The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (79 page)

I closed my eyes, feeling so utterly stupid.

“You had to think it was real,” Kor murmured.  “It broke his
heart to do that to you, you know.  And for what?  Nothing.  You had to go and
break out of prison and plant yourself right in the middle of all the danger. 
I never figured you to be such a rash maniac.”

“Tarik isn’t,” I said.  “Shade is.  And he’s exactly where
he wants to be.”  I took a step closer to him.  “Understand this.  I don’t want
to be rescued.  And I damn well don’t want to be protected.  Keep doing what
you’re doing, and leave the rest to me.”

“What are you planning?”

I grinned.  “I have no idea.  But I’m working on it.”

“Work fast,” Kor said.  “And don’t risk messing with this
lot.  They’re more dangerous than you can imagine.” 

Chapter 12 — Hayli

I crouched in the corner of my metal corral, trying to make
myself small as possible.  A handful of other mages were in the ring with me,
all cuffed like me, and so, powerless.  One, a woman with hair like fire, was
crying softly, trying not to make a scene.  One of them sprawled on the ground,
bloody and bruised.  He’d probably pitched a fight before that strange weapon
had taken him down.  I shivered.  Only a few minutes back I’d started to get
some tingly feeling in my arms and legs, and it hurt like the devil.  I never
wanted to go through that again.

But I would risk it in a heartbeat if it meant I could get
free.  I had to clear away, get back to the Hole, warn the skitters.  Warn
Shade.  Oh, God, if these folks got their hands on him…I didn’t even want to
think what they might do with him.  I twisted my wrists in their cuffs as I
looked around. 

The metal corral had only two rungs, so slipping out under
the lower bar would’ve been easy as pie, but not with my hands shackled to the
post behind me.  If only I had a lockpick…

“It wouldn’t work,” said a girl sitting close by me, chained
to the next vertical post.

She looked just a bit older than me, with straight dark hair
and the clearest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

“What won’t?” I asked.

She smiled, faintly.  “Escaping.  Sorry, I’m a Knack.  Cuffs
can’t stop my magic.”

“Can you hear what any of them are thinking?” I asked,
jerking my head toward the swarming guards.

She closed her eyes and bent her head, her hair falling across
her face.  “Too much noise,” she said after a moment.  “I’d have to get closer
to them.”

“I’m a Sculptor,” a young man said, sitting across from me. 
He stretched toward us, far as his chain would give.  “If you could find a
guard who’s a bit sympathetic, I could Sculpt him into letting us out.”

“What then?” I asked, dropping my head back against the
metal rung.  “That’d just make us open targets for all the
other
guards.”

“It was a good thought,” the girl said.  “Wish it
would
work.”

I jerked my head up suddenly, because just for a second I
thought I’d seen a crown of white-gold hair and a white tattoo.  There, coming
this way… I lurched onto my knees, not even caring how my shoulders twisted or
my wrists burned, while my heart pounded like crazy.

Oh God, he got caught.  I was supposed to warn him.

And I didn’t know what I felt.  Grief, regret…and a selfish
little flicker of joy. 

A guard was shoving him along, driving him toward the corral
across from ours.  I held my breath, biting my tongue, waiting and hoping that
he’d see me.  The girl Knack watched me quietly a moment, then craned her head
to try to see behind her.

“Which one is he?” she murmured.  I just stared at her, so
she smiled and said, “If you love him that much, I’ve got to see which one he
is.”

I blushed and nodded toward Shade.  “Pale hair, white
tattoo.  Big black coat.”

She managed to twist around enough to get a goggle of him,
and after a tick she turned back, grinning.  “I can see why you like him.”

I scowled, because if she thought I liked him just for his
pretty face, she couldn’t be reading my mind at all.  Then I got worried that
she might have heard me thinking that, and I shot her a cold kind of glare.

“Please dan’ read my thoughts anymore,” I said.  “It’s
uncomfortable.”

She smiled and nodded.  “I’ll respect that.”

I let out a sigh of relief and watched as the guard linked
Shade’s cuffs to a post and strode away.  Shade jerked his wrists once, looking
like he had half a mind to try to tear down the corral with sheer force of will. 
Then he slouched back, fire in his eyes, chewing at the inside of his cheek as
he slowly scanned the other corrals.  I held my breath.  Wanted to call out to
him, but I didn’t need to, because his gaze suddenly snapped my way.

“Hayli,” he mouthed.

I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.  So much pain,
so much regret, so much wild hope.  My heart turned topsy and I found myself
smiling in spite of all that had happened—all that he’d done…and all that I’d
done.  A smile flickered across his face, then vanished suddenly and he jerked
his wrists again, harder than before, making the whole corral shake.  One of
the guards strode over, waving one of those terrifying electrical guns at him.

“Stay still or I swear I will use this on you,” he said.

Shade grinned at him.  “Try.”

“I will do it!” the guard said, waving it again to make a
point.

But a train whistle interrupted his pantomiming, and all the
guards stopped milling about as a man in a dark grey hat and military coat
climbed up on the Station steps with a loud hailer.

He lifted the device to his lips and said, “Escort the Jixy
prisoners to the train.  Five Jixies per car, except the Zealot.  He will ride
in the first car under guard.  Chain the others to the hitching rings.  Let’s
get this done in an orderly fashion!”

The Zealot?  Who’s the Zealot?

I cast an anxious glance at Shade, but he just shot me a
pointed kind of look and leaned his head back, closing his eyes.  Of course, it
would have to be Shade.

The guards saluted, and one by one they dragged us off to
the train.  I lost Shade in the chaos.  The black-haired girl disappeared, too,
and I found myself shackled into a train car with an older man with a swirling
blue tattoo on his bare chest, and a whimpering boy a few years younger than
me.  The shadows were too thick to see my other car-mates.  We waited, and
waited, and waited.  My hands got prickly and my shoulders ached by the time
the whistle blew, then the train bucked forward and wrenched my shoulders again
and stung my hands, and I could barely keep my feet. 

In the darkness of the car I lost track of time.  The boy
kept muttering under his breath, and someone deeper in the shadows was praying
out loud.  Presently the boy fell silent, then, quietly, he joined his voice to
hers.  The blue-tattooed man murmured with them, under his breath, and before I
knew it, I was praying with them too.

They’re going to kill us all,
the crow whispered in
my mind. 
Pretend to ship us off somewhere safe, but it is a death
sentence.  We can’t survive.

If you’re ganna be a gloomy bird, keep your beak shut
,
I told her. 
Shade’ll get us out of here.

*  *  *  *

Two, maybe three hours had passed when the whistle screamed
and the train stuttered to a stop.  Our car was completely dark besides the
slats of light creeping in past the door, so we had no ken where we’d got.  Not
until the guards came and threw back the door, flooding the car with blinding
daylight.  Once my eyes adjusted, I saw the stark lines of a huge building
looming up over us, all darkish and drab with only a few sparse windows to be
seen.

“What is that place?” I whispered.

Someone said, “It’s Esobor.  It’s a Ministry building.”

A Ministry building?  Out here?

“Quiet!” said one of the guards outside our car.

They came in and unchained us, leading each of us down to
the landing.  Farther down the track I heard a sudden commotion and a frantic
shouting.  Three mages were all trying to run, trying to jump through the train
cars and get clear to the river beyond.  The guards didn’t bother with their electrical
weapons.  They just gunned them all down with their rifles, without a word,
without hesitation.  Just killed them all, like rabby dogs.

I staggered, choking on a gasp, and stared at the bodies. 
If I’d thought about trying to run…how could I now?  Maybe the crow was right. 
We were all going to die.

The guards shepherded us through a maze of chain fences into
the building, which looked more like an empty factory than anything.  It seemed
to be one enormous room, with just a few first and second story offices on the
sides and a walkover that looked fit to collapse.  Bright electrical bulbs hung
from the high roof, pooling pale light on the floor.  There was just one door,
a grobbing huge sliding door that some of the guards bolted from the outside once
we’d all got in.

The other guards locked us up like chattel around the edges
of the room, fixing our cuffs to metal rings that kept us well clear of each
other.  I finally caught a goggle of Shade after the rest of us had been
secured.  Two guards marched him in, but they didn’t chain him with the rest of
us.  They held on to him out there in the middle of the floor, where all of us
could see him.

Someone came out of one of the offices, dressed in a long
white coat.

Cold horror prickled over me. 
Dr. Kippler.

He strolled out onto the open floor, surveying the line of
us with a cold kind of smile.  I bowed my head, praying with every ounce of my
being that he wouldn’t recognize me.  He didn’t.  He turned and stopped in
front of Shade, folding his arms behind his back.

“So, you’re the one they call the Zealot.”

Shade just stared at him and didn’t say a word.

“The question is, what makes
you
so special?” Dr.
Kippler asked, studying him from head to toe.  “You look ordinary enough.”

He pulled out his brass pocket watch device and passed it
across Shade’s forehead, then bent to examine its gauges.  A minute and he
didn’t move, then he called over another scientist from the office.  They
conferred over the device for a tick, then Kippler folded it into his pocket and
stared at Shade.

“That should be impossible,” he said.

“I’m an impossible sort of person,” Shade said, making me
smile.

“These energy readings are extraordinary.”  Kippler turned
to the other scientist, facing away from Shade, but their voices carried across
that vasty silence.  “I’m not sure that the standard procedure will even work
with him.  If we slip and don’t capture him…”

“You could always try,” Shade said helpfully.

“I think we ought to try the EMS device instead,” the other
scientist said.  “He’s too dangerous to risk a failed capture.” 

I jumped, because I recognized his voice, though I’d never
caught a good glimpse of his face.  Toma, the scientist who had been with
Kippler in the basement of the Science Ministry.

“Electromagnetic suppression?” Shade asked, tilting his head
back, looking a bit bored.

“How would you even know that?” Toma cried.

Shade grinned.  “Burns you up a bit, does it?”

“Shh,” Kippler said suddenly, holding up a hand.  He cocked
his head, like he was listening, then turned slowly to the line of us.  “One
hundred mages, all rendered powerless by simple handcuffs.  Except…”  He walked
up and down the line, waving his brass device.  “Except the mental powers. 
Because right now, I’ll be damned if one of you isn’t trying to manipulate my
emotions.”

He glanced down at his device, then stopped suddenly, right
in front of the young man who’d been in the corral with me.  The mage just
smiled at him.

“Not very wise,” Kippler said, and snapped his fingers.

Without any warning, the nearest guard shouldered his rifle
and fired three rapid shots, and the mage collapsed in his chains.  A few other
mages cried out, but Shade got terribly pale, anger burning like lightning in
his eyes.

“That’s four mages I’ve watched you murder,” Shade said.  “I
will kill four of these guards.”

Kippler nodded, dismissive.  “Right.  Of course you will. 
Toma, let’s deal with him first, then process the rest of these mages.  They’re
almost done setting up the examination room.”

Toma bowed and took a few steps back, but he didn’t say a
word.  I wondered if he still thought it was wrong, what they were doing.  What
they meant to do.  Because the way these guards killed us so easily, I couldn’t
pretend any of us would be leaving this place alive.