House of Bone

Chapter 7

Why would they need to measure me? Surely, my height and weight are stored in a file somewhere. I wonder what they will do, and I'm praying that it won't be as bad as what's already happened. Although, I suspect it will be just as bad, or possibly even worse.

"Come on Kyra, sit down." Kimron gestures to a chair, he seems nicer than the other man, but that isn't saying much. Especially in a place like this.

I sit down and see the tool he's holding properly, it's long and it has a sharp point on the end, like a very complicated syringe with many modifications.

"What is that for?" I ask, terrified, not wanting some unknown thing prodding around my skin.

"It won't hurt, don't worry," Kimron says, preparing the tool. He turns around and I see he has a mask on his face.

"Why are you wearing a mask?" I ask, getting more panicked by the second.

Kimron ignores me and continues towards me, he sticks the object into my arm and pushes down on something on the other end of the stick. I feel something flush into my veins, something cold and dark, and I could feel that it wanted to flood my nerves and hijack them completely. I struggle as much as I can against it, trying to push the strange substance out of my system, I can't let it take over, some sort of primal instinct isn't letting me give up just yet. I try as hard as I can, and I can feel something tingle inside of me pushing out the imposter. I realise my eyes are closed and open them, taking in deep breaths as I do. There's a line that's on the syringe, and the harder I try to get the thing out of me, I can see some red filling up the line. Who knows what it measures, but I do know that the substance is out.

"She's a five." Kimron calls to the other dude "We'll need to try again and again to weaken her forces. She's stronger than the others. But it seems to... like her, for lack of a better term."

Like me? How can a cold vicious liquid like something? And five? Five out of what?

I think about it for a bit and come to the conclusion that the thing inside me was some sort of animate thing and that my force was that tingly feeling inside me when I tried to push back. That just leaves me with more questions, why do they want me to weaken? Do they want this thing to be in control? Why? My thoughts are interrupted by the annoying man giving out a loud grunt.

"I guess we'll have to pump more power in next time then," he says and turns away, then remembers something, he turns to me and chucks my clothes at me.

"Change," he says and walks off.

Kimron comes over and unbinds me and I hurry over to the closet to change. After I finish, I see that we're up by where we entered. I see no one around so I rush out the door hoping no one will stop me from leaving this horrid place. No one does.

As I leave I can see Tia and Shade waiting for me.

"Shade, Tia. I–" I exclaim, but Tia puts a finger to her lips, and getting what she means, I attempt to cover up my story by adding on, "The Tombs, like we were talking about before. I was just thinking about when Lady Bone took me there for history. Oh, how I hated it."

"Heh, sounds horrid." Tia says "Lucky I was sick on my history trip. The other Tears were complaining so loudly afterwards."

"I didn't mind them." Shade adds on surprisingly, as they don't usually like things like that "They were nice and dark."

I sigh quietly, of course, they say that. All I truly know about Shade is that they like dark stuff and they're not very talkative. But they're very sensitive, I'll need to ask Tia later about what not to say around them. Like Bron.

"Well, we are done for the day so we can head back to the dorms. Although they're not really dorms, more like big fancy hotel rooms."

"Yeah," I agree. "A bit smaller than the guest rooms but as fancy as the Bone's rooms. At least at my House."

"There you go." Tia smiles "You referred to Bone House as 'my House' instead of 'Bone House'"

"Does that really matter?" I ask, forgetting that she'd asked me why I did that earlier. At the time I thought it was because I was adopted and I didn't really think it was my home, not just a House, but now I have a feeling that there is a deeper reason behind it. And I have to figure out what that thing they wanted to control me is. And why, do those people want it to control me?

***

Back at the dorms–which I have learnt that Tia and Shade refer to as the Shelter–I gesture to Tia to follow me into my room.

"What?" she asks when we get there "Are you going to pester me about talking about the tests?"

"No!" I exclaim to assure her, that particular thought had slipped my mind."I asked you to come because I wanted to ask about Shade. What not to say to... trigger them."

"Oh!" Tia chuckles as though she hadn't said anything earlier "Well, don't pester them about Bron, or go in his room, or Shade's room. And uh, what else? Don't ask them about their House, they either miss them or hate them. And do not, whatever you do, ask them about their family."

"Why?" I frown, confused. "Is their family...?"

"Well," Tia begins "It's complicated. You know how we took the test to get here? The Shadow House has sent lots of initiates here, most of them don't even pass the first day, and the Shadow House trains them to succeed in the test. You know how the order goes, Soul, Shadow, Bone, Blood, Tears. Shadow is the closest House to the Soul Dynasty, so they believe that the initiates are given some kind of honour. They were glad that Shade left. No one actually cared that they were gone, they wanted them gone."

"Oh. I- um, didn't know. I'm sorry."

"It's not me you should be apologising to. If you apologise to Shade you'll only make it worse. And probably get yourself put under again."

"Thanks for telling me." I'm shocked at that horrid realisation, poor Shade, poor all of those initiates.

Wait.

I realise something even worse, those initiates aren't here, Tia said they didn't make it past the first day. They're –I breathe in and out slowly to calm myself– they're dead.

And this program killed them.