3. Chapter 3
Kalli
They draw my blood through a hatch in the bars, not a door. A slot at waist height, hinged, just wide enough for a gloved forearm.
I put my elbow through before anyone asks.
The strap comes over my forearm from the outside and cinches down.
I know the drill. Elbow through, wrist rotated palm-up, hold still.
Nobody’s come inside these bars yet. The whole rig is built to keep it that way: the hatch, the strap, the mirror bolted above it so they can find the vein without leaning close.
Two of them this morning, as always. The young one does the needle.
“Nice day for a bit of bloodplay, huh?” I say. Nobody answers.
The girl works a piece of gum, one soft crack at a time. There’s chipped polish on one nail she hasn’t bothered to fix. The older man stands behind her with a foam case open and tells her how to do it.
“Other side of the crook,” he says.
“This one’s good.”
“You used it Tuesday. It’ll stop being good.” He licks his thumb and peels a label off the sheet. “Rotate or I write it down.”
“You write everything down.”
“That’s the job.”
The alcohol swab is cold going on and colder drying. The needle goes in on the side he wanted. Vial. Cap. Label. He counts them out loud, and when he’s done he counts them again.
“Two,” the girl says. “It’s been two every time since I started.”
“It’s two until somebody tells me it’s three.” He fits them into the foam. The case is cut to hold those two and nothing else. “Courier’s at eleven. If it’s not sealed by half past, it sits here until Thursday, and then I’m the one getting chewed out.”
“They bumped it again?”
“They bump it every time now.”
I turn my head enough to see the case in the mirror. Small glass, sealed caps, a code printed on each label. I can’t read it, and I’ve never seen one like it. I can’t imagine anyone drinking from it.
“Those are awfully small,” I say.
The gum stops.
“Nobody drinks out of a vial that size,” I say. “You’d need a hundred of them and a very patient man.”
Neither of them looks at me. The girl draws the next vial, and the man goes on fitting foam and doesn’t stop once.
“Arm,” he says.
“You’ve got a name?”
“Arm.”
“Suits you.” I draw my elbow back through the hatch. “You’ve done a lot of these.”
“Enough.”
“Ever done one of me before?”
The girl’s gum stops again. He fits the last vial into the foam and shuts the case.
“You came with a schedule,” he says. “Twice a week, two vials, same days. That’s all you need to know.”
He picks up the case and leaves, and the girl gathers the swabs and follows him. There’s a red line across my forearm where the strap sat, and one puncture in the crook. I press my thumb over it and sit back on the cot.
Vials.
The other captives at the last place had full tubes drawn. Mine look like samples.
Over a year, I’ve believed twice a week meant they were taking less blood on purpose. Sparing me.
They weren’t sparing me. Somebody’s doing something with my blood that needs a sample on a schedule.
The hatch clicks shut behind them. I watch them go down the hallway past the board. If I lean to the left on the cot, I can read that board. Today’s date is circled in a color none of the other dates use. Two more circles ahead of it, evenly spaced.
Courier days.
The young guard from my first night still logs the morning paperwork.
He brings his coffee down with him now, which he didn’t do the first morning; the smell of it arrives before his boots do.
There’s a fresh nick on his jaw this morning, and when he catches me glancing at it, his hand goes up to cover it.
“You’re going to run out of face,” I say.
“It’s a new razor.”
“It’s a new razor every time with you.”
He sits. He could log from the far desk. He logs from the near one.
“Big day for the courier,” I say, just to fill the silence.
“Twice a week.” He turns a page. “Rush job today. Client bumped the pickup.”
“The client bumps a lot.”
“The client—” His mouth shuts hard enough that I hear his teeth.
I let it sit. Pushing isn’t how this works. Slow is how this works.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, after a while.
“You’re the one with the keys.”
“Is it true you can’t fly out of a mountain? Someone said you have to jump off something.”
“Someone’s an idiot.”
“So you can?”
“I can do a lot of things. Right now I can sit on a cot.” I shift on the cot, and he doesn’t flinch today. That’s progress. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Fair enough, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.”
“You’d rather I called you by your name?”
He opens his mouth and closes it, and I laugh at him. His ears go red at the rims, and he almost laughs too. Almost. He looks at the door first to check who might be in it.
“Where does the hallway go?” I ask, like I’m bored, because I am bored, but that’s not why I want to know.
“Out.”
“That’s the whole building? A hallway and out?”
“There’s the wing they haven’t finished. It’s just walls.” He catches himself and does what he always does after: he sits up straight and reads the folder. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“You’re not talking to me. You’re complaining about your razor.”
He turns two pages without reading either of them.
“Do they make you work nights outside?” I ask.
“Why?”
“Because you look tired and I’m making conversation. If you’d rather sit there in silence for six hours, be my guest, but one of us has a book, and the other one has a drain in the floor.”
His mouth opens and shuts again.
“Three,” he says. “Two after midnight. It’s not a hard site.”
“It’s not a hard site because there’s nobody in it?”
“There’s going to be.”
“Is there?” I let my head rest back against the wall. “I walked the whole block coming in. Both sides. Every door open and nothing behind any of them.”
“That’s not— They told us it fills up.” He shifts in the chair. “That’s what the induction says. Forty on this wing when it’s running, more when the far side’s done, and the far side isn’t done, it’s walls and cable. They had us learn a rotation for forty.”
“How long have you been running a rotation for forty?”
He doesn’t answer that.
“Sir,” I say.
“Don’t call me sir.” Then, quieter: “You’re the first one so far.”
“Lucky me.”
“You’re not supposed to be here long either.” His pen stops. His whole face stops. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Said what?” I close my eyes. “I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about your razor.”
I wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. He logs from the near desk until the shift bell, and I lie there with my eyes shut and my face doing absolutely nothing.
I run through the handful of details I’ve been gathering.
This place is brand new. Too new for occupants. It’s still under construction. But someone’s set a wing of it up with guards and a roster and put me here, away from the regular pipeline. The blood still goes out on a cycle. Whatever it’s for, it isn’t some sicko with a taste for dragon.
What the fuck are they doing with it? Why am I here?
I think about it until my head aches, and I’m no closer to an answer. Then I doze off, because sleep is all I have in here.
In the afternoon, a maintenance man comes through with a stepladder and sets it up at the near corner of my bars, reaching for a hall light that’s been buzzing since morning.
His eyes are on the light. His shoulder is a hand’s width from the bars.
His wrist is closer than any wrist has been in days.
My dragon comes up fast, straight at him. My hands curl. My back teeth grind together.
No!
I turn my face to the wall and breathe. Slow. Boring. Sweat runs down between my shoulder blades while I do it, and holding still takes everything I have.
This one’s complacent. The kid who guards me is a rookie. That doesn’t mean the men outside aren’t ready for me.
I need to know more about this place.
He changes the bulb, folds the ladder, and leaves without one glance at me. He’ll never know how close he came.
My dragon is seething. Holding her used to be a decision I made once. Now I make it constantly.
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling until the panels blur.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Minutes drag into hours. I think. Maybe they’re just very long minutes. I stopped being able to tell a while ago.
The door at the end of the hall swings open and something steps in. Not someone. Something. Everything inside me prickles.
The man who strides down the hall is tall and dark-haired, and he moves like someone I should recognize. He stops at my cell door and looks in at me. Pale eyes move over me, assessing. My nostrils twitch.
Smoke. Flame.
Dragon!
“You—” I begin, on my feet without realizing it.
“Back away from the door.” His voice is as cold as his eyes.
“But you’re—”
“I said, back up!” He’s used to being obeyed. I can hear it. I step back, forcing down the scales that are rippling beneath my skin.
The door opens, and he steps in. He’s got a case in one hand. Behind him, an escort stands at the door, and a woman with a clipboard stands where she can see me without getting close. He doesn’t introduce himself. He just gets in my space, no hint of the recoil I’ve had from all the others.
Dragon. And ancient.
He reaches into the case and extracts a tape measure. “Arm,” he says.
I raise it, confused. There’s no sign of a needle, so he’s not taking my blood.
“Height and body condition consistent with records,” he says, running the tape down my arm without asking. “Joint mobility within range.”
The woman writes.
“Feet apart,” he says to me without looking at my face. I don’t move. He moves them himself with the side of his shoe, then puts the tape around my hips, both hands settling on the bone through the coverall, thumbs pressing in to measure the spread. “Hip breadth. Pelvic alignment within tolerance.”
“Yes, sir.”
Blood registers don’t hold hip measurements.
“What the hell are you doing?” I push his hands away. He carries on as if I’d done nothing.
I’ve been handled by people who were afraid of me for over a year. This man isn’t afraid of me, and he isn’t cruel either. He’s reading numbers off my body and checking them against a sheet.
“Open.” He’s looking at me now.
“What?”
Two fingers press up under my chin.
Is he fucking serious?
The fingers press deeper, and I open my mouth for him. Everything in me wants to take those fingers off at the second knuckle, and it isn’t only the dragon wanting it.
“Dentition sound, full set. No extraction history.” He turns my head one degree to the left, then to the right. “Good bone structure,” he says. “Healthy skin.”
He steps back and adjusts my coveralls briskly, so they’re snug across my chest and belly, then runs an eye down my torso. My nail beds start to tingle.
“Overall structure seems fit for purpose. Though that will be verified following a full physical.”
“Yes, sir.” More notes.
“Query the client’s team on cycle records. Nothing in the sampled panel indicates a heat marker, but the panel wasn’t built to catch one. Note that we can’t confirm from bloods alone.”
“Do you want her age at first cycle?”
“If the clan file has it, use the clan file.”
The clan file.
“You could ask me,” I say, though I have no intention of discussing my freaking heat cycles with him. “I’m right here. I’ve been right here for over a year.”
He doesn’t react. He doesn’t even pause.
“Whoever sold you my file,” I say, “did they throw in the rest of my family or was I the whole order?”
Nothing. He wipes his hands on a cloth from his case, and that’s it, that’s the entire response, and it’s worse than if he’d hit me.
My dragon rises at him slow. Not the surge from before. She wants his throat, and she’s in no hurry about it. For one long breath, I hold her back and can’t think of a single reason she’s wrong.
“Metrics verified to contract standard.” He closes the case. “Match confirmed compatible. Client timetable moves forward.”
“I think he’ll be pleased.” For the first time, she shows something other than cool detachment.
“That’s not for us to decide.”
He’ll be pleased? Who the fuck will be pleased? And why?
My heart is going hard enough to hurt. My dragon wants to take that flat expression off his face.
“Transport prep tonight or morning?” the woman asks.
“That’s their decision, not ours.” He turns his back on me. Every other person in this building has been afraid of me since the day I arrived. He isn’t.
Because he’s a dragon. Like me.
The door shuts. The lock runs through. I stand exactly where he left me, feet still the width apart his shoe put them, until the boots are gone from the hall.
My breath comes out in a rush.
I’m not being sold to a buyer. I’ve been matched to one. My own kind put me in here, and my own kind are taking me out and handing me to a man who wants to know about my heat cycles.
I know what that means.
I make it to the drain before I’m sick.