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hands. Maybe being here, a prisoner of men, allied only with fellow draki (except the one, of course, that would prefer to kill me) and longing for the sky, I’m feeling the gulf between Will and myself more sharply.
    The door of the observation room opens. More lab coats pour inside. They’re pushing a sheet-covered gurney with brown leather straps dangling off the sides. The sight of it starts a slow, nervous fluttering in my stomach.
    I rise to my feet, my heart rate increasing. I back against a wall, pressing my palms into the cold concrete. A draki somewhere down the line begins making a racket. Almost like he’s digging at the concrete floor.
    “What’s going on?” I call out, hoping one of them will answer me.
    Lia obliges—her tone apologetic—as if she were somehow responsible. “They’ve come for you. It’s your turn.”
    I gasp. “My turn for what?”
    “At the beginning, they take each of us … put something inside of us.”
    “What thing ?” I shout, pacing rapidly inside my cell, back and forth, back and forth, as if my quick movements can somehow carry me away from all this.
    “I don’t know really … some little shiny metal thing. It hurts only for a second.”
    Shiny metal thing?
    I flatten my palms against the wall again and shake my head from side to side as if I can will it all to stop, will the enkros not to come for me. I hadn’t anticipated this. I didn’t think they would have time to do anything bad to me before I was rescued.
    “No point fighting it,” Roc volunteers, his voice grim. “We all have to go through it.”
    We all have to go through it .
    Somehow that doesn’t hearten me. Terror rises up my throat as I watch the humans stop on the other side of my Plexiglas cell. I’m not supposed to go through this. Just twenty-four hours. That was the plan. Not this. This was never the plan. And now it’s supposed to be sooner. Will said they were coming. Where are they? Did something go wrong?
    I might have been the pliable creature before, when I first arrived and was playing a role, but I can’t afford to be that easy victim any longer. I can’t be anything but myself.
    I’m ready for them when they crack open the Plexiglas. I blast a path of crackling fire, intent on keeping them from reaching me.
    They back away at first, but then come again, crouching low. Several times they try, edging carefully into the cell. Each time I reward them with fire, pushing them back out.
    I pant loudly, hot smoky breath falling from my lips. I refuse to wonder how long I can keep this up. I just tell myself I must. I have to last until Will gets here.
    Their faces are angry and red as they slide the Plexiglas closed and regroup. They glare at me, their determination to have me, get me, break me, no less bright in their eyes.
    “She was easy before,” one says, his voice very close to a whine.
    Easy? Right.
    One finally orders, “Enough of this. Go suit up.”
    My stomach clenches and I know what suits he’s talking about. The fire-resistant ones they wore into the simulated forest to stop the gray one and me from killing each other.
    Two suited men return. Apparently they thought two would be enough to handle me. I tense, my thighs quivering in readiness. A low growl swells from my throat.
    The others step back as the two suited men square off in front of my cell, each holding the cattle prods I remember so well from when I first arrived.
    The Plexiglas slides open again and I blast them with fire, following the trail of flames. I surge between their bodies, intent on escape.
    I can’t get past them though. They zing me. My every muscle seizes as the electric current runs through me. A scream strangles and locks in my throat. I can’t move. No matter how my mind commands my body to move, to go —I can’t.
    I drop to my knees, the impact jarring me deep to the bones. Someone’s behind me. I hear the loud peeling of tape. A hand grabs a fistful of my hair and forces my head back.