His best chance was to magic in and then take it from there.
He pulled his wand from his belt and whispered the spell, felt the shimmer of magic in the air, and then he was gone.
His first thought was that it had worked. His second that he had fucked up and was in the wrong cell. There was a woman on the cot, but it wasn’t Destiny. Dr. Yang lay on her side just as he had seen her in the vision. She was gagged, her hands were cuffed behind her back, and her face was still, her eyes wide. Was she dead? Then she blinked.
He moved quickly, crossing to the narrow bed and tugging the gag from her mouth.
“Where’s Destiny?” he asked.
She licked her lips. “How…?”
“It doesn’t matter. Where the hell is Destiny?”
She sat up and turned around, presenting her cuffed wrists to him. He touched his wand to the cuffs, whispered a word, and they sprang open. She turned back, rubbing her wrists and eying the wand in his hand.
“Destiny?” he prompted.
She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “You’re too late.”
Not happening. “Where the fuck is she?” He reached forward and shook her. “Tell me.”
“She’s upstairs, and right now, I would think they’re cutting out her heart.” She said the words with a total lack of expression, and they made no sense at all.
“Tell me what’s happening. Now!”
“Luther Kinross has a weak heart. Actually, I suspect he doesn’t have a heart at all. He brought me along on the trip to find him a cure. He promised me a future for my family if I could save his useless, worthless, treacherous life.”
“So how does Destiny fit in? What has she got to do with Kinross?”
She gave him a pitying look. “Destiny is a clone. More precisely, a clone of Luther Kinross. The whole point of her existence is to provide spare parts for Luther.”
The words still didn’t make sense or maybe he didn’t want them to. He latched on to a thought. “She can’t be a clone of Kinross. She’s a woman. He’s a man. It isn’t possible.”
“It’s quite possible. It just needs a little manipulation of the chromosomes.” She gave a shrug. “I had plenty of time and for the first time in my life I had no limits on what I could attempt. I got creative.”
“You cared for her, brought her up, and then handed her over to be slaughtered.”
“I had to. I had no choice. It was the only way for my family to survive.”
“They’re operating now?”
“I believe so.” She looked around at her surroundings. “Obviously, I’m a little out of the loop.”
He couldn’t be too late. He’d know if she was dead. Then he remembered the image in the scry. She’d been sleeping. Sleeping or anesthetized? His skin went cold, and a shiver ran through him. Panic awoke in his gut, twisting and clawing. He had to find her. He reached forward and grabbed Dr. Yang’s arm, shook her. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs, but we’ll be too late. Luther always gets what he wants.”
“There has to be time.”
She glanced at the comm unit on her wrist. “The operation is scheduled for five minutes. We won’t make it.”
“Then we have to stop it.” There had to be a way to stop it. They were going to cut out her fucking heart and give it to that bastard Kinross. No fucking way. Think. “Where’s the power supply?”
She glanced at him sharply. “At the rear of the building.”
Now he remembered, he’d seen the generator house while he’d been doing a recce of the place that first night. To magic or not to magic? If the spell went wrong, then she would die. But he didn’t have time to take out the guards. He’d never make it out of the tunnels.
Without giving himself time to think it was a really bad idea, he grabbed hold of Dr. Yang’s arm, raised his wand, whispered a spell, and pictured where he needed to be. They reformed outside in the open air; night had fallen. Dr. Yang stumbled and he let her fall to the ground, as he pulled his pistol from his belt. There was a guard outside the generator house. He was staring at them, blinking. Milo shot him in the chest and then ran forward. The door was locked, and he shot at the lock and kicked the door open.
The room was filled with the hum of the machines. A man sat at the