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Chapter 12: The Palace

Anastasia
oOo

Location: Unknown
City Population: Unknown
Current time: Unknown
Current date: Unknown
Current alias: Unknown

I woke to the sound of chains clanking as they swayed. That was certainly new.

My arms were stretched above my head, my wrists clamped with handcuffs that looked to be shackled together and to the ceiling. My feet were the same way; bound together by the metal cuffs and weighed to the floor with some sort of block.

I must have been no less than fifteen feet up in the air, chained to the ceiling and hanging by my arms. I hadn't been there long, however: I would have suffocated by now if I had been. It had apparently been no more than a half hour (my arms had turn copper red, even under the ink, with the effort my circulatory system had to use to get blood to them). But if they didn't take me down in the next ninety minutes, I'd say, then gravity was going to tear my lungs apart and I would die almost instantaneously from lack of air and blood loss.

I tried to take a deep breath, but I found that I was constricted by rope binding me tightly around my stomach and torso. It kept me from breathing any more than shallowly, also leaving a lot of stale oxygen in my lungs. There were chains attached to the rope, too, also keeping me up in the air. They knew that my hands would rip apart if I was only being hung by the spiked cuffs and I'd never survive the fall if there weren't more supports.

That made my time before death about sixty minutes if I'm to die like this. By my cause of death is yet to be determined. My time could shorten or lengthen by any one decision.

Something was sliding down, down, down my arm, and I tilted my head to the side to see what it was. Blood. A crimson trail had been steadily creeping down my skin for the past who-know-how-long, from my wrists. The handcuffs were spiked, puncturing the skin until it met the bone of my wrists. Ah. I was being held up by the thickness of the skin surrounding my bones.

Lovely.

I heard footsteps, hollow and heavy, two pairs echoing off the walls (the room was twenty feet tall, all metal walls and very little to no objects within it besides myself). When I glanced back down as best I could, I noticed a set of steep and skinny stairs that had been moved in front of where I was hanging. Far enough away so I couldn't touch anyone, even if I tried my very hardest.

Click-tap, click-tap, click-tap. Shoes, fairly big ones, walked up the steps slowly. Agonizingly slowly. I recognized him the moment his silver-tipped head came into view at the top of the stairs.

I smirked. "Hello, Diablo! How are you today? You look bloody awful, if I dare say so myself."

He sent me an evil glare as the rest of him came into view, followed by another person. His… That dirty, filthy lying pig had double-crossed us all this time! And he wondered why I had no feelings for him.

But first impressions are the worst. Black had his feet shackled, weighted down with blocks of cement that he had to drag up the stairs one step at a time and his hands were each wrapped tightly with a new band, magnetized together.

"I wasn't lying," he said. Diablo looked between me and Black, but I only focused on the younger. "I did join The Eye. He," Black spat, glancing at his father, "knew where we were all along. Caught me when I left that night after our little show-off."

His voice was hoarse and croaking, like he had been beaten up pretty badly. When he drew himself up one more step, I could see that he had been. His nose was bleeding and he had an ugly bruise stretching from the edge of his nose, across his eye and down to his jaw bone. His lower lip was swollen and busted, and he had a nasty cut on his temple.

I turned to my former employer. "I always knew you were evil, but not that evil, Diablo."

His face turned to a twisted evil grin, showing off his now perfectly, manicured teeth, no hint of coffee stains remaining. "Oh, my dear, you haven't seen the least of it. Garner!" he called to someone behind him, who responded; "Yes, sir?"

"Get this worthless sack down from the ceiling and put her on the ground so I can show her what we really do around here. And put this asshole in her place. Make SURE that you bolt the door and take away the stairs."

"I will, sir," Garner replied.

I found myself being lowered to the floor, and two armed guards came and un-cuffed my hands and feet, also slicing the ropes off my upper body. My arms tingled from the blood rushing back to them, my lungs slightly more free to breathe now that they weren't being both squeezed together and pulled in two opposite directions at the same time.

I had landed too hard on my bad leg, the one where the new tattoo was. I hadn't gotten to look at it but could tell that it was going to be darker than all the rest of them combined and would surely never fade like some of the others had begun to. It burned, like it had been branded into my leg with hot coals.

On top of it all, I couldn't feel my hands, but I could see that there was more blood than I would have liked to think should be coming out of those puncture wounds. They went all around my wrist, each one the size of a bottle cap, six on each arm. But I couldn't feel or move or touch my hands. There was not time to act on it-the pain and the numbness were probably just the the effects of the cuffs and lack of blood.

I looked behind me once I'd recovered from collapsing to the floor, seeing that all of my old restraints were now on the Black, and Diablo was beaming down at my crumpled form. I held his evil gaze with my own cold, emotionless one.

But my freedom was short lived-a chair was set in front of me (steel, welded together so no screws or bolts; electric handcuffs, modified and impossible to pick) and I was heaved up onto it by two armed guards I hadn't notice come in the room. My hands were snapped into the shock cuffs (I could tell they were rubbing against the puncture wounds still leaking blood on my wrists, but I still had no sense of touch anywhere close to the gaping holes). My legs were shackled, magnetized together and bolted to the chair.

Even if I hadn't been this week, I still wouldn't have been able to move, especially with the shock cuffs. I was barely managing to keep my head up to look my old master in the eye.

"You won't get anything out of me, Diablo," I told him truthfully.

The grin never left his face. "We'll see about that, my dear. If I trained you, I can break you." He circled around my chair, toying with my loose hair and brushing a hand across my face. I was repulsed, and I made no attempt to hide it. "We'll start simple: is my brother alive and still running that God-awful magicians league or whatever the hell it is?"

I smiled, careful not to let any emotion or give away any hints on my face, through my body language. I tried my hardest not to even think of the answer to the question-they could have done anything to my head while I was out and I wouldn't even know it. "Oh, come on, tell me, Anastasia. We'd have so much more fun if you did," he whined. My expression stayed the same. He sighed. "Have it your way."

Once again, I hadn't noticed the shadow of a guard beside me until his fist connected with my jaw, bit enough that it spread up close to my ear, too. Pain exploded on the side of my face and my head whipped around with the force of the contact. I rolled my jaw carefully, testing for broken bones… a crack in the ramus is all that I suffered, as far as I could tell. It would hurt to talk for a few days (assuming I lived that long).

This was absolutely no incentive for me to spill any beans.

"Still not gonna talk?" Diablo asked. "I know the Eye exists and I know that Damien was the M to their Bond. All I want to know is if he still is." Nothing. "Since I'm still here and the Eye is still there, I'm going to assume that yes, he still is. I would have caught wind of his murder by now, I suppose."

"Then what are you asking me for?" I managed. The crack in my jaw hurt more than it should have.

He leaned in close-his breath smelled like rotten tuna and hard boiled eggs. "Because I like to see you suffer for all the trouble you caused me."

"Killing me will get you nowhere."

"Oh, no, no, my dear. I don't intend to kill you. I intend to make you wish you had never been born." He rocked on his heels, arms behind his back. "Where is the Eye's HQ? That's a simple question for a smart girl, isn't it? Shouldn't be hard."

My silence earned me stomach punch. A quick jab, but powerful enough to send bile to my throat nonetheless. I glanced up at Black afterwards. His expression both worried and confused me, if only for the moment that I saw it-he was terrified. Not for himself, because self-preservation looks different from concern for another human being, something I rarely got to see coming from him. My eyes were back on the floor before Diablo could see the direction my gaze had travelled.

"How can I get to Dylan Rhodes? Know that name? Your brother, is he not?" The slightest twinge of something must have flashed across my face. "Ah, we have a weak spot!"

"You leave him out of this, you son of a bitch."

"I'll leave him out of it as soon as I get to the Eye." His voice changed then, his face, too, and what he said earlier came back to me. I'm going to make you wish you had never been born. I had no doubt. "Fighting, what methods do they use? How have they been trained? Who trains them?"

It hit me then, what he was after. He knew about my mission, too, just as much as he knew about everything else. He'd been ahead of us in everything the whole time. He needed me alive so that he could lure out the Eye. This was all a game of pressure points, if I was correct.

My weak spot was the Horsemen (it took some work to admit that to myself). As the fifth Horseman, Dylan's weak spot was me. The Eye's weak spot was Dylan. The Horsemen, Dylan included, would come after me, then they Eye would send reinforcements to help once Diablo had their best agent in his clutches. But because The Caste was far more powerful, especially now, than anybody in the Eye knew, they would all be killed almost instantaneously once they tried to enter HQ, leaving Damien, the head honcho, with no choice but to either surrender or face his brother himself.

But Diablo had a Plan B, and if it worked better than his previous one, it would become Plan A. If he could get the information out of me than he could attack first without going through the trouble of too many bodies piling up on his terrain.

But why me? Other than that I'd escaped and he already knew where I was, he knew he couldn't get anything out of me. It was one of the things I had been most renowned for in my time under his wing. I didn't know anything about the Eye, had never had personal contact or been to HQ or anything. It just didn't make any sense.

But Black. Black, his own son, had all that information, unless his mind had been wiped clean from a long distance. For all the Eye is capable of, I don't think that's something they could do.

These thoughts were racing through my head in the instant it took for Diablo to ask another question and me to earn a backhand by him himself-unusual. The various rings on his right hand, not his wedding hand, hacked deep lines under my eye that immediately began to drip red. As if the slap was exactly what I needed to clear my head and allow new thoughts to fly around, I knew exactly why they hadn't tortured Black yet and why they were punishing me.

It was all a game of pressure points, and I was Black weak spot.

When he screamed out, pleading with his father to stop, I knew I was right. I licked blood away from my lips and craned my head to see him. "Don't hurt her!"

"Black, stop! It's what he wants you to-"

The butt of a gun raking across my cheeks, hitting my nose and slicing my already swelling lip effectively stopped me from saying more. I spit more blood out of my mouth, right at Diablo's shoes. He wiped them on the pavement in disgust.

Black continued. "Damien's alive. He's still the Eye's M." I could see Diablo smile through the stars that were streaking my vision.

My fingers start to draw into fists, but they're inches apart before I find that I can't move then any closer together. Details: the cuffs probably struck a nerve. No, two of the three main nerve systems in my hands. That's why I can't feel past the wound. Impossible to tell whether the damage is permanent. Will I ever be able to punch again? Fight with my hands? Hold a pencil or a book?

Black had been shaking his head while I stressed over my injuries. "I can't tell you any more."

"Pity," Diablo said, rolling his eyes. "You were doing so well."

The amount of electricity that was produced by the shock cuffs was all too much at all one time. It was agonizing, coursing through the chair-of course, I was foolish to think it would only stay at the cuffs when it was attached to a steel chair-and over my entire body. I couldn't help but arch my back when the waves continued, jolting forward and back with ever new one. It must have only lasted for seconds but it might as well have been days.

The new breakers stopped, but the old ones kept washing over me and I could hardly force my ears to quit ringing enough to hear what Black was shouting at them.

"HQ is in underground in a town called Raynesse, Florida."

"Do they operate in New York?" Diablo questioned, all serious and the business-man I had known him to be before he'd taken me. The guard behind me held a knife to my throat when he didn't answer. "I can kill her. She's no use to me."

"Yes, yes! The carousel in Central Park, the one by the Lionel Shrike tree. There's a base there, too. I don't know how to get in." I felt the knife jerk harder against my throat and I didn't dare even breathe. "I honestly don't know! That's all I know about anything to do with them, I swear!"

I heaved in a breath when the knife was taken away. "That's all for now." I praised myself for being able to meet his gaze, unwavering even when he shouted to Garner again.

"Bring in the girl."

I heard Garner's voice buzz over an intercom. "Yes, sir." That meant there was a speaker in here; also a window for him to see and hear better through or Diablo was miked.

The door where the man had disappeared during the interrogation swung open again, and I could hear Garner walk in (Military boots, four sizes too big; new to him but already worn-must be hand-me-downs, probably by a brother) carrying something. A human, obviously by what Diablo had ordered. The crying started when the door slammed shut (a girl, then) and Diablo gripped one knob at the chair's back and spun me around so quickly I was afraid I might topple over when he let go.

I gasped when I finally recognized the child's face.

"Clara!" The little girl from the town in Florida. I had made her a pink kite with her name on it…

"Who's… there…?" she asked in between sobs. Her eyes. They were glazed over and her pupils were no longer visible. She was blind now, where she hadn't been before.

"Clara, it's Maggie!" My tongue was too dry to keep talking and I erupted into a fit of violent coughs.

Diablo continued for me in a sickly sweet voice I remember he'd used with me when I was just that age. I'd hated it then and I hated it now.

"You remember Maggie, don't you, Clara?" She turned her head to try to locate his voice. "From your town when she made you that pink kite with your name on it and one for all your friends, too?"

Her face lit up through the tear streaked and pale mask it had become. "You're the magician!" She tried to look around, tried to see me, though she couldn't remember where my voice had come from when I spoke. "Where are you? Why can't I see?"

She broke down into sobs. Instincts kicking in, I wanted to run to her and pick her up and rock her until she stopped crying, but I was bound to a chair. I don't know whether I was grateful or not when Diablo did the job for me, sending an evil grin over her shoulder at me.

"Untie Rhodes." He said to Garner who was still standing at attention by the door. "She's not a threat any longer. And if she tries to be one, she'll be the last thing that pretty face hanging from the ceiling sees or hears besides a gunshot to the head.

I launched out of the chair as soon as I could, plunging to the ground on my hands and knees (my bad one still took some of the impact, try as I might to keep from doing so), spluttering the liquid iron material onto the seamless metal-plated floor. No use trying to get out that way, then.

"I was walking with my parents and then two cops or something came up and Mommy and Daddy were gone and one of the cop guys took me with him and then the next thing I knew I was waking up and I couldn't see anything! Maggie, what do I do?"

She said everything so fast that I almost couldn't understand her. I tried to stand and go to her, but the guard kicked me back down in the ribs. I gasped for air, fiery pain blossoming in my side. I knew it would hurt more later, though, when the effects of whatever drugs I had been given were wearing off and the adrenaline stopped pumping through my veins.

"You monster!" I rasped, doing my best to see Diablo through my blurred vision. "How could you do this to a child? She's only six!"

"Dearest, all that I did to her was blind her. But her parents…ooh," he sucked in a hissing breath through his teeth, "I don't know what happened! One moment, they were just so normal in a normal little interrogation room in normal little chairs, then the next…" He smiled wickedly and reached around the girl's body, still in his arms, and took a lighter out of his pocket. "You know, fire can be so hard to handle. Especially when there's a flammable substance all over the floor, walls, ceiling. Such as… gasoline?"

He flicked the lighter and the flame danced for a minute before dying. He closed the cap and placed it back in his pocket before securing Clara in both his arms again. She didn't understand what was going on, and I prayed that she wouldn't have to find out.

This was just another plan, another way to get information out of me, in case everything else hadn't worked. But it had: black had given him everything he needed. This was just sending me on a guilt trip, teaching me a lesson I had already learned but apparently failed to pay attention to. Don't get attached.

Was this man before me still the man that had been a fatherly figure, the man I looked up to for sixteen years when I was still with The Caste? Had I really done everything he had asked me to, including kill all those people, all those magicians exactly like me?

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must be going," he continued gleefully, dropping Clara to the floor who immediately began to snivel again and he looked at her with disgust. "I have a very important meeting to keep. Too-da-loo! Garner, show me out and take down the bloody staircase. Make sure she doesn't go anywhere."

"What about Mr. Black, sir?"

Diablo looked up at his son, the man shaking where he hung and his eyes clearly showing the fear, guilt, pain he felt. "I'm not worried about him," he said. "He can die up there, for all I care." He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands and gave it Garner, all the while staring in repulsion down at Clara, sitting helplessly on the floor. "I have no doubt that she'll find her way to cripple over there." He nodded to me.

Diablo exited through a sliding door in the wall (posted with two guards on the outside, deadbolt and a submarine turn-table knob on on the outside, along with a fingerprint scanner. Impossible to open from the inside. On eye slot: can only be opened by guards on outside, covered with plexiglass, four inches thick).

Garner took from his suit pocket a small button and flipped the switch, causing the staircase to fold in on itself and rise up to the the ceiling, sliding on nearly invisible conveyor belts to one corner of the room and disappearing into the darkness. It was impossible to reach in my current state, including the lines it had travelled on-Diablo knew this full well.

None of them looked back.

It hurt to breath, much more to talk or move. Injuries. Where are you hurt? I told myself to focus. Two cracked ribs, it feels like. Nerves damaged in wrists, I'm guessing-possibly permanent damage, but definitely shouldn't make it worse by moving them around. Lots of blood loss from puncture wounds, so should be getting anemic soon. Crack in the nose, busted lip, two chipped molars, possibly others, rope burns around my upper torso, bruise already spreading right side of the face and a crack in the ramus (right behind my jaw). I was obviously still weak from the electric shock and my stomach was squeezing tight every twenty seconds from that jab to my gut.

It took almost all the rest of the energy I had to get myself to the wall for support. I wouldn't be able to move after that. Okay, Clara. Get Clara over here. She hadn't started crying again yet, for which I was mildly grateful-I wouldn't be able to deal with the headache added to everything else.

"Clara," I whispered. Not for fear of being heard, but because it still hurt even to do that much. Her head perked up, but she didn't speak. "Can you follow my voice? I'm over here." She nodded and began to crawl slowly, carefully, picking her hands and feet up high to avoid any nonexistent objects on the ground. It would have amused me any other day of the week.

It took her no less than five minutes to reach me. I kept talking to her the whole way, instructing her to come over to my other side so as not to disrupt my broken ribs more (I didn't tell her about the injuries, of course). She snuggled up to my side, latching her arms around my neck and I put one of my own around her protectively. I managed a glare at the cameras I'd noticed earlier (motion activated, following my every move, impossible to reach and turn off without somebody seeing you beforehand).

I gazed around the room carefully, looking for any way I could escape. But they were good-the only way was through the door or the air vent above me. But it's Philip's Flat Head screws with silicon bronze Tap bolts pet it firmly in place against the ceiling. But security would catch you from either way.

I allowed my eyes to settle on Black, my plans for escape or contacting Dylan or anybody outside of this cell dissolved. There was nothing I could do but hope for the best. I was being naive to think I could do any more than that.

His eyes were closed, giving up watching me for fear that I would be pissed. I was a little bit, but I understood. Did I look that bad when I was up there. "I'm sorry I didn't believe in you, Black." He rolled his head around to look at me, eyes now bleary but open, scanning the scene and instantly looking like he could kill himself for what he done. "It's not your fault."

He ignored the part about it not being his fault, knowing I would stick with my argument and it would be fruitless to argue. "You had every right to suspect me."

"Yes, but I should have trusted you. After all those years that I had managed to stay hidden from The Caste, it was easy to think you were still working for them. I didn't believe you were magic at first, but I know what a terrible liar you are, and I could see you were telling the truth—"

"Rhodes?"

"Hmm?"

"You're not helping."

"OK," I sighed.

Black quickly fell into a state of unconsciousness that I knew he wouldn't be coming out of for quite some time. I looked down and noticed that Clara had also fallen asleep in a way, and knew that she too would be out for a period of time long enough to allow a good bit of uncertainty.

With all hope gone, I one last look around the room, pulled Clara closer to me and finally closed my eyes, thinking of anything but sleep.

oOo

As far as I could tell, a little more than two more days passed like this. Both Black and I were on the brink of death, but neither of us were willing to give any more information. I didn't know if Black had any more, even though he claimed he was telling all he could. It didn't stop Diablo from trying in any case, however. It surprised me that he never hurt Clara any more than he already did, though it pained me more than any of my injuries that he left her in the room when he 'interrogated' us.

My spot against the wall became my refuge and my left side became Clara's. Black came down from his place in the air every two hours, then tied to a chair. He could hardly breath and wouldn't have been able to get out anyway-they bound his hands and feet with rope they were so sure of it. I was sure it was just to taunt him. It was working.

It was the third morning that I heard it.

I could barely keep my eyes open. Black was passed out again, and I was astounded that I hadn't been drugged yet. More ribs had been cracked and you almost couldn't see my face for all the bruises and cuts it was covered in. Black was even worse-he knew all the things Diablo wanted that I didn't have. I'd ripped off the bottoms of my pants by now for all the heat and everything was drenched in sweat (or was that blood?). My vision drifted in and out, as did my consciousness and I had lapses in time that I couldn't remember.

Diablo had just left and I could tell by the yellows and black spotting everything around me that I would be passed out again soon. I had barely made it to the wall this time. My eyes were drifting closed, so tired that it was painful to have them do so. It could have been seconds or minutes or hours when a noise, soft but unrecognized to anything else i'd heard for a while sounded from above. My eyes popped open, dry and bloodshot and red-rimmed from exhaustion. There were cranks and thumps and bumps and… I'd be damned if those were voices. Not Diablo's or Garner's or Black's or anybody that I would happily kill upon entry.

"Ouch, Danny, stop poking me!"

I never thought my heart would leap into my throat and my stomach would turn over and over and over again when I heard that voice.

Everything betrayed me then, my mind and body and whatever was keeping me from tearing apart, and I crashed from where I had been dragging myself to my wall, Clara following behind, a tiny hand on my leg. The floor connected too hard with my temple and my consciousness became a dark abyss.