The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, and the lights kept flickering on and off as we crept forward, sending chills over my skin. The faint sound of gunshots echoed in the distance, muffled by the thick cement walls of the compound. It made me hunch my shoulders up to my ears. Where we winning or losing?
We couldn't lose, could we? Not with the king and queen leading us.
"Here." Eli's whisper sounded harsh in the quiet, and I jumped, the back of my neck prickling. I whirled on my heel to hush him, but he was pointing to the left, just ahead of me, where the corridor branched in two. "The holding room."
"Is that what you call it?" I hissed over my shoulder at him, and he flinched, opening his mouth to say something. I didn't listen, I didn't want to think about a time when Eli was like his brother. When he was brainwashed into helping with these experiments, like Cain was. It made me think about how much he'd sounded like his brother. And I hated that.
But at least Eli had refused to do it anymore, at least he ran, rather than stay and participate any longer.
Not like Cain. You could only be forgiven for overlooking the whole "pure evil" thing for so long. And he was still involved, helping his serial murdering grandfather. How many of my people had they killed over the years? How much jotun blood had they splattered the floor with? Did Kalda's blood still decorate the lab floor? Or had they washed it away? It wouldn't matter if they had, this building might as well be filled with it. It radiated death. Like the blood of its victims had soaked into the stone floors over the years, settling in layers in the foundation. An ocean of tears and pain.
I hoped I would run into Cain and his grandfather. Tearing them limb from limb would be incredibly satisfying.
"Just down here, at the end," Eli whispered, and his voice shook slightly.
The cement corridor ended in a heavy oak door about ten feet away. Each step I took got slower. My legs felt heavy, my feet were sticking to the floor. Something wrapped itself around my lungs, squeezing my chest until I couldn't breathe properly. Four more steps and I would be in the room where I'd been trapped with Kalda. Three more steps and I'd be seeing the cages they'd kept us in. Two more steps and I'd be back inside the place where they'd dragged Kalda away.
My hand was on the doorknob now, the metal cold beneath my fingers. I didn't want to do this.
But I had to, for Gunny. It was my fault she was here. And Fiske was here somewhere still, I had to get both of them out.
I shouldered the door open, and thankfully it creaked inward. Apparently there was no need to lock down the actual room, which made sense, considering the people in the room were all in plastic cages.
The lights flicked on automatically as I crept inside, startling me so much that I jumped back, slamming my left shoulder into the door. I didn't even get time to stretch my senses out and test for people nearby, so my heart crammed up into my throat, beating furiously.
If I'd expected an ambush, I didn't get one.
Instead, the room was empty and silent.
Cold dropped down my spine, dread crawling over my skin. It looked the same as I remembered, drab cement walls, and row upon row of square plastic cages stacked on shiny metal shelves. The light reflected off the Plexiglas, making me blink frantically as my eyes adjusted. There were details I took in now that I hadn't seen before, like the low metal table that ran along the wall on the far side of the room. A row of shiny metal cupboards hung above it, and on the counter there were glass containers full of cotton balls and flat wooden tongue depressors. Did they give their test subjects shots over there? Maybe that's where they prepared the sedatives.
"Vee." Eli's whisper jerked me out of my thoughts, and when I turned it was to see him pointing at something behind me, eyes wide. "She's there, look."
I whirled around, heart beating hard against my ribcage. The row of cages Eli pointed at was empty, save for two in the very center, where two dark shapes lay at the bottom, hard to spot if you weren't looking.
Gunny and Fiske.
I ran, footsteps echoing on the cement floor, breath ragged in my lungs. My blood rushed in my ears, drowing out something Eli was saying behind me. It didn't matter, my eyes were fixed on the still, dark shapes at the bottom of the cages.
They couldn't be dead. They had to be alive, both of them.
Cain's grandfather had said she was only half dead-
When I reached the cages I could make out the figure on the right, even through the cloudly plastic. It was Gunny, curled up on her side, hands folded over her middle, over the wound in her stomach. Her face was dangerously white, and I pressed my hands to the plastic, heart beating wildly, pressing my face to the cage, trying to see her face better.
Oh gods. Please be alive.
Gunny's face stayed perfectly still, like a wax mask, cold and dead. But her chest rose and fell, ever so slightly. She was alive.
It felt like someone had unwrapped the iron band from my lungs. I could breath again, and I moved onto Fiske's cage. He was asleep and breathing heavily, his tail and paws twitching from time to time. He was sedated.
I barely held myself back from smacking the heel of my hand into the cage. Of course he'd be sedated, and Gunny was unconscious. That made things about a million times harder, since we had to try to drag them out without being caught when they were both deadweight.
I was an idiot.
"Vee," Eli said, his voice soft by my ear. "I don't like this."
"Me either, I don't know how we're going to get them both out without being seen."
"No, I don't like this...this room." Eli darted a look around. "It's too...perfect."
I straightened up, alarm already spiking in my chest. I'd been too focused on the cages, on Gunny and Fiske and trying to get them out. I hadn't even checked to see if there was anyone nearby. Now I could feel them, two figures approaching, one taller than the other, just outside the door.
"They're coming-"
"Already here, dear."
The voice send prickles of alarm over my skin, and I whirled around. Cain's grandfather was standing on the opposite side of the room, leaning back against the metal table by the cupboards. He had a long silver needle in his hand, and while I watched, eyes wide, he flicked the side of it with one finger and smiled at me, his lips thin and white. The expression didn't meet his eyes. "You were so focused on my approaching soldiers that you didn't sense me, did you? Though you can hardly be blamed, since I've taken some precautions against you. I'm glad this is over soon, I haven't had any water for three days now. Not a drop to drink. I think a few more days could kill me, honestly."
"How about I do that now?" My hands curled into fists. "There's no way you get close enough to use that needle, I rip your stomach out before you get within ten feet of me."
He would need to get closer, I could barely sense him now as it was. He wasn't bluffing, he really was completely dehydrated. What sort of man half kills himself to get to one person? The idea that Cain's grandfather was insane had occurred to me before, but now he was really confirming it.
"But I don't have to get close to you." The old man's eyes went distant, fixed on something behind me.
My head jerked up, and I started to turn around, but already I could feel it, a stinging pain in the side of my neck. In slow motion I raised my hand, clapping it over the pain in my throat, feeling the small plastic dart lodged in my skin. I curled my fingers around it and ripped it out with a sharp cry of pain.
"Sorry about the delivery system."
That familiar cold drawl sent me staggering backwards as Cain stepped out from behind the shelves, a slender metal tube in one hand. He grimaced down at it, his sharp features twisted in disgust. "The blow pipe, such a primitive tool. But really, your new found powers made it necessary to do business from a distance."
Already I could feel something surging through my blood, or maybe it was just my imagination, or fear that shot through my veins. My hands felt heavy and awkward, like I had gloves on, and my shoulders slumped, head rolling forward slightly. Everything felt so heavy.
I was vaguely aware now, of movement out of the corner of my left eye. Eli launching himself forward, soldiers bursting through the door with a shuffling clatter. Someone was yelling.
Above me, the ceiling blurred and swayed, the buzzing electric lights morphing into shining blobs of energy, waving in and out of one another, dancing and jumping from one corner to the next.
I wasn't standing anymore. I was on my back on the floor, the cement cold on my cheek.
How did I get here?
"A mild sedative." Cain's voice floated above me, sounding both nearby and one hundred miles away at the same time. "Combined with a new serum. In theory it should work to block your power. Of course, we haven't tested it out yet. Tell me, are you able to rip my innards out, Vee?"
I wanted to, so very very much. But my head felt foggy, and when I reached out with my senses everything was a wash of jumbled feelings and sensations, a vague, fuzzy chaos. It was like grasping at motes of dust in a sunbeam. Useless.
My eyelids were heavy, drifting down and flickering up again as I fought the wave of exhaustion that rolled over me. Whatever I did, I couldn't sleep.