“Hello, Jessica,” Ivan said.
She glanced up, disconnecting from the computer momentarily.
Confusion flashed through her eyes. Stephanie moved around behind her.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, you don’t know me. This is my first time here.”
“I don’t have anything on the schedule...”
Stephanie slipped one of the gloves on the suit off.
Jessica stared into space, reconnecting to the computer. In a moment, she’d have access to the security feeds as she checked Ivan’s clearance. She’d see the guards go down and then Ivan come in, the elevator taking him down apparently of its own accord. She’d know they weren’t meant to be there and she’d sound an alarm.
Stephanie’s hand settled on the back of her neck.
“Don't,” she whispered, close to her ear.
“What’s going on?” Jessica asked.
“I know you’ve seen the footage. The new quirk in my abilities...” Stephanie tightened her grip on the other woman’s neck.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Jessica breathed, her throat tight as fear washed over her.
Stephanie cleared her throat, trying to push away the wash of the other woman’s feelings.
“I’m not going to hurt you, if you do exactly what I say... and don’t even think of trying to double cross me because I’ll hear it the second you do and I’ll rip the life out of you, so help me.”
Jessica’s mind flashed on an image of Stephanie as a little girl, playing with her batch sisters.
You seemed like such a sweet kid, she thought, what happened?
“The corporation happened,” Stephanie spat the words. “What they did to me... to Caroline and the others... these abilities are what happened.”
Calm down, Maia said.
You don’t want to kill her by accident, the killer said.
Dr. Volkov walked around from behind the desk.
Stephanie shook her head.
“First, disable all alarms. Second, grant us access to all areas.” She shoved her coms in Jessica’s line of sight. “Third, disable internal vid-feeds. Fourth, shut down all communications.”
Jessica’s eyes glazed over. Stephanie followed her into the computer interface as Jessica’s mind connected through a sub-cranial neural network. She felt dizzy for a moment, watching Jessica complete her tasks.
Stephanie nodded at Ivan and he walked around the desk to the set of doors behind them, swiping his wrist over the scanner.
The door slid open and Stephanie listened through Jessica’s mind.
Silence.
She administered a dose of the sedative, using her other hand, and let go as Jessica slumped forward on her desk.
“That was the last dose,” she said, putting the canister away. She slid her glove back on.
Ivan nodded. “We should have an hour, right?”
“I’ll meet you back here,” she said, hurrying through the doors.
“Stephanie.”
She turned.
“Good luck.”
She nodded. “If I’m not back in an hour, don’t wait.”
“Same.”
She nodded again. The words she wanted to say clawed their way to her lips and she swallowed them down.
It might be your last chance to say it, Maia pointed out.
Stephanie turned her back and set off at a jog down the hall. She reactivated the suit’s camouflage, disappearing into the background.
I know, she thought. That’s why I didn’t say it.
Chapter Forty-One
Stephanie searched the memories she’d taken from Jessica, to see if Caroline was still in the medical ward.
She wasn’t.
They’d moved her to a new ward. An experimental treatment center. The rates of Succubus psychotic breaks were decreasing in frequency but they hadn’t stopped. Even those who had passed the initial screening excursion were beginning to show signs of weakening, reported under the watchful eyes of their contacts in place of medical monitors. She wondered how many of them had slipped through the cracks, like her.
She hurried down the hall, then further down into the complex. It was like a labyrinth. There was no way Ivan would be able to get everyone before they were caught. She just hoped he’d be able to get enough of them.
How many people do you have to save for it to be enough? Maia wondered.
Stephanie shook her head. It would never be enough.
She rounded a corner and came to the door of the new ward. She swiped her coms and a light above the door dinged green before the door slid open.
She slipped inside, invisible.
The door led onto a narrow hall that opened up into an observation deck. View screens showed multiple beds, their patients gazing absentmindedly into the space in front of them.
One person stood, monitoring the screens. A stranger to her. He was young, considering the length of the experiments, maybe even younger than Spencer Evans.
I watched Jessica kill all of the vid-feeds, Stephanie frowned.
All of the security vid-feeds.
Do you think there are medical vid-feeds anywhere else?
Probably just in med-bay.
She crept toward the man, feet silent as a shadow. The man never saw her coming. She caught him in a choke hold, squeezing until he passed out, and then a bit longer to make sure he wasn’t faking it. She checked his pulse, worried that the killer in her had gotten carried away. His heart was beating.
She moved his body behind a desk, then stood in front of the view screens, searching.
There were more of them than she’d been expecting. She checked the statistics on one of the people she didn’t recognize. He was younger. Batch two point five.
She scanned the others, breathing a sigh of relief when she didn’t see Ellie. There was a woman who looked like her, but... she looked older.
Caroline?
She’s alive. Caroline’s alive.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she flipped the visa open, deactivating the suit’s camouflage as her tears fogged up her vision. The predator class did not cry and the suit was not designed to deal with that bodily function.
Stephanie’s hands roamed over the control panel, cutting the flow of sedatives to the Succubus class experiments. She added a shot of adrenaline to help them clear the sedative from their systems and watched as some of them began to stir. She had to get down there.
Stephanie raced from the room.
* * *
Ivan was breathing heavily.
He’d stunned two guards, both of them wearing gloves, so he knew he must have been getting close. Adrenaline hammered through his veins.
He rounded a corner, coming to a door. He knocked once before swiping his wrist over the door lock. The door slid open and he darted inside, closing the door behind him. A young woman stood in the middle of the room, as though she’d just gotten up. Her eyes were wide.
“Who?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t have much time.” He held a hand out to her.
“What?”
“Read my mind.”
Her hand shook as it touched his, her touch light, like a butterfly landing on his fingertips.
She pulled her hand back, as though she’d been burned.
“Are you sure?” she asked. Her hand covered her mouth, making her wide eyes look wider.
Ivan shrugged. “I don’t know how much you got from half a second... but it’s not safe here anymore.”
“You’re with Stephanie?”
“Are you coming or not?”
“Of course, just give me a minute to-”
“We don’t have time. We need to get as many people out as we can, before they-”
“Right, yes.” She bent to slip a pair of trainers on and then dashed out of the room, Ivan close on her heels.
* * *
Stephanie’s hands shook as she brushed the hair out of Caroline’s face.
“Hey.” Her voice
cracked. “Caroline, we have to go, I need you to wake up.”
Caroline’s breathing was slow and steady. Her eyes were wide and vacant.
“Caroline?” she pressed her hands against her cheeks, trying to connect to her. She searched her mind for... anything. A thought. A memory. An image or a dream. There was nothing.
“She’s functionally brain dead,” a voice said from behind her.
Stephanie turned.
Spencer Evans stood behind her.
He was standing very still, as though afraid that any sudden movement would startle her, like she was a wild animal. She felt like a wild animal. The urge to protect her kin boiled away inside her. She wanted to kill him for what he’d done. She wanted every single person who’d ever worked for the corporation to die.
“What did you do to her?”
“We were looking for a cure.”
Stephanie shook her head. “You must have seen it wasn’t working before you melted what was left of her brain away.”
“It was working.” he shrugged.
“You’re lying,” she slammed a hand against the wall. “Just like you were lying about Caroline. You call this okay? Does she look okay to you? She may as well be dead.”
“I’ll admit we’ve failed her, but I swear we’re getting close. I promise, just a few more years of research and we’ll have the answer. You’ll be able to keep your minds and your abilities. There’s still time for you, Stephanie. We can cure you.”
“I’m not sick.” She took a step away from him, edging back toward the door she’d come from.
The man in the next bed stirred, trying to push himself to a sitting position.
Spencer checked something on his coms. Frowned.
“You are sick, Stephanie. Very sick. We never designed you to be able to kill by touching. Do you have any idea how damaged that means you are? Worse than Caroline’s contagious delusions. We never should have let you out in the field.” He shook his head.
“Contagious?”
“I didn’t put two and two together at first. When you mentioned Dr. Volkov. It was Caroline’s Dr. Volkov, wasn’t it? The one you visited on Argun？She drove him crazy, you know, filling his head with the same delusions she had. That there was an evil corporation out to get them and their only hope was to get to Sanctuary.” He laughed.
“Look around, Spencer. This is an evil corporation.”
“No. No, you don’t understand. We’re trying to help you. You think we want you to suffer? To live a life in fear of the things that are growing in your own head? All I’ve ever tried to do was help you, Stephanie.”
“I don’t want your help.”
Spencer Evans checked his coms again.
“No one’s going to answer your call for back up,” Stephanie said.
He glanced back at her.
“You thought I didn’t notice you send a message?”
She turned her back on him.
The room stretched out in front of her, a huge hall filled with hospital beds. It was almost like the one from her nightmares.
“Anyone who is together enough to understand what I’m saying,” she said, trying to project her voice into the corners of the room. “Run.”
Chapter Forty-Two
She should have followed her own advice but something in her rebelled against leaving Caroline and the others, even if they were too far gone for her to save.
Tears pricked at her eyes and her nose stung, but she knew it was the right thing to do. It was what she would have wanted inthat position.
She pushed past Spencer Evans. He tried to stop her but she knocked him to the ground, slamming his head into the floor. His eyes rolled back into his head and she didn’t check his pulse. The succubi who could move detached themselves from the various medical systems, some of them pausing to help each other. They stumbled past her, half jogging, legs weak from long disuse.
She went back to the main control room, searching through the medical delivery systems. The same system that she’d used to cut the sedatives and inject the room with adrenaline
There was a lump in her throat.
She wished she was a religious person. That she could send up a prayer for their immortal souls, but she only knew the naturalist, ‘May the purity of ancestor’s past,’ and the organization mandated, ‘I am grateful to my creators.’ Neither of which seemed appropriate, given the circumstances.
She manipulated the controls, turning the sedatives back on. She doubled the dosage. Then she hacked into the med computers, disabling their various fail-safe systems. She flooded her sibling’s systems with everything she could possibly give them.
The people in the other room twitched once or twice, then went still.
She stood there for a moment longer, after the monitoring systems declared everyone dead.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks and she brushed them away. She wasn’t crying because they were dead.
I couldn’t save them. She thought. The lump in her throat grew bigger, spreading until it was an ache in her chest.
You did save them, Maia whispered. You set them free.
Stephanie swallowed. She wiped her face on the sleeves of the killer’s suit. Sniffed. She just needed another moment.
And that’s how they finally caught her.
Chapter Forty-Three
Stephanie opened her eyes.
It took her a moment to piece together what had happened and where she was. A bright light shone down on her. Thin blue sheets covered her body. Something lay on top of the sheets, a shimmering mesh that made it impossible for her to move. She rolled her head, turning to look one way, then the other.
A neural net covered her head, pinching her hair and tugging at her scalp.
A wall. No window.
A row of beds, most of them empty.
How did I end up here?
One moment she’d been standing in front of the view screens. She hadn’t been able to get all of the succubi who were in testing out. The ones who were too far gone, she’d euthanized.
She tried to remember what had happened next.
Had she heard something? A low hiss? Right before her memory cut out.
A stunner.
Someone had hit her with a stunner.
She pulled at the restraints, trying to sit up. Agony tore through her and she cried out.
She heard footsteps, loud on the lino floor, as though the person was wearing boots.
Someone leaned over her. Dr. Kelsey. Gray hair tied in an elegant chignon at the back of her head.
Stephanie spat in her face.
Dr. Kelsey leaned back, wiping her face carefully.
“Do you think that was clever?” she asked. Her precise accent and rich tone of voice didn’t show any emotion.
Stephanie bit her tongue. She would not speak to this woman.
Dr. Kelsey shrugged. “No? You don’t want to ask me about your friends? Jessica was very annoyed when she woke up, you know, but if you’re not going to be polite, I’m not going to tell you what she did to them.”
She was lying. She had to be lying. Ivan was supposed to go straight to Ellie. He was supposed to show her everything she’d given him and then Ellie was supposed to help spread that information to the other Succubus class experiments. Then they were going to go to the predators.
There would have been too many of them to take out. At least some of them would have gotten away. Unless Ellie and the others were already off planet.
She rechecked the numbers in her head. She should have been there. Unless they’d decided to test them earlier than they had her batch. Why hadn’t she looked for them when she had access to Jessica’s memories?
She ground her teeth. Dr. Kelsey was just trying to get under her skin.
What if Jessica woke up early? Maia asked.
Dr. Kelsey smiled.
“You can avoid talking to me all you want. We’ve got everything we need right here.” She tapped the neural net that covered Stephanie�
��s skull.
Dr. Kelsey turned and walked away, her booted feet echoing in the long room.
I don’t want to give her anything, Stephanie muttered, half hoping that the others would come up with a plan to escape.
Her situation looked bleak.
She didn’t mention Ivan or Ellie by name. Maybe she doesn’t have them.
She didn’t say anything about the reporter either, Stephanie realized. Hope swelled within her. Maybe they’d gotten away. Maybe they would come for her.
One of the tubes feeding into her changed color.
Her breath sped up. Bright points of pain shot through her, like shooting stars, burning up in the atmosphere of her skin. She bit back the scream for as long as she could before it tore itself from her throat.
She nearly blacked out.
When her vision cleared, she saw another tube had changed color. The pain was still there, but the feeling of sinking into darkness was gone.
She saw Maia standing beside her. She had her dark hair braided over one shoulder and the long-sleeved blue dress was neatly pressed.
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