“You acted when I mentioned examination.” Adjutant stooped into a crouch, bringing his face closer to mine. “It seems you don’t like the idea of being a subject.”
There was no malice in his expression, no hint that he derived any pleasure from my pain and confusion. There was only detached interest, the regard of someone making observations about some new and interesting phenomenon.
He stretched out his hand and took mine. “If you concentrate, I think you’ll find you can move a little. Unless you prefer the floor?”
I let him pull me up and settle me back into the chair. Both the chair and the table were made of some lightweight, silvery metal. The chair was frigid to the touch but soon began to warm to my body heat.
“Tell me,” said Adjutant, taking up a position on the opposite side of the table. “Have you been held somewhere as a subject before?”
I stared at him, jaw clenched. It was still an effort to speak—and even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t going to answer his questions.
“Never mind,” he replied. He tapped his fingers against the table. “Your body language is all the answer I need.”
My eyes flicked from his drumming fingers to the device lying on the table between us. Could I make my arm, cramped and slow as it was, move quickly enough to grab it before he could stop me?
“We have no plans to mistreat you, young lady,” said Adjutant, leaning back far enough that I’d be able to beat him to the device even if I fumbled with the task. “If you’ll only just answer a few questions and meet with Prometheus, you’ll see that what we’re doing here is important, and that we need your help.”
I didn’t waste any more time. I flung my arm forward, struggling to make it work the way I wanted. My hand fell short of the device and I wrenched it forward again, eyes watering with effort. My clumsy fingers scrabbled against it for a moment before closing around it, drawing it back to myself.
I dragged my eyes up to find Adjutant unmoving, watching me, one corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile.
“These smaller versions are only good for one discharge,” he said calmly. “Then they need to be recharged again. Don’t worry. I have others fully charged and ready.” He patted his pocket gently.
My fist was still wrapped around the device, its metal edges digging into my skin. After working so hard to get my hand to cooperate, I couldn’t get it to uncurl again.
“What is your name?” asked Adjutant.
I swallowed. “Margaret.” I said the first name that popped into my mind—the name of one of my classmates back in the city where I was born.
“And your place of origin?”
“All over the place,” I replied promptly, surprising myself with how easily the lies came. “My parents were Travelers. They were killed by Empty Ones a few years ago.”
“How tragic,” said Adjutant. “And what is the boy’s connection with you?”
“I met him in the ruins above right before the Eagles found us. I’d never met him before that night, I don’t even know his name.”
“Hmm.” Though the Adjutant made no physical notes, I could almost see him mentally filing away my answers, trying to build a picture of who I was. I had no idea if he believed anything I was saying, but I was surprising myself with how easily the lies came. “Were your parents Renewables as well?”
“Yes.”
“And the boy?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Can’t you tell for sure?”
“I don’t have the Sight as strong as others do.”
“I see. And how long have you been able to magic iron?”
The question caught me off guard, coming so quickly after the others. I had no ready answer for this one, hadn’t rehearsed it beforehand in the planning stages of this operation.
But when I opened my mouth, some instinct took over. “I didn’t know I could,” I said, widening my eyes, letting fear and confusion into my expression. “That was the first time. I just got so angry.”
Adjutant paused, watching me. “I see,” he repeated. “I’ll leave you now for a little while. The door will be guarded by Eagles, all of whom will be armed.” He retrieved the device from my now-lax fist and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll return soon enough, but in the meantime, please consider your story again and think about whether it’s the one you wish to present to Prometheus himself.”
Even after Adjutant left, it took me a long time to recover from being “zapped,” as he called it. Though the worst of the muscle cramps had passed, I was still seeing strange halos around everything, and my skin buzzed. The sensation was hauntingly familiar, but it wasn’t until I closed my eyes against the violet double images that I realized why.
The last time I’d felt like this was when I’d stripped all the magic from the Renewables in the Iron Wood.
Overloaded with magic, Adjutant had said. For a regular Renewable, who couldn’t absorb the power like I could, it must simply interfere with their abilities, incapacitate them. But me . . . ? I got to my feet carefully, still not quite trusting my legs. But the more time passed, the better I felt. Buzzing with power. Drunk with magic. Insanely, I felt like laughing—without realizing it, they’d given me all the power I could digest.
But those devices could still take me out for a while, knock me flat. If I wanted to get out of here I was going to have to be careful.
Before I could formulate any plan, however, the door opened again, and Adjutant stepped back through. Hovering above his shoulder was a machine, half-concealed as Adjutant turned to close the door behind him.
“Prometheus is most excited to meet you,” Adjutant said. “If you will come with me, we won’t waste any more time.”
He turned again, and this time I got a good look at the machine. It was a pixie, larger than usual.
Adjutant saw me staring and glanced at the machine hovering next to his face. “Ah, yes. Pixies are not exactly welcome in Prometheus’s city, but we keep a few around for specific purposes. There aren’t any machines better suited for detecting magic, for example. If you seem to be regaining control over your power more quickly than expected, this device will alert us.”
Something dark twisted in my stomach, but it wasn’t until the pixie opened its eyes that I figured it out. The eyes glowed white, not blue, and the pixie was staying in one shape, but I knew it well. I knew it better than I knew most people.
Nix.
It hovered there, its blank white eyes on me, unseeing. “Where did you find this one?” I asked, unable to keep my voice from shaking.
Adjutant was watching me carefully—I wonder if he knew this was the pixie that had come with me. If he did, he gave no indication. “Machines occasionally find their way here on their own, attracted by the magic here in Lethe. Sometimes they’re brought in illegally by Travelers and confiscated. I believe this one was found on its own, trying to camouflage itself in a scrap heap.”
The pixie spoke. “I am PX-148,” it said in a shockingly female voice. “My purpose is to assist Prometheus and his servants in any way asked of me.” The voice was unrecognizable, bewildering—nothing like Nix’s voice. Nix’s voice was neither male nor female, a familiar amalgam of other voices: me and Oren, Kris and Tansy, sprinkled with hints of everyone it had ever interacted with.
Nix, wake up. I willed it to shift, to wink at me as it had once, to give me some sign of my unlikely friend. Nix, help me—please, wake up.
“Don’t be alarmed,” continued Adjutant, misreading my distress. “Although we often find these machines malfunctioning and dangerous, we always scrub them well before employing them here.”