It had to be related to my pregnancy. But what was the point of shielding myself from a traumatic conception, when the pregnancy itself remained as evidence that something had happened?
“Delilah.” Pagano’s voice startled me back into awareness, and I realized I’d stopped pushing the cart. “One more tray. Let’s go.”
I checked the list hanging from the cart and saw an unfamiliar name, next to a room I didn’t recognize.
Dr. Hill. Lab.
Frowning, I looked up at Pagano. “Where’s the lab?”
“In the basement. But it’s only open as needed. I don’t think you’ve been down there.” He led me into the elevator, then pressed the L button. Which I’d never noticed. Was the basement lab, like the secret hallway, hidden from casual observation?
The elevator descended, and when the doors opened, a wave of nausea washed over me. Pagano stepped out into a tiled foyer in front of a long glass wall, beyond which was a room furnished more like an infirmary wing than a research lab.
My handler was wrong. I’d been there before.
I didn’t recognize the row of padded exam tables or the countertop stretching across the opposite wall. I didn’t recognize the trays of sterile equipment or the curtains hanging from tracks mounted on the ceiling, separating one table from the next. But I recognized the astringent scent and the cold air. The echo of Pagano’s boots on the tile made my stomach churn.
“Delilah. Come on,” he said, and when I didn’t move, he pulled the cart into the foyer, then hauled me out of the elevator by one arm.
“Finally!” An unfamiliar man looked up from the form he’d been scribbling on and pulled one of the frameless glass doors open. “You’re late,” he said as I pushed the lunch cart into the lab. I was supposed to hand him the last tray. But I couldn’t move.
Why had I been in there before? Had I buried the memory for a reason, or was my time in the basement lab just collateral damage from my two-month system wipe?
“Delilah. Wake up,” Pagano said, and I lifted the tray without feeling its weight. Without smelling the food.
The man in the lab coat rolled his eyes and snatched his lunch from me.
“Sorry, Dr. Hill. She’s been acting pretty weird lately.”
I studied the doctor’s face, but it didn’t set off any mental or psychological alarms. He was not the source of my discomfort in the lab.
“Delilah?” The voice was soft and it cracked on the last syllable of my name, but I would have recognized it anywhere.
I turned to find Lenore staring at me from one of the padded tables, holding back the curtain between us with one arm. The siren’s eyes were glazed, and her voice carried more pain than I could fathom, but no compulsion whatsoever.
“Lenore!” I jogged across the floor toward her, and when the doctor tried to grab me, Pagano blocked his reach.
“It’s not safe to touch her with bare hands.”
“What happened?” I pushed back the curtain to see that Lenore was covered by a white hospital sheet. “Are you okay?” If she was sick, why wasn’t she upstairs on the main infirmary floor?
“Get her out of here,” Dr. Hill said, but I hardly heard him.
“They took it.” Lenore’s words were slurred; she’d been sedated. “I don’t know whether I wanted it, but now that it’s gone...” Tears slid down her cheeks and left wet spots on the paper-covered pillow beneath her head.
They took it. Magnolia’s face flashed behind my eyes, but it was Simra’s voice I heard, explaining what happened to captives who got pregnant.
“Oh, Lenore.” I brushed hair back from her face and blinked away tears of my own. This basement lab, only open as needed, was where Tabitha sent them to have the problem removed.
So, why had I been there, if not to end my pregnancy?
To confirm it with a test or an exam?
“Don’t tell Kevin.” The siren eyes fluttered closed as she spoke. She’d passed out, which meant I didn’t have to remind her that her husband had been arrested along with Alyrose and Abraxas for helping us take over the menagerie. Kevin was in prison.
His wife was in hell.
“You did this to her?” I turned on the doctor and felt my hair begin to stand up at the roots. “You operated on her without her consent?”
“Consent?” He crunched into a carrot stick from his tray. “She’s not a patient, she’s a cryptid. If you ask me, you should all be fixed when you’re brought in. That’d be cheaper in the long run.”
“Fixed?” The furiae roared within me, her outrage echoing through every cell in my body.
Lenore would be avenged.
“Delilah.” Pagano had one hand on his stun gun, but he hadn’t pulled it yet. His other hand held the remote control. With one click, he could immobilize me, but he was waiting. Giving me a chance to rein it in.
“It’s okay,” I lied. My voice sounded strangely full and my vision was so sharp I could see individual threads in the weave of his uniform. “Let’s go before I lose control of it.”
Pagano didn’t holster his remote, but his stance lost a little of its tension.
“Control of what?” the doctor said around his carrot. “What’s her deal?”
I headed toward Pagano, and his gaze was glued to my eyes, which were no doubt absent irises and threaded with black veins. As I drew even with Dr. Hill on my way to the door, I sucked in a deep breath. Then I leapt at him.
“No!” Pagano pressed the button on his remote, paralyzing me even as pain shot through my entire body. But I was already airborne. Momentum drove me into the doctor, throwing us both to the ground.
The doctor’s elbow cracked against the floor, and he howled in pain.
“Don’t touch her!” Pagano cried, but Hill shoved my limp, pain-racked form onto the floor. His hand brushed my arm, and my pulse surged as rage poured out of me and into him. As fire raced through my veins from my collar, scorching every inch of me.
The doctor froze. Then he pushed himself upright, while I lay panting on the ground at his feet.
Both my paralysis and the sadistic electric current ended.
“Dr. Hill?” Pagano seemed to have forgotten me as he watched the doctor, well aware of the brutal inevitability of whatever was about to happen.
The doctor picked up a scalpel from a tray of tools on the counter.
I pushed myself up and scooted back until my spine hit the cabinets, trying to ignore the pain still echoing in my every nerve ending. From there, I had an unobstructed view of the doctor as he lifted his shirt and sliced his own belly open, just below the pooch middle age had given him.
“Oh, fuck...” The guard pocketed his stun gun and pulled the radio from his belt. Static burst through the silence of the lab. “This is Pagano. I need backup down in the infirmary basement lab. Delilah freaked out again, and Doc Hill just opened himself up with his own scalpel.”
“Shit! I mean, roger that,” the voice over the radio said. “We’re sending everyone we’ve got.”
But it was far too late for Dr. Hill. I watched, stunned, while he sliced into his belly again, deepening the original wound. Then he dropped the bloody scalpel on the tile and reached into his gut with his right hand. The doctor who’d operated on Lenore without her consent then began to pull his own intestines from his body, one bloody, lumpy length at a time.
Pagano retched, and the acrid, sweet stench of vomit filled the room.
Deep inside me, the gleeful furiae curled up to watch her gruesome handiwork play out. Gallagher too would have gloried in the spilled blood of an enemy, if he’d been there to see it. But I turned away.
Lenore was avenged, but I still needed answers. “Michael.”
His boots shuffled away from me, and from the doctor crying as he slowly disemboweled himself onto the
floor. “Holy fuck, Delilah, what did you do?”
“Vengeance is never pretty. He made his own choice, but Lenore didn’t get one.” She hadn’t chosen to get pregnant, and she hadn’t chosen to get unpregnant. “This is what I do. If you can’t handle it, request a transfer.”
“Fuck!” Pagano wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of one arm, still clutching the radio.
I stood slowly, holding my hands out to show him that I was no threat. Anymore. “Take me to Vandekamp.”
“Hell no, I’m not taking you anywhere!”
“Look at me, Michael.” I struggled to control my voice. To keep from shouting. “Don’t I look normal again? It’s over.” Though the sickening wet sliding sounds to my left said otherwise. “And you’re wearing gloves. I’m not going to hurt you. But I need to see Vandekamp.”
“You’re not going to see anything but the inside of a hole in the ground!”
His backup would arrive any second. Out of time and options, I sucked in a deep breath and spat out the truth. “Michael, I’m pregnant.”
“What?” The hand clutching his radio fell to his side.
“I’m pregnant. But instead of strapping me to that bastard’s table, someone’s been making sure I’m isolated from everyone else, and that I get good food, vitamins and exercise. I need to know why. I need to know what’s happening to me.”
Pagano’s unfocused gaze fell to the floor. “I just thought... You’re an exception. A problem. They said that was why they isolated you. And I don’t know what they feed the others, so...” He shrugged, and his gaze found mine again. “I never put the pieces together.”
“Vandekamp has all the pieces. Take me to him, before—” The hum of the elevator cut me off, as it was called back to the first floor. “Please. We can take the stairs.”
“I can’t—”
I glanced at the elevator doors, and each beat of my heart felt like the tick of a clock counting down. “If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone who steps out of that elevator that I’m pregnant. You know damn well that if your boss wanted anyone else to know, he wouldn’t have isolated me.”
Pagano aimed his remote control, obviously ready to electronically silence me.
“The next time I can talk, I’ll tell Vandekamp it’s your baby.” The threat flew from my mouth like one long word. “He’ll fire you long before the paternity results come in.”
The handler hesitated, obviously trying to think that through in a hurry.
I glanced pointedly at the stairwell. “If you want to keep your job, get me out of here. Now.”
Behind him, the elevator rumbled as it descended toward us, and he drew in a panicked breath. “Fine. Come on.” He pushed through the glass door and headed for the stairwell to the left of the elevator, and I raced after him. The door closed behind us just as the elevator slid open, and for a moment, we stood frozen, listening as several sets of heavy boots clomped into the foyer we’d just vacated. Voices shouted for space and supplies as handlers and medics descended upon Dr. Hill.
“Turn around,” Pagano ordered in a whisper, pulling a set of padded cuffs from his belt. He restrained me, then led me quickly up the stairs and out of the building through a rear exit.
“Do you know who the father is?” Pagano asked as he escorted me swiftly through the topiary garden, where the sun reflecting from the fountain nearly blinded me. There was a strange quality to his voice. As if his question wasn’t really a question.
“Do you?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he marched me straight through the main building to Vandekamp’s office, where the secretary tersely informed us that we didn’t have an appointment.
“Is he with someone?” Pagano demanded. She shook her head. “Then he’ll want to see us.”
As we marched past her desk, she pressed a button and warned her boss. His office door opened before Pagano could knock.
“Why isn’t she in an observation cell, writhing in a great deal of pain?” Vandekamp demanded. “Because those are the orders I sent your backup in with.”
Pagano lowered his voice. “She’s threatening to spill sensitive information.”
The secretary leaned forward for a better view and, presumably, better hearing.
“What sensitive information?” Vandekamp demanded, still blocking his office doorway.
“I think I should let her speak for herself.”
“Bullshit.” But the boss finally stepped back and waved us into his office. He slammed the door behind us, then marched straight to his desk and picked up a remote control, which he aimed at my neck. “Explain yourself.”
“Explain yourself,” I spat, before I could rethink my approach. “Why am I still pregnant, when Lenore and Magnolia are not?”
For one long moment Vandekamp’s expression registered no change. Then he frowned and his lips moved silently, repeating the question, trying to make sense of it. “Still pregnant?”
“You didn’t know?” I studied him, trying to find truth in features trained for showmanship. For politics.
In the end, I decided to believe him not because of the authentic ring to his anger and disbelief, but because I could see no reason for him to lie. I was no threat to him. He could make sure I never spoke another word to anyone in my life as easily as he could have me killed and fed to the arena beasts.
“You really didn’t know.” I believed him. But I didn’t understand it.
“I still don’t know. Has this been verified?” he demanded, looking over my shoulder to my handler.
Pagano shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything official, but someone’s ordered vitamins and exercise for her, and what’s evidently a specialized menu—”
Vandekamp’s face flushed. “Someone what?” he roared.
My handler shrugged. “I thought it was you.”
His flush deepened and his jaw clenched. “Why would you follow ridiculous orders like that without question?”
“Sir, handlers who question orders don’t last long here,” Pagano said, and again I was impressed with his nerve.
Vandekamp scowled. “Wait in the outer office.”
“Sir, she just made Doc Hill slice open his own stomach and pull his guts out one handful at a time.”
“I’m well aware of the threat she represents.” Vandekamp pulled one of his guest chairs into the center of the floor space, then backed away from it. “Sit,” he ordered.
When I sat, my cuffed wrists pressing into the leather cushion at my back, he aimed his remote at me and selected an option from the screen.
I lost all feeling from the neck down, as well as the ability to move. Panic sped my pulse and oddly, I felt like I was drowning. As if a sudden pressure was keeping my lungs from expanding.
“There. She’s harmless. And if you’d acted quickly enough, Dr. Hill wouldn’t require sedation and restraints in the ambulance, to keep him from making balloon animals out of his own intestines.”
Pagano flinched.
“Out,” Vandekamp ordered, and my handler backed out of my line of sight. A second later, the door clicked closed behind him.
Vandekamp sat on the edge of his massive wooden desk and watched me concentrate on breathing, to counter my body’s insistence that it couldn’t do that very thing.
“If you hyperventilate, you’re as good as dead,” he said at last. “After what you did to the doctor, I won’t be able to get anyone to treat you.”
He was right.
I closed my eyes and willed myself to forget about how hard breathing seemed, now that I couldn’t feel my lungs expand. My body would do what needed to be done, if I just let it.
That got easier when Vandekamp started talking. “How far along are you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that. I can’t—” I nearly bit my
tongue off trying to stop that thought from flying out.
I couldn’t tell him that I’d paid Laure to erase my memory; I wasn’t going to let a child pay for what I’d done. But it wouldn’t take him long to figure out why I didn’t have the answers to his questions, especially once I started asking questions of my own.
“I don’t know how this happened. Okay? Last week I woke up in a private cell with no memory of the previous eight weeks. I don’t know how I got pregnant or why other pregnancies have been terminated, but mine has been protected.”
Vandekamp’s gaze narrowed on me. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I tried to shrug, but my body was unresponsive. “Maybe you’ve messed with my memory one too many times.” I wasn’t supposed to remember how that had happened, but I should remember that it had happened.
His mouth opened, then closed, and I recognized caution in his hesitation. He was trying to sort out what I should and shouldn’t remember of our interactions, considering all my trips to the secret room.
“And you really don’t remember...the father?” There was a careful quality to the phrase. Just because he hadn’t known I was pregnant didn’t mean he couldn’t be responsible.
A sick feeling swelled inside me. “Did you do this to me?” My head felt light with the sudden rush of my pulse, though I couldn’t feel my heart pound. “Is this your baby?”
“No.” He held my gaze without flinching. But he’d lied to me before.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe, and I don’t care who the father is,” he said, as if pregnancy among his captives was so common as to be unworthy of notice. “What I care about is finding out who authorized the change in your menu and your exercise breaks.”
That, I believed. The fact that he was more concerned about insubordination than about the baby told me that it truly wasn’t his. And since Vandekamp obviously wasn’t being paid by a client to keep me pregnant, surely finding out who had ordered my new living conditions would tell me who the father was.
“Who else knows about this?” he demanded.
“Just Pagano, as far as I know. And he only found out minutes ago. Do any of the guards have the authority to arrange this without needing you to sign off on it?”