The back of her head stung unbearably from the icy water and she tentatively touched it with her fingers. A small section of hair had been shaved, and a neat line of small stitches made tiny ridges under her fingers. They’d operated on her brain. A pitiful cry escaped her lips.
Max, Angel thought frantically, overwhelmed with horror. Max—help!
13
“LOOK HERE,” the voice commanded. “Pay attention.”
Angel blinked water out of her eyes and squeezed her hair, feeling chilly rivulets trickling down her back. Outside her crate, the room went dark. Angel saw extremely well in the dark, but then a lit screen flickered on, several feet away.
She saw a young child, a boy, with pale, almost white hair. He was lying on a table, very still, covered with a sheet. A crisp, white, sterile sheet. Angel shuddered involuntarily, the wounds on her body aching in response to the image.
The camera panned to look down on the boy, and Angel saw that he was in an operating room. He had a mask over his nose and mouth, and his eyes were clamped open. Angel recognized the look in them. It was a feeling she knew well: pure, undiluted terror. Angel felt an icy coldness in her temples as the view zoomed in. There, on the little boy’s neck, was the trio of freckles, right where she knew they’d be.
Iggy.
It was Iggy as a little kid. Before…
Angel swallowed hard, her eyes trained on the large screen as gowned and masked doctors came in and shone spotlights onto Iggy’s operating table. One doctor, his eyes hidden behind large magnifying glasses, spoke directly to the camera.
“Today we’re experimenting with a new technique, only recently developed. It involves a surgical stimulation of a certain area of the rods and cones in the backs of this hybrid’s eyes. We estimate that the subject will have its night vision improved by at least four hundred percent.”
Then Iggy’s panicked blue eyes filled the screen.
Angel shook her head, horrified. She couldn’t watch. They weren’t really going to make her watch…?
But the video continued, and she couldn’t look away. She stared as the scalpel found its mark and plunged in as if slicing a boiled egg, as tweezers pinched and needles probed, as blood pooled and tubes suctioned it away.
As they hacked into him, like butchers.
She listened as Iggy’s agonized moans grew more and more frenzied. They sounded visceral, verging on madness, louder and louder and louder.
He was awake. The whole time.
Angel shrank back into her crate and squeezed her own eyes shut, the screams echoing in her ears. She had just seen a film of the crazy whitecoats at the School making Iggy blind.
“No!” she wailed, her voice joining Iggy’s. “No no no no.”
The movie flickered to a stop and the room’s lights came back on.
“That was thirteen years ago,” someone said from out of view. “The techniques were unbelievably primitive, which no doubt caused the less than optimum results.”
Less than optimum? Angel thought with rising hysteria. You mean the total blindness? That result?
Once again she tried to hack into someone’s brain, the brain of even one person in this awful torture chamber. But it was like the room itself had a dampening field—she hadn’t been able to read a single thought the whole time she’d been there.
“But you see, Angel,” the voice went on smoothly, “we’ve made tremendous progress since then. Those were the days of cavemen. The science, the technique, is vastly improved. This time, it will go beautifully.”
“No,” Angel whispered again, her adrenaline surging and making her voice seem small, fuzzy. “No, please—”
A gloved hand reached for the door of her crate.
This time, they would operate on Angel. On her eyes.
14
“ARI, WHAT ARE you talking about?” Fang said. “We’re on the same side, remember? You saved Max.”
“Times change.” Ari smiled again and looked down the sight of his missile launcher, as if gauging how far away Fang was. Fang shifted his weight, primed to leap. “Having the same goal doesn’t mean we’re on the same side.”