(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 45; Anna

She was humming a song out loud, clicking around on her mouse with the pestiferous after-tick of her acrylic nails. Jaylin pretended to be asleep, pressed into his pillow, waiting for the sound of her to finish her work and take her leave so he could at least pretend he was alone to himself for a good few hours.

The air still stunk of chemicals. Without moving too much, Jaylin looked to the grate in the floor at the farthest corner of the room from his cot. Between the roll of gauze and the medical tape Gunner had left beneath the bed, Jaylin had managed to seal off each slot in the vent. But the smell still came from somewhere, and though he was revitalizedin comparison to the day before, sleep still felt like a stone, anchoring him down to his uncomfortable metal cot.

His eyes left the grates, found the black-domed camera on the ceiling. There was only one he found for certain—in the far right corner of the outer room. He supposed they'd kept the camera out of his cell for fear that he'd have the means of breaking it—but it gave him leverage. Late at night, when the lights had gone off, Jaylin spent hours testing the motion-sensors. He found that if he stayed low to the floor—slithered inch for inch like a garter snake, the lights wouldn't turn on.

So when he reached the grate and needed to stand, he brought the blanket from his cot, and the tape from Gunner's medical box. And slowly—painfully, painfully slowly, Jaylin stretched the blanket over the glass and secured it with enough tape to give him just the time he needed to move freely behind his veil.

He would have to wait until dark to re-secure the gauze and find the source of the leak; the cameras only seemed to blink their tiny red lights when the motion sensors flashed on. Unless by chance, those cameras could see in the dark, night was his only cover.

For now, he was awake. Awake enough to function.

"Mr. Maxwell?" Dr. Peterson was tapping on the glass. Jaylin tried not to flinch at the sound. "Mr. Maxwell, are you awake?"

He stayed still and said nothing.

Dr. Peterson fluttered out a sigh and scraped her pen against her notepad. "Unusual sleeping behaviors. I'll have to have them raise the oxygen levels in here."

Good. Jaylin thought. Perfect.

And when he heard the door shut behind her, he threw himself from his cot.

His arms ached—not from the change or the blackened flesh, or the way his bones had started to contort again beneath his skin. But ached from the plentiful needles that had been pricked into his inner elbow. He wondered how much blood they'd taken.

He still had the camera watching his every move, but there was one tiny corner of seclusion in his little glass cell. The bathroom, with only enough space for the toilet and the sink that Jaylin didn't understand the purpose of. There was no soap, no toothbrush. He wasn't allowedthings like that. Maybe they thought he'd try to hurt someone, maybe they thought he'd try to hurt himself. Even the legs of his cot were drilled into the ground so they couldn't be broken and used to bludgeon someone. But there was one thing that tiny space did offer him. Privacy. Protection from the camera.

He was grateful for that tiny space because there was something in just knowing he was being watched that made Jaylin sick. He had one precious area of privacy. He wanted to find his footing, to wobble to his little white porcelain sink and feel cold water on his face. But as he tried to his feet, the back door of his cell opened with that thunderous brattle and two women stepped in, white masks on their faces and plastic caps on their heads. They met him at either side, lifted him up from beneath the arms.

"What's going on?" he asked, stumbling over two numb feet. Each step felt wrong, like broken bone. The dead, tired dullness of a spasmed muscle. "Where are we going?"