Archon's Queen by Matthew S. Cox Read Free Book Online

through the bars as she sagged, staring into a bucket Blake had hung below, scowling at the thought he cared more about his floor than his workers. She considered spiting him, but somehow found the presence of mind amid her shuddering misery to fear the beating it would earn her.
    Once the retching ceased, she reached through at the water bottle she had dropped hours before. Blake left it there, no doubt knowing she would never be able to reach it. She could stand under the cage without it touching her head. One arm wouldn’t make it to the floor. For ten minutes she tried, sticking arm and leg through the bars in every conceivable contortion. The closest she got was a toe a few feet away.
    Fading to oppressive heat, the numbness retreated. Sweat came, this time with a fever and flashing patches of burning sweeping in waves. The zoom was out of her system; all traces of it sat beneath her in the pail. It had been more than a year since she had let it fade this far. Mercifully, she felt so awful the presence lurking in the back of her mind was the farthest thing from it. At the moment, she would have happily glommed anything she could find: a Zoomer, Narcoderm, Freelove, Flowerbasket, Smileys, Yellow Crumblies, a Racer Dot, anything… except maybe Nightcandy or Lace. She craved a high, not a casket.
    After a short-lived repeat of her ineffectual thrashing at the door, she held her hands over the lock. Ages ago, she might have caused an arc strong enough to melt it. Her fried mind failed to summon even a static shock. Even her emotion racing from anger through shame to terror produced no effect in the surrounding electronics. The throes of withdrawal kept her power well and truly unreachable. She was helpless, for real.
    Is this what it’s like to be normal?
    She draped herself against the cage, letting her legs hang free, too hot to move. In defiance of the lethargy that immobilized her body, her mind searched. Knowing she was locked in and could not go off in search of the substance she so desperately craved made her want to scream and kick and shout. Her muscles spent, her angst took the form of a piteous whimper through her nose. Glimmering threads of light, the silver bars reflecting the faerie wings, mesmerized her. A tendril of drool descended from the corner of her lip, landing unnoticed upon her breast. She gaped at the shifting light as if it offered insight to the deepest mystery of the known universe.
    An hour passed before the shivering came again; the involuntary spasms of protesting muscles rattled the chains from which her prison hung. Her brain cried out for zoom, the static reality of her surroundings displeased it. She stared at the keyhole and recalled a vid she’d watched as a child where an evil magician kept a faerie locked in a jar to use as a lantern. Anna felt like that tiny woman now; her immediate surroundings aglow in the hologram blue of slow-fluttering wings.
    She traced a finger over her pixie tattoo and wondered how much it resembled what she must look like, though certainly she was not grinning. It was futile to fight the cage, and even less purposeful to feel shame. She curled into a shivering ball, forehead against her knees, and cried.
    This is what I deserve.
    Brilliant sparking explosions shocked her eyes open, and she recoiled from a shower of embers sputtering out of media projectors in the roof. Shame and guilt had awoken the beast. Glancing at the wings, she let slip a detached giggle that they had survived. Then again, they didn’t have much power in them. Anna tried again to melt the lock, but the limp tendril of current that leapt from her hand to the cage only grounded into the ceiling.
Am I that rusty?
In order to melt plastisteel, she would need more current than she could generate from thin air. She would have to redirect it from a mains supply. Alas, everything in the place had been shut off at the breaker.
    The night passed in alternating moments of lucidity and delirium.