The Gift

Chapter 59

Wisty

I'M CLUTCHING A LIMB, or I guess I should say a dismembered arm. Drummer Boy No More's. Then suddenly it's pulsating and starts moving as if it's a living thing, first caressing my face, then, like the traitorous soul it belonged to, clawing viciously at my eye…

I wake up screaming and with my head pounding. Even worse, Byron is leaning very close to my face. I can smell his dippy cologne. "Are you okay, Wisty? You're as white as a sheet and you're sweating like a soaker hose."

They've clearly given Byron some sort of script that's been diabolically designed to keep me on an emotional knife-edge between suicide and murder.

The dayless, lightless monotony down here also creates the ideal conditions for psychosis. We've already taken bets on who'll succumb first. Byron's been-I kid you not-counting beans (lima beans, that is), just like his deadbeat New Order dad. Whit's been writing in his journal and searching for the Shadowland (and Celia, of course), and I've been self-inflicting pain in order to steel myself for the next visit from the torture brigade.

"Make him go away, Whit," I grunt through my headache.

"Really, Wisty," insists Byron. "I just want to help -"

"I don't need help. I'm perfectly capable of being miserable on my own. Buzz off and do something useful for once in your life," I mutter.

"Something useful?" he says. "Oh. I didn't think you thought that I could."

"Seriously, I'd be so incredibly psyched to be proven wrong right now."

"Well, then. How about… I pick the lock on the door?"

Whit and I both look at him, trying to figure out if he's joking. Then I remember: Byron has a subzero sense of humor.

In our exploration of this dank place, we've come across only three doors. And, of course, they've all been locked tight. We've checked, in the event that there's some good-hearted, normal person hiding in the body of a grunting, surly school monitor. (Not.)

"I did it on one of the other doors-not the door we used to get in here," Byron explains. "Then I put it back so we wouldn't get in trouble."

"A door is a door is a door," I say, still aghast. "How'd you do it?"

"It wasn't that hard. I used to be a Sector Leader's Star of Honor, and as trainees we learn all kinds of skills that are helpful in a prison. So I found a piece of wire and I looped it into the tumbler and felt around, and then, you know, before too long, I'd got it."

"When exactly did you do this?" I ask.

"When you guys were snoring so loud that I couldn't sleep."

"Let me get this straight," says Whit. "You can pick the lock to a door that might be our escape route out of here, and you didn't tell us?"

"Well, there's something behind the door," explains Byron.

"So? Like what? A monster?" Whit quips and makes a scary face.

"More like, umm…" Byron's voice trails off.

"What?" I scream at him.

"Your parents."