After he leaves, the empty room gurgles with the sound of air bubbles from one of the tanks. My brain screams—hurry, hurry, hurry. I have to find Paige before the resistance attacks.
But I can’t leave these people to be sucked dry by these monsters.
I sneak through the matrix of fetal columns to look for something to try to get the victims out of the tanks. At the far end of the matrix, I see a blue ladder. Perfect. I can open the tops of the tanks and try to pull the victims out.
I slide my sword back into its scabbard to free my hands. As I run to the ladder, a new mass of colors appears and starts growing to my right. The columns of fluids distort the image, giving the impression of a blob of flesh with a hundred hands and feet, with grossly distorted faces dotted all around the mass.
I edge forward cautiously. A trick of the light makes the dancing distortions look like a hundred eyes following me.
Then I step out of the column matrix and see it for what it really is.
My chest constricts and I stop breathing for a few beats. My feet stick to the floor and I just stand there in the open, staring.
CHAPTER 37
At first, my brain refuses to believe what my eyes see. My brain tries to interpret the scene as a wall of discarded dolls. Mere cloth and plastic, created by a toymaker with severe anger issues. But I can’t convince myself of the illusion and I’m forced to see it for what it is.
Against the white wall are stacks and stacks of children.
Some stand stiffly against the wall and on each other, half a dozen deep. Some sit propped up against the wall and against the legs of the other children. And some lie on their backs and stomachs, stacked on top of each other like cords of wood.
They range from toddler size to about ten or twelve years old. They are all naked, stripped of anything that might protect them. All have distinctive autopsy stitch marks in a Y shape starting at their little chests and going down to their groins.
Most of them have additional stitch marks along their arms, legs, throats, groins. A few have stitches across their faces. Some of the kids' eyes are wide open, others closed. Some of their eyes have yellow or red instead of white around the irises. Some only have gaping holes where the eyes used to be, and others have their eyes sewn shut with big, clumsy stitches.
I almost lose the ongoing battle with my stomach, and all that rich food I ate earlier comes up in my throat. I have to swallow hard to keep it in. My breath feels too hot, and the air feels too cold on my prickling skin.
I want to—need to—close my eyes, to blot out what they see. But I can’t. I’m searching. Looking at every brutalized child for my little sister’s pixie face. I start shaking all over and I can’t seem to stop.
“Paige.” My voice comes out in a broken whisper.
I can barely whisper her name, but I say it over and over as though that will somehow make it all right. I drift toward the pile of mangled corpses like a dreamer in a nightmare, unable to stop myself and unable to look away.
Please don't let her be here. Please, please. Anything but that.
“Paige?” There is horror in my voice as well as a thread of hope that maybe she’s not here.
Something stirs in the pile of stitched flesh.
I take a shaky step back, all the strength seeping out of my legs.
A little boy rolls off the top of a pile and lands face-down.
Two bodies below his original position, a small hand reaches out blindly and braces itself awkwardly on the fallen boy's shoulder. The bodies above the hand rock back and forth, gaining momentum until they tumble on top of the fallen boy.
I can finally see the child that belongs to the fumbling hand. It's a small girl with disproportionately skinny legs. A curtain of brown hair hides the girl's face as she crawls painfully toward me.
She has a cruel cut above her bottom that intersects with another one sliding up her spine. Large, uneven stitches run up her spine, holding her bruised and slashed flesh together. Stitches run up both arms and down both legs. The red and blue of her cuts and bruises contrast sharply with her corpse-white skin.
I am frozen in my horror, aching to shut my eyes and pretend this is not real. But I’m incapable of anything but watching the girl's painful progress across the pile of bodies. She pulls herself forward by her arms, her legs a pair of dead weights dragging behind her.
After an eternity, the girl finally lifts her head. The stringy hair slides back from her face.
And there is my little sister.
Her tormented eyes find mine. Huge for her pixie face. Filling with tears as she sees me.
I crash to my knees, hardly feeling the slam of the concrete.
My baby sister's face has stitches running from her ears to her lips as though someone had peeled back the upper part of her face and then put it back together again. Her whole face is swollen and bruised in angry colors.
“Paige.” My voice cracks.
I crawl to her and take her in my arms. She is as cold as the concrete floor.
She curls into my arms like she used to when she was a toddler. I try to hold all of her on my lap even though she's too big for that now. Even her breath on my cheek is as cold as an arctic breeze. I have a crazy thought that maybe they drained all the blood out of her so she can never be warm again.
My tears drip down her cheeks, mixing our anguish together.
CHAPTER 38
“Touching,” says a clinical voice behind me.
The angel walks toward us with an expression so detached that nothing human can be detected behind it. It's the kind of look a shark might give to a pair of crying girls. “This is the first time one of you has broken in instead of trying to break out.”
Behind him, the delivery guy pushes through the double doors with another load of cadaver drawers. His expression is all human. Surprise, concern, fear.
Before I can answer, the angel jerks his gaze up toward the ceiling and cocks his head. He reminds me of a dog listening to something far away that only dogs can hear.
I hug my sister's scrawny body closer as if I can protect her from all things monstrous. It's all I can do keep my voice working, if not steady. “Why would you do this?” I force out in a whisper.
Behind the angel, the delivery guy shakes his head at me in warning. He looks like he wants to shrink behind his cadaver drawers.
“I don't need to explain anything to a monkey,” says the angel. “Put the specimen back where it was.”
The specimen?
Rage boils through my veins. My heart screams for blood. My hands tremble with the need to squeeze his throat shut.
Amazingly, I rein it in.
I glare at him, dying to do so much more.
The goal is to get my sister out of here, not to get momentary satisfaction. I lift Paige in my arms and stagger toward him.
“We’re leaving.” As soon as the words are out, I know it’s wishful thinking.
He puts down his clipboard and steps between us and the door. “By whose permission?” His voice is low and threatening. Utterly confident.
He suddenly cocks his head again, listening to something I can't hear. A frown mars his smooth skin.
I take two deep breaths, trying to blow the anger and fear out of my body. I gently put Paige down under a table.
Then I launch myself on him.
I hit him with everything I've got. No calculations, no thought, no plan. Just crazed, epic fury.
It isn't much compared to an angel, even one that's a runt. But I have the advantage of surprise.
My blow slams him onto an exam table, and I wonder how his hollow bones don’t break.
I whip out the angel sword from its scabbard. Angels are far stronger than men, but they can be vulnerable on the ground. No angel who is any good at flying would work in the basement where there are no windows for him to fly through. There is a good chance this one can’t take to the air very quickly.
Before the angel can recover from his fall, I thrust my sword at him, aiming for his neck.
Or I try to.
He's faster than I thought. He grabs my wrist and slams it into the table’s edge.
The pain is excruciating. My hand contracts open, letting the sword fly. It clatters across the concrete floor, far from my reach.
He gets up at leisure while I grab a scalpel from a tray. The scalpel feels flimsy and useless. I give my chances of winning, or even injuring him, slim to none.
That just pisses me off all the more.
I throw my scalpel at him. It nicks his throat, causing blood to bubble out and stain his white coat.
I grab a chair and swing it at him before he recovers.
He tosses it aside as if I had thrown a crumpled ball of paper at him.
Almost before I can realize that he’s coming for me, he slams me down on the concrete and starts strangling the life out of me. He’s not just choking my air, he’s cutting off the blood to my brain.
Five seconds. That’s all I’ll have before losing consciousness with no blood flowing to my head.
I shoot my arms up between his like a wedge. Then I slam them out against his forearms.
It should have worked to bust me out of his strangle. It always worked during training.
But there isn’t even a slight easing of his grip. In my panic, I didn’t take into account his super-strength.
In a desperate final attempt, I clench my hands together, fingers interlaced. I draw back and hammer my fists down on the crook of his arm with everything I’ve got.
His elbow jerks back for a moment.
But then it pops right back into place.
Time’s up.
Like an amateur, I instinctively claw at his hands. But they might as well be steel clamped around my throat.
My heart pounds thunderously in my ears, getting ever more frantic. My head feels like it’s floating away.
The angel’s face is cold, indifferent. Dark spots bloom on his face. My heart sinks as I realize my vision is fading.
Blurring.
The edges getting darker.
CHAPTER 39
Something slams into the angel. I get a brief impression of hair and teeth, animal growling.
Something warm and wet splashes onto my shirt.
The pressure on my throat is suddenly gone. So is the weight of the angel.
I suck in a huge, burning breath. I curl into a ball, trying not to cough too much as the lovely cool air surges into my lungs.
There is blood on my shirt.
I become aware of wild grunts and growls. There is also the sound of retching.
The delivery man is retching behind his cadaver drawers. Even while retching, his eyes keep darting to a spot behind me. His eyes are so wide they look more white than brown. He’s staring at the place where the sounds are coming from. The source of all this blood soaking my clothes.
I have a strange reluctance to look even though I know I have to.
When I do look, I have trouble comprehending what I'm seeing. I don't know which thing to be shocked by, and my poor brain thrashes from one thing to another.