Chapter 8.2

I stayed awake for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. The tap dripped in intermittent flurries, and I found myself listening to it, the rhythm lulling me. In the morning, I'm ripped from my sleep when the lights flickered on again. A moment later, someone enters with a bowl and leaves it on the stall without saying a word. I find cold congealed porridge at the bottom, having eaten much worse in the past, I wolfed it down. I washed by face in the basin and used the bottom of my shirt to dry it, having been given no towel. Not long after I was done, the same two researchers collected me from the room and returned me to the room with the one-way mirror. Dr Linderman was waiting there when I arrived.

"Good morning. I hope you slept well."

"It was fine."

"Like I said yesterday, I want to test your ability to see through your shadow's eyes."

"Are you going to use the EEG machine today?" I noticed that the small box and cap were nowhere to be seen.

"Not today, my team are still processing the data from yesterday, I don't think they'd appreciate me giving them more." He smiled at his attempt at humor. Instead, he held a monitor in front of him, facing toward him and away from me. "It's quite simple, you just have to tell me what you see on the screen."

"Okay." I nodded, Shadow was already standing beside me, but I tugged at our connection a little more and with a grunt of surprise from Dr. Linderman, I knew he was visible beside me. Shadow silently glided over to Dr. Linderman and I saw him shuffle on his seat uncomfortably and watch him out of the corner of his eye. "Ready?" I ask, amused.

"I'll start now." He drew his attention away from Shadow and started the reel of images. I closed my eyes so that only Shadow's red vision was there.

They were a bunch of everyday images; some were mundane items while others were well-known scenes.

"Bike… Kitchen… Apple… Park…" it went on like that until a picture of a kitchen knife appeared, for some reason he looked up at us both in surprise. Then he went back to the monitor until an image of a snake appeared and his eyes narrowed at us both. He changed the image again to a photo of a handgun, but he wasn't looking at the monitor, he was looking at me.

"Let's take a break. I'll get someone to get you some refreshments and then we can restart a bit later." He interrupted, and I peered curiously back at him.

"Okay…" I watched him leave and I got the feeling we weren't really taking a break so we could get some nibbles. He was gone for about ten minutes and in the meantime, someone had given me a glass of water. I gulped it down and wished he'd given me more; I was about to knock on the door and ask when Dr. Linderman enters carrying equipment.

"I thought you said you weren't using the EEG machine today?" I commented at the box in his hand.

"My team worked through the data quicker than I thought." He replied but I was sure he was lying. Did he find something? Did we do something wrong? After Dr. Linderman, four other people joined us- the same people who sorted the EEG cap the day before. Dr. Linderman watched them work, I hadn't finished picking out the dried gel from yesterday (they didn't exactly give me a chance to shower) and they were already applying more.

"So, we'll continue where we left off."

I made Shadow visible and instructed him to stand opposite me in front of the screen and the experiment resumed. They started off normal "Shop… Bun… Pen… Road…" Then the images started to change- it was subtle at first- a bloody uniform and then the Garlantian flag. But the last image was an emblem that I had branded into my mind- a crescent moon shape with three knives jutting into it. My breath caught in my throat and my stomach twisted uncomfortably. I felt every fiber of my being tense, my breath catching in my throat. "What the hell are you playing at?" I spat. My mind reeled. How the hell did they know what squad I was in? How did they know about dark moon squad? They shouldn't have that information. No one knew that. Then I felt anger. Scorching hot rage burned through my body. I felt my temperature rise and my heart hammering in my chest. How dare he.

He watched me with detached interest, with no reaction at all to my anger. Which actually made me angrier. Shadow was back behind me, at some point he'd left his post at the other end of the screen, and now stood at my flank, reacting to my strong emotions.

"Your recognition of threatening images is much faster than the non-threatening ones. That's quite normal, it's a natural response to threats and it's evolved to help us survive as a species. However, what isn't normal is that you name the image before the image was visible. Care to explain that?

"That's impossible," I muttered, still angry, although I knew it was entirely possible with all the strange things we'd seen.

"I have it recorded, from the knife and the snake to the images associated with Garlantia, you answered 1500 milliseconds before the image changed. I'm sure the EEG will also show this."

"I don't know what you want me to say. Maybe your machine is broken." My anger morphed into defiance.

"I don't need you to say anything. I'm just sharing my findings with you. It's interesting."

I hated the way he said interesting. He barely showed any emotion, like he wasn't even human, and I hated it. I hated that he caught me off guard and I hated that I felt vulnerable.

"I would like to stop now," I growled through gritted teeth.

He nodded lightly, "okay. We can start again tomorrow." He got up and the door opened just as he got near, and the same two researchers escorted me back.

Like an overused muscle, my head started to ache to keep our connection going for so long, there was a feeling of pressure building up behind my eyes, so I released our connection, but Shadow stayed in his normal invisible state, silently guarding me by my side. I laid on the bare bed, but I didn't sleep. I wondered what tomorrow would bring. I wondered what Theo was doing- what sort of havoc she was giving Raven right about now to try and get to see me. It made me smile- but it was short-lived. I wondered if I did the right thing, but I banished the thought from my mind knowing that I had. It would be worse for Harry or Tasmin if Dr. Linderman got hold of them. I wanted to spare them as much as I could. I pushed all the discomfort from my mind and focused on surviving.

I scoffed. This was nothing! Why was I moping about the injustices of unethical experimentation?

The throbbing behind my eyes ebbed away as a blissful, dreamless sleep took hold. In the morning, there was a cold plate of food standing on the stool; I'd slept right through dinner time and through to the early morning. There wasn't any way to tell the time; we were underground and there wasn't a clock in the room with me, but the food from the night before was still there and someone hadn't delivered any breakfast, so it was at least earlier than the morning before. It was the third day since I'd had a shower and I became aware of the ripe smell that emanated from me. I did the best I could with a small bar of soap and the palm of my hand, but I wasn't sure it did much good. I was just replacing my shirt when the same two researchers unlocked the doors.

They didn't introduce themselves and they rarely spoke so I gave them nicknames in my head. The woman was Spike because of her short black spikey hair and the man was Chip because of a massive chip missing from his front tooth. I didn't put much thought into their nicknames I'd admit.

That day I spent my time summoning and unsummoning him over and over until they were satisfied they had enough readings. I felt anxious as they surrounded him with different equipment and bustled around him needlessly, but I wasn't sure if the anxiety was mine or his. I was ignored, for the most part, the only interactions were made when I had to give Shadow instructions. I recognized one of the devices was to measure radiation, but I didn't recognize any of the others, nor did they stop to explain it. Dr Linderman wasn't present that day, and none of the researchers paid me any mind so it was mostly boring.