by Paula Stokes
Damn it. I must have dropped that when I fell from the rope.
Alec unzips my purse. “Well, what have we here?” He removes the tranquilizer gun and studies it curiously. “American?” he asks. “I suspect this is also illegal.”
I sigh. At least he doesn’t seem to know I have a second throwing knife in my other boot. “It’s also against the law to hire people to break into someone’s hotel room and steal from her,” I say. But it’s pointless to bring that up. I have no proof Kyung was responsible, and even if I did, that crime happened in the US, not here.
“I’m afraid I have no idea to what you are referring.” Alec plucks something else of interest out of my purse—the all-access ID badge. I swear under my breath. Baz put my picture on it, but how hard will it be for Alec to figure out it’s actually Jason Choi’s clearances? He holds the ID next to the one still clipped to my shirt. “This is interesting. Where’d you get it?”
When I refuse to answer, Alec and Mr. Yun each take one of my arms and we turn toward the entrance to the building. Alec shakes his head in dismay when he realizes I’m limping. “Did you injure yourself?” He wraps one arm around me to support my weight, but I shrug him off.
“Don’t touch me,” I say. “I’d rather limp.”
“As you wish.”
The three of us enter the building through the parking garage. We walk down a ramp to the bank of elevators. Mr. Yun presses the UP button and the elevator doors open. The three of us shuffle inside. Alec swipes the fake ID and hits the button for B-2. The elevator begins to move.
“Oh, that’s troubling,” he says. “Whose badge did you clone?”
“He’s not working with us,” I say. “He doesn’t even know I copied it.”
“Who?” Alec repeats.
“Please don’t hurt him.” I refuse to give them a name. Jason Choi seemed like a nice guy. If there’s any way to keep them from discovering his identity, I’m going to protect him.
The elevator doors open and Alec stops at the first door we come to, marked Lab 5. He swipes his badge through the card reader.
“What is this place?” I ask, even though I already know. I’m trying to keep Alec distracted while I figure out a way to escape.
“Just more laboratories.” He pushes me inside the room. “Where we do some of our more classified research.” Mr. Yun enters behind us and for a few moments the three of us stand silent in the open room.
I still have a knife hidden in my right boot. I might be able to reach it before either man notices, but even if I can take out one of them, I still have to defeat the other and escape with a sprained ankle. That probably means killing them both. Killing wasn’t hard when it was self-defense, but what if Baz is right? Killing someone is different in practice than it is in theory. There are factors you can’t prepare for, feelings in the moment where you’ll question everything you thought you knew about yourself. What if I freeze up? What if I can’t go through with it?
I can, a voice hisses in my brain. Lily, reminding me she has no problem killing anyone and everyone. Even me.
Almost as if he can read my mind, Alec gestures toward Mr. Yun. “Make sure she doesn’t have any other weapons on her.”
Keeping his gun trained on me, Mr. Yun pats me down, quick and businesslike, finding and confiscating my remaining knife. Now I’m completely unarmed and in the custody of the enemy. The most dangerous weapon you have is your brain … All right. Perhaps not completely unarmed. I try to decide what Gideon would do in this situation. He would probably go about it in a scientific manner. First, gather information.
“Go get him,” Alec tells Mr. Yun.
The stocky security guard disappears out into the hallway.
I pace back and forth, studying the various equipment placed on the counter that runs along the back of the room. There are several computers, along with a high-powered microscope and some machines that I think process blood samples.
Alec hops up on one of the steel tables and sits, his legs dangling down. He watches me with curiosity.
My eyes flick to the door of the lab and back to Alec. If I had the element of surprise, I could probably get to the hallway, but then what? The ViSE tech is in the lab next door, but it might as well be in a foreign country.
“If you’re thinking of making a break for it, you should know that the door to this particular lab is keycard-locked from both directions.”
“Oh. So it’s like a prison.”
“We do work with animals in here. Can’t have any test subjects escaping, now can we?”
“Is that why I’m down here?” I keep my voice level. “To be some sort of test subject?” Colonel Rojas’s words echo in my brain. Human subjects? Fatalities?
“You have a vivid imagination.” Alec cracks his knuckles. “We’re waiting for my superior. He needs to speak with you.”
“Kyung?”
“I don’t recommend you call him that, but yes.” Alec studies me for a moment. “I take it you don’t remember me. Pity. I guess it’s not true what they say.”
I pause in front of a tray of wrapped surgical instruments. I want to ignore him or tell him I don’t care who he is, but part of me is curious.“What do they say?” I ask cautiously.
Alec smirks. “That you never forget your first.”
The blood drains from my face as I spin around. “Liar.”
“I remember it quite clearly,” he murmurs, as if he’s reminiscing about a fond vacation memory. “Some girls begged for their mothers, some begged for God to intervene, but with you it was ‘Eonni, eonni, eonni.’ As if your sister could somehow save you.”
“I will kill you,” I blurt out. “I will make it hurt.” The words spew from my lips like razor blades, sharp, shredding. I can barely understand them because they’re not my own. They’re Lily’s. She thrashes around inside of me like a black ghost.
I shouldn’t let go but—
Yes, you should.
Yes, I should.
CHAPTER 44
LILY
The one called Alec steps back, puts a table between us.
I grab the first thing my fingers find—a rack of glassware. Shiny missiles. One, two, three, four, five. I fling beakers and flasks.
Alec dodges them and then backs away. Unhurt. Unharmed.
Unacceptable.
My eyes fall on the shards of glass. I reach for another flask, bring it down hard against the counter. It shatters. Success.
“I’m going to kill you now,” I say.
There is only the thick pulse in the one called Alec’s neck. And the jagged edge of the broken flask in my hand.
I fly.
CHAPTER 45
When I open my eyes, all I can see is a blur of white and gray. I try to sit up, but I can’t. I’m restrained, tied down to something hard and flat. Panic swoops in like a falcon. My heart beats its wings in my chest as I try to remember what happened. I blink hard. Gradually, my head clears and the white and gray solidifies into paneled ceiling tiles with silver sprinkler heads. I lift my neck and see that I’m still in the lab. I’m strapped to one of the long metal tables, Velcro around my hands, feet, legs, and chest preventing me from moving. A yawn escapes my lips.
“What did you do to me?” I ask, my voice slow and thick.
“I shot you with your tranquilizer gun,” Alec says. “You were trying to stab me with a broken flask, remember?”
I don’t remember, but I do remember Lily. I remember letting go.
The door to the lab swings open and I wrench my head to the side to see who is joining us. Bad idea. It’s Kyung. His face is stoic but I can sense a bit of glee in his step. He’s wearing a black suit with one of his trademark red ties.
“It’s nice to see you again, Song Ha Neul,” Kyung says. “Though I regret that it’s under these circumstances.”
“I don’t use that name anymore,” I say coldly.
“Yes, well. If only we could change ourselves the way we can change our names.” Kyun
g steps forward. “Bold move coming to work here. Even I didn’t expect you’d do anything that drastic.”
My insides twist and turn at the nearness of him, this horrible man whom I came here to kill because it felt like the only way I would ever be free. Memories crash down on me. Trafficking. Abuse. Assault. My own blood seeping from self-inflicted wounds. “I guess you underestimated me,” I choke out, still struggling to keep my emotions in check.
“Perhaps.” Kyung pulls the neural editor from the pocket of his coat. “What did you do to this?”
“Doesn’t it work? Maybe your thugs damaged it when they broke into my room and stole it.” Knowing that Kyung is here because he needs something from me gives me the smallest shred of control. I intend to capitalize on it, somehow.
Kyung leans back against one of the silver tables. “Or perhaps you disabled it.”
“I don’t know much about the technology,” I tell Kyung. “Including how to disable or fix it. Only Gideon would know. Maybe you shouldn’t have let Sung Jin kill him.”
“Ki Hyun.” Kyung shakes his head in dismay. “My brother and I were going to do great things together. Until he developed some sort of hyperactive conscience.”
“Your brother?” My voice is shrill, shocked. This can’t be true. I would have known. Rose would have known and she would have told me.
Kyung chuckles. “I suppose it makes sense he kept it a secret. Little Brother always was ashamed of me. He and my parents both. I wasn’t surprised that my father cut me out of his will. But I was surprised that Ki Hyun thought it was okay to steal even more from me.”
“It was his research,” I say. “His findings.” My words sound hollow. I can’t believe Gideon chose Rose and me over his own flesh and blood. To turn against your family, even when they’re horrible and wrong the way that Kyung is, can’t have been easy for Gideon. I suppose that answers one question I always had about why he didn’t go to the police and try to break up the trafficking ring. At the time, I always figured he was worried about being implicated as one of Kyung’s clients. But maybe he wasn’t protecting himself. Maybe he was protecting his brother.
And then Kyung had him killed.
“Research he only discovered because I set him up with a position after he graduated,” Kyung scoffs. “I was a fool to believe he wanted to reconcile after our father’s passing. I never should have taken him on.”
“He was a decent person,” I say. “Not like you.”
“He was a lying little weasel,” Kyung snaps. “But also an amazing researcher. The kind of man who undoubtedly kept meticulous notes. So where are they?”
The snowflake necklace! I had it in my hand when we entered the lab, but then Lily took over and now I’m not sure where it is. “There might be notes in his study back in St. Louis,” I say. “Or on his computer.”
“Unfortunately his computer is still in the custody of the local police.”
“Look,” I say. “I don’t know how to make the editor work and I don’t know where Gideon’s notes are, so if that’s what this is about, you might as well let me go.”
Kyung smoothes his red silk tie. Only it’s not a tie anymore. It’s an incision, a giant gaping hole in his flesh. Blood pours from the wound. We will split him apart, Lily hisses in my head. We will show him how it feels to live as pieces.
I blink hard. The blood disappears.
“Did you search her?” he asks Alec.
“Mr. Yun checked her for weapons.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, right, Ha Neul?” Kyung brushes my hair back from my temples and his fingers catch on my wig. He gently lifts the wig from my head and smirks when he sees the recorder headset beneath it. A slight shock runs through me as he removes the headset, collapses it, and hands it to Alec. “We must remind Mr. Yun to be a little more thorough next time.”
Kyung turns back to me. I try to keep from flinching with revulsion as his fingers trace their way across my head and then skim across the fabric of my shirt. He stops at the rose pendant around my neck, leaning in for a closer look. “Please don’t,” I say, my voice wavering. “It’s the last piece of my sister I have left.”
“She has another one,” Alec says. “In fact, I might not have found her after she went out the window if she hadn’t stopped to retrieve it.” Alec produces my snowflake pendant from a nearby counter where my purse is also sitting.
Kyung’s eyes narrow. He crosses the room and fingers the pendant. He pulls it apart, exposing the drive. “So clever, Ki Hyun was.”
“What?” I crane my neck to see what he’s doing. “What is it?” I take in a deep breath and exhale slowly, trying to remain calm.
Kyung slots the drive into a nearby computer and frowns at the screen. “What’s the password?”
“Password for what?” Maybe I can convince him I didn’t even know about the drive.
His lips tighten into a hard line. “Password protection with automatic data destruction. That is unfortunate … for all of us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I try to make my voice sound scared and pathetic.
“Yes, well,” he says. “If that’s the case, then you won’t mind if Mr. Kwon runs a little … experiment.”
Alec steps forward and begins to unbutton my shirt. Bile surges into my throat. This is the one kind of experiment I might not survive. Now would be a good time for someone else to take over, I think. But that’s not true. I let go with Lily and only ended up in deeper trouble. As much as I want to blink and wake up on the other side of this hell, I need to stay focused. I need to figure out a way to get free.
“Please,” I whisper. “If you have any decency at all, don’t do this.”
“Relax,” Alec says. “We have more important things than pleasure to think about right now.” He steps away for a moment and returns with a tangle of wires. He applies electrodes to my chest, above and below my ribs, and then inserts the wires into a computer. A monitor sitting on the table next to me comes to life. I watch the green repeating pattern of my heart rate, the jagged spikes coming closer together as my pulse accelerates. Alec clips a monitoring device to my index finger. A slower blue line that represents my breathing flows across the bottom of the screen.
“It’s not going to kill her, is it?” Kyung asks, just loudly enough for me to hear.
Human subjects. Fatalities. Terror rushes through me. My head is suddenly full of voices. Kill. Wait. Focus. Die.
“I wouldn’t worry.” Alec laughs lightly. “That’s the beauty of the technology. We can do whatever we need to, with no lasting effects. I just want her vital signs on record so that we can show our potential buyers we’ve tested the product on human subjects.”
“Get it started, then,” Kyung says. “I’ll be back. I need to make some calls.”
I squeeze my eyes tightly closed. I will not give these men the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Pressure builds up in my chest. The monitor beeps.
“Breathe,” Alec says softly.
My eyes flick open. I let out my breath in a series of choked gasps. “What are you going to do to me?” I ask in a shaky voice.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He touches my face with one hand. “Not really, anyway. Just do as I say and you’ll be fine.”
The words trigger a memory. Los Angeles. A hotel room. Alec sitting next to me on a bed as I lay curled into the fetal position. I’m not going to hurt you. Just do as I say and you’ll be fine.
A tear works its way out of my eyes, and then another. Alec brushes them away with one thumb. Somehow it’s even worse that he’s being gentle, that he’s pretending to be kind. “Don’t touch me,” I say. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
A smile plays at his lips. “Ah, you’re remembering.”
“You’re sick,” I say. “I was just a little girl.”
He chuckles. “Not that little. I used to help Kyung out with the younger girls, get them … acclimated. Something about me seemed to keep them calm. My accent,
perhaps.”
“I wish she had killed you,” I mutter.
“Who?” Alec asks. “Your sister? She wouldn’t have killed me. She liked me. Not as much as Ki Hyun, clearly. But I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
My fear morphs into rage. “I am going to kill you twice, once for each of them,” I rasp. I don’t know if they’re my words or Lily’s. Right now, I don’t know where she ends and I begin.
“Such dark language for such a pretty girl,” he says. “Sit tight. I’ll be back.”
“You’re leaving?” I say, and these are definitely my words. I hate the way they sound, like I don’t want him to go, like I’m afraid to be alone with his little experiment.
“I’ll return shortly,” he says. “With a little surprise for you.”
The door closes behind Alec with a hiss and a click and I’m left in the lab alone, my wrists and ankles strapped tightly to the metal table. I turn my head, first to the left. I see the doorway to the hall, a line of sinks, a counter with a microscope and other technical equipment. Most of the equipment looks too bulky to serve as a proper weapon, assuming I could somehow get free from these restraints.
I turn my head to the right to see if there’s anything more helpful on that side of the room. Broken glass litters the floor. It looks like someone pushed over a rack of beakers and flasks, but most of the pieces are too small to actually do anything with. Beyond that, just more steel tables like this one, and a cart of surgical supplies. I might be able to find some scalpel blades if I’m lucky. And then I see my throwing knife, tossed casually on top of the cart. Mr. Yun must have left it there. I have to get my hands on it … somehow.
CHAPTER 46
There are no clocks that I can see, no windows to the outside world, so I’m not sure how much time passes before Alec and Kyung return. I hear the door open with a soft whoosh and turn my head to see the two men approaching. Mr. Yun is right behind them. I try to steel myself for whatever might happen next.
Alec grabs my ViSE headset from the counter where my belongings still sit. Kyung watches while he slips a memory card into the slot on the back. Alec slides the headset over my ears and tightens the prongs. I shake my head back and forth, trying to make this difficult, but it’s no use. If they think they can force me to vise against my will, they’re wrong. I’ll open my eyes. I’ll embrace the overlay and vomit all over this lab before I let them force me to experience something I don’t want to experience. But then Alec steps forward with a piece of black cloth. It turns out to be a hood that he slips down over my face.
