“No.” I yanked against the cuffs, the beeps on my heart monitor getting louder and faster. “You can’t do this.” Though I knew they could and would. My words were pointless and wasteful.
“This girl is riddled with sexual disease and suffers from malnutrition from living in squalor. This is a wonderful opportunity we are giving her.” Dr. Karl spoke as though she should be bowing down at his feet, an honor that he took a moment of his time to help a piece of trash like her. “A chance to do something good with her life.”
“You don’t know what this will do.” I wrenched harder at the restraints.
“Someone needs to calm down.” Dr. Karl turned to me. Before I could even react, he jabbed me with another sedative, my insides warming and melting instantly, though my mind struggled going down. I shook my head, my refusal falling dead on my tongue, my eyes watering.
I had no choice but to comply. The lethargy took over, along with the sensation of being violated. My very essence was being pried from me and shoved into a stranger. A cry only gurgled in my throat before everything became a hazy trance.
“This should take an hour or so. Then I’ll want to test where you are.” Dr. Karl turned on the machine, pumping my blood into her arm.
Exhaustion fluttered my lids. My body was working so hard to defend itself, and I could do nothing to protect it, to stop the machines from raping more of my essence. Taking, violating, robbing.
After twenty minutes of the red liquid continuously slipping into her veins, lost to me forever, she started to stir as if she had been zapped with electricity.
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Karl didn’t even look at her, checking her monitor and writing notes on his clipboard. “Dizziness? Nausea?”
“Actually...” She licked her lips. “I feel amazing.” Her voice was soft and light, though it held strength and the knowledge of the pain and suffering life can deliver.
“Describe everything you are feeling.” Dr. Karl pulled out an otoscope, peering into her eyes.
“As though I could run for days. I feel energy I haven’t felt... ever.” She gushed with a giggle.
Cranking my head to look at her, I noticed her hazel eyes were bright, her cheeks flushing more and more rosy with every minute passing, the pockmarks lightening. Her hair even had a shine to it.
Robbing me of mine.
“Like I can barely sit still. Lighter and healthy. Is that strange to say? But it’s true. I feel strong. Powerful.”
He wrote everything down. The hiss and beeps chirped like an alarm, burning through my veins.
Attacked. Ravaged. Desecrated.
“Warwick...” I reached out, feeling our connection diluting, a single drop of ink in an ocean. I could barely feel the buzz anymore. To know he was all right.
“Farkas?”
Nothing.
No. He’s fucking mine! Anger burned through what was left of the drugs, fear swirling in my stomach, boiling down the back of my throat.
The sound of thrashing snapped my attention to the girl with a sudden movement. Her cuffed legs and arms knocked violently against the gurney as she started to cough and wheeze.
My mouth parted as she convulsed, her mouth open, gasping for air but not seeming to get any.
What the fuck happened? She was fine a moment ago.
“What the hell?” Dr. Karl moved to her. It seemed he had no idea what to do as her body seized and jerked on the table, and he rushed to find his sedative.
“Help her!” I screamed.
Sounds ripped up her throat, tearing through her esophagus. Blood spurted up like a fountain, forcing her to choke on it. Her head turned toward me, and I froze in terror as I watched blood pour from her eyes and mouth, flashing me back to the day in Killian’s lab, watching that woman die in front of me. The horrific scene which had stained my soul was now repeating itself.
Panic and terror also bled from her eyes, her gaze directly on me as if she were begging me to do something.
I couldn’t move or speak. Petrified.
Her body jolted again, her mouth moving. “Help me...” The words barely left her lips before she went still.
Dead. I knew because I could feel her life slip away, not even lingering for a moment, her soul taking flight, free of her body’s limitations.
Dr. Karl danced around her, pumping her chest and pulling out the defibrillator, panic soaking his clothes with sweat. “No, no! You can’t do this. You were fine! It was working.”
Swallowing, I stared up at the ceiling, numb, blank.
The girl was alive just five minutes ago. Now, she was dead.
Istvan was to blame, but I knew I would carry the burden of her death.
“Take her back to her cell.” Dr. Karl pointed to me from his lab table when two officers entered. Karl had long since given up trying to save the girl, but his nervous energy sprang up around him. Not because of her death, but because he was scared to tell Istvan the test had been unsuccessful.
Istvan didn’t tolerate failure.
“And remove that as was well. It will contaminate all my experiments.” He pointed his finger to the dead girl next to me. She was no more than garbage soiling his lab now. “Also, while you are at it, get someone to come in here and clean this mess up right away.”
The guards nodded, one heading quickly for me, the other frowning as he was left with the dead body. “Bastard,” he muttered. The guard unlatching my binds smirked with a quiet chuckle.
“You owe me.” The other one with curly brown hair glared over at him, unbuckling the girl.
Her mouth was
still parted in her final words. Her vacant eyes scraped into my soul as if it were my fault.
I didn’t even know her name.
“Come on.” The young guard yanked me up, my legs unsteady, my head spinning at the sudden movement. I was drained, physically and mentally, but followed the man without a word.
The other officer wrapped up the girl in the cloth from the gurney and threw her over his shoulder like a sack.
“Don’t forget to get someone in here. Pronto!” Dr. Karl yelled after the men when we exited the lab.
“Yeah, yeah... we hear you, fat pig.” The one holding me, with short blond hair, muttered under his breath. “Thinks he can order us around like he’s the general.”
“Right?” Brown Curls huffed, hitching the dead girl higher on his shoulder. “We’re not those pill-poppin’ mindless drones the general has at HDF and Věrhăza.”
My ears pricked at their chatter. They didn’t consider me anything more than a walking lab rat.
“Fuck, I’ve heard things about the ones in Věrhăza... like feral and shit.” Brown Curls shook his head, his grip on my arm tight.
“Guess you get what you pay for.”
They both laughed, and I ground my teeth together. Entitled bastards.
“My father is still bitching about how expensive the tank treatment was.” Blondie shook his head.
The other guy nodded in agreement. “But so fucking worth it.”
These two were part of the tank experiments?
Now that I was aware, I could see the huge difference between those in the prison and these guys. The guards at Věrhăza were aggressive, mindless, and feral. These guys seemed “normal” besides the fact they had been turned into fae. Machine-made. Did they know at any moment they could die? Was it weeks? Years? Would it be worth it to them?
“Help me dump this one, find the servant girl, then we can head out for a beer after we return her.” We moved down the hall.
“How about you find the servant and discard the body, and I’ll take her back?” Blondie grinned, tugging on my arm.
“You owe me, asshole.”
“Fine.” Blondie sighed, turning us down a new passage. This place was much bigger than I first thought.
“Hey! Girl.” Brown Curls yelled out at a woman down the hall.
Lena stopped, her gaze quickly jumping over me, her throat bobbing.
“This needs to be dumped, and Dr. Karl needs you to clean up the mess in the lab.” Brown Curls continued as we strolled right up to her. “
“Of course. I’ll go get the trolley. Wait here.”
“Lena and I work at the factory they are using for their fae experiments... we were promoted one day out of the blue about a year ago. To do cleanup.” The words of her brother, Emil, flung back into my head. Is this what they meant by cleanup?
As if she could hear my thoughts, her eyes shot to me. Something in them tugged at my subconscious, as if she was trying to tell me something. But before I could understand, she turned for a door next to us, opening it slowly.
I pinned my lips together to keep from making a noise. My eyes gobbled up what was on the other side of the door. Rows and rows of jail cells. The ones I could see were more like the HDF prisons. Sterile, clean, and even had seatless toilets, unlike the fae cages.
Men, women. Young and old. Sickly, thin, and haggard.
Humans.
They all looked as if they had been plucked right off the streets of Savage Lands. Those who had no shelter, no job, and no food. Living from moment to moment, hoping for someone to actually see them. To care and help.