Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Iwake up, confused and disoriented, to bitter cold. My teeth chatter, and my breath forms little clouds in front of my face.
“X?” His name comes out automatically when I realize I can’t feel him pressed against my back as usual. I sit up, shivering, and find him slumped against the side of the pod, still in his human guise. Motionless. It looks like he was trying to get up and he fell. Is that what woke me?
“X!” I scramble out of bed and drop to his side, pressing my fingers to his neck.
For a horrifying moment, I can’t find his pulse.
But then I feel a faint heartbeat. Another, after an impossible stretch of time.
He’s still alive, but his eyes are shut and he’s barely breathing, his skin clammy to the touch. When I try to move his arm, it’s stiff.
It’s a relief to know he isn’t dead. Still, I hate to see him like this, cold and unmoving and corpselike.
Completely defenseless after being forced into hibernation.
I feel an odd surge of protectiveness as I crouch beside him, knowing that he’s the more vulnerable one of us for the moment.
I wonder if this is a shade of what he feels when he calls me his taujak.
“You’re going to be okay,” I tell him, though I have no idea if he can hear me. “I’ll find you some heat, and—” I cut off abruptly as I hear the cell door hiss open.
For one single, foolish moment, I’m relieved at the sight of Dr. Tabs standing there, thinking it means that help has arrived. Then I see the two uniformed security men standing behind him, each in full riot gear and with a weapon in their hands.
“Ms. Wright,” Tabs says, gesturing to me.
I straighten up, standing on unsteady feet. The tile is icy cold beneath my soles. I stare at Tabs and the security officers, and then glance back at X’s still form.
“You’re free,” Tabs says. “Come here, you’re safe now.” He gestures. Calling me like a dog. And then he says, “Come on, Calli.”
Rage is a fire in my chest. The use of that nickname—and all of the derision behind it—reminds me how much I hate this man, and the others, for what they did to me. I know they were watching me as I struggled to survive. Mocking me as they tried to manipulate X into killing me.
They call X a monster. But when it comes down to it, in this moment I know I’d take my chances with him over the men of this facility a hundred times over.
I turn around and lean over X. I pry his stiff jaw open and press a finger against one of his teeth until I feel a stinging puncture, a drip of blood.
“What’s she doing?” I hear one of the guards ask.
“Ma’am, you’re okay now,” the other says, the thud of his heavy boots approaching me. “Just come with us—”
“She’s out of her mind,” Tabs snaps. “Just grab her. Grab her. Get her away from that thing, now.”
A moment later the guards forcibly yank me back. I kick and struggle, my shoes skidding on the tile, watching X’s still form as they drag me away from him.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of the guards demands as I claw uselessly at his face. “We’re getting you out of here, ma’am.”
“That monster have her brainwashed or something?” the other asks, looking at Dr. Tabs.
A hot rage flares inside me—and the way the scientist smiles makes that heat climb even higher. Monsters. You’re the fucking monsters here, I want to scream, but I grit my teeth and save my strength.
“Perhaps some kind of Stockholm syndrome,” Tabs is saying in a horribly condescending tone to the security officers, as if I’m not here at all.
I have no way to stop them as they drag me toward the door.
Once, I would’ve done anything to escape this cell—but right now, the ominously dark halls of the Facility feel like a descent into a nightmare, and I want nothing more than to be back in X’s arms.
“Please,” I whisper, watching X. Was my blood not enough?
Is the temperature too low for him to recover?
“Please, please…” I grab on to the doorway with one hand, straining to slow down the officers dragging me, but one of them mutters something inaudible and wrenches my arm behind my back.
I cry out in pain as he forces me down to the floor of the antechamber with a knee on my back.
I turn my head to the side, watching desperately as the other guard begins to shut the door behind us.
My view of the cell begins to disappear, inch by inch, until it’s only a sliver.
Too late. It’s too late.
A hand grabs the edge of the door from within the cell. The guard shouts and tries to fight against it, but the door flies open.
X stands in the doorway.
Even with a knee grinding into my spine and pain in my twisted arm, I smile as I see his lips curl back from his teeth and his pupils grow huge.
He still wears a human face, but his eyes are black, his mouth bristling with protruding teeth.
Tentacles burst out of the back of his lab coat.
Half human, half other, turning into something truly monstrous as he lunges.
But he is my monster, and my salvation.
The man holding me only has time to shout before the sound turns into a panicked gurgle.
I can’t see what’s happening, but the other’s grip on me goes slack and I crawl free of the chaos while he screams. A series of gunshots make me flinch, my hearing drowned out by a high-pitched whine as I duck my head and keep crawling.
I drag myself into the corner of the antechamber and sit up, back pressed against the wall.
One security guard is already on the floor, covered in blood.
X’s tentacles are wrapped around the second, holding his arms at his sides and forcing him prone.
A gun lies on the floor at his feet; the shots he fired certainly didn’t seem to slow X down.
The alien’s mouth is stretched impossibly wide, lined with sharp, sharp teeth—and they are currently dug deep in the throat of one of the men who were hurting me.
Blood fountains as he rips his teeth free. He takes a chunk out of the man’s face, swallows, and bites again.
I watch with horrified fascination as he feeds, tentacles ripping off pieces of the bodies and delivering them to his sharp teeth.
X does not look like the gentle, protective being I’ve grown to know during our time together.
He looks feral. Dangerous. Monstrous. Somehow even more terrifying since he’s still only half transformed, wearing a human face as he devours the men who tried to harm me.
It’s hard not to stare. But movement out of the corner of my eye draws my attention. Dr. Tabs is cowering against the exterior door, a shaking hand pressing his key card against the scanner.
“X!” I shout, pointing.
X has him within his tentacles in one blink of an eye. In two, he’s torn the man’s throat out. He eats him alive while Tabs gurgles out unintelligible sounds that may be a plea for his life. After a few bites, he drops his limp remains to the floor with a wet thump and turns to me.
For a moment, I barely recognize the being I’ve grown to trust in the bloodstained creature towering over me.
Gore stains his face, and his jaw is stretched unnaturally.
His pupils are huge and predatory as they lock on mine, and I can’t fight the shuddery little breath that escapes me.
I see his muscles coil in preparation to pounce, driven by the instinct he’s always warned me about—
But he stops himself. Blinks. His jaws snap back together with an audible click, and his expression calms as he looks down at me.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I slowly shake my head. “No. I’m okay.” I manage a weak, watery smile. “I’m okay, thanks to you.” I reach out a hand, and he grabs me and pulls me effortlessly to my feet.
“We need to get out of here,” I murmur. I grab Tabs’s key card from where it fell and wipe the blood off before holding it up to the scanner. It beeps: negative. My heart sinks for a moment before I realize the inner door leading into the cell is still open.
“Shut that, please,” I say.
X frowns. “We will be trapped here.”
“Trust me, X.”
Still frowning, he does as I say, letting the metal door click shut.
It’s cramped in the vestibule with us and three bodies, the air thick with the smell of copper.
I fight back a wave of claustrophobia. This will work.
The only reason the key card failed is because of the system only allowing one door open at a time.
I shut my eyes as I scan the key card again. They open when I hear the satisfying click of the door unlocking. I push the door open, and X and I step out into the hallway.
Red emergency lights are flashing, and the alarm is wailing, high-pitched and constant, through the halls of the Facility. Still, I can’t help but smile. We’re out of the cell. We’re free, or close to it.
“My brilliant taujak,” X says, nuzzling his face affectionately against my cheek. I try not to wince as he smears blood all over me.
“We need to get out of the building,” I say, squeezing his hand.
“Not yet.” His head whips toward the door beside the one we just escaped from, leading to the observation room. “The scientists.” His eyes narrow. “One still lives within.”
A shiver runs down my spine. Of course. Akimov and the others must’ve been waiting to interrogate me—and do God knows what else—once I was extracted from X’s cell.
“More guards will come.” We should escape while we can, but… I hesitate, feeling a flicker of that fury in my chest again. They betrayed me. They tried to kill me. “But…perhaps it would be safer if the scientist was gone.”
X nods. His eyes never leave that door. “I promised I would kill them all. And I will.”
Before I can voice further protest, he pulls his hand free from my grip and launches himself at the door. His tentacles batter against it, each blow denting the metal, but it doesn’t break. It must have been built with a scenario like this in mind.
We don’t have time. But he isn’t going to stop.
And there is a vengeful part of me that doesn’t want him to.
I want those men to pay for what they did to me.
They would have watched me die in that cell.
No, worse than that—they tried to manipulate X into killing me.
They would have killed me themselves, I assume, once they had what they needed from me after my extraction.
I see no reason why the scientist behind that door shouldn’t suffer the same fate.
What happened to Tabs was pure instinct in the moment. But what happens now is a choice. After a moment’s hesitation, I walk over, Tabs’s security card in hand. There’s a moment’s pause as I hold it to the scanner. I can’t hear the beep over the alarm, but the light turns green.
“Taujak,” I whisper. Even with all of the noise and all of his fury, X stops immediately, turning to me. His face is a bloody mess, but his eyes are soft as they lock on mine.
I reach for the handle of the door and open it for him.
“Kill him.”