A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 49 Shifting 3

       

Chapter 49 Shifting 3

Callin locked his gaze onto Tassen's mirthless, snake-eyes. He had a hundred questions screaming about inside his head, but he knew Tassen would only answer the few he felt like answering. He had to choose carefully. It was always a game with Tassen. Tassen loved to hold information Callin considered critical, loved making Callin anxious for more...and withholding it. Abruptly, Callin decided to switch tactics, deciding to change how he dealt with Tassen. He knew everything they said and did as they walked down these corridors was monitored, recorded. Was thoroughly reviewed many times later on.

"If I agree to let go, to unleash what's inside of me, will you tell me where I come from?" He said loudly, clearly. Ensuring that the cameras and microphones in the hall definitely heard him.

Tassen blinked, then smiled slowly. He hated Callin, wanted nothing more than to kill him as painfully as possible, but he couldn't help but feel a glimmer of respect for the boy's cunning. The boy knew how to back him into a corner. The scientists in the lab, Tassen's bosses, all desperately wanted to see that animal side of Callin again.

They had tried many different ways, many different times, to get him to unleash that beast within again. For years. But the boy had resisted them, applying a diamond-hard will they had never suspected, in order to keep himself in control. In order to deny them what they wanted. Now he was offering to willingly work with them, in exchange for information. Information that cost them nothing to give up.

"We'll see." Tassen said, continuing down the hall. But they both knew he had essentially just agreed to the deal.

Callin tried to sink back into that centered, calm place. It was impossible. His mind was spun up by the promise of learning more about where he came from. And why would he need that animal side to survive going back? How were they going to send him there? Trying to focus, trying to center his mind now, was like trying to pick up wet noodles with toothpicks. He could touch that focus, could move his mind around it, but it slithered away into boiling corners, where razor questions lay in wait.

They headed down into Level 4, making Callin curious. He had rarely been down here. As his mind tried to remember when and why he had been on this level, he felt his thoughts skittering away. He had found another block in his memories. The lab telepaths had apparently not wanted him to remember what was down here, or what had happened when he came here.

That uncontrollable skittering of his thoughts, sliding and skipping away from that single point where he could almost feel his memories, made icy rage flash through him. The telepaths here tampered with his mind, controlled him, by controlling his memories. Who were you, really, but a collection of your memories?

He felt his heartbeat quicken, could feel his fangs and claws burning in their sockets, could feel the beast inside howling behind the bars of control, demanding release. He forced himself to walk as casually as if nothing were happening, as if he wasn't so bloodthirsty, so full of rage, that he wanted to scream and let go, to unleash the demon that raved just beneath the surface of his waking thoughts.

He hated the telepaths here in the lab with unequaled ferocity, nearly his entire daily thought focus centered on killing them all. He wanted to rip and rend, he wanted to bath in their blood, he wanted to see them strewn about in bits like human garbage.

"Level 4 is where we normally keep those of you that cannot be allowed to be awake." Tassen said, not looking at Callin.

The words chipped at the blocks in his mind, letting him touch just a bit more of his memories. Frantic, he clawed after them like a drowning man. What would he learn, what had happened down here? Abruptly he realized they were entering another elevator. They were going down another level?