No Peace for the Damned

certainly as I could feel the hot evening air.
    I jumped up and walked out into the yard. I couldn’t just sit here anymore. My pace quickened until I was running past the wide back field. Faster and faster I moved. The trees tore at my clothes but I didn’t care. I hadn’t run like this since my escape. It felt good to feel the wind gain speed around me. Free. I’d never been in control of my life. But now, recently, I wasn’t even in control of
me
. Intense dreams. Unexpected powers. Theo. All these…feelings.
    I couldn’t run fast enough.
    Night fell quickly. Before I knew it, I was several miles from the farmhouse.
Shit
. I wound through the trees, following the sound of cars on a busy road. When I could see the street, I recognized it from my trip to Target. No wonder I had a cramp—I’d just run about twenty miles in ten minutes. With deep breaths, I walked along the road back to my farmhouse, staying under the cover of trees and bushes. The return trip took much longer.
    At least my run had served its purpose: by the time I got home, I was too exhausted to think anymore. My Target-brand sheets and quilt welcomed me with cool comfort. On the bed, I curled on my side and sighed. My flowing yellow curtains waved me good night right before I closed my eyes and passed out.
    …
    Everything was red. Painful, pulsing red. It felt like an ax had lodged itself right in the middle of my forehead, splitting my skull in two. This wasn’t one of my normal dreams. It was too painful.
    I took a deep breath, hoping to ease some of the pain. A rancid stench filled my lungs—mildew mixed with blood and grain.I flinched and the rub of restraints burned against my ankles and wrists.
Oh God
. It was all too familiar not to recognize.
    No, no, no, no!
This could not be happening. It
had
to be a dream. But the pain was too real to deny.
    I was back.
    Somehow, some way, they had gotten through the Network defenses, past my own senses, and dragged me back to the estate. I strained to peel open my eyes. When I did, a wave of nausea overwhelmed me. My stomach turned over. My throat burned, and the smell was enough to make me heave again. I leaned forward, gagging.
    I pulled at my arms. Just like my eyes, moving was a forced effort. My body wasn’t working right.
    There was a sound. It must have been ongoing, but I only noticed it now. Some kind of low grinding. A machine of some sort. No voices, no cars in the near distance.
Shit
.
    The walls were dark and powdered with dried dirt and ancient grain. The reinforced ceiling, a large square window, the thick metal door in front of me. I hadn’t been in here since I was child, but I knew where I was: the farthest silo on the southern acres. It was rusted to the point of crumbling. To the left of the door was a desk with a table lamp turned on. And next to the lamp sat my guard—a small, dark-haired man in a disheveled gray suit…sleeping. His snores were the low grinding I heard. His collared shirt was unbuttoned nearly halfway down his hollow chest and his feet hung off the end of the desk. Thin and lanky—was this a joke? My head not restrained, a nothing guard—
What the hell was going on?
    I closed my eyes as a wave of dizziness overtook me. With a deep breath, I stretched against my restraints and felt leather bite into my wrists.
    Wait a minute.
Leather straps? Were they serious?
Only thick chains were ever strong enough to hold me. I pulled again, but my arm barely moved under the leather.
    The guard shifted in his sleep, and suddenly he wasn’t the dark-haired, skinny man anymore. He wasn’t a man at all. He was a woman, her blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, stretching her already sharp features. Alabaster skin spotted with dark, scabbed lesions covered her sickly frame. A torn and stained halter top accented the knobs of bone in her shoulders, and her shredded jean shorts were cut too short to leave anything to the imagination.
    Terror consumed me. I couldn’t breathe. The woman turned her sunken face toward me. “Teddy?” she asked in a heavy whisper. “Teddy Bear, is that you?”
    Images slashed through my mind. Foreign, haunting scenes of a life before I was put in foster care, before I found Jon and the others, before I won a scholarship to Butler and became a decorated Navy SEAL. A life before the Network—a life with a mother, the hooker who raised me on the streets of Chicago.
    I squeezed my eyes shut.
Please, please no!
    The guard