The Girl With Green Scales: A Gen M Novel

Chapter 33: Prince

I wake in stages. Sounds echo, too loud and impossible to make out. Circles of light are like icicles jammed into my skull. I pull against restraints fastened about my wrists and ankles. I growl and hiss, blinking rapidly until everything snaps into focus.

I'm strapped to a chair; surgical instruments are arranged neatly on a tray at my side.

"Good, you're awake," Groff says.

"Father," I say, my voice sodden with sarcasm.

He loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves.

I look about desperately. "Where's Stinky? What did you do to her?"

"Nothing, yet," Groff says, clamping my eyelids open. His sausage fingers uses a suction cup to clasp one of Mairī Lin's contact lenses. "There it is." He yanks Mairī Lin's spy tech from my eyeball and drops the contact into a clear liquid in a Petrie dish. The gadget fizzles and dissolves. Groff does the same to the second contact lens, then releases my eyelids from the clamps.

"Much better," he says.

I gaze at the hissing and bubbling Petrie dish; Mairī Lin's tech liquifies.

I've lost, I realize.

"Please," I beg, my eyes watering, "don't hurt Stinky. She has nothing to do with this."

"I didn't know crocodile tears were one of your lizard powers," Groff snorts. "I admire the effort and your loyalty, I do, but it's a little late for that, and they're directed to the wrong person. Now, where is ... ah! There you are." He reaches over me to pick up something from a lab table. "You agreed to marry Anton and have children. Yet here you are, breaking into my restricted laboratory. I feared you might try something like this, so I brought Stinky just in case. Actions have consequences."

He holds a stainless steel bio-injection gun. I've seen too many of those over the course of my Manifestation prep. He screws a long needle to the end of it.

"What's that for?" I ask.

"I have to say, I am impressed," he says, ignoring my question. "Most don't get past the wailing wall, and no one slips through Nightandgale. But here you are. Your camouflage abilities are truly remarkable. Your smell and tread are muted. You fooled infrared scans and laser detection. Even your thoughts are cloaked. Do you realize you slipped past my best telepath?"

I had no idea.

Groff presses a button on a boxy, outdated communication system with wires coming out the back; it's labeled INTERCOM.

"Bring in the subject," he says.

He towers over me, sliding latex gloves over his enormous hands. He picks up the needle gun.

"I shouldn't have come," I admit. "Please, whatever that is, don't use it on Stinky!"

"This?" he asks. "This isn't for your friend. This is for you." He grasps my cheeks and turns my head to the side. "Hold still. This will cut you open just a smidge; its the injection that hurts like a cluster bomb. He shoves the needle through my skull.

"Stop!" I beg.

He pulls the trigger. There's a pop that fills my mind with blinding pain. Froth forms at my lips as he pulls the needle out and dabs the entry point with a cotton ball.

"There," he says. "Barely any bleeding."

"What did you do to me?" I ask.

A lab technician in a hazmat suit with the multi-pronged lightning bolt insignia opens a door, holding it for Stinky to shuffle past; her small steps leave behind gooey footprints.