12

 

THE ENCLAVE TRUNDLES to a stop. For several minutes, nothing happens. Then a crack forms in the darkness above, a razor-thin slice of gray light. Not bright, but my eyes—too long in the darkness—blink in surprise. Then I’m suddenly being lifted up toward the widening crack of light.

Silver light bathes me and I force my eyelids open despite the sharp jab of pain. Dark silhouettes of thin, long-limbed figures hover over me. Their ovoid heads almost touch as they peer down at me. They don’t speak, only stare. I catch my own reflection in the pairs of shades they have donned on their faces. I look so small. So frightened. Their shadows glide over me like dark clouds erasing my reflected image.

A hiss. Then the glass wall begins to pull away. Fresh air pours into the enclave, and it is a sweet clarity that fills my lungs, clears my head. I shudder in the relief of it.

Whispery words, quiet and detached. Then they touch me. They push aside my arms, hands pressing against my chest, fingers poking between my ribs. Then they’re hoisting me out of the enclave. Cool air splashes against my skin, chilling me. I try to stand, but my legs are jellified. I collapse to the metallic floor. Immediately I start crawling away from these men, my legs scrabbling over the slippery tiled floor.

They don’t stop me, don’t utter a word to me. They only pace beside me, their feet mincing along with unnerving calm beside my frantic, crawling body. I bump up against the wall, spin around. The men—three of them, reedy and swaying slightly as if blown by a breeze—surround me. Their pale skin glows with a sour-milk complexion.

White cubicle curtains hang from tracks on the ceiling, sectioning us off from whatever lies on the other side. I squirm up into a sitting position. In the far corner stands someone tall, broad shouldered, his face blurry.

“Do not be afraid,” the man immediately in front of me says. Cold, detached, clinical.

“We mean you no harm.”

“You’re safe now,” the third man says. His thin upper lip slips up his row of teeth, exposing a pair of sharp incisors.

Instantly I’m leaping to my feet, my fist connecting with his soft, effeminate cheek. The man collapses to the ground, offering as much resistance as a daffodil. But the other two are on me in an instant, their speed compensating for their lack of strength.

One of the men is holding a hypodermic needle.

I smack it away. It shatters, its contents—a dark-green fluid—splattering on the wall. I need to escape through the part in the curtains, but before I can get my legs in motion I feel a sharp prick on the side of my neck. I grab the nearest man by the scruff of his neck, push him against the wall. His shades smack into the wall, crack into two, and fall to the floor.

I feel something dangling from my neck. I reach for it, pull it out. Another hypodermic needle, the syringe fully depressed, a dark-green droplet hanging off the tip of the needle. The man squirms, trying to escape.

“Where’s Sissy?” I shout, pressing him against the wall, keeping his fangs away from me. “The girl! What have you done with her?”

Face smushed against the wall, the man shakes his head vigorously from side to side, stammering.

“Take me to her!” I shout, my words slurred and thick.

The man begins to turn. He has found a surge of strength, his arms now able to break out of my hold. A wave of dizziness hits me. The man extricates himself from my grip, faces me. The room tilts, canting at a harsh angle. My legs wobble with sudden weakness. Leering, he shoves me, causing me to stumble and almost completely lose my balance. My vision swims. He hasn’t gotten stronger; I’ve gotten weaker. Whatever he injected into me, it is working quickly and powerfully.

Then a set of hands clamps down on me from behind. “Do not resist.” This voice is masculine, authoritative. His grip on my shoulders is strong and assured. I turn around, realize it is the man who just a moment ago was standing in the corner. My legs fail me, and I start falling. He catches me, lowers me to the ground. “We are not them. Do not resist. We are not them.” He speaks these words softly now, with tenderness.

“Father?” I murmur.

But it is not. It is the burly man I’d seen in the catacombs an hour ago, the one who’d spoken to me in the restroom weeks ago. He looks exactly the same as he did back at the Heper Institute, even wearing the same prissy pair of glasses. Except now he’s dressed not in a tight-fitting tuxedo but in the regal attire of the highly ranked.

“Do not be afraid,” he says gently. “Nothing is as it seems.”

And then I fade out.