“Do you guys get claustrophobic? What with the wings?”
He stepped closer and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Many of us could level this place with a thought. No concrete, human building could hold us.”
“That’s a no.”
He smiled at me. “You need to learn that no concrete human building could hold you either.”
I attempted a smile back and squeezed past him, following my sister further into what we had thought was a lab.
But was really a prison.
“Why would whoever’s in charge here come after Evie?” I murmured.
“I have my suspicions,” Samael said. I glanced at him and he shook his head. “Let’s collect what evidence we can, and then make our determination.”
The next room was a small medical room, as were several others after that. Restraints dangled from each bed, and by the time we’d worked our way down the corridor to the first set of stairs, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.
We followed Evie down toward the basement. Samael’s people had already broken the security on the door, and we walked past cell after cell, furnished with nothing more than a steel toilet, sink, and a concrete bed with a thin mattress.
Hundreds of cells. Some of them showed signs of recent use. A pair of thin boots in one. Blood smeared on the floor in another. And always, an echo of hopelessness. People had been held in here. Where the hell were they now?
Another set of stairs waited for us at the end of the cells. We took it up, past the ground floor, where the corridors became white on white.
“Medical floor,” Evie said, a few steps in front of us.
These cells were larger than the ones downstairs, mostly to fit the equipment. Cameras were positioned in the corner of each cell.
The third floor was one huge lab. It stretched the length and width of the building, the first quarter home to fifty or so workstations, while the rest of it was blocked off with more security.
Bile climbed up my throat as we walked through what were once secure doors.
Examining tables complete with stirrups, and more restraints. I’d seen some of that equipment at my gynecologist’s, only I sure as hell hadn’t been tied down for my checkups. The next section made me catch my breath.
“Babies,” Evie said. “This is where they kept babies.”
Tiny bassinets, some of them enclosed and surrounded by huge lights. They’d tried to destroy this room, but it was evident that this was a place for newborns.
Samael’s demons walked through each room, collecting what they could.
The fourth floor had been designated for offices. More workstations, only this time without any scientific equipment. These were the drones. We passed them, heading toward the closest corner office.
Someone had been shredding documents. The shredder was full, and larger pieces of paper littered the floor, as if someone had panicked and attempted to destroy as much evidence as they could with their hands before they fled. A steel filing cabinet hung open and half-empty. Whoever’s office this was, they hadn’t had a chance to completely clear it out before they ran for their lives.
We left Evie searching through the filing cabinet and walked through the rest of the floor. “Half lab, half prison,” I said. “They were experimenting on people here.”
Samael nodded, and we spent the next half hour walking through the floor. I couldn’t go near the lab, but I stared at the photos on the cubicles. There was something about seeing family photos in this place that turned my stomach. The people who’d worked here had treated it like any other job. Were they blind to the suffering or did they not care?
Maybe they’d enjoyed it.
Samael stepped away to murmur to Bael and I turned as Evie appeared. Her face was ashen, her hands shaking as she gestured for me to follow her back into the office.
She’d been piecing together some of the larger documents, and she had the first third of what looked like some kind of physical description. A photo had been stapled to the corner of one of the pieces and Evie’s hand shook as she pointed to it.
“He looks just like the dark fae guy Mom was half in-love with when we were kids. But his features are slightly different. His eyes are darker too. Maybe his brother?”
“Maybe.”
“Look at this one.”
