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“That’s confidential.”
“Right.”
Oz didn’t like that, his expression clouding. I decided I didn’t want to see what remained after he shucked off his sunny facade like a snakeskin. Someone who could remove someone’s limbs like it was nothing was damn scary. Remember who you are, August. You’re the person who knows how to appeal to someone’s ego.
“I wouldn’t understand it,” I said quickly. “I’m not a scientist like you. It’s all so complicated.”
Oz brightened again. “It is. I’d have to use lots of big words.”
Like murder and psychopath. I held my tongue.
“Anyhoo,” he said, skipping to the next photo. “This is Clive. I injected infected blood straight into his brain. It was one of my most interesting clinical trials…”
I tuned him out, refusing to look at the next photograph and burn more faces into my memory. Robert and Benjamin were enough. How long had they been here before he’d gone all Frankenstein on their asses? I hoped not long.
A snarl came from the opposite side of the lab, Oz’s dad growing restless. Oz turned with a frown. “Shush, Dad. I already fed you. I’m talking to Tobias. He’s interested in our work.”
I jerked my chin toward the photos. “Is this what’s going to happen to me? Are you going to chop off a part of me and substitute it for something else?” It was on the tip of my tongue to make a jibe about ending up with the cock of someone who’d turned, but I didn’t want to put ideas in his head.
“No!” Oz looked taken aback by the suggestion. “You’re different. You’re immune. You’re like a… a golden egg.” He grinned, pleased with his metaphor. “The things we’re going to do with your blood.”
“And this?” I rattled the chain around the pipe. “Is this my life now? Sleep here, piss here, shit here?”
Oz chewing on his lip said I’d created a logistical problem that hadn’t occurred to him.
“I tell you what,” I said, softening my tone. “I’d love nothing more than to be instrumental in creating a cure. It would be an honor.” Yeah, right? What did a man like me know of honor? “We could be partners. You do all the science stuff and I provide the magic blood, and maybe I could…” I thought fast, trying to come up with something that might be of use in a lab. “I could take notes for you or something. Dictate your findings, and record them for posterity.”
“You can write?”
He said it as if I’d confessed to levitation. “Yeah… So can you. You wrote on the clipboard.”
Bright spots of color appeared on his pale cheeks. “It looks official, doesn’t it? I like to look the part. I have an excellent memory, though,” he said defensively. “I could tell you everything you said.”
“So, notes?” I suggested again.
He shook his head in awe. “Immune and literate. You truly are blessed.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I muttered, unable to keep the note of cynicism out of my voice. “So what do you say?”
He stared at me, his pale blue eyes slightly narrowed in contemplation. “This partnership… I assume it means letting you roam free? No chains. No tranquilizers. Like a… house share?”
“Well, yeah. We’d be friends.” I offered him my most charming smile. “United in our goal to rid the world of the blight that’s plagued it for over seventy years. And as the first person cured, your father would be famous. You’d be rolling in money, able to live wherever you wanted to.”
“I like it here,” Oz said defensively. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Then you can stay,” I added quickly, sensing him slipping away. “Money just gives you choices. This could be your base, and then you could have a holiday home somewhere nice.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. By the sea, maybe. Have you ever seen it?”
Oz shook his head. “I’ve heard it’s so vast you can’t see the end.”
“It is. We could go there together.”
“After we find the cure?”
“Of course. That’s our priority.” I nodded toward the cage in the corner. His father was quiet now. “The three of us could go. He’d like that, right?”
