Chapter 106 106
Annabeth's POV:
They came for me on what I think was the third day.
I say "think" because time had stopped meaning anything in that white cell. No windows, no clocks, just the fluorescent lights buzzing constantly overhead and the meals that appeared through a slot in the door at random intervals. Sometimes it felt like hours between them. Sometimes minutes. My body couldn't tell anymore.
I was lying on the cot staring at the ceiling when the door opened. Not the slot, the actual door. Two guards in tactical gear, faces hidden behind those black masks they all wore, and behind them a woman in a white coat with a clipboard.
"Get up," one of the guards said.
I didn't move. Partly because fuck them, and partly because my body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Whatever they'd been putting in my food, some kind of sedative probably, it made everything slow and heavy.
"I said get up."
"Make me."
The guard stepped forward and grabbed my arm, yanking me off the cot. I stumbled, legs not working right, and would've fallen if the other guard hadn't grabbed my other arm. They held me upright between them like I was a puppet with cut strings.
The woman in the white coat looked at me with zero expression. Just... nothing. Like I was a lab rat, not a person.
"Subject is responsive but weakened," she said into a small recorder. "Muscle coordination impaired, likely from the suppressant dosage. Recommend reducing to maintenance levels before extraction begins."
Extraction... They were talking about my blood probably.
"Where are you taking me?" My voice came out slurred, thick.
Nobody answered. The guards just started walking, dragging me between them, and I had no choice but to try to keep my feet under me as we moved down the white hallway.
The facility was bigger than I'd imagined. We passed door after door, all identical, all with those little rectangular windows. Some of them were dark inside but others had the same fluorescent glow as my cell, and I caught glimpses as we walked. A figure huddled on a cot. Someone pacing. A hand pressed against the glass, watching us pass.
Other prisoners. Other dragons.
The thought hit me like a punch to the gut. I wasn't the only one here. There were others, maybe dozens, maybe more, all trapped in these white boxes while the Order did god knows what to them.
We turned a corner, then another, then went through a set of heavy doors that required the woman to scan her badge twice. The hallway on the other side was different, older, somehow. The walls were concrete instead of that smooth white material, and the lights were dimmer, yellower. It smelled like rust and something chemical.
"Cell 47," the woman said, checking her clipboard. "Standard containment. She'll be processed for extraction starting tomorrow."
One of the guards grunted acknowledgment. We stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others except for the number painted on it in faded black: 47.
The guard on my left let go of my arm to unlock it. I thought about running. For maybe half a second I actually considered it, just bolting down the hallway and... and what? I could barely stand. My fire was gone. I had no idea where I was or how to get out.
So I didn't run. I just stood there while he opened the door, and then they shoved me inside and the door slammed shut behind me.
This cell was different from the white one. Smaller, dirtier, with a cot that had stains I didn't want to think about and a toilet with no seat, same as before, but this one had rust around the base. The walls were that same concrete as the hallway, gray and cold, and there was only one light, a single bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling.
But the biggest difference was the sound.
In the white cell, everything had been silent except for the buzzing lights. Here, I could hear... things. Movement in the cells around me. Coughing from somewhere to my left. A low humming that might have been machinery or might have been someone singing to themselves.
I wasn't alone anymore.
I sat down on the cot because my legs gave out, not because I chose to. The suppressant was still heavy in my system, making everything foggy and distant. I tried again to reach for my fire, for the bond, for anything, and got nothing. Just that horrible emptiness where Kaelen used to be.
God, Kaelen.
I'd been trying not to think about him. Trying to focus on anger instead of grief, on revenge instead of loss. But in the quiet moments, when I couldn't distract myself anymore, his face would appear behind my eyes. His smile. His voice. The way he'd looked at me that last morning, like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And then the harpoon. The blood. His hand reaching for me as they dragged me away.
I curled up on the cot and pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from screaming.
Time passed. I don't know how much. The light in the ceiling flickered occasionally but never went out. No one brought food. The sounds from the other cells continued, that constant low background noise of people existing in cages.
And then, from somewhere very close, a voice.
"You're new."
I sat up fast, too fast, my head spinning. The voice had come from... from the wall? No, from the other side of it. There must be vents or gaps in the concrete, something that let sound travel between cells.
"Hello?" I said, and my voice cracked on the word.
Silence. Then: "They brought you in a few hours ago. I heard the guards."
It was a woman's voice. Older than me, and tired-sounding.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Does it matter? We're all the same in here. Just blood bags waiting to be drained."
Blood bags. The words made me shiver.
"I'm Annabeth," I said anyway. "Annabeth Clarke."
More silence. Longer this time. I was starting to think she wasn't going to respond when her voice came again, different now, sharper.
"Clarke. That's not a dragon name."
"My mother was human. My father is..." I stopped, not sure how much to say. But what did it matter? We were both prisoners. What was she going to do with the information? "My father is a red dragon."
The silence that followed was so complete I thought maybe she'd left, moved away from the wall, stopped listening. But then I heard something that sounded like a sharp intake of breath.
"Red," she said. "You're a red dragon."
"Hybrid. But yeah."
"There are no red dragons left. They were hunted to extinction decades ago. The Order made sure of it."
"Not all of them." I thought about my father. The man my mother had loved enough to die for, the one who'd passed me this fire that I couldn't even access anymore. "My father survived. Long enough to have me, anyway."
"That's..." The woman's voice wavered. "That's remarkable. Truly. I thought... we all thought..."
"What about you?" I asked, partly to change the subject and partly because I genuinely wanted to know. "What kind of dragon are you?"
"Golden. Like my husband. Like my children."
Something cold started spreading through my chest. A weird feeling, almost like recognition, except that it didn't make sense because I didn't know this woman, had never heard her voice before in my life.
"Your children," I repeated slowly.
"Three of them. Two boys and a girl." Her voice got softer, sadder. "They'd be grown now. Or dead. I don't know which. It's been five years since I've seen them."