Subordinance

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

"What were you doing when you were abducted?" Cool eyes glare at me with an accusatory expression, frosted with disdain. The man in front of me paces, as if taking in my seated form from every angle possible.

"The Quadrant Officer and I were out by the Mississippi River taking swamp samples," I reply, my knee bouncing. I am ridiculously tired and sore from being jostled and bumped these last seven hours it took for us to get back by off-road car. I've been sitting in the interrogation room for a good twenty minutes now.

At least, that's what it feels like. There's no clock in here, just a bare bulb that flickers every so often, illuminating just enough of the concrete floors to see the cracks in places and the metal walls that chill the air like ice. The face of a security camera blinks at me from a corner, watching our discussion and recording every response I make.

I wonder who's watching.

"And how were you abducted? You were together, were you not?" The man's figure is imposing, his arms bursting from tight sleeves, his mouth turned down in a perpetual snarl. I roll my shoulders, on the verge of exhaustion despite the last couple of hours of restless sleep I'd gotten on the ride back.

"Yes," I say, staring at him, "we were together. I was on my motor bike when I was shot with a tranquilizer dart and crashed. We were about ten minutes outside of the marshland."

"Do you remember anything after that?" the man takes a seat at the chair across from me and leans over the rectangular metal table that breaks up the space between us.

I shake my head. "No. I blacked out after that and woke up in a room at the Enemy base. I really don't know what happened." His eyes say he doesn't believe me but the set of his mouth tells me he's going to move on.

"About how long would you say you were out?"

My cheeks flush slightly. "Maybe six hours?"

His eyes narrow. "And yet we only received notice of your location seven hours ago." My throat dries and I blank.

He's calling my bluff.

"Why wasn't your tracker on?" His relentless stare is boring into me, his eyes unforgiving and demanding. I wet my lips with my tongue as I scramble for an explanation. Something that will seem reasonable.

"I didn't know it was off?" My shoulders droop with a reply as lame as that. He doesn't seem to take it either, standing up and facing the wall to the right of him.

"You didn't know, huh?" Calculated measures occupy the brief interims between his words. "Did you really not know?" My sleep-deprived body is still capable of pumping out adrenaline, it seems, as my heart drums loudly in my chest, beating out my confession in a traitorous percussion.

I. Didn't. Want. To.it pounds. I wonder if he can hear.

"And what exactly did you do in those hours you spent at the Enemy base? What did they show you?" His eyes shift into a different light, a light that can see only the imprints of the Enemy, like their fingerprints on my person that contaminate me with their venom. I squirm under the scrutinizing gaze.

Be honest, I tell myself. Right the wrongs you made at the Base.

I take a deep breath. "They showed me—," unsure of how to phrase it, I pause, "they showed me Delta." His brows furrow, confusion marring the previously brunt expression.

"In what way?"

"They showed me information on what Delta really is," nervous about my answer, I throw in, "supposedly." His gaze narrows once again, the confused set of his features twisting into revulsion.