Chapter Fifteen
The last of the peanut butter was sticking to my teeth, as it always did, and I took a swallow of the tepid water. It was hard with minerals; we were on a well. He wasn't lying when he said that we were out of the city, I thought as I set the plastic glass down and pulled my knees to my chin. I'd been stuck in this cage for almost twenty-four hours, but there was a feeling in the air that I didn't trust. I'd been watching Eloy to try to figure out what was up. He'd come in early this morning, grumpy and stiff, making me think he had spent the night outside on sentry detail.
Jennifer had left an hour ago wearing a pair of nursing scrubs and a doppelganger curse invoked with my blood. Chris had spent the morning getting twenty years of dust out of the workings of one of the older-looking machines, now glinting a dull silver. Gerald was on a bathroom break with Winona, serving as both her balance and jailer.
Winona was a good girl. She could use the bathroom any time she asked. They let me go only when both Eloy and Gerald were around, and Eloy was gone more often than not. Right now, he was fiddling with Gerald's security cameras, trying to get them to pan. He was somewhere in the basement, visible through one of the monitors as he stretched and sweated. A light flashed on the panel, and Eloy grimaced, reaching around to try again.
Sucking on my teeth, I leaned back against the wall as I sat on the cold floor, a stinky sleeping bag the only thing between me and the cement, watching the subtle flow of emotions and feeling of expectancy. Everything had changed earlier this morning after a hushed, intense argument between Eloy and Chris. It had taken place out of my hearing and almost out of my sight, at the edges of the light. Eloy got his way in the end, though, whatever it was.
The snap of Chris carefully closing the box of her vials drew my attention, and I sighed. She had been counting them again. God, she was worse than Ivy.
Ivy, I thought, feeling my chest clench. By now she must be worried to the point of tearing someone's throat out, but she and Jenks would find me - and get me out of this cage. I fingered my band of silver, thinking I'd been more than stupid about this. No wonder Trent thought I was brainless. He'd been trying to tell me, and I hadn't listened. I guess I hadn't watched the right movies to know that with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. My blood was power, and I had a responsibility to keep it safe - even if that meant I had to hurt someone in the short term.
I didn't like it. But it was a moot point if I couldn't get out of here and fix things, and my jaw clenched as I watched Eloy through one of the monitors, squinting as the camera panned back and forth. Nodding in satisfaction, the man walked out of the camera's range. He flashed up on a second monitor before vanishing behind the new camera in turn.
"Hey, how about a bathroom break?" I said loudly. Chris had left a screwdriver on the counter after replacing the back of the machine, and I wanted it.
"Use the bucket," Chris said, not bothering to turn around.
"Winona didn't have to use the bucket," I said, then looked at the monitor and the gray shape coming down the stairwell, one hand on the railing, one hand holding a shopping bag.
"Shut up, you stupid little chubi," Chris said, pushing back from her chair as if she'd been killing time up until now. Sure enough, she went to her cot and grabbed her thick, army-green coat, shrugging into it as she muttered under her breath.
"Bathroom?" I prompted, ignoring the slur.
Chris searched her pockets until she found a tissue and wiped her nose. "Hold it," she said as she threw it away. Not looking up, she yelled, "Gerald! Jenn's back! Let's get this over with!" Rolling her eyes, she turned to the monitors, now showing Eloy and Jennifer. He'd taken her shopping bag for her all polite like. The woman didn't look like herself, being about twenty pounds heavier and just as many years older. It had to be her, though, seeing that Eloy was talking to her and the matronly seeming woman looked right up at the camera and waved.
I fidgeted, balling up my napkin and throwing it at the bucket. My blood had made the doppelganger curse work, and it bothered me, even though voluntarily giving them ten cc's of blood had gotten me a much-needed trip to the bathroom last night. I was an unwilling demon, doling out wishes to an insane practitioner. At least Al could say no. I suppose I could say no, too, and pee in a corner. Maybe I should have. But then they just would have darted me.
"You think you're part of this, but HAPA is going to kill you when they don't need you anymore," I said, and Chris stiffened. "Why do you think Eloy is here? To keep you safe? They're using you, and as soon as they don't need you, you're dead."
"You open your mouth one more time, and I'll dart you this shy of a coma," she snarled, but I'd seen her flash of fear. Maybe she was smarter than I'd given her credit for.
The fast-paced sound of heels on cement grew loud, and Jennifer click-clacked into the circle of light, looking refreshed and red cheeked if nothing like herself. Eloy set her bag on the floor and went to Gerald's security camera, making sure the joystick worked.
"Why are you bothering to fix those?" Chris said snidely. "They don't need to pan."
"Why are you opening the back panels of those old machines?" Eloy said dryly. "They aren't going to work any better with the dust out of them."
Chris leaned against the makeshift lab bench, the nylon of her coat scraping it as she looked him over. She was ugly with her short hair, no makeup, the scratches from Jenks healing - and the fear I had reminded her of. "You do your job, I do mine."
"Uh-huh," he muttered, still standing hunched over the equipment.
"Wow, it got cold out there!" Jennifer said, her gaze going over the small room and seeing that Winona and Gerald were absent and that Chris had her coat on. "I thought we were staying in tonight," she said, picking her bag up and setting it on the counter. A new name tag attached to the pocket of her scrubs peeped out past her unbuttoned coat.
"Captain America has plans," Chris said shortly. "Any problems getting the stuff?"
Jennifer glanced at me, and I gave her a bunny-eared kiss-kiss. "No," she said, her eyes darting away. "The charm worked great. In and out, no problem." She shifted her shoulders as if shaking off a chill. "I feel like I need to take a shower, though."
"It's a curse, not a charm," I said loudly, and a flash of fear crossed her as she took wrapped sterile syringes out of the bag. "You should see how black your soul is now."
"Your aura is fine," Chris said. "Don't listen to the corr bitch."
"Filthy," I mouthed at Jennifer, and she paled. Hey, I took my digs when I could get them.
Jennifer set a small bottle of injectable something beside the syringes. "Why are we getting a new subject already?" she said, clearly still uneasy. "We can't move three people if we have to bug out. Eloy says the next base isn't ready yet. If something goes wrong and we have to leave, we've nowhere to go."
Chris frowned, crossing her ankles and barking, "Break that curse and put your bar clothes on." Turning to the dark, she shouted, "Gerald, get goat girl back in her cage! Let's go!"
Goat girl? Oh, I owed her some serious foot-in-gut for that one.
Jennifer didn't move, but the curse washed from her, leaving her in clothes too big and a very concerned expression on her face. "Four people can't move three."
I stifled a shiver when Chris smiled at me. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."
What she meant was, they'd take the most useful and kill who was left. I suddenly felt like I was on the Titanic.
Jennifer spun to Eloy. "You're going along with this?" she asked, and Eloy shrugged.
All my warning flags went up, and Chris noticed I was watching Jennifer intently. Her eyes never leaving mine, she said, "Can I talk to you for a moment, Jennifer?"
My eyes narrowed in suspicion as Chris put a hand on the woman's shoulder, whispering into her ear. Jennifer's eyes went wide, then she looked at Eloy as he stood and stretched, finally bending to check that his boots were tied. Frowning in thought, Jennifer went behind the curtain she'd hung last night between her cot and Gerald's, changing into her bar clothes, I expected.
Eloy stood beside the syringes and picked up the tiny bottle, squinting as he read what it contained. "You know this is toxic, right?" he said, jiggling it in his palm. "You'll have to wait twenty-four hours for it to work its way out of the subject's system before you can alter him."
Alter? My face burned, and I sat up, pulling my cold back from the stone. "Why not just say mutilate, Eloy? That's all it does."
"That's not for the next subject," Chris said, annoyed. "That's for her if she becomes a liability."
Eloy nodded, and he set the bottle down with a tap. Her frown deepening, Chris turned to the stacked clutter. "Come on, Gerald!" she shouted. "It doesn't take that long to use the can!"
"We're coming!" came back faintly. "She can't walk that fast, for God's sake!"
Jennifer pushed the curtain aside, dressed in some slinky black dress, high heels adding four inches to her height. She looked at me and beamed. I felt like the butt of a joke being told out of my earshot, and I touched the corner of my mouth to see if I had peanut butter on it. The awkward trip-trap of Winona's hooves became obvious, and my pulse quickened. The door to the cage was going to open.
Gerald's hunched form eased into the light, Winona looking small and frail on his arm as she wobbled, hanging on for dear life. They'd given her blouse back to her, and it looked odd with her thick thighs and cloven feet showing from under it. Balancing on her tiny feet with that heavy head must be hard. She looked okay, if having wrinkly gray skin, a curly red pelt, goat feet, and a tail somewhere between a monkey's and a stingray's was okay.
Winona gave me a smile, her oversize canines making her look like she was growling, but I smiled back, tensing to jump at the door.
Angry, Chris turned to Gerald. "Hurry up. I'm tired of smelling these stinking corrs!"
"All right, all right!" Gerald muttered, his head down as he wove Winona through the last of the boxes and toward our cell.
I got to my feet, eyes on the door. "Hey! What about my bathroom break?"
"Use the bucket," Chris said, arms crossed as Winona grabbed the wire mesh for balance while Gerald fished the key from his pocket. There was only one, and Gerald had it.
"On your knees, facing the wall," Gerald demanded, and shoulders slumping, I turned my back on them and dropped to my knees. I don't know what movie he'd been watching, but it was effective. No big loss, I thought as I heard the door open and Winona totter in. Even if I did manage to get out, I wouldn't get anywhere. Not with them standing around watching.
Hearing the door shut and lock, I stood and turned, reaching to take Winona's thick hand. Her eyes met mine in thanks, and I helped her to her side of the cell and supported her until she was down. They really didn't need to cage her. She could barely stand.
Chris put the bottle of sedative in her purse with a couple of syringes. "I doubt moving three people is going to come up," she said. "We've never had a subject live longer than three days." She looked at Winona. "This is what, day two?"
"Winona is healthy." Why are they scaring her like this?