Page 146 of Juniper Unraveling

“The anti-prion antibody. Doctor Falkenrath created a vaccine.”

“And killed himself.” Doctor Ericsson’s unenthusiastic tone withers my hopes of appealing to him. “I don’t believe you. There is no cure. As he said himself, before he died, it’s an ever-changing protein.”

“Evacuate the building immediately. Code Triage. Evacuate the building immediately.”

“It’s true. He left me his journal. Please, the vaccine is yours. Just let us go. You can salvage something. Rebuild.” My words are a lie. My only objective is getting out of here, and I would sacrifice everything to do it—even Papa’s lifelong work. “We can all walk out of here.”

“The bag, Father. Search her bag,” Albert says, reaching for the second strap across my body. “You’re not walking out of here. None of you savages will live to see the day this world rebuilds. And as for your little friends camping out in the mine? Legion has been dispatched. They’ll be dead within the hour.”

Doctor Ericsson rifles through my satchel and lifts the syringe into the air, his eyes skating to mine. “Too warm for a vaccine. The proteins have probably denatured. Stupid girl. You’ve undoubtedly destroyed it.”

Behind him, the door flies open.

My lungs freeze at the sight of two deformed-looking males entering the surgical suite, wearing the blue prisoner uniforms. Down on all fours, they scramble forward like animals and jump to their feet to charge.

Alphas.

Wrapping a bloody, mangled arm around Doctor Ericsson’s throat, one of them drags him away. His legs kick and flail as they head toward the exit, and the second they breach the door, a red spray scatters over Doctor Ericsson’s lab coat. All I can see are his feet lying across the door’s threshold, shaking until they go still.

The second alpha rounds the gurney toward Albert, who releases his hold on me, and I wriggle free enough of the straps to kick back into a sitting position, watching the monster take him to the floor.

With skin stretched down over its eye, and silver clamps at each corner of its mouth, torn down to the exposed fascia beneath, it looks hideously inhuman. A true monster.

Fear paralyzes me, skates down my spine, as I watch the creature wrestle with Albert. Like watching a nightmare come to life.

Albert’s scream bounces off the walls around me, loud and gurgling, breaking me of my trance.

I fly from the gurney, zipping up Ivan’s uniform to cover myself, and scramble toward Rhys. A second scream is the warning before Albert’s body is thrown into the air, crashing into an upright machine beside me.

In the next moment, pain cracks against the side of my head and everything goes black.

Chapter 42

A horn breaches the void, constant, loud. “Lockdown will commence in T-minus fifteen minutes. Prepare for decontamination protocol. Lockdown will commence in T-minus fifteen minutes.”

My eyes flutter open, to the voice that calls to me, and the room blurs, like looking through a lens. Two bodies struggle on the floor across from me, rollicking through my slowly-expanding field of view, and the memory of what’s going on filters in.

“Rhys!” I call out, and one of the figures twists around toward my voice.

Not Rhys.

It crawls across the floor, slithering toward me like a snake, leaving Albert lying in a pool of blood.

I kick back away from the alpha coming at me, until the wall crashes into my back.

The roar from above me rises over the horns outside, and the alpha stops in his tracks. Black, lifeless eyes skate from mine to the stretcher, where Rhys lays strapped. Helpless.

I swipe a scalpel from the tray beside the bed and push to my feet, holding it out with trembling hands. The alpha remains crouched, poised to pounce.

With slow steps, I round the bed, careful not the incite the alpha with any abrupt movement. I loosen the metal contraption from Rhys’s skull, and unfasten the restraints to free his arms, keeping my weapon where the male can see it.

He watches me, his eyes following my hands, but doesn’t approach.

The alpha bares his teeth. His black eyes rolling over to white, just like a shark’s before attacking.

“Brenin?” Rhys’s voice breaks me of my intense watching, and he pushes to a sitting position, his legs still strapped.

The alpha’s deformed face tips to the side, the thin faint line of his eyebrows pinching together, as the black returns to his eyes.