New World Ashes Read Free Page A

me.
    The longer I stayed quiet, the more impatient he grew. The tip of his cane slowly pressed harder against my throat as he awaited my response. I could feel the bruise forming as my windpipe constricted further. I smiled warmly at him, batting my eyes before speaking.
    “Go to hell.”
    I only caught a glimpse of rage as it flashed across his face before the brass cane smashed into the side of my head. But in that instant before I blacked out, I took pleasure in his frustration.
     

     
    I DIDN’T KNOW how long I had been out, but regardless of the time, it was the pounding headache that woke me. It felt as if my head had been cleaved in two. A steady pulse beat in my skull. As I tried to roll onto my side, the pain flared, causing me to curl into myself in agony. I clutched my head trying to make it stop. There was a bandage just above my left temple. The flesh around it was raised and burning, the gauze sticky to the touch. I forced myself not to shake, scream, or vomit.
    I lay still until the pain eased, counting the seconds as I focused on my labored breathing. Even without opening my eyes, it was easy to tell I had been moved to yet another room. Whatever I was lying on now, it wasn’t the concrete floor of the room I had just been in, nor was it the high gloss surface of my personal hot box either. No, wherever I was, there was definitely some kind of mattress—if it could be called that—beneath me. Its scratchy material felt like sandpaper on my blistered skin. When the pain in my head finally subsided enough that I could open my eyes. I took in my new prison.
    The floor was coated dark grey and the walls were thick cinderblocks that someone had painted white. In the corner of the tiny room was a silver toilet. At the other end of the room was a hingeless red metal door with a slot at the bottom about a hand’s width high by two hands wide. I couldn’t see the hall beyond it. And as the small gap had an opaque sheen to it, I would wager a guess it was an electrified force field similar to the door I had encountered at the Subversive. Stick your hand in it, and you would get zapped.
    If I were to reach my arms out, my fingertips could just graze the wall opposite of me. The room itself was tiny. The whole thing was maybe half the size of my little closet in the old library. No windows. No vents. No electrified open passageways. They wanted to keep me isolated and blind. It felt like being buried in a cinderblock coffin.
    Good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic.
    Other than my eyes, I hadn’t moved an inch. But the tingling at the base of my skull alerted me to something. I knew that feeling. Six years of being alone, six years of constantly being on the run—on the defensive—had given me a sixth sense for these things.
    I was being watched.
    Feigning closing my eyes again, I looked up to the ceiling through my eyelashes.
    I was right.
    In the upper left corner of the room, just off the doorframe was a camera. I had seen many outside of The Wall in Tartarus. They were mounted in streets, falling off walls in decrepit buildings. There, they were old, fragmented and definitely not in use. But this one—while shaped a little differently from the ones I had seen and read about—was most certainly a camera and it was on. A tiny red light at the top warned me it was broadcasting right at this very moment.
    I would bet my life there was one in my other torture chamber of a room too. I had just never been able to see it through the blinding lights.
    They were watching me. They had been watching me.
    I closed my eyes all the way, trying to forget that others were still watching, others who never closed their eyes.  As I lay still, I took inventory of my body. Old wounds still hurt. The shoulder I was laying on was tender from the healing bullet wound. Aside from the splitting headache, raw skin, and injured shoulder, my body felt drained. Every muscle ached from dehydration. My insides seemed to be withering into