Prying the back door of the DSW open turned out to be much easier than Bailey had expected, considering it wasn't even locked. The heavy metal swung aside with a soft, grating creak, then with a louder one as it shut with a thump behind them. It was pitch black inside.
"They must be here, then," Bailey said softly to Dameon, cautiously walking between a couple of shoe-littered shelves. She was glad she had such good night vision. Things would've been much more complicated otherwise. "The door would only be left open if people were using it."
"Or someone just forgot to lock the door," Dameon suggested, following her with quiet footsteps. "That does happen sometimes, you know."
"At a store that sells ridiculously overpriced shoes?" Bailey asked, glancing back at him as she rounded a corner. "That kind of thing would get somebody fired. No one would forget." She made an abrupt left, nearly leading Dameon to crash directly into the wall of shelves ahead. Luckily, he managed to stop himself before causing a massive, noisy accident, grunting in annoyance. She'd probably done that on purpose.
Bailey continued on for a few seconds, rounding another corner and making her way through the maze of shelves. She stopped dead after a moment, however, frozen in the center of the aisle. Dameon barely managed to keep from bumping into her. She'd probably done that on purpose, too.
"Do you hear that?" she asked in a whisper, her head tilting slowly to the right as she tried to better hear the sound.
"What is it?" he asked, mimicking her movements as if it would help. Surprisingly, it did.
Deep voices, the voices of men. Faint, distant, possibly below them. A human wouldn't have heard them, but a werewolf and a devil...
"Does this place have a basement?" Bailey asked, glancing back at Dameon.
"I didn't think so," he answered, "but it wouldn't surprise me if they built one." She nodded in agreement and continued forward on tiptoe. Silence was even more important now.
It took nearly a full minute to reach the opposite wall, being as careful and quiet as they were. She felt along it, expecting to have to search for the door to the lower level, but it took her only seconds to reach a door knob. She opened it slowly, cautiously, and started carefully into the brightly lit passage below.
The voices were louder here, covering the occasional soft creak of the stairs. Straight ahead, there was only a wall; but peering to the right, Bailey saw what she'd been looking for: cages lined the blindingly white walls, stretching as far as the eye could see. Each small cage held one person too large for it, sitting with legs crossed or knees pulled up to their chests, miserable. In the center of the room, their backs to the stairs, stood two men, hunched over a pair of clipboards and speaking to one another.
"Specimen 203 is showing no signs of change," one of the men said, shifting as he flipped a page on his clipboard. His white lab coat swayed about his knees. "Cold, heat, water, fire...Nothing is having any effect."
The other man nodded. "Specimen 212 is behaving in exactly the same way. You can burn her, submerge her, try to roast her, but all she does is stare at you through the glass." He visibly shuddered, and his companion laughed.
"It's all right, Ben," he said with a smile. "She can't hurt you. The one thing we're sure of is that none of them can break through the glass." He patted his friend heartily on the shoulder, and the man smiled in return.
"I suppose you're right," he said, and then turned his attention to his clipboard. "How about our 300's?" he asked, flipping another page. "Has anything been shown to effect them?"
YOU ARE READING
For the Hopeless
FantasyGuardians: those who have stepped forward to protect the various nonhuman races from their human enemies. Few have emerged, but the war has only just begun. Bailey is one of these brave individuals. Her race is unknown, but her power is great. She...