INVISIBLE PRISON (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) Read Free Page B

issue to absorb.
    As a species humans tended to be driven by fear. What we didn’t readily grasp or understand, we killed. It was a basic survival mechanism and one of the reasons humans remained at the top of the food chain. So the fact this woman was willing to keep the status quo, the much smaller and more threatened population of non-humans living secretly among the larger mass of humans, rattled me.
    However, talk was cheap.
    “But we are also pragmatists,” she continued, glancing over her shoulder at her granite-faced colleague before continuing. “Traditionally those humans who have known of the non-humans in our midst have dealt with those who pose a clear threat in one of three ways. Assuming all non-humans were dangerous and meeting that danger head on, warding any danger off before it strikes, or trying to avoid it through denial.”
    I snorted, knowing how effective the last approach was.
    Ling Mai nodded as if I’d spoken aloud. “My point is that as the world becomes more populated, the approach many humans have taken, to ignore the non-humans or non-human behavior around them, becomes less and less effective. The alternative is—”
    “Another Spanish Inquisition?” I threw out. “Salem witch trials? Russian Pogroms, the riots against the Jewish population where the government turned a blind eye?”
    “Where more innocents, both human and non-human, suffered and perished than those guilty of creating the situation in the first place,” she finished for me. “You’re also ignoring the Irish Leprechaun killings of 996, the Chinese warlock hunts of 1296, and the Islamic djinn slaughters of the early 1700s throughout North Africa.”
    So she knew about those events, interesting. Most people only knew about the systematic killings of non-humans, or those deemed different, through fairytales and most of those stories had been whitewashed. Humans tend to come out on top in most of the tales I’d read as a child and not the trolls, goblins, or pixies. It wasn’t fair but it was reality.
    Okay, I could see where there could be a need for a preemptive approach to potential clashes between human and non-humans. But that didn’t make me a believer that some government agency was the best option, or that I wanted to be any part of such an agency.
    “Has nothing to do with me,” I said, spreading my hands wide, ignoring the tension knotting my neck and back muscles.
    Mercenary Stone rocked forward on the balls of his feet, classic preemptive strike mode. I clutched the arms of my chair, hoping I could launch myself out of it before blood was drawn.
    Ling Mai’s tone implied a reality-check absent from the room. “I think you’re wrong, Ms. Noziak. You are just the right type of individual we want for the new agency.”
    “A convicted killer?” I asked with enough sarcasm to coat the room.
    “A person who knows firsthand what can happen when a non-human attack is misunderstood. You had two options, hide the truth, which would have mitigated your sentence, or let a lie force you into prison for life.”
    “You’re forgetting a couple of things,” I said, goading her. “The first is I’m here because of the violence of the crime.” She seemed familiar with the details so no need to elaborate. Bottom line was killing the rogue Were who wanted to kill my brother was not why I was in prison. I was here because I’d used black magic to call that death demon, thus he was literally torn limb from limb. Pretty gruesome, and not something that could be ignored.
    It was the violence of my crime, and my reluctance to explain it, that railroaded me behind the walls of the Grey House. But if I’d explained what he had been, how I could use magic, I’d probably be facing a lot worse sentence than life in prison. Which brought me to my second point. “Here, there’s always the chance I can get parole for good behavior.”
    “Not at all. You and I both know you’d be looking at a minimum of twenty to