Chain Me

Six Degrees of Separation

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     Teeth bared, I snap and struggle, throwing my body against the bars of my cage. The metal rods are reinforced with defensive magic, and they sting my skin with every touch. My flesh burns and bleeds and welts are all over me but I continue ramming myself bodily over and over. I need to escape. I need to get to Kahlan.
     "Stop," Tiffany whispers fiercely. Tear tracks run all over her cheeks, the grief from having her son snatched from her evident. "They'll come back if you keep making noise."
     "Let them," I growl. "I'll take another one to the grave."
     "Please, Lost," she pleads. "My son will suffer..."
     I still long enough to catch my breath and to think. Tiffany's boy, Gerry, was taken by these witch hunting freaks and placed somewhere else. He didn't inherit his mother's gift and was spared her fate. He might live through all this.
     Dropping on my butt I study the area outside my cage. Tiffany's cage is directly beside mine and we're both in the back of a transport van, left in the rattling dark to be sent to an unknown location. I can handle it, I've been in worse situations, but Tiffany is coming apart at the seams. She misses her son, her coven, her family. Everyone else at the apartment was either killed or escaped during the initial struggle or transport. The old woman from the shop took down three freaks before going down herself. It was impressive and I howled for her soul.
     Sighing, I shut my eyes and try to focus on Kahlan. When the attack started and the front door exploded I caught her before she could break her back or her neck from being thrown so hard, but not long after my connection with her dimmed to almost nothing. My collar remained around my neck so I knew she was most likely unconscious, but I panicked and got myself captured like an idiot. At least I'm not dead, though.
     The van thumps over something in the road and my cage tilts, not being bolted to the van floor itself. Wherever I'm being taken it's in the opposite direction of Kahlan. I can feel myself being dragged further and further away from her. It hurts my heart.
     Tiffany sobs as we hit another bump in the road and I reach through the bars of my cage to reach her. She jumps at my touch and slaps at me, then apologizes just as fast.
     "Where are they taking us?" she asks quietly, holding strongly to my hand.
     "I don't know. But we'll make it through this. I will protect you."
     "What if they kill us? They're monsters."
     I blink in the darkness, trying to make out anything that might help us. "They kept us alive for a reason."
     She sobs harder so I squeeze her hand comfortingly. I need to be strong for her, and for Kahlan. I need to be strong for myself so I can get out of here. I need to get out of here.
     Tires skid and we come to an elongated stop. Tiffany whimpers as a door slams and footsteps crunch around us. I pull my hand back into my cage and hunker down, preparing myself for what's to come. Sudden light blinds me for a second but I jump at it, accepting my freedom or death. But I'm not going down without a fight.
     My cage rolls over into the light and I fall a few feet to hit gravel, the pebbles pricking my skin between the bars. I blink and move to my hands and knees.
     "Feisty one," a girly voice observes. "What is she?"
     The world stops being so bright and a skinny kid with a too big nose sticks his face by my cage. "Don't know. Thought she was a witch but her eyes glow."
     "Witches can do that."
     "Not like this. She's got the vocal chords of a Were, too."
     "Then she's a Were."
     "She never transformed."
     "Maybe she never learned."
     The skinny kid cocks his head and flicks one of the bars of my cage. "But she's got the aura of a vampire. You know, that seductive glamour thing? That's weird, right? Were's don't have that."
     Girly Voice smacks her lips together and, while she tries to explain hybrids, I throw my arm through the bars of my cage and snatch the skinny kids shirt. I yank him to me and smash his head into a bar. He cries out as I continue to pull on his shirt and stick him to the side of the cage with my strength alone. I palm his stick neck and snap it with ease, then finally let him go. His dead weight drops beside my cage.
     My body convulses as lightning runs under my skin and I hear Girly Voice curse. "She can't do that!" she shrieks.
     "Apparently she can," a new voice mumbles. It's low, deep, but most definitely female. I look up at this new voice and find a brunette staring down at me. Just from her eyes I can tell she's running this show. Her voice, too, sounds like it should always be obeyed.
     "Reinforce the cages," she demands with enough force that says she's used to giving orders. "Put them away and find out what she is."
     I watch as the brunette walks away in her fancy boots. She's carrying a modified rod, one of those things used on disruptive cows. Evidently I'm a disruptive cow.
     Two more pairs of boots, combat this time, and a pair of ratty sneakers make their way to my cage. The ratty sneakers belong to a frail old man, looking tired and sad, and he's the only one that gets close to me. I want to lash out and strangle him but his almost dead attitude keeps my limbs politely in my cage.
     "I'm sorry," he mumbles under his breath as he struggles to squat down beside my cage. He lays his hands on the bars of my cage and sheds a tear as he whispers an old tongue. So this is how those monstrous humans got their hands on defensive magic. They're forcing defenseless people with witch blood in them to do their dirty work.
     My cage hums barely enough for me to hear and the old man takes his hands away from the bars. He apologizes to me again as he's yanked off his feet and dragged away from me. I test the newly reinforced bars with a finger and find them just as effective as before, but I hiss and pull away, anyway. The two pairs of combat boots approach my cage and each one takes a side to lift me. I sit still and allow them to carry me away.
     I'm taken into a musty warehouse building with broken windows and a foundation so old that I think I can smell the plague underneath. Girly Voice follows close behind and doesn't stop staring at me with utter contempt. The skinny kid I killed was someone close to her, that I could tell even if I couldn't see her ugly thoughts trudging around her head.
     A fit of rage hits me out of nowhere, and I recognize it as Kahlan's. I howl without wanting to and beat the bars of my cage like a beast. The men holding my cage fight to keep me steady but don't put me down to let my episode pass. They only hurry through the building towards a white light hidden behind a wall of plastic. As they push the plastic barrier my fit subsides and I'm able to calm myself. They both sigh in relief then place me on the ground to push and kick my cage into a free slot in a wall of dozens of other cages. With my head clear of Kahlan's intense emotions, I'm able to study the area around me.
     A medical area sits in the middle of a three walled room of cages, some of them empty, some of them not. There's a doctor writing down on a chart beside the only bed/operating area. There are straps on the bed to keep 'patients' from escaping and a giant light aiming down on the bed. There are trays and things, too, around the table, filled with strange tools and instruments of torture.
     I scoot to the edge of my cage and try to make out the other prisoners. There are at least three Were's on the cage wall opposite mine and some witches. There's even a male fairy and a goblin present. I'm not sure what kind of creatures are trapped in my wall but I can hear someone praying above me. It's disheartening.
     Tiffany is finally brought in, crying and shaking, and her cage is placed at chest height on the wall adjacent to mine, behind the medical area. The doctor stops writing on his chart when the muscle moves to be on standby and he sighs, looking around at the cages around him. He drops his chart on an empty silver tray then rubs his eyes.
     "A witch. Male," he says, and the muscle reacts. They make their way to the wall opposite me and reach hip height to extract a cage with an emaciated male witch inside. They place the cage on the floor then force the witch out and manhandle him to the doctor. They pick him up and strap him into the bed. The worst part is that the poor man doesn't fight. He groans pathetically but otherwise does nothing.
     Tiffany slaps her hands over her mouth as the doctor picks up a scalpel and hovers it over the witch's chest. I frown, disliking the scene. The doctor hasn't even bothered to put on gloves and the witch hasn't been put under. Even dogs get put under at the vet and have the right to sanitary surgery. This is just... vile.
     The witch screams as the scalpel digs into his chest and trails down to his belly button, blood following the blade in a river of red. The doctor doesn't react to the sound and cuts another line across the witch's chest so he can pull the skin back to better get at the ribs. He drops the discolored scalpel onto a tray to pick up some type of mini circular saw from another. He coughs and wipes under his nose with his forearm before starting up the little machine and digging it into the witch's chest muscle and cracking the bones underneath. The poor witch is burbling last words to a God that's refusing to listen.
     The wolf across from me wakes up enough to resettle in a different position, their face away from the horror in front of them. It breaks my heart that the wolf is so used to this that they can sleep through it.
     Bones cracking catches my attention and I see the doctor using some clawed contraption to help open the witch's chest cavity to get to the soft innards inside. The scent that overtakes the area is familiar but I'm not feeling excited like usual. I'm upset at the injustice of it all and I want to rip the doctor's pathetic head off his pathetic body. I want to annihilate this whole hate group and show them why their fears are true. I want to terrify them until they're cowed into submission and will leave my people in peace.
     Emotions a whirl, I keep watching the evil doctor as he pokes and prods like an amateur. He doesn't even know what he's doing. He's searching for ghosts in a dead man where the ghost has run and hid in fear, and all that's left is a rotten body. Stupid humans can't duplicate witch blood without completely tainting the line. They can't create hybrids without mating. Opening us up will only kill us, but it's not like they don't want that. That poor witch on the bed will probably be thrown into an unmarked grave or burned when they realize they won't get a sample out of him.
     Another flash of rage hits me and I snarl loudly. The doctor turns to me as I bash the bars of the my cage with my fists and stare him down. He narrows his eyes at me as his red hands drip rubies to the floor, and I bare my teeth for him. He scoffs then returns to the dead on the table and sticks his hands back into the chest cavity. It looks like he's playing in the sandbox.
     I finally look away from the hellish display before me and find Tiffany with my eyes. She's sobbing fiercely, her face hidden in her knees, her body rocking back and forth. Just above her head there are five words crawling around over and over and over and over again.
     We're all going to die.