Page 93 of Infamous

I barely register it. The world narrows to the drum of my heart, to the hot, sharp blood-rattle of anger. I want to tear him apart with my bare hands. I want to rip the teeth out of the city and find her.

“He has her,” I snarl, teeth bared. “Kellerman has her.”

Mason’s eyes harden. “Then lets go get her.”

55

NADIA

My eyelids are heavy. My tongue is thick, metallic, bitter. My head pounds like it’s been split open, and every nerve feels like it’s firing at the wrong time.

I try to move, but my arms won’t budge. My legs are pinned.

Panic snaps through me, cold and sharp. I force my eyes open.

The world tilts into focus.

My wrists are strapped to what I think is a gurney, leather biting into my skin. My ankles, too.

I yank at the straps, but they don’t budge.

A sharp panic flares under my ribs.

My mind splinters in a dozen directions at once. The room smells coppery, and the scent clings to the back of my throat. Blood. Is that…my blood?

For a second I’m sure I’m in a hospital. Maybe my hospital. Maybe something happened on shift. Maybe I collapsed. Maybe someone found me.

But this room doesn’t look like any at the hospital. It’s cold, concrete, sterile. There are no windows and the only lightcomes from a small naked bulb hanging from a hook in the ceiling.

My head throbs like someone dropped a grenade behind my eyes, and every thought that rises is jagged, unfinished. Confusion swirls so thick I can’t tell up from down.

Why am I strapped down? What the hell happened to me?

A sound slices through the silence. A door opens, the hinges squealing in resistance.

Footsteps scurry against concrete, harsh in their purpose as they near me.

I jerk upright as far as the restraints allow, my chest heaving.

A man comes into view. I have to squint against the light to make him out.

Kellerman.

His white coat is pristine, his stethoscope draped casually around his neck.

For a moment, a fragile, desperate thought sparks: maybe I really did collapse at work. Maybe I hit my head, maybe that’s why everything feels like it’s detonating behind my eyes.

A fall could explain the pain. The fog. The way my brain won’t stitch anything together. But something about him - about all of this - feels wrong, incomplete.

“Ah,” he says softly, smiling as though we’re colleagues meeting in the hall. “You’re awake.”

My throat is sandpaper, but I manage a rasp. “What happened? My head hurts.” I yank at the restraints again, but they’re a prison unto themselves.

His eyes are calm, cold, devoid of any empathy or emotion as he sets a tray down on a metal counter, instruments clattering faintly. I catch the glint of steel. Scalpels. Syringes. Clamps. My stomach lurches.

“What?” My voice cracks. “What happened?”

He turns, his smile widening as though I’ve asked somethingamusing. He steps closer, tilting his head, studying me like a specimen pinned beneath glass. “You’re a loose end, my dear. And I don’t leave loose ends.”