We had to see it for ourselves.
Charlie walked toward the door. “Come on. Let’s see if there are any survivors.”
We left the bedroom and entered a long hall. We passed by other bedrooms, and each was as empty as the last.
Oberi kept his nose down, sniffing along the floor. He stopped at a closed door at the end of the hall.There’s something in here.
My pulse quickened as Charlie opened the door. I didn’t know what I expected to find— perhaps prisoners huddled in the corner, awaiting rescue.
Instead, we found a massive dark room lined with shelves so full, they were overflowing. The storage room had to be bigger than the rest of the guards’ quarters combined. The room was full of random belongings, like glasses, jewelry, blankets, clothing, and children’s toys. The piles of belongings stacked up to the ceiling and consumed the area. There was barely any room for my chair to get through. Cautiously, my friends and I entered the long room.
“What’s all this?” Opal mused.
Alistair’s cane hit a baseball, and it rolled across the hardwood floor. “Perhaps it’s stuff the guards left behind?”
My stomach hollowed as I caught sight of a child’s cup. I reached for it, and my heart ached as I pulled it down from the shelf. The cup had teeth marks from where the child chewed the spout.
I choked back a sob. “It’s thevictims’belongings,” I rasped. “It’s everything the guards confiscated from the people they brought here.”
Eddie shuddered, and he shrank back toward the door.
Charlie ran his fingers over the items on one shelf— a framed photo of a witch family, a pair of worn moccasins, and a shell with the name of a merfolk pod carved on the outside. A traditional Elven wedding dress had been tossed haphazardly beside the other belongings, its beautiful train tailing to the floor. When Charlie touched the lace, he yanked his hand away, like he couldn’t bear to take in any more.
“Let’s keep moving,” he ordered.
We left the room and turned down another hallway, until we came upon a door that led outside. I knew I wouldn’t be able to navigate the camps in my chair, so Oberi shifted into unicorn form, and I hoisted myself onto her back. Marcus subconjured my wheelchair, then opened the door.
The night sky was dark, but floodlights lit the property. Outside, we had a full view of the camp, and my guts churned.
The first thing I noticed were the bodies strewn across the ground. Everywhere I looked, people lay face-down in the dirt. There were hundreds of them, if not thousands. The only sound that could be heard was the buzzing of insects feeding on the dead.
Worse than that was the smell. The stench of rotting corpses, mixed with sewage, hit me so hard I might’ve toppled over if I wasn’t already sitting down. It was obvious these people hadn’t been given proper sanitary facilities. It smelled so bad that my friends and I started gagging. Charlie waved his hands to try tocontrol the smell in the air. His Air magic helped, but even he couldn’t completely hold off the foul odors.
Kallie threw a hand over her mouth. Marcus wrapped an arm around her to pull her close, turning her into his chest so she didn’t have to see it. Rishi sank closer to them. Chancey’s features paled, and Ivy rubbed their eyes, like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Alistair gripped tight to Eddie’s hand. Ez and Opal both looked away.
I tore my gaze from the bloated corpses that were decomposing in the night to take in the rest of the camp. The property must’ve been dozens of acres wide. We were on one side of the camp near the edge, and I couldn’t see the other side from here. A tall noxite fence with barbed wire at the top surrounded the property, and concrete guard towers were placed on each corner. Beyond the fence was nothing but barren desert as far as the eye could see.
Toward the far end of the camp was a collection of warehouses. A water tower that serviced the whole camp rose over a hundred feet high. I squinted across the landscape. The layout of the buildings seemed familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why, until an image of the Institute flashed through my memory.
I clutched my stomach, because the realization was like a punch to the gut. “It’s the Institute,” I whispered. I pointed to a warehouse with a tower on top. “That looks like the cathedral, and that building over there has doors like the asylum. It’s the same layout and everything, even though the buildings are smaller. The Wardenintentionallybuilt this place to look like the Darke Institute.”
The Warden took pride in his prison— that much was obvious. This place was just an extension of what he’d built back on Darke Island… only much,muchworse. There, he needed to keep up appearances for the United Supernatural Union. Here,there were no rules, and he’d taken every advantage of this lawless land for himself.
“We’re too late,” Ez breathed. “The Warden slaughtered all these people so they couldn’t be liberated.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. These wards didn’t fail by accident. The Wardenletthem fall, because he didn’t need to hide this place anymore. There’s no point now that there’s no one left to hide. He… he wants to show off his work.”
My friends remained silent, and I didn’t blame them. There was so much to take in, and it was enough to make a person go mad. I felt what was left of my sanity disengage, crumble and be blown away as I observed the masses of bodies that were sprawled out all over the camps. They were nothing more than skeletons covered by skin. The Warden had starved them so badly before their demise, their empty eyes holding nothing but sorrow and pain.
These people had suffered miserably for months. All to serve the avarice of one cruel man.
I tried to cry, but couldn’t. Tears wouldn’t come, not even if I forced them to, because it seemed like a crime to cry over the fate of people who’d never had a chance, people who I hadn’t been able to save. My sadness and grief meant nothing. Not when compared to what had been done to these poor people here.
Charlie started forward, Oberi at his side. We followed behind him like zombies, weaving between the dead bodies. I spotted witches lying beside dead cats. Elementai were sprawled next to small magical creatures like jackalopes and miniature dragons. I was certain the Warden had not permitted any larger, stronger Familiars to live once they arrived. Fae sorceresses lay face-down, their insect-like wings twisted angrily toward the sky. The pretty shimmer of a mermaid’s blue hair was no longer visible beneath a layer of dirt.
There weren’t very many angels, but the few I spotted barely had any feathers left on their wings. A vampire lay on his back, his eyes staring up lifelessly at the stars. His mouth hung open, fangs protruded as if in a permanent scream for help… a scream that didn’t make a sound.
We passed by long tables lined with benches, like some sort of outdoor cafeteria. The tables were full of victims, and people lay slumped over bowls of unfinished soup. The sound of buzzing flies intensified as they swarmed the tables to feast on the rotting food.
