Chapter 2
Chapter two
Jen
Beyond the north door, power is out in sections and the alarm throws everything red and then black and then red again. Thaw moves through it like he has a map behind his eyes.
Maybe he does. He worked for them once. Before.
I do not ask. I keep my fingers fisted in the back of his waistband and my feet moving.
I am supposed to keep my eyes down.
I look at things anyway.
We come through a set of double doors and the walls change — concrete to drywall, the floor going from raw slab to something sealed and pale.
Then the smell hits.
Rubbing alcohol. Laundered fabric. That cold, clean nothing-smell that means scent has been scrubbed out on purpose.
The medical section.
Crull's hand settles at the base of my spine. I keep moving.
We pass an open door and I catch a glimpse before I can stop myself.
An exam room. Not mine — there were others, of course there were others.
But here is the proof of it, lit in red strobe: a table like the one they put me on, vinyl, paper-draped, the straps hanging off the vertical supports.
And past it a second table. And the second table is bigger.
Longer. The straps on it are wider and set farther apart, sized for a body with the proportions of the men around me, and the sight of it puts a cold straight line down through the center of me.
They have a table built for Crull.
For Thaw. For all of them. For whatever comes next when the breeding line gives them something new to strap down.
Don't look at anything, Thaw said.
Now I understand it was not about my safety. It was about this. He has walked this corridor before restrained, or escorting, or worse and he knew what was hanging on the walls of it and he did not want me to have to carry it out.
Too late.
We keep moving.
Then something shifts.
The bonds stop feeling separate.
Thaw ahead of me.
Crull behind me.
Harek at my side.
The twins at both ends of the formation.
For the last few weeks I have felt them one at a time.
Now they hit all at once. Focus. Protection. Warmth.
The two new raw threads pulling from opposite directions.
Five. My step stutters. The corridor tilts.
Not the floor. Me.
The red strobe smears across the walls and suddenly there is too much of all of them. Too much feeling. Too much pull.
My knees stop being reliable.
"Thaw."
It comes out thin. He turns immediately.
He reaches for me and his hand lands flat on my sternum, over the mark. His eyes lock on mine and his voice drops. The same one he used on Fen through six feet of corridor.
"Me. Just me. Find me."
I do.
The other bonds do not disappear. They are still there. Still pulling. But Thaw is closer. His hand. His voice. The noise inside me eases. I take a deep breath.
"Good," he says.
His hand falls away.
"Stay on me. We move."
We pass the last of the medical section. A sample fridge. A whiteboard I do not let myself read.
Then Fen twitches.
For one second, I feel him.
Not words. Not Thaw's clean focus or Crull's anchored weight. A churn. Dark. Fast. Wrong. A body climbing toward consciousness through four canisters of gas and clawing at the inside of its own sedation.
I feel how far down he is. I feel how hard the climb is. I feel, for one second, what it is to be Fen, and it is the worst thing my body has ever done.
Then it is gone.
On Crull's shoulder, Fen's whole body locks. His back arches. The lolling head comes up an inch. The claws flex, and one hand closes on nothing, grasping. A sound comes out of him.
The half-whine. The broken one.
"He's coming up," I say. "Crull—"
"I know."
Crull's rumble never stops.
"I have him."
His hand tightens once across Fen's back, then pats. Slow. Certain.
Fen's back eases. Not all the way. The half-whine thins. The grasping hand opens.
Between one red strobe and the next, he sinks again.
The hollow in my chest stops fluttering.
It goes silent again, and I am ashamed of how relieved I am, because the flat cold silence means he is safe. Because he cannot survive waking in the wing where they broke him.
We reach a stairwell.
Dean is in it, holding the door, and Thaw says up and Dean takes the stairs first.
Thaw. Crull. Fen. Harek. The twins.
The bonds and threads blur together until I stop trying to separate them.
We keep climbing.