Then Jackson notices Annalise’s condition and immediately limps past me to check on her. He grabs a dish towel from the stove and replaces the blood-soaked pillowcase. He tells Annalise to hold the towel to her wound instead. When he turns around to us, his expression is grave.
Jackson runs his eyes over the blood on my clothes again. He sees the bruising on Sydney’s neck. His jaw tightens as he grows fierce. Protective of all of us.
“Yeah, so let’s go,” he says, pointing out the door.
“We can’t,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
“She needs to get to the skin grafts,” I say, motioning to Annalise.
He stares at me, and then glances at Annalise. “The what?”
“Long story that we don’t have time to explain,” Sydney says. “Now come on.”
Marcella and Brynn help Annalise, and Sydney tells me to grab the key from the drawer. I locate the small silver key, still wondering why Leandra left it for us. Why she didn’t just let us escape.
As the girls disappear down the hall, I turn toward Jackson and find him reaching for the plate of cookies still next to the tea kettle.
“Don’t,” I say, suddenly. He glances at me, startled, but holds up his hand.
“Sorry,” he says, embarrassed. “When I get nervous, I...” He pauses, sweeping his eyes over me. “Wait. Why shouldn’t I eat one?”
I furrow my brow. “Because they’re too sweet,” I murmur, thinking about those words.
“Mena,” Sydney calls urgently from the stairwell. “Come on.”
Quickly, I take Jackson by the sleeve and lead him toward the basement.
He winces with every other step. He says he’s sure his ankle is sprained, but my guess is it’s broken. I keep my arm around his waist as I help him down the stairs, the girls ahead of us.
“I’m still sorry I didn’t tell you about my mother,” Jackson says, glancing sideways at me. We both know it’s not high on our list of problems right now, but I appreciate the apology and tell him so.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you kidnap us from the movie theater,” I say in return.
He laughs and then sucks in a sharp breath, pausing to take the weight off his leg. He puts his arm around my shoulders to start walking again so we can catch up with the others.
Sydney stops at the bottom of the stairwell and looks up at us. “You ready?” she asks.
Everyone nods that they are, so I nod too. Jackson takes his arm from around me and hops down on his own the rest of the way.
Sydney steps aside. I place the small key into the lock and turn it with a click. My heart beats wildly as Sydney pushes open the door. It’s dark and Marcella flips the light switch. They flicker on with a buzz.
The room is large and mostly empty aside from storage shelves. There are two gurneys on opposite sides of the room. It takes a moment for me to realize that there are bodies on them, covered in white sheets. I fall back a step, bumping Jackson, who nearly trips because of his injured leg.
“Who is that?” Brynn asks quietly, pointing to the closest one with a shaky finger. We all stare at the body covered in white fabric.
No one answers. But as I look at the sheets, I wonder if Valentine is under one of them.
I walk to the first table and pause next to it. I am absolutely terrified when I reach to pull back the white fabric. My entire body jolts as I look down, my vision beginning to swim. Sydney gasps behind me.
“Mena,” Jackson says, coming closer. His voice is only a whisper, lost and faraway.
I can barely breathe. A suffocating pressure is building in my chest, crawling up my throat.
Jackson takes a step toward the table, hesitates, and then takes another before looking down.
A pale white body lies naked on the table. Her perfect flesh is exposed; her skull is split open along the hairline. The space that would normally house the brain is instead a tangle of wires—hundreds of tiny wires, varying in sizes—their ends exposed and unconnected as they mix with veins and nerves.
