‘Jesus,’ Leoben says. ‘What the hell did you just do?’
I crawl to the back of the jeep and push open the rear doors. ‘I knocked him out. He’ll be down for fifteen minutes. I’m going in there alone – don’t try to follow me. Wait out here and block his connection.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Leoben says, stunned. ‘Welcome back, Jun Bei.’
I nod, turning to stride to the lab, not sure how I feel about hearing that.
The steel door set into the front of the lab is unlocked. I push it open to a shadowed waiting room I’d expect to find in a doctor’s surgery. Dust-covered chairs are arranged beside an empty reception desk, with the Cartaxus antlers printed on a sign behind it. Triangular lights on the ceiling blink to life the moment I step inside, creating a glowing path leading to a hallway across the room.
Lachlan knows I’m here. Of course he does. He’s probably been tracking our movements all the way from Sunnyvale. The lights pulse, urging me to follow them. Lachlan is guiding me through the lab.
‘OK, then,’ I mutter. ‘I’ll come to you.’
I let the door swing shut behind me and limp down the hallway. The overhead lights flicker as I walk, guiding me past dusty rooms that tug at my memory. I’ve run down this hallway before, and I’ve been dragged down it by my hair, kicking and screaming, with wires in my arm.
The lights stop at an unmarked door, but even without them, somehow I know this is where I need to go. I can feel it, deep down. An itch in the base of my skull. I grit my teeth and turn the handle.
The door swings open to reveal the gleaming laboratory I’ve seen so many times before. The room from my dreams, and the flashes during the decryption. The tiled floor and wall of glass looking out at the three mountain peaks. They loom beyond the window, shrouded in mist.
Lachlan sits across the room, watching me with a smile.
‘Hello, darling,’ he says. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
I freeze. I’ve been preparing myself to see him for the last two hours, but the sight of him still takes me by surprise. He’s badly wounded. The skin on his face is scabbed and raw, and he’s sitting back in a mechanical chair that looks like it belongs in a dentist’s surgery. One hand is bandaged; the other is a blistered mess. His wrists and neck are wrapped in layers of blood-spotted gauze.
But it’s him. Lachlan. The man I once called Father. Meeting his gaze brings back a flood of jumbled memories. I see our days together in the cabin mixed up with the years spent as a prisoner in this nightmare of a lab.
I was his experimental subject. His victim.
But for the past three years I was his daughter, too.
‘It’s really you,’ I say, stepping into the doorway. Lachlan’s bloodshot eyes drop to the handgun at my side. Something attached to the door starts humming.
I look down just in time to see two electromagnets tear the socket out of my wounded knee.
CHAPTER 46
I fall to the floor, letting out a scream as twin arcs of pain burn through my legs. Blood splashes the tiles. My lungs contract and lock like fists, sending me sliding to my side.
My right knee seems intact. It was further from the door when the magnets turned on.
My left knee, the one I destroyed at Homestake, wasn’t nearly so lucky.
The black fabric of my trousers is torn open, revealing a gaping wound in the flesh of my left leg. It stretches from mid-thigh down to my calf, exposing dark muscle, beating veins and the white glint of bone.
Lachlan put electromagnets inside the door. That’s my trap, my own goddamn trap. How the hell did he know?
The handgun at my side is gone, ripped from its holster by the magnets. It bounces off the door frame and skids across the tiles, coming to a stop just out of my reach. The metal socket from my left knee is embedded in the side of the doorway, and the end of the gold-flecked cable that ran down my leg hangs from the wound. It flips about on the tiles, broken and sparking, trying to reach the socket again.
‘Use your belt, quickly.’
I look up, woozy. Lachlan sits motionless in the chair, watching impassively as my blood forms a dark, gleaming pool on the tiles.
‘You’re going to need to cinch your thigh, or you’ll bleed out. That’s an artery, darling. You’d better hurry. You’ll be unconscious soon.’
I yank my belt off with blood-soaked fingers, fumbling as I wrap it around my thigh.
‘Tight, now.’
I gasp, wrenching the belt tight, gritting my teeth against the pain.
‘That’s good. I’m sorry to have to hurt you, Catarina, but I wanted to make sure we had time to talk before you try to kill me.’
I tie the belt off, holding the end to keep it tight, but the wound is still pulsing with thick, hot blood. The tissue in my knee is new and fragile after I hurt it at Homestake. The magnet ripped it open like a knife slicing through fruit. I grit my teeth, yanking the belt tighter. ‘I’m not going to have much time to talk if I keep bleeding like this.’
Lachlan watches me for a moment, then nods. A steel drawer beside me shoots open with a hiss of refrigerated air, revealing a row of silver syringes.
‘Healing tech,’ he says. ‘Straight into the wound, that’s the fastest way. It’s the latest generation. I designed it myself.’
I pick up a syringe, biting my lip. I don’t trust Lachlan, not by a long shot, but the puddle of blood around me is growing by the second. The bleeding shows no sign of stopping. I can feel my blood pressure dropping. I don’t have any choice but to do what he says.
I drive the needle into my shredded flesh, scrunching my eyes shut.
‘That’s my girl,’ he says. ‘Well done.’
Almost instantly, the pain ebbs away. I drop the blood-smeared syringe on the floor, gasping with relief. The blood flowing from the wound slows, then turns into a trickle. I shift my weight, pushing myself up shakily until I’m sitting against the wall, my legs splayed out in front of me.
Lachlan watches me, his expression still impassive and unreadable. Part of me is flung back to when Cole first told me he was dead. I cried for this man. I loved him. Maybe part of me still does. That would explain the tightness in my throat, the pounding of my heart. I came here today with a gun and every intention of using it, but sitting here now, looking into Lachlan’s eyes, I don’t know if I could.
He coughs wetly. He looks seriously wounded. Bandages cover his ankles and feet, and what skin I can see on his hands and neck is blistered and scabbed.
‘You’re hurt too,’ I say. ‘It looks like you could use one of these syringes.’
His eyes drift down to his bandaged hand. ‘Unfortunately that isn’t possible. I miscalculated the time I’d need to get out of the lab at Cartaxus when I blew it up. The genkits corrupted my panel when they detonated. I can’t risk using healing tech until my system is clear.’
‘That’s not like you. You’re normally so careful.’