She had to find him now. She had to talk to him. She had been planning what she was going to say to him and she knew that as soon as he heard the words, everything was going to change. It was all going to be fine. All she needed to do was find him and get him to listen to her, and she would be able to prove to him that he didn’t need anyone else, that the life ahead of them was going to be everything that either of them could ever want.
Ilya rushed through the machinery and through the doors on the other side, finding herself in another stairwell that led onto another factory floor virtually identical to the first. She repeated the process, moving through a third floor until she finally found herself at the end of a long corridor that looked like the level beneath the cubicles. The doors that lined the hall on either side of her were all shut and she tried several, but they were locked. She listened intently, hoping to hear Ryan’s voice from somewhere. Her heart was pounding now. She could feel herself getting closer to him, as though his very presence was palpable in the building. Just a little bit further, a little bit more and she would be with him again and they could forget about all the pain, all the questions. He would know that she was his true love, the only woman who was ever really devoted to him, and the only person who would give him the life that he deserved. It would all be alright soon. Soon everything was going to be alright.
Ilya had turned the corner at the other end of the hallway, stepping out into another hallway, when she heard muffled voices somewhere in front of her. She paused long enough to listen harder, wanting to make sure that that was really what she was hearing, and then started toward them at a faster speed. Despite the circumstances, she couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips as she drew closer to the sound. Soon the voices were just on the other side of one of the doors and she reached for the knob without knocking. Unlike the other doors, this one opened easily. Ilya hoped that she would see Ryan standing there, but when she did, it wasn’t as she expected. He wasn’t alone. Instead, strange hooded creatures stood on either side of him. Light sparkled from the ceiling against the blackness of the walls and floor and two of the creatures were looking up toward it, their eyes closed and their faces serene as they seemed to bask in the glow. Ryan didn’t look happy that she was there. His face was tense and his eyes flashed with anger, but Ilya wouldn’t be deterred.
“I had to come see you,” she said, taking a step toward him and reaching her hands toward him.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan demanded.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Ilya,” he said. “I’ve said all that I’m going to about this.”
He started to walk around her out of the room, but Ilya reached for him, taking him by his shoulder so that he whipped around to look at her again.
“You can’t just turn your back on me,” she said. “You can’t pretend that you don’t care about what we have.”
“Ilya, I’ve already told you. I got what I wanted from you and now I’ve moved on.”
“But we’re in love,” she said weakly.
Part of her hated herself for saying those words, for showing just how vulnerable he had made her, but it wasn’t enough to make her stop. He felt like the only thing in her life that was important and the foundation on which she was building her future. Without him, she couldn’t imagine living on. It was too much to handle, too much to suffer through.
“You might be, Ilya, but that’s not me. I don’t do love.”
“Of course, you do.”
Ryan let out a long-suffering sigh and looked at the figures who were in the room with him.
“I need to handle this,” he said, speaking about her as though she were just another nuisance in the lab. “Continue on and I’ll be back.”
The figures didn’t respond, but Ryan pushed past Ilya to go out of the room, grabbing onto her wrist as he went. He dragged her with him down the hall at a pace that made her feel as though her feet were barely touching the ground before finally turning into another room and releasing her with a toss of his hand. They were standing in an office that looked as though it had been unchanged in decades, corresponding with the look of much of the rest of the building. It felt as though she were walking into a photograph, something that should be hanging on the wall in a more contemporary building to show how far the company had come from its meager origins. Ilya was just starting to process how he was treating her when he whirled around to face her again.
“What are you doing here, Ilya? What could you possibly be thinking that makes it alright for you to come storming in here like this uninvited?”
Ilya stammered for a minute, unsure of what she was supposed to say.
“I needed to talk to you,” she said.
“I told you, I don’t have anything more to say to you. Whatever it is that you think that we have between us, you need to get over. You were fun to chase after at the beginning because everyone said that you were nothing but an ice queen, probably a virgin who would never even consider going after her boss. I have to admit you were a lot more willing than I expected you to be. And that was great—for a while. I got what I wanted out of you, but then the novelty of it ended. I never said that I wanted any kind of life with you.”
“Yes, you did,” Ilya argued. “You talked about it.”
Ryan laughed.
“You really are inexperienced,” he said. “You honestly believe that anything a man says when he’s in bed with a woman is the truth every single time?”
Ilya felt tears springing to her eyes. This was not the way that this conversation was supposed to go. This wasn’t how it played out in her mind and she was suddenly feeling like she couldn’t catch her breath.
“I thought that…” she started, but she was struggling to actually get the words out of her mouth.
“That what?” Ryan asked, his tone mocking and sarcastic. “That I was going to whisk you away and we were going to get married and live out our lives basking in the glory of all of the discoveries that we made together? That you were going to be my muse and support me through all of my research?” He scoffed and looked her up and down as if he was seeing something in her that he hadn’t before. “You’re pathetic. I wouldn’t even tell people that I was dating you because I didn’t want anyone to know. Maybe I should have, though. I could have advertised you as being a good lay and then maybe you would have someone else to pay attention to you and I wouldn’t have to deal with this.”
Panic rose in Ilya’s chest. He couldn’t really mean what he was saying. This wasn’t him. Something must have happened that was twisting his mind and making it so that he couldn’t see what they really had. The new woman he had been dating must have gotten to him and convinced him that he didn’t know his own feelings.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Ilya said. “You have to remember all the things we talked about. You told me that you were working on the most important scientific advancements of your career, that what you were working on was going to change everything.” She looked around the office and then over her shoulder at the door that led out into the rest of the factory. Maybe if she appealed to the scientist in him and showed him how invested she was in his work, then he would see that she was more than just temporary entertainment. “Is that why you’re here? Are you working on that project?”
Ryan looked at her incredulously.
“You could never understand what I’m doing here,” he said.
Ilya nodded.
“Yes, I could,” she said, taking a step toward him. “Explain it to me. Tell me what you’re accomplishing here and I can help you. Just like we’ve talked about. You said that we were going to do this all together, and we still can. All of us.”
“All of us?” Ryan asked.
Ilya nodded again, taking another cautious step toward him. She couldn’t wait any longer. It was time to tell him what she had planned to, the reason that she had come all this way. She had gone through the words in her mind ov
er and over, but now that it was time for her to finally say them it felt like she couldn’t bring them all the way up. She swallowed and took a deep breath, the smile coming to her lips undeniable.
“You, me, and our baby.”
She wanted him to return her smile, to light up and take her into his arms, thrilled at the idea of creating a family together. Instead, his face fell and his eyes grew dark. His shoulders straightened and he stared at her with such intensity in his eyes that it was almost as though she could feel them glaring through her.
“What do you mean our baby?” he asked in a voice that was far too low and controlled.
Ilya felt herself shaking slightly. Her hand came to rest on her belly almost instinctively. It had only been a matter of days since she found out about the pregnancy and at only a few weeks along, she wasn’t showing, but that didn’t change that she could sense the baby growing within her. From the moment that she learned that she was carrying this baby, she had felt connected to it in a way that was unexpected and almost frightening. It was such a powerful feeling, something that went beyond thought and reason to instinct and compulsion that made her want to do anything that she could to protect this tiny being. Now the one person who she thought was going to share that feeling seemed like the biggest threat that she had faced. She took a slight step back from him.
“I’m pregnant,” she finally said.
“Pregnant?” he asked, still sounding cold and steely.
She nodded.
“That’s what I came here to tell you. I knew that when you found out that it would change everything.”
Ryan stared at her for just a moment too long and then nodded slowly.
“You’re right,” he said.
He turned and walked over to the desk. He touched a button and Ilya heard a buzz somewhere in the distance.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Yes?” a voice said from somewhere in the room and Ilya realized that Ryan had pressed an intercom button.
“Please send Elzer up to my office,” he said. “I will be needing his assistance.”
“Who is Elzer?” Ilya asked.
Ryan walked back from around the back of the desk and over to a cabinet against the wall. He opened it and withdrew what looked like a long black cord. Ilya immediately felt the fear inside of her spike.
“Just an assistant of mine,” Ryan said. “I think that you’re right. I think that we can work on my project together. It seems that you are the perfect candidate for being a part of a particular experiment I’ve been doing.”
Ilya felt her heart pounding harder.
“What is it that you’re doing in this factory, Ryan?” she asked.
He gave a sinister smile and shook his head.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, twisting the cord around his hands. “You won’t be here for long. What I have planned for you is back at the laboratory. You are going to get the opportunity to see the facility that I designed. I think that you will find it very impressive.”
Ilya immediately turned and ran from the office, narrowly dipping past one of the cloaked figures as it made its way toward the office. She felt its hands grasp at her shirt, but she pulled away. She ran blindly down the hallway, knowing that she was going in the opposite direction from which they had come, but not being able to turn around. She could hear the cloaked man she assumed was Elzer and Ryan chasing after her and all she could think of was getting out of the factory or at least finding a place to hide to buy herself some time.
She crashed through a door at the back of the floor and found herself outside on a narrow, spiraling staircase. The metal felt almost powdery beneath her hands, but she gripped the railings and clambered down as fast as she could. She was nearly to the bottom when she came to a metal cage that blocked the rest of the staircase. A heavy padlock secured it in place. She looked over the edge of the staircase. She was still too high to jump safely and the walls on either side of the staircase leading down after the cage were tall and solid, creating more of a tunnel than a continued staircase. All she could do was climb back up.
Ilya swung her leg over the side of the wall so that she perched on top of it. She could hear the door at the top of the stairs open again as she reached up and took hold of the bottom of the staircase above her, so she could pull herself up. Her feet slipped on the side of the staircase, but she fought to maintain her strength and pull herself up so that she could put her feet through the railings and stand. Above her, Ryan and Elzer started down the staircase. She didn’t know if they had seen her and she tried to figure out which direction she should go. Finally deciding that she would go to the next curve and then climb up again, she scrambled along the side of the metal rail and then climbed up again. Her hands were burning from trying to hold onto the metal and her muscles were shaking with the exertion of moving along the staircase.
The two men were muttering angrily to each other as they moved down the stairs and Ilya pressed herself toward the building to stay concealed as they ran past. She held her breath until they were several steps down past her and then swung up and over the side, starting to run back up toward the door. She nearly tripped as she reached the top and instead leapt forward, crashing her shoulder against the door as she grasped at the doorknob. Her body hit the floor inside hard, but she couldn’t pause even for a moment to deal with the pain. She scrambled to her feet and started down the hallway again. She ran until she found the stairs that led her down to the factory floor, crossed it, and ran onto the second. Here she hesitated, only for a second, to seek out a place to hide. If she could stay out of a sight they might think that she got away and stop pursuing her, giving her a chance to get out of the factory safely.
Seeing a piece of equipment covered with a tarp in one corner, Ilya rushed toward it and hunched behind it. She lifted the corner of the tarp and ducked beneath it, covering herself completely so that she would be undetectable even if they were looking for her. The smell that she had noticed on the first factory floor was nearly overpowering here and she realized that it came from the equipment. The tarp held in the heat and soon the heavy, thick air was making her feel dizzy. She reached for the edge of the tarp and lifted it just enough to allow some of the cooler, fresher air to come in. Just as she did, she heard a low thud from somewhere in the factory. She went still, trying to control her breath so that it couldn’t be heard outside of her corner. The sound came again and she curled up tighter, trying to make herself as small as possible.
The door to the factory floor opened and she could hear steps come inside. Voices reverberated from the walls but she was concentrating so hard on controlling her breathing that she couldn’t understand the words. There was nowhere for her to run now. She was trapped where she was, unable to move. All she could do was wait and hope that they wouldn’t find her. Ilya closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly. The footsteps were louder now and she knew that they were coming closer. She was suddenly aware of the cool feeling on her hand and realized that when she lifted the side of the tarp to breathe in the fresh air, her hand slipped out of its cover. She started to pull it back in, but before she could, she felt a hand grab her wrist.
Ilya started to scream at the feeling of the hand grabbing her, but another clamped down on her mouth, muffling the sound. She opened her eyes and realized that she wasn’t under the tarp in the corner of the factory floor. Instead, she was standing in the center of it and Mordecai was beside her, his hand wrapped around her wrist and his palm pressed against her mouth.
“Come on,” he hissed, tugging on her.
She finally fell into step with him and he brought her across the room and to the shadows of some of the large equipment. They crouched down with the rest of the group and leaned forward, struggling to drag in breath while also staying as quiet as possible. Mordecai wrapped his arm around her and held her firmly, helping her to feel safer. She heard footsteps coming through the room again, just as she had the first time that she was ther
e. She felt dizzy with the fear that rushed over her and she reached up to grasp onto Mordecai’s arm. Her eyes slid over to the edge of the machine into the room. She could see the shadowy image of someone approaching them now. Mordecai pulled her closer and she felt the entire group seem to tighten in toward one another.
They all held their breath as the person approached, but Ilya noticed that the figure, a man who was wearing clothing that looked far closer to conventional human clothing rather than the cloaks of the creature that she had seen here before. He was walking through the factory with purpose, but not as though he were pursuing them. He didn’t even seem to think that anyone else might be there with him. Instead, he looked around the room, approached one of the machines briefly, and then walked out of the doors that led down to the floor below. They all waited a few seconds and then let out long sighs as if releasing all the air that they had been holding in. Mordecai turned to her.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Ilya nodded, still trying to calm the trembling inside her body.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Who was that?” Gannon asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, climbing to her feet. “Did any of you recognize him?”
They all shook their heads.
“We should keep going,” Jonah said. “He didn’t seem to care that we were here, but if he’s here, that means there might be others. Stay vigilant and make sure that we all know if you hear or see anything strange.”
They all agreed and stepped out from behind the machine, continuing on the rest of the way across the floor and through the door that led to the next.
Chapter Fourteen
Mhavrych was reeling from what Kendra had said to him. What could she possibly have meant that she was his wife? He felt like he was stuck where he was standing, but he forced himself to turn around. As he did he saw Ellora rushing up to him, a near-frantic look on her face.
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