Page 64 of Light

Steeling for the realization of every disgusting detail.

The monitors. The electrodes. The test tubes. The video cameras.

The steel surface at the center of it all, awaiting a new subject. A new mutant.

The angled corner, just behind the headrest of that slab, where she used to stand. The voice without a body. The mistress without mercy. The bitch without a soul.

The corner where I could never see her…

Because the room is shaped like a hexagon.

Another cell in a huge hive of torture.

A massive center of experimentation.

A reality I impel myself to accept, no matter how shrill the screams in my senses, the gashes in my belly, or the protests in my soul. The truth I thrust to my lips, despite their stinging poison.

Back to the starting blocks.

All the fucking way back.

“The Source.” I whip a burning glare back up to Aliz. “This is…we’re inside…the Source?”

Her awful stretch of silence is all the answer I need.

All the truth I can take.

Before I wheel back around, slamming both hands against the lab cell wall. Searing ten holes into the tiles before letting my head fall again—and losing everything from my stomach all over the floor.

Chapter Four

Emma

Reece can’t speak.

And neither can I.

A million words barrage my stunned mind and shocked soul. None of them sound close to right when I fight to form them on my lips.

And so, the pall of our silence. The air around us clinging and weighing like fog over a graveyard. The echoes of our steps clinical and cold, like prisoners being delivered to a dungeon. And my husband, now looking like a blue-skinned zombie. No life in his gaze but the dark desire for just one normal breath. The desperate, shuffling quest for a meaning in his survival. A nobility in his endurance.

A way back to his humanity.

But he’s shut that switch off. Purposely plunged himself back into the darkness. One more time. One last time.

The dive he has to take.

The journey he must make.

I see that now. I know it. I feel it in every arc of energy that still passes between us, fusing his faint fire to mine through the conduit of our joined hands. Though his light is dim, it’s still there. Still calling out to me as it did the night we first met. Still pleading with me to stay by his side, no matter what kind of a glowing freak he appears to be on the outside.

I’m not going anywhere.

I send the message to him with every step we take down the hall, despite the Tesla coils my neck hairs have become during our progress through the warren of underground passages. We ordered Aliz to accompany our X-15 of a son back up the shaft with Mis and Ira, along with Reece’s terse voice memo on his phone for Sawyer’s ears only. Aliz ensured us she’d do just that, showing off her own electric parkour skills.

Fortunately, Reece seemed to believe her. Sometime between vomiting in the lab room and shutting his brain off, he’d explained that he didn’t yet trust this revelation to anyone but Sawyer. A valid point, since we’ve already passed three partial cave-ins along the halls. Aliz alluded to more, including the massive tunnel collapse that trapped her and the twins in a remote section of the complex, with only a couple of video monitors to disable. By now, we can safely assume the Consortium never ascribed to the wisdom of building all of this to proper earthquake codes. Even if the jolt wasn’t caused by a real quake—a truth we may never know at this point—the effect on these rudimentary tunnels has been the same.

Too bad, so sad. Your loss, assholes.