Ready Or Not

The Queen and The Pea

**Lydia**

The first set of bars outside my cell slid aside as I lay on the cot, listening. The second set rattled as somebody shook it the way I'd like to shake them. Then I heard their voice crystal clear despite the two layers of bulletproof glass between me and them.

"Montgomery! Did ya sleep well?"

Go fuck yourself. "There's a pea under the mattress and it's given me a terrible pain in my delicate ass," I responded. In my head I saw Daniel and Sam shake their heads at me. Oh well.

My discomfort hadn't been all that real. Sure, it wasn't my perfect mattress back home, but I'd hardly slept anyway, so who cared? What was real was my hunger. They'd offered me another meal before escorting me to the cell, and I'd declined. I wasn't in a hurry to fill myself up with more yew.

The second set of bars opened and the officer swaggered his way to the glass, opening what was basically an armored lazy Susan and dropping a plastic bottle into it. He rotated it so the open side faced me and the moment the smell hit me I knew I'd made a mistake refusing to eat the night before. Last night at least there had been the possibility that the blood had only been dosed with the same heavy handedness as the bottle I'd had before my interrogation.

This smelled twice as strong. Still, if my stomach still growled, it would have. The thought of putting poison into my system made me sit and stare at the bottle, considering its small size and unusual (to me) plastic material, for what was probably a full thirty seconds.

"Better make up your mind, princess," the officer egged me on. "I hear it's worse when it ain't warm. And you have a visitor. Beautiful thing. Blonde. Talks like a cowgirl. She a friend of yours?" He whistled low in an imitation of what my gut was doing.

I felt it drop to my feet. Why was she trying again? Why put me in here and then come to check on me?

Huffing, I pushed myself off the cot and towards the bottled blood. I held my nose and downed half in one gulp. I barely kept it down. It tasted so off and smelled so strongly I couldn't bring myself to drink what remained. I'd just get used to being hungry. And weak. It was subtle, but it was there. Increasing the dose of yew so suddenly made the effects much more noticeable, whereas when they'd been dosing me on the outside (listen to me, talking like I'd been in jail for more than twelve hours), it had been a slow but steady adjustment.

I was starting to get used to feeling confused by Hannah too.

****

Humiliated.

That's how I felt, and it wasn't just because of the ridiculous chains that went from my ankles, to my wrists, to my neck of all things. They even ran a chain behind my back from elbow to elbow. That was bad, but worse was seeing Hannah shifting in her chair, ignoring the sterile, monochrome room around us, obviously uncomfortable, but still staring directly at me.

Staring directly at me with those deep, dark eyes, and what I could only describe as a look that switched from guilt, to concern, to relief to an utter void of all feeling altogether, like somebody was cycling through her emotional settings, unable to settle on the right one. It was unsettling, and I was embarrassed to be seen like this. Reduced to a chained animal because I'd believed there was a chance for us, when really, all there was was her deceit.

I sat slowly, refusing to look away from her, but also refusing to speak first. The low murmurs of another couple and the shifting of guards were the only sounds in the room.

It didn't take her long to find her voice. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

There was the guilt.

"Right," I sniffed. "So sorry. I just bet."