Chapter One: The New Normal
Neuroner: Book Two by J. Faith Kenney comes out in only four more days!! E-books are everywhere (you can preorder now). Paperbacks are more selective, and more information to come later.
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*CONTAINS SPOILERS SO BEFORE YOU READ, READ BOOK ONE*
Copyright © by J. Faith Kenney
CHAPTER ONE
THE NEW NORMAL
Thela
I cry out with an angry, tired breath as the resistance band snaps back. My left leg falls to the side of the bed in the still-empty room called “mine.” My teeth bite down on my lips, puncturing the skin and bringing the taste of metal to my mouth. Slowly, I raise my leg again, holding my breath, but really holding back the tears that want to fall. My leg never healed correctly, never got the chance to, since Lucas shot me and a bullet skimmed my left outer thigh. I have grown used to the limp, which isn’t as bad as it was eight months ago.
I take a deep breath before raising my leg again, trying to push it higher even though my body protests. I need to strengthen it. Pain is just pain. I am used to it. Beads of sweat roll down my forehead, my whole body shaking and my thigh muscles spasming. I know I am pushing my thigh past its limits, but I need it to be stronger. I need it to heal.
In these eight months, Lily has been kind enough to get me whatever I ask for. I don’t ask for a lot, only the things that I need. It’s been mostly medical supplies or things like the resistance band. She never questions why whenever I ask her for something. Always, the next day at our breakfast, which we have shared every day since I’ve been here, she gives me what I asked for with a smile. A smile I have grown to resent but love at the same time. She has the same smile our mother had.
I raise my leg one last time as my body gives a violent shake in protest, and my breath catches in my throat with the pain creeping up my body. The resistance band, which I have looped around the leg of the bed, snaps back to the bed frame as I release a heavy breath of anger.
Angry with myself. Angry at Lily. It shouldn’t take this long for a wound so simple to heal. If only Lily’s assessments could stop reopening the wound and allow me to heal. But of course, I don’t tell Lily about my pain or even how bad my leg is. I keep my mouth shut, not wanting her to care.
The band slides off my foot, and I unloop it from the bed to place it in the dresser drawer, where I have stored Mrs. Abby’s scrub top folded nicely. Every time I open the top drawer in the dresser across from the bed in the small room, my eyes always go to the plum scrub top.
It’s cruel. A cruelty that I put on myself, but it’s also a reminder. A reminder of the life I had. A reminder of the life that was my dream and what I conquered before all of this. A dream now that I can hope to return to. Someday. Someday in a different world.
A few knocks come to the door, pulling me back to my reality and the state I am in. I slam the drawer shut and wobble back to the bed. My butt barely touches the bed before the door opens and Lily walks in, turning on the chandelier.
“Why do you always sit in the dark?” she asks, shutting the door behind her. She leans against the door, knowing better than to sit next to me on the bed. “I get it’s the middle of the day, but it’s storming out today, with dark clouds blocking the sun.”
“I wouldn’t know if it is the middle of the day even with this window,” I mumble, looking down to the tile of the floors.
“I gave you a watch, Thela,” she says slowly, her voice calm, trying so hard to build a relationship with me, the same as she has for these past eight months.
My eyes look up to her brown eyes. You have mother’s eyes, and I have father’s. “I know, and I do wear it.”
She nods with a little smile. For my twenty-first birthday two months ago, Lily gave me a custom watch that is still very simple. The watch is teal with the silver gears matching the hands passing the seconds, the minutes, the hours, and then the days.
“Is it time for me to come out of my cell?” I ask.
Lily shifts uncomfortably, her smile disappearing as she looks me in the eyes. “You can come out anytime you want, Thela. No one is making you stay in here against your will.”
I know. I came here on my own free will to save Zac and Tess, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. It doesn’t mean I want to be here though.
“If I wander the halls, I risk seeing you more than I have to. I risk seeing Cole more.” I pause and stand up. “But if I had the option,” I say, walking to the door, “I would rather see you than him.”
Lily chuckles under her breath while turning to open the door. “He does have an ugly face.”
I nod, holding in my laughter as Lily walks me to the lab, part of our daily routine. Every day she tries to make small talk with me whenever she has the opportunity to. We walk, and it’s just her and me. No guards, no cuffs. My limp now doesn’t slow me down, but at first, when it still affected my pace, she would walk the same slow pace as me, not pushing me to move faster. Now we have the same natural pace with our short legs carrying us.
People’s heads don’t turn now when we walk in like they did for a few months when I first came here. They are all used to it, working at their different stations around the room. Cole’s soulless dark gray eyes are the only pair on us—on me—with him smiling his sick little grin. You still have no power, Cole.
“Ladies, good afternoon,” states Cole as I take a seat on the metal table. A lady at a station brings Lily a tray with the injection and medicine cup on it.
“Afternoon, Cole. Are you mad that the little power you had is gone? Now that Lily has to stand over you, watching the whole thing for herself so you don’t mess up, again,” I ask, placing my own IV in my arm.
“At least I still have power in my job, unlike you,” he sneers.
“But I never messed up enough to have my boss watching over me, calling all the shots,” I fire back, looking into those soulless gray eyes. “I didn’t almost blind someone last week by exploring more into their mind than what is okayed.”
Last week, Cole tried to explore my occipital lobe, making me go into an assessment blind while he played with my vision. Techtenders and their Intelligenttenders only explore the frontal lobe for problem-solving, cognitive functions, and to study the way their lab rats, Dangerous Neuroners, think.
After that assessment last week, I was blind for almost two days before my vision came back fully. Lily was, and still is, furious with Cole. For every assessment since, she keeps her hawk eyes on him and every movement he does while I am under.
“That’s enough, you two,” growls Lily with a huff, glaring at Cole with her rage still high from that incident. Cole turns to the mem-monitor, his face turning a little red.
Lily turns her attention to me, her anger vanishing as she hands me the medicine cup filled with the musky liquid. I take the cup from her and swallow the liquid in one gulp. Every time it hits the back of my throat and the pit of my stomach, I twitch with the feeling, like burning holes slowly fading away. I hand the cup back to her, and she smiles to me lightly, getting the injection ready.
I place the helmet on, its cords connected to the mem-monitor. That, I learned, is the tool to help everyone in the room see what is going on in the assessment, and to see what my reaction is while under.
“Ready, Thela?” asks Lily, exposing my collarbone by pulling the collar of my black shirt down.
Lily is the only person who is allowed to inject me. Her rule, not mine. I nod and close my eyes, blocking out the bright lights in the lab. The needle goes in right above my collarbone, and the fluid enters my bloodstream. A second later the bright white light takes over my body. I am officially in.
🧠
My eyes open to see a light fixture of the ceiling that should be cracked and covered in dust. Instead, the light fixture in the kitchen of the blue house is clean and looks brand-new. Carefully, I sit up, rolling my eyes as I push myself off the floor to stand. This house will always haunt me. Always look nicer and ready for a family instead of what it looks like now. Destroyed, broken.
I only take one step in the kitchen to get a clear view of the dark living room. A chill creeps up my spine, and my bare feet feel the cold wooden tiles for the first time in this assessment. My head turns slightly to look out the window beside me, seeing nothing but darkness. Middle of the night.
CRUSHH! My attention snaps to the dark living room with my heartbeat pounding against my rib cage. I look around wildly to see if there is anything I can use to my advantage as a weapon. A rolling pin is beside the bread container on the counter, and it’s the only thing that is in my view that I can use. I grab it, clutching on to it for dear life.
CRUSHH! Broken glass flies across the floor of the entranceway, coming from one of the windows in the living room. A figure, a man, climbs through the broken window, while a woman climbs through the first broken one. Both of them are dressed in black from head to toe, but the woman’s golden-blonde hair sticks out from under her mask.
My heart slams against my chest, my nerves spiking for fear. There is only one way out of this, and I take a tiny step forward. Fight them. Fight two of them. Why does there have to be two of them? I take another step forward. Neither one of them notices me in the dark kitchen as they look around to focus on the task at hand—breaking and entering.
One more step. Creak. My heart stops as the floor creaks below me and their attention turns to me. Crap. I can’t see them clearly, only their figures in the moonlight, but I don’t miss the click of the gun. Crap. One or maybe both of them have a gun, and I only have a rolling pin. Panic fills my veins as I stay completely still, not making any noise, but my mind is screaming. I HAVE A ROLLING PIN! A ROLLING PIN TO PROTECT ME FROM GUNS. Why would Lily let them have guns against me?
The floor creaks more, and not from me. The man stands a foot away, and I don’t miss the handgun in his hands, pointing at my head.
“Don’t move, pretty thing. Just let us take what we want and everything will be fine,” says the man, his voice like steel.
I wish that was the case. Swinging the rolling pin toward his hands, I knock the gun out of them. The gun clatters to the floor, the sound filling every empty space in the house. He grunts in anger and punches me in my jaw. He tries to punch me again, but I dive for the gun, pushing it farther away from him. I don’t pick it up to use for my advantage. I never want to hold a gun to shoot someone and potentially kill them, even in an assessment.
The woman stands over me, placing her heel in between my ribs and presses down. All of the air escapes my lungs, causing a burning gag when I have no more air at all.
“Grab whatever you want,” snorts the woman, and somehow, even in the dark, her eyes seem to find mine.
The man gets right to work filling his pockets with the stupid knickknacks around the house. I don’t care, take those stupid things. They were never mine. Watching the man fill his pockets with whatever he pleases, I try to breathe, but only a gag comes. The woman’s heel digs deeper into my chest. A scream of some sort escapes me as a pleased smile plays over her features. Not just any pleased smile, Cole’s pleased smile.
The woman looks up to say something to the man, not paying any attention to me anymore. One of my hands grabs her ankle and yanks it up. She falls, slamming into the ground with a loud bang that rings in my ears. The man comes over, and I wait to get up. I wait for the perfect second to slam my foot into his knee to make him go down as well.
I stand up only to fall back to the ground as the man grabs my ankle and pulls me down. I know that trick. And every time, I will be that fool who stands up, I scold myself. His hands crawl up my body until one has a grip on my hair and the other supports his weight. He brings my head up by my hair, getting ready to smash it into the floor.
BANG! The gun goes off. My head falls from his grip, and I catch myself before my face smashes into the ground. Blood that is not mine runs down my neck into my braided auburn hair. I look to the left of me, where the man’s body lies on its side, blood spilling out from the bullet hole where his third eye would be. I get to my feet quickly, looking at the woman—who isn’t the woman anymore.
The Black Blur’s pure yellow eyes stare back at me.
“Time for you to try to kill me?” I ask.
The Black Blur doesn’t answer. Its reply is throwing me against the wall into the bookshelf without even touching me. The books and I fall to the ground, and more books rain down on me. My breath is knocked out of my lungs, and I look up to the Black Blur standing over me. It grabs me by my throat and pulls me to my feet to slam me into the bookshelf again. My breaths come in gasps and the pressure on my throat tightens. I bring up my knees, kicking the Black Blur, breaking the grip on my throat.
My fist collides with what would be a jaw if the Black Blur were human. My opposite hand slams down on what would be the temple. The Black Blur grabs my elbow with the shadow of a hand. The yellow eyes lock with mine and it slaps me, sending me flying backward to the opposite wall. I find my footing and charge after it. With a simple wave of the Black Blur’s limp, it knocks my knees out from underneath me, forcing me to drop.
What feels like a hand wraps around my throat and squeezes, but not hard enough to kill me. My blood is pumping and my lungs burn, trying to find the oxygen that isn’t there. The Black Blur stands all tall and mighty over me, its pure yellow eyes locking with mine.
“I want to kill you. To take your life from you,” purrs the cold, rough, soulless voice that belongs to the Black Blur.
“Then do it,” I wheeze out, coughing, trying to get air.
“It’s not time yet.”
The Black Blur presses harder on my throat, never breaking eye contact with me. Just as quickly as the feeling of the hand appeared, it disappears, along with the Black Blur. Air rushes back to my lungs, and I gulp it down on my hands and knees. The bright white light takes over my vision, my whole body.
🧠
My eyes open and I am back in the lab. Lily is standing over me, looking at my neck, and only my neck.
“Can you please back up?” I ask Lily.
She nods and takes a step back, her eyes still on my neck. I sit up, taking the helmet off and the IV out, and slide my legs off the table. I turn my head to Lily as she stares at my neck like it is a puzzle she hasn’t figured out yet.
“What are you looking at, or are you just staring at my neck, Lily?”
Her eyes look up to mine, and one arm crosses her body while the other rests under her chin. “You had marks on your neck like someone was strangling you. They’re gone, they faded away.”
“What does that mean?” I know what it means. The marks were from the Black Blur, but the Black Blur is not part of Lily’s simulation anymore. Its only motivation is to kill me, to build a mental wall in my own mind.
“I’m not sure,” replies Lily.
“Should I be concerned?”
“No,” she says too fast. “We will have our Intelligenttenders take a look at it to find out what happened.”
I nod and slide off the table, then walk toward the door. Good luck with that. You won’t find anything, but it will keep you busy for a while.
🧠
A few hours later, I fell asleep. I take whatever sleep I can get these days no matter the time of day. At night, nightmares keep me up with tossing and turning, never being able to get too comfortable in one spot for long.
A light, chilly breeze touches my bare skin, and the smell of damp woods fills my nostrils. My eyes open to the dark gray sky above me and dead, decaying tree branches within my line of sight. A smile finds a place on my face—the only smile that is real while being in this hell of belonging to Lily. The dark place of my mind is more of a comfort zone than anything else.
“Are you going to lie there all day, or can we get to work?” asks the little girl with scars.
I sit up, looking up to her who is sitting in a tree.
“Yes, Thea,” I say with a little smile. A couple of months ago, we decided to change her name to a more reasonable one. We decided on Thea because it is like Thela but a little different. “Just breathing in my own air before I have to breathe the same air as Lily and Cole.”
“You know you are still in the room, right? Just your consciousness is elsewhere.”
“Yes, I do know that, but my conscious in here is free and not under watch by a dozen pairs of eyes.” Standing up, feeling the dry dirt and dead grass under my toes. “It’s free, at ease here.”
She nods and pushes herself off the tree with her bare arms. In the short-sleeve shirt, all the scars that run up and down them show. Some scars are little, and some parts of her arms are bare, waiting to be filled by a scar or scars. A new scar is on her, just above her collarbone right where the injection goes in. Some other scars are new, each one telling a story of the terror of how I got it, always in an assessment.
“Let’s get right to work.”
Thea snaps her fingers, and a silhouette of a man appears two feet away. I take a deep breath and nod to Thea, keeping my eyes trained on the man. She snaps her fingers again, and a rolling pin appears in my hands.
“A rolling pin?” looking at her sidelong.
Thea nods with a smirk. “You never know, it could come in handy.”
I roll my eyes and turn them back to the silhouette of the man. Thea snaps her fingers again, and the attacker begins to charge. He brings his fist to my temple, and I block with my forearm, punching him in the chin with my other hand.
“Use the rolling pin,” instructs Thea, watching off to the side with her arms crossed.
I turn to the man, slamming the rolling pin into his shin.
“There you go,” mumbles Thea.
He lets out a grunt of anger, doubling over in pain. I turn my body slightly to have his nose over my knee. I raise my knee, but he slams his shoulder into my stomach, forcing me to the ground. The rolling pin loosens from my grip and drops out of my hands, rolling away. So much for that idea.
The man grabs the rolling pin and raises it high above his head. “Have the rolling pin, Thela!” shouts Thea.
He brings down the rolling pin, and I move out of the way while getting to my feet. My arm hooks under his as he brings the rolling pin up. I pull toward his chest and up, hearing the pop of his shoulder.
“Rolling pin, Thela,” reminds Thea with urgency in her voice.
“I am getting to it,” I snap back.
Rolling pin fall. Rolling pin fall. Rolling pi—
The rolling pin falls from his grip, rolling right under me where I can reach it. He struggles, trying to get his arm free, but I only tighten my hook on his arm. I grab the rolling pin with my free hand. As soon as my hand is on the handle, I bring it up to slam it to the side of his face where I would have used my elbow.
The man falls, his temple already bruising. Thea snaps her fingers, and he disappears with the rolling pin before he has the chance to fall to the ground completely. My breaths are in short heaves as I turn to Thea.
“Good. Do you think you can focus when and if the Black Blur put its hands around your throat?” asks Thea, looking up to me.
“Like it did today?”
“No. It will be with more pressure, it doesn’t want to waste a second to kill you.”
“I don’t know.”
“We will keep working on it to make sure your mind can focus enough to manipulate whatever the Black Blur has in store for you. “
“Okay. Do you think I will survive this?”
“You have survived this for a long time, and you are getting stronger. But I have a feeling the Black Blur is done playing games. It has been eight long months, something has to change.”
I nod and stick out my wrists to her. She grabs them, digging her nails into my veins. I don’t even feel that much pain anymore, it is only a sting. My wrists and skin have become so used to her nails that now I don’t even form bruises from her.
🧠
Thunder rattles the window and lightning flashes right outside. Slowly, I sit up and look out as more thunder booms above. I get up from the bed and leave the room just to walk the halls. I look down to my watch and read 10:22 p.m. I take out the loose braid from the day and run my fingers through my hair as I turn the corner.
“Thela is nothing but a distraction to you, boy.”
My feet halt as I look around, but no one is there. At the end of the hall is an open door, and slowly I creep toward it, not sure whose voice I heard. I peer slightly into the small room, where a few chairs and a table take up most of the space. Cole is off to the side, standing in a corner, and an older man sits in a chair with his back toward me, facing Cole.
“Listen, Cole, I need eyes on her, and not googly eyes for something that is never going to happen.”
I can agree with that, whoever this man is.
He stands up, showing broad shoulders and that he is slightly taller than Cole, and places his hand on Cole’s shoulder. “I need to know how she is responding to the new technology, and your eyes should be on that, and only that.” The man’s voice is rough like he swallowed a pack of nails.
“Thela is doing fine with the new technology, and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t even notice the difference,” replies Cole.
I didn’t notice the difference. What new technology, because everything in the lab looks exactly the same since day one?
“As for the technology itself, I can’t say because I am not a Techtender. I thought you had Lily watching over the technology and reporting back to you about it.”
“I do, but her reports are . . . distant, to say the least. They are still useful, and her intelligence about the technology is remarkable since she created it. But I wanted to know from my son, an intelligent and incredible mind, what do you think, and is it working?”
“It is a good piece of technology, I will give Lily that. We can now track Thela’s movement in the assessment while watching how her brain and nerves react to the different simulations we throw at her. It’s easier now to detect when she is scared or panicky.”
“With those fears and panic, we can use it to push them to their death with fear coursing through their veins. Makes for a less messy execution.”
Execution?
“Is it helping with your studies and your team?”
“The new technology is a great tool for understanding how the mind of a Dangerous Neuroner works.”
“Are you ready to move on to the next stage?”
“Not yet, but close. I have one more study to do, then the assessment can become harder, more challenging, to expand what we can learn from the subjects’ minds,” states Cole.
Subjects? How many are there? How many are there in this building? What does Cole mean “harder” and “more challenging”? What more can they do without killing me completely?—but that is exactly what they want to do.
“Just remember, Cole, Thela is a subject. A Dangerous Neuroner who is living out her true purpose in life, to be a lab rat.”
“I know, Dad.”
Dad?
Cole takes a few steps forward toward the door, and the man turns, but I don’t see his face. I am too busy trying to keep my footsteps silent as I run up the hall the way I came. My mind is buzzing with so many questions that I can’t answer that I don’t notice I turn the wrong way and am getting farther away from my room. I turn back around, my chest tightening.
Cole runs into me, and my breath gets stuck in my chest completely. I swallow down my fear and push away the terror, replacing it with annoyance. I take a step back from him, always hating being so close to him.
“Watch where you are going, Cole.” Putting as much annoyance in my voice as I can muster.
“Thela Brown”—I hate how he always uses my full name, and real annoyance fills my nerves—“It is late, you should be sleeping, but I am surprised you’re out of your room. I guess even guinea pigs need to get out of their cages sometimes.”
“I am not a prisoner. I can walk the halls whenever I please. Besides, you are the guinea pig, always being told what to do by someone else.”
His face pales a little, even more than his already porcelain-white skin. I walk around him to get back to my room for the night, until I have to come out in the morning.
I am a guinea pig. My mind is being told what to do as the lab rat that I am. Eventually, that will kill me.
What will come first, that assessment or the Black Blur?