Chapter Five
I was strapped on a hard gurney with my large but delicate wings pulled out and taped uncomfortably.
Even my head was strapped so that I couldn’t move, though my peripheral vision detected my leathery appendages quivering with a rage I barely repressed while my tormentors, who called themselves scientists, began yet another experiment on me.
As if being restrained and stripped of freedom wasn’t horrific enough, this examination room was surrounded by caged cells above where some of the GM prisoners were held.
That each of us was not only tormented and experimented upon but were sometimes forced to watch each procedure in turn was just an added layer of malevolence.
The scientists clearly wanted us to know the suffering we’d endure. Not that there were many of us left. Though we were mostly kept in solitary cells, we had an hour each day to stretch our legs and intermingle. Thanks to that one hour, I’d watched my family die in slow motion.
Bat genetics apparently didn’t mingle well with humans.
I thought of Angel who lived in the cell next to mine, how she’d whispered a week ago during our exercise hour about the beaches she’d visit if we ever got out.
White sand between her toes, salt air in her wings.
Then she’d started coughing, specks of blood hitting the concrete.
“Soon,” she’d said, but we both knew she meant dying, not escaping.
The voices of two of the male scientists brought me back to the present as they double-checked their instruments and computer monitors, ensuring everything was set up before they began.
“Our biggest investor is visiting today, Dr. Segmund himself.” The scientist, his dreadlocks contained by a wide headband the same color as his dark hair, pinched the bridge of his prominent nose.
“Word is he’s been pressing to buy one of the assets.
” He looked pointedly my way. “No guessing which one.”
I almost smirked. Had they not guessed what had happened to two of their colleagues after they’d hurt me? That same investor and scientist, Adam, had taken them out as easily as someone would squish a bug underfoot.
The other scientist with his pockmarked face—I’d counted twenty-eight of his pitted scars each and every time I’d been laid out on the gurney—snorted with disgust. “If it’s a whore he wants, I know of much cheaper ones who don’t fight.”
“Does your whore have wings?” the dreadlocked scientist asked with a cocked brow. He chuckled darkly. “And perhaps he enjoys the fight.”
“Who really knows what goes on behind his closed door,” pockmarked conceded. “What I do know is that he collects rare treasures. That he’s been intrigued with this GM from the start makes me wonder why he hasn’t bought her sooner.”
I refrained from wincing, from revealing any emotion whatsoever.
But I hated the humans calling me and the other prisoners GM—genetically modified—like we were little more than unfeeling test subjects.
Less than shit under the humans’ boots. Bad enough they also called us by our single letter and numbers.
“The review board and our boss might have something to say about that,” pockmarked said in his nasally voice.
“That our subject isn’t declining like many of the others makes her a whole lot more valuable.
We’ve still got so much to learn from her.
” He peered down at me, his grin leering.
“How does it feel knowing you have a chance of getting out of here?”
His morbid interest made me want to throw up. I was only glad the standard white smock that covered each and every prisoner hid much of my body. Only the slits in the back, which gave my wings relative freedom, showcased any difference to my human captors.
It wasn’t until they unzipped the front of my smock to stick electrodes on my chest, their fingers deliberately grazing my breasts before moving to my scalp that my pulse accelerated and my muscles tensed. Shit. This was going to hurt.
More of Angel’s words echoed in my mind. “When I get out of here, I’m going to eat strawberries until I’m sick, then eat some more.” She’d been coughing blood even then, five days ago, but her eyes still held fierce hope. By now, that hope was probably all she had left.
Bzzzt.
Everything locked, then spasmed. Straps bit into flesh. A scream built in my throat, but I had no breath. Just searing white pain.
Through the haze of agony, I recalled Angel’s latest coughing fit. It’d been during yesterday’s exercise. The blood had been darker this time, more of it. “Promise me something,” she’d wheezed. “If you get out and I don’t, find the ocean for both of us.”
My eyes stayed open as colors blazed through them one after the other, bright, relentlessly vivid neon lights that coalesced into one dazzling glow before the powerful jolt switched off and I collapsed back onto the gurney.
“Again,” the pockmarked scientist said to his colleague.
No! But my scream was all in my head as I was jolted yet again with agonizing pain.
“Stop!”
The commanding voice pierced my consciousness simultaneously to my pain disappearing, the voltage blast replaced by a blessed absence of suffering.
I made out prowling footsteps before I became aware of a man in a gray suit and ruby tie standing over me, his raven-dark hair glinting under the lights while his golden-brown, verging on black eyes barely repressed his rage.
Adam.
Was this what power smelled like? Sharp and warm with earthy undertones I couldn’t quite place. His clothes fit him too perfectly, like they’d been stitched just for him. That kind of attention to detail...I’d never known it existed.
That was when I comprehended the warm, sticky blood streaming from my nostrils.
He pulled a white cloth from his jacket pocket and gently wiped away the blood, leaving a bright crimson stain on the fabric. Shame flooded through me at my exposed torso, at my vulnerability, and I experienced a strong urge to clutch my gown together and pretend I wasn’t hurting.
I couldn’t even lift my chin as I held his stare that softened ever so slightly, as though he’d read the insecurity beneath my pride. Then he swung away from me to focus on the scientists.
“Who authorized these tests?” he growled.
“Professor Swan,” the dreadlocked scientist answered. “He signs off on all our experiments and research.”
“You fund much of what goes on here, Adam,” pockmarked added.
“I do not fund torture and exploitation of another species,” Adam gritted out. “That was never my intention.”
The dreadlocked scientist clucked his tongue. “We’re doing the best we can in the short time-frame we have with these GMs.” He nodded at me. “Though Q27 is unique in that she appears to be getting stronger, unlike the others of her kind.”
Pockmarked added, “The chiropterans aren’t as strong as many of the other species in these connected labs.”
I let this new piece of information sink in, renewed rage and desolation filling me like toxic swamp water.
There were other genetically modified species?
But of course there would be. Though I’d only ever been aware of my family of mutated bats, there would doubtless be many other species meshed with humans.
People—experiments—who were suffering just like me.
“Release her,” Adam instructed in a harsh, no-nonsense voice.
“We’ll have to run it past Professor Swan—“
“I’ve paid a princely sum for her, money that no doubt helps pay your wages. You will take off her bindings and have a nurse check her over and clean her up. She’s coming with me.”
“But w-we have so many more tests to run on her. The others are too weak—“
“Now,” Adam reiterated softly, but with such an inflection of power behind his voice I might have drawn back if I’d not been strapped down.
That I was leaving this place, this prison, didn’t register at first. Not until the scientists unbuckled my restraints and a nurse came in with a washcloth to clean me off. I was too weak to resist. I was limp and fatigued, all my energy zapped out of me.
I did manage to look up at the windows, making eye contact with many of the other prisoners.
R17, the oldest of us. It wasn’t that long ago he’d been strong and virile.
Now his once lustrous sky-blue eyes were foggy, his skin papery thin and yellowed.
Even his shoulder blades stuck against his gown like angular blades.
That he didn’t even have wings to try and escape made him seem much more human.
Either way, he was family to me, but he probably wouldn’t last another week.
I inhaled sharply, my gaze automatically lifting and seeking out my best friend. S21. The beautiful but fragile woman I called Angel. Not just because she had a heart of gold. Her wings were huge for her petite frame, angelic to look upon despite their leathery look.
Her green eyes glowed as she pressed the palms of her hands against the glass high above me.
I lifted my trembling hand toward her, stretching as far as I could reach through the impossible distance between us.
Thanks to my heightened sight, I could make out her mouthing, remember the ocean.
I pressed my palm to my heart, then pointed up at her, knowing I’d never see her alive again.
Then Adam bent and lifted me. I folded in my wings before I lost all sense of myself, my body suddenly alive in the cradle of his arms. His warmth surrounded me, earthy and solid, laced with something sharper on his breath, unfamiliar, expensive. Definitely not anything we were ever given here.
I’d been born in a lab, raised without touch, without closeness. We weren’t allowed physical contact in our hourly sessions. I’d been deprived of sensation for so long I hadn’t known what I’d been missing.
Until now.
Everything overwhelmed me. Not just the earthy, spiced scent clinging to him, but the heat of his chest against mine, the steady thrum of his heartbeat, the brush of his jacket, too smooth, too fine to be real.
Even the sound of his breath, measured and controlled, filled my ears like it belonged to me.
I looked up, mesmerized. His freshly shaven face, his full lips tight with unspoken fury. Eyes like burnished gold, storm-darkened with emotion. A square-cut jaw clenched so hard it sharpened his whole face.
Then he stepped toward the door and pressed a hand to the scanning pad, access only granted to the most trusted.
When the doors slid open and he carried me through, reality hit like an icy shock. I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know what he wanted. Behind us, Angel and the others were still dying.
And I was leaving them.
A scream ripped from my throat, rage, terror, grief all tangled into one unbearable sound. I twisted from his hold, my wings flaring wide. The claw at the tip of my wing tore through his jacket and shirt, then into his chest before the rich, metallic scent of his blood spilled free.