Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [56]
“Yes,” he continued, “about five feet two and not much more than a hundred pounds, I’d say…. Yes, yes.” His face broke into a prideful smile. “It certainly is a piece of good fortune.”
And then he said the words that really rocked my world.
“Now we only have to find her brother and parents, and the Allgood threat will be history.”
“What?!” I yelled.
The guards shoved me painfully back against the wall for daring to interrupt his conversation.
“Yes… very good,” he went on. “Consider it done… and congratulations to you too.” The administrator’s headset switched off, and he smiled at me mockingly.
“My parents aren’t in this prison?!” I shrieked at him, earning myself another bruising shove from the guards.
“Why would we put your parents in a children’s prison?” He snorted.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because you’re all certifiably insane?”
The guards gave me yet another jab, but the administrator ignored me. “Why, indeed, would we keep them alive at all? You, we need to interrogate, but them… trust me, as soon as we have them, you can officially call yourself an orphan.”
He smiled menacingly, but for all his cruelty, I was taking some comfort in the fact that my parents were alive… and free.
“Put her in cell block D, cell four twelve,” he yelled at the guards, who dragged me away from his post and toward the place where I would spend the rest of my short life.
I stared around at the cell doors, their bars crowded with the hollow-eyed faces of kids, none over the age of sixteen.
A new anger was building inside me. Was Sasha a New Order spy? Had he fooled Whit and me to come here just so we’d be captured?
They dragged me up the stairs and over to cell 412, which, like all of them, was crowded with haunted, hopeless faces. How much longer would they be alive? How much longer would any of us be alive?
Chapter 91
Wisty
ONE THOUGHT HAUNTED ME as the guards shoved me against the bars and went to open the door. Even if Sasha had tricked us, the fact was that I’d failed. I’d failed these kids. I’d failed Emmet. I’d failed Margo. I’d failed Whit. I’d failed my parents.
For the second time that day, I cried like a baby.
But then the most remarkable thing happened. One of the kids, an emaciated little girl inside the cell, touched my arm through the bars and tried to cheer me up.
“Don’t cry. Remember, they’re doing all this because they’re scared. They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid of all of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“They know we can change everything. They know we have the power to fight back.”
“Shut up, you little piece of dirt!” one guard barked at her like a hellhound. The girl didn’t even flinch.
Which got me thinking. Here she was, emaciated and oppressed to the brink of death—a veritable Michael Clancy—and yet she had the strength to comfort me. She had the strength to hope.
Maybe I had just a flicker of faith inside me too. That 1 percent chance of survival that I’d hung on to so fiercely earlier.
They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid of all of us.
I turned to my hellhound guards as they manhandled me toward the now open cell door and heard myself yell like a girl possessed, “FREEZE!”
They laughed, and one of them clouted me over the head with a nightstick.
Stars danced in my vision, and I went limp. What was going on? I couldn’t hear the guards…. I was no longer being dragged…. And the kids in the cell were staring openmouthed like they’d just seen Santa Claus come down the chimney.
Yes. Yes! Some magic had worked! The guards were frozen!
With some minor straining of my wrists and elbows, I managed to pry myself loose of their stonelike grip.
It was still a long, long way to freedom. I stared up at the winking red light of a security camera that was even now swiveling toward me. Who knew how many hundreds of guards and dozens of steel doors I was going to have to get past to reach the outside?
And not just me, but my big fat conscience too. After all, the