The Fire and the Sky (Book 3 of the... - Chapter 58: Chapter 58

Em awoke on the floor. A furious kind of pain stabbed at her skull from the inside as she tried to sit. Her joints protested and muscles ached as though she had aged fifty years since she last opened her eyes.
Then again, perhaps she had.
Wherever she found herself now, it wasn't the room she had fallen asleep in. Everything around her was an aggressive white that reflected stark lighting back in on itself and right into her eyes. The floor was cold and stank of bleach. Her bed was absent, as was anything else that could qualify as furniture.
Gingerly, Em got to her feet. As she moved, she realized her hospital gown had been replaced by fresh, mint-colored scrubs. That, at least, was a relief. Running her hand over her hairless head, she discovered a series of small, coin-sized electrodes secured in a symmetrical constellation across her scalp. In doing so, she noticed more that had been placed on her arm, close to or directly on top of pulse points. A quick glance down the front of her scrubs revealed more still, including a couple that sat directly over her heart.
She turned in a slow circle, taking in the room as her eyes adjusted to the light. The space was a rectangle, equally tall as it was deep. Save for a single door on one end, the ceiling and three of the walls were covered in shimmering panels. Em walked toward the door and, against her better judgement, ran her fingertips across one at eye-level.
Nothing happened.
"It hasn't been turned on yet."
Em whirled around, nearly losing her balance in the process. The fourth wall—one of the two long sides of the rectangular room—wasn't a wall at all: it was a window. Thick triple-pane fiberglass ran from edge to edge, floor to ceiling. On the other side of it was a gallery of control panels that filled an equally sterile room. Researchers busied themselves at their individual stations; doing what, Em couldn't tell.
And there, directly on the other side of the window, was Wyndam. He was dressed as impeccably as always in a crisp, personally tailored suit. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his slacks, and the lackadaisical smile on his face gave him the air of a man who had never doubted himself once in his entire life.
The truth hit Em all at once — she wasn't in a room at all: she was in a cage.
"Today we move onto the exciting part of our program, Starborn. Are you ready?" Wyndam cocked his head, his expression smug.
Em didn't answer. She came to the window and scanned the room. Aside from Wyndam, not one person looked back. Her eyes slid back to the door to her chamber, sizing it up. Its edges were flush with the wall and it lacked any sort of discernible handle with which to open it
No in and out privileges here, I see, she thought.
She looked again into the control room and found one set of double doors against the back wall. It probably wouldn't be difficult to blast down the chamber door and soar over the heads of her captors out of the control room. But she was weak and had no idea where in the lab this room was, which would make finding an escape route tricky—possibly even deadly. Frowning, Em shuffled back into the middle of the chamber and sank down to sit cross-legged in the middle of the floor. With her elbow on one knee, she cradled her chin in her hand and blinked back at Wyndam with as much ambivalence as she could muster.
If her defiance troubled him, he didn't let on. Instead, he turned to the researchers and told them to begin. One of the researchers bent over their station and got to work. Within seconds, a mechanical sound on the other side of the wall roared to life before settling into a dull and constant hum. A quiet buzz emitted from the panels. Em kept her expression impassive, not wanting to give the Loyals any sense of satisfaction, but her mind was racing. She didn't know what was happening, but she didn't care to find out either.
"The biological testing has been fascinating, but it has its limitations," Wyndam said. "No amount of bloodwork or x-rays is going to tell us what we really want to know."
Em knew he was waiting for her to ask what that something might be, but she just stared. She wasn't interested in playing into his villainous monologue.
"Your powers," Wyndam continued when it became clear that Em wasn't going to speak. "We're going to figure out how they work."
With a roll of her eyes, Em flopped back onto the floor. She folded her arms behind her head and gazed up at the panelled ceiling while her brain considered what these people already knew. They had witnessed her ability to fly, though there was no way they could know this ability was the result of manipulating the energy around her. Melanie, who leaned back against one of the consols, arms crossed and shooting Em filthy looks, had been on the receiving end of one of her powerful blasts. And they had video footage of her lifting one of their own agents into the air, dangling him there like a puppet before throwing him back to the ground, which meant they knew she could kill them.
But for all of that, they had never seen her at her strongest. Em hadn't even seen her strongest, though she knew instinctively she had much more power at her disposal. She'd simply never had the need to test her own limits before.
Em could see only two options: she could continue to subvert their expectations by downplaying her strength, or she could let loose and they could discover together just how powerful she really was.
Would it be enough?
A loud bang made Em jump. She lifted her head to find Melanie at the glass, the meat of her fist still pressed into the window where she had hammered against it.
"Are you deaf? He said get up," Melanie barked.
"Don't talk to me." Em laid her head back down on her arms.
Wyndam stepped up to Melanie's side.
"Starborn—"
"Em. My name is Em, stop calling me Starborn."
"We're ready to begin," Wyndam said, ignoring her completely.
"Cool story. I'm not interested."
Wyndam and Melanie exchanged a smug look.
"You should be," Melanie said. A shark-like grin spread across her face. "But if you want to be a bitch about it, I don't mind incentivizing you."
Em snorted. "There's a thinly-veiled threat if I've ever heard one. I hate to break it to you though, but this is what rock bottom looks like. I've got very little to lose."
"Very little, sure. But you do have something. Or, rather, someone."
The implication behind Melanie's words was enough to send Em's thoughts into a tailspin. It would never matter how much time went by, the very thought of May being in danger was like catching a molotov cocktail: explosive and devastating.
"Shut the fuck up," Em snarled as she rolled onto her side.
Melanie pressed in close to the glass, her eyes flashing with malevolent delight. "It would be so easy to track her down, you know. I'm due for a little payback, and I'd love to give you a front row seat to the show."
Em rushed at the window. She pounded both fists against the glass on either side of Melanie's head but the Loyal didn't flinch.
"I said shut up."
"Then do as you're told."
"What do you want from me?" Em shouted, hammering her hands against the glass again. "What is the point of all this?"
"The point," Wyndam interjected. "Is that we believe in understanding our enemies."
Em shook her head. It never ceased to astound her whenever she was faced with the Loyals' lack of humanity. "I'm not your enemy."
An ugly scowl twisted Wyndam's expression. In his eyes, Em saw nothing but hate.
"You are the bastardization of everything we believe in," he hissed, his cool demeanor faltering for the first time since Em's capture. "Your very existence spits in the face of the Stars. Of course you're our enemy."
"Listen, you have two options here," Melanie said. She made an exaggerated motion of checking her watch, as if she had somewhere more important to be. "You're either going to do as we say willingly, or I'm going to find your scrawny girlfriend and make you watch as I gut her like a fish." She gestured to the floor between the window and the bank of consols. "I'll do it right here. Like I said, you'll have a front row seat. And there won't be a fucking thing you can do about it."
Em's fury came to a violent boil and spilled out of her as a feral scream.
"We'll see about that." Em stepped back from the window, letting her arms fall to her sides. She flexed her fingers, clutching at the air and trapping molecules of energy in her grip. The energy burned hot, drawing more and more into itself like a black hole until her hands were enveloped in sizzling, swirling energetic masses. Em could see herself reflected back in the glass—the whites of her eyes growing dark like the sky before a storm. That darkness bled out, spider-webbing from her eyes and reaching down her cheeks and up across her temples. Beyond the window, the researchers gaped fearfully at her. Wyndam snapped at them to act, though Em was too far gone to hear what he was saying.
"You want to know how my powers work?" Em bellowed. "Fine!"
With cutting swings of her arms, Em forced the energy from her hands so that it exploded outward. She sent every ounce of her rage and pain and fear with it, feeding the energy like a dark monster. The buzzing of the chamber's panels grew louder, over the crashing and snapping of energy ricocheting around the room. A vibrant brightness filled Em's vision as the lighting swelled. The force of her outrage was so great and so powerful that for a few white-hot moments she thought she was going to be torn apart.
And then, the cacophony of noise was extinguished with an anticlimactic pop. The world went quiet and Em fell to her knees. Her scrubs were soaked through with sweat, and her heart was hammering so hard she wouldn't have been surprised if it crashed right through her chest.
But when her vision corrected itself, adjusting from the blinding light, she was horrified to find nothing had changed. the chamber still stood, sterile and whole. There wasn't so much as a crack in the glass or a scorch-mark on the floor.
Absolutely nothing had happened.
But on the other side of the glass, Wyndam didn't seem upset. In fact, he looked delighted. He turned his face toward Melanie and smiled. "It looks like our little cage is working perfectly."
Melanie nodded, and in unison, they turned to Em.
Her heart sank: there was no way she was getting out of there now.
Wyndam looked her dead in the eye, and all she saw behind them was his triumph.
"I think we've messed around long enough," he said. "Let's get down to business."