Infected (Releasing the Magic Book 1)

by Maya Riley

  Just as I had done countless times in my dreams, I followed the path I subconsciously knew so well. I walked over to one toward the middle on the right, my eyes trained on the odd swirly symbol on the top, and peered inside.

  Adam

  The cold air whipped my hair around my face, making it difficult to see, which was a bit of a nuisance. I really wanted to grab one of the red strips of fabric to tie around my head and keep my hair off my face, but I didn’t want to screw up our way back—if we even chose to go back after finding the others. That is, if Skittle wanted to come back. If she wasn’t going back to the cabin, then I was going to do everything I could to stick with her, and I knew the other guys would as well.

  We never should have separated. Even Maura went after her on her own, evident by the empty cabin we went back to before heading back out to search for both of them. We would always follow. We’d split up at times over the last few months for scavenging, but this wasn’t our normal scavenging mission. This was a rescue mission.

  I could have strangled Lincoln when he pushed Skittle away like he did. Too much time has passed since she’s been missing, and we’d expected her to return by now. The fact that she hadn’t was worrying.

  She was the toughest and most stubborn lady I’d ever met, but she was still human. Granted, she had some sort of healing ability, but that didn’t make her invincible. At least, I didn’t think it did. That had yet to be confirmed.

  Mateo picked up his pace at the sight of the next red scrap of fabric, and I pulled the two jackets tighter around me and moved my legs faster. I’d brought an extra jacket for Skittle, but if she’d been out here all this time without any other clothing than what she had, I’d give up both of them right away. Anything to keep her warm. I doubted she had any idea what she meant to us. To all of us. She was one of us now, and her disappearance was as unsettling as it would be if it were any one of the other guys.

  We emerged into a slight clearing, and the only thing visible was a large rusted door hanging open, showing an entrance into a structure covered in vines and other foliage. A scrap of red fabric was tied to the handle and we approached, peering in to find stark darkness where the light from outside ended.

  Silently praying that Lincoln and Jonah found our girl, we disappeared into the darkness.

  Blyss

  “You expect me to believe you’ve been here before?” Maura shrieked. She thought I was losing my mind, and I didn’t blame her. This all sounded crazy to me too.

  “I don’t know, M. All I know is that I’ve dreamt of this place. At the very least, I’ve been here in my dreams.”

  “Why would you dream of a place you’ve never been before? A place you’ve never seen? You said this room looks exactly like it did in your dreams, how else would you explain that?”

  My hands pressed against my temples, trying to relieve the ache in my head from attempting to make sense of any of this. There were so many puzzle pieces and no clue how to make them fit. Standing here with no real lead wasn’t going to help anything. I needed a momentary distraction while my skull cooled down.

  Opening my eyes, I turned around to see what else was in the room. I spotted a desk near the door with cabinets lining the wall above, and walked over to it. Maybe there’d be something in there that gave some explanation.

  “I don’t know, M. I’d love to find out though, so help me look for some answers. There might be some clues around here.”

  “Um, Blyss?”

  “What?” I answered, still rummaging.

  “There’s… there were, um, things left behind in some of these cribs.”

  I turned around to see Maura peering inside of one. While I hadn’t felt the need to look inside all of them, apparently she’d been more curious. I walked over and peered inside. She was right. Some infants had apparently been left behind. The inside of this crib looked unlike that of the other cells we’d passed to get here. Small, mangled bodies filled some of the cribs, while most of them remained vacant. What the hell kind of place was this?

  We began opening the cabinet doors and the desk drawers, rifling through books and papers. The hallways and rooms we’d walked through had been filled with carnage, both of people and rotters, but also of countless broken objects and scattered papers. We hadn’t thought to stop and look at any of those items in particular though, we were more focused on the beings in every room we passed, and staying alert to any surprise rogue rotters. We’d already been caught off guard and if Maura hadn’t been there with me to take care of it, I was sure that I’d have been a goner.

  The desk was still immaculate, and nothing seemed out of place except for a thin layer of dust. It was an odd, stark contrast to the rest of the building that we’d seen so far.

  I pushed those thoughts aside since they weren’t at all helpful right now, and continued to scan the desk for any clues. A nameplate told me that a Dr. Hannity used this desk, now I needed to find out for what reason, since the name meant nothing to me.

  The drawers were filled with research papers and books on biology, stem cell research, and all sorts of other sciency things that I didn’t understand. Science was never my best subject in school.

  I opened another drawer to find it filled with labeled files and skimmed the tops, but none of the names called out to me in recognition.

  Taking a chance, I pulled out a random one from the middle and opened the folder. A picture of a dark skinned boy looked back at me and I focused on the words. The date at the top was the late 1900’s. He was subject 924 and was taken from his stroller behind an inattentive mother at roughly one year old, and then kept here until he was fourteen. There was a list of drugs he was given throughout those years, and notes on his reactions and vitals all throughout those thirteen years. The last experiment they performed on him turned him ‘savage’ and he had to be ‘taken care of.’

  I shut the file, closed my eyes, and groaned. This place had not only been abducting children, but experimenting on them too, and then incinerating them when the experiments failed? How fucked up was that?

  I opened my eyes and looked around. He had probably occupied one of these cribs at one point in time. The early 1900’s… how long had this place been operating under everyone’s noses, hidden in the woods under vines and overgrown foliage? Did they have any connection to the government, or were they sliding by incognito? All these crazy experiments they’d been doing for all these years… I begun to suspect even more that they may have had something to do with the Void Virus outbreak. And if that were so, then maybe there would be a way to reverse it.

  The sound of glass breaking had me jumping around to see a broken snow globe on the floor at Maura’s feet, its contents streaming out and pooling around it. “Oops, sorry!”

  I brought a hand to my chest, trying to catch my breath again. “It’s alright. At least it was your clumsiness and not another psycho rotter.”

  “Ha, ha.” Maura stuck her tongue out and turned her attention back to the cabinets. “Hey, water bottles!”

  “What?” That was random and unbelievably perfect. I ran over and we each downed a bottle of water. There were only two, but it was perfect.

  Turning my own attention back to the file drawer, I pulled out another file right before my ears were greeted with another crashing sound. “Maura, if you see something big, heavy, or breakable, leave it where it’s at.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “What—” Another crashing sound, and this time I pinpointed it to having come from outside the door and down the hall. A loud, angry grunt preceded the thump of something heavy being thrown against a solid surface.

  “Fuck, we’re not alone here.” I grabbed Maura and pulled her down to a crouching position with me and we slid underneath the desk.

  We waited, listening to the footsteps get closer to the room we were in. There were at least two sets of feet. Now that M could fight and wield a weapon, whoever they were didn’t stand a chance. We had the element of surprise o
n our side.

  The footsteps stopped right outside the opened door and I held my breath. I couldn’t see anyone there from where I was hidden, so I listened in wait. My hand hovered over the spot on my hip where I had a dagger. In my haste to hide, I’d left my sword on top of the desk, clear as day. If someone who had worked in this building were to stick their head inside the room, they’d see it for sure and know there was an intruder. Despite the few months I’ve spent practicing stealth and fighting, I was still sloppy.

  The door creaked, sending shivers down my spine and I waited on full alert.

  I pushed the negative thoughts from my mind and placed all my focus on my ears. Someone, or something, was sniffing right inside the door. Rotters would turn their noses toward their prey, but I’d never heard any of them sniff like that. This sniffing sound was more dog-like. Before I could take the observation any further, I was suddenly engulfed in a large body of fur, and a wet tongue was covering every inch of my exposed face and neck. I pushed the furry body away from my own to get a better look and let out a throaty cry of joy. My arms flew around my pup, pulling her close to my body as she struggled to pull away so that she could cover my face in slobber once again. It was a messy battle of hugs and saliva.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here?” The owner of the voice stopped in front of the desk and bent down, the pant legs riding up to reveal the familiar metal prosthetic, and I paused. Lincoln’s face appeared in front of my own, filled with relief.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, before I could even think of any other reasonable words. That seemed like a valid enough question though.

  He frowned at my less than grateful words. “Rescuing you, of course. Hey there, Maura.”

  “Hey.”

  The blood in my veins began to heat up. I didn’t need any rescuing. Despite the many times they had saved my ass recently, I was still perfectly capable of doing something on my own. “Let me rephrase the question. Why are you,” I pointed at him, “of all people, here? You made it clear how you think of me.”

  His face fell and I felt a pang of guilt in my chest, but I still needed an answer so I fixed a glare at him. I would have crossed my arms, too, but those were occupied at the moment.

  “B,” he started.

  “Don’t you ‘B,’ me.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t mean what I said, I promise. I was taking my own issues, my own insecurities, and projecting them on you. I promise you when I say it’s me, not you, I mean it. So you can come back.”

  “Are you really using the typical breakup line in an apology to get me to go back with you?”

  “Yeah, I am.” He smirked. “Is it working?”

  An awkward laugh escaped, echoing off the walls and filling the room. “I don’t know. But if you move out of the way, we could come out from under this desk and have a much more comfortable discussion.”

  His head disappeared with a nod and he stood halfway up, holding down a hand to each of us to help us out and up.

  Once we were free from the confined space and Puppy had let up so I could stand, I noticed another figure by the door and walked over to give Jonah a hug. He opened his arms and wrapped them around me as I snuggled up against his chest. I smiled when he placed a kiss to the top of my head before I pulled back. “So, is everyone here?” I voiced the question and signed it for Jonah’s sake.

  “No, just us two plus Puppy. The others are back at the cabin.”

  They won’t be waiting at the cottage for much longer, with how long we’ve all been gone. I’d be surprised if they didn’t follow shortly after, Jonah commented. What is this place?

  “Some kind of lab or something, I think.” I picked up the file I had dropped in my rush to take cover. “I only had time to look through one file before we heard you guys out in the hallway and hid.”

  “Yeah, about that, what the hell was up with all those rotters and dead humans in those cages? This place doesn’t strike me as a normal jail. We took care of a rotter out in the hall that was heading this way, so you’re welcome.”

  I ignored the unsolicited ‘welcome’ and continued on with what I was trying to say. “In this file is the life of a kid. He was a year old when he was taken right out from under his mother’s nose and kept here for thirteen years. There’s a whole list of all the drugs they’d given him, all the experiments performed on him, up until he ‘turned savage’ and they disposed of him in an incinerator. There’s something really wrong about this place. I have a horrible feeling.”

  “Could this be where the outbreak started? The first rotters reported were from this general region of the U.S. Do you think this is the place that started it? That these experiments could be what caused the virus?”

  “That was kind of my train of thought too. I was wanting to look through these files and see what all we could learn.”

  Lincoln hesitated. “If that’ll get you out of here sooner rather than later, I’ll try.”

  Jonah clapped his hands together. Let’s get to work.

  Jonah joined Maura in looking through the cabinets, while Lincoln helped me sort through the massive drawer filled with files. We each took a folder and looked over them, trying to find a correlation between all these ‘subjects’ and what happened to them.

  The next few folders we sifted through were of children who had been abducted at an early age. It angered me to see the kind of horrible treatment everyone went through in this place, only to be discarded like last week’s trash when they ‘expired.’ Not just the children they took, but the prisoners in the cells we’d passed to get here.

  This company had to have been working inconspicuously, because if the public had known what was going on here, there would have been riots.

  A growl of disapproval from my left had me turning to look at Lincoln. He was scowling down at his opened folder and I nudged his arm in distraction, worried it would literally catch fire if he stared at it much longer.

  He looked up at me, his expression remaining in the same look of disapproval, and placed the folder in my hands. A young girl, around four years old, looked up at me. Rather than the date abducted and estimated age that were featured the top of the older folders we’d looked at it, this one had a ‘date created.’ A full page described the process of how an embryo was brought to full term inside of a flask of liquid medium in an incubator. Near the end of gestation, they used a bioreactor.

  Not only was this place abducting children and experimenting on them, but they were also creating them. The only mention about how these embryos came about was a series of letters and numbers. I didn’t know enough about their scientific process to be able to figure it out right now, so I moved further down the page and through the folder.

  This particular ‘subject,’ as they seemed to refer to all of them whether they were abducted or created, was given the same drugs and tests as one of the more human children. At first it seemed as though they wanted to see how human the creations could be. Then it seemed as though they were after something entirely different. At least, this seemed to be the gist of it.

  “What would be the reason they would do all of this?” I asked absentmindedly to no one in particular. “What’s the point of all of this?” I motioned to the rest of the room and the building with my hand. “I know they were taking kids and creating kids, giving them drugs and running tests on them, but what was the point of all these experiments? What were they after?”

  “Creating kids?” Maura murmured in confirmation.

  “In shit like tubes and jars. Probably in another room of the building we hadn’t been in yet. Who knows how much of the building we actually covered already. But this, all of this, it’s so inhumane.”

  I grabbed another folder as if it might hold all the answers, or else maybe an, “lol, jk, April Fools!” but its contents weren’t any better. The face that greeted me upon opening the cover was familiar. I’d seen this face, only hours ago. The only difference was these eyes still had life in them. “M, t
his is the first guy we saw in here. The dead human inside that one glass cell.”

  She walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder at the picture before commenting. “Says here he was taken at age fourteen, only seven years ago. Looks like none of the tests were successful. Whatever they were doing, it failed and he was left behind.”

  I handed her the file and rubbed at my temples again. None of this was making sense. None of the puzzle pieces were fitting together. It was like there were thousands of puzzle pieces and we were missing a few. There was something in all of this stuff, all of these files, but I couldn’t piece together what it was, what I was missing. I stared at the rows of cribs as the vivid scenes from my supposed dreams played through my mind, but without any real substance.

  “Guys.” I grabbed the attention of Lincoln and Jonah. “There’s something else. The reason we’re even going through all these files in the first place is because when I saw this room, I recognized it.”

  Lincoln’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion and Jonah signed, What do you mean?

  Sighing, I explained, “I’ve been having these dreams. Not every time I slept, but they started getting more frequent. They occur about every other night now. At first they were only memories from growing up, most of them ones that I’d tried to forget. Sometimes they’d morph into other memories. There were times when the dream would shift and I would be standing in a room full of monochrome cribs, with a baby in each and a lady that tended to them. Either I’ve been having visions of the past, premonitions of the future, or, I don’t know, astral projecting or something.”

  Silence filled the air as we took some time to process that information, theories flitting through our minds with nothing to really latch on to. After a few moments, shuffling sounded from behind us and I turned to see that Jonah had resumed his search. Taking his lead, the rest of us continued our quest for answers and Maura turned back to the overhead cabinets, while Lincoln pulled out another folder. I didn’t have time to reach for another folder myself before Jonah was rushing over to me with a book.