Chapter 11

Katherine makes a giant decision.

My eyes slowly opened, revealing a dark room. It was larger than the last room they held me in. But none the less, I was caught and done for. A solid slap across the face woke me up even more, my cheek stingy from where the hand made contact.

In front of me was a big man. Big as in round. He was bald, nerdy glasses, and wore an over sized white coat. One of the scientists, probably. His face was studying me, waiting for me to give him some kind of response.

“What? Your mother never taught you it is wrong to hit a girl? Or did you hit her too?” That got me another slap, and almost a second before someone demanded he stopped.

The new visitor was another scientist with a long lab coat. In his hand was a clipboard, listing different statistics or information, most likely on me. My hands were tied together behind my back, stretched slightly out toward the corner of the wall. The new scientist was thinner than the one who laid hands on me. He leaned down to my arm and began clicking buttons.

“Number 072614,” he read off the number. I hadn’t recognized the number from anything, no telephone number was that short, not even the Hex government phones. Maybe I was that number subject. Which was an extremely large number of subjects. “Simon, can you hear me?” The scientist was using the phone function, and I felt a tickle as the parasite shifted inside my arm, underneath the skin. “If you can hear me, you need to come back. Help me. They caught me and I just need some back up.”

To the other side, on Simon’s end, it surely should have sounded like a man. However, I had a feeling that he did something when he poked around on the Driver, masking his voice with what sounded like mine. But as I tried to scream out, the duct tape muffled it. My actual voice wouldn’t reach the Hex Driver enough to warn Simon.

“That will bring him in, and we’ll deal with him when he gets here.” The scientist waved the chunkier one away, telling him to get out of the room. With a grunt, the bigger man did as he was told. When the other one was completely gone, the thinner scientist turned back to me. “To deal with you now,” he said. The duct tape came off.

“Let me go, I won’t say anything.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t dare. At least, everyone says that.” The scientist smirked. He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me, far enough to where if I tried spitting it wouldn’t reach.

“No, I really mean it,” I pleaded. The guy sat there shaking his head.

“I hear that our… associate… explained something about the Hex Driver,” he said, shifting in his seat. “She wasn’t wrong, you know. The Hex Driver’s parasite is a rare species we found here when looking for resources and an island to build a secret base. It sought us out, feeling the magic potential. What the lady didn’t tell you are the side effects. The parasite is only so strong, and that stunt you pulled in the other room fed it nicely, but tired it out. Big spells like conjuring a tornado will have the parasite drain your magic from your veins. When it is done, you lose the ability and in all of our other subjects that didn’t make it… the parasite starts to feed on other things. Namely drinking your blood and draining you.”

My eyes went wide. If I had known something like this would I have tried to do that spell? Maybe. It got Simon out of the room and out of harm’s way. It needed to come off as soon as possible, somehow, but I wanted to keep it on until the company went down.

“Are you thinking about you want it off? Because despite what you may want, we’re going to take it off.”

“Please do. Then I will go home and not talk about this. Everyone would think I am crazy anyway.”

“Unfortunately, the main risk of taking off the Hex Driver before the parasite is ready is death. You’d be risking your life. And the only reason we want to take it off is because of the associate who couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and your demonstration in the other room.” The man jotted down some notes on a clipboard and threw it to the side of the room.

The Hex Driver gave me a way to fight back. It gave me a way to fit in with the kids at Hex Academy. Even if I was the new girl, a lowly freshman who wasn’t even noticed, I had just started school there. The idea of a parasite inside all of us, draining us of everything if we didn’t know how far along it was, and then what the scientist wasn’t confirming. Mind control. Could they really pull off such a wide-scale stunt like that? The students and convicts were their future soldiers for whatever they wanted to use. Hex’s plans weren’t the clearest, and I had no reason knowing them in full. A world where everyone thinks these Hex Drivers are the best, most technologically advanced things only to have their bodies drained of life or their mind taken over.

The scientist unhooked me from the chair, but my hands were still bound together. He pushed me forward slightly, and guided me to the door. A small alarm went off and the door clicked open. We walked through and the man led me down a few long, narrow hallways. The rooms we passed held labs, subject testing, but none had Claire. As hard as I looked, for the few seconds I had, there was no Claire.

“Get in,” the man said behind me, opening the door. When I didn’t move, he shoved me. I landed on the ground and skidded forward on my face and chest. He came in to pick me up and strap me to another chair. “The procedure is going to hurt. I assure you.”

A team of people came in with tons of medical tools. They put more restraints on me, making sure I couldn’t move any part of my body. They brought in those medical lights they put over you to see what they’re doing but blind you, and all I heard was the tools being played with, the small sounds of metal hitting together as they dug for the right one.

When they started on the Hex Driver, it pulled up, then down into my arm like it was clinging to it. The amount of pressure was intense, and at one point I thought my hand would be squeezed so hard by the Driver that it’d fall off. No matter how much I screamed, they didn’t stop. One of the guys cursed at me, and somewhere in his shouting over my screams, he told me to shut up and put a long, sticky piece of tape over my mouth. I still tried screaming, but everything was muffled.

Finally I passed out. I couldn’t have been happier to start feeling the emptiness that was about to cover me.

Suddenly, Simon was in front of me and shaking me. My eyes slowly opened and Simon hugged me, saying that he was so glad I was alright. I tried to move my arm, but it felt bruised and was wrapped up. My throat was dry, no sounds were coming out as I tried to tell Simon to run, that they called him back, not me.

I continued to try. Not a peep was coming out.

“There you are,” I heard someone say. Simon was grabbed and yanked away from me. Without him holding me, I fell to the ground. “We have the male subject,” said one of the men into a small radio. Simon was trying to fight them off, but he was no match for the three guys that were holding him down and putting the restraints on him. And in my condition, I still couldn’t even yell.

It really told me how useless I seem to have been in this entire factory. First going with them, getting caught, hitting Claire, passing out several times. Now my Hex Driver was gone and I couldn’t have cast a spell to help my friend being dragged away.

My body was lifted up by two guys, and thrown into the back of a van. I could tell it was a van by the metal I was laying on, the size of the back, and the way it moved. Where was I going? Hopefully home.