“Then I’ll wait it out here.”
Doc opens his mouth to protest, but Jacks cuts him off. “I’ll watch her,” Jack says from the doorway. “I’m off work soon, and I’ll keep an eye on her till my next shift. If she doesn’t change within the next day, she’s not going to.”
Doc considers, softening as he looks at Jacks. Maybe my initial instincts were wrong about Doc.
“Okay. But if she starts to change, you have to give her the injection. . . . No hesitation.”
Jacks’s eyes flick to me before returning to Doc. “I’ll watch her,” he says. “You have my word.”
Doc has left us to have my blood tested, giving me one last, hard look before leaving the room.
“What’s in the injection?” I ask after a few minutes of silence. I scan the room for the syringe and find it resting on a metal tray on the counter across from me.
“Potassium chloride.” He pulls over a chair and sits between me and the syringe, but not too close to either. “If you start to change, I’ll have to give it to you,” he says. “It’ll stop your heart.”
I grin darkly. “Why don’t you just ask Tank to take care of it?”
“I wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
“So what’s his deal anyway?” I ask. “Are there a lot of guys like him in Fort Black?”
“Tank is . . . complicated.” Jacks looks away. “He may seem dumb, but he’s really good at manipulating people into doing what he wants.”
“Like his buddy Pete?” I ask.
“Exactly. Last year, a fourteen-year-old girl went missing. A rumor spread that she ran off, but then another girl vanished a few months later.”
“You think Tank . . . ?”
Jacks nods. “People die here, people leave, but we all try to keep track of the women.” He avoids catching my eye. “There aren’t a lot of you left.”
“I see.”
“After the third girl went missing, some of the men got together and led a lynch mob against Tank. Tank somehow got one of his cronies to take the blame.”
“Was there any proof?”
He shook his head. “There wasn’t any proof, no witnesses, but I’m sure Tank let that man pay for his crime. With one of the girls, Tank was stalking her for a while, showing up everywhere she went. She complained about it all the time, but her father couldn’t protect her. Then she just disappeared.”
“No one found her body? She could have just run away.”
He shakes his head. “She wasn’t the type. Tank got to her and hid the body. I don’t know how connected he was to the two other girls, but he eventually moved on to someone new. Became obsessed with her. If that’s not proof enough, he has a . . . prior record of abducting teen girls.” His voice sounds hollow and sad. “It’s why he was in prison.”
“What happened to the new girl he was bothering?”
“She died, but not by his hands. I know he would have tried eventually. There’s something not right with him.”
My stomach drops. “And now he’s taken a liking to me?”
“That’s why you need to be careful.” He sees the look on my face and quickly adds, “Hey, do you really want to be talking about this stuff right now?”
I swallow my dread and shrug. “What better way to kill time while you wait for me to change into a Florae?”
Suddenly there’s a commotion outside. A man pops his head in the door. “Jacks, we need you.”
Jacks looks at me uncertainly.
“Don’t worry, I won’t go all Florae on you.”
“Stay here. If you don’t, I won’t be able to help you if you run into someone like Tank.”
I nod as he rushes out. I hear more shouting. Footsteps running down the hall. Then nothing.
I sit up and slip off the exam table. Moving quietly to the door, I open it a crack. Doc’s voice is echoing down the hall. I inch the door open farther and look both ways, checking for Tank or any other guard. There’s no one around, the hall quiet except for the hum of the lights and the far-off commotion Jacks is dealing with. I close my eyes and try to make out what Doc is saying.
“. . . blood pressure normal . . . CBC normal . . .” Doc’s voice carries up the hall. “Now, which inoculation are we on?” he asks, then answers his own question: “F1T13.” He continues chatting away to himself. “Patient refused examination and all immunizations.”
He’s talking about me.
“I will try to convince her of the importance of having an up-to-date shot, then release her into Fort Black.” Doc continues to talk to himself, rattling off names of people who are due for an updated flu shot. Nothing sinister there, just a slightly loopy doctor going over his charts with himself.