The one thing that was missing was a human presence. Other than stacks of papers and coffee cups and a sweater or two left over a chair, it was as if the people who worked here brought nothing of themselves with them. There were no photos, no kids’ drawings tacked to cubicle walls, no plants or paperweights or figurines.
Prairie disappeared down a corridor at the other end of the room, and Kaz dug in his backpack, then handed me a can of lighter fluid.
“Shouldn’t take much,” he said. “Just concentrate it along the drywall.”
We set to work, stepping around the equipment. At first I was cautious, but then I followed Kaz’s example and shoved things out of the way, pushing desks aside to reach the walls. The acrid smell of chemicals filled the air, stinging my eyes and making me cough, and adrenaline pumped through my veins.
I thought I heard something-a slam, a muffled cry-from the corridor Prairie had entered. Kaz heard it too, and we both went still, looking at each other and trying to listen over the hum of the equipment. Then we were both running toward the source of the sounds.
We were barely into the hallway when there was a crashing of metal on wood and a heavy door rebounded off the walls a few feet in front of us.
Prairie stumbled into the hallway, followed by someone else.
Bryce Safian-it had to be. A well-built man with close-cut brown hair and a starched button-down shirt was holding a gun jammed against Prairie’s back. Kaz reacted before I could absorb the scene-he rushed forward and slammed between Bryce and Prairie, knocking her to the floor. He grabbed for the gun and it went off, and a split second later he grabbed one hand with the other, wincing, blood dripping between his fingers. He’d been shot in the hand, and now Bryce had the gun aimed straight at his heart. Kaz backed up slowly as Prairie crawled out of the way and got to her feet.
The man’s eyes met mine, narrowed, and then relaxed. He smiled, a cruel and calculating expression that wasn’t all that different from the way Gram used to look when she thought Dun or one of her other customers had said something funny.
“You must be Hailey. I’m Bryce Safian. Please call me Bryce.” His smile grew wider. “It’s a good thing I decided to come check on things in the lab when I heard that my employees had managed to let you slip away yet again. You should be congratulated on your ingenuity. Remarkable, really.”
“Your hand…,” I choked out, watching Kaz bleed onto the floor.
“Don’t worry about him,” Bryce said dismissively. “He’s not worth your time. You know, Hailey, if things had gone differently, I might have been your Uncle Bryce.”
I looked from him to Prairie. I had never seen her look so angry.
Bryce followed the direction of my gaze. “Yes, that’s right. I had been thinking of proposing to your aunt. That is, until she made it clear that we had profound, ah, you might say, fundamental character differences.”
“You have no character,” Prairie spat. “You have no shame. You’re-you’re inhuman.”
Bryce laughed, a rich and cultured sound. “That’s pretty funny, coming from you, darling. Seems like it might be you that deserves that title. Did you know,” he said conversationally, tipping his head to me, “that your aunt has chromosomal abnormalities so severe that technically she shouldn’t even be alive in any condition known to science?
“Oh dear,” he added, creasing his forehead and pretending to be sorry. “I shouldn’t have said that, seeing as you-and your young friend here too, I take it-have the same… deficiencies.”
Kaz raised his bloody hands as though he was going to go after Bryce again, but Bryce swung the gun between me and Prairie and back at Kaz. His gun hand was steady.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” he said to me. “You all bleed regular blood-and I should know, considering all the testing we’ve done here. Presumably, losing enough of it will kill you just like it would any normal human. And I know you can’t heal this one without touching him.”
I could feel the rushing that signaled the need to heal. I couldn’t take my eyes off Kaz’s shredded hand. My fingertips pulsed with the compulsion to touch him, to find the wound and let my energy flow to it. But I couldn’t reach him. Bryce would never let me get to him. And without touching, I couldn’t heal. Milla, Rascal, Chub… I’d had to lay my hands on them to feel the energy from my fingers go into their bodies.
“Kind of funny, really,” Bryce went on. “If you could get to big boy here, you could probably fix him up, but I’ve got lots of extra clips, so I’d just keep shooting holes in him. No doubt who’d win that race, huh, sunshine?”
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Prairie muttered.
“Oh, but I do! Who’s been running those tests for all these months? Hmm? I’d say I’m intimately familiar with just how your special little powers work, wouldn’t you? In fact, I think I’d be able to hurt your young friend here just badly enough that you’d have a very difficult choice to make. Isn’t that so, Prairie?”
She looked stricken, a choked sob dying in her throat. I remembered her promise to Anna. I’ll guard him like my own.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Bryce went on, smiling lazily. “I don’t need you anymore. I found someone new. She’s not as pretty as you, and I doubt she’ll prove as… amusing. But she’s cooperative-very cooperative, considering she’s become, let’s say, a permanent guest of the laboratory. And now that I have Hailey, the two of them are all I need to get the last of our work done. It’s a shame, really, that you won’t be around to share in the glory.”
So Kaz’s vision had been real. Bryce had found another Healer, and locked her up here just as he intended to lock me up. My heart sank as I realized that all our work might have been for nothing. Bryce planned on keeping me alive, but he clearly didn’t intend to keep Prairie or Kaz around. I felt despair overtaking the determination I’d started the night with.
“You won’t live that long,” Prairie said, surprising me with her fury. She stepped toward Bryce, unafraid. “Shoot me if you want. Go ahead, I dare you. Your new girlfriend’s never going to make zombies for you. That’s not what was ordained, and you can’t fight it.”
Bryce chuckled, genuine mirth crinkling his eyes at the corners. “Oh, Prairie, such idealism, it’s so refreshing. I’ve always loved that about you. If you only knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Where do you think I found out about your little niece here?”
Prairie hesitated, and I saw uncertainty flicker in her eyes.
“The guys you hired,” I said, trying to edge closer to Kaz. “Your men. Your dead men.”
Bryce laughed harder. “That is so amusing to me, you see, because once they traced Prairie’s true identity, we found an unexpected ally. Someone who was willing to tell us everything we ever wanted to know about you, little Hailey, for a price. Someone willing to set up the perfect opportunity for my men to come and get you, someone who not only wouldn’t miss you, but would make sure no one else did, either.”
A murmur started inside my ears and built quickly into a roar. I shook my head and whispered “No,” but I knew exactly who he was talking about.
“Your grandmother, Hailey,” Bryce said, barely able to conceal the smug satisfaction in his voice. “Alice Tarbell. Gave you up for five thousand dollars and a ticket to Ireland. Oh… and the promise that, not to be indelicate, when it was time for you to procreate, we would furnish you with one of your own kind.”
Kaz shot forward, launching himself low against Bryce’s torso, trying to knock him down. But I could see that Kaz’s injury had weakened him, made him miscalculate. Bryce stepped neatly out of the way and his finger tightened on the trigger, almost in slow motion. I heard the shot and saw Kaz’s injured hand fly out at an odd angle and bang against the wall in a spray of blood.