The man listened, clearly interested in what was evidently new information, but his gaze grew more and more intent as he watched me. He was pressed firmly against the front of the cage now, seemingly unaware of the fact that the wires were digging into his nose, chin and chest. As if he were being drawn to me even more strongly than I was being pulled toward him.
“How did you get out of that facility?” I asked.
“One night, the collars just stopped working. All of them, all at once. Most of us escaped.”
My hand flew up and I gripped the metal mesh, part out of horror, part out of an uncontrollable urge to reach for him. “When was that?” I demanded as a suspicion began to sneak up on me. “When did the collars stop working?”
He shrugged awkwardly with his chest pressed to the front of the cage. “Months ago. Maybe a year. They didn’t give us calendars.”
“What season was it?”
“Um...” He closed his eyes for a second, thinking, but when they opened again, his gaze seemed almost hungry for my face. “Fall. It was starting to get cold at night.”
Understanding crashed over me and I stumbled back a couple of steps, ripping my fingers free from their grip on the cage. Gallagher and I had destroyed the system controlling Vandekamp’s collars in early fall, giving cryptids at the Spectacle free range of the facilities and uninhibited use of their species-specific abilities.
Could the system at this government facility have been run from the control room at the Spectacle? When we’d freed our fellow captives, had we freed this man and his fellow prisoners, as well?
If he was an innocent former prisoner, why did thefuriaewant him so badly?
“Delilah!” Footsteps pounded into the room at my back, and I turned to see Gallagher in the doorway. “We got Mirela and Lala. Let’s—” He frowned past me at the naked man in the cage. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.” I knew nothing about the man, other than that he was one of us, and that Gallagher and I had unwittingly set him free once. Fighting the pull toward the man in the cage, I crossed the room toward Gallagher and lowered my voice. “I don’t know who or what he is, but he’s wearing one of Vandekamp’s collars. I have more questions for him than we can afford to ask here and now. Can you get him out?”
“You want to take him with us?”
“Whatever he is, he can clearly pass for human. He’s no more of a risk than Miri and Lala are. Though—fair warning—you may have to keep me from killing him. Thefuriaewants him.”
Gallagher’s brows rose in an almost comical display of intense interest. He headed for the cage, aiming a formidable, suspicious look at the man, focusing on his eyes, which were often telling of a cryptid’s species. But this man’s eyes looked perfectly human. “What are you? Some kind of shifter?”
“Of sorts,” the man said. “Get me out and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“You certainly will. Wait right here,” Gallagher said as he disappeared into the hall. As if the man in the cage could simply waltz out on his own, if he wanted.
“How did you wind up here?” I asked the man in the collar as Zyanya wandered into the room.
“Why is he doing that?” Scowling, she waved one hand up the length of the body he still had pressed against the front of the cage.
“That is one of many questions I hope he’ll be able to answer for us,” I told her.
“I think I came here for you.” The man hadn’t even glanced at Zy. “I walked for days before I got caught. I felt this tug.” He pressed one hand to his stomach. “Like there’s a string tied to something inside me, and someone’s pulling on it. I think that’s you.”
I took a step back from the cage, startled by how familiar his description felt. But... “I’m not ‘pulling’ you.” Not intentionally, anyway.
Could thefuriaebe doing that?
“Stand back.” Gallagher stormed into the room again carrying a large red fire extinguisher. Claudio and Zyanya hovered in the doorway behind him, and beyond them, I was thrilled to see Mirela and Lala, looking thin and exhausted but blessedly whole.
I backed farther away from the cage, and Gallagher slammed the fire extinguisher down on the padlock holding the naked man’s pen closed.
The lock shattered. Bits of it flew all over the room. Gallagher plucked the last curved bit of metal from the cage door, and it swung open. “Let’s go.”
“Here.” Zyanya stepped forward with a white lab coat she’d evidently found in one of the other rooms. “This should work until we can find you some—”
The man stepped out of the cage and headed straight for me. That pull deep in my gut acted like marionette strings on my legs, carrying me toward him through no conscious desire of my own.
“Whoa.”Gallagher lunged between us at the last second, facing the man. My stomach collided with his back. “Don’t go near her.Ever.Or I will—”
My hand shot out around his arm, and clenched around the naked man’s wrist.
