Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) - By Fionn Jameson Page 0,80
as though it had very nearly taken her left eye.
“What’s going on, Beth?” I repeated myself, slowly, carefully.
Her lips thinned. “I think we should be asking you that, Hwang.”
Beth had never called me by my last name before. We just were never that formal, in fact if I’d ever had anything remotely close to a friend, she might have been it. “Where’s Adrian?”
She turned. “Come.”
The guard, for how could they be anything else, swallowed up her again and swallowed me up as well. Being this close to people armed to the teeth made my skin feel as though it would jump off my bones and quietly, I let them lead me through the outer courtyard, past the training fields and into the inner sanctum, where the Elders resided. An attendant dressed in their somber black and gray pulled open a shoji door and I watched, utterly nonplussed as boots tromped on the floors, the snow and dirt creating a mess I had never seen before. It was tradition to take off your shoes before stepping into the living quarters of the Sanctuary.
Just how much had changed since I had left?
I hesitated at the edge of the upraised floor, years of tradition keeping my feet on the snow-covered ground.
A rough shove sent my knees careening into the wooden edge. “Get up.”
This, this was a face I recognized. “Mac. Nice to see you haven’t lost that edge of yours.”
The darkly tanned Scotsman grinned at me. It was not a friendly one. “You’re lucky you’re not dead. We don’t suffer traitors easily.”
We don’t suffer traitors easily.
I blinked. “Are you calling me a traitor?”
Instead of replying, he grabbed me by the arms and physically lifted me off the ground, setting me firmly on the wooden inner walkway. Inwardly, I cringed at the mess I was leaving on the polished wooden floors that should have never seen a scuff, much less the mess everyone else was making.
Stupid thing to worry about, really. Especially when it seemed as though everyone I knew had this strange misconception that I was a traitor.
Painfully aware of just how easily someone could slip a dagger through my ribs, fully aware of just how the Fellowship treated traitors, I let my hands dangle by my sides, trusting in the Hunters sense of honor. Or something like that.
The group stopped, but I could not see over the heads of those taller than I. Considering I was taller than average, it did not escape my notice my guards had been chosen for the express purpose keeping me from seeing outside, or people from seeing in.
A door opened and I followed a tall brunette with a ponytail longer than mine. The broad shoulders as well as the crisp smell of Old Spice told me the person was male, that and the exposed forearms were covered with curly hair, slightly darker than the hair on his head.
The Hunters spread along the small concrete room, bare with a single chair in the middle, a swinging light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
I was very well acquainted with the interrogation chamber.
Although I never thought I would sit in the wobbly chair that very desperately needed a wad of paper underneath the back right leg. It was interesting to see the room sitting down. A completely different point of view, so to speak.
Beth paced in front of me, hands held behind her back. “Why did you come back?”
Painfully aware of the eyes on me, I shuffled my feet on the concrete floor. All the nervous energy in my body needed some place to go. “I told Adrian I’d be back. I thought Chang would need some kind of status report.”
The first slap took me across the face, catching me completely by surprise. Beth was small, but in her case, small did not equate with little strength. She was rather infamous for her punches and the slap took my breath away.
Blinking blearily through the hair in my eyes, I tried to catch my breath. “That was...unnecessary.”
“Isn’t it?” Teeth bared, she stared down at me. There was something in her eyes, something I couldn’t trust. On anyone else, I would have said she had grown power drunk, but not Beth, not the orphaned girl who came to the Fellowship at the age of fifteen, half crazy from an inhuman strength that only the Elders could harness and turn into something useful, something needed.
This person in front of me was not the girl I remembered. “No. I think I deserve an explanation.”