Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

didn’t want to keep running into walls. Something in his brain was directing his body in ways over which he had no control. He was a puppet to whatever they’d done to his caudate nucleus—yes, he remembered the scientific name for that small pea-shaped structure in his brain that was causing all of his trouble.
    He didn’t want to kill himself, but he didn’t particularly want to live, either. He was indifferent to anything, except for the lightning. Over and over, for hours or days or weeks, he didn’t know which, they’d put him in that chair and called the lightning.
    He, Brennan, had once been able to call the lightning. It was a fleeting memory, or more probably only a fantasy. There was nothing left but such fleeting memories.
    Those and the lightning.
    He heard a sound, but took a moment to place it, then dully turned his head to see if she was still there. He’d forgotten her, again. His world had narrowed to the lightning and the woman, and it struck him as somehow desperately wrong that he kept forgetting even the woman.
    She was in the other cell, and he did not know her name, but when she looked at him and called his, a tendril of knowledge tried to unfurl, deep, deep in his soul. About her. About who she was.
    Who she was to him.
    But then the haze would settle over his mind again, because the lightning left no room for memories. Only for obedience, and he could not give it that. Everything else, but not that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He had sworn an oath to a god, and no machine could override that, no matter how much it scrambled his brains.
    They didn’t take the woman to the lightning as often. She was human, not . . . what he was. Not Atlantean. Not a warrior. He looked at the bars again and reached out to touch one, feeling only cold metal and not the surge of electricity. Thinking there was something he should know about the bars, and something he should be doing.
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 185 of 232
    He couldn’t remember, though. His mind was empty of so much, and even his emotions, which for some reason he knew should be important to him, had been dulled.
    The woman, too, had lost hope. For the first hours, or days, she had called out to him. Called his name. Talked to him constantly; told him stories of himself and of her. Of the two of them, together. Her name was Tracy, or maybe Tiernan. She knew him, and he knew her, she claimed.
    She was wrong. He only knew the lightning. He feared it less now. Almost welcomed it.
    Everything else was dull and gray, and he kept hoping now that the lightning would take him to the waters of the ancestors. He was ready to end the cycle of cell and chair and cell and chair.
    Except, he was not. Not quite yet. He couldn’t give up. He didn’t know exactly why, only that he should be helping the woman. He was a Warrior of Poseidon. It was his duty and his calling.
    The men opened the cell, but not his, so it was not the lightning. It was late; he knew that somehow even though the cells had no windows. The guards on duty at night were worse than the others. Rougher. Louder.
    They entered the woman’s cell, and Brennan sensed danger. Danger to her. A primal instinct to protect seared through his mind and the fog slowly cleared. Memories flooded his mind, and his heart, and his soul, dragging pain and shame and horror in their wake. Dredging up the memories. The first clarity he’d known in such a long time burned the rest of the haze from his mind, and he remembered. For the first time in days, he remembered.
    “Hey, pretty lady, we just want a little bit of fun,” one of them said, shoving the woman—Tiernan—into the arms of the other. “We’re bored here every night, all alone. Why don’t you be nicer to us?”
    She didn’t even scream. She’d given up all hope of rescue or help, even from him, Brennan realized.
    One of the thugs reached out and ripped the sleeve of her shirt away, and Brennan threw his head back and roared out a challenge. The guards jumped away from Tiernan and whirled around to stare wide-eyed at Brennan.
    “What the hell? He’s been damn near comatose for three days,” one of them said, reaching for his gun.
    “Maybe he’s going crazy like those shifters,” the other one said, yanking Tiernan in front of him to use as a shield.
    “It’s my turn,” Brennan said, clarity returning in a searing rush, and he called the power.
    Everything that he was and ever had been answered his