Chapter 26
Two brown eyes
LUCAS
“This is also empty? What the hell? They knew we were gonna search, and they just took off?” Paul says, kicking a shattered vial with his leg.
It’s the fifth building on the list, and until now, there were only dusty rooms, full of the remains of former labs.
And the strangest part is that all the doors were unlocked. They didn’t bother putting a key in and turning it. They knew there was nothing of value here.
Another five in this area.
I hope the others are luckier than we are and we won’t have to stay all day snooping around rooms full of dust and gross bugs.
We are about to exit the room when I notice something odd on the old wooden floor, covered in a thick layer of goo and a black, shabby carpet. A small trace of what seems to be fresh blood that stops abruptly at the margin of the carpet.
I go to it and lift it in one move.
“Come on, man! You didn’t have to do that,” Paul coughs.
I try to see something through the cloud of dust that formed, holding my shirt to my nose to be able to breathe.
After a couple of seconds, the dust particles spread, and all that remains is the bloodstain that gets lost without a trace.
“There has to be something here,” I say, and look around the room for something that can help me take the pieces of wood aside.
“Here!”
Paul throws a screwdriver at me, and I manage to catch it right before it hits one of my eyes.
“Sorry,” Paul says when I give him a furious glare.
“Mmm,” I growl, but then go back to what I need to do.
I stick the object in the floorboard margin where the bloodstain stops and try to remove the splinter. Of course, it just manages to make a small hole.
I inhale some air to help me keep my cool and try once again, but this time sticking to its end and applying a different method. I pull the floorboard slowly until I manage to shove my fingers and lift it, more pieces of it coming at once.
Behind them, the blood traces go down some stone stairs. I touch the blood to get a closer look, and from its texture, it feels fresh.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I take my lantern and knife out, starting to go down the stairs with Paul behind me.
“This makes me sick. I hope we won’t find the owner of the blood,” Paul whispers too close to me.
“Shut up and follow me. You attract too much attention with your girl-whining.”
He accepts my threat and shuts up, following me. The distance between us is so small that if I stop, we would both fall down the stairs. I don’t say anything about this and just keep a steady rhythm until we reach the end of the stairs and enter a tunnel.
And of course, there isn’t one option, but four. All dark and wet.
I study each stone trail, and something about the third one gets my attention. I get closer and reach down. I gulp when I see what’s before my eyes.
“Are those…” Paul starts to say in a trembling voice, getting down to my level and seeing exactly what I’m illuminating.
“So it seems,” I tell him, taking the two brown eyes from the ground.
“G-great, now you even t-touch t-them,” Paul starts mumbling behind me, making me roll my eyes.
I twirl them around and notice that they are too perfect. Too… Tamwine style.
“These are not real,” I say, hearing Paul strongly exhaling.
“Thank heavens!”
“Don’t pray yet. They are still from a body, but they were created in a lab,” I say, and I can hear him abstaining from vomiting.
I get up, putting the eyes in my shirt’s pocket. I take a few steps and stomp on a couple of pieces of broken glass with a colourful liquid surrounding them.
“Ok, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Paul says, passing me by.
I hold myself back from telling him that this isn’t the worst thing he will see and follow him.
?
“Are you sure we are not going around in circles? It looks the same everywhere,” Paul whines.
I have to agree with him on this. Everything is built like a labyrinth. It’s extremely easy to get lost, especially since he instinctively took the first route when he had to choose between two options.
We now have to make the same choice.
“Damn it,” Paul says when his lantern goes off. “You don’t happen to have some spare batteries, do you?”
“Nope,” I say, choosing the first road and starting to walk faster to not lose the light we had left.
Maybe number one is lucky.
“What would we do when we find Bianca?”
His question stops me from walking, and I feel him bumping into me.
“Easy. I will torture her to find out what I want to get out of her, and then I will let you decide what you want to do with what remains of her.”
I illuminate his face, and he just looks at me like he saw a ghost, gulping.
“What do you mean by what remains of her?” he asks in a small and scared voice.
“You travelled in fluff, brother. Cathal should’ve applied to you the same treatment I had,” I say and turn around.
Paul doesn’t say anything and only follows me, even though I can feel his questions humming around his head.
I exhale with ease when I notice a pale light in front of us. I walk faster, not wanting to stay any longer in this wet tunnel. It’s the perfect environment for Lycos, and I don’t want to let him out this time.
You’re bad, Lucas. You don’t like to have fun at all.
We have different definitions of the word ‘fun’, as it seems.
The entertainment for him means eye gouging and blood everywhere. If possible, some heads on spikes with his teeth out and the tongue hanging out of it.
Yes, and for you is to play with some vile toys and have sex with Anmara. You should’ve let me taste her, too. I think she would’ve liked my ideas better than something so slow and boring like last night. I would’ve gripped that beautiful neck of hers…
“Shut the fuck up!” I scream out loud, my mistake, unable to stand the thoughts of my dark personality.
“But I didn’t say anything,” Paul says, confused.
I don’t mind his affirmation and concentrate on the road ahead of me. A door appears after a turn, lighting the atmosphere through the crack next to the handle.
“Finally, some light!” Paul says, getting past me.
He opens the door and stops in the doorway with his hand trembling on the handle. His high-pitched scream makes me push him aside and look inside the room.
When I see what he saw, my legs start moving until I get next to the man I hated so much. The man who mentally and physically tortured me to become his best weapon and make the best devices that he can use to steal a lot of substances and mortal drugs.
And however bad he looks in this moment, I would recognise the structure of his body anywhere.
Cathal is tied up to a chair, half of his head cut open. Inside is only a small part of his brain.
I lift his head and let it down the next second, getting far away from him.
He has his eyes taken out.
Not the ones we found, but the ones in a jar on one of the tables in the room, in a colourful conserving liquid.
I really asked myself why I haven’t heard anything from him.
“What are you up to, Bianca?” I talk to myself, but my words reach Paul.
“Didn’t we settle that he worked for him?” Paul asks, getting past the cadaver and closer to me.
“That’s what I thought. Now I don’t even know what to believe.”
My nerves don’t wanna let me think rationally. I take one of the vials with black liquid and throw it into the wall.
I shudder, and I can feel Paul shivering when the part of the wall stained with that dark goo slowly starts to melt.
I inhale and exhale the air that I can barely breathe in this fucking room that looks like a legit lab.
Substances everywhere in a double-sided fridge, vials of different sizes with diverse colourful liquids inside.
A table full of objects used for surgeries, but some for torture too.
I then realise how well developed the town’s underground network is. How old it can be. How fucked-up is the situation we are in because it isn’t Marshall who did this, but someone with more influence, with more power. It may even date back a few generations.
Marshall was nothing compared with who really controls this industry.
He was the man who was left to do his experiments in peace, from which everybody profited badly. Especially since Bianca got her hand on the formula and created the best version of it.
I hope Anmara and Blake are safe.
With that thought in mind, I take the walkie-talkie from Paul’s pants.
“You won’t believe who we ran into,” I say through it and take my finger off the button, waiting for a response.
“Neither do you,” the lost voice of Anmara answers.
Something’s wrong.