought destruction would be permissible. It was either the glass or his whole life.