Maybe the thing with Major Tom had freaked him out more than I’d realized, and that was bad. I didn’t want him to be on guard this morning. I wanted him to dismiss me, to forget I was any kind of threat.
“I guess my stomach wasn’t ready for meatloaf,” I said as timidly as I could.
“They don’t pay me enough for this shit,” he said, glaring at me and backing out of the cell, slamming and locking the door behind him.
“Hey, no. What about the toilet?” I called, but I could already hear his footsteps retreating down the corridor. He’d seemed really upset, disproportionately so, given the situation.
Great. What if he decided to just leave me there to suffocate in that smell? It had gotten worse overnight—decidedly worse—and my bladder was painfully full. I was going to have to pee soon, which would only make things worse.
About a half an hour later, Anthony returned, but he wasn’t alone. Mike Palmer came into the cell right behind him, his eyes falling on me, the many scars on his face standing out under the pale fluorescent light.
I found myself plastered against stone, my back jammed into the corner of the bed slab, making myself as small and inaccessible as possible. This was a man I had tortured, and I was pretty sure payback was going to be a bitch.
Anthony had his gun in hand, ready and pointed in my direction, his fingers twitching to use it.
“Put the gun away,” Palmer said, frowning at him. “She’s not gonna hurt you.”
That was the last thing I’d expected Palmer to say. He’d once been terrified of my PSS, just like Anthony was.
Anthony obeyed, reluctantly, slipping his gun back into its holster, but he didn’t take his eyes off of me.
Palmer, on the other hand, completely ignored me. He crossed to the toilet and looked down into its ruined innards. “Nope,” he said. “This won’t be a quick fix. This place has ancient plumbing embedded in even older stone masonry. Doesn’t take much to gum it up. We’ll probably have to tear this floor out to get to it. Maybe even this whole wing, depending on where the clog is. In the meantime, we’re gonna have to move her,” he added, nodding in my direction.
Score one for me. At least that part of my plan had worked. No one had even noticed that the plasticware from last night was mysteriously missing.
“Fine,” Anthony said, coming at me and grabbing me by the hair to pull me out of my hidey corner. “Where do you want her?”
“You enjoy beating up on young, defenseless women?” Mike Palmer asked, his voice low and mean. I was so startled I tried to lift my head to look at him—to see if he, of all people, was seriously coming to my defense—but my movement only made Anthony tighten his hold.
“If they’re young, defenseless minus bitches, I do,” Anthony growled. “It’s better than she deserves. She’s defective.” He let go of me, shoving me back into my corner for emphasis. “You want her fuckin’ mutation getting into your family line? Because it will if we let her live and breed.”
“I’m not afraid of a bunch of kids with PSS,” Mike Palmer said, which was pretty impressive, given what we’d done to him. “As for the breeding part, there’s always sterilization.”
Gee, thanks, Palmer. Way to be on my side. I loved being talked about like I was a stray cat, instead of a human being sitting right there in front of them. But I bit my tongue and shriveled back into my corner. The goal was to get into a new cell and see more of the compound on the way, not pick a fight with two of my worst enemies.
“You hear about what happened last night?” Anthony asked, his voice pitched low.
“Yeah,” Mike answered, his face suddenly somber. “Such a shame. I still can’t believe he’d—”
“He didn’t,” Anthony cut him off. “She did something to him.” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “He was with her just hours before. That’s how dangerous this one is. She’s not like your little pet—”
“Shut up!” Mike Palmer snapped, stepping toward Anthony menacingly. “You need to learn when to keep your mouth shut, boy. And when not to.” He looked at me, and Anthony’s eyes followed. “If she did what you claim, something needs to be done.”
A look passed between them, some silent message I couldn’t decipher.
What were they talking about? What had happened last night, and who had it happened to? Dr. Fineman? Major Tom? Was that why Anthony had been acting so weird today? And what had to be done?
“Take her downstairs,” Mike Palmer said. “Find her a cell down there while we deal with this mess.”
“Sure,” Anthony said, grinning wickedly. “And on the way we can stop in for a little visit with Major Tom.” He meant it as some kind of threat, something to strike fear in my heart.
Instead, my heart soared.
If he took me to Major Tom, it would be an opportunity for me to see more of the compound. Unless he was just taking me to the interrogation cell again, but it didn’t sound like it.
Mike Palmer frowned and turned back to the toilet I’d destroyed. Apparently, he was a CAMFer, a fireman, and a plumber. Who knew he had so many hidden talents?
“Come on, let’s go,” Anthony said, grabbing me and pulling me up.
As soon as my bare feet hit the cold cement, my bladder went into warning level urgent, but there was no way I was going to ask Anthony or Mike Palmer for a potty break. Not with them there, watching. And not with the state the toilet was in. I’d just have to hold it.
“Give me your hands,” Anthony said, wheeling me around and handcuffing them behind my back.
He pushed me out the door and into the corridor, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Palmer hadn’t enacted his revenge. In fact, he’d seemed almost docile. Maybe Fineman had forbidden him to mess with me. God, I hoped so.
Anthony took me the usual route at first, pushing me ahead of him, but instead of going left and up the stairs to the lab, we took another right, then another, and then I was being shoved through the open doors of an old elevator. Anthony wouldn’t let me turn to see the buttons or the floor indicator, and the back wall wasn’t reflective enough for me to see anything clearly in it, but I did notice there weren’t any cameras. I tried to count the seconds as soon as I felt us start to descend. Unfortunately, the sensation also made me feel like every organ in my body had ganged up on my bladder and sucker-punched it.
I pressed my thighs together and shuffled my feet, something my mother had once designated “the pee dance.”
“Hold still,” Anthony barked, shoving me up against the back wall of the elevator, my face smashing against it. His whole body was pressed against mine, grinding into me. I could feel his dick against my ass through our clothes. In the past I’d seen him want me, seen him take advantage of a chance to brush against my breast or place a hand near my crotch. He’d never been as bad as Felix, my first guard, but he’d been working his way up to it. Yes, Anthony liked to hurt me, but he usually waited for Dr. Fineman’s orders to do any serious damage. Because I was a prize. Because I was a potential tool.
But there in that elevator alone with him, something had changed. I could tell he didn’t just want to hurt me. He wanted to kill me.
“I’m going to piss in here,” I said, desperate, my fear making it that much more urgent. “You need to get me to a bathroom if you don’t want another mess to clean up.”
“Another mess?” he hissed in my ear, pressing the cold circle of his gun barrel into my temple and cocking it. “How about I make you the mess, you little whore? After what you’ve done, that’s exactly what you deserve.”
He was going to do it. I could feel the need seeping out of his pores. I was going to die right there. Somehow, I’d misread everything. I’d made some crucial error and I didn’t even know what it was. Maybe this had never been a trip to see Major Tom. The elevators didn’t have cameras. Anthony could claim I’d attacked him and he’d simply killed me in self-defense. What had Palmer said to him? Something needs to be done. If that something was killing me, would Dr. Fineman real
ly be upset? Would anyone? Maybe Marcus, who was lying in a hospital bed somewhere. Maybe Passion. But they would be the only ones. My mother had probably given up searching for me by now. Fuck this. Fuck them. I didn’t want to die.
I released my bladder, opened up the gates and let it all run free. It ran down my legs, soaking warm into my pants, splattering my bare feet and filling the elevator with spritz-o-urine. It soaked into Anthony too, where he was pressed against me.
“What the—you little—” He pushed himself away, smearing me into the wall, but at least he was off me and the moment had been diffused. His gun wasn’t pressed to my head anymore.
The elevator stopped, chiming cheerily as the doors slid open.
Anthony yanked me out into a dim foyer and I almost fell, my feet slipping in my own warm piss. He hauled me down an even dimmer corridor, my wet footprints trailing behind us, to two metal doors with rubber stripping running between them. He got out his keys, fiddling with them, and then the doors were open and he was shoving me into a large, cold room, bathed in florescent light.
I stopped in the doorway, cool air rushing over me and freezing my insides.
This was not Major Tom’s office. This was not my new cell. This was not anywhere I wanted to be.
It was a morgue.
“What’s the matter?” Anthony whispered in my ear. “Not what you were hoping for?”
“I thought you were taking me to Major Tom?” I blathered, almost a plea. Across the tile floor in front of me were two large white tables. Beyond that was the wall full of metal drawers, all of them closed and shut tight. But my imagination was already filling in the contents. And I was trembling.
“Come on now,” Anthony teased, running the end of his gun along my cheekbone. “I thought you were a Goth girl and all that. Isn’t this the kind of place that turns you on? Isn’t this what you wanted when you got into Major Tom’s head and did what you did to him? Didn’t you know it would all end up here?”
Shit. He was going to kill me. No one would hear me scream down here. The mess would be easy to clean up, and he wouldn’t have to carry my body anywhere. It was the perfect place to murder someone.
“Anthony,” I said his name for the first time, hoping to tap into his humanity if there was any left. “You don’t want to do this. You’re not a killer.”
“I’m not a killer?” He laughed in my ear. “That’s funny, coming from you.” He shoved me out of his arms, then grabbed me and propelled me past the tables to the body drawers. “I told you I was taking you to Major Tom and here he is.” He yanked one of the drawers open, the body under the white sheet scrolling out before me.
I stared down at it, not understanding until Anthony reached out and pulled the sheet back.
Major Tom lay there, pale and blue and naked, his throat cut in a long gaping slice from ear to ear. There were other cuts on him as well, as if he’d been in a knife fight with a real pro, someone who’d been testing him, teasing him, whittling him down and making the agony last as long as possible.
“Oh my God,” I blurted, turning my head away.
“Look at him!” Anthony put his hands on either side of my head, forcing me to. “We found him early this morning in his office with a knife in his hand. We’ve checked all the camera feeds. No one was in or out all night. He did this to himself after you put the knife back in him. This man was a warrior and a soldier. He didn’t have a suicidal bone in his body until you got inside his head, and now he’s dead.”
“No—I—” That couldn’t be right. Major Tom had been fine yesterday.
“I know you did this, bitch, even if the doctor won’t admit it,” Anthony hissed. “He didn’t want you to know. Thought it would scare you out of using your hand for him again. Plus, he knows there’d be a lynch mob taking a visit to your cell if anyone else knew what you’re capable of. So, if you tell him I brought you down here, or say anything at all, I’ll be sure we make this trip again. Except next time you’ll stay. You understand me?”
“Yes,” I nodded. He wasn’t going to kill me. Not today. Not now.
“And if you ever come at me with that hand of yours, I’ll end you.” He pulled the sheet back over Major Tom and shut the drawer.
Then he escorted me to my new cell.
I tried to pay attention, but my mind was reeling. Major Tom was dead. Had I done that? Had I killed him? Is that what happened when people got their burdens back? I kept seeing him alive in my head, then grey and dead in that drawer, a gaping red cut across his neck.
Anthony and I hadn’t taken the elevator or any stairs. I knew that much. That meant I was still on the same level as Major Tom and the morgue, most likely the basement of the compound.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. My plan had utterly backfired. I hadn’t seen anything helpful, and I was probably further from anyone or anything else than I’d been before.
My cell was almost exactly like the previous one. Same camera in the corner. Same cement slab bed. Same metal toilet and single receding light in the ceiling.
I crossed to the slab and collapsed onto it, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.
I wasn’t a killer.
There had to be another explanation.
But I honestly couldn’t think of one.
14
OLIVIA
There were rats in my new cell, or at least they were trying to get in, scratching and scrambling at the crumbling mortar.
Maybe they were drawn to the sound of my crying, so I tried to keep it down. I couldn’t stop the tears, but I could bite back the sobs.
I slept a little. Dreams of Marcus and the pool were now a welcome escape from images of Major Tom’s smiling neck wound. Besides, I knew Marcus was safe, with Passion at his side. Most importantly, he wasn’t working for the CAMFers. I clung to that fact, chanting it in my head, making it my mantra. Marcus wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t be, or everything was lost. Especially me.
I don’t know how much time passed. A day and a night? Maybe two? The urine on my clothes dried, making them crusty and rank. I didn’t get hungry, but someone had left me a plastic pitcher of water and I drank it all. When it was gone, I began to wonder if they’d just left me to rot down in the depths of dirt and stone. My cell felt like a tomb, but it was better than the morgue. It was better than being noticed by them. I thought that for a while. And then I got angry.
I paced my cell. I cursed and flipped off the camera. I tried to tear it off the wall, but it just ended up dangling at an odd angle from wires I couldn’t cut. I contemplated smashing the cup and pitcher and clogging my new toilet, but I didn’t know where they’d put me next. There was no going down from here, except perhaps in a drawer next to Major Tom. Anthony had told Palmer I’d done that. What if the rumor spread? What if they convinced Dr. Fineman I was too much of a liability?
What if I was too much of a liability?
I lay down and cried again, and the rats become more frantic.
There was a crumbling pile of mortar near the floor now, more dust cascading down. Then something pink, like the tip of a nose, poked through.
Shit.
I scrambled back, fleeing to the corner as far as I could get from the hole. Normally, I wasn’t afraid of rodents. Rats were fine with me, in pet stores, or labs, or cages, or even on the street. I’d caught several mice that had found their way into my house, caught them humanely and released them back out into the woods behind our place. But that nose had been large, and I was less than thrilled about being trapped in a small room with a rodent of unusual size.
If I only had a weapon of some kind. Maybe I could trap it in the pitcher, but then what? I’d have a giant, scrambling, angry rat in a plastic pitcher and it would chew its way out eventually.
More mortar crumbled and the pink thing jutted out further.
It wasn’t a nose at all.
It was someone’s finger, poking through the wall, then quickly retracted again.
I jumped off the slab and
threw myself on the floor, putting my mouth up to the crumbling wall. “Hello? Who are you?” I began digging frantically at the wall with my own fingers, brushing away the dust. “Hello? Are you there?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the camera, but thanks to my earlier rage it was now slanted away, pointing to the far corner of the room.
“They can’t see us or hear us,” I told the wall, almost yelling now. “Why won’t you answer me?”
I jammed the index finger of my flesh hand between two stones, breaking through to the other side. I wiggled it, attempting to make an even bigger hole I might be able to see through.
Something touched my finger and I froze. It was the gentle rub of a fingertip against mine, running over my jagged, dirty fingernail, then under as if memorizing the lines of my fingerprint. Human contact, so gentle and wholly unexpected in that deepest, darkest place—I cannot explain what it did to me—but I burst into tears, sobbing and hiccupping and heaving, with my finger stuck in a hole in the wall.
Then, the other finger was gone and I cried out, “Wait. Don’t leave me.”
I waited, holding my finger still, then wiggling it. How do you make the tip of your finger look inviting, friendly, hopeful, needy, desperate? I knew it was silly, but I was afraid to pull it out. What if that other finger took it as a sign of rejection? What if it never came back? What if the person who belonged to that finger had weighed my finger and found it wanting? Thank God I hadn’t used a ghost finger.
“Please, come back,” I begged.
And it did, touching me firmly, pushing and nudging my finger back through the hole. I slipped my finger out and her finger came through, but only for a moment, and then it was gone.
I heard a sound, like the crinkle of paper, and I bent down, peering through the hole. Something was coming through, something small and folded. Oh my God. It was a note.
As soon as the edge of it passed the threshold of the hole, I snatched it. “I’ve got it. I’ve got your note. Thank you,” I said, unfolding it as quickly as I could.
It was the page of a book. Page 113 of some book titled The Bone Road.