Smoking Power

Chapter 33

The sound of deathly screams jolt me awake. At some time during my numbness of last night, I must of fallen asleep. I ignore the stiffness in my limbs after sleeping in an awkward position, and spring up into a sitting position to try to see whatever's causing and who's screaming the actual screams.

After seeing the picture of Ambers deceased body and being locked away in this disgusting place, the last thing I want to do  is to listen to the sounds of another poor soul getting tortured. Unfortunately, I still have to do my job, even if I have had a pretty rough day. I can't keep myself in the dark if somehow these screams are a important piece of information that could possibly help us. Somehow.

My gut churns as I listen to the horrid howling coming from somewhere above us. My mind gives me horrible flashes of who the victim could be. I don't want it to, but it continues giving me images of scared people, even hanging rusty, butchery weapons. It goes on and on and I don't know how to stop it. Is this the first signs of post traumatic stress?

I sigh and rub my temples. I don't have time to think about my mental state at the moment. What I need to do now, is find a way out of here. I stand up and limp over to the cell door. My injuries from the explosion are only just beginning to heal and sleeping on them funny last night, did not help.

I heat up my hands and go to wrap them around the bars. If I heat them up enough I can melt the metal and hopefully escape. I guess deep down the reason why I honestly didn't try to escape last night, was because there was no point since my energy levels were very low. Now that I've had a good nights sleep, I feel like I'm up for a crack at it. As well as sufficiently avenging Amber and Clarence's deaths by severely injuring and possibly killing a couple of hogmers.

As my hands are about to fully wrap around the pole though, something pops up and saps them. Huh? I reach my hands back from where they had instinctively flown up to my chest, only to get sapped again. I do it again a third time, but actually pay attention to them this time. Just before the inevitable sap, a glossy blue bubble, that looks a bit like a bubble of soap, pops up around the inside edges of the cell. It's like some time of force field that really stings when you touch it.

I look over my shoulder to where I was sleeping last night. It's a plain, rock wall. I take it that they only put the force field up around the actual bars then. I feel my eyebrows get pulled down in confusion as I think back to last night. Marco grabbed the bars to open the door and put both Declan and I into our separate cells. I then remember how he clipped them shut with a padlock each time he shut the door. At the time I had just assumed that it was for an extra lock, but I realise that that might of activated the force field.

I frown in confusion again when I think back to the photograph that Marco chucked into my cell. If the padlock activated the force field and Marco chucked the picture to me after he sealed the padlock, then why did it still enter my mini prison? Why didn't it get stopped like my hands have?

I sigh again and plonk down on the ground. This might take slightly longer than I had originally thought it would. Eventually I find myself looking in the direction that I haven't looked in since I first entered here. I guess that subconsciously I was too freaked out to see something that I definitely don't want to see. Taking a deep breath, I look directly into Declans cell.

Declans still asleep. Either that or he's dead, but I'm not even going to think about that possibility. He's got slightly less scrapes and bruises from the bombs than I have. His arm that Gareth shot with a poison bullet though, looks pretty bad. The blood is still trickling out of the hole that it's caused and there's a huge patch of dry blood surrounding him. I want to gag at the sight of so much blood. I know that he needs urgent medical help. If he doesn't die of blood loss, then he'd probably die of an infection. The wound that's still got the crusted black spots around it, should be bandaged up. The amount of bacteria and other deadly germs that are probably swarming in this place, will surely be attracted to such a feast for them. Let's just hope that we'll get help before either of those scenarios take place.