Altered

Chapter 34

Cold. That's all I'm feeling, cold. My body felt numb, like I lost control of it.

I pried my eyes open and immediately shut them due to a blinding light. I brought my arm up to shield my face and sat up from the cold surface below me.

When my eyes had adjusted, I pulled my arm away. I was in a room made up of entirely concrete. There was a large door opposite to me that was obviously never going to be broken. Fear started to cloud my brain as I remembered what had happened to land me a place in this room.

Cinder was actually Barkers daughter and she was back for revenge. I was back in the facility and there was no possibility of escape this time. I was going to die in here.

I jumped when a loud speaker boomed overhead.

"Training will commence in 30 minutes. Be ready," I snorted. If they thought I was going to cooperate now, they're idiots.

I pushed all thoughts of death out of my mind and filled it instead with plans of escape.

"Training will commence in 15 minutes. Be ready," the same monotone voice droned. I thought that maybe it could be a robot.

Plan number one. As soon as someone opens that door, if ever, storm them as fast as possible and murder everything in sight. Plan number two. Pretend that I'm dying and hope that someone opens that door and then murder everything in sight. Plan number three-

"Training will commence in 5 minutes. Be ready," yep. That was definitely a robot.

As I was thinking but was so rudely interrupted. Plan number three. Study this stupid concrete box for days until I find any weaknesses and then exploit them.

I was going with plan one and then two and three if all else fails. I wasn't staying in this hellhole for much longer than a few days.

Suddenly the three walls around me except for the one with the door on it raised. I jumped up and got into a defensive stance. I winced when the voice came again, sounding substantially louder than all the other times.

"Training had commenced. Please make your way to the centre of the arena," it's robotic tone was irritating me to no extent. If I had to listen to that every day, I was going to kill something or hopefully everything.

"Please start with pyrokinesis," this time it was an actual person talking. I could tell because of the faint but ever so present fear in their voice.

I resisted the urge to scream profanities at them and settled for a double middle finger to the empty walls around me.

The room that had opened up was big. As big as my old training gym but with all concrete walls and one singular, tiny mirror in the top left corner of the farthest wall, I knew it was a one way mirror and that's where they were watching me from.

I had decided to stay in the boarder of my new cell and disobey the orders of the robot. When I heard the person talking, a human decoy had snapped up from the floor. They obviously wanted me to fire at it but like I said before, there was no way I was cooperating that easy.

"Please start with pyrokinesis," the voice seemed more demanding and probably angry that I still had my middle fingers stuck up. They gave me a few more seconds before the voice spoke once more.

"Ms Jones, if we have to ask one more time you won't like the consequences now please, start with pyrokinesis," I smirked at the mirror, no doubt from where they were watching me.

A few moments later I yelped in surprise and clutched my collarbone. It felt like I just got shocked, sure it didn't last long and I yelped more out of surprise than anything but I was pretty sure they just shocked me.

"Please start with pyrokinesis," I growled before yelling as loud as I could.

"Go rot in he-" I was cut short by a long and sharper pain in my neck. I slapped a hand over it and fell to my knees. It wasn't intense enough for me to cry in pain but I did scrunch my eyes to stop them from watering.

"Start with pyrokinesis," I didn't dare move, afraid that they would see my actual pain. The longest and most painful shock yet made my whole body jolt and this time, I did yell in pain.

This carried on for what seemed like an eternity but in reality was probably only about an hour. Each time I refused to show my powers, they would shock me for longer and harder each time. I had counted up to 28 second shocks by the end. It had felt like someone was constantly firing a taser at me.

My throat was raw from screaming in agony and I could feel my skin tingling without even being shocked. I could almost guarantee that the skin around my neck and collarbone, where they no doubt implanted some sort of chip, was going to be as red as a tomato.

The voice had sighed and stated that they would try again tomorrow. The walls lowered at a such a slow pace, making awfully loud grinding noises of metal on concrete all the while.

I lay on the cool floor, holding the place where the shocks were coming from with a white knuckled hand. I was sure that my hair looked like I stuck my finger in a light socket because, basically I did.

I hadn't shed a single tear the entire time. I wasn't about to let them see how much pain it was actually causing me even though you could probably tell due to the intensity of my screams.

A short time later, my neck craned to see a plate of food being shoved though a small opening on the floor under the door. I growled. I don't think they ever plan on opening that thing. A bottle of water was thrown through a larger opening on the door and I scrambled over to it.

I chugged the bottle in 15 seconds flat. Some of it dripped down my face but I made a move to catch them and then lick them off my finger. There was no way that I was wasting this precious liquid.

Now some people would be saying, 'why don't you just use your hydrokinesis to make water?' And it's because the water I create is salt and that just dehydrates you more than it sustains you, it would just be dumb to do it.

I shuffled over to the plate of food. It was the usual stuff they gave me. Lots of protein and muscle building pills and the proper food to keep me going strong each day. A nice steak with some organic vegetables. They spared no expense on my food here, I do have to give them that.

I finished the food and regretted drinking all the water at once. My throat was starting to burn again from swallowing the streak but I reminded myself that the pain of a raw throat is much worse than a bit of scratchiness.

Only when I went to lay back down did I see that there had been a fleecy grey blanket that was shoved inside after my food.

I pulled it over and did my best job to set up a makeshift bed because they hadn't been kind enough to give me one of those. Losers.

The last thing I remember was the steely grey, concrete walls fading to black.