“When we get out of here and you’ve dealt with the Guild. You’re coming home with me.” There was an intensity in his eyes. Or maybe desperation. “Maybe we’ll take a vacation first. Ever been to Duna? The water is azure blue and the sands as white as sugar. I’ll teach you to surf, we’ll skinny dip at night and make love in the waves.”
“Sounds magical.” It did. Ria wanted that. She wanted him. She’d been fighting to find something worthwhile in her life. She now suspected loving this man was that thing.
“After a rest, we’ll head out on a hunt. There are so many places I want to show you. You’ll make a damn good treasure hunter.”
She smiled. “I’d like to give it a try.”
He smiled now. It was a little crooked, but she could see he was getting himself together.
“We have to go now.” She wedged an arm under his shoulder and they helped each other stand. “We have to walk through more rooms like this, and stars know what else we’ll see.”
His jaw tightened. “I can do it.”
They skirted the table. He paused for a second, his fingers brushing the metal surface. “Goodbye, Viktoria.”
Ria swallowed the lump in her throat and opened the next door. They passed through another room with multiple chains attached to the walls. Then another with trays full of implements of torture.
Then they made it into another hallway. This one was stark, blinding white.
She glanced at her Sync. “That way.” She pointed to a set of doors near the end of the hall. There was a strong scent in the hall. One that reminded her of the Guild’s Medical wing where they got patched up after a mission.
At the doors, she saw the symbol carved on the front. A small dagger inside a circle. She gasped.
“What is it?” he asked.
She stroked the symbol. “This is the children’s area.” She swallowed. She’d always wondered what was behind here, her own memories dimmed by time. Could she handle seeing the small children in training, babies learning how to kill? Could she see them and know that right now, she couldn’t help them?
“We have to go through here,” she said.
“We’ll come back. Once we’re out of here, we’ll work on finding a way to stop what the Guild does to children.”
Ria looked up at the man she suspected she was falling in love with. She had no experience with love, but if the jumble of bright feelings and possibilities inside her wasn’t love, she couldn’t imagine anything stronger. “Thank you.”
This time Zayn pushed the door open.
She walked in and frowned.
Long rows of large, clear tanks lined the long room. Tubes snaked from the top of the tanks up to the roof, all filled with different colored fluids.
There were bodies floating in all the tanks.
She walked to the first tank. A young woman floated in there, her dark hair streaming up in the water like an inky cloud. The tubes entered her body at various places.
“Where are the kids?” Ria looked at Zayn. “What the hell is this?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Zayn didn’t like this. Not one bit.
A bad feeling sank over him like a suffocating blanket. He stared at the tanks and the bodies inside. He couldn’t even tell if the occupants were alive.
He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He still felt a little shaky from seeing the interrogation room, that small, dank place that he hated so much. He felt like he had no solid footing. Then he looked at Ria and everything steadied.
She pressed a hand to the glass of a tank housing a tall, young man. Suddenly the man’s eyes snapped open. Ria took a hasty step back.
Zayn moved closer. The man didn’t seem like he could see them. His eyes were a milky white, unaware. His chest was a mass of laser burns.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked.
