She’s breathing. Extremely, impossibly slow, but still breathing.
I tear my eyes away from her and force myself to scan the room for something I can use to get her out of this tank. Now I can see other tanks here and there that have people trapped in them too. They are all in different stages of the deadly embrace with some still looking vital and fresh, while others look drained and close to empty.
One of the scorpions has a fresh woman in a party dress in its arms and is kissing her on the mouth with her oxygen mask dangling above her. Another has a man in a hotel uniform. His scorpion beast has its mouth latched onto his eye.
It’s not a systematic feeding. Some tanks have a large pile at the bottom while others have very little. It shows in the various scorpion angels too. Some are large and muscular while others are puny and malformed.
As I stand there feeling stunned and ill, a door opens on the far side of the basement and I hear something rolling on the concrete.
My instinct is to hide behind a monster’s tank, but I can’t force myself to get close to one. So I stand in the middle of the glass column matrix, trying to decipher what is happening on the other side. Trying to see the room through the glass columns is like trying to read a note on the other side of a shark tank. Everything looks distorted and unrecognizable.
If I can’t see the angels, they shouldn’t be able to see me. I sneak around one of the columns and get a different perspective on the room. I steel myself to ignore the victims. I’ll be no use to anyone if I’m caught.
On the other side of the matrix, an angel is berating a human servant. “The drawers were supposed to arrive last week.” He wears a white lab coat draped over his wings.
The human stands behind an enormous steel cabinet balanced on top of a flatbed cart. It’s three drawers high with each drawer large enough to hold a person. I don’t want to think about what is meant to go into them.
“You picked the worst night to deliver these.” The angel vaguely waves his hand toward the far wall. “Stack them over there against the wall. They need to be secured so they never tip over. The bodies are over there.” He points to the adjacent wall. “I’ve had to pile them on the floor, thanks to your tardiness. You can put the bodies in the drawers when you’re done setting up.”
The servant looks horrified but the lab angel doesn’t seem to notice. The man moves to the far wall with the cabinet, while the angel walks the other way.
“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.