Dragonel Read online

  He had no idea how much time had passed, but when he woke, consciousness snapped into full focus abruptly, his head ruthlessly clear. A nurse was standing over him, injecting something into his IV line. His blindfold was gone, and the feeding tube had been removed.

  She looked down at him and smiled. “Good morning, Goldilocks,” she greeted. “You’re being moved out of here.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Just out of the basement.” She capped the needle and put it on a cart beside the cot. “Lord Ashmar has ordered that this phase of your confinement is over.”

  “Lord Ashmar?”

  The name meant nothing to him, but he felt that he should have recognized it. He opened his mouth to ask another question, but he was interrupted by the arrival of a quartet of soldiers. Three of them held rifles in their hands, and they were pointing them at him. The fourth stepped forward with a key and began to unlock his shackles. The nurse removed the IV, taped a bandage over the bruised puncture wound, and left the room.

  The man with the key spoke in a gruff voice. “If you fight, we will not hesitate to put you down. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  His feet were free. He closed his legs, grateful for the chance to move. The soldier unlocked his wrists and stepped back. He brought his arms down and huddled in a ball, pulling his limbs together to assuage their aching.

  “Sit up.”

  He obeyed. The change in position from lying to sitting made his head swim, and he grasped the edge of the cot to steady himself. He was dizzy, but it felt good to be upright.

  The lead soldier left the cell, leaving him sitting on the cot in front of the soldier’s comrades. The laser targeting sights from three automatic rifles pointed at his chest, dancing in minute circles over his heart. He sat quietly, staring at the livid red laser dots. The soldier returned with a pile of clothing, which he tossed onto the cot.

  “Get dressed.”

  He was only too happy to comply. It was a relief to cover himself after all the time he’d spent naked and at the mercy of the orderly and his machine. He slid on clean underwear, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Everything fit as if it had been tailor-made for him. He had nothing for his feet, but he was too grateful for the clothing to complain.

  “Stand up. Put your hands behind your back.”

  Again, in no hurry to be shot, he obeyed. The soldier handcuffed his wrists behind his hips and gave him a shove between the shoulder blades. He stumbled forward, weakened from his long-enforced inactivity.

  “Walk.”

  The concrete was icy beneath his feet, but he was walking, so he counted it as a victory. One soldier led the way, and he was flanked by two more. The soldier who was doing all the talking brought up the rear, completing the diamond-shaped formation.

  “They caught you weeks ago. I guess it took a long time before they finally got what they wanted out of you.” He sneered. “Although what makes you worth the trouble is beyond me.”

  They marched him out of the cell and into a long concrete hallway. There were no doors on either side of the corridor. He had been kept in complete isolation. At the end of the hall, an elevator was standing open, waiting. The soldiers forced him into it, and then the doors closed and the cabin began to rise.

  There were no floor numbers on the elevator controls, only up and down buttons. He had no idea how far up they were traveling, but the ride was longer than he would have expected. When the doors opened, they stepped out onto a carpeted floor in another long corridor. This time, there were multiple doors on both sides that they passed as they walked. He could hear voices inside those closed rooms, male and female alike, and dozens of unidentifiable scents assailed his nose. The scents were animal and organic, heady, but strangely not unpleasant.

  The soldiers took him down that hallway and then around a corner to another. They marched him into a room on the left side of the corridor, next to last on that side and directly across from what looked like an ice machine. He looked around as the guard who’d released him from the cot opened the door with a key card.

  “Is this a hotel?” he asked.

  The guard to his right snickered, but he fell silent at a harsh look from the squad’s apparent leader, who opened the door and stepped aside. “Get in there.”

  He obeyed. The room was small, and it resembled an efficiency apartment more than a hotel room. The soldiers entered with him, and the squad leader removed his handcuffs.

  “Don’t try to run. There’ll be guards on this door and two at both ends of the hall, along with two at all the exits. There’s no way you’re getting away this time.”

  He rubbed his wrists. “I didn’t exactly get away before, it seems.”

  The soldier smirked. “No. You didn’t.”

  The squad left the room, and the door automatically locked when it closed. There was no handle on his side of the door. He had exchanged one prison for another.

  At least this one was more comfortable. There was a tiny kitchen area with a sink, a microwave and a compact refrigerator on one side of the room. On the other side, a double bed was pushed into the corner so that it was accessible only from one side. A low bookcase stood at the foot of the bed, filled with leather-bound volumes that looked much older than he would have expected. A writing desk with three shallow drawers waited beneath the single window, the desktop empty except for an MP3 docking station. A player was already plugged in, waiting to be activated. The light came from an overhead fixture, and the switch was on the wall beside the door. There was an attached bathroom with a tiny shower stall, toilet and sink, but no mirror, and a closet filled with clothing that appeared to be his size, all variations on a theme: white T-shirts, black jeans, no shoes.

  There were no pictures on the walls and no papers in the drawers. The room was as devoid of identity as he was, himself.

  He sat on the bed and ran his hands over his face, feeling completely lost. His head was pounding, and as if to add insult to injury, his nose began to bleed. He wiped the blood away and looked at it in surprised curiosity. The color was more orange than red, and it seemed to carry a sort of dust. He supposed that he had inhaled concrete dust in the basement and went to the bathroom to wash the blood away.

  His hands shook under the stream of cold water, and he watched his fingertips tremble. They seemed to belong to someone else, and he felt disconnected from his body and everything around him, as if it were all one long, bad dream. He knew it was no dream, though. If it had been a dream, he could have woken up.

  He walked back and forth through the room until he could walk no further. He sat down on the bed, and the mattress was soft. Outside the single window, light was slowly vanishing, and night began to fall. He stared at the lengthening shadows and scooted back on the bed until his back was against the wall. With his legs stretched out in front of himself, he gathered up the pillows from the bed and clutched them in his arms. He didn’t know anything about who he was, or why he was in this situation he hated so very much. He only knew that he was overtaken with the urge to cry, and so he wept himself to sleep.

  He dreamed.

  There was a man there, with golden hair spilling over bronzed, freckled shoulders. They were sitting together on a dock jutting out into the blue expanse of a peaceful lake. They were both in swim trunks, and their feet were dangling in the water.

  In the dream, he kissed the young man, who responded readily. He melted into his companion, who put his arm around him and held him close. When they parted, he looked down at him with shining eyes and whispered, “I love you, Sebastian.”

  “Sebastian!”

  He jolted awake at the voice outside his door, uncertain if it was still something from his dream. He pushed the pillows away and slid to the edge of the mattress, where he looked around blearily, subconsciously mimicking the position of his dream self on that tranquil dock.

  The voice spoke again. “Sebastian! Be strong!”

  He didn’t know who the spea
ker was, but he went to the door. “Who are you? Is that my name?”

  “Your name is Sebastian,” the man said. “Remember. We’re coming to free you. Don’t let them break you before we get to you. I - no!”

  There was the sound of a scuffle and loud shouting, and he could guess that whoever the speaker was, he was being dragged away by the guards. He could hear blows and yelps of pain, and he tracked the noises as they went down the hall. The man was being beaten as they dragged him away.

  The noises of the beating lasted for quite a while, even after the cries had gone silent. Then everything was quiet again.

  The sun through the window was bright, and he was sitting on the floor, soaking up the warmth of it when the orderly came. The guards opened the door and ushered him inside. Instead of his cursed machine, this time he had a medical cart with him, complete with examination tools and other medical equipment.

  The squad leader came in with the orderly, his gun at the ready. “He’s going to examine you and take some samples,” he told him. “If you fight, I will not hesitate to put a bullet in your brain. Understood?”

  Sebastian stood. “I understand.”

  The orderly pointed. “Sit on the bed.”

  He did as he was told, sitting placidly while his temperature was taken and lights were flashed in his eyes. His ears and throat were examined and his neck palpated. The orderly pressed a stethoscope to the right side of his chest and listened, then to the left side, then to his back. He returned to the right side and ordered Sebastian to breathe deeply, which he did. It was all very routine, until it wasn’t.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Sebastian hesitated, and the squad leader raised his weapon, shining the laser sight onto his chest. He sighed and obeyed. Once he had fully disrobed, he stood before them, embarrassed and ashamed.

  “Bend over, ass toward me,” the orderly commanded.

  Sebastian did as he was told, and the orderly poked and prodded at his genitalia and anus, which were sore to the touch.

  “Well?” the squad leader asked, sounding anxious.

  “A few minor electrical burns, but nothing major. Nothing that will cause any functional deficits.” The orderly stepped back and retrieved a long, wide-bore needle attached to a thick-barreled syringe. He ordered his reluctant patient, “Hold still.”

  “What are you doing with that?” Sebastian asked, obediently doing as he was told.

  “I need to drain your gas bladder.”

  “My what?”

  The needle penetrated his back, sliding between his lower ribs and into a structure beneath. He could feel something pop like a distended balloon as the needle was forced in. The burning pain was sharp and extreme, and he gasped as flashes appeared in his field of vision. The orderly filled the syringe, then straightened and yanked the needle free, as if it had caught on something that prevented its smooth removal.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered. “That might bleed for a while, but you’ll heal up soon enough.”

  He turned and looked at the syringe. It was filled with a yellowish liquid that sparkled with reflective flecks. I have glitter inside of me? His hands were shaking as he reached for his underwear. “What is a gas bladder?”

  The squad leader looked at him strangely, and the orderly laughed. “Boy, they really wiped you, didn’t they? Do you even know what you are, or who you are?”

  “No,” he admitted, stepping a little further away so that he could continue dressing with less chance of brushing against this man he despised. “I don’t know who you people are, or why I’m here.”

  “So, you don’t remember running?”

  He pulled his shirt on and winced from the pain in his back. A little needle stick shouldn’t hurt this badly! He sat on the edge of the bed again. “No.”

  The squad leader asked, “So you don’t intend to run again?”

  He sounded as miserable as he felt. “I wouldn’t know where to run...although I’m pretty sure I can guess why I probably wanted to.”

  The orderly laughed. “Oh, this is rich. Lord Ashmar will love this.” The squad leader kept his gun trained on Sebastian while his tormentor rolled his medical cart away. At the door, the orderly turned and dropped a mocking bow in his direction. “Until tomorrow, Your Highness.”

  They vanished behind the door, and it once again locked after they had gone.

  Sebastian went into the bathroom and flipped on the light. The mirrors had been removed from the wall and from the medicine cabinet, but the steel on the side of the shower fixture was shiny and reflective. He pulled his shirt up so that he could see the puncture wound in his back. He looked into the image cast back to him from the metal, and he stopped short and stared.

  His back was covered in golden scales, the pentagonal shapes gleaming. The scales were larger over his shoulders and upper back, almost like armor, diminishing in size but not in brilliance as they ran down his spine toward his waist. The needle going into his back had dislodged one of those scales, one of the mid-sized ones just beneath his shoulder blade. It fell free as he watched, fluttering down to the bathroom floor, leaving a five-sided raw wound behind, deep and bleeding.

  He looked into the reflection of his face and saw eyes the color of molten gold staring back at him. His hair was blond and the skin on the bridge of his nose and on his cheekbones had a golden shimmer, as if he had been brushed with the faintest layer of gilt paint. The comments about breeding and how Lord Ashmar hated his eyes made more sense to him now.

  He wasn’t human.

  Sebastian was sitting on the bed, his fallen scale in his hand, when the door opened to admit the dark-haired nurse who had been so kind before. He looked up at her warily.

  “Hello there,” she greeted pleasantly while the guards locked the door again. She was carrying a caddy with medical supplies, and she put it on the bookcase. “I’m here to have a look at that bladder puncture.”

  She directed him to remove his shirt and lie face down on the bed, and he complied. She pulled on a pair of gloves and probed the sore gently.

  “My name is Sebastian,” he told her.

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “Nice to meet you, Sebastian. Did someone tell you that?”

  The sound of his name made him feel better, as if she had been the first to acknowledge that he was a person and not a thing. He suppressed a smile, unwilling to reveal that she had given him a slender thread of something that smelled like hope.

  “No,” he lied. “I dreamed it.”

  She finished examining the wound and went to retrieve some salve and a bandage. She applied them both deftly. “And do you always believe what you dream?”

  “When it seems real.” He wanted to ask her name, but he suspected that she would be disciplined if she told him. He kept his curiosity to himself.

  She stripped the gloves from her hands. “Well, keep dreaming, Sebastian.”

  He sat up. “I’m not human.”

  The nurse looked at him in surprise. “Of course you’re not, silly. We wouldn’t have a breeding program for humans, now would we?”

  Breeding program.

  “What am I?”

  She picked up her caddy. “You’re a dragonel.”

  “A what?”

  “Dragonel.” She tilted her head and looked into his eyes. “Do you get headaches?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nose bleeds?”

  He looked away. “Sometimes.”

  “I’ll speak to the doctor. It might be a side effect of the mind-clearing procedure.”

  Sebastian grimaced. “Mind-clearing or mind-wiping?”

  She shrugged. “Same thing.”

  He stood, and she took a step back from him. She was small, barely as tall as his shoulder, and very petite. She was afraid of him; he could smell the fear exuding through her pores. “There was a man who spoke to me through the door when I was first brought here. They took him away and beat him. Who was he, and is he all right?”

  Th
e nurse looked away. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Sebastian,” she chided, as if she were speaking to a naughty child. “I can’t answer your questions. There are only certain things I’m allowed to say.”

  He nodded. It was clear in the scent of anxiety she was releasing and from what she didn’t say that she would face consequences if he persisted. He didn’t want her to be hurt or punished because of him. “I understand. Thank you for the kindness that you’ve shown.”

  “You’re welcome.” She seemed uncomfortable, and he wondered if she had been punished for giving him the blanket in the basement. She shifted into a more business-like mode. “Now, keep that sore dry for at least the next day and try not to scratch it. It’ll itch when the new scale comes in. I’ll be back tomorrow to change the dressing.”

  “Thank you.”

  She went to the door and tapped on it, signaling the guards to open it for her. She looked back at him and whispered, “My name is Kathy.”

  Then the door opened, and she was gone.

  Time dragged by, slow and featureless. Every day, Kathy would come and change the dressing on his bandage. She gave him injections whose purpose and nature he was never told, and she collected his laundry. Twice a day, the guards brought him food, which was always an unappetizing mixture of tasteless protein paste and vitamin gels. Once they brought back clean clothes and left them on his bed, leaving again without so much as a nod of the head. There were no other interruptions of his solitude. Sebastian spent as much time sleeping as he could, hoping for more dreams of the golden-haired man on the dock, but he did not reappear.