“Again!” Jared shouted, hoisting Cordray up from the floor for what felt like the hundredth time that morning.
“You don’t understand how my Pulse works. I can’t shoot out electrodes at a target. I have to touch someone with my bare hands for anything to happen.”
Jared was immovable, his expression never veering from the soldier who always did as he was told. “If the queen thinks you’re capable of breaking the laws of magic, then you’ll do it.”
Cordray scowled at Jared and shook his arm off once he was on his feet. “What about you? Can you throw your Pulse? No! This isn’t even possible. She even said no one’s ever done this before! What makes you idiots think I can do this?”
Jared never argued more than was necessary. He stood back and pointed to the bullseye on the other end of the concrete room Cord had been locked in.
Cordray obeyed, but he had little frame of reference. He’d never heard of anyone casting their Pulse without the use of touch. He knew it couldn’t be done, but somehow, he now had to figure out how to accomplish such an impossibility.
Cord stared at the bullseye across the cold concrete room and raised his palms, his nostrils flaring as he tried to do as he was instructed. Three whole minutes of him gritting his teeth as his face tightened produced nothing – the same result he’d had every day thus far. Malaura only came by once a month to the bunker, he was told, and she would be most displeased if, once again, there was no progress to report.
Jared never appeared hopeful or frustrated. He was stoic – stuck in the bunker, which didn’t seem to affect him any more than being out in the field under the sun might. He punished Cordray for not performing the task, which was how he ended every night, and then left the prisoner to lick his wounds in the dark.
There was a hole in the floor that served as the toilet, and meals that came two times a day. Other than that, Jared and Dustin were the only interaction Cordray was granted on a daily basis. Dustin was at least amiable and relatively chatty. Jared was a brick wall with absolutely no personality.
Cordray lost count of the days he’d been locked up, but didn’t lose hope that he would find a way out and get back to Rory. He’d almost escaped four times already, but was caught and punished with tortures that only enforced in his mind that he would never join them. The more they beat, suffocated, waterboarded, and attacked his internal organs, the more concrete Cordray’s will became. He spent his spare time doing pushups when he was left alone in the room, planning and preparing for when the next opportunity for escape arose.
He’d surpassed the pleading and panicking portion of his imprisonment, and skipped right to plotting, which turned out to be a far more soothing color on him. When he’d escaped the first time, they’d broken his leg. The second time had been his arm. He knew he’d been incarcerated for at least eight weeks, because the medic they had onsite commented that it had been as long when they removed the cast from his wrist. And that had been who knows how long ago. His leg was mostly fully functional at this point, which only worried him more over how much time had passed.
Cordray pushed at the ground, repeating his calisthenics for the fourth time that day. He wanted his repaired arm up to snuff, without any weak points on his body when his next window of escape came about. He’d already killed seven of their people, which, he reasoned, was their own fault for taking him off the pill and trapping him like a dog. He’d gone his whole life trying not to harm anyone, and only a few months spent with the Lethals had him murdering. He tried to talk himself through the guilt, but it stung him all the same.
Cordray was sweating as he switched from pushups to sit-ups. When he’d been a boy and just discovering his ability, he’d only been powerful enough to kill a few bugs and give people a painful shock. When his parents had suggested gloves, his inner turmoil relaxed. He could be normal again and not worry about hurting the people he loved. Now that he was separated from them, and he didn’t have the buffer of the pill, he felt exposed and a little unhinged.
That night, however, Cordray went to sleep with contentment ironing out the worry wrinkles he’d worn for too many months. Jared had socked him in the stomach a few times, and he knew his lip was bleeding, but he smiled all the same.
In the darkness, Cordray stretched out his hand and practiced sending a spark of electricity from the center of his palm into the hole in the middle of the floor. The grueling training had worked, though his keepers didn’t know it. He’d endured the beatings, the suffocations and the torture, knowing that he could make it all end if only he revealed the evolution in his ability. But his power would never belong to them. It was his, and he knew just how to use it.
When Malaura came for him again, he would be ready.