Page 89 of Grave Danger

He felt like he was flying at one point. Lifted off the ground by a number of hands, all of them shouting to each other but using words he didn’t understand. For all he knew they were speaking in a foreign language, and he cursed himself for not sticking with Spanish once he’d left high school. They placed him on a cart of some kind, drove him over rugged ground and into an area with bright lights that hurt his eyes.

He heard more shouting, followed by the sound of a large door rolling up like the biggest garage door Cody might ever have seen, if he’d just had the energy to open his eyes. Demmy sat near him, both hands clutching Cody’s hands tight and saying things Cody could actually understand. They were words of reassurance and comfort, telling him he was going to be okay, that everything was going to be okay.

Cody drifted into a deeper darkness. He wanted to take the feeling of Demmy’s hands around his into the darkness with him, but it wouldn’t come. Loss swelled inside him, filling every nook and cranny like that spray foam insulation he’d used in the basement of the house. No, their house. The house they’d lived and loved inside for the last few years. His last thought before everything went black was of Demmy and how his blue eyes looked electric when the sunlight hit them just right.

A numbing panic roiled within Demetrius. All around them was chaos, but he ignored the white-coated people running and shouting, the occasional gunshot, and the random moaning and growling from behind metal doors. He sat in the back of the golf cart style transport, his legs falling asleep because he’d curled them beneath himself. Cody lay on his back, eyes half open and unseeing, his hands turning cold in Demetrius’s grasp, so very cold. The lights overhead flicked past, allowing Demetrius to see Cody’s pupils widen, completely opposite from the expected reaction.

“Cody!” Demetrius shouted, shaking his arm. “You stay with me!”

“You’ve got to move,” Dave said, running alongside the cart. “Faster!”

The cart sped up, leaving Dave, Oliver, and Agatha behind as it bore Demetrius and Cody onward through the halls of the laboratory.

GRUNT, it appeared, was fully back in business. And, like before, everything had gone right to hell.

After slowing to turn a corner at a hallway intersection, the cart stopped fast. Demetrius tumbled forward against the back of the driver’s seat, then pushed himself upright. He’d kept hold of one of Cody’s hands, though, and he clutched it tight as he eased his slightly numb legs out from beneath himself and looked around. They’d stopped outside a heavy metal door with a small window and a sign to the side that read: TISSUE REGENERATION.

“Let’s get him inside.”

The driver had come to the back of the cart and reached for Cody. With a shiver of shock, Demetrius recognized him as the bearded man he’d seen at the cemeteries.

“It’s you,” Demetrius said.

“Yep, it’s me. Get his right arm.”

Demetrius put his feet on the floor, wincing at the pins and needles all along his legs as the blood worked its way back into them. “You work here at the lab, not for the cemetery.”

“That’s right. On three, okay? One, two, three.”

They got Cody up between them, but he was big and dead weight, and Demetrius crumpled to the floor. Cody slumped down with him, bringing Sam along as well. Dave and Oliver came around the corner at that moment and immediately dove in to help prop him up.

“You all right?” Oliver asked Demetrius.

“Yeah.” Demetrius got to his feet. “He’s just dead weight.”

“That’s for sure,” Dave said with a grunt as he adjusted Cody’s arm around his neck. He turned his head to look at Sam. “Where to?”

“Inside.”

Sam waved his wrist in front of an electronic pad mounted on the wall and the door slid open. They manhandled Cody through the door, and Sam directed them to put him on an examination table. Demetrius moved in and immediately took Cody’s hand once again. He hated how cold it felt, but was relieved to see him still breathing. Dave and Oliver moved back to stand beside Agatha, and all of them watched Sam grab a syringe from a nearby tray cluttered with them. Some of the syringes were full of a dark purple liquid, and some were empty. Sam turned back and looked at Demetrius.

“Was he only bitten on the forearm?”

“I believe so,” Demetrius said.

Sam stood across the table from Demetrius and stuck the needle directly into the bite on Cody’s forearm. Demetrius flinched, and his stomach did a slow roll, but he forced himself to watch. Behind him, he heard Dave and Oliver both gasp and draw their breath in between their teeth with hisses. Demetrius didn’t like the dark, almost black color the skin around the bite had taken on. And he especially didn’t like the threads of that same color snaking out in either direction along Cody’s skin.

Sam stepped back and dropped the syringe on the tray. He tapped his watch and looked at Demetrius. “This is going to take some time.”

“Yeah, okay. And what, exactly, is it that’s going to take some time?”

“A cure.” He made a face. “What we hope is a cure.”

“Hope.” Demetrius let out a slow breath. “Okay. Well, it’s all we’ve got, right?”

“Pretty much.”

Demetrius looked around the room. It was a lab, long and wide, and contained a number of work benches covered with test tubes and beakers, as well as laptop computers. In the far corner was a space about ten feet square enclosed by walls made from a clear thick plastic. It looked to Demetrius like some kind of containment cell. With a start, he realized a man sat at a desk inside the plastic cube, busily typing on a laptop computer.