“If you run off, you’re on your own.”
Hippy licked his face. Blech. Still, Piranha smiled. “Stay,” he said firmly.
Hipshot understood that perfectly. His tail stopped wagging, and he whimpered.
“You heard me,” Piranha said. “Until I come back or call you—stay.”
Hipshot’s haunches nearly rose, but he fought his protective instincts and sat. The damn dog would obey! He could stash Hipshot in a hidden corner, out of sight, and call if he needed him, like one of the cool pet tricks he’d watched on Letterman. If he survived this night, he and Hipshot might become buddies after all.
“Good boy,” Piranha said, and left to the sound of Hippy’s thumping tail. Feeling worlds better armed with both the gun and the map, Piranha continued his painstaking journey down what he hoped was the right hallway. He walked fast, almost a jog, and the ceiling opened up. A large glass-domed atrium filled with trees and tall plants appeared right where it was supposed to be, and if he got to the southeast end …
The next footsteps, from behind him, were so swift and soft that Piranha barely heard them, and he knew he’d been spotted.
The footsteps froze. Maybe this would be like a gunfight in Tombstone, and the Gold Shirt would give him time to draw. Slowly, Piranha turned. If he had to, he decided, he would toss his gun down to the floor.
But no such order came. Sonia stood six feet behind him, wideeyed and petrified. Then she saw him in a shaft of moonlight, and heartbreaking relief washed over her face. Her clothes were mussed, but she looked unharmed.
“Piranha?” she said, hesitating, afraid to believe her eyes.
“Sonia! You okay?”
He ran to her, and they embraced. Sonia was trembling head to toe. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as if they were being swept out to sea. “You scared the— I thought—” She fumbled for sentence. “That shirt?”
“Ursulina swiped it,” he said. “We’re all here, just like the plan. The others went for Kendra.” Piranha let out a soft whistle, and canine toenails clicked across the floor as Hipshot came running. Sonia was as glad to see Hipshot as he was to see her.
“What about Wales?” Piranha whispered, remembering others might hear them.
Sonia grinned like her old self, holding up a Taser. “Taking a nap.”
“Good girl,” Piranha said. He bit back his questions about what had happened between them. She would tell him in her own time, or not. Maybe ignorance was bliss. “Any news on Rianne?” Piranha said.
Sonia nodded. “Maybe. I’m following a hunch. Let me see your map.”
They huddled behind a towering royal palm unnaturally planted indoors, and Sonia studied the map with light from his flashlight. Sonia was wearing perfume she must have gotten from Deirdre, and she smelled so good that Piranha’s mind almost went blank. She spoke softly to him while she lowered her face close to read the handwritten scrawls on the map. “Threadheads believe in something called routing—as in sending thoughts from one plane to the next. One of my old high school friends was into it. It’s a kind of meditation, like praying. If I could find a room …”
Piranha grinned. “Like this?” he said, pointing. One of the rooms on their floor, practically around the corner from the Atrium, was marked RT Sanctuary.
Sonia looked up at Piranha, ecstatic. “I knew there was something I loved about you, Charles Cawthone,” she said.
Their kiss was deep and private, wiping the memory of Wales away.
Rianne.
Sonia knew her on sight, despite having seen nothing more than a cell phone-sized digital picture until this moment.
The willowy girl was barefoot, sitting placidly in a thronelike chair with crimson upholstery, facing the door. Her forehead and lips did vaguely resemble Deirdre’s true daughter’s, but she looked much taller even seated, and her skin was more olive than brown. She didn’t open her eyes, lost in unknowable thoughts even after Sonia and Piranha came in and Hipshot began sniffing her feet. No sign that she was infected. “Rianne?”
Sonia spoke softly, but Rianne gave a start and stood so quickly that she nearly tripped over her feet. Her almond shaped eyes regarded them with more wonder than fright. Of course—Piranha looks like a Gold Shirt, she remembered.
“Who are you?” Rianne said with bland curiosity. She stared at Piranha, trying to remember if she had seen him before.
“My name is Sonia,” she said, walking closer to her. “This is my friend P. Deirdre and Myles sent us to talk to you.”
Rianne’s face shed all openness. “You’re outsiders,” she said, suddenly nervous. “You don’t belong here.”
Piranha had hidden his gun, luckily. He raised his empty, harmless palms. “We’re just here to help.”
“I don’t need anyone’s help. You shouldn’t be here. The ceremony is only a few hours away. Don’t you understand that you’re … contaminating me?”
Sonia almost sniggered. Don’t worry, Wales has already done that, she thought, but she blocked the sneer playing on her lips. “This is our last chance to talk to you,” she said. “After tomorrow, you’ll be gone.” One way or the other, she finished silently.
“They’re worried about you, Rianne,” Piranha said. “The whole family. You’re like a daughter to them.”
Rianne sighed, impatient. “They’re really nice people, but they’re not my family. My family is here now. They never understood.” Rianne and Sissy definitely had been studying the same script. Sonia didn’t know how long deprogramming took, but she was damned sure she and Piranha didn’t have time. They were beyond lucky they hadn’t been spotted sneaking around Wales’s house up until now.
Rianne sighed, resting a gentle hand on Sonia’s shoulder. “I know you can’t help being ignorant,” she said, “but tomorrow is more important than you can imagine.”
“What if I told you it wasn’t what you think it is?” Sonia said. “That it’s something big, all right, but it’s a lie. Wales has been lying.”
“That isn’t possible.” Her face was all earnestness.
Piranha tapped Sonia from behind, nudging her. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “Where’s the video camera? This is what they asked to hear.”
“Yes!” Rianne said, eavesdropping. “I’ll say good-bye on video. I don’t think Mr. Wales would approve, but I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. They were good to me.”
“No way,” Sonia said, turning to Piranha. “You didn’t hear everything Wales told me. She can’t stay here. He’s making people disappear. Changing them. You don’t know what he wants to turn them into.”
“Are you kidding?” Piranha said. “I came in through the tunnel, remember? I think I’m beginning to get the picture.” The tunnel! The entire room seemed to brighten as Sonia got an idea. She linked her arm with Rianne’s. “Listen, you’re right: maybe there’s nothing I can say to change your mind,” she said. “But how about something you can see?”
Rianne held firm. “I’m not supposed to leave the Routing Sanctuary.”
“We’ll bring you right back,” Piranha said, “if that’s what you want.”
“It’ll only take us five minutes,” Sonia said.
Rianne considered, glancing back at her abandoned throne. “I really don’t want to cause you trouble,” she repeated. “But after five minutes, I start screaming.”
In five minutes, we might all be screaming, Sonia thought.
But she offered Rianne her sweetest smile.
Thirty-Two
All Kendra saw, at first, was a bright gold shirt as three people moved quickly toward them in the corridor. Then she saw Hipshot trotting at the group’s heels and realized that the Gold Shirt was only Piranha … and Sonia and another girl were with him! Rianne? Kendra’s joy at seeing her friends erased the inexplicable sense of grief she’d felt when she watched the fifth-level freak die. Why hadn’t she killed it herself? The creature had wanted to bite her, yet she’d felt such an odd connection …
She and her friends bumped fists and slapped palms.
“We were just on the way to rescue you,” Terry told the others.
“Why send children to do a man’s job?” Piranha said.
The stranger with them squirmed with discomfort, her arms folded as if she were covering a bare chest. “None of you should be here,” she said. “I’ll be banned from the ranch—”
“Everyone, this is Rianne,” Sonia said, hooking her arm around the tall, beautiful girl’s waist. “She thinks she wants to stay here, but there’s a little something we want to show her in the tunnel.”
“Perfecto,” Ursulina said. “It’s on the way out.”
“What about Wales?” Kendra said.
“Not an issue—for now,” Sonia said, apparently choosing her words carefully in Rianne’s presence. “But let’s not hang around.”
While the group made its way toward the rear, where the basement had appeared on the map, Ursulina sidled up to Sonia and whispered a private question. Sonia only smiled and shook her head, and Ursulina squeezed her hand.
Maybe this will work, Kendra thought, entertaining a ray of optimism.
Then, as if the thought were a jinx, a broad-shouldered Gold Shirt with butch-cut dark hair turned a corner and stood a foot in front of them. For an instant, everyone froze. Kendra was sure that the surprise on the Gold Shirt’s face mirrored theirs. The stranger’s eyes went to Piranha, confused.
The man reached for his belt—maybe a gun, maybe a radio— but he’d barely moved before Piranha smashed a right cross against his jaw and the Gold Shirt crumpled. Ursulina clamped her hand over Rianne’s mouth to stifle the girl’s horrified scream.
“Don’t worry, he’s okay.” Kendra tried to reassure Rianne, although the man on the floor looked as dead as the creature they had left behind. Alive, maybe. Not okay.
“Hustle time,” Terry said.
While Ursulina held her mouth, Terry and Piranha had to drag her, and Rianne’s energetic writhing made every few steps a labor. In the kitchen, Piranha hoisted Rianne over his shoulder in a fireman carry, and Ursulina’s hand slipped from her mouth. Rianne screamed so loudly for help that no one on the lower floor could have missed it.
“So much for the easy way,” Ursulina said as they broke into a run. She, Terry, and Piranha headed straight for a rear door that must lead to the basement. The door was unlocked, an easy passage except for Rianne.
“Go, go, go,” Piranha urged, breathless, as the others ran down the basement steps. Hipshot barked with excitement.
“Put her down,” Ursulina said. “We’ve got her.”
While Kendra closed the basement door to make sure Rianne couldn’t escape back into the kitchen, the others pulled and coaxed to get her down the stairs. Rianne was sobbing, so frightened that Kendra felt sorry for her.
“We’re not the ones you need to be afraid of,” Kendra said.
“How many others were there, Rianne?” Sonia said. “People you’ve never seen again? You’re about to see why.”
“Leave me alone!” Rianne shrieked.
Hipshot barked, but Kendra didn’t need Hipshot to know that freaks must be nearby. Their tart, rotting scent filled her nostrils.
Downstairs, they reached a large room where a prisoner was trying to free himself from a binding to a pipe. When he saw them, he tried to yell out over his gag, red-faced, but they all ran past him as if he weren’t there. He was bare-chested—so that was where Piranha’d gotten a gold shirt. The prisoner’s words were muffled, but Kendra understood his last shout clearly: “You’re all dead!”
Probably a threat, but it might have been a simple prediction.
The door Ursulina opened on the other side of the room led to darkness. Suddenly Terry’s hand was on Kendra’s shoulder, pinning her still. Terry’s eyes shined urgently. “Careful down here,” he said to her, but loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“There’s a freak in chains by the door. He’s got no teeth, but stick to the right to get past him. Then stay down the middle. No matter what you see, keep going. Fast.”
“You’re about to meet Ralphie,” Ursulina grinned.
My name was Harry. Kendra remembered the freak upstairs and felt a shiver.
“I won’t go in there!” Rianne shrieked.
“Bad news, sister—we’re here now,” Ursulina said, and pushed her through the doorway. When Rianne tried to run back out, they blocked her path.
“Flashlight?” Sonia said, annoyed.
And then there was light. Darkness might have been preferable.
The freak Terry had warned her about lunged from the left, his face a red-pitted atrocity. Hungry fingers tugged at the sleeve of Kendra’s dress, and she felt a sharp pull that took her balance. Hippy growled and lunged at the freak, sinking his teeth into its calf. Only Kendra’s worry about the dog kept her from screaming.
“Hippy’s biting him!” she said as Terry and Ursulina pulled her free. She felt as panicked as she might have if Hippy were a human.
“Dogs are immune to freak juice,” Ursulina said. “Keep moving.”
“Down, Hippy!” Piranha said, and Hippy backed away from the freak, baring his teeth. Kendra’s racing heart slowed, but only a fraction.
“Please,” Rianne was begging. “Please, please, please let me go.”
“We’re working on it,” Sonia said.
Their voices echoed throughout the endless passage. They plowed ahead in a huddle, picking up speed. A clamor rose from both sides of them, blows against metal. As the flashlight strobed from right to left, hands reached through bars, close to the floor, as if they were sweeping for crumbs.
“Wait,” Sonia said after they’d walked only a few yards. “Slow down. She has to see the faces. Where’s a flashlight?” When Terry gave her a flashlight, Sonia shined the light into the cell closest to them, from face to face, searching for someone.
“I know about the freaks!” Rianne said. “He captures them to find a cure.”
“That’s not all he does,” Sonia said. “There—look.”
A red-robed female freak pressed her hollowed cheeks between the bars, teeth gnashing. Blond hair cascaded from her shoulders. Kendra gasped, believing she might be Sissy. She wasn’t—this girl had been a freak so long that thin roots anchored her to the dirt floor. But she could have been any of them.
“Ring any bells, Rianne?” Sonia said. “Take a good look. Was she here when you first went into training? Did you know her name?”
At first, Rianne tried to turn her face away, refusing to see, but Ursulina and Sonia held her head still. While Kendra’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she watched Rianne’s face make a remarkable transformation: it seemed to stretch, then crack. Rianne’s mouth opened wide, her jaw trembling. When Sonia and Ursulina let her go, Rianne sank to her knees.
“No!” Rianne said. “No. No. No.” As if she could chant away the sight before her.
“Is that what you want?” Sonia said quietly, tears dripping from the bridge of her nose. “To help Wales recruit more people to come here and end up like this?”
“That’s what it’s all about,” Kendra said. “Wales was never trying to find a cure. He’s trying to help them take all of us. To create something beyond an ordinary freak. I talked to one of them. He told me everything. They need us. We’re their only hope for a future.” Her nose stung as she talked about Harry, tears threatening. As terrible as he was, he’d been valuable too. A treasure lost forever.
But there would be others soon. Probably many more. Harry didn’t need tears.
Rianne reached out toward the blond-haired freak, and the freak reached back with an eager moan. Their fingertips came within an inch of touching before Kendra, Sonia, and Ursulina wrestled Rianne away. The girl crumpled into sobs, clinging to them. Kendra knew that terrible cry well; it was always hidden inside her too.
“That’s not your friend anymore,” Kendra said. “She’s not here, but you are. And you have a home. You have p
eople who care about you so much they were willing to risk everything to bring you back.”
“Yeah, and other people who need to get the hell out of here,” Piranha said. “Like us.”
Thirty-Three
Joseph Allen Wales was unconscious, dreaming he was wrestling the frayed strands of a web that fell apart beneath his weight. Then the web freed him suddenly, and he was pitched into a terrifying free fall, plummeting toward … what?
Knocking. At his door. Yes, his room. A Taser. The girl!
With a gasp, Wales opened his eyes. He was relieved to find that Sonia was gone. She could be anywhere telling her tale by now, if anyone would believe her.
“Mr. Wales?” His bodyguard’s voice called through the door. Vladimir, who had been with Wales for twenty years. Thank God!
“Yes, I’m here—come in!” Wales said.
He cringed at the idea of being found tied to his bedposts in his robe. Before his coming-of-age after the Change, he’d forced his staff to sign nondisclosure agreements about anything they saw while on duty—and they had seen plenty. But much more than Wales’s ego was at risk now that he’d been so damned stupid with that little tease.
Tonight, at least, it was the hulking Ukranian and not one of the new recruits who might rush to the Threadie camp bonfire to gossip about what he had seen. Vladimir had been with Wales in Lost Angeles, as he’d always called tinsel town, and the nickname was truer than ever now. L.A. was a wasteland nearly beyond description, he’d been told. Awaiting rebirth.
Grief and shame seized Wales. God have mercy on him. What had he done?
Vlad’s jaw set hard when he saw Wales, and he rushed to untie his binds. He avoided Wales’s eyes, sparing him the disapproving gaze he’d perfected in Hollywood.
“The bitch?” Vlad said. Thirty years stateside had softened his accent, but not the ring of judgment. “Are you safe?”
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