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Chapter 23

Cali

Walking through the halls of the hospital, the stench of rot sticks to the back of my throat all the while, while my skin crawls with thoughts that something is watching us from the shadows. Distant sounds can be heard, echoes of what could almost pass for voices, but there is no sign of life anywhere. Only death and carnage.

We pass a familiar room, one I remember from while on my way to a check up years ago. Through the room’s window, I watched one of the male subjects, maybe in his twenties, having sex with a female subject, who’d been strapped down to a bed. Guards stood by, observing, while the girl screamed between sobbing. Medusa didn’t even acknowledge it at the time, and I later learned it was where they impregnated second generation female subjects, to study third generation offspring. Some of the males used were carriers, some in the early stages of infection, and others had turned to monsters.

I’d become so ingrained with the atrocities of this place, it didn’t even occur to me I had witnessed a poor girl’s rape. At the time, I was just grateful it wasn’t me lying on that gurney.

The room stands in disarray now. Window busted out. Fluorescent lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. The bed that likely facilitated the rape of countless girls now tipped over, with its restraints scattered on the floor.

We keep on to the level below us, and flashlight sweeping the corridor of the first floor, I find only the remains of soldiers who got trapped inside with the mutations. All of them mutilated and mostly consumed, leaving behind that god-forsaken stink clinging to the air. There is no smell worse than death, but this is something else entirely. A morbid memento of human suffering and terror. Its repulsive stench reaches deep inside my gut, stirring a thick black dread.

Brandon’s sniffling doesn’t hide his tears, while he runs his flashlight over every fallen soldier’s name etched into the dogtags at their throats. A few he collects, perhaps friends he knew, hanging them around his own neck, as though to salvage the names of the forgotten.

Ahead of him, Kenny leads us to the computer room. As I understand, from there, we should be able to see where Valdys was taken before the hospital sealed shut.

My body still carries the tremble of our earlier encounter with the mutations from the tunnels, and I know they won’t be the last before we leave this place. “The faceless things. They were the mutations you saw a while back. The ones in the tunnel?” I ask Cadmus over my shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Then, it was real. It wasn’t a hallucination.” It’s disturbing, the way doctors at Calico screwed with our minds, until we didn’t know if things before our very eyes were real, or not. Even now, I question if Valdys was real, or some figment of my imagination, designed by the doctors to keep me in line. A lifeline. A hallucination that I’ll wake and find never truly existed.

“Maybe. Could’ve been both. I saw your face, too.”

“You might’ve mixed up what you saw in the tunnels with the hallucinations you had.” The comment is a reminder of what he told me about his tortures in isolation. How easily his mind tricked him into believing he raped me multiple times there.

I’d had my own hallucinations of Bryani during my time spent in isolation, and could’ve sworn it was her voice speaking to me in that darkness.

“I’m so fucked up, Cali, I couldn’t tell you. But you’ve seen them now. That part, at least, is real.”

Metal clinks, as Brandon straps the last dogtag over his head with a shine of tears in his eyes, and he follows Kenny into a room across from the elevator and stairwell. The lack of screams on the other side of the door, after Kenny ventures inside, is a good sign there are no mutations there. Perhaps a place we can settle our nerves before going to look for Valdys. Beyond the door, I find Kenny sitting in front of a massive wall of small screens, and below those are a number of buttons and levers, more screens and equipment I can’t even begin to identify.

“Take a seat. This is going to take a while to get the computer up and running again. I’m not even sure it will work.”

“Please try, Kenny.” Plopping down against the wall, I set my pack out in front of me, tugging the small canteen of water from inside.

Cadmus sits beside me, while Titus paces at the door, undoubtedly restless. Maybe spoiling for a fight. The Alpha never seems to sit still for long. Even after being shot multiple times, he insisted on getting up and out of bed. If not for his rapid healing, he would’ve been laid up far longer, or dead, I suspect.

Also rifling through his pack, Cadmus grabs a couple of pieces of the dried meat, before drawing his knees up, resting his arms atop. “I never knew you had a sister.”

Frowning, I glance at him, capping my water before stuffing it back inside the bag. “What brought that to mind?”

He shrugs, ripping off another bite of meat. “Just something I realized I never knew about you. Was she like you?”

“Bryani? No. Nothing like me.” I quietly chuckle, tipping my head back as my mind teases me with memories of her. “She was more social and outgoing. Everyone liked her. She was … absolutely beautiful.”

“Aside from the outgoing part, sounds like you two had some things in common.”

“Maybe some things.”

“Sounds like I’d have gotten along better with her.” At my unamused stare, he snorts and elbows me. “Not like that.”

Running my fingers over the bracelet I’d forgotten about, I smile to myself. “She had a way of seeing the best in people, so maybe.”

A good half-hour slips by, the air in this room becoming stagnant and almost suffocating. I close my eyes and imagine that Valdys is somewhere in this building. So close I can practically touch him right now. My skin tingles and vibrates as I visualize his fingertips running over the surface of it, springing goosebumps with his touch.

A beeping sound draws my lids open. The computer screens are lit up. Lights flicker on overhead. The sound of generators kicking into gear sends a tight feeling of excitement across my chest.