Needs to call Ez and Obie. They can tell him if his house has been compromised and when it’ll be safe to return to Redwater.
And they can help him plan a jailbreak, too. Cass knows that the Sanctum interrogates their dissidents for at least a few days before deciding their final fates; that’ll give Cass and his friends precious time to figure out their next moves.
The alternative—that JJ is already gone—is something that Cass can’t even consider. Hewon’t.
JJ saved Cass. Now, Cass is going to save JJ. It’s that simple.
His last few rifts are sloppier. One to a different part of Antarctica, back-to-back ones in different areas of Morocco. Japan, France, Australia, Ecuador, and finally back to the United States, to an especially quiet section of the Appalachian Trail. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, gently sets Desi on her feet, and adjusts Kira in her arms. “We’ll rest here for a while, okay?”
Desi immediately bursts into tears. Cass’s eyes burn as he drops to his knees, pulls her back into his arms, and hugs her tightly. “We’re okay now, Desi,” he murmurs, gently rocking her back and forth. “We’re okay now, all right? I promise.”
Desi’s voice is halting and quivery. “Is JJ gone forever?”
Cass’s heart nearly cracks in half. “Of course not, sweetheart,” he whispers, and he ruthlessly shoves down the tightness in his throat and the dread pooling in his stomach. “Don’t even think like that. We’re going to save him, okay? We’re going to save him.”
And, with Desi still crying softly in his arms, Cass squeezes his eyes shut and prays that he isn’t lying.
21
Fifty-three seconds.
That’s how long JJ lasted against the Sanctum’s strike force. He actually doesn’t think it’s too bad, considering that he was hilariously outnumbered and up against some of Redwater’s best, but now?—
Now, everything hurts. Both eyes nearly swollen shut, the left worse than the right. Broken nose, sprained wrist, cracked ribs. Knuckles bruised and scabbed, lip split in two places, and one missing tooth. He can feel his bones grinding against each other whenever he moves and tastes blood whenever he breathes. Probable concussion, based on the other injuries.
Frankly, he’s impressed that he survived at all. A split second before the blow that knocked him unconscious, he distinctly remembers thinking that he was about to see his family again, but instead, he woke up in a Sanctum prison cell with a gray jumpsuit, a pounding headache, and mild to moderate difficulty breathing.
He wouldn’t exactly call his continued existence “disappointing,” but he’s sure death would be a lot less painful than this.
The accommodations would probably be better, too. These high-security cells for dissidents are eight-by-eight boxes with metal walls, no windows, and a single locked door. As far as interior design, there’s the hard cot he’s currently lying on, a toilet directly across the room, and zero other distinguishing features.
Home sweet home—for now, at least. The interrogators are obviously going to transport JJ to another room to question him about Cass and Desi, but when he doesn’t talk—because hewon’ttalk, not about them—he doesn’t know what they’ll do with him. Will they keep torturing him in hopes that he’ll eventually break? Execute him quietly to free up his cell for another dissident?
Burn him alive as an example for the rest of the Sanctum?
He wouldn’t be surprised if they went that route. He’s just a neophyte hunter, after all. No bloodline to carry on, no family to protest his fate. No memorial or gravestone, either.
Julian Jackson will just… disappear.
For now, though, he’s here. Nothing to distract him except his myriad injuries and the occasional meager food trays pushed through the slot underneath the door. He tries counting off the seconds to keep track of time—one one thousand, two one thousand—but always loses count somewhere in the low seventies. After that, he tries counting his breaths, each one shaky and rattling and painful, but the highest he can get without dozing off is ninety-four.
Eventually, he just lets his likely brain injury win and drifts into a fitful sleep. The pain keeps him partially awake and his dreams—nightmares, hallucinations, visions from capricious gods—make him panic, imagining Desi and Roma and Chester and Bryant andCassand?—
Those fade, too. Everything just keeps getting darker and blurrier, and his head keeps pounding in time with his pulse, and his ribs keep crackling with every breath, and?—
JJ wakes up gasping in a different location. Cold metal underneath him instead of a cot, harsh fluorescent lights blinding him from above, and biting leather straps wrapped around his forehead, chest, wrists, hips, and ankles.
With a jolt, he realizes that he’s strapped to an interrogation table. As his vision adjusts, he catches glimpses of expansive one-way mirrors, stacks of biohazard bags, and easy-to-clean tile floors.
It’s not his first time here—that was during Chester’s final exam—but he has the sinking suspicion that it’s going to be his last.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
JJ’s stomach lurches at the familiar voice. Slowly, reluctantly, he glances to his left.
Adrian Nostrand, one of the Redwater Sanctum’s lead interrogators, is currently setting up his tools on the metal table next to JJ. Knives, scalpels, torch lighters, ahammer?—
“You almost died,” Nostrand says casually, examining one of his blades with tactical precision. “Brain swelling from the concussion, collapsed lung from the broken ribs…” He tsks disapprovingly. “One of the infirmary’s spellcasters had to take time out of her day to come down here and heal you. But I’m sure you’re used to being an inconvenience by now.”
