Before I realized what was happening, a collar was being snapped around my neck, sharp electrical pulses shooting through me. Suddenly I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Panic filled me, joining the adrenaline rushing through me, and my body wasn’t sure how to react. Keep fighting, or shut down.
“What are you doing?” I heard Kat scream. “Let her go!”
She could see me? The collar, maybe...
Keep fighting. Definitely keep fighting. I tried to stand, but my legs refused to cooperate.
“You want me docile? Leave the girls out of this,” I tried to shout, but only gurgles escaped.
“Ethan?” Reeve gasped. “Help us!”
“You told me you wouldn’t hurt Reeve,” Ethan shouted.
Instant comprehension. He knew the Hazmats, because he was one of them.
He was the spy—no doubts about that now—and he had gotten some of his information from Reeve. When I’d lived with her, she’d known my schedule. The rest he must have gotten by watching me.
He’d covered his tracks very well. I still felt stupid. I should have known.
Someone crouched in front of me and removed the clear panel from his mask. He had to be in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and thick lines around gunmetal-gray eyes.
He offered me a sad smile. “I hate that matters have come to this, Miss Bell, I really do, but my daughter is sick, and I suspect you’re going to be her cure.”
Chapter 25
Who Stole the Poisoned Tarts?
My spirit was dragged to my body, the collar removed by one Hazmat while several others forced the two halves of me to join. At the moment of connection, I jolted into motion, determined to fight these people with everything I had. Some of the Hazmats were not in spirit form, however, and one of them managed to slam a hard fist into my temple.
Dizzy...
Slowing...
Still I fought.
I heard a whoosh of air, felt a sharp stab of pain in my arm. I patted blindly at the spot and dislodged a small dart.
The dizziness spun out of control, helped along by...a drug? I swayed, bones liquefying, knees buckling. When I hit the ground, I was roughly hauled to my feet, my hands tied behind my back, and there was nothing I could do about it. A black hood was draped over my head, and I was stuffed into a vehicle, driven I don’t know how many miles. Time ceased to exist. There was only here, now. Darkness, rising panic. Where was Kat? Reeve?
I listened for movement—or whimpers—but heard only the wet slosh of tires, the zoom of passing cars and the soft hum of the radio.
Stay calm.
Easy to think, so difficult to do. Tremors racked me, and sweat beaded over my skin. The blood in my veins was somehow a dangerous mix of too hot and too cold.
After we parked, I was towed outside with the kind aid of two guards. We ascended a flight of steps and entered a pool of warmth. A heated building? I heard footsteps. A ding. We stopped, and the world around me jostled. We were in an...elevator?
Another ding. Again I was towed forward. We stopped several more times, and I imagined my surrounding went far beyond grim. A dungeon, like Mr. Ankh’s. A torture chamber, with wall after wall of deadly weapons once found in the Middle Ages.
We entered a room with a deluge of new sounds. Moans, groans, rattling metal.
Other prisoners?
Can’t stay here. Act! Gathering every ounce of strength I possessed, I struggled for freedom. I managed to head-butt one of my captors and trip another, and we all tumbled to the floor. Before I could run, someone fisted the back of my shirt and lifted me to my feet. The ties were cut from my wrists, and I was thrust forward. As I tripped to my hands and knees, I thought I heard Kat and Reeve gasp. Hinges groaned, and a door slammed. Trembling, I ripped off the hood and blinked as the bright light in the room stung my eyes.
We were in a laboratory. There were computers, strange equipment I didn’t recognize and a handful of humans wearing lab coats. There were also cages, with collared, frenzied zombies locked inside.
Locked inside—like me.
And in the cage next door to ours was a girl I’d thought dead. Jaclyn Silverstone.
She was dirty, her hair in tangles, her far-too-thin body stretched out on a cot. But she was alive, and in that moment, she stopped being my enemy and became my best ally.
“They’re not allowed to talk to or look at us,” she said weakly. “Mr. K is too afraid they’ll start feeling guilty and set us free.”
The horror of the situation struck me, followed by rage, and I lumbered to my feet. I had to know if she was right, and threw myself into the bars, shaking the entire cage. “Let us out!”
As Jaclyn had promised, everyone ignored me.
“Hey!” Kat called, stepping up to my side. There was a tremor in her voice. “She’s talking to you. You better listen or you’re gonna regret it.”
Again we were ignored.
Soft sobs echoed behind me. I turned to see Reeve standing in the center of the cell, her arms wrapped around her middle. Tears streamed down her cheeks, little pink track marks left behind.
“He betrayed me,” she said with a sniffle. “I caused this. I talked to him, told him everything I discovered. I just... I never suspected he already knew what was going on, that he was pushing me to find out more for him, that he was using me. Using me.”
Kat raced to her side.
I threw one last look at the lab coats—no one met my gaze—before striding to my friends. Reeve verged on the edge of a breakdown; I recognized the signs.
“You couldn’t have known his plan,” I said, doing my best to sound calm, rational. But when my words registered, I realized I’d lied. She could have known—if I’d told her what was going on when she’d first expressed interest. “Your dad has cameras everywhere. He will have seen what happened in that forest. He’ll find us.”
He had better find us.
Kat nibbled on her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry, Ali, but Ethan helped us disable all the cameras. He said he didn’t want anyone to be able to see or stop us from rescuing you.”
The brightest hope I’d had died a quick death, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was bad. Really, really bad.
But I had three small hopes left. The first, Emma. She could warn Cole. The second, the message I’d left him. The third, Justin. He might know the truth about what had happened to us. But...was he truly on our side?
I did my best to keep my expression neutral as I urged the girls to the back of the cage and onto the cold, concrete floor.
“What are we going to do?” Reeve whispered.
“Yeah, Ali, what?” Kat asked, her usual bravado gone.
“Right now we’re going to rest,” I said with a small smile. I glanced over at Jaclyn. “I’ll think of something. Promise.”
Hour after hour ticked by with agonizing slowness. I summoned Emma, but she didn’t appear. I studied my surroundings, taking in every detail. The same glow I’d seen in the forest, when I’d tracked the spy, streaked the floor and walls in here. Zombie toxin, maybe?
There was a camera posted at the top right corner of our cage, recording our every move and word.
There were no beds for us, no blankets and the toilet was out in the open. The number of lab coats thinned out in an unhurried but continuous stream, until only two people remained. The others would be back, though. I knew they would.
I stepped up to the bars blocking me from Jaclyn. Up close, I could see the gauntness of her cheeks.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“A little over a month, I think. I lost track of time.”
“We thought you were dead.”
“Only in my favorite dreams.” She shrugged, the action weak. “Mr. K wanted a way to control Justin, to force him back to Cole...to you. Rather than tell him I was a prisoner, and risk him spending his time searching for me, he told my brother Cole killed me.”
Mr. K. The guy running this show. Ms. Wright’s replacement. The man whose daughter was sick—the girl I was somehow supposed to help.
“I’ve tried to escape,” she said. “I think that’s why they keep me undernourished now. So I stay pathetic and feeble.”
Good plan. Fatigue had added weight to each of my limbs, and my eyelids felt as if they’d been replaced by sandpaper. Blinking was a terrible chore. Can’t allow myself to fall asleep. An opportunity to do something, anything, might present itself.
“People come in, but they never walk out,” she continued. “Mr. K likes to experiment on cancer patients. I think maybe he’s trying to cure them, because he’s always upset when they die, but he’s sucked it up worse than a Hoover. The patients are now the zombies that you see here.”
He’d made an army of zombies out of cancer patients? The man was seriously unbalanced.
“What kind of security does he have?” I asked.
“There are always guards outside the room, monitoring us. I don’t know how many. And they’ve got their version of the Blood Lines all over the place, even the bars, so our spirits can’t leave and alert another slayer.”
No wonder Emma hadn’t shown.
Another hope withered.
At 7:58 a.m. the doors at the far end of the room slid open, and the grinning man from the forest entered. Two tall, armed men flanked his sides, and the group approached my cage. Kat and Reeve were huddled together, leaning on each other, their eyes closed and their breathing even. Their adrenaline had crashed, I think, and when sleep had finally come, they’d been unable to resist.
“You’re coming with us, Miss Bell.”
Jaclyn reached through the bars and squeezed my wrists. “It’s going to hurt. I’m sorry.”
Metal rattled against metal as the cage door was unlocked. The armed men pounded inside, and my heart beat in tune with their angry steps. I wouldn’t leave my friends easily and threw a punch. My knuckles connected with the nose of the guy on the left. Blood spurted, and he howled with pain. Before I could do the same to the other guy, he grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, pain exploding through my shoulder.
