Free Furnace 3 - Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith

Grimacing against the ache in my chest, I took his hand and let him pull me into a sitting position.
    ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said, resting both palms on my head the way a priest might do. ‘You have embraced a new life, our life.’
    I felt my chest swell, not with pain this time but with pride. The warden took a step back, checking the sac of nectar which hung from a stand beside the table. When he spoke again the warmth was gone from his voice, taking me by surprise.
    ‘But we are not ready to accept you, not quite yet.’ I opened my mouth to protest but he stole the words with a single glance. ‘Simply staying alive this long isn’t a guarantee that you are ready. Some of those who make it through the procedure are still weak at their core, they do not have what it takes to join my family.’
    He nodded at the door and a wheezer entered the operating room. I watched the creature as it staggered to a tray beside the table and picked up a long syringe. This one was full of clear liquid.
    ‘Some lack the physical strength to make it as one of my soldiers,’ the warden went on as the wheezer tapped the tube and squirted some of the liquid into the air. ‘Others cannot handle the … responsibilities that their new life entails.’
    The wheezer shrieked, and before I could object it jabbed the needle into a vein in my forearm. There was none of the cold rush of nectar, just a pleasant buzz that permeated my entire body. When the warden’s voice came again it was muffled, as if heard through gauze.
    ‘This is a mild anaesthetic, nothing to be worried about. When you next wake we’ll find out how far you’ve come, and how strong you really are.’
    His voice continued to fade as I plunged deeper into the silence of my mind.
    ‘Get the chamber ready, divert the river, and prepare the rats. Let the test begin.’

THE TEST
    Something was dripping on my face and it was driving me insane.
    I snapped open my eyes, saw that the world was made of silver. I was confused for only a moment before I remembered my new eyes, the night vision letting me know I was in a small room made of rock. At first I thought I was back in the hole, in solitary confinement, until I looked to the side and saw a narrow passage leading off into shadows.
    Another trickle of water brushed down my cheek and made my whole face itch. Looking up, I saw a hatch embedded in the rock maybe ten metres above my head. Even as I watched, two more globules peeled their way loose from the metal and fell, every detail perfectly sharp as they danced then merged with one another – platinum teardrops against the dark stone. I went to move out of their way but a cold grip on my wrists stopped me. Manacles, bolted into the wall.
    What the hell was going on?
    I thought back. Remembered the warden’s last words. Let the test begin . What kind of test was this?
    Tugging on my chains did nothing but almost deafen me in the small space. I waited for the echoes to die out before searching the floor for a key. The cracks in the rock were laid out like a spider web of light, and there was nothing there but my own bare feet. I noticed the scars on my skin and remembered the surgery, the way my torso had looked the last time I’d seen it. I don’t know how long had passed since the wheezer had sent me to sleep, but it must have been a while because the pain had vanished completely.
    And the warden was right. There had been no more nightmares.
    Something groaned above me, so loud that I felt my heart stutter through a couple of beats before finding its rhythm again. I clambered to my feet as the trickle of droplets became a steady flow, as if somebody had turned on a tap on the other side of the hatch. The groan came again and this time I knew what it was. I felt my blood run cold, and it had nothing to do with the freezing downpour that was already starting to form puddles in the rock.
    It was the sound that metal makes when it is under a huge amount of stress. The