“Right?” Brown Curls huffed, hitching the dead girl higher on his shoulder. “We’re not those pill-poppin’ mindless drones the general has at HDF and Věrhăza.”
My ears pricked at their chatter. They didn’t consider me anything more than a walking lab rat.
“Fuck, I’ve heard things about the ones in Věrhăza… like feral and shit.” Brown Curls shook his head, his grip on my arm tight.
“Guess you get what you pay for.”
They both laughed, and I ground my teeth together. Entitled bastards.
“My father is still bitching about how expensive the tank treatment was.” Blondie shook his head.
The other guy nodded in agreement. “But so fucking worth it.”
These two were part of the tank experiments?
Now that I was aware, I could see the huge difference between those in the prison and these guys. The guards at Věrhăza were aggressive, mindless, and feral. These guys seemed “normal” besides the fact they had been turned into fae. Machine-made. Did they know at any moment they could die? Was it weeks? Years? Would it be worth it to them?
“Help me dump this one, find the servant girl, then we can head out for a beer after we return her.” We moved down the hall.
“How about you find the servant and discard the body, and I’ll take her back?” Blondie grinned, tugging on my arm.
“You owe me, asshole.”
“Fine.” Blondie sighed, turning us down a new passage. This place was much bigger than I first thought.
“Hey! Girl.” Brown Curls yelled out at a woman down the hall.
Lena stopped, her gaze quickly jumping over me, her throat bobbing.
“This needs to be dumped, and Dr. Karl needs you to clean up the mess in the lab.” Brown Curls continued as we strolled right up to her. “
“Of course. I’ll go get the trolley. Wait here.”
“Lena and I work at the factory they are using for their fae experiments… we were promoted one day out of the blue about a year ago. To do cleanup.” The words of her brother, Emil, flung back into my head. Is this what they meant by cleanup?
As if she could hear my thoughts, her eyes shot to me. Something in them tugged at my subconscious, as if she was trying to tell me something. But before I could understand, she turned for a door next to us, opening it slowly.
I pinned my lips together to keep from making a noise. My eyes gobbled up what was on the other side of the door. Rows and rows of jail cells. The ones I could see were more like the HDF prisons. Sterile, clean, and even had seatless toilets, unlike the fae cages.
Men, women. Young and old. Sickly, thin, and haggard.
Humans.
They all looked as if they had been plucked right off the streets of Savage Lands. Those who had no shelter, no job, and no food. Living from moment to moment, hoping for someone to actually see them. To care and help.
Lena grabbed a tilt truck, wheeling it through the door.
As the door started to shut, someone moved in the farthest cell against the wall, the same double secured type of lockup Warwick and I were in on the fae side.
I caught a flash of brown eyes, dry, tangled reddish-brown hair, and a boney figure huddled against the bars.
I blinked, and the door closed, but my chest heaved as if it understood something my brain hadn’t picked up on. Prickles danced down my vertebrae, my head dizzy, stumbling me to the side.
“Whoa…” Blondie grabbed for me. “Let’s get this one back to her cell before she passes out on me.”
Brown Curls tossed the girl’s body into the bin, brushing off his hands.
“Dump her and get to the lab,” he ordered Lena.
“Yes, sir.” She bowed her head.
I didn’t even glance at Lena as they pulled me away, heading back for the fae side, my mind still reeling.
You’re delirious.
I was exhausted. Weak. Traumatized. Hallucinating from blood loss and hunger.
There was no way I saw who I thought I saw.
Chapter 12
“Guess you missed chow time.” Blondie mocked in my ear while he hauled me down the row of fae cells. Numbly, I turned to peer in the string of cages. Some people were licking their tray, trying to get any morsel of food from it, while a few trays sat untouched on the floor next to them. Other prisoners were tucked in a ball in a corner, either too weak to move or no longer cared to preserve their lives.
My lungs squeezed when I looked into one cage. The man stared blankly back, empty of life. He was one I noticed on the extraction table in the main lab today. Even though he was skin and bones, he actually appeared to be wrinkling, his hair graying. It made sense, though. Ripping out fae essence took the magic which kept them young and eternal.
On the way back to my cell, seeing the starving, tortured, innocent children in the cages, reaching their boney arms out to me, pleading for help, snapped something in me. I was barely holding on anyway. The sound of the guard dumping the girl’s body in the trolley like a hunk of meat, the thump of human flesh and bones, echoed in my ears. Her bloody, terrified eyes staring at me on the gurney, begging me for help, replayed over and over in my mind. The children’s cries. The vision of Caden in the tank. Warwick being part of this. And only yesterday, we had lost Maddox.
I never had time to mourn one before more devastation rained down.
It all came at me like a tsunami, overwhelming and drowning me in grief, pain, and guilt. It was too much, stealing the air from my lungs and making me sag under the weight. All I could do was shut down. Switch everything off and compartmentalize, otherwise I would never get up again.
“Pick it up.” Blondie rammed his legs into mine, trying to speed me up. Movement caught my eye in the cage next to the one I called home. An enormous figure stepped up to the bars, wrapping his hands around the metal barriers. Warwick’s face peered through, his knuckles white, his eyes pinned on mine, his nostrils flaring when our eyes met.
My touchstone.
Relief burned the back of my lids, seeing him bulldozed into the walls I was trying to keep up, tearing at my foundation. But I couldn’t afford to let go because if I did, I might not come back from it.
Pinching my lips together, I slid my gaze away from his. I concentrated on the officers returning me to my pen, the vibration of the metal slamming, the locks clicking, their boots strolling away.
“Kovacs?” he rumbled. At the sound of his gravelly voice, my lids slammed together, squeezing back the tears I could feel trying to break through.
My mouth wouldn’t open. I leaned against the wall, sliding down until my butt hit the ground. Tucking my knees in tighter, I leaned my forehead on them, trying to breathe in and out.
Still in the prison outfit from Věrhăza, I stared vacantly at the dried blood dyeing my gray pants a murky brown. Mine. Maddox’s. The remains of his life were painted on my clothes like a tribute. Although he was no longer a lone tribute. Specks of fresh red from the young girl were also sprinkled over my entire frame. Soaking into my skin and fabric, marking both, though only one could be washed out. Another ghost that would haunt me.
“Kovacs?” he tried again. I felt the tug of our bond, but it was barely there, a whisper. They did this to us, unraveling our bond, separating us not just physically but mentally as well.
My nails cut through my clothes into my skin. The breath of his touch was too much, leaving me flayed open. Slamming against the link, I tucked in tighter into a ball.