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Chapter Fifteen
August
Consciousness came more easily this time. Either my body was adapting to whatever drug he kept introducing into my system, or he’d given me a lower dose. I kept my eyes mostly shut, feigning still being under, while gathering as much information as I could.
I wasn’t in the room with Keaton anymore. Had I gotten the keys to him? I couldn’t remember. If I had, had I done it without Oz realizing? Another unanswered question. I was chained again—this time to a pipe, not a ring in the wall. I spent some time studying it, gauging how easy it might be to tear free. Not likely was the answer. Not unless the drug Oz had given me had the side effect of turning me into a superhero.
My shirt and leather jacket were gone, leaving me bare-chested. Nobody enjoyed waking up to missing clothes, and I was no exception. I might whore myself out occasionally, but that was on my terms. The thought of Oz doing anything while I was unconscious made my skin crawl.
I turned my attention to the rest of the room. It was white, startlingly so, like everything had been bleached to within an inch of its life. It didn’t smell of bleach, though. It smelled as if something had died in it. Counters formed a horseshoe, their surfaces cluttered with glass containers and other bric-a-brac. At the center was a microscope. I might never have seen one, but I’d seen pictures. Oz hunched behind it, absorbed in his work—which suited me just fine.
A metal slab sat in the middle of the room with an arm dangling from it, the hand blunt-fingered and male. At least I’d found the source of the smell. Something had died in here, and someone had either already completed an autopsy or was still working on it, based on the open chest cavity. The sight churned my stomach. Would that be me once Oz finished with me? I wouldn’t bet against it.
The floor told its own story, the dark stains beneath the table evidence that the corpse on it wasn’t a one-off. How long had Oz been doing this? Whatever this was. I hadn’t pieced it all together yet. But I could feel the wrongness of it.
A large dog cage was in the far corner of the lab. Eyes stared back at me from behind the bars. Human eyes. Oz’s father. Jesus Christ! I hadn’t had the easiest relationship with my father, but I couldn’t imagine keeping him in a dog cage, no matter what his infection status.
My sharp intake of breath had been a mistake, Oz’s head snapping up. “Hi,” he said brightly, like we were old friends. He hopped down from his stool and strode toward me. If the wall hadn’t been at my back, I might have scooted backwards. There was such a thing as being too pleased to see someone, and Oz had it in spades.
“What happened to my shirt?” I asked, unable to let it go, even if it pissed him off.
“Oh!” He blinked, then grinned. “Would you believe me if I said it fell off?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
He gave a sheepish shrug. “You can’t blame a boy for taking an opportunity when it comes along.”
“An opportunity?” My voice was ice, and I couldn’t find it within myself to temper my reaction. Consent mattered. Choice mattered. And as twisted as it might be, getting something out of it mattered as well. So unless Oz intended to let me go in exchange for whatever it was he’d done to me, he could forget it.
“I kept it above the waist.”
“Oh, well, that’s alright, then.”
“Exactly.” He smiled too wide as he skipped closer. “We’re friends, right? Friends do each other favors.”
“We’re not friends. Friends don’t chain each other up.” Not unless you were Keaton and me. But that was gone now, buried beneath the lies I’d kept telling. I just hoped he understood that my apology had been in what I’d done for him. If he made it to Dover, I hoped he’d look back one day and appreciate the small part I’d played in him getting his revenge.
“I put you by the photos,” Oz said. “So you’d have something interesting to look at.”
Photos? I turned my head and froze. I’d been so busy examining the rest of the room that I’d missed what was right next to me. The wall was plastered with photographs—not landscapes, not family portraits, but blood and bone, internal organs on the outside that should have been inside, horrors framed in glossy prints. My stomach clenched. I’d seen some things while I was on the road, even done some things, but I’d seen nothing quite like this.
Oz tapped a photo. “This was Robert. I don’t use numbers. I like to use names, Tobias.” I was glad I hadn’t given him my real name. “Names are more personal. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I forced out, my throat sandpaper. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. The boy in it looked no older than twenty. He had the expression of a man who’d long since come to terms with his fate. Which was understandable given the rest of the photo. He was bare-chested with a crude snake tattoo curling over one pec. It cut off suddenly at a series of messy stitches, where another limb had been grafted on.
“One of my first experiments,” Oz said proudly. “I replaced his arm with that of someone who’d turned.”
I swallowed the instinctive why?—afraid of the answer. “What happened to him?” A pointless question. He was half-dead in the photo. I doubted he’d lasted more than a day or two after it had been taken.
“I thought he’d turn,” Oz said. “But the results were inconclusive because he died before that happened.” He shrugged. “I didn’t let it deter me. Science requires perseverance. Great discoveries are born of failure.” He pointed at another photo. “This was Benjamin.” He frowned. “Or maybe it was Nathan. Same procedure. He lasted a week. Then he turned.”
The man in this photo was older, his hair graying at the temples. Just like Robert, he’d mentally checked out. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“What did you learn from it?” I asked.
Oz blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You said yourself that science is about discovery, that great things come through perseverance. But if you’re not learning, you’re just…” Butchering people. Playing God.
