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the table dimmed and went out, and it seemed he was falling slowly into a dark hole filled with cotton candy, but the hole didn't have a bottom. He closed his eyes.
This wasn't like the dreams. It felt like someone pushing open his mind and chipping bits of it loose.
He was sitting at the computer playing WoW . . . His brother Bob was behind him, yelling, saying it was his turn . . . Drake hitting the floor, coming up punching wildly . . . one flailing fist catching Bob in the balls . . . Bob choking him and demanding that he give . . . Drake trying to get air any way he could, no air . . . Bob saying "What's wrong with your eyes?" . . . Drake feeling like he was growing . . . A flash of light, blinding, blotting out Bob, and Sareena downstairs, and his mom and dad out by the stock pond . . . A feeling of collapsing, darkness . . .
Where was he?
Chapter 10
Drake opened his eyes again, back in the interrogation room. His head was over a trash can and he was throwing up. Drake couldn't believe how much was coming out of him. He hadn't been eating much lately.
"That's all right, Drake," Pendergast said. "That's what it's there for."
Smitty glanced up from the notebook he was writing in. Dr. Carlisle was whispering in his ear. She looked scared. "Get him out of here," Smitty said. "We're done for now."
Drake tried to get to his feet, but his thick legs were wobbly beneath him. "What did you do to me? Does this go away?"
Dr. Pendergast handed him a glass of water. "You'll feel better if you get some of this down." Drake took this glass in an unsteady hand and balanced it against his lip, gulping down as much as he could. At least it took a little of the vomit taste from his mouth.
When he was finished, Justice tugged at him. "Time to get back to your room, Drake."
Drake tried to take a step but lost his footing and collapsed face-first to the floor. His forehead bounced heavily off the cold linoleum. Smitty laughed. Drake clamped his jaw shut. He wasn't going to let them get him to go emo if he could help it. At least whatever they'd drugged him with dulled the pain as well as making him a spaz.
Justice lifted Drake up by his armpits. "Shut up, Smitty." He glared at his fellow BICC agent.
"Thanks," Drake said. "I'm okay now." It was a lie, but he was going to do his best to pull it off. He could tell that Justice wasn't taking up for him because he liked Drake. It was because he thought Smitty was a jerk-off. It was one of the few things they agreed on.
On the way back to his room Drake tried to get Justice to tell him what they'd injected him with, not to mention what it had done to him. As expected, Justice told Drake exactly nothing except that it was an advanced interrogation technique. Justice gave Drake a stick of gum when they got back, "to take the taste out of his mouth." Then he left Drake alone again.
Drake lay on his bed, chewing the gum slowly to keep the taste for as long as possible. As near as he could tell, they were going to keep him here forever. All he knew was that he had to get out of here soon, and he was going to need help. Major help.
Niobe, Zoe, and Zane pretended to watch American Hero in the lounge while Zenobia snuck into Pendergast's office. Zane chuckled (in the form of cyan and burgundy cross-hatching) when the Laureate, the weakest of the competing aces, managed to get Tesseract, the most powerful, voted off the show. Team Clubs was screwed.
Niobe turned inward, focused on Zenobia. The filing cabinet was locked. Zenobia reached inside with a phantom finger and tripped the latch. It took a bit of searching to find Drake's file.
Got it, Mom. Zenobia pulled out a thin hanging folder. The tab said "Thomas, Drake."
Good job, kiddo. Don't keep me in suspense.
Zenobia started reading. "No. Freaking. Way."
Drake was, apparently, the only survivor of the accident in Texas that had been on the news. An Air Force reconnaissance patrol had found him, naked but otherwise apparently healthy, near the center of the devastation. SCARE suspected that Drake had played a role