FLOOD

The Formula

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, and the lights kept flickering on and off as we crept forward, sending chills over my skin. The faint sound of gunshots echoed in the distance, muffled by the thick cement walls of the compound. It made me hunch my shoulders up to my ears. Where we winning or losing?

We couldn't lose, could we? Not with the king and queen leading us.

"Here." Eli's whisper sounded harsh in the quiet, and I jumped, the back of my neck prickling. I whirled on my heel to hush him, but he was pointing to the left, just ahead of me, where the corridor branched in two. "The holding room."

"Is that what you call it?" I hissed over my shoulder at him, and he flinched, opening his mouth to say something. I didn't listen, I didn't want to think about a time when Eli was like his brother. When he was brainwashed into helping with these experiments, like Cain was. It made me think about how much he'd sounded like his brother. And I hated that.

But at least Eli had refused to do it anymore, at least he ran, rather than stay and participate any longer.

Not like Cain. You could only be forgiven for overlooking the whole "pure evil" thing for so long. And he was still involved, helping his serial murdering grandfather. How many of my people had they killed over the years? How much jotun blood had they splattered the floor with? Did Kalda's blood still decorate the lab floor? Or had they washed it away? It wouldn't matter if they had, this building might as well be filled with it. It radiated death. Like the blood of its victims had soaked into the stone floors over the years, settling in layers in the foundation. An ocean of tears and pain.

I hoped I would run into Cain and his grandfather. Tearing them limb from limb would be incredibly satisfying.

"Just down here, at the end," Eli whispered, and his voice shook slightly.

The cement corridor ended in a heavy oak door about ten feet away. Each step I took got slower. My legs felt heavy, my feet were sticking to the floor. Something wrapped itself around my lungs, squeezing my chest until I couldn't breathe properly. Four more steps and I would be in the room where I'd been trapped with Kalda. Three more steps and I'd be seeing the cages they'd kept us in. Two more steps and I'd be back inside the place where they'd dragged Kalda away.

My hand was on the doorknob now, the metal cold beneath my fingers. I didn't want to do this.

But I had to, for Gunny. It was my fault she was here. And Fiske was here somewhere still, I had to get both of them out.

I shouldered the door open, and thankfully it creaked inward. Apparently there was no need to lock down the actual room, which made sense, considering the people in the room were all in plastic cages.

The lights flicked on automatically as I crept inside, startling me so much that I jumped back, slamming my left shoulder into the door. I didn't even get time to stretch my senses out and test for people nearby, so my heart crammed up into my throat, beating furiously.

If I'd expected an ambush, I didn't get one.

Instead, the room was empty and silent.

Cold dropped down my spine, dread crawling over my skin. It looked the same as I remembered, drab cement walls, and row upon row of square plastic cages stacked on shiny metal shelves. The light reflected off the Plexiglas, making me blink frantically as my eyes adjusted. There were details I took in now that I hadn't seen before, like the low metal table that ran along the wall on the far side of the room. A row of shiny metal cupboards hung above it, and on the counter there were glass containers full of cotton balls and flat wooden tongue depressors. Did they give their test subjects shots over there? Maybe that's where they prepared the sedatives.