“Stay there, Daemon.”
I turned my head slowly, aware that the other guards had moved between Kat and me. “Why? I did what you wanted.”
“We haven’t seen anything yet other than the fact you healed him.” Nancy moved around the chair, watching the doctor and Largent. “How are his vitals?”
“Perfect,” the doctor said, standing as he wrapped the stethoscope around his neck. He reached inside his lab coat and pulled out a small black case. “We can start Prometheus.”
“What is that?” I asked, watching as the doctor pulled out a syringe full of shimmery blue liquid. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Archer cock his head to the side as he stared at the needle.
“Prometheus is Greek,” Kat said. “Well, he was a Titan. In mythology, he created man.”
A flash of amusement flickered in my eyes.
She shrugged. “It was in a paranormal book I read once.”
I couldn’t hold back a small grin. Her and her nerdy reading habits. Made me want to kiss her and do other stuff. And she picked up on it, too, because a flush stained her cheeks. Alas, wasn’t going to happen.
Dr. Roth rolled up Largent’s sleeve. “Prometheus should act faster, without the need to wait for the fever. It will speed up the mutation process.”
Hell, I wondered if Largent really was okay with being the first guinea pig. But it didn’t matter. They shot him up with the blue gunk. He slumped over—not a good sign—and Roth went into doctor mode. Vitals were through the roof. People were starting to look a tad bit nervous. No one was really paying attention to me, so I started inching toward Kat. I was halfway there when Largent shot up from the chair, knocking the doctor on his ass.
I put myself between Kat and the general area of where Largent was standing. He stumbled forward and then bent over, grasping his knees. Sweat poured off the guy’s forehead, dripping onto the floor. A sickly sweet stench replaced the metallic.
“What is happening?” demanded Nancy.
The doctor started to unwind the stethoscope as he went to the soldier’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder. “What are you feeling, Largent?”
The man’s arms were trembling. “Cramping,” he gasped. “My whole body is cramping. It feels like my insides are—” He jerked up, throwing his head back. Throat working, he opened his mouth and let out a scream.
A bluish, blackish substance spewed from his mouth, splattering the doctor’s white lab coat. Largent wobbled to the side, his hoarse scream ending in a thick gurgle. The same liquid leaked from the corners of his eyes, streamed from his nose and ears.
“Oh boy,” I said, backing up. “I don’t think whatever you injected him with is working.”
Nancy cut me a dark glare. “Largent, can you tell me what—?”
The soldier spun around and ran—and I mean he ran at full light speed—toward the door. Kat screamed and then clasped her hands over her mouth. I moved to block the grisly sight, but it was too late. Largent smacked into the door with a fleshy, wet thud, hitting it at the kind of speed jumping out of a fifty-story window would do.
Silence descended, and then Nancy said, “Well, that was disappointing.”
…
Katy
As long as I lived, I’d never be able to scrape from my mind the sight of the soldier going from relatively normal to something that looked like stage one of a zombie infection to going splat against the door.
We had to wait in that room until staff came and cleaned up enough of the mess that we could leave without stepping in the…uh, stuff. They wouldn’t let Daemon or me get within an inch of each other as we waited, like it was his fault somehow. He’d healed the guy—he did his part. Whatever was in Prometheus had done this. The blood wasn’t on Daemon’s hands.
Out in the hallway, the soldiers took Daemon down one wing, and Archer took me down another. We were halfway toward the elevators when one of the elevator doors on the right opened, and two soldiers stepped out, escorting a child.
I skidded to a complete stop.
Not just any child. It was one of them—the origins. Tiny hairs on my body rose at the sight. The boy wasn’t Micah, but he had the same dark hair cut in the same style. Maybe a little bit younger, but I was never good at judging ages.
“Keep walking,” Archer said, placing a hand on my back.
Forcing my legs to move, I didn’t know what it was about those kids that freaked me out. Okay. There were probably a lot of things about those kids that could freak me out. The main thing was the abnormal intelligence gleaming in their oddly colored eyes and the small childlike smile that seemed to mock the adults around them.
God, Daemon and I needed to get out of this place for a whole truckload of reasons.
As we crossed paths with them, the little boy lifted his head and looked straight at me. The moment our gazes collided, a sharp tingle of awareness traveled up my spine and exploded along the back of my skull. Dizziness swept through me, and I stopped again, feeling strange. I wondered if the kid was doing some kind of weird Jedi mind trick on me.
The kid’s eyes widened.
My fingers started to tingle.
Help us, and we’ll help you.
My mouth dropped open. I didn’t—I couldn’t. My brain stopped working, and the words repeated themselves. The kid broke contact, and then they were behind us, and I was standing there, quaking with adrenaline and confusion.
Archer’s face came into view, eyes narrowed. “He said something to you.”