The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)

Dr. Arlan was a wild card. I didn’t know him that well, and I couldn’t bank on him not giving up our location. There were dozens of people in the camp, including my cousin, his wife, and their children.

Standing up, I made a snap decision and checked my watch. It had been about three minutes since Amber’s transmission. Twenty-seven minutes until they returned, if the heloship flight went smoothly. I set the timer on my watch, and then headed down the hall. I pushed open the closest door and stepped inside. The room reeked of the plastic, antiseptic, medical smell that seemed prevalent in all hospital rooms.

The room was dimly lit, with only two battery-powered lanterns on the lowest setting illuminating the two twin beds on either side of the room. They were flanked by IV stands, which dangled clear plastic bags connected to the beds’ occupants by long plastic tubes. Henrik lay on the left, Quinn on the right. I moved slowly over to Henrik, taking in the older male’s sallow skin and the dark shadows under his eyes. Something stirred behind me, and I turned, seeing Dr. Tierney sit up from her makeshift pallet on the floor against the wall separating the hall from the room, her eyes squinting at me in confusion.

“It’s all right, Dr. T,” came a voice from Quinn’s side of the room. “It’s Violet.”

Turning, I noticed Jay sitting on a chair at the foot of Quinn’s bed, his legs drawn up on the seat with his arms wrapped around himself. Samuel sat underneath his perch, and the dog looked up at me with big brown eyes and thumped his tail against the floor a couple times, looking almost as careworn as Jay did.

“Hey, Jay,” I said softly, and he smiled at me, but it was lined with tired edges. The young man didn’t look like he’d been sleeping much.

“Violet?” Dr. Tierney’s voice was thick with sleep, her brown hair mussed and tangled. “What’s wrong? Did anyone get hurt?”

She was already beginning to push herself up off the ground, and I hesitated, then moved closer and offered her my hand. She squinted at it for a moment, and then batted it aside with a grimace. “No helping anyone up,” she griped as she got her legs under her. “Let’s call that doctor’s order number seventeen.”

I waited until she had stood and placed her spectacles on her face, then asked, “Dr. Tierney, what would you need to move Henrik and Quinn?”

She turned abruptly, her brows drawing together. “Why?” she asked. Jay leaned forward, the chair squeaking slightly under his weight, attracting my eyes. Nervousness fluttered unexpectedly in my stomach at this first moment of having to explain my plan, and I realized I was worried they might think I was overreacting. I steeled myself, explaining my worst-case scenario to the doctor with Jay listening in.

Surprisingly, she nodded. “That’s prudent thinking,” she said. She looked at Henrik, then at Quinn, her gaze thoughtful and considerate. “We’d need a vehicle large enough to transfer them and all this equipment. Theoretically, Henrik can be taken off most of these, but Quinn...”

She shook her head, and I moved closer to the young man, my heart heavy as I took in Tabitha’s handiwork. It seemed like every bit of him was being held together by stitches—and I couldn’t see much under the bandages. There was no telling where the cuts stopped or started. His face alone was crisscrossed with them. A set of stitches started over his left eye, just under his hairline, slashing horizontally before cutting straight down the side of his nose, down his cheek, and through his lips, stopping just under his chin. Tabitha had spared that eye, it seemed, but his other eye was covered with a bandage, stitches running from his eyebrow down his other cheek. His right ear was missing the uppermost part, while bandages covered the spot where his left should have been—but they looked suspiciously flat.

Quinn’s arms were lined with stitches, running up and down his arm with no real pattern, and I could see, on his right hand, the bandaged pinky finger that stopped an inch short of where it should have.

“Can we move him?” I asked, my voice a whisper, my mouth dry.

Doctor Tierney nodded. “As long as we can get a vehicle with a big enough open area in the back.”

I nodded and checked my watch. Twenty-two minutes. “Jay, feel up to helping me?”

The young man was off his chair and standing in front of me in moments, his face intensely serious. “What do you need?”

“Well, I need you to find who’s on guard duty tonight and send them to me in the den. I also need you to find Lynne and Morgan, and bring them to me. Do you know who they are?”

Jay nodded. “I know Lynne. She worked with us at the facility. Morgan I don’t know, but I can find him.”

“Her,” I corrected. “She’s another one of the Liberators. Lynne will know where she is. Ask them to meet me in the dining room. You come back too—I’ll need your help.”

Jay nodded and hurried off, and I turned to Dr. Tierney. “Do what you can to get these two prepped for transport. I am really hoping it won’t come to it.”

“I’m on it,” she replied, already turning away from me, focusing completely on Quinn. I turned and left, leaving the door partially open. I moved back through the dining room and into the den with the creepy animal heads, grabbing a black plastic crate off the floor. I proceeded to shove all the loose papers and files we had somehow accumulated into it, not bothering with any sort of filing system. It could be sorted later.

I was halfway through when a dark-haired, tanned man—his name was Gregory—knocked on the door. He had a rifle slung on his shoulder, and his eyes watched me, alert.

“You’re in charge of the guards tonight?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Yes. Jay said you needed to see me?”

“I need you to pull everyone scheduled for the second shift to join you in the watch. Have them patrol the area, and send a scout out to the heloship landing area in one of the larger vehicles.”