“One. Two. Three!”
Mothball’s parents brought their hands low then flung them toward the sky, letting go at the right moment to send the weapons flying up and well over the top of the wooden fence and the waiting Fifths. A few seconds later, the clatter of the weapons raining down on the other side was immediately followed by the ripping static thumps of the Ragers exploding. Then came the Squeezers’ metallic clanging and sounds of wires whizzing through the air. All muted and distant, but loud enough to be heard clearly.
“Go!” Sato yelled. “Go now!”
The six soldiers were already on the move. They grabbed the very top of the fence and swung their legs over, the bulky Shurrics already gripped in one of their hands, ready to start firing. They disappeared from sight.
Sato started climbing the wall after them. “Go! Go! Come on!” He didn’t need to say it—every last Fifth was already scaling the clunky wood face of the fence.
Just before Sato reached the top, a soldier’s head suddenly popped back over, looking straight down at him. It was a woman, and she had a puzzled look creasing her skinny face.
“What’s the matter?” Sato asked.
“You need to see this,” was her response. She disappeared once again.
Sato clambered up the last few feet to look over the edge. He’d had ideas of what to expect inside—barracks, groups of creatures, large weapons ready to fire, a creepy hospital-looking thing that was the Factory. But he froze in confusion at what he saw below him.
Other than the grove of trees that grew close to the iron gate, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
From where he perched on the fence, looking left and right and forward all the way to the other side of the fence—barely visible in the distance—he saw nothing but dirt and mud and a few trees. Not one building, not one creature, not one person other than the soldiers he’d sent over.
Dirt and mud and trees.
Sato turned to Mothball, who was right next to him and looking as bewildered as he felt. “Are we sure we came to the right place?”
~
Tick wanted to look away. Every single cell in his body wanted him to look away. Every notion of normalcy and human decency and right-and-wrong screamed at him to look away—that this wasn’t something a boy like him should witness.
But he stared through the window in disbelief that Jane could really be this evil.
The room was identical to the first one—three beds lined up in a triangle, the odd, skin-like bio-tube, and a creepy man in the middle, his back turned, typing away at a computer. As before, the closest bed was empty and the left and right beds had occupants. But that’s where the similarities ended and the true horrors began.
Another raven lay on the bed to the left—or what used to be a raven. The poor thing that lay there now barely resembled a living being. It looked like a corpse, its emaciated body sucked dry of fat and water, the feathers gone, yellowed skin clinging to its bones. The bio-tube still grew out of its dead chest toward the ceiling.
Tick turned his attention to the right bed, where a panting wolf lay clinging to life, the other end of the tube shaking with each desperate breath. Most of its black-gray fur had fallen out, littering the bed and the surrounding floor like some kind of haunted barber shop. Diseased skin stretched taut over the dying thing’s bones.
And then there was that third bed. Empty. Waiting. For what?
When Jane spoke, Tick flinched, startled. “The needed materials have been fully exhumed from the subjects at this stage. They’ve been collected, filtered, sorted out, and reconfigured. All done with an intense heightening of the scientific process made possible by our special version of Chi’karda. The sweet sacrifice of these two noble creatures is about to conclude in an even greater achievement than their separate lives could ever have accomplished. And one day we’ll be ready to use human subjects. I’ve already gathered many worthy candidates—children with the spark of Chi’karda strongly within them. Soon the possibilities will be endless.”
Tick’s hands compacted into tight fists. He felt like the skin might burst, he squeezed them so tightly. Trickles of Chi’karda burned within him. It took every bit of his willpower not to explode, do whatever it took to kill this insane, evil woman.
“Ah,” she said with an intake of breath, a sick burst full of joy. “It’s just about to happen. Keep watching, keep watching!”