“What is so important to you that you would risk your life?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Loyalty, okay. There’s someone I need to protect.”

  Amber pushed away from the wall and came over to us. “I understand that. What you did for me back at that building, uh, thanks.”

  I didn’t help her. I took away her pain and she went right back into the fight. With as much blood as she lost, she could have died. Guilt riddled my heart and I looked away.

  “You want them to take you to the water’s edge?” Amber said.

  Rex wasn’t buying this. “Don’t encourage this.”

  Amber knelt by a body and started undressing the woman from her patrol gear. “You aren’t alpha yet, Rex. I can do what I please.”

  I realized what she intended to do and though it was putting her in danger, I needed an escort to D’s destination. I bent down and started helping her strip the woman. We were halfway done by the time Rex growled and bent down next to the man, doing the same to him. Every part of me knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t tell them to stop.

  “You’re bleeding,” Amber said.

  I squeezed my hands, feeling the leather gloves grow tight. It wasn’t sweat that made my hands slick. I turned to help Rex undress the guy and then gave them privacy to change.

  The windswept over my shoulder and for just a moment, it felt familiar, like Katrina was ruffling my air. I swore I smelt the warmth of her perfume and then it lifted.

  “Katrina,” I whispered.

  Dressed in full gear, Rex was suddenly at my side. “What?”

  I shook my head, dismissing him. I didn’t want to leave Katrina in the middle of the street, but she wanted me to go after D.

  “We get you there and then what?” he asked.

  Dressed in formfitting black, he looked dangerously good. I had to shake the thought because the way the material clutched at his strong thighs was distracting.

  “Drop me off and leave,” I said.

  “I’ll work on a plan as we go,” he promised.

  With their masks over their face, they looked exactly like patrollers. My heart raced and the only thing that kept the tingling down was the fact that every couple of minutes, I smelt Katrina. I felt the weight of her presence, but this was the first time I could smell a shadow.

  The carnage left sharper scents in the air and as they drew me through the destruction, those scents overpowered Katrina, but she still lingered. It made me brave, even though I suddenly felt incredibly cold at the center of my being.

  As we moved by the dead bodies, more shadows began collecting towards me. They were emotionally heavy. I had a hard time focusing with the constant loathing and hate radiating through me. In my rush to leave it behind, I took too wide a step and slid on the slick pavement. Rex caught me, but his fingers lingered long after I found my balance. His hot presence pushed the cold weight back.

  For one moment, the world melted away. It didn’t take all my fear, but it was easier to concentrate.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too,” he offered.

  Guns popped around us and desperation flared through me. Was it the newly dead or me? I couldn’t tell. Many people died tonight and were still being killed. There was no way I could close the floodgate on their anger. It was consuming.

  We made it to the water’s edge where the electric fence was pulled back exposing the naked shore with captives waiting to board the boats. D was nowhere among the grouped girls.

  Amber growled. “What do they want with them?”

  The young women were getting their necks scanned, then getting separated and escorted into different boats. My biggest problem was that D wasn’t among them. I worried my bottom lip until I tasted blood.

  “I need to get closer,” I whispered.

  “No way,” Rex grumbled.

  I slid past him before he could grab me. The need to be quicker than Rex had my pulse speeding again. It didn’t take much to gain the patrollers’ attention. My palms began to sweat and the salt made my wounds ache. When they scanned me and saw that my chip didn’t work, would they kill me on the spot?

  “I have her,” the man yelled at Rex who was rushing up behind me.

  They thought I was a runaway. I glanced back at Rex who stood frozen. Amber was next to him. The man grabbed me by the throat, tilted my head and scanned my neck. I waited for the indicator to go off since I didn’t have my chip, but it never happened.

  “I need assistance. We have Belen McKnight over here,” the man said.

  He released me and I played my fingers over the skin behind my ears. Draken lied to me. He never disabled my chip. The big question on my mind, however, was why did it sound like they were looking for me?

  I glanced at Rex and Amber, but with their masks on, I couldn’t read them. Rex’s gun was trained on me, though Amber’s was held at an angle. This close to the patrollers, they had to keep up the parts they were portraying. A number of patrollers approached with their guns aimed at me. Two of them disarmed me, taking every knife in my coat and gun, but they didn’t check my boots.

  “Move it,” a man ordered.

  I was shoved, along with the others, towards a docked boat. That’s when I saw him. D was a single prisoner in a boat with seven guards. His blond hair twisted and that’s when I realized I couldn’t feel Katrina. I thought of the way she brushed her fingers through his hair and wondered if she was now following him.

  I needed to catch up to him, but the cold water and the guns pointed at me were major deterrents. The moment I was up the plank, I was hauled by my shirt to a seat. There were at least seven girls, all forlorn and roughly beaten. Beside myself, there was one other girl present who looked like she was ready to put up a fight. We sized each other up before our attention drifted.

  Two guards climbed the plank and took their positions and I knew, without a doubt, Rex and Amber were going to follow me to the island. It was suicide. They had no idea that I wasn’t worth it.

  I took the chance and leaned toward the only sane girl sitting beside me.

  “What is with the masks?”

  “Gas masks,” the girl said. Her eyes were red rimmed, but it wasn’t from crying. She actually looked too tired to care. “That’s what killed so many people the first round.”

  Gas? It hadn’t affected everyone on the island, though the girls looked ill. If the soldiers were wearing masks, that meant they were human. That upped my chances of survival, or at least I liked to believe it did.

  “My names Belen,” I said.

  “Rose,” she answered.

  The longer I sat there, the colder it became. I fidgeted. My thoughts wandered to all the things that we were heading into without a plan. It was easier thinking about D than it was about Katrina. So many people were dead.

  “Start the engine,” a guard ordered.

  I shifted in my seat as the patrollers took their post and the boat roared to life. We didn’t get far from shore before the fog rolled in, clinging to my clothes and making me clammy.

  I flexed my achy fingers, trying to make them limber, but the pain was great. It was hard not reaching for the blades in my boots. I desperately wanted something in my hands.

  “It’s the perfect night for Diablo,” one of the guards mumbled.

  “Don’t say creepy things,” the second one said.

  A fog horn mournfully blared. We could have gone a few feet or half a mile for all I could judge. The boat wasn’t in a hurry. The fog that rolled in was surprisingly thick and hid everything. It became so dense that I could barely see the girls at the end of the boat.

  There was a shout and then a splash.

  “Girl overboard,” a lone guard at the back shouted.

  No one jumped in after her and there was no sound of swimming. I released my breath slowly, hoping against the odds that the girl could swim to shore, before hypothermia would get her. The cold would eventually freeze her muscle and carry her down.

  The light that played over the fog was almost gray, but it grew brighter the closer we came to the island. The patrollers started moving, preparing the boat to dock. This was the end of the line and I still had no plan.

  The fog lingered, but it was thin enough around the asylum that I saw D surrounded by a group of guards no longer in their masks. Draken was among the crew. I stood; ready to swim the distance, but they were already walking into the building with Draken in the lead.

  The boat docked and exiting was a slow process, starting with the girl at the front getting dragged to her feet. To avoid being bullied, a number of girls stood, but my defiance was strong. I remained sitting until the guard yanked me up and pushed me on my way. A second later, Rose tripped into me and I caught her before she fell. She gave me a curt nod.

  The island was larger inside the fence. I grew uncomfortable under the hot spotlights reflecting off the sand and bouncing back in my face. The building was extremely tall and there were no handholds. How did D climb it?

  Once we were lined up, a man in a suit, a shade lighter than what Draken was wearing, walked down the line. Rose and I were separated from the others and a guard stood between us.

  “This one is with the Reincarta, but she no longer has her chip,” the guard said, pointing to Rose. “And this one, Belen McKnight, is with the Diablos.”

  The suited man stopped at the end of the line to stare at us. Rose kept her eyes straight ahead, but I looked at him. What could he do that was worse than death? I could take a beating for my insolence and it wouldn’t change me.

  “After tonight, the Diablos will no longer have a leader,” he said.

  That comment stole my breath. No one came out and said that D was the leader, but I had a feeling he was. Jose and Katrina treated D with such high regard, even with that tiny piece of his mind missing. I couldn’t stand knowing he might die here.

  My heart fluttered in fear and a spotlight mimicked that pulse before blowing out. It didn’t create a great deal of darkness. The fog started to press through the gate on that side. The patrollers, no longer wore gas masks, stood a little straighter, pointing their guns at the gate. There was something very unnatural about it all.

  The man in front of me grew stiff too, but the anger that radiated off him said he was human. “You all act like children in the dark instead of security.”

  One guard stepped forward and pointed his gun at the miserable girls. “What do you want us to do with the Berserkers?”

  The silence stretched and another light burst by the guard tower. Curses flowed from the scared patrollers, but the boss stood, unmoved and the girls were too beaten to care. That same calmness wasn’t inside me. I was pissed and I wanted everyone to know.

  “Take the Diablo and Reincarta down to central control. We have use for them downstairs,” the man said. He walked past us and back to the gate.

  “Get moving, ladies,” the lead female guard ordered.

  The line moved, but one by one with shuffling feet. Right now, I wanted to keep the world out of my head, but I needed to know if Amber and Rex got off the boat.

  Dropping my shields was becoming easier. The light that weaved around me burst leaving me exposed to the shadows that lingered. The darkness was such a strong veil that it felt like I was deep underwater. The shadows had a deep purple hue that gave the living shades as well. I read people by looking at their auras, something I studied in Ms. Sable’s private library.

  A gold hue followed two patrollers who remained masked. Rex and Amber were following me into this pit of doom.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The glass doors silently drifted open when the first guard was within distance. There were no key swipes and no guard station at the front. I couldn’t see cameras or any other means to keep people from entering or leaving. We were lead down a long expanse of sterile hall with no windows or doors.

  It was all very alien and empty. I couldn’t feel the essence of the system or the people who passed through the hall before us. The prisoners’ energy and the stench of sickness followed us, but it would be wiped clean after we passed through.

  There were two elevators side by side with a skeletal shaped piece of metal behind the clear glass doors. That thing had one red piece of machinery in its head that resembled an eye. It made my flesh crawl.

  “I’ll take these two down,” the lead female guard said.

  The elevator doors opened as silently as the front doors had and the red eye hissed as it focused. I felt it was staring right at me. The guard waved her gun, indicating that I should step into the elevator first and there wasn’t room to dispute. Since they categorized me as a Diablo, I had a feeling I was being taken to where they held D.

  That red eye roved in its metal socket to follow me. Rose shuffled her feet but a few steps and she was in the box with the robot too. It felt a little less scary with another member of the human race in the small space with me. I brought my shields back up, since the last thing I wanted was for my mind to be fogged by everyone around me.

  Before the doors could slide shut, Amber and Rex also came on board. They missed their chance to escape. Either they were extremely loyal to me, or exceedingly afraid of Sonya. After tonight, nothing would matter. Our survival rate was slim. I thought the woman was going to dispute it, but she didn’t.

  “Lab 23-Central,” the guard said.

  The muscles in my neck tightened as I stared the robot down. That red eye never roved in its metal socket to look at anyone else. It remained focused on me. I didn’t like that.

  The elevator started downward in a very smooth, but slow fashion. Rex’s cool exterior was slipping. He was thinking about something as his fingers ticked against his leg. Amber’s fingers stroked the long barrel of her rifle, also in thought.

  The elevator box was too pristine and perfect to be manmade. There were no screws, no lines where the sheet metal was pieced together. The light above our heads came from frosted glass that reminded me of a sunroof.

  After a few moments of staring at the roof, the light started to flicker, but it wasn’t just in our box. The lights on each floor we passed were going on and off. The seconds in the dark were growing longer and longer. I counted to fifteen before the lights came back on and the flickering stopped. The dark usually enlisted fear in me, but this time, there was only calm. I was more afraid of myself than the dark.

  “The main database must have a malfunction,” the guard said.

  “That is impossible,” a computerized voice replied from the walls. It was surreal hearing it.

  For emphasis, the lights went out again and this time, I felt the shadows twist around us. They were as real as the rest of us and if they moved any closer to me, I’d feel their touch. I wondered if Katrina was among them.

  When the lights came back on, there wasn’t an ounce of shadow lingering or even slithering away. Our guard looked fairly pale, but Rex and Amber were poised and ready. It felt good knowing the woman could be startled.

  “How many floors are there?” I asked.

  The guard didn’t answer. We had passed at least five floors going downward, though the elevator was slow. The glass doors gave us a glimpse of every floor. The further down we went, we started to pass laboratories. There were numerous cages of various sizes, lined up while machinery with metal arms and fingers diligently worked on stringing something together. It looked like they were sewing human skin.

  “Hell,” Rose blanched and pressed herself in the back of the elevator. “Reincarta help us.”

  The lights flickered again and this time the elevator stopped between two floors. Electricity left the circuits and everything went dark, except for that sharp red eye that continued to stare at me.

  “Attention all personal, system is down. Reboot scheduled.” The elevator informed.

  The patroller slid her gun strap over her shoulder and pushed her gun out of her way. “If it reboots, the magnets will release and we’ll plummet. Lose the masks and help me get these doors open.’

  A mask dropped and it was followed by another. I wondered who relented first. Rex squeezed my shoulder before passing me and even Amber gave me a light pat. Was this wolf code?

  We were in so much danger; there wasn’t time to think. I took a spot next to the glass and dug my fingers into the indent. Even with all of us yanking, it still didn’t budge.

  “Protective gear required for entry to this level,” the elevator voice said.

  Blue emergency lights flickered on. It wasn’t a great deal of light, but it was enough to steady my vision. I didn’t prefer it. Blue light made the shadows thicker.

  Frustrated, the patroller slammed her hand against the glass. “C-System, move us now.”

  “Voice command not calculating. Red chambers scheduled for release in five… four…three.”

  “What is the computer about to release?” Amber asked.

  “Two…one.”

  “What’s that? What is it talking about,” Rose asked.

  I was feeling the same rush of uncertainty, but I’d be damned if I admitted it.

  The guard was cursing under her breath. “Computer, we’re stuck on the bio-level. Get someone down here A.S.A.P.”

  I held my breath waiting for a response, but none came.

  Rose pressed ahead of everyone. “What’s that coming towards us?”

  I strained my vision, but I didn’t see what she was looking at.

  “There’s nothing’s there,” I said.

  “Yes there is. It’s sort of drifting this way like a cloud,” Rose said.

  “Shut up and get away from the glass!” The guard cocked her gun at the two of us.

  “Releasing doors in five seconds,” the computer said.

  “Who is working on the system?” the guard yelled.

  The computer didn’t stop counting to answer. I bit my lip when she got to one and waited for the glass doors to slide open, but they didn’t.

 

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