Defect - By Ryann Kerekes Page 0,16

clicks on the power, and horrible images blast down on me. Images I don’t even understand, but they make my blood curdle. I twist my head to the side and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to forget. But Kane’s fist in my stomach gets my attention. “Open them,” he barks. I gasp for breath, and the screen assaults my senses again. The images flash so fast, they barely register, but the effect is no less haunting. Close up images of a human body decaying, mounds of snakes curling all over each other, then an up close shot of a man and a woman … I close my eyes again, my cheeks flooding with heat. Kane laughs, but before he can hit me again, I open my eyes. “You liked that last one, didn’t you?” I can hear the twisted smile on his face. I want to punch him in his stupid mouth. The images flash and invade every part of me. I’m held captive by them. I watch until I’m numb and shaking with rage.

As quickly as the images started, the screen goes black.

“What the fuck?” Kane says. I look around and notice the whole room has gotten dark. I hear him flip the light switch back and forth, but nothing happens. “Don’t move,” he says to me, before turning to leave. Even he catches the irony in that statement and I hear him chuckle on his way out of the room.

A few seconds later, the door opens, but the footsteps are too soft to belong to Kane. I’m still shaking with fear, lying strapped to a table in the darkened room. In the fading light from the hallway, someone tall with broad shoulders steps past me. Just as the door shuts, blocking out all light, I think it must be Will, though I didn’t get a good look at him. He doesn’t say anything, he just moves quietly through the room as though he knows just what he’s after. He passes the table and I crane my head to see what he’s doing. He stoops down near the data terminal. I hear something snap. He leaves just as quietly as he entered.

A second later, the lights flick back on. Then Kane is back, grinning at me like a damn fool. “Little technical difficulty. But now, back to the show.” He cues up the video again, but the machine grunts and ejects the card. “What the hell?” Kane picks up the scan card. He’s holding it in two pieces. He looks from me – still strapped down on the table – to the data terminal, trying to figure out how in the world this happened. My face gives nothing away.

Chapter 6

Life does not put things in front of you that you are unable to handle.

– Unknown

I’m awoken in the night to a needle in my arm. I get the same rush of being forced into consciousness – a shot of adrenaline – just like after the mindscan. I gasp for breath and sit up in the bed, trying to see who’s there. It’s O’Donovan and one of the night nurses. She unshackles me, and he hauls me to my feet.

I hurry behind him, though I have no idea what’s going on. My arms ache from all the recent shots. Shades of purple and green decorate the crooks of my elbows.

After winding through the hallways, he leads me outside to the open area where I ran with Will yesterday. When my eyes adjust to the moonlight, I see a group of guards-in-training standing in the field. I recognize a few faces from the bunker, including Sam’s. Kane’s there, too. And though I scan the crowd for Will, I don’t see him.

The field has been set up with a series of obstacles, and people mill around nervously, as if waiting for something to begin. There’s a thirty-foot rope wall to scale at the start, then log hurdles, deep mud bogs in the center of the field and a trench where flames leap up into the air. My eyes can’t make out the whole course in the darkness, but I do take note of a space squared off with ropes at the end and wonder what it’s for.

“You’ve done well in your tests this week I’m told.” O’Donovan watches my expression as I take in my surroundings. “So I thought it was time to try you at something a little more … advanced.” He smirks around the word advanced. He means brutal. “You’ll