What …

The …

Hell ...

I was painfully aware that I collapsed thanks to the coldness of the floor under me. The scent of the air was different from what I remembered. The constant aroma of burning embers seemed absent. Moaning and groaning, every inch of my body ached as I pushed myself up from the floor. The room spun. My head spun. My vision blurred, and I passed out again.

“I can’t believe you killed her!” I heard the sharp tone of a woman’s voice screaming.

She couldn’t be talking to me. I was the only person in the room and I hadn’t killed anyone recently. Panic began to settle in as my eyes darted around the space. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been out, but I wasn’t in the warehouse anymore. I tried flexing every muscle, every part of my body to force my scale, but nothing happened.

“This is why you don’t experiment on friends,” a male’s voice countered. “You shouldn’t be friends with them anyway! Let’s go check out the newbie.”

I had a feeling he was referring to me, but the woman rejected it, “Absolutely not! You went against my orders and killed my last subject! There’s no way I’m letting you get your hands on this one. You’re going to have to fight me.”

“Oh, Addy…”

I quietly crawled across the floor toward the barred entrance. My surroundings were like none I’d ever seen before. The tiled floors were dark, graphite, with splashes of amber laced through it. It felt like stone. A large bed sat against the back wall. It looked comfortable enough to sleep in, but as tired as I was, I needed to figure out what was going on first.

“Addison!” the woman snapped, “We’re going to see the Council right now!”

“Don’t go run and tell!” he pleaded, “We need to do this together! Our work cannot be done separately!”

“You didn’t want to work together when you were killing Avery last night! Look at her!” the woman choked out, “You didn’t isolate the compound correctly. You only slowed down the scale! You slowed it down so much that she didn’t have a chance to … and then she… you’re a monster, and you won’t get away with this!”

“Addison wait!”

Before I could reach the bars, I heard the sound of a door sliding open and then shut. The place was empty. By the time I got to the doorway, the lights were dark around the room except for a few dim bulbs placed over my door and three others. Flashes of lights and sounds came from a long island. Tubes, machines, and monitors sat across it. It looked like a lab of some sort.

“HELLO?!” I called out. The only thing I heard in return was the sound of my voice echoing back to me. I wondered who the man and woman were. They weren’t Scalers… couldn’t be. We don’t keep each other captive.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?” I called out again.

Nothing.

My head pulsed like the beat of a thousand drums. Whatever it was they hit me with; it was strong. What the hell were they doing to stop me from scaling?

I flexed my muscles again, and nothing happened. Not a burgundy or red scale to be seen or felt. I never thought myself to be emotional, but if they’d managed to strip me of my birthright, I’d be devastated. However, as the thought of never feeling the wind underneath my wings engulfed my consciousness, the pungent odor of someone struck me. It was the scent of burnt scales to be exact. The stench of a dying Scaler seeped into the air. My senses were getting stronger. Whatever it was they drugged me with, it was wearing off. Time to go.

I pulled at the bars. They were still too strong for me to yank apart. The room was large enough to hold my dragon, but I didn’t want to scale in here. Once I was at my full capacity, I’d bust through that window and take off. I just hoped we were somewhere near Black Harbor.

Instead of flexing my entire body, I tried my hands. Talons painfully protruded from my fingertips, but before I could do anything with them, they retracted. Letting out a disappointing sigh, I could tell I still had some time before I could physically break myself out of here.

The bed looked comfortable enough, and it had to be better than the floor. Until my abilities returned, I might as well get some rest. I was exhausted and couldn’t deny the fact I needed to rest. My head ached. My vision continued to blur. Sitting on that plush mattress drew my body to it faster than I anticipated. So long as I was being left alone, catching a few winks couldn’t hurt.

The low sounding buzz of the bright lights of the lab turning is what woke me. I felt weaker than when I laid down. The bars didn't appear in front of the door, and I took my chance. Swinging my feet over the edge of the bed, I stood up only to feel the same dizziness I had before. I flexed my fingers, yearning to feel the pain of my talons pushing through, but not even that would happen. Then I saw her.

Black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail with strands on either side of her face. Like two stars breaking through a night’s sky, those piercing green eyes locked onto mine and never left. The soft shade of her buttermilk skin blushed as she turned away from me.

“You’re um,” she hesitated. Her soft voice stuttered, “You don’t have any clothes on.”

I admit that when I woke up the first time, I’d been stripped of my tactical gear and laid on the floor with merely cargo pants and a t-shirt. I didn’t remember taking them off before I laid down, but here I sat wearing nothing but boxers. Her coy nature was unusually alluring. I tried to stand up, lost my footing, and stumbled back into the sitting position.

“Be careful,” she warned rushing over to me, her shyness disappearing. “You’re on a new dose of the serum.”

“Serum?” I breathed heavily onto her arm as she held me behind the head to lay me back down.

“Yes, the serum stops you from scaling,” she told me.

“Why the hell would anyone want that?” I asked with an unanticipated amount of disgust in my voice.

She moved back, offended by choice of words, “Because some of your kind don’t enjoy it. They should be free to choose.”

“They are,” I countered with my rage building, “If you don’t want to be a Scaler then you don’t scale. Simple.”

“It’s not that simple,” she murmured.

“Where am I?”

“The Rock,” she answered shortly. “No way on or off here without wings and you my friend do not have access to those at the moment.”

“How long?”

She began touching me, my neck, my wrist, my heart with a stethoscope. Checking my vitals it seemed. After she jotted down a few notes on her clipboard, she looked down at me, “How long for what?”

“How long won’t I be able to scale?”

Her beautifully thick eyebrows scrunched together as if she weren’t sure she should share that information, but she did, “In about three hours, you should start to feel the effects wearing off. Then, I’ll come in to give you another dose.”

“I don’t recommend that,” I told her. As hazy as I was, my temper was one hundred percent volatile.

“Please just let me run my tests to figure this out, and I swear I’ll let you go,” she told me.

I scoffed, “The scent of death drips off of you. I’m not leaving here with an Anthro watching me. Not unless it’ll be like whoever’s in that other room. I’m not too enthusiastic about their results. What’s going on here? I might be able to help you without you killing me.”

“You wouldn’t help. I know who you are. I’m surprised you don’t remember me,” she spat.

“Why should I?” I returned a just as equally irritated tone. “No Anthro is worth remembering.”

“Despite what you think about my species, yours is no better. I’m going to help you get out of here, but only after you help me. I have a mission, a goal, and I’m going to see it through to the end. Trevor deserves that much from me. You, on the other hand, I’m not so sure of. Don’t make me regret being kind to you.”

“Kind?!” the word forced my anger to boil over. Without thought to my weakened state, I reached up to her, grabbing her by the throat and yanked her down to me. Her face was so close that if I moved an inch closer, our lips would lock. The fear in her eyes erupted as her hands desperately clawed at me to let her go. Her smooth complexion began to redden as I scolded her, “Don’t you dare equate mercy for kindness! I am not here voluntarily. And more than likely, I will not leave here alive. Just because I can’t scale doesn’t mean I can’t snap your neck. Now, this is kindness.”