G I G I

It was so dark. So dark.

Wherever they'd pulled over my head blocked out any light in the room. For the millionth time, I yanked at the chains restraining my arms and legs. I'd done everything I could to try to break free but to no avail. My throat was raked dry from screaming. I wondered who'd heard me. If anyone had.

I'd been given food and water three times. Someone had been forced to shovel the food into my mouth because I was so confined by the chains. At first, I'd screamed and fought. However, once I realized that I needed to sustain myself to live through this experience and that that was more important than my pride, I'd become compliant.

I had no idea how long I'd been down here. At least two or three days. It felt longer than that. There seemed to be no end to this prison sentence.

The longer I was in the darkness like this, the more I felt my mind beginning to go to places I wished it wouldn't. Sometimes, my thoughts didn't even make sense. They got dangerously close to the line I'd drawn around them, threatening to go even darker.

I wasn't crazy. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't crazy.

My heart pounded in my ears. I felt it all around my body. As I was struggling to calm my breathing, my nails dug into the palms of my hands, threatening to break the skin.

No, no, no.

Blank walls. A padded room. The heavy door that hardly ever opened. Food on a platter sliding through a slit in the wall. Listening to myself breathing at night to fall asleep.

Doctors taking blood samples. My stiff bed. Chains around my wrists. A formless hospital gown on my body. Staring for hours at the white walls.

Alone, so devastatingly alone.

I closed my eyes. This was the ONNT headquarters. I was in a cell somewhere underground. I was not there.

The asylum.

The very name made me forget the rage burning in my veins and replaced it with emptiness so deep I wondered if I'd ever feel anything again. The same emptiness I had felt for six years since they'd wrongfully put me there.

My mother. She would have comforted me now. I knew she wished she could have been with me in those cold, blank years.

But she was dead, I remembered, in a quick flash of pain. Dead, dead, dead.

That hollow feeling in my chest was back. Like a hole had been made in my heart. Like someone had ripped out a part of me that I couldn't get back.

Suddenly overwhelmed with feeling, I screamed so loudly I thought my lungs might tear. My hands shook against the chains binding me, looking for any way of escape. I felt it all. I couldn't see anything. The darkness was everywhere. I was blind, so blind...

Julia.

I instantly stilled. I knew that voice better than my own.

Julia.

A rogue tear slid down my face under the sack they'd thrown over my head. It was my mother. I thought I'd never hear her again.

"Yes?" How was she here? I'd been to her funeral.

Pull yourself together, girl. Look at you.

I sniffled. "I know, I'm sorry. I just—that place, it's so much like this cell."

You're not at the asylum. You're free from that prison now.

"Mother, no one knows that I didn't do it! They think I'm crazy, that I'm insane. You're the only one who knows what really happened. The rest of them..."

You didn't mean to kill that boy. I do know that, baby. But you must move on.

"Move on to what?" The guilt followed me around no matter where I went. "How can I?"

Focus your energy into something else. Do you know of what I speak?

"Killing Delphinium." My teeth clenched together when I remembered what she'd done.

Exactly. Kill the girl who put a bullet in my brain. Avenge me. Avenge me. Don't let them forget me.

Even though she couldn't see me, I shook my head. "I can't, especially not when I'm in here."

Indeed, she is powerful. But so are you. The Tesla girl will be very difficult to topple, however, with help you can do it.

My mind went to the one person who I knew wanted to see her burn as badly as I did. "You're right."

Do whatever you have to do. Finish her.

"I will, mother. I won't leave her alive." Again, I was practically shaking with anger. My mother was right, I did have to do this no matter what. I hardly cared if I'd die, because if I did, she'd be coming with me.

After a moment, when she didn't say anything more, I called, "Mother?"

There was no response. She was gone.

For once, I hardly minded. I knew what I had to do.

▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂

The door opened. A lot of time had passed, probably days. In that time, I'd been perfectly behaved: no screaming, no refusing food, sitting perfectly still.

A voice to my right said, "Well, Gigi, how are you feeling?" It was Hunt.

"I'm feeling much better. Now that I think back on what I did the other day, I feel bad about it." I knew what they wanted to hear, so I'd let them hear it.

"Good," Hunt remarked. "You've been very well behaved. We're going to see how you react to having your eyesight back. But be warned, I have armed soldiers in here with me. One wrong move and I can put you right back into the isolation that you've been in for these past few days."

"I understand."

Footsteps got closer to me. The bag on my head was slowly pulled off and the blinding light of the room greeted my eyes. Squinting, I saw that there were five men in the room with me, the ONNT director included. Four of them carried guns.

Forcing myself to be still, I simply sat on the ground and stared up at them. They needed to be sure I wouldn't do anything to compromise their operation here. Though I could feel their heartbeats thrumming from inside their ribcages and the rush of blood in their veins, I did nothing but watch.

When they realized I wasn't going to kill them, Hunt got closer. "If you keep cooperating like this, you should be out of here in no time." After a moment of hesitation, he spoke again. "I'm going to let you get up and stretch your legs."

I nodded compliantly. As he stepped forward to unlock the chains around my arms, I watched every movement of his. The key sunk into the keyhole and one side was free.

He moved to the other side. The room was perfectly silent. As soon as my wrist slid out of the shackle, I shot to my feet. With one wave of my hand, the four men dropped to the ground, their blood pressures skyrocketing. In no time, they were dead, their hearts overworked to death. The guns laid about on the ground, now unused.

To my left, Hunt was speaking into a radio he'd pulled out of his pocket. "Gigi Henderson has escaped and is volatile. Send armed backup to Cell 62. I repeat, Gigi Henderson-"

His steady stream of commands was cut off when I blocked his airflow with one clawed hand at my side. The wide gaping mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Eventually, he dropped to the ground and I released my mental grip on his esophagus. Hunt was unconscious, not dead; he may have been of some use to me later on.

Knowing I didn't have much time until the people he'd called came down here and restrained me again, I slipped out the door, dragging the smallest of the fallen soldiers. Heavy though he was, he was also integral for what I had to do next.

It was a miracle that no one encountered me wandering through the underground halls. A miracle for them.

When I reached the door I was seeking, I pulled the soldier's hand up as high as I could lift it and pressed it against the keypad. For a moment, nothing happened. I narrowed my eyes at it, willing to kill every single person in this place until I got someone with a handprint that worked.

Then, the door slid open and I dropped the soldier. His weight would only slow me down. Once I was inside, I rushed down the platform and over to the glass enclosure. I didn't have much time before they found me and dragged me back to my cell. Minutes, at most.

Benny smiled when he saw me. "Julia, I was wondering when I'd be seeing you next, especially after that show you put on the other day."

I glanced at the doorway. "This needs to be quick. I have a proposition for you."

"What kind?"

"It involves you helping me kill Delphinium Tesla."

"I doubt my master wants her dead, at least not at this time."

"Do you?"

"She needs to be punished for her crimes against Imperium."

"Then help me. Help me kill her." When he didn't answer, I began to feel desperate. "Just think about it. Once she's gone, one of your major enemies is dead."

He still wore an expression of skeptical disdain. "I'll do anything you want." I didn't care what he asked me to do as long as Delphinium was killed. It's what my mother wanted, after all.

That caught his interest. "Anything? Even helping me escape this place?"

"Anything."

Benny now wore a smile on his sinister face. "Then it's a deal."