“Come on, now. Wake up. We didn’t hit you that hard.”
Cordray felt a hand slap against his cheek three times, his face sticky with saliva and something viscous. His eyelids felt heavy, but eventually, he coaxed them to open. The world spun in sickening shades of gray, green and black, so he closed his eyes again until he was certain he wouldn’t vomit if the room spun again.
“There you go. Awake, finally. You’ve got to develop a thicker skin if you’re going to keep up. You can’t go all soft like a baby the first time you’re hit.”
Cordray frowned, his lips puffy. His mouth felt dry, and his teeth had a ringing sensation to them that he couldn’t remedy even after opening his mouth wide to stretch his jaw. “Where am I?”
“You’re home, brother. We’re the people you belong with, Cordray.” The man had a few missing teeth, but looked friendly enough. He had a burn mark on his left cheek, but a brightness to his gray eyes that gave Cord something to focus on. “I’m Dustin, one of the people who rescued you.”
“Rescued me?” Cordray asked as he cracked his sore neck. He took Dustin’s gloved hand and brought himself up to sitting – though that took more effort than he’d been anticipating.
“We’re the Queen’s Lethals,” Dustin proclaimed with pride, puffing out his chest. He wore an unwashed blue mechanic’s shirt that was missing a button at the pooched waist. “Shame that you hide your gifts. The world doesn’t appreciate us.”
Cord tried to hold onto Dustin’s words and sift them into the proper order in his groggy mind. “Wait, how do you know my name?”
“Everything about you is in your file.”
“My file?” Cordray rubbed his forehead. “Where am I?” He blinked again, and the room became clearer. The concrete walls matched the cold floor, and both were covered in cobwebs and something that looked like a putrid green fungus. He shivered and looked down to see his shirt torn at the shoulder, smeared with dirt and grime.
“You’re home. We take care of our own, especially since no one’s going to look after us.”
“We?”
“Lethals. You’re Electric. I wanted your name to be Zapper. Then people could call you the Mad Zapper, but ‘Electric’ was the one that stuck. Sorry, man.”
Cordray smacked his lips, grimacing at the funny flavor in his mouth. “How am I here?”
“We’ve got eyes on the Chancellor and his daughter. Make sure everything goes according to the queen’s plan. We’ve known about you for weeks.”
Cord’s eyes widened. “It was one of you who attacked Rory in the restaurant.”
“Of course. We didn’t care about taking her down then. It was to see if you would react.”
Cordray stretched his back, which felt like it was in desperate need of a chiropractor. “You should be arrested.”
“We’re not criminals,” Dustin retorted with his chin raised petulantly.
“Of course not. You only attacked the Chancellor’s daughter after breaking into my house. Then you abducted me. What’s wrong with that?” He frowned at Dustin, who he guessed he was slightly bigger than. Though, his body felt like it had just been put through an industrial clothing dryer, so it was anybody’s guess who would win in a fistfight. “If you wanted a conversation with me to explain your politics in all of it, you could’ve just talked to me, you know.”
Dustin shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest. “Not with Aurora around. She knows most of our faces. Besides, we had to get you away from them first. Otherwise they could keep poisoning your mind with their self-righteous filth.”
“Rory isn’t self-righteous,” Cordray grumbled, taking his time as he stood to his feet. He stretched out his back and heard several unsettling pops and cracks that made him feel like an old man.
“Maybe not outright, but her parents are. And Remus, of course. But Aurora’s nothing to us. She kept Remus distracted well enough while we assembled and gathered more of our kind.”
Cord clenched his hands into fists. “I’ve got to get back.” Cordray knew it wouldn’t be that simple, but he had to try.
Dustin stood from his stool and blocked the doorway in the empty room. “You’re staying with us. The Chancellor will have his hands full for a long time. He won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“I was taken right out of my house! Of course they’ll come looking for me.”
Dustin shrugged, and then delivered his hard truth to the newcomer. “You’re a Lethal. You don’t matter to them one bit.” He wore a saddened expression, as if he pitied Cord for not understanding the harsh ways of the world. “How many of us have gone missing in the past year, only to end up with a piss-poor police job in the hunts to find us? All because we’re inconvenient to society.”
Cordray knew Dustin was needling him, but the panic started to eat at his insides all the same. “You’re wrong. I don’t want to hurt you, man. Let me out, and we’re cool.”
Dustin cracked his knuckles and held up his hands as if he was readying to catch a baseball. “You’re welcome to try it, brother, but I wish you wouldn’t.”
Cordray didn’t feel completely ready for a fistfight, but he came out swinging all the same. Though the pill was muting his electric current, it did nothing to hamper his strength that had been earned the old-fashioned way – chopping wood in the forest. He was proud of his aim that rang true when he socked Dustin across the face.
It wasn’t Dustin who cried out, though. With a simple touch, Cordray found all the air sucked from his lungs. He fell to his knees, gasping and holding his throat as he struggled for air.
Dustin crouched in front of him, a sympathetic look on his face as he clapped Cordray on the back. “You really don’t know much about your own people, do you. I’m a Suffocant. The papers call me Sycophant the Suffocant. See, that’s why I wanted to get you a good nickname. You get a stupid one, and it follows you around forever. What you’re feeling now is me taking all the air from your lungs. If I concentrate with all my might and squeeze too hard, I can collapse your lung, but see, I don’t want to do that. We’re not all the monsters the Chancellor thinks we are. You took a swing at me, so I’m defending myself with the weapon nature gave me.” He shook his head in dismay as Cordray’s eyes began to bug out in distress. “And to think, there are people out there who want to leave me defenseless. The Chancellor’s daughter is a Deadpulse, so he wants to make all of us useless. That pill you took? It’ll make you just like a Deadpulse for an entire month. That’s not something any of us should have to tolerate.” He pushed out a chuckle and slapped Cordray on the back, forcing a flood of oxygen back into his lungs. “But see? All it takes is a little self-control. Same as people who go off and buy guns. No harm, no foul. I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
A heavy set of boots tromped down the hallway, and when the door swung open, a man in all black stared down at the two with a bland expression on his face. “The queen wants to meet Electric.”
Dustin rolled his eyes at the nickname that was far from his first choice. “Alright, Jared. He’s coming.”
Without waiting for the prisoner to catch his breath, Jared and Dustin hoisted Cordray to his feet, leading him along as Cord stumbled down the dimly lit hallway toward his doom.