God of Monsters (Juniper Unraveling #4) - Keri Lake Page 0,125

waves me to follow.

I scramble after him, and we descend a dark staircase that’s lit only by torches every few feet. Sounds reach my ear from below, and when I focus on them, I realize they’re the cries of torment and suffering. Moans of agony that remind me of the many women I watched in labor for hours on end. The stairwell seems to go on forever, until the gunfire above becomes a distant sound. Ice cold air steals my breath, while the scent of rot and death clings to the back of my throat, overpowering the surrounding aroma of decayed earth and rusted stone.

Flames flicker along the path, toward a door ahead, around which light beams through the cracks. Titus swings back the door, the fluorescent light overhead revealing boxes and equipment stacked about the room. I recognize the medical supplies and furniture, beakers and burners, test tubes, and empty petri dishes.

“I didn’t think this place had electricity.” I scan the open room, over the benches and shelves, which look to be in the thick of packing up, or unpacking. It’s hard to discern. “Looks like they’re storing medical supplies.”

“They’re preparing a new research facility.”

“Like Calico?”

“From the looks of it. C’mon.” Striding through the open space, Titus leads the way toward another door, this one made of hard steel and held closed by a latch that won’t open. The biohazard signs plastered to the front of it give my stomach an uneasy twist over what might be on the other side.

I scan the adjacent door, also with a biohazard sign, but no lock on the latch.

“Let’s try this one,” I say, making my way toward it, and feel a tight grip of my hand, tugging me back.

Titus tips his head as he stalks toward it, and the moment he places his hand on the latch, the door flies open. A man in a lab coat barrels out, aiming a gun, and he fires a shot that, from my angle, appears to hit Titus in the arm.

“No!” I lift my gun, but before I even manage to get my finger on the trigger, another shot rings out, and the man in the lab coat drops to the floor.

A second man, mostly bald, steps out from behind the door with his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot! Please!”

Instead of lowering the gun, Titus keeps it trained on the man’s skull. “I’m looking for someone. Said to be held in Purgatory. An Alpha.”

“There … um. There are no … Alphas … that I’m aware of.”

A shot fires from the gun, hitting the wall directly behind the man, who lets out a scream, trembling, as he glances back at the hole left behind.

“Okay. There’s one … Alpha.”

“Show me.” The unyielding tone in Titus’s voice carries the unspoken promise that he’ll blow the man’s head off, if he tries anything tricky.

The man flicks his fingers for us to follow and leads us down a long corridor of rooms encased in glass. Two other men in lab coats stand at benches with their arms in the air, one of whom ducks when we pass. The moment we’re beyond the room, I catch sight of him scrambling for the door through which we entered, and swinging the gun around, Titus fires a shot that hits the man’s back, sending him tumbling to the floor. Not a minute later, a blossom of red stains the back of his coat.

“You don’t … have to shoot them. They’re unarmed.” Lab Coat’s voice seems to get shakier by the second.

“Go.” Titus thuds the gun against the man’s back, nudging him forward, and we keep on toward yet another set of doors.

The man opens them onto a dimly-lit room, inside which the sound of compressed air echoes. Around the space are enormous capsules that reach from the floor to the ceiling. Contained within the capsules are human bodies, suspended in some sort of liquid, with an apparatus attached to their face that has tubes extending upward.

Men. Women. Children. Perhaps a hundred, or so, capsules that glow a fluorescent light.

I look around the room at all the faces that seem to be asleep. “What is this?”

“They’re in a hibernation mode. We call this latency.”

“Latency for what? What have you done to them?”

“They’re the future. The hope of our species. We’re not expected to survive the next decade.” Lab Coat nods toward the capsule in front of him, in which a young boy, perhaps only six years old, or so, twitches, sending bubbles