There was a camera posted at the top right corner of our cage, recording our every move and word.
There were no beds for us, no blankets and the toilet was out in the open. The number of lab coats thinned out in an unhurried but continuous stream, until only two people remained. The others would be back, though. I knew they would.
I stepped up to the bars blocking me from Jaclyn. Up close, I could see the gauntness of her cheeks.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“A little over a month, I think. I lost track of time.”
“We thought you were dead.”
“Only in my favorite dreams.” She shrugged, the action weak. “Mr. K wanted a way to control Justin, to force him back to Cole...to you. Rather than tell him I was a prisoner, and risk him spending his time searching for me, he told my brother Cole killed me.”
Mr. K. The guy running this show. Ms. Wright’s replacement. The man whose daughter was sick—the girl I was somehow supposed to help.
“I’ve tried to escape,” she said. “I think that’s why they keep me undernourished now. So I stay pathetic and feeble.”
Good plan. Fatigue had added weight to each of my limbs, and my eyelids felt as if they’d been replaced by sandpaper. Blinking was a terrible chore. Can’t allow myself to fall asleep. An opportunity to do something, anything, might present itself.
“People come in, but they never walk out,” she continued. “Mr. K likes to experiment on cancer patients. I think maybe he’s trying to cure them, because he’s always upset when they die, but he’s sucked it up worse than a Hoover. The patients are now the zombies that you see here.”
He’d made an army of zombies out of cancer patients? The man was seriously unbalanced.
“What kind of security does he have?” I asked.
“There are always guards outside the room, monitoring us. I don’t know how many. And they’ve got their version of the Blood Lines all over the place, even the bars, so our spirits can’t leave and alert another slayer.”
No wonder Emma hadn’t shown.
Another hope withered.
At 7:58 a.m. the doors at the far end of the room slid open, and the grinning man from the forest entered. Two tall, armed men flanked his sides, and the group approached my cage. Kat and Reeve were huddled together, leaning on each other, their eyes closed and their breathing even. Their adrenaline had crashed, I think, and when sleep had finally come, they’d been unable to resist.
“You’re coming with us, Miss Bell.”
Jaclyn reached through the bars and squeezed my wrists. “It’s going to hurt. I’m sorry.”
Metal rattled against metal as the cage door was unlocked. The armed men pounded inside, and my heart beat in tune with their angry steps. I wouldn’t leave my friends easily and threw a punch. My knuckles connected with the nose of the guy on the left. Blood spurted, and he howled with pain. Before I could do the same to the other guy, he grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, pain exploding through my shoulder.
Cuffs were slapped on me and I was shoved out of the cage. That. Easily.
“Hey! What are you doing? Let her go!” Kat called, the commotion having roused her.
The zombies erupted into a flurry of motion and sound. Grunts, groans, shuffling footsteps.
Hungry...
Feed...
Soon...
Now...
As the whispers reached my conscious, making me tremble, I was led into another room. There was a chair; something usually found in a dentist’s office. Beside it was a padded stool, a table with different-sized blades and syringes strewn across the surface and some kind of machine that looked like a car engine.
As I was strapped to the chair, I fought for freedom.
“Calm down, Miss Bell,” Forest Guy said. “We’re going to talk, you and I.”
“Screw you.”
He ignored me. “I’m Kelly Hamilton. I don’t usually share my name—I prefer the anonymity of Mr. K—but you and I are going to be closer than most. You, my dear, may call me Kelly.”
Hamilton. Like Ethan Hamilton. Kelly had to be his father.