River

I was beginning to feel bored out of my mind. The hunters might have kept the cells clean and decent, but the lack of anything to do in them was torturous. What did they expect their prisoners to do all day? Nothing, I guessed.

I would’ve killed for a book to read. Or anything to help take my mind off time passing… and the crude gestures the merfolk had started making to me from their tank. I guessed that they were just as bored as I was. I glared daggers back at them for lack of anything else to do. In the end, I retreated to the bathroom and stepped in the shower, pleased that the water was hot. I found the shower comforting, and I would’ve stayed there for a lot longer if I hadn’t heard keys being inserted into my cell door. As it clicked open, I leapt from the shower and grabbed a towel, wrapping it tightly around me. I opened the door just a fraction to see who it was.

My eyes were met by Mark’s icy blue ones. I quickly shut the door again.

“What do you want?” I called. Truth be told, I had expected him to return sooner.

“I’d like you to come with me.”

I shouldn’t have expected anything less cryptic from him by now.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Let me get dressed.”

I fumbled around in the bathroom, looking for my clothes before realizing that I had left them on the bed outside. Dammit.

“Uh, would you hand me my clothes?” I called to Mark through the door. “They should be on the mattress.”

I opened the door again, just wide enough to thrust out my hand. A few seconds later, he had planted my clothes into my palm and I pulled them in through the door before closing it again behind me. I hurriedly dried myself and got dressed. Glancing in the mirror, I realized for the first time how wrecked I looked. I had dark shadows under my eyes and in general looked like I hadn’t had a wink of sleep in days. I gathered my hair above my head and wrapped it in a tight bun before leaving the bathroom.

Reentering the main room, I took in Mark’s appearance properly. He was wearing a change of clothes, and whereas he’d had a shadow of stubble around his sharp jawline before, now it was shaved clean. His black hair was combed back neatly, and he smelled of minty aftershave.

He wasn’t holding a gun this time, although I was sure that he was armed with one—perhaps attached to the back of his belt.

I frowned at him. “Where do you want to take me?”

“To our lab,” he replied, eyeing me steadily.

Lab. Recalling his assurance that the more I cooperated, the better off I’d be, I moved to the door and stepped outside.

I wanted to ask what exactly they wanted me in the lab for, but I was fed up of asking questions only to be brushed off with non-answers. I guessed I’d find out soon enough what they wanted from me. Maybe even too soon for comfort.

Even now, Mark didn’t bother to bind my wrists. It showed how small a threat the hunters had come to see me as, though I supposed that this could only work in my favor.

He gestured toward the exit of the courtyard and indicated that I follow as he began heading toward it. We entered an elevator and embarked on a journey out of this building, along countless corridors and half a dozen glass walkways, until we arrived outside tall, stark white double doors on the ground floor of a building about a mile away from the one that held the courtyard. Mark flattened his thumb against a screen fixed near the handles. The device beeped, and the doors drew open as gracefully as curtains.

I stepped into a vast laboratory. The length of the tables that lined the stark white walls and the amount of sleek, state-of-the-art equipment they had in here was breathtaking.

“This is just the ground floor,” Mark commented as he led me deeper into the room. Perhaps he’d noticed the awed expression on my face.

Mark stopped us in the center of the lab and pulled out a phone from his pocket. He dialed a number, his eyes falling on me as he waited for whomever he was calling to pick up.

“Jocelyn, I’m on the ground level.” He spoke into the receiver. “We’re waiting for you.”

He hung up.

We stood for a few moments surrounded by the eerie silence of the lab before the sound of footsteps descending a staircase came from the far corner of the room. The set of doors swung open near a table of burners and out stepped a short, mousy woman with wide-rimmed spectacles and a tiny frame. Donning a dark blue lab coat, she hurried as she spotted us, the short heels of her shoes clacking against the sleek white floors.

Arriving next to us, she exchanged a knowing glance with Mark before reaching out to take my hand. I hesitated, glancing at Mark.

He nodded encouragingly. “Go with Jocelyn. She’ll return you to your room once you’re done.”

Once I’m done with what?

I looked at this new Jocelyn woman untrustingly, but allowed her to lead me away all the same. I cast one more glance over my shoulder toward Mark as he left the room before the woman led me up a staircase. We climbed a single flight and arrived on the first floor—just as large and impressive as the one beneath. She led me across it toward a long, heavy black curtain that was sectioning off a portion of the lab. She parted the curtain and led me through it. I found myself staring at a row of treatment beds with more alien equipment crowded around them. She indicated a bed in front of it and nodded, smiling faintly.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

I doubted I could make myself comfortable in this lab even if she presented me with a king-sized bed to stretch out on, but I did my best to acquiesce. She perched herself on a stool next to the bed and planted her foot down on a red button, which made the bed tilt upward slightly, until my back was at a forty-five degree angle.