FLOOD

The Exit

It took a little while for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I almost wished they hadn’t. The lab was huge, with towering ceilings that vanished up into the darkness, and shelves that housed rows and rows of the same type of cage I’d been trapped in. My heart was slamming violently against my ribcage as I started forward, trying to walk as quietly as I could on the tile floors. I realized my feet were bare then, and wondered if there’d be a way to get a hold of some shoes. And maybe clothes, actually, because to my surprise, my skin was suddenly covered in goosebumps.

I was cold.

The realization made me stop, even though I was in the middle of the long hallway and totally exposed if someone walked in and flicked the lights on. All my life, I’d been able to walk barefoot through the snow. The cold never affected me, ever. Of course, it wasn’t like my nerves were dead, I could still feel a variation in temperatures. When I got up in the morning I could tell if it was only mildly chilly, or if the little pond behind the servant’s quarters would be frozen enough for us to skate on.

But now…now it was different. I was hunching my shoulders, wrapping my arms around myself as if to try to warm myself up. And worst of all, I found myself shaking.

What’s happening to me?

There was a dull clunk and whirr from somewhere in the building, and I stiffened, then relaxed. It was the air conditioning or something, nobody was coming for me. Not yet.

Reminded of the urgency of my mission, I pushed myself forward, forcing the thoughts about the cold out of my head. There was no time for that now. Later, after Fiske and I got safely home, then I could go to the healers and they would figure out what was wrong with me. Maybe they could fix me. Bring my old power back.

Even though I knew how impossible that probably was, I kept lying to myself as I crept down the hallway.

I looked carefully into every plastic cage as I walked by, squinting until I was sure there was nobody inside. They were all empty.

Frustration made me walk faster, sure I had a limited amount of time before somebody discovered the mess I’d made of the man back there. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, but I could see the orange exit sign at the end. It was hard not to fixate on that, tearing my eyes away from it every time I came to a cage. But again and again, they were empty.

It was beginning to be clear why the Jotun hadn’t noticed people missing. Because there weren’t many. Not yet. They hadn’t taken very many of us. Instead, it was like they were preparing for something. Maybe Kalda and I were the beginning of something, and now they would go after us and capture hundreds.

The thought was staggering.

How were they getting into Jotunheimr in the first place? It should have been impossible. Of course, from the way Cain had talked to the man in charge, it sounded like they themselves had some Jotun blood in them. That they were trying to find a way to purify themselves in some kind of sick experiment. But you had to be at least half blood to get into Jotunheimr, and it was clear that nobody here was. They were all too human.

It had to mean they had people on the inside. The idea made me feel like vomiting. To betray your own people was the ultimate low, it was looked at as the worst violation of the Jotun ways. You had to be desperate or truly evil, to do so.

I’d reached the end of the room, nearly at the exit sign, when I heard a dull, low whimper from one of the cages to my left. I jumped, then rushed over and pressed my face against the plastic. It was hard to see through, but there at the bottom of the cage was a long dark shape, lying low to the ground. The shape moved…raised its head.