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My scalp burns.
    Spots dance before my eyes.
    It’s the duct tape again, flattened over my mouth.
    He releases my hair and I drop forward, dead weight. I will myself to move, to rise. Nothing.
    They don’t bother to bind my wings. Nor do they tie my wrists. I guess after that electric jolt, they’re not too worried about me lashing out. Two men grab my arms and drag me. My feet twitch, struggling to push flat in order to gain purchase on the slick tiles.
    The room spins. Faces fly past. People. Like me. I want to shout, I’m like you! You’re hurting someone who does all the things, big and small, that you do. Someone who thinks and lives and loves and hates. And hates …
    Hates all of you .
    Fire burns through me like a fast-spreading disease. My lips tingle beneath the smothering tape.
    They fling me on the gurney like I’m nothing. Already dead. A corpse. Except if I were a corpse they wouldn’t care to do whatever horrible things they have planned. They wouldn’t need to stick some shiny metallic thing inside me.
    My mind whirls, brain racing wildly, trying to think what it could be. What it will do to me.
    They strap me in, bear me down with leather straps fastened at my ankles and wrists.
    And as if that were not enough, a leather band stretches across my chest and hips. They adjust it, squeeze and pull so tightly I can hardly breathe through my nose. I begin to feel dizzy.
    One of the lab coats peers down at me. “She’s strong. Make sure they’re tight.” He frowns and resets his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “You sure she can’t burn through the tape?”
    “She didn’t last time.”
    Fools. I didn’t try the last time. Now I have to try.
    I gather up the smolder from deep in my chest, let it rise. I push the scald up my windpipe and try to let it fill my mouth, but it doesn’t work. It’s not right. The tape is too constrictive. I can’t work my facial muscles, can’t get my mouth wide enough. Frustration burns a different kind of fire through me. Helpless rage.
    I can’t flex my cheeks like I need to. I can’t even part my lips wide enough.
    Desperate now, I struggle against my leather straps. Useless.
    One of the lab coats smooths a hand over my sweaty brow. “Easy there, girl.”
    Like I’m some dog to be soothed. If I had use of my mouth I’d spit on him. Wait—no. Burn him to a crisp. It’s what I’m born to do. Why the pride always thought I was so important. But I’m not. I can’t even help myself. I turn my head, shaking off his touch. He clucks his tongue and glances at the others.
    He continues in that placating tone, “This will help us to take care of you, make sure you’re safe …”
    I try to guess what that means. Is it some kind of implant to monitor my vitals? To what extent I can’t guess. Who knows what technology they’re capable of? All I know is that I don’t want it in me. I can’t let them put it in me.
    “She’s feisty. This one is going to need serious management.”
    “If anyone can do it you can. You’ve got such a tender way with them.”
    Soft chuckles accompany me as I’m wheeled from the room, and I know that the last thing this guy has is a tender hand.
    I crane my head and try to follow the direction we take down halls, which blur past me, try to spot any ways out of here. We travel a long distance and then turn left. From there we don’t go very far.
    I’m pushed through a set of double swinging doors that remind me of the ones in hospital emergency rooms you see on TV. The inside of the room is just as sterile and unfriendly as an operating room.
    I’m rolled to the center of the room beneath several blinding-bright lights. Other lab coats wait here. I glimpse a wide rectangular window to my right. Several people crowd in there, more lab coats and even some ordinary-looking people, dressed like civilians.
    They peer through the glass curiously, like spectators at a circus come to witness the freak. And I guess that’s all I am to