Vision blurry, sweat dripping down her skin as infection caused fever pushed her temperature up, she somehow managed to grab the handle and open the cabinet. Then she dropped, whimpered again at the pain, and climbed inside, tucking herself into the bottom shelf, which was just big enough to hold her small frame.
No sooner had she pulled the door closed behind her, latching it into place, than she heard footsteps and voices.
“She's not in here,” one of the guards said.
“Probably put her back in her cell and shot her,” another said, so matter-of-factly that Indigo shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the fever.
“That’s all of them then,” the first man said, and she assumed he meant that all the other prisoners, the experiments as they were called, had been killed.
Surely they’d check her cell.
Find it was empty.
Realize she was still alive somewhere in the facility and look for her.
But instead, she heard the pop of a gun and the sound of a body thudding down onto the floor. The sound was close, right outside her hiding place, inside the room. Which meant that one of the guards had just shot the other.
What did that mean?
Were they all going to die?
Was Dr. Gardner so paranoid that the instructions to his employees were to commit suicide rather than risk getting captured?
Indigo got her answer a moment later when another pop and another thud indicated the second guard had also just died.
Did that mean whoever had set off the silent alarm were the good guys? Someone after Dr. Gardner, determined to shut down him and his program?
She could only hope that might be true, but the truth was hope had long since died inside her, and as she curled tighter into a ball, unconsciousness lapping at the edges of her mind, all Indigo expected to come her way was more suffering.
Chapter
Two
January 20th
11:09 P.M.
“Another two here,” Lion called out from a little further down the room.
They were making their way through the building, counting off the dead as they went and snapping photographs of their faces. Not to be morbid, but because they would need to run each person they found here by Whitney to see if she recognized any as previous prisoners, or other scientists or guards she had worked with at the other facilities.
Most of the people on the original list she’d given them when Blade first brought her home with him had yet to be located. Some of the guards had been the men Blade killed when he found them searching for Whitney in the mountains before he brought her home. A couple of others had passed away from illnesses, but the vast majority were still out there.
Or right in here.
Since Whitney had blown up Dr. Gardner’s main lab, forcing him to move to another temporary lab, it would make sense that he’dbrought all his workers with him. While they were yet to find the doctor himself, Voodoo was sure most of the people now lying dead, scattered about the building, would be recognized by Whitney.
“It’s like someone went around executing all of them,” Steel muttered as he stood looking into another of the glass-enclosed cages so reminiscent of the one they’d been locked inside, only much smaller.
“Rather have them dead than found,” Blade said softly.
Voodoo agreed. It was killing him seeing so many dead bodies. So many lives cut ruthlessly short.
Even before he signed up for the program that had forever changed him and his life, he’d been a healer. As far back as he could remember, he’d always grieved hard for any living thing that died. From animals run over on the road, to birds caught by local cats, to bugs sprayed needlessly with poison because people didn't understand them. He’d been his team’s medic before joining up with these guys when they all took part in the experimental drug program.
While he could be as ruthless as his teammates when the situation called for it, death broke off a tiny piece of his soul each time he encountered it.
“Killed everyone, not just their victims,” Thunder added as he came to a stop by Lion at a door to another room down the end of the large space they were in.
