Free Web NovelChapter 127: Chapter 127 A chemical
_Rowena’s POV_
The door opened without warning.
There was no knock or sound of footsteps approaching first. Just the sudden shift of air and the door swinging inward and a man stepping through it with the unhurried movement of someone who was not worried about what was waiting for them on the other side.
He was tall, I noted that. Well-dressed in a way that looked out of place in this room, like he had come from somewhere better and hadn’t bothered to change for the occasion. Good shoes and dark jacket. The kind of face that would read as handsome in better lighting and in better circumstances.
He looked at me on the bedframe and said nothing for a moment.
I looked back at him, waiting patiently and calmly.
“You look better than I expected,” he said.
“Disappoint you?” I asked.
He came further into the room and let the door close behind him. He had something in his hand. A small thing. I registered it without focusing on it directly, keeping my eyes on his face while my peripheral attention tracked the object.
It looked like a syringe.
“This will hurt,” he said. He said it conversationally, like he was telling me the coffee was hot. “I want you to know that going in, so you’re not surprised.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Something that makes cooperation feel more appealing than resistance,” he replied calmly. “After a while.”
He crossed the room.
I stood up from the bedframe.
He was bigger than me. Significantly. And he moved like someone who had been in physical confrontations before and had come out of them fine, which meant rushing him without a plan was going to produce a predictable outcome.
I assessed it in about two seconds and made a decision.
I let him get close.
And then I moved.
I caught his wrist before the syringe reached my arm and I turned it hard and he absorbed the turn without dropping it, which told me his grip strength was serious, and then his other hand came up and he was stronger than I had read him to be and the syringe found my neck before I had finished redirecting his arm.
It was eerily cold and immediate.
He stepped back and I stood where I was and felt it travel.
It was not like the chemical they had used to take me down on the street. That had been fast and dark and it had just turned off the lights. This was different. This moved through me slowly and it felt like cold water in my veins for about three seconds and then it felt like something else entirely.
The pain arrived in my bones.
I don’t have a better description for it than that. It was in the bones themselves, not the muscle, not the skin, not any surface-level thing that you could locate and brace against. It was structural. Like every bone in my body had simultaneously decided to object to existing and was making that objection known as loudly as it could.
I went to one knee.
I did not intend to go to one knee. My leg made the decision before I could countermand it and then I was on the floor with both hands pressed against the cold concrete and my teeth locked together and the sound that came out of me was not a word. frёewebηovel.cѳm
“There it is,” he said with a small laugh.
I looked up at him.
He was watching me with an expression that was clinical in a way that was worse than cruelty. Not enjoying it exactly. Just observing it, the way you observed something you had set in motion and were monitoring for results.
“Who sent you?” I asked. My voice came out steadier than I expected given what my body was doing.
“Rest,” he said instead.
“Who sent you,” I said again.
He crouched down to my level. Up close his eyes were careful and calculating and they looked at me with the specific attention of someone who was measuring something.
“You’re not going to break, are you?” he asked. It wasn’t quite an admiration. More like professional assessment.
“Answer my question,” I gritted my teeth.
“No,” he said simply.
The pain spiked and I pressed my forehead against the cool concrete for a moment because the concrete was the only thing that was the right temperature and my hands were gripping the floor and I was riding it the way you rode something that was going to pass because things like this passed.
And the pain eventually passed.
But slowly. It receded like a tide going out, leaving something raw behind it in the bones, an ache that sat without leaving. freewёbnoνel.com
I pushed myself back up to sitting.
He was still crouching in front of me, watching me.
“How many people have you done this to?” I asked. At this point, I could barely feel Kyra.
“Enough,” he said.
“And they all broke eventually,” I pointed out.
He tilted his head slightly.
“You think you’re different?”
“I think I’ve been in pain before,” I said. “Real pain. This is significant but it isn’t new territory.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“It comes back, actually.” he said. “Every few hours. Each time it lasts a little longer.” He stood up. “By day three most people are willing to discuss whatever needs discussing.”
“What exactly needs discussing?”
He picked up the dirty cup of water from the floor and set it closer to me. An almost considerate gesture that made it worse somehow.
“Drink that,” he said. “You need to stay hydrated or the compound’s side effects get more complicated.”
“What needs discussing?!” I raised my voice.
He just ignored me and walked to the door.
“Rest,” he said again.
Then left.
The door closed and the room went back to its dim stillness and I sat on the concrete with my back against the bedframe. I thought about what he had said. Every few hours. Each time longer.
“Kyra,” I called out.
“I felt it,” she replied weakly. Her voice was thin. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help.”
“It’s alright,” I said.
“It’s not alright,” she signed.
“But It will be,” I encouraged.
I picked up the water and looked at it for a while before I drank it anyway because he was right about the hydration and because spite had its limits.
Then I started thinking about the door.
