And stopped dead.
What was in front of me and spread out to my left looked like a scene out of Coma, Alien Resurrection, or Wolverine’s origin stories. There were glass tanks along the walls, one right next to the other, bubbling gently with some kind of fluid, all with bodies inside of them. The bodies were floating, all with facemasks on and lots of tubes and such going into them. I was pretty sure they were all alive in some way.
Metal bars crisscrossed the ceiling, strong cables hanging from them, in sets of four. Each set of cables held what looked like a space-aged stretcher up off the ground. And every stretcher had a body in it. They all had tubes and such running into the ground. Again, had the distinct impression they were all alive.
The lights were blue. Couldn’t tell if they were light bulbs or tubes or something else, but the glow was enough to see decently.
To my immediate left was a wall with an opened door. Regular yellow light washed out from the doorway. It looked jarring against the blue, which was rather soothing. Or would have been if I wasn’t revved up on stress.
There was a teenaged kid standing in the doorway. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Ah . . .” I stepped back and shoved whoever was behind me back as well. “Stay back,” I said in the lowest voice I could. “He’s only seen me.”
“Come out here,” the kid demanded.
I stepped back into view. “Hi.”
The area we were in was separated from the hanging body beds by only open space. The kid didn’t look at the bodies—clearly he was used to them.
“Who is it?” A different voice, a girl’s, came from whatever room the open door led to.
“I don’t know . . .” The kid stepped closer to me. “Oh.” He smiled, and there was something very familiar about his smile, but I couldn’t place my finger on what. “I know you. Katherine, right?”
“Ah, right.” Almost no one called me Katherine. Even White was down to using my full first name only when we were doing something legitimately formal or if he was trying to make a parental-type point.
“You were supposed to be coming the day after tomorrow. You’re early.”
Score another one for Mom. “We like to mix it up, keep the bad guys guessing.”
“Yes, you’re good at that, aren’t you, Katherine? But you don’t go by that name, not really, do you?”
He flipped a switch on the wall near him and the blue lights were overpowered by white fluorescent. The kid’s smile widened. “I know what you like to be called.”
My stomach clenched. I recognized his smile now. And his eyes. I really recognized his eyes. They were kind of slitted and they glittered. He was slender and had a reptilian look to him.
I was terrified of snakes. And there was one person in my life who, more than anyone else, had reminded me of a snake. Not at all coincidentally, it was the same person who’d terrified me more than any other in my life.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” His voice dripped sarcasm and menace. I recognized that, too.
Managed to get the name out. “Leventhal Reid.”
His grin went wider. “In the flesh.”
CHAPTER 85
“HOW ARE YOU HERE? I saw you die. And it wasn’t over a decade ago.”
A girl who looked a little younger than the kid in front of me stepped out. She looked vaguely familiar, too. “I checked, she’s not alone.” She gave me an icy look. And, as with Reid, I recognized this expression.
“LaRue? What the hell? I saw you die, too.” A year or so ago.
“Maybe you did.” She shrugged. “Maybe you didn’t.”
“You were shot through the head by Esteban Cantu. I watched you die.” Knew I had to be giving off supernova levels of stress and terror right now. Wondered if it would be enough to let Jeff know where I was, but then realized it wouldn’t be—this entire facility had to be blocked, otherwise someone would have found it by now.
“We’ve overcome death,” LaRue said with a superior smirk.
“Apparently. How?”
“Oh, let’s meet your friends first,” LaRue said.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Reid called in a singsong voice.
“I’m alone.”
They both laughed. “We have sensors, you idiot,” LaRue said. Yeah, it was definitely her. Someone or something had locked the door behind us, so had to figure they weren’t bluffing.
The rest of my team stepped out of the corridor and fanned out next to and behind me. Reid’s eyes lit on Serene, LaRue’s on Amy. Then both of them looked at Naomi and Abigail. The expressions on their faces were exactly the same—spiders looking at juicy flies.
“Who’s the guy?” Reid asked. “I was expecting your knight in shining armor.”
“He’s a friend.” Interesting. Somehow Buchanan had remained off everyone’s radar. What a pity he was going to be on it now.
“Why are we hanging back?” Adriana asked quietly. “They’re unarmed.”
“Heard that,” LaRue said.
I blinked, and somehow Reid had Adriana and was twisting her arm behind her back. Her expression said that he was hurting her. His expression said that he knew he was and was enjoying that he was causing her pain. If I’d needed confirmation that somehow this was really Leventhal Reid, I now had it.
“Let her go,” I said as evenly as I could. “You’ve made your point. You’re clones, but you’ve had that extra special A-C something added in.”
“Why shouldn’t we just have fun with her?” Reid asked.
“How about because the rest of us will kick your asses?” Naomi asked.
“You can try,” LaRue said. “We’d like that.”
“Okay,” Abigail said.
“No!” Buchanan and I shouted in unison.
Unfortunately, we both shouted slower than the A-Cs moved. Buchanan was able to grab Amy, but the rest of the girls all went for it.
Reid threw Adriana toward the open space between him and the hanging body beds. Lorraine and Claudia both went to catch her. Which they did, but they were staggered back a bit.
In the meantime, LaRue grabbed both Gower girls and tossed them toward Lorraine, Claudia, and Adriana. Serene happened to be between the Gowers and the others, so she got bowled over as they all crashed into each other.
This was done at hyperspeed, so took only a moment. And in less than that clear walls that had a bluish glow went up around the girls.
“There are booby traps,” Buchanan the Scout Master said to the troop that had just earned their Being Taken Hostage Badges. “By the way.”
“We guessed,” Claudia said. “A little late, but . . .”
“Don’t touch the sides,” Buchanan said quickly, right as Abigail’s hand was heading for one of the “walls.” “They look electrical.”
“Lasers, actually,” LaRue said. “Feel free to touch them.” The girls carefully moved into the center of the box they were in.
Reid snickered. “This area is really well protected. Father doesn’t like us to have uninvited guests.”
Father? “Ronald Yates is alive, too? Or do you consider Mephistopheles to be your daddy?”
They both laughed, nasty teenaged laughs. It was like being back in high school. “No,” Reid said. “Father doesn’t think we need to bring him back, in either form. I think he’s right. At first I didn’t agree, but I see the wisdom now.”
“So, is Father Herbert Gaultier? Antony Marling? Madeleine Cartwright with a sex change?”
More nasty teenaged snickering. “You’ll never guess,” LaRue said. “So don’t hurt yourself trying.”
“Who’s Doctor Feelgood, then?”
Unsurprisingly, they knew exactly what I meant. What I was saying always seemed super clear to the bad guys, go me. I could tell they got this reference because they looked at each other, smirked, then looked back at me. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Reid asked.