Prisoner of Glass Read Free Page B

feel the contact with her new pinky.
    “I’m hallucinating,” she said.  
    “I think they injected your hand with something,” Titus said.   “You were unconscious when they brought you in.”
    “When was that?” she asked in a daze.
    “Yesterday.   You’ve been out for almost twenty-four hours.”
    “So this … this grew in a day ?”
    Titus nodded.  
    “Okay,” Elspeth said.   “Forget that.   I’m just going to ignore my impossible pinky for a moment.   Where is this place?   I mean, where is it located physically?”   She couldn’t bring herself to call it a ‘prison’.
    Titus shook his head.   “Nobody knows.”
    “So we don’t even know if we’re on United States soil right now?”
    “No.”
    “How long have you been here?”
    “About two years,” Titus said.  
    “Are you American?”
    “No.   I’m from Rome.”
    “Italian,” Elspeth said.   She looked through the bars at the Panopticon.   “I need to think this through.   None of this makes sense.”   After a moment, she asked, “What were you doing when they brought you here?”
    “I was asleep.   I went to bed, and I woke up here.”
    “And do you ever see anyone who runs this place?   You know, like guards?”
    “Oh, yes.   You’ll meet them soon enough, when they come out for the morning count.”
    “And have you asked them why you are here?”
    “Oh, yes.   Of course I have.   We all have.   It’s pointless though.   They never tell.   They say they’re under orders, but they won’t say whose orders or why.”
    “Well.   They haven’t met me yet,” Elspeth said, her eyes crinkling.  

    THE LIGHTS in the interior of the globe-shaped prison came on with bang.   Instantly, a gaudy, sharp sizzle of illumination cast a contrast of deep shadows and starkly-lit objects and people.   The noise sent a flurry of parrots and parakeets flapping and chittering, screeching and howling, throughout the interior space of the great hollow bulb.
    Elspeth was startled awake, and then startled again when she realized she’d actually been asleep.
    Another bang, and the cell doors all sprang open in unison.  
    Out of the Panopticon came a flood of shouting men, barely managing to hold their own against the din of tropical birds.   Bridges extended from the center to the various levels of the prison, and these men now swarmed across, clubs drawn, seemingly eager for blood.   Elspeth noted that all of the prisoners were now stepping out their cells and standing there meekly.    
    She turned to ask Titus if she should step out as well, but he was nowhere to be found.  
    What the hell?
    She marched out of her cell.   But she did not stand obediently and patiently.   Instead, she kept moving towards the horde of men heading her way.  
    She saw now that they were all covered in some sort of black body armor — it looked like riot gear or some sort of futuristic exoskeleton.   Even their faces were hidden and enclosed completely.
    “Hey you!   I want to talk to you!” Elspeth yelled, taking some pleasure in the fact that she was considerably taller than the men and women she passed: all of whom stared at her like she was mad.   “My name is Elspeth Lune!   I demand to talk with Amnesty International and a lawyer right now!   You’re going to —”
    She stopped short.   The TSA agent Danny Trenton, the same one from LAX, stood before her.   But he was not in uniform: instead, he wore the same drab clothes she did.   He was in the lineup for the count, just like every other prisoner here.   He stared up at her with sleepless eyes, his mind clearly soaked in terror.
    She grabbed him and howled in his face.   “You!   What did you do?   Why I am here?”
    But he only shook his head.   “I — I — I don’t know!   I was talking to you and — and then next thing I know, I was here!   I thought you did this to me !”
    She drove her gaze into him.   But it was clear that Trenton was just