Once I pulled Zippy back, I swung through the vent and dropped to the floor. I had the element of surprise and a stun gun. In the second it took for them to react, I shot them both. The sizzle slaps rang, but they didn’t fall down.

The man on the left pointed to his belt buckle. “Anti stunners.” He aimed his weapon at my chest.

I flinched but nothing happened. Good job, Zippy. Then I realized it was me against the two of them. I bolted toward the patient area. And I would have escaped, too.

Except one of them yelled, “Stop or we’ll hurt Doctor Lamont.”

Damn. I turned. The right side goon held a scalpel to Lamont’s throat. Her angry eyes aimed a clear signal at me to keep running. They were probably bluffing, but I couldn’t take that chance. Not with her life.

“Drop your weapon,” Right Goon ordered.

An odd request considering I couldn’t hurt them with it. I placed it on the floor and Left Goon picked it up. Before I could even say a word, Left Goon stunned me with my own gun. The sizzle slap hit me in the middle of my chest, knocking me back.

15

AS THE PULSE FROM THE STUN GUN TRAVELED THROUGH my body, it left behind a stinging pain as if thousands of needles jabbed into me. The numbness followed, but it seemed slower. Eventually I couldn’t move, or think clearly, or talk. Voices reached me, but their words were jumbled. My vision blurred and I was unable to focus on one person or thing. I’d never felt so helpless and uncaring at the same time.

Encased in something white, I sensed movement. I concentrated on the sounds around me. After a while, I heard the washers slosh and spin. Then the hum of the power plant dominated as the laundry noises faded.

The crunch and clink of the recycling plant grew louder and I smelled the hot, sweet scent of the glass kilns. The light changed to bluelights and all sounds were cut off.

The white material disappeared. The two goons talked and my view changed to a lower point. They fussed with things around me, then left.

Time passed until pain pricked my feet, then sizzled up my calves. Sensation returned with agonizing slowness. When the effects of the stun gun finally wore off, I felt relief that the fuzziness had lifted from my mind. It was quickly followed by panic.

I sat in a chair, but my wrists were clamped to the armrests with metal cuffs. A hard ring bit into my ankles, and I guessed they were cuffed to the chair’s legs. My waist was strapped in, as well. The chair wouldn’t move when I squirmed. I considered screaming for help, but the walls had been sprayed with insulating foam, which scared me more than being secured to a chair.

Taking deep breaths, I calmed my terrified thoughts and focused on the positives. I hadn’t been recycled. I wasn’t in the brig with Karla and Vinco. And Logan knew about Inside’s top level. What else?

I glanced around in the dim bluelight. Shelves full of metal parts lined two of the walls and half of the wall with the door. A storage closet for maintenance was my first impression, but this chair didn’t fit. And the work table filled with half completed gadgets meant this could be where the goons had built the anti-stunners.

I looked for air and heating vents, but didn’t find any. That would explain why I didn’t know about this room. It also meant the only way out of here was through the door. A gap under it let in daylights and air.

It didn’t take a genius to guess Jacy had ordered my abduction. Although I was unclear on the why. Sloan obviously had informed him of my visit to the recycling plant, so Jacy knew I had tricked my tracer. Why would that goad him into doing this?

A couple of hours later I still didn’t have any answers. Or food and water. My stomach grumbled. Finally, the door opened and my two goons and Jacy slipped inside the room, closed and then locked the door.

Clearly unhappy, Jacy studied me for a while.

I stared right back. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

“You tell me. What have you been up to?” he asked.

“I helped lance a boil—that was gross. I stitched a patient’s hand, I disinfected every surface of—”

“Stop playing around, Trella. You know what I mean.”

Like I would tell him. “This isn’t the right way to ask me, Jacy.”

His scowl deepened. “I needed to get you away from the infirmary and Bubba Boom.”

“And you couldn’t have asked me to meet you somewhere else?”

“Would you have come?”

“No.” A wave of pure exhaustion swept through me. “What do you want, Jacy?”

“I need to know what you and Logan have been doing for the last few weeks.”

He knew about Logan. Not good. “Why would I tell you?”

“Because we’re on the same side.”

I made a show of looking at my restraints. “Is this how you treat all your cohorts or am I just that special?”

“I know Bubba Boom fed you a bunch of lies. I didn’t realize what he was up to until too late. And I couldn’t think of another way to make you listen to reason,” Jacy said.

“So you attack me and tie me to a chair and I’m supposed to believe you’re the voice of reason?”

“Yes.”

I laughed at the pure ridiculousness of the situation. “Save your speech, Jacy. I saw you with Sloan and James Trava. I heard you plotting.”

“Did you hear the entire conversation?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Fine. I heard the last ten minutes or so.”