“The most interesting night in centuries and this idiot has to pick tonight of all nights to deliver furniture.” The lab angel mumbles to himself as he heads for the wall to my left.
I shift to stay hidden from the angel as he moves. He shoves through a pair of swinging doors and disappears.
I inch forward, looking around to see if there’s anyone else in the room. There’s no one other than the man unloading his cadaver drawers. I wonder if I should expose myself to him and beg for help. It could save a lot of time and trouble if I could get someone on the inside to help me.
On the other hand, he might decide he could earn brownie points by turning in an intruder. Frozen in indecision, I watch him roll his empty cart out through a set of double doors across the room.
After he leaves, the empty room gurgles with the sound of air bubbles from one of the tanks. My brain screams—hurry, hurry, hurry. I have to find Paige before the resistance attacks.
But I can’t leave these people to be sucked dry by these monsters.
I sneak through the matrix of fetal columns to look for something to try to get the victims out of the tanks. At the far end of the matrix, I see a blue ladder. Perfect. I can open the tops of the tanks and try to pull the victims out.
I slide my sword back into its scabbard to free my hands. As I run to the ladder, a new mass of colors appears and starts growing to my right. The columns of fluids distort the image, giving the impression of a blob of flesh with a hundred hands and feet, with grossly distorted faces dotted all around the mass.
I edge forward cautiously. A trick of the light makes the dancing distortions look like a hundred eyes following me.
Then I step out of the column matrix and see it for what it really is.
My chest constricts and I stop breathing for a few beats. My feet stick to the floor and I just stand there in the open, staring.
CHAPTER 37
At first, my brain refuses to believe what my eyes see. My brain tries to interpret the scene as a wall of discarded dolls. Mere cloth and plastic, created by a toymaker with severe anger issues. But I can’t convince myself of the illusion and I’m forced to see it for what it is.
Against the white wall are stacks and stacks of children.
Some stand stiffly against the wall and on each other, half a dozen deep. Some sit propped up against the wall and against the legs of the other children. And some lie on their backs and stomachs, stacked on top of each other like cords of wood.
They range from toddler size to about ten or twelve years old. They are all naked, stripped of anything that might protect them. All have distinctive autopsy stitch marks in a Y shape starting at their little chests and going down to their groins.
Most of them have additional stitch marks along their arms, legs, throats, groins. A few have stitches across their faces. Some of the kids' eyes are wide open, others closed. Some of their eyes have yellow or red instead of white around the irises. Some only have gaping holes where the eyes used to be, and others have their eyes sewn shut with big, clumsy stitches.
I almost lose the ongoing battle with my stomach, and all that rich food I ate earlier comes up in my throat. I have to swallow hard to keep it in. My breath feels too hot, and the air feels too cold on my prickling skin.
I want to—need to—close my eyes, to blot out what they see. But I can’t. I’m searching. Looking at every brutalized child for my little sister’s pixie face. I start shaking all over and I can’t seem to stop.
“Paige.” My voice comes out in a broken whisper.
I can barely whisper her name, but I say it over and over as though that will somehow make it all right. I drift toward the pile of mangled corpses like a dreamer in a nightmare, unable to stop myself and unable to look away.
Please don't let her be here. Please, please. Anything but that.
“Paige?” There is horror in my voice as well as a thread of hope that maybe she’s not here.
Something stirs in the pile of stitched flesh.
I take a shaky step back, all the strength seeping out of my legs.
A little boy rolls off the top of a pile and lands face-down.