Taken (Erin Bowman)

thinks I’m dead, I can start a new life. I can search out Harvey and figure out how to free Claysoot. And then, when the time is right and Frank has forgotten about me, I can return to Taem for Emma.
    “Here,” Bree says, passing me a wooden spoon. “You’ll want to bite it. It’s going to hurt like heck.” She turns a cheek to me and reveals a nasty scar running from beneath her right ear toward her collarbone. She must have served in the Order at one point.
    Clipper cleans an area of my neck and takes an odd contraption out of his bag. He hooks up a few wires and positions some menacing-looking tools beside me.
    “Bree? Are you sure Clipper is qualified to be doing this?”
    She frowns. “Clayton has been doing this for years; it’s how he earned the nickname Clipper. And he did mine when he was only eleven, so he can most certainly handle yours.” She smiles viciously and adds, “Chances are you won’t even scar that bad.”
    “Ready?” the boy asks.
    “Count to three,” I say. “So I know it’s coming.”
    Clipper holds something I can’t see alongside my neck. “Okay,” he agrees. “Here we go. One . . . two . . .”
    Without warning, pain jolts through my neck. Everything burns. There is a piercing stab, like a hot iron drilling into the muscles of my neck, then a wrench and a pull and something breaks free from my body. I’m screaming so loudly, it’s hurting even my own ears. I’m certain I’ve bitten the spoon in half.
    Clipper presses something warm to my neck, but it is not relieving. Instead, I feel as though my skin is melting, burning, blistering. A moment later, he pulls the instrument away, and the pain begins to subside.
    “You said you’d count to three!” I shout at him.
    “Sorry.” He actually sounds sincere. “It only works if the person is relaxed. If I’d counted to three, you would have braced for it, and then it would have failed.”
    “It’s true,” Bree says. She smiles as though she’s happy I suffered.
    “Look,” Clipper says, holding out a mirror. “You barely even scarred.”
    There’s now a pale red line on the side of my neck. He’s right. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as Bree’s. Hers looks as if Clipper got into a knife fight with her neck.
    “Can I see the tracker?” I ask.
    Clipper holds out a bowl. In it rests an insignificant metal strip, no longer than my thumb. I feel dirty, knowing they had planted something in me without my knowledge.
    “All right, Clipper, that’s enough,” Bree says. “We don’t need to give him a full-blown lesson. I’m not even sure he’ll be staying around.”
    “You’re kidding!” Clipper flings the tracking device into his bag. “I just went through that entire process so that you can kill the guy later?”
    “What?” I reach for the knife tucked in my waistband, but it’s gone. I’m still too weak to fight even if I wanted. I think I need more water.
    “We have to take precautions,” Bree says, shrugging. “And in the end, it’s not my call.”
    “Whose decision is it?” I ask.
    “Owen’s.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “Why don’t we go find out?” She points her gun at me and nudges my shoulder.
    With my hands once again held up in surrender, she guides me from the room. We head through a series of narrow rock hallways, encountering no one along the way. I think of jumping Bree and making a run for it, but I’d probably wander in circles and be captured by someone before finding an exit. That, or collapse from exhaustion. And I can’t leave without Blaine.
    We come to a halt and Bree wrestles a door open. “Inside,” she says, motioning with the gun. “Owen will be in momentarily.”
    I don’t bother arguing. I walk through the doorway into a dark and dingy room. Rock surrounds me. It reminds me of the prison cell I shared with Bozo back in Taem, only it doesn’t smell quite as foul. A single overhead light renders the far side of the room visible. Against the wall is a lone chair and I drag my tired legs over to it. As soon as I sit, a man enters.
    “Stay where you are,” he says, his voice oddly familiar. I slump further into the chair. From where I sit I can make out only his shins and feet—he wears thickly woven pants and a pair of strong boots—but the rest of him is in shadows.
    “Bree said I should see you before we dispose of you,” he says. “Do you know why that might be?”
    “She feels guilty murdering someone who had his hands up in surrender?” I