Page 141 of Juniper Unraveling

“He didn’t know.” She sobs, wiping the tears. “And they took him. They took all of them.”

“You tried to strike a deal with Damian?”

“Didn’t you? Isn’t that what you were trying to do?”

“Yes, but unlike you, I was thinking of all of us.”

Her eyes soften, and she shakes her head. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a little girl out here. You don’t know the worry I live with every damn day, that someone, or something, is going to come out of the shadows and steal her away. I went through it once, Wren. I can’t go through it again. So I met up. To trade Damian and the others for asylum.”

“You traded the other women?”

She nods, tucking her hands into her pocket. “Said they’d take them in. Find them husbands.”

“Who?”

“Doctor Ericsson.”

He has no intentions of finding them husbands. He’s looking to create third generation offspring to study and perform his disgusting experiments on. Tongue gliding across my teeth, I shake my head. “One rule, you told me. Everyone has a choice.”

“I’m sorry, Wren. Please. I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

I back away toward the vehicle, and as she lurches forward, I rack the chamber of the gun.

“Please.” She clasps her hands as if in prayer. “Let me go with you. I can help.”

“You made your choice, Lea. And I’m making mine. I’m going alone.”

“You’ll die. It’s suicide, Wren.”

With one foot set inside the truck, I pause to look back at her standing in the middle of the road. “So was making any kind of deal with Ericsson.”

* * *

The sun races toward dusk, when I finally catch sight of the smokestacks in the distance. I pull the truck off to the side of the road, parking behind a small hill, and quickly shed my T-shirt and jeans, exchanging them for the black uniform. It sags enough in the front to hide my breasts, as well as the satchel strapped across my body inside, and I tuck the cuffs into the sleeve so they’re not hanging over my hands. The lightweight suit is surprisingly cool, as hot as it is in the truck, with the desert heat kicking up blurry waves across the pavement. I fit the mask over my face and nab a sip from the canteen in my bag, before inserting the respirator connected to the accordion tube into my mouth.

Once dressed, I pull the car out onto the highway and breathe to calm my rattled nerves. With every mile closer to Calico, my demons rise up from the shadowed side of my mind, and I have to screw my eyes shut, blinking those images away. I see two Ragers on the side of the road running toward the vehicle. A spray of red spatters across the windshield, as a third one hits the wide grill of the truck, but not even that can tear me away from the memories of this place commandeering my thoughts.

In minutes, I’m staring at the front of the building, the line-up of vehicles where I hid from Ivan and Doctor Ericsson at fifteen years old. My stomach twists with the recollection of wondering whether, or not, I’d make it out of the place alive, and here I am, headed straight for the gates of hell.

A guard stands alongside the vehicle and signals the other to open the gate. I pull in, parking the truck amongst the others, every hair on my skin standing on end. I force myself to take slow, easy breaths, to keep from hyperventilating, and slide from the seat, my nerves bouncing like livewires.

They’re going to know. They’re going to find out.

I sneak past the guard, who doesn’t say a word to me. Doesn’t even acknowledge me, as he sits thumbing through an outdated magazine with a half-naked woman on the cover.

I’m certain everyone I pass can see the trembling. Surely, they notice the oversized suit. The mask still fastened to my face. The boots, too big for my feet, that clunk as I walk.

And yet, they don’t. Aside from an occasional nod when they pass, not a single one claps their eyes on me for more than a second, or two.

I almost feel like Six walking among the Ragers.

Six. I need to hurry. As much as I want to search for him, I know it won’t do me any good unless I have something with which to barter. Something valuable. Something Szolen would kill thousands of innocents to possess.

Familiarity guides my feet through the doors of B-block, and up the flights of stairs toward Papa’s lab. It’s strange calling him that here, where I knew him as Doctor F. The place he pretended to be a monster in order to find a cure.

The familiar stabs of anxiety gnaw at my stomach, as I push through the double doors to the experimental lab. It’s here where the stares linger, as the physicians and surgical staff pass, but still, no one questions me. Through the window, I peek into Doctor Falkenrath’s lab, the only one whose lights are off, empty of victims.

As much as I should hate this place, and I do, there’s a sadness that burns the rims of my eyes at the memory of being here. Surviving. And of course, my brother, Abel.