I slump, butt hitting the top stair, my arms looping around my legs. I’m not sure how long I sit there wallowing before I force myself back up.
Jasper and the others. If I’m here, they must be, too. And there are two rooms left to check.
I stumble down the stairs, peeking into the room I left Cecily in. She’s still bound to the bed, and her mouth falls open when I open the door, but she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say anything when I let the door shut again.
The next room is three times the size of the one I woke in. The floors are that same slick cement, and the same fluorescent lights hum above my head.
Along each wall are large vats. There are six horizontal, cylindrical tubes, big enough to hold a linebacker. Three on each side of the room. They’re solid metal, with long glass windows at the top.
From here, I can tell four of the chambers are occupied.
Every instinct urges me back, away, anywhere that isn’t this room and whatever nightmares await.
I make my way up to the chamber anyway.
Inside, wearing a white hospital gown, laid out on a thin mattress, is Sloane, barely a shadow of herself.
This Sloane has IVs sticking out from every limb, a tube down her throat, and another thin one taped to her cheek and running into one nostril. Her hair is dull, and her skin is pale and faintly bruised. Tiny sensors are pressed to her chest and wrists.
If it weren’t for the panel with her vitals next to the chamber, I’d think she was dead.
My lungs constrict.
I move to the vat next to Sloane’s.
Aisha. The colorful beads adorning her braids are nowhere to be found. She looks so much younger, thin and gaunt.
I return to Sloane’s chamber. There’s a seam running down the middle. I slide my fingers along the sliver until it widens, and my pointer finger runs across a tiny oval button.
I press it. The metal gives a hiss as it splits apart. The top of the chamber slides up, yawning open like those butterfly doors on fancy cars.
Inside, Sloane doesn’t move. With her entire form exposed, more and more tubes are visible. They’re like IVs but thicker, and there’s a milky, discolored liquid inside a few of them. The most troubling protrusion, taped to her neck, looks like some kind of wire but with a syringe at the end. It’s the only thing that stretches outside of the chamber itself; the wire extends to the ground and runs to the wall and up it, disappearing into the ceiling.
The other chambers have an identical wire.
And on the other side of the wall is Cecily.
I press my lips together, dropping my gaze to the body in front of me.
No, not a body. A girl. A frail, dying girl. Surrounded by frail, dying kids. None of whom I really know how to save.
Thirty seconds at a time.
In these thirty seconds, I will disconnect Sloane from whatever she’s hooked to and go from there. They must be pumping some kind of sedative into her, like what I was given, and maybe she’ll wake up if the line is removed.
Which means I have to pull them all out. Even the wire.
She can’t hear me, but still I say, “I’m going to pull these out. I’m getting you out of here. All of you.”
I have absolutely no medical training, but I do have the common sense to question whether all I’m doing is making this worse. But I carefully pull each line and its accompanying needle from Sloane’s skin. A few of them bleed, but it’s not enough blood to really be troubling. With each one, I check her vitals on the monitor. Steady.
Two lines on each arm. Smaller ones attached to the wrists.
In a hospital, the monitor would screech in protest if anything bad happened; if her vitals dropped too low, if her heart stopped. But this isn’t a hospital. There may be no lifesaving measures in place.
I set my focus on the wire, the one protruding from Sloane’s neck. The needle itself looks like all the rest. I have to shake out my trembling fingers before reaching for it. I pull it out as gently as I can and deposit it alongside the others. I should probably stash this in a biohazard can, but I don’t have the time for that.
I reach for the breathing tube last. I don’t bother with the one down her nose; it’s a feeding tube, I think, and not currently connected to anything, so not an immediate concern. My heart thunders, racing at least four times as fast as the heart inside the comatose girl in front of me.
