Excerpt 1
Trees swept by Devin as he ran. Their
gangly tendrils grasped at his clothes, tearing scratches at his skin. He
almost welcomed it. The ache to have physical contact with something, anything,
burned as a residual longing deep inside of him, but that was what the men
wanted. They knew his touch would kill, and he would not fall to that level.
It hurt, knowing he had to always stay
away, but he refused to care. No one gave a crap about him anyway. The abuse
and torture from Lament and his crew proved that was true, but they would not
break him.
He would not become their weapon. They
could go to hell.
The sound of footsteps moved behind him,
and he quickened his pace, scrambling as best he could through the darkened
branches. Sweat broke across his brow, and his lungs heaved for air. Even in
the cool, night breeze, the gray tee shirt he wore clung to his chest, hot and
damp. It had seemed like hours since he had broken free of Lament’s hell-hole
prison of a lab, and he had no idea where he was headed. All he knew was that
he had to run. He couldn’t live like that. He would not become a monster.
If only he could find a way to blend in
and hide amongst the canopy of darkness, perhaps the idiots would pass him by
unseen. Maybe he could be free.
He couldn’t go back. He would rather
die.
Excerpt 2
Michael grabbed us both by the arms, as
he bolted for the fully closed and barred window, which faced nothing but
blacktop and honking cars below. “Don’t worry, we’ve got Jacey. Heal us, love.”
I didn’t have time to think about what
that meant. He let go of me briefly as he extended his arm in front of him. The
bars snapped and the glass exploded free from the pane in an array of pixilated
fragments—colored jewels against the starry sky. “Close your eyes,” Michael
said, as he took my arm, and leapt through.
Everything dropped away as I fell. Time
had momentarily suspended, and the air around me hollered in my ears. In the
distance I heard men yelling, and even the crack of a gunshot—at least it
sounded like one—but that commotion was soon drowned out by the low hum of car
engines and blasting horns. My senses caught up to me as I saw the pavement
closing in.
I was going to die.
“Tuck your chin and roll” Michael’s
words sounded faint through the rush in my ears. “It’ll lessen the impact.”
A billion thoughts flushed through my
mind faster than I would have thought humanly possible, the main one being: He’s insane. What’s the point? Even so,
in a last-ditch effort to survive, I closed my eyes and bent my chin to my chest,
just as the ground met me.
The bones in my upper back cracked with
the impact, along with a stinging roar of pain. I felt my legs bounce, as I
rolled out onto the blacktop. A buzz sounded in my head. I couldn’t move. The
sound of a car skidding, its tires ripping with the smell of burnt rubber,
shuddered through me, and then everything went white.
Excerpt 3
“We need to head down to the lower
floor. The crematorium is off of the cell block.” He rolled his emerald eyes at
me, with a toying smirk. “Yeah, I know. Figures, huh?” He mock shivered. “Kudos
to them on the ominous creepy. They should get a job in some underground
Italian horror flick.”
I gently side-checked Michael with my
elbow, giving him a mock glare. I couldn’t believe he was trying to find humor
in this. Devin could be cooking alive right now.
“What, you don’t find it funny?” he
asked, and this time the weight of my gaze was real. Michael shook his head,
tossing me a weak, sympathetic half smile. “Oh come on. We can’t let them get
to us, Jacey, love. It’s how they win.”
I sighed. “No. I know. I just feel
guilty.”
“It’s okay, Jacey,” he said, bumping me
back through his cloak in the arm. “It’s called surviving.” He paused and
swallowed. “Devin would want that for you.”
He turned from me, before I could
respond, hitting an elevator button on the side wall. I found the fact that
they had elevators in this strange, alien place rather weird, but my focus
stayed on Michael. He didn’t look at me until the sliding metal doors had
opened and he slipped inside. Extending his arms in welcome, he grinned against
the fluorescent lights. “Welcome to Instant Death. For those who may be
pregnant or have severe motion sickness, please kindly step to the left so that
you may die a horrible death in another way and not on this crazy, insane
mission.” He grinned.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked, my tone a
bare slip from usual. .
Michael stared at me, his arms seemingly
frozen in their outstretched pose, as if he didn’t even know how to respond.
“Michael?” I asked, stepping into the
elevator in front of him. The silver doors swished shut behind me, and the
lights above our heads flickered.
“Don’t ask me that.”
