Chapter Nineteen
Gemma was about to hurry to her friend’s side when the interrogator pointed at her. “The girl of British descent next.”
Gemma’s knees locked. She’d forgotten that both she and Imara would go through questioning before the men.
The doorway of the cage shimmered as the female guard reached in and grabbed her.
Every step Gemma took toward the chair was like sinking into the sand on Reva’s surface. Her shoes may as well have been packed with the very rock she’d mined; they were so heavy.
She glanced over her shoulder at her teammates. Hawk tended to Imara now, but Christian stood at the front of the cell, bracing himself against the barrier with his hands.
Tears pooled in Gemma’s eyes. Stars, help me. She hoped she had the same strength as Imara to not break when the interrogator centered on Gemma’s secret, a secret she’d been trying so bloody hard to contain—a secret that would end her life.
Maybe the shocks from the collar would distract her from the pain that would follow when her friends stared at her with nothing but hatred in their eyes.
The chair was like ice on the back of Gemma’s thighs, deepening the chill in her bones. Her teeth chattered as the restraints tightened around her wrists and ankles. The monitors were stuck to her skin, and the collar was secured around her neck.
The interrogator placed the gas mask over Gemma’s mouth and nose, and a moment later, it filled with the vile smell of chemicals, like those used to scrub patients’ bodies before surgery. Gemma gagged, her eyes burning.
The room started to wobble and hemorrhage color. A weightlessness filled her arms and legs until she felt as if she could sail on sand dunes of purple and blue.
“What is the code to your bomb sequence?”
“What code?” Gemma replied nonchalantly.
A current of excruciating pain jolted through Gemma’s body from her neck up into her brain and down into her feet. Her mind instantly reconnected with her body, and a scream tore through her on instinct.
“You know the code!” the interrogator shouted. “Tell me now, or I will share with your comrades why you really stole those drugs from the infirmary.”
Gemma’s hands shook despite the wave of relief. They wouldn’t know the truth about why she was here in Zion.
She clenched her jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The agony that jolted through her was like burning her hand on a hot kettle, yet so all-consuming that she couldn’t breathe or think. Her stomach was in her knees; her heart was in her spine. Every muscle in her body contracted beyond the point of pain. Her scream tore her throat on its way out.
Another round of inhalant was pumped into Gemma’s mask as the interrogator spoke to Gemma’s teammates. “Did you know that Gemma tried to kill herself with those drugs? What kind of person would do something like that? Can you even trust that person?” She spun back around to Gemma. “The code. Now.”
Gemma’s head swam, full of the hallucinogenic gas that, once again, flooded her system.
The drugs she had stolen were right in front of her: five syringes, all with sedative properties. A sixth was in her hand. She tied a tourniquet around her arm, stabbed the needle into her vein, and flushed the drug into her system.
The ecstasy was instantaneous. A few more, and she could drift into a permanent slumber.
Gemma squeezed her eyes shut and tried to drive the memory into the back of her mind.
She reached forward and injected into her arm another syringe, then another, until her eyes couldn’t focus, and her neck couldn’t balance her head. All she had to do was keep going, and all her pain would be gone. Forever.
Gemma shook her head. She wouldn’t give in—she couldn’t give in.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gemma forced out, word by word.
Her limbs stiffened as a deep, penetrating ache forced her entire body to shake. She bit down hard and tasted blood.
Everything went black.
“Gemma.” Christian’s voice echoed from somewhere far away.
Her eyes flitted open.
Somehow, she’d ended up back inside the cell with Christian, Imara, and Hawk.
A buzz of electricity told her Colton was in the chair now.
Imara still sat on the floor but appeared to be more alert.
Hawk stood at the front corner, watching Colton’s interrogation, while Christian was crouched in front of Gemma, his hand on her cheek.
“I’m okay,” she grumbled, but when she tried to stand, her muscles wouldn’t respond to her mind.
She felt boneless, as if she were nothing but a stuffed doll. The side of her tongue ached from where she’d bitten it, and the right side of her head felt like it had been smashed by a pickax.
Christian’s hand fell away from her face as she managed to lift her arm, pressing the heel of her hand into her temple. She squeezed her eyes shut against the ache.
Christian’s fingers stroked her left arm softly, his gaze unblinking. “It’s a good thing this is only simulated. You had a seizure there at the end.”
A seizure? Stars, that was embarrassing.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Gemma whispered, her throat raw from her screams.
“What do you mean?” His forehead wrinkled, his brows nearly touching in the middle.
She opened her eyes to look at him. “The part about the medicine, what I did with it.”
The small muscle in his jaw flexed. “You know I understand.”
Colton came back, strolling into their cell without any need for assistance, and Gemma squinted at him. How had he not been as affected by the gas or voltage?
Hawk was the next to be pulled away, and his screams were as heartbreaking as Imara’s. Christian sat next to Gemma on the floor, his hand in hers, and she leaned against him for both physical and emotional support.
She had already been exhausted before entering the simulation; now, she was languid. Her bones still vibrated from the volts of electricity that had pierced her, and each of Hawk’s screams worsened the pounding in her skull.
She tried focusing on the rhythmic rise and fall of Christian’s chest as he breathed, distracting her mind from wandering listlessly.
“Another useless one.” The interrogator sighed. “Bring me the last boy.”
Gemma tensed, her grip tightening on Christian’s hand. After all he’d been through, all that he’d seen, she couldn’t let him sit in that chair.
She tried to cling to his arm as he rose to his feet, but he gently pried her fingers away and steadied her when she almost toppled over, still weak from her own experience.
“I’ll be fine.” He brushed her jaw with his thumb. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
Gemma sagged back against the wall of the cell, tucking her knees close to her chest. A hiss, and Gemma knew the gas had been forced into Christian’s mask. She held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut.
“What is the code to your bomb sequence?” the interrogator demanded.
Christian’s cry of pain was a dagger to Gemma’s soul.
She clamped her hands over her ears, dropped her forehead to her knees, and silently screamed for him within her own head. Minutes, seconds, hours passed, and the veins in Gemma’s neck felt like they were going to explode.
Gentle hands caressed her forearms.
Gemma lifted her forehead off her knees. Imara was bent in front of her, a wave of satiny black hair cascading over her shoulder.
“It’s over,” she whispered. “Christian passed. They’re helping him back to the cell.”
Imara assisted Gemma to her feet as Hawk guided Christian against a wall of their glass box. Gemma tried to work her way over to him, but her stiff legs protested, and before she could get very far, the high-pitched whistle shrieked in Gemma’s ear.
They were being dragged back to reality.