Unseen

Chapter 8

The world rushed by too fast outside the car. Moonlight lent chaotic splashes of color to the dark trees. Delta-Nine-308's stomach flopped wildly back and forth like a dying fish.

She and her cohort had needed to catch fish with their bare hands, once. They had laid them out on the floor next to the bucket and watched them slowly suffocate. In the moment, Yvette had thought it was a test of reflexes, grasping the slippery fish and pulling them out of the bucket before they could squirm away. It wasn't until later that she had figured out the real test had been a test of will. Not everyone had passed. Some had tossed the dying fish back.

She closed her eyes and focused on the memory. The past was easier than the present. The sight of the dying fish had made her sick, but now it was a comfort next to the speed of the world passing by outside the car.

She thought about home. She thought about white walls. She thought about a world that didn't move when she looked at it.

The man driving the car was the same one who had come to get her at the restaurant. He gave no sign that he recognized her. He focused on the road. Every so often, she saw his oversized sunglasses in the rearview mirror, and suspected he was looking at her. Looking for what, she didn't know. A sign that she was going to throw open the door and make a run for it?

She had considered it.

But the world was moving too fast to look at, let alone hurl herself into. And what would be her reward? To be left stranded on an unfamiliar street until Yvette's people found her again. Or maybe they wouldn't find her, and she would be left to wander the streets until she found the horizon and toppled off.

Better to pin her hopes on the secret hole waiting for her in the closet. Better to wait for her moment.

It would come. It had to come. She would know when it was time.

Until then, she had a mission.

She had been excited at the prospect of a mission night. Something familiar amid all the brightly colored newness. But there was no Joss. There was no van. Only this car—the same car that had pulled up beside her the night she had been captured.

Her arms and legs were free, leaving her to shift helplessly back and forth at every bump and turn. All she had to hold her in place was this flimsy seatbelt the driver had needed to show her how to use.

And there was no blindfold. No comforting darkness to let her focus on the excited drumbeat of her heart. There was only the world rushing by, houses and trees blurring together in a swirl of muddy colors.

She gasped for air like the dying fish. Her stomach flopped harder.

Maybe she shouldn't have eaten all those cookies.

She wasn't even wearing the bracelet. The missing threat should have been a relief. But she had already grown used to its weight.

Now its absence was just one more way she felt unanchored.

The car rolled to a stop. Her stomach flopped for a few more breaths, then slowly settled. She remembered the fish's frantic movements slowing, until it finally lay still, its bulging eye staring into hers.

The man looked over his shoulder at her. With his sunglasses obscuring half his face, his expression revealed nothing. "Are you all right?"

She nodded faintly. "A little sick. I'm not used to... seeing. Before a mission." She gestured vaguely toward her eyes. She should have asked for a blindfold.

His long silence told her that wasn't what he had been asking. "Are you prepared for your... assignment?"

His slight pause before the last word spoke of discomfort. Maybe he was as uncomfortable with her job as she was with... with whatever the fourth floor was. Whatever Yvette had given her.