24
CUFFS BOUND VERN to a metal wall, and she could not move.
“Rise and shine,” said Ollie, four or five feet across from Vern. “You’ve been knocked out for several hours. Time to wake up.”
Vern’s eyelids were too heavy to lift. She moaned weakly with the effort of it.
“Sorry, Vern,” said Queen sheepishly. Her voice, all church-lady-polite again, was enough to rouse Vern that final layer. Vern opened her eyes.
Queen sat to Vern’s right, separated from her by a glass wall and locked in cuffs.
Vern’s head pulsated with pain and she was mad with the desire to rub her temples. With hands locked in place, she could not. She hummed an agonized wail to keep herself from passing out from the sheer magnitude of the ache. Were she not absolutely certain otherwise, she’d think the fungus was fruiting in her brain, a mass of hard conk erupting through gray and white matter.
“Gogo,” she moaned feebly as she recalled the spreading watercolor splash of blood. “Where is she?”
Ollie gestured to Vern’s left. “Don’t get excited. I expect she won’t survive. I’ve kept her here for now only in the event that I can use her to talk some sense into you. You might not care about your life. Hers? Well. I’m glad you’ve found love.”
Vern rotated her head toward Gogo. She lay on a gurney outside of Vern’s cage, bandaged, hooked to an IV, a breathing mask over her face.
Howling and Feral were nowhere to be found, but that was a good thing. They must be with Bridget.
The pain in Vern’s head eased as she became more accustomed to consciousness. “Fuck you to pieces, Ollie.” She wanted to say the same to Queen—had she not interfered, Gogo and Vern would be free—but she could not bring herself to turn against that wounded woman.
“Good to see you haven’t lost your fire,” Ollie said, her reaction otherwise frustratingly blank.
Jags and bumps jolted Vern up and down and side to side. They were in the back of a vehicle and it was moving fast.
“Where are you taking me?” asked Vern. “Back to the Blessed Acres?”
“Years ago, had you listened to me, that’s where we’d be heading, but that’s not an option now.” Vern wasn’t sure how Ollie could sound so boastful and regretful at the same time.
Vern tested the resistance of her restraints. She was strong, but the metal holding her in place was stronger. “What changed?” she asked, buying herself time to figure out an escape.
“You changed. Literally. Look at you, Vern. All grown up now. The world knows who you are, or they will very soon. We can’t have that. I did what I could to keep you safe, but you’re hardheaded, aren’t you? Can’t blame you. I am, too.” Ollie leaned back into her seat.
“You’ll get to see my home,” Queen chimed in with a polite, shy smile.
“Queen, the Blessed Acres is your home,” said Vern. “Not that place. Don’t you remember? You used to live at the compound. What happened to you? Where are they taking us?”
Queen smiled wordlessly, lost in her mind. Vern wondered how much of her life was spent lost in hauntings.
“You’re not gonna get any answers out of her, but you can talk to me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” said Ollie.
Vern watched Ollie with narrowed eyes. She had that same youthful, devil-may-care look she’d had when Vern first met her. Messy-haired and angular, she was all tomboy.
“Why would you work for the people who did this to me? And Queen?” asked Vern. “Is it just for fun? Do you really get off on hurting people like that?”
“Cainland didn’t hurt people. It saved people. Lost souls ended up there, ones who didn’t have a place anywhere else in the world. I fought to keep Cainland alive long after everyone else abandoned it and its facilities, wrote it off as a failure like some high school science fair project. My initiative paid off, though, didn’t it? I had to carry out a lot of my work in secret—Sherman helped, of course, convinced I was an angel of the God of Cain—and I’ve got the government’s attention now, don’t I? They want my guidance. My knowledge. I made you, Vern. Me. I did that. And you didn’t have to grow up in a military lab to become the miracle you are.”
Vern did grow up in a lab, no matter how Ollie saw it. “It’s not like those were the only two choices. You could’ve fought to cancel the program altogether. You could’ve freed everyone.”
“How could I do that when I believe in the work? How could I abandon it, when it saved me? I’m alive because of it.” Ollie had devoted her life so thoroughly to Cainland that she saw it as her reason for living. “I carried on looking after Cainland because I believe in the potential of the remarkable human beings who, like you, for whatever reason the fungus latches on to. Were it up to my colleagues in the military, the happy people of the compound would’ve been disappeared at black ops sites. So I made Cainland into a place where people could live normal lives, in a town, outside of the confines of a laboratory but where we were still able to learn, understand.”