Page 105
One second. Two. An eternity of agony where the only sound is the roar of blood in my own ears.
Then, the light shuts off, and I catch the hum of the drone as it turns on its axis, drifting away toward the ventilation shafts.
I kick off the bottom of the basin with explosive force, and we break the surface together, a violent, splashing breach that shatters the silence. The air hits my lungs and I drag in a ragged, greedy gulp of oxygen, coughing as the water clears from my throat. Eden’s hacking beside me, her chest heaving, her hair plastered to her face.
“Fuck,” I wheeze, the adrenaline crashing into me with the force of a landslide.
I grab her and haul her wet, shivering body against mine, needing to feel the solidity of her ribcage expanding and contracting against my own.
“You're okay,” I rasp. “I've got you.”
She looks up at me, eyes wild and wide, pupils blown with fear and the lingering haze of the orgasm. And then she surges forward, crashing her mouth against mine—hard. I groan into her mouth, my hands tangling in her hair, kissing her back with a bruising, possessive force that says we’re alive, we’re here, you’re mine.
“We can't stay here,” I say, tearing my mouth from hers. It takes a supreme effort of will. I want nothing more than to drag her back under the surface and finish what I started, drone scans be damned. But the reality of where we are is crashing back in.
I boost her up onto the rim of the basin and she scrambles out, shivering as the air hits her skin, instantly raising goosebumps on the pale flesh I was just worshipping. I haul myself up after her, water sluicing off my frame in sheets, pooling on the concrete.
A low whine echoes from the corner, and I look over. Chain-Chewer is standing now, his massive, stone-heavy head cocked to the side. The iron pipe lies forgotten at his feet. He’s staring at us with those hollow, glowing sockets, vibrating with a low rumble that I feel in the soles of my feet.
He didn't make a sound. Not one crunch.
“You did good, you ugly bastard,” I murmur, walking over to him while dripping wet. I slam my hand against his rocky flank in a rough, affectionate pat. “Quiet as the grave.”
He leans into my touch, letting out a sound like a grinder stripping gears.
“Malachi,” Eden’s voice is soft behind me. She’s struggling with the tunic, her damp skin making the scratchy fabric cling and bunch awkwardly.
“Here,” I say, crossing the space between us in a few strides, batting her hands away so I can take over and yank the tunic down over her hips.
“We pushed our luck,” I mutter, kneeling to help her step into her pants. My thumb brushes the inside of her knee, gaze lingering for a second on the skin that’s still flushed from my mouth. “That drone will circle back. We need to be gone before it does.”
Once I’m dressed, I reach out to take her hand, lacing our fingers together with a grip that borders on bruising, and pull her away from the steam and heat, right toward that fucking Corpse-Boy.
Chapter 38
Eden
“Number four billion, six hundred and two... please proceed to window nine. Number four billion, six hundred and two.”
The mechanical voice drones over a crackling intercom system that sounds like it’s broadcasting from inside a tin can.
I was ready for a fortress—braced for gigantic gates guarded by three-headed dogs, or a laser grid that would slice us into ribbons, or something that actually felt like the gates of Hell. Instead, Malachi shoved open a rusted service door, and we stepped into a low-ceiling waiting room that smells of burnt coffee, despair, and industrial-grade floor wax.
It’s the DMV.
And it is endless. The bodies—God, the bodies. There are thousands of them.
It’s like someone took the concept of Purgatory and decided to run it with the efficiency of a government agency in the mid-nineties.
There are rows of orange plastic chairs bolted to the floor, stretching out until they vanish into the smoggy distance. And sitting in them is the wash-up of the universe.
To my left, a man in a tailored suit sits rigidly. From the neck down, he looks like a CEO. From the neck up, he’s a butchered mess. His jaw hangs unhinged by a single, wet tendon, dark blood pouring down his silk tie in a thick sludge. He keeps trying to push the heavy, ruined meat of his face back onto his skull with trembling fingers, desperately trying to keep up appearances, but the flesh just keeps sloughing off the bone.
Two rows down, a woman stares blankly at the ticketing screen. Her lap is pooled with her own blood. She’s casually, methodically using a rusted box cutter to flay the skin from her left forearm. I watch, my stomach heaving, as she peels back a thick, dripping ribbon of flesh, exposing the gleaming white bone beneath. She drops the meat onto the linoleum, waits for the arm to knit itself back together with a crunch of cartilage, and then starts carving all over again.
It smells like an abattoir. It’s a suffocating reek of hot copper, spilled bowels, and rotten meat hiding under expensive cologne and the sweat of people who spent their lives breaking others and are now condemned to tear themselves apart while they wait for their number to be called.
“Keep moving,” Malachi murmurs, his hand a heavy, grounding weight on the small of my back, steering me through the narrow aisle before I can be sick. “Don't look at them, Eden. You aren't one of them. These aren't the mistakes. These are the predators. The ones who liked it.”
