by Meg Collett
Somehow, I got myself into the suit, booties, and gloves. Once we’d tied face masks over our mouths, Lieutenant Milhousse opened the final door.
The lieutenant stepped out onto the metal platform and swept a hand outward in a lavish gesture. “We borrowed the university’s dorm design. Dean was kind enough to supply the blueprints.”
My footsteps rattled against the platform as I approached the edge and looked down and down.
And down and down.
Rings upon rings of dorms spiraled down along a concrete path that ended at a single cell far below. The inverted dome was dark, the path lit by small blue lights. Through the small square windows in each door, I only saw more darkness inside.
And the silence. It was so quiet. Even the Death Dome contained the noises of students living and breathing and filling the space with vitality. There was none of that here. It was empty. It was silent as the grave.
“How many.”
The words were cold stones in my mouth. The sentence not even a question. Just two bullets firing from my tongue.
Lieutenant Milhousse frowned, completely confused. “How many what?”
“Kids,” I growled. “How many kids are in these cells.”
“We don’t call them—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you call them. How many. How many kids are in here. How many kids do you sick fucks cut up every single day. How many have you killed. How many. How many. How many.”
Lieutenant Milhousse glanced at Luke, and then at Hatter when Luke only blinked at him, his rough fingers tap-tapping against each other with barely contained fury. Hatter cocked his head at the good doctor and grinned. Lieutenant Milhousse’s eyes finally landed on Sunny as if she might help him, might explain her crazed friends.
“Answer the fucking question,” she said instead.
Lieutenant Milhousse retreated, his back against the railing along the platform. “We’re down to thirty-one. We lost over sixty to an infection last week. Now, everyone, calm down. We’re not like those make-up brands that test their products on thousands of stray dogs! We have laws!”
“Where.”
Lieutenant Milhousse was too scared to meet my eyes. Good. “Pardon?”
“Where do you get the kids.”
“Look, I’m starting to get the impression you think we’re doing something illegal here. But let me tell you, Miss Volkova, this operation is completely on the up and up. Your government’s laws define the parameters around which we conduct our research. We treat our factors with standard care set forth by the—”
“Where do you get the kids.”
Punctuating my lack of question, Luke approached the doctor with enough menace to send him scurrying toward the other corner of the platform. Hatter and Sunny repositioned to block him.
“The foster care system,” the doctor said, voice trembling. “We take the ones no one else wants. We’re doing the system a favor, really. It’s not much different from what’s happening on Kodiak in that prison you call a school. What about those kids? At least we don’t send ours into war!”
“You’re right,” I said, surprising everyone. “It’s not that different. But it will be.”
The doctor walked us out. In the waiting room, he said, “Do you know where Zero is? Have you seen … her?”
I stared at Lieutenant Milhousse until he held up his hands. “I liked her,” he explained. “She was the first one we had here. I worked with her the most while this lab was still a joke in a back office of the White House. She validated all of this. I … miss her.”
The red haze crept into my vision. “She won’t be coming back here when we find her.”
“Of course not.” Lieutenant Milhousse looked at me like I was crazy. “She can’t. Too many outside factors have tainted her mind. She’ll have to be terminated.”
I stepped up to him. “You like that phrase, don’t you? Terminated.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Terminated. Terminated.” He flinched at every word. “Terminated. Terminated.”
“Ollie,” Sunny said from behind me. She hadn’t acknowledged me since the sim. “We should go.”
The doctor looked like he might be sick. He obviously regretted inviting us here.
“It was good to meet you,” I said and smiled. “We’ll be seeing each other very soon.”
I left.
Out in the fresh air that didn’t stink of disinfectant, I took a few deep, trembling breaths. Behind me, the others followed. In the parking lot, the dark cars waited to return us to the airport.
“Are we just leaving?”
I turned back to see Sunny standing in the middle of the parking lot. She frowned at me in confusion, looking like she didn’t recognize me anymore.
“There’s nothing we can do right now.” Hatter reached for her hand. She jerked away from him without looking away from me.
“Ollie?” she asked me.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
The words shocked her. I saw their impact. In that moment, she didn’t know me. “You’re going to leave them. Those children. Those foster kids. You’re going to leave them with that doctor.”
“Sunny,” Luke said, “we have to focus on Zero. She’s killing people. Once we have her under control, we can deal with this. But we have to focus.”
Sunny shook her head. “But we’re here. We saw what they’re doing to them. They don’t even have names, Ollie. They’re numbers.”
“We’re leaving,” I repeated.
Sunny blinked, but the tears kept filling her eyes. They shone like hot caramel. Threads of dark hair twisted around her face as the breeze picked up. “They don’t even have names,” she whispered.
The tears fell.
Hatter reached for her again, but she backed away.
Luke had been right. I was losing her.
“Pick one.”
Luke and Hatter turned to me, eyes wide. “We can’t—”
“Pick one,” I told Sunny, cutting Luke off.
“Pick what?” she asked.
In this empty plaza, we all squared off. Lieutenant Milhousse was probably on the phone with Dean in the lab behind us, watching our exchange through the cameras mounted outside. Perhaps he was listening. Perhaps he knew we were coming for him.
“Pick between those kids or your antidote, because you can only do one right now. Today. Tonight. We can’t be in two places at once. So pick. Pick those kids back there, or pick returning to the university and figuring out whatever breakthrough you had.”
Luke scrubbed a hand across his face. “If we take that lab, we’ll piss off Dean. We won’t have a place to return to. It’ll put everything on hold if he kicks us out.”
“If he does,” I said, eyes still on Sunny, “we’ll kill him too. Pick, Sunny. Do you want to kill today, or do you want to save someone?”
She realized it was a challenge. I was demanding she pick a side. Pick a version of herself. The savior or the fighter.
She took longer to decide than I’d imagined, but she picked what I knew she would.
What I’d hoped she would.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I hadn’t lost her. Not yet. Not completely.
But she’d considered it. The time it had taken her to decide told me it wouldn’t be long. Soon, she would decide to kill. Soon, it wouldn’t be a decision at all.
And then she’d be just like me.
S I X T E E N
Ollie
Before we left Anchorage, I had one more place to stop.
I couldn’t leave the city without checking in at the warehouse. I hadn’t been back since winter break, and with Thad’s disappearance, I had no clue what was happening at my mother’s halfling sanctuary. As we drove into the warehouse district, I kicked myself for not returning sooner. I was letting my mother’s memory down.
“There wasn’t enough time,” Sunny whispered so only I would hear.
I glanced over at her. We sat together in the backseat of the SUV w
e’d borrowed from the university’s supply in the hangar. Anchorage was a major layover point from Kodiak to the northern part of the state, so the school often kept the hangar fully supplied. Hatter drove with Luke in the passenger seat. Hatter’s music was just loud enough that my conversation with Sunny was muffled.
“Do you always know what I’m thinking?” I asked, grimacing at her.
“It’s written across your face. You feel bad for not coming back since break, but there’s been no time. The university needed you.”
“Apparently, the halflings needed me more.” Outside my window, as we traveled farther into the district, the buildings changed from maintained factories to decayed, crumbling buildings. The damage from the ’64 earthquake hadn’t been repaired.
“What do you think we’ll find?”
The worry was plain in Sunny’s voice, but I had no good answer for her as we drove deeper and deeper into the shadows of the tall buildings with broken windows and boarded doors that did little to keep the homeless out. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I hoped for a sign. A clue. A letter with a smiley face and a “Be back in five!” note from Thad. I hoped there were still halflings gathered here and that they hadn’t fled back into obscurity without the comfort of a leader. I hoped Hex hadn’t taken them. I hoped the warehouse was still the beacon of promise my mother had established it as.
I hoped for a lot, which was stupid. I knew how worthless hope was.
The car rolled to a stop, and Hatter killed the engine. It softly clicked, the fan belt whirring as we sat in silence. I leaned forward to peer out through the front windshield. I’d expected debris and a massive crater where the warehouse had been and maybe blood, but the building stood exactly as I remembered it: dark, quiet, waiting. Always waiting.
In the front, Luke cocked his rifle.
I flinched. “I don’t think we’ll need guns.”
Hatter snorted. “Famous last words, Ollie-O.”
Everyone piled out of the car. I was the last to leave. Plunking down into the dirty slush of gutter runoff, I took a deep breath. The air smelled of tire fires and mold, likely asbestos given the age of the buildings.
Delicious.
I sighed. “Let’s do this.”
“Hey, uh,” Hatter said, “you don’t think there’s more of those creepy lady things with the guts and bones, do you? I mean, like, the one you killed was the last one alive, right?”
The Manananggal. I shuddered at the memory. I hadn’t killed her. She’d killed herself out on a frozen lake deep in the forests of Chugach State Park. It probably said too much about me, but I’d felt sorry for her. The parallel between her and Zero didn’t escape me. I apparently had a penchant for misunderstood killers.
“We’re fine,” I told Hatter and led the way into my mother’s home.
There was no lock on the rolling bay doors leading into the warehouse’s ground floor. Nothing to keep someone out who wanted in. The door clanged and rattled on rusted tracks; a bird squawked in the eaves of the roof’s overhang. With the door open, we peered inside.
Hatter clicked on his flashlight, and a beam of light flooded through the place. He sliced it through the shadows in the closest corners.
“She’s not here,” I said, stepping into the warehouse. Luke grabbed my arm. I shot him a glare. “What? Zero wouldn’t be here.”
“Don’t you smell that?” Luke whispered.
Hatter’s flashlight slid to the middle of the first floor, which contained only a few boxes and storage cabinets. As the beam darted about, I caught a gleam on the floor. “There! What is that?”
“Here,” Sunny called from twenty feet away, on the other side of the room. I spun toward her. “I found the light switch.”
She hit a lever, and the warehouse flooded with blazing white light.
We saw the blood then.
* * *
Sunny
I hadn’t enjoyed my stay at Irena’s warehouse sanctuary during the last half of winter break. Surrounded by halflings and Hex’s pack, it had been impossible to know who was friend and who was foe. Not to mention how badly it had hurt to see Ollie thrive here. To watch as she picked herself back up after Max and found her footing again, not with us—her friends—and not at her home—Fear University—but here. It had hurt. I hated this place.
That didn’t mean I wanted to see the entire first floor coated in sticky blood, frozen in places and tacky in others. With the bay door open, the scent stirred in the air. Death. Blood. Life spilled out in a kaleidoscope of gore.
“Where are the bodies?” I asked slowly. Carefully. As if the dead could hear me.
Many people had died here. I wasn’t fond of the halflings, but I would never wish this horror on anyone. Not even my enemy.
Hatter had tucked his flashlight back in his jacket pocket and crossed the floor to stand beside me. He had his gun ready as if he thought the attacker was still here. Silly. Even I knew the blood was old. The smell was too strong. A tight giggle pressed up my throat and threatened to choke me.
“Stay beside me,” Hatter muttered.
“Do you think—”
“He wouldn’t have done this,” Ollie snapped, interrupting Luke’s question. “Hex wouldn’t kill halflings.”
“You sure?” Luke glanced around the warehouse with a grim set to his mouth.
Ollie ignored him. “Let’s split up. Look around. See if we can find any clues as to what happened.”
“We should stick together,” Hatter said. Even as he spoke, he inched closer, his shoulder blocking me from the center of the room.
I brushed past him and started toward the metal stairs that led up to the living area and bedrooms. If there were bodies to be found, they would be up there. “No one’s here,” I told Hatter over my shoulder as I approached the stairs. “This place has been deserted since the attack.” I paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back as the bay door rattled shut. “We should question the homeless around here. They might have seen something.”
Ollie nodded jerkily. She stopped the door from closing completely with her foot. “I’ll go. Good thinking, Sunny.”
She crouched and stepped out before Luke could stop her. The door slid shut, slamming into the floor, and Luke cursed. “She’s going to get herself killed,” he growled.
From the other side of the bay door, Ollie’s fist slammed against the warped metal. “I can hear you, asshole.”
“Good!” Luke shouted back. He turned to us. “Fine. Let’s look around. Hatter, you go with Sunny. Take the bedrooms.”
I was already clanging my way up the metal stairs. “That’s okay. I’m fine by myself. You boys can search together, though, if you’re scared.”
Hatter called after me, but I ignored him too. I turned at the top of the stairs and headed straight for Thad’s office. If anything had happened to him, there might be something in that room.
As I strode down the hall, not bothering with the lights because the moon gave off enough light through the dusty windows, I felt my skin itch. I wanted to be back at the lab, helping those kids. It tortured me to think of what was happening to them in the name of science. Lieutenant Milhousse thought he was doing good. Melanie, the chipper lab tech, thought she was doing good too. But how could they justify experimenting on kids? It was sick. Disgusting. It left a sour taste in my mouth and a hole in my heart. I’d dedicated my life to science, but this made me want to walk away from it all and pick up something else. Something bloodier. Something that would put a stop to that lab and leave those so-called scientists in ruin behind me.
I couldn’t help it. I wanted to paint the lab’s floor with blood.
I reached the office. The door was unlocked. It swung open with a muffled screech. I hit the lights and illuminated the room in a muted glow. A light bulb was missing from the overhead light, and the curtains were pulled tight over the single window along the back wall. The room smelled musty, the air still for too long. But there was no blood. No gore. No b
odies. The dust hardly appeared disturbed.
I went around to the back of the desk and pulled out the chair. This wasn’t my first time snooping around in Thad’s office, and I knew exactly which drawer to start with. I opened the bottom right one first. I’d expected nothing, but what I found surprised me.
My note from winter break was still at the bottom. A yellow sticky note with my hasty scrawl, the back’s sticky edge not so sticky anymore. The corners were rumpled with wear as though Thad had taken out the note multiple times since we’d left to read it. I turned the note over in my hand and reread my words from over a month ago.
Dear Thad,
I took the picture because Ollie is not your plaything. I think you were going to use this picture against her somehow, or worse, show it to her. She needs her mother, but not like this. It’s up to you whether you want to tell everyone I stole from you, but I suggest you don’t. As for me, I won’t show this to Ollie. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.
- Sunny
But I found nothing there that would have captured Thad’s attention for this long. I returned the note and closed the drawer with a shake of my head.
I went through the rest of the drawers and file folders, but found nothing of note. Thad had barely kept any paperwork, aside from a few correspondences on missing halflings. He kept a map and a file on each halfling staying at the warehouse, but that was it. I was about to stand up and leave, when something beneath the desk calendar caught my eye.
I picked up the edge. A manila folder sat beneath it.
Holding my breath, I pulled out the folder and flipped through the pages. It didn’t take me long to realize what I was staring at. I’d seen Ollie look through it enough to know.
Thad had a copy of Zero’s file. The one from Dean’s office. The one that detailed her experiments, her purpose. He must have found it before leaving for Barrow, meaning he’d been studying the same file as Ollie months before her. Perhaps even while we were here in the warehouse during winter break. Thad had known about Zero all along, and he hadn’t told us. Goose bumps spread along my arms.