Wicked Ones {bxb}

{Chapter 43 : The White Room}

Sharp heels tapped against the ground as a slender blonde roamed an unending stretch of hallway. Her hair was trimmed short, just reaching the nape of her neck. Her androgynous cut didn't hide the feminine structure of her face, or her shapely build adorned in black.

Her sapphire eyes stared cold and straight, ignoring the dozens of empty cages she passed. Each were made of glass—all four walls, and the ceiling as well, clear as clean-cut quartz. In each of them, a person gazed from behind the transparency with hungry, bulging eyes. The faces she passed were hollow, stolid and wan behind the jutting features of their sickly thin bodies. Over time they had all come to look the same. Skeletons swaddled in pale, sinking flesh.

She paused, about-facing one of cells she had nearly overlooked. The creature was long gone, leaden eyes glazed over lifeless. She was unmoved by the sight, only tilting her head as her eyes dined on the corpse's pale, caving expression. She'd have to alert someone for a disposal.

She continued on, striding the long distance to a row of cells far off from where she had entered. It wasn't until she found herself stationed outside of his own narrow confines that she turned abruptly on her heels. Apeachy smile caught light to her dewy face as she recognized the one behind the glass. So it wasn't a rumor after all.

"Hello, Kailan."

He had been counting, counting to calm his fears. An hour had passed since he'd awoken in the glass room. No explanation, not a word at all. So Kailan sat and he counted the fingers in his lap. One to ten and down again, until he heard her voice.

Slowly he gazed up, and his eyes felt to tremble as they placed upon her face. He recognized her instantly. "Sage?"

There was no mistaking it as Sage. The girl he had dated only briefly—the one who had committed suicide while he was away, she was standing before him. Older. Alive.

"We were told you killed yourself," he said quietly, a relentless pounding in his head, courtesy of the drugs that had annexed his bloodstream. Even so, it was dull, like the far away grumble of storm clouds. "But I'm gonna take a guess and say this is where they bring all 'suicidal' Wickeds?" he asked, catching himself before his voice cracked. It wasn't hard to put the two together, after all.

"Something like that." Sage smiled, despite the empty void behind her eyes. "It's really not so bad here." Her fingers danced along the glass, drawing intricate shapes with the tips of her nails.

"How has Vinny been?" The happy expression that clothed her features seemed spiced with malevolence, her nails dragging with a skin-crawling screech as they traveled down the glass. "He wasn't too sad, was he?"

Kailan winced, but kept silent about Vinny. This wasn't Sage. This wasn't the loving, charitable girl he knew, but something more sinister. Something less human.

"Let me out." His voice was barely a whisper but his eyes burned into hers. "Let me out and I'll tell you how Vinny's been."

Sage's smile only grew, her palm pressing flat against the glass as she observed him, like a beast on exhibit. "You'll come out soon enough." Her fingers dragged along the smooth surface, until they dropped casually at her side. "And when you do, they'll make you stronger. Just like me."

It was unsettling, a cold creeping up Kailan's back and tightening its hold around his throat. He couldn't breathe.

"I don't give a fuck about being stronger!" he shouted, "I want out!" His fist beat against the glass, but the material did nothing more than reverberate around him. He hit it again and again, until his hands ached—until he couldn't see Sage's face past the tears in his eyes. He was angry and scared, and panic was feasting on his air supply.