The doctors will come for you, if you stay.”
Eyes wide, he scrambles toward me, burying his face in my chest, and I wrap my arms around his cold, wet body.
“Let’s get out of here.” On the way toward the exit, I nab one of the lab coats hanging on a hook and wrap it around the boy.
Atticus clothes himself in another lab coat that only just covers his manhood, and the four of us hobble through the hallway that’s flanked by glass rooms, toward the stairwell that led us down to this place. When we finally push through the doors, we’re greeted by more Legion soldiers, a wave of black uniforms that sweeps into the convent like a black squall.
“We have to go back.” The grit in Titus’s tone sounds off his frustration, and I’m certain if it weren’t for me and the boy, he’d have plowed through those soldiers without hesitation. Abandoning our escape, we head back down the stairwell.
The door at the bottom swings open as an older man with graying hair and a white lab coat pushes through it. As Titus lurches toward him, he holds up his hands in surrender.
“Wait. I can help you. I know a way out.”
“Don’t trust the bastards here,” Atticus says through clenched teeth, and he grunts, hand clutching his stomach.
“Thalia …” The doctor sets his eyes on me, igniting a blaze of confusion inside my head. I’ve never seen him before in my life. “I was a friend of your father’s for a long time.”
“I’ve come to learn my father’s friends can’t be trusted.”
“If you’re referring to Jack, you’re right. He can’t be trusted.” The clank of metal from above signals the approach of the soldiers, and the man’s eyes widen. “Please. I can get you out of here. Safely.”
It’s not as if we have a choice. Even if I wanted to tell him to go to hell, he seems to be our only option at the moment, unless I want to watch Legion officers gun down Titus and Atticus right in front of me.
“Lead the way, then.”
The stranger spins toward the door behind him, guiding us back through the labs to a room beyond the one with the capsules, where the blood makes for a slick walk.
“My lab is below. Most don’t know it’s here.”
“And what is it that you do that you need a secret lab below, Dr ...”
“Levins. My name is Doctor Levins,” he says, opening a door to what looks like a supply closet. He pushes a linen cart out of the way, revealing a door in the floor of the room. “I was a surgeon before the Dredge …” He swings open the door to a black stairwell, and from one of the shelves, he nabs two flashlights and hands one to Titus. “When Szolen recruited me, I was under the impression that we were a select group, chosen to combat this disease with medicine and science.” His shoulders slouch as he ushers us down into the hole. “I couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d decided to teach pole dancing, instead.”
At the chasing silence, Dr. Levins clears his throat. “Or standup comedy. Anyway, down you go.”
The four of us stare blankly at him. No one moves.
He nods and begins the climb down. “Right. So, whoever brings up the rear needs to close the hatch. My ass is on the line for betrayal, after all.”
Titus unhooks Atticus’s arm from his neck and directs the Alpha to climb down next, probably to put some muscle between Doctor Levins and me. He then nods at me to follow after them, and helping the boy climb down first, I do, descending into the dark tunnel below. Titus brings up the rear, drawing the linen cart between the door and the hatch to conceal us, before he closes us inside.
Waiting below, Doctor Levins presses a switch that turns on a series of lights along the tunnels. “As I was saying, my job here is a little more obscure.”
“How so?” Titus asks, jumping from the last rung of the ladder.
“I’m in the business of saving people. Doing so means evolving with the disease. Perhaps you’ve noticed, Ragers are getting smarter. The more their genetics mix with ours, the better they’ll get at hunting. But they do not hunt their own kind.”
“Yeah. We saw what you do.” I wrap my arm around the boy beside me, drawing him closer.
“I’m afraid there are two philosophies to this science. Taking what isn’t broken, and