Sam thought about how Scorn described Curdon Cay from her perspective. A padded room, and no one around for what felt like years upon years. Then she mentioned seeing Sam once. Sam immediately perked up. A slight grin crossed her face as she knew faintly why Scorn was being so familiar with her. She must have seen Sam while she was comatose.
"… Yeah. In order to keep a Conduit like me in check, they had to drain away blood and keep me in a perpetual coma. Before that was solitary confinement. They didn't know what I could do so they restricted just about everything from me. Augustine must have had some way of changing the temperature or air in the room, because every day was something new. One day, she heated up the room so much all I could do was lay there and wait until I died. On the same day, she dropped the temperature down so fast that the very same sweat that had kept me cool froze. I decided I'd had enough when a guard accidentally left a door open too long."
Sam remembered the memory in more detail than that, her discovery of her powers, the frantic use of them to try and escape… the failure when she accidentally used too much of her own blood. "I tried to escape, and when they found out what I could do… I spent my life in a coma for what they told me was about seven or eight years. The bonus was that now I have a blood store set up to use. Sorry that's kind of depressing… but I did manage to see most of the things to visit in the United States." Sam shrugged, as though the story was rather dull. To her, it was. She'd told just about everyone who asked, and when they said that was rough or sympathized with her, Sam usually brushed it off.
Wherever Augustine was now, karma had her in its clutches. The thought made her smile. "The only reason they brought me out of the coma was that I had to promise not to hurt people and to submit to police if I am ever arrested. I even managed to get a lovely anklet out of the deal. Anyway, you see any taxis around here?"