“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 Fatigue had added weight to each of my limbs, and my eyelids felt as if they’d been replaced by sandpaper.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.
Cuffs were slapped on me and I was shoved out of the cage. That. Easily.
“Hey! What are you doing? Let her go!” Kat called, the commotion having roused her.
The zombies erupted into a flurry of motion and sound. Grunts, groans, shuffling footsteps.
Hungry...
Feed...
Soon...
Now...
As the whispers reached my conscious, making me tremble, I was led into another room. There was a chair; something usually found in a dentist’s office. Beside it was a padded stool, a table with different-sized blades and syringes strewn across the surface and some kind of machine that looked like a car engine.
As I was strapped to the chair, I fought for freedom.
“Calm down, Miss Bell,” Forest Guy said. “We’re going to talk, you and I.”
“Screw you.”
He ignored me. “I’m Kelly Hamilton. I don’t usually share my name—I prefer the anonymity of Mr. K—but you and I are going to be closer than most. You, my dear, may call me Kelly.”
Hamilton. Like Ethan Hamilton. Kelly had to be his father.
More of a betrayal than I’d realized.
And oh, glory, I wasn’t meant to leave this laboratory, was I? That was why he felt so comfortable sharing his full name, his link to Ethan. It had nothing to do with closeness.
He sat on the stool and tugged on a pair of latex gloves. “I must admit, you have been a difficult girl to find. Just when I decided you could help me, you disappeared.”
“For good reason.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’m dangerous.” You better believe it, jerk.
“Yes. I was told you’d developed a few zombielike tendencies. The fact that you’re still alive, your body healthy and whole, intrigues me.”
I snapped my teeth at him. “If you aren’t careful, I’ll show you those tendencies firsthand.”
He gave my shoulder a comforting pat. “I know you’re scared, and I’m sorry for that, but you can rest assured that what happens in here is for a very worthy cause. My daughter is dying, Miss Bell, and I must find a cure.”
Ethan’s sister. Leukemia. “Exactly how do you think I can help?”
“Unless you slayers use your fire to ash, the zombies possess the ability to live forever. It is my hope to harness that ability for humans.”
“That’s ridiculous. The zombies live, in their way, but they never stop rotting.”
“And even that, in itself, is a miracle, Miss Bell. Think about the possibilities. If we can figure out how, and why, the rotting occurs, then we can figure out how to eliminate it as a side effect and save human beings from death.”
“Zombies are death, in every sense of the word. Those tendencies you mentioned make me want to kill people.”
“A small price to pay for eternal life.” He held up an empty syringe and waved the needle in front of my face, making sure he had my attention. “Just think. Your actions in this laboratory will help save countless lives.”
Maybe. One day. But what about the countless lives lost in the meantime?
He wanted to save his daughter. I got that. I did. I’d want to help Nana, Cole, Kat and all of my friends if the situation were reversed. I’d be desperate to help, actually—I already was. Watching Kat’s decline was a true horror. But this wasn’t the right way.
“You love your daughter,” I said, “and I’m betting she loves you. Would she want you to do this? To hurt people in order to help her?”
His lips compressed into a thin line. “This is going to sting, but I’ll be as gentle as I can.” Leaning over me, he wound a tourniquet around my upper arm and stuck the needle in the soft tissue of my inner elbow.
I cringed, watching as crimson filled the belly of the tube.
“We’re going to figure out what caused your body to embrace the zombie toxin, and yet not actually kill you or even cause you to rot.” He removed the tourniquet and bandaged the puncture wound.