One of the guards opened the door and spoke to me in a gruff voice. “Your friend is in cell six.”
I nodded and hesitantly breached the threshold, feeling the weight of countless prisoners watching my every move. The lighting cast an eerie orange glow along the walls, and my shadow jumped at me with every step. Passing the pale, zombie-like humans in each cell made me wonder what they did to be thrown in here. The echoing silence and the musty smell of mildew made me think of a haunted house, and I half-expected someone to jump out and scare me.
“Gabe?” I whispered into the vast area, hearing only sniffles and coughs in the dank space. I stopped walking and quieted my breathing, straining my ears for any sound.
A rustling sounded in a cell toward the far end of the jail. A surprised voice penetrated the silence. “Vin? Is that you?”
My heart leaped into my throat, and I practically ran toward the cell from which I’d heard his voice. The metal bars blurred past as I glimpsed a large, hunched shadow on a cot in the dimly lit prison cell. The number six glared at me from a heavy padlock that detained him. “Gabe?”
The shadow straightened, its head turning slowly as it brushed the long, dark hair from its face. The shadow’s intense gaze pierced my soul, and it darted towards the metal bars. “Vinny! It is you! You’re safe!”
Hearing his voice, my body felt lighter, though the persistent itch remained. It was a sound I didn’t think I’d ever hear again. I inhaled deeply, drinking in the familiar sound of his voice before I dropped to my knees, my arm sliding through the rusty bars. “Are you alright? Please tell me you’re okay. Did they hurt you?”
The weight of his thick body pressed against the cell as he wrapped his calloused palms around my slender fingers. “I’m fine now that you’re here. Have they hurtyouat all?”
The unexpected question made me stop short, a knot of surprise tightening in my chest. The humans haven’t hurt me. Everything we’ve been told about them was wrong. I shook my head, relief washing over me. “They said they found you almost frozen to death.”
“I’ve been traveling for days in the snow, hoping to find you.”
“You found me.” A smile crossed my face before a thought struck me. Gabe was part of my father’s entourage. A loud, hearty cough emanated from a nearby cell, and the prickling sensation of bile rose in my throat. I took a breath, not preparedfor his answer to my next question. “Did you detonate the bomb?”
Confusion etched itself onto his face as his thick eyebrows furrowed. “Bomb? What are you talking about?”
“Gabe, I need you to be honest with me. It’s the only way I can save you.”
He shook his head and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “I’m being truthful, I swear.”
I searched his face, hoping to catch a flicker of deception in his pupils. But I found only an honest gaze staring back. “Did my dad send you here?”
His lips turned into a straight line, and his jaw clenched. “After you were kidnapped, your father turned cold. I begged him to let me organize a search party, but he refused. We got into a heated argument before he threatened me and my job.”
This news didn’t shock me. My dad was spiteful, and in the face of any opposition, he needed to prove who was in charge. Nevertheless, a gasp escaped my throat, and I clutched my palm over my open mouth. Besides me, Gabe’s job was the only other thing he loved. It was part of him, a defining aspect of his identity. How dare my father threaten to take that away from him?
“After he did that, I packed a bag and left Elysium to come find you.” He tightened his grip on my hand. “If he wasn’t going to help, I’d do it myself…or at least die trying. Without you, my world ended, and I’ve always said?—”
“You want me to be near so if there’s ever another apocalypse, your life can end where it began.” My heart elated, feeling like a balloon inside my chest as he nodded. “I need to ask you one more question.”
“Anything.”
I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat. “I found out a lot about my dad while I have been here. Do you know what he did?”
“Are you talking about the Dogs?” His mouth frowned. “Only his inner circle knows he controls them, and we’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’ve seen him feed many friends of mine to the Dogs for so much as using his name and the Dogs in the same sentence.” His eyes were wet and pleading. “I couldn’t tell you without fear I’d be next.”
He knew this entire time. As hard as it was to grasp, I did understand why he couldn’t tell me. “So you don’t know what he did to this world? To me?”
His face reddened, and his voice grew angry. “What did he do to you?”
I held my wrist out to feed him while recounting the events that had unfolded since my arrival at Silvertown Mall and the horrors I witnessed inside the laboratory. Well, maybe not everything. I, of course, left out the portions about Jude and I. Which I still didn’t really understand yet.
I described how my father profited from the end of the world, and his face went slack with shock, his mouth hanging open. Then, when I recounted the video on the computer and the failed clones, he gasped. To me, his reactions validated he knew nothing. And I believed him.
“That motherfucker.” Gabe’s voice was an angry whisper. “I can’t believe I did that man’s dirty work. He was like a father to me.”
“Heismy father—how do you thinkIfeel?” My voice quivered, but I remained firm. “I’m done with him. I’m going to bring him down for everything he did.”
“How? Are you-are you going tokillhim?”
A cold stare adorned my face. Did I want to kill him? If the roles were reversed, I’m sure he’d have no hesitation ending mylife. “I’m not like him. To bring him down and make things right with the humans, I won’t let him harvest my blood. I’m refusing to take part in the Extraction and without my blood, his empire will fall.”
