kisses, the strength of his arms, how it felt to lie with him, feeling him all against me.
Hot tears leaked from my eyes and ran down my face.
Fang. I had missed him, ached for him, for so long. Years and years. Phoenix. My mother’s heart had felt ripped apart, empty, unnatural without my baby by my side. To be alone here for so long had been the worst punishment I could imagine. Not knowing what had happened to either one of them—surely I would be able to feel it if either one had died? Wouldn’t the fabric of the universe be ripped in some way that I could feel? If I’d ever gotten out of here and found that Fang or Phoenix had died—I knew I wouldn’t be able to go on. For me, a world without them was a world I didn’t need to be in. Real apathy would have taken over then. They could’ve pinched me in half. Sent a dozen guys at me with shivs. Set me on the rocks when the waves came in. I wouldn’t have cared.
Except, even thinking about those scenarios automatically made my mind whirl with how I would escape them. The rocks were the easiest; obviously if I were anywhere outside, one of the Flock could…
Oh, god. Angel. Nudge. The Gasman. Iggy. Any one of them would have been able to spring me out of here. The fact that they hadn’t meant one of two things: They had no idea where I was, or they were dead. I couldn’t remember what had happened to injure me so badly—so badly that leaving Phoenix in a safe place seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
Suddenly the claw came to a jolting stop and my body swayed in agony. Slowly, slowly, the arms loosened while I clawed at them. Then they were open and I dropped to the ground.
Here was the Judgment Room.
CHAPTER 26
Hawk
I woke up on one of the folding tables in the laundry room—Clete had carried me, despite not really liking touching people.
“I fainted?” I asked unnecessarily.
“Yep,” he said, reaching past me to throw some soiled towels into one of the big machines. The crisis was over and he was sticking to his schedule.
I sat up, and everything went filmy, black spots in my vision.
“Some of the prisoners tried to grab you,” he said. “I stomped on a couple arms.”
That made me grin, though I still felt light-headed.
“That guy said he was your dad! How stupid does he think you are?” Clete said.
“The weirdo? The worst of the worst? The kid killer? I guess he thinks I’m pretty damn stupid,” I said and slid off the table. I must have been hallucinating when I thought I saw the resemblance to myself. I didn’t have parents. They would have come and gotten me. They wouldn’t have let me live like th—
Clete was still automatically putting laundry in the machines and starting them.
“He said we looked alike,” I went on, hearing snideness in my tone, some anger. “Which part? My tattooed eyeliner or my boobs?”
Clete looked at me, met my eyes—something he almost never did. “He’s not your dad. You should just forget about it, refocus. We still got to rescue the other lab rats.” He eyed me worriedly. “You still up for it?”
“Damn straight,” I said and got busy, loading as many machines as I could—until Clete and I took our “break.” We left the laundry room casually, looking bored, but as soon as we were out in the hall, we flattened ourselves against the wall and waited. After the guard’s footsteps faded, we hurried down the hall, trying to be as silent as possible.
The Labs were in another building, across a courtyard. We opened the door to the courtyard slowly, catching it as it closed to prevent it from making the slightest sound.
“Stick to the shadows,” I murmured to Clete, and he nodded. I wished Clete hadn’t heard that weirdo say he was my father. I didn’t ever want to talk to Clete about it again. I silently took in a deep breath, trying to put all that out of my mind.
It took us two long minutes to cross the courtyard, precious minutes of our so-called break. We didn’t have much time.
In the Labs building all the doors were alarmed, opened only by keyed ID tags worn by the guards. We waited, standing behind a tree, until two guards marched out. Before the door could close behind them we had slipped through, as