by Keri Lake
“I’ve not learned guns yet.”
“Today’s a good day to figure it out.”
With a firm grip on my arm, Titus yanks me after him, and the two of us scurry up the stairs and into the convent, where Mother Chilson screams and kicks, as the women haul her toward the chapel.
Footsteps approaching signals guards are coming, and as gunshots ring out behind us, we duck low and hustle toward the door at the back. The one we were told led to Purgatory below.
Titus places his ear to the door, and his jaw hardening, he pushes me out of the way and raises his gun. The moment Legion officers plow through the door, he fires.
Hands clapped to my ear, I duck behind one of the pews, peering around the corner to see him take out three officers, before he waves me to follow.
I scramble after him, and we descend a dark staircase that’s lit only by torches every few feet. Sounds reach my ear from below, and when I focus on them, I realize they’re the cries of torment and suffering. Moans of agony that remind me of the many women I watched in labor for hours on end. The stairwell seems to go on forever, until the gunfire above becomes a distant sound. Ice cold air steals my breath, while the scent of rot and death clings to the back of my throat, overpowering the surrounding aroma of decayed earth and rusted stone.
Flames flicker along the path, toward a door ahead, around which light beams through the cracks. Titus swings back the door, the fluorescent light overhead revealing boxes and equipment stacked about the room. I recognize the medical supplies and furniture, beakers and burners, test tubes, and empty petri dishes.
“I didn’t think this place had electricity.” I scan the open room, over the benches and shelves, which look to be in the thick of packing up, or unpacking. It’s hard to discern. “Looks like they’re storing medical supplies.”
“They’re preparing a new research facility.”
“Like Calico?”
“From the looks of it. C’mon.” Striding through the open space, Titus leads the way toward another door, this one made of hard steel and held closed by a latch that won’t open. The biohazard signs plastered to the front of it give my stomach an uneasy twist over what might be on the other side.
I scan the adjacent door, also with a biohazard sign, but no lock on the latch.
“Let’s try this one,” I say, making my way toward it, and feel a tight grip of my hand, tugging me back.
Titus tips his head as he stalks toward it, and the moment he places his hand on the latch, the door flies open. A man in a lab coat barrels out, aiming a gun, and he fires a shot that, from my angle, appears to hit Titus in the arm.
“No!” I lift my gun, but before I even manage to get my finger on the trigger, another shot rings out, and the man in the lab coat drops to the floor.
A second man, mostly bald, steps out from behind the door with his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot! Please!”
Instead of lowering the gun, Titus keeps it trained on the man’s skull. “I’m looking for someone. Said to be held in Purgatory. An Alpha.”
“There … um. There are no … Alphas … that I’m aware of.”
A shot fires from the gun, hitting the wall directly behind the man, who lets out a scream, trembling, as he glances back at the hole left behind.
“Okay. There’s one … Alpha.”
“Show me.” The unyielding tone in Titus’s voice carries the unspoken promise that he’ll blow the man’s head off, if he tries anything tricky.
The man flicks his fingers for us to follow and leads us down a long corridor of rooms encased in glass. Two other men in lab coats stand at benches with their arms in the air, one of whom ducks when we pass. The moment we’re beyond the room, I catch sight of him scrambling for the door through which we entered, and swinging the gun around, Titus fires a shot that hits the man’s back, sending him tumbling to the floor. Not a minute later, a blossom of red stains the back of his coat.
“You don’t … have to shoot them. They’re unarmed.” Lab Coat’s voice seems to get shakier by the second.
“Go.” Titus thuds the gun against the man’s back, nudging him forward, and we keep on toward yet another set of doors.
The man opens them onto a dimly-lit room, inside which the sound of compressed air echoes. Around the space are enormous capsules that reach from the floor to the ceiling. Contained within the capsules are human bodies, suspended in some sort of liquid, with an apparatus attached to their face that has tubes extending upward.
Men. Women. Children. Perhaps a hundred, or so, capsules that glow a fluorescent light.
I look around the room at all the faces that seem to be asleep. “What is this?”
“They’re in a hibernation mode. We call this latency.”
“Latency for what? What have you done to them?”
“They’re the future. The hope of our species. We’re not expected to survive the next decade.” Lab Coat nods toward the capsule in front of him, in which a young boy, perhaps only six years old, or so, twitches, sending bubbles into the surrounding water. “He will live. And thrive. And carry his name into the future.”
“When? When is he set free to do that?”
“When his body stops fighting the injections. All the years of research have brought us to the pinnacle, the assurance of mankind.”
I examine the boy through the glass, the scaling of his skin, the slight discoloration that gives him a bluish hue, as if he’s not really alive, at all. “You’re stealing children from their families. Women and men without their consent. They didn’t ask to be placed inside these capsules.”
“One in three children dies out on the Deadlands, whether by famine, disease, or brutal mutilation. I don’t need to give you the statistics on women.”
“How do your injections save women from rape and murder?”
“We can’t save them from rape. The yearning for dominance is an age-long affliction. But we can allow their bodies to carry a Rager child to term.”
The response he offers is ludicrous, yet at the same time believable. The Szolen church has always been against abortions, no matter how abominable, how wrong the circumstances of the pregnancy might be. “And why the hell would any woman want to carry a Rager child to term?”
“The virus remains latent in a child for the first few years of life. It only begins to manifest at age three.” He glances back at the boy suspended in fluids. “He is the product of a human mother and Rager.”
“And the mother?”
“She perished. Our science is still quite new, but with a bit more research, we can begin to co-exist with the infected. Imagine a world where the infected look like this boy.”
“His mother …. She was raped by a Rager out on the Deadlands?”
“No. She was mated with one in the safety of our facility. We ensured that it did not bite her, though.”
I scowl at the man, teeth clenched in anger. “You forced her to be raped by a Rager. To bear a child, for which she inevitably died.”
“It wasn’t inevitable. We’ve had a number of women survive the childbirth.”
“You’re savage bastards.”
Titus steps toward him, muscles rigid with tension, as if changing the subject is all he can do to keep from throttling the man. “Show us where to find the Alpha.”
With a glance toward Titus and the gun he continues to hold on him, he nods and shuffles past us, guiding us toward the back of the room, where he comes to a stop in front of a capsule carrying the familiar Alpha.
The man’s body appears to be battered, the index finger of his right hand bent in such a way that it must’ve been broken and healed wrong. His shoulder is cocked, as if it was also broken and left unattended. Numerous scars mar his body, ones so grisly I can’t bear to stare too long.
The pained look on Titus’s face is a contrast to the belief that Alphas are heartless and cold.
“We didn’t do these things to him, I want you to know that. He was in awful shape when Legion ha
nded him over to us. We fixed what we could and placed him in hibernation.”
“Get him out,” Titus growls. “Now!”
Flinching at his words, the man scampers around the capsule to the back and throws a lever. A loud click and the sound of suction precedes the movement of water, as it begins to lower around Atticus, who sinks toward the bottom of the capsule.
Shots ping off the capsule’s metal frame.
“Get down!” Titus twists around, and as I turn to find Legion officers storming toward us, he unloads a round of lead that takes out two officers.
I duck behind one of the nearby capsules, and he takes cover behind the capsule opposite from me.
“No! Don’t shoot in here! Please!” Lab Coat waves his hand as he comes around from the back, toward the Legion officers. Without hesitation, they shoot him multiple times until his body collapses.
Titus volleys another round of shots, and one bullet hits a glass capsule, sending the fluid pouring out. At the realization that they’re not bulletproof, he directs his fire downward toward Atticus’s capsule. The glass shatters, sending the passed-out Alpha crashing to the floor. The tubes connected to the apparatus at his face snap loose from the top, and his wet body flops against the white tiles. Blood trickles from cuts where the glass must’ve sliced him on the way down.
I peek around, to where the Legion officers seem to be held back by Titus’s intermittent firing at them, then crawl toward the fallen Alpha. The apparatus appears to be latched to clips driving into his cheek, and I unclasp them on either side of his mouth.
A bullet whizzes past me, the buzz of it flinching my muscles as I hustle to remove the object from the Alpha’s face.
When I tug on the apparatus, a long tube follows, which must’ve extended down into his lungs, and just as I remove the last of it, his eyes flip open.
Hands fly up from either side of me, gripping tight to my shoulders, and he snarls, turning me beneath him. Gravelly bits of glass press into my back while he holds me down, and I let out an involuntary scream.
I’ve grown to care very deeply about an Alpha, but this one is foreign to me and every muscle in my body shivers with fear, as I stare up at him.
“Atticus! She’s with me!” Titus shoots the last of his bullets, and he tosses the gun to the floor as he dives toward us and pushes the Alpha off of me.
My body is hoisted up off the floor, and Titus throws me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carries me toward another capsule. Atticus hobbles behind us, keeping his eyes on me as he takes cover behind the capsule across from ours.
The tandem fire of two Legion officers is all that blocks us from the entrance.
Titus sets me to my feet and dives for the gun of a fallen soldier on the floor.
Gunfire sends him flying backward, into my legs.
He reaches again, sliding the strap toward him, before another shot hits his shoulder. With a groan, he raises the retrieved weapon and fires at the offender. Three shots take him, and the soldier slumps to the ground. Stepping out of his hiding spot, Titus aims his gun at the last Legion officer, who manages two shots that ping off the walls.
One single fire marks a hole in the officer’s head, where blood oozes out, and the man drops to the floor.
Once the gunfire quietens, the sound of coughing draws my attention back to Atticus rubbing his throat. The band that Titus wore shines between his fingers, as he crouches, chest heaving for breath.
“Can you walk?” Titus strides toward the Alpha, offering him a hand, and Atticus’s eyes are on me again.
“She. She was … the one … who sent me here.” Though his voice is broken by coughing and wheezing, the malice in his tone is clear.
“She’s also the one who helped rescue you.” Muscles flexing, Titus helps lift his friend from the floor, and wraps the Alpha’s arm around his neck for support. He straps the gun over his body and flicks his fingers toward me. When I arrive at his side, he wraps his arms around my waist, keeping me close to him, and the three of us hobble toward the entrance.
The sounds of choking bring me to a halt before the capsule where the boy was suspended. Water trickles out of a gunshot hole, and the boy gags and gasps around the apparatus still attached to his face.
“Wait.” I step toward the capsule, examining the boy whose eyes are rolled back, his body twitching as it sinks with the water. “We have to get him out of there.”
“We can’t take a child with us,” Titus argues.
“We can’t let him die here, either.”
Groaning, Titus aims the gun toward the lower part of the capsule, and I step back as he shoots the glass, just as he did with Atticus. The capsule shatters and rains down.
Just before the boy hits the floor, Titus reaches out, catching his fall, abandoning his grip of Atticus, who stumbles into the capsule behind him.
He lays the boy carefully onto the floor, and I kneel beside them, disconnecting the tubing from his throat.
Coughing and floundering on the floor, the boy opens his eyes on a gasp and kicks back from us.
“It’s all right. We’re here to help you. To set you free.” I hold out my arms to him, flicking my fingers. Urgency beats against my spine, as it’s only a matter of time before more Legion officers will arrive. “Come with us.”
Frowning, the boy’s eyes flit to Titus, then Atticus, and back to me. He continues to cough, heaving for breath, and when I reach for him, he bears his teeth and growls.
“Leave him, then. We have to go.”
I flick my fingers, making one more effort. “Please. I promise I won’t hurt you. The doctors will come for you, if you stay.”
Eyes wide, he scrambles toward me, burying his face in my chest, and I wrap my arms around his cold, wet body.
“Let’s get out of here.” On the way toward the exit, I nab one of the lab coats hanging on a hook and wrap it around the boy.
Atticus clothes himself in another lab coat that only just covers his manhood, and the four of us hobble through the hallway that’s flanked by glass rooms, toward the stairwell that led us down to this place. When we finally push through the doors, we’re greeted by more Legion soldiers, a wave of black uniforms that sweeps into the convent like a black squall.
“We have to go back.” The grit in Titus’s tone sounds off his frustration, and I’m certain if it weren’t for me and the boy, he’d have plowed through those soldiers without hesitation. Abandoning our escape, we head back down the stairwell.
The door at the bottom swings open as an older man with graying hair and a white lab coat pushes through it. As Titus lurches toward him, he holds up his hands in surrender.
“Wait. I can help you. I know a way out.”
“Don’t trust the bastards here,” Atticus says through clenched teeth, and he grunts, hand clutching his stomach.
“Thalia …” The doctor sets his eyes on me, igniting a blaze of confusion inside my head. I’ve never seen him before in my life. “I was a friend of your father’s for a long time.”
“I’ve come to learn my father’s friends can’t be trusted.”
“If you’re referring to Jack, you’re right. He can’t be trusted.” The clank of metal from above signals the approach of the soldiers, and the man’s eyes widen. “Please. I can get you out of here. Safely.”
It’s not as if we have a choice. Even if I wanted to tell him to go to hell, he seems to be our only option at the moment, unless I want to watch Legion officers gun down Titus and Atticus right in front of me.
“Lead the way, then.”
The stranger spins toward the door behind him, guiding us back through the labs to a room beyond the one with the capsules, where the blood makes for a slick walk.
“My lab is below. Most don’t know it’s here.”
“And what is it that you do that you need a secret lab below, Dr ...”
“Levins. My name is Doctor Levins,” he says, opening a door to what looks like a supply closet. He pushes a
linen cart out of the way, revealing a door in the floor of the room. “I was a surgeon before the Dredge …” He swings open the door to a black stairwell, and from one of the shelves, he nabs two flashlights and hands one to Titus. “When Szolen recruited me, I was under the impression that we were a select group, chosen to combat this disease with medicine and science.” His shoulders slouch as he ushers us down into the hole. “I couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d decided to teach pole dancing, instead.”
At the chasing silence, Dr. Levins clears his throat. “Or standup comedy. Anyway, down you go.”
The four of us stare blankly at him. No one moves.
He nods and begins the climb down. “Right. So, whoever brings up the rear needs to close the hatch. My ass is on the line for betrayal, after all.”
Titus unhooks Atticus’s arm from his neck and directs the Alpha to climb down next, probably to put some muscle between Doctor Levins and me. He then nods at me to follow after them, and helping the boy climb down first, I do, descending into the dark tunnel below. Titus brings up the rear, drawing the linen cart between the door and the hatch to conceal us, before he closes us inside.
Waiting below, Doctor Levins presses a switch that turns on a series of lights along the tunnels. “As I was saying, my job here is a little more obscure.”
“How so?” Titus asks, jumping from the last rung of the ladder.
“I’m in the business of saving people. Doing so means evolving with the disease. Perhaps you’ve noticed, Ragers are getting smarter. The more their genetics mix with ours, the better they’ll get at hunting. But they do not hunt their own kind.”
“Yeah. We saw what you do.” I wrap my arm around the boy beside me, drawing him closer.
“I’m afraid there are two philosophies to this science. Taking what isn’t broken, and making it worse, and taking what’s worse and trying to fix it.”
“I’m not following.”
“Where my colleagues have recruited young women for the task of impregnating them to produce a new generation. I’ve been tasked with trying to reverse those who are infected.”
