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Find your center. Ignore the rest. The words from her first mentor, Jack, wove through her head.
She could do this. Carefully, she slipped the pick into the lock and moved it, searching for each tumbler and clicking it into place. Her concentration calmed her pulse and steadied her hand, and when the lock clicked open, she couldn’t help the grin that curved her lips. Damn, she still had it. That was one thing Samil hadn’t been able to take away.
Inside the utility room, monitors lined the far wall, while an electrical panel nestled in the corner . First thing’s first: finding Viktis. Renna scanned the screens, each showing a different area of the facility. The room where they’d gotten caught. Several views of the main open space. Three small labs and several hallways. She didn’t see Samil’s private lab on any of the screens. Hardly surprising. Of course the woman wouldn’t want her horrific actions recorded.
The last monitor showed a large, windowless room and her stomach dropped to the floor. Oh, gods. Viktis.
He was chained to the wall, arms and legs spread-eagled. His shirt was gone, displaying his muscled chest and arms in all their amber glory, and his head hung forward on his chest like it was too heavy to hold up. Larson stood at a table across the room rearranging tools, a shiny silver med-drone hovering nearby. Renna couldn’t make out which instruments he was using, but she didn’t really need to. She could already see the results marking Viktis’s lithe frame.
Bile bit at the back of her throat and she pressed a hand to her lips. Larson was a f**king monster.
A long jagged cut stretched across Viktis’s left pectoral, blood seeping down the hard planes of his stomach. His right eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled from it like tears down his face. Perfectly round pockmarks marred the skin on his arms.
Larson had used the gravitic cauterizer in the med-drone to burn Viktis’s skin almost down to the bone.
She backed away from the monitors so fast she knocked over a stool with a clatter. Vomit burned her nose and mouth as she heaved and gagged on what was left of her dinner. Viktis was dying, and it was all her fault. She should have left him behind. Should have forced him to stay on the ship.
Renna rocked back and forth, arms around her waist. But what could she do? How could she save him? She whimpered low in her throat. She would never be able to forgive herself if he died on her watch.
Pull it together, Renna, she ordered herself. Having a breakdown now was not part of the plan.
She forced herself to straighten her spine and turn back to the monitors. From what she could tell, the torture room was in what used to be an old storage area not too far from here. She could be there in a matter of minutes, as long as no one stopped her. Which meant she needed to cut the power to the facility.
Before she could take more than a step toward the electrical panel, footsteps thundered outside the room.
“She’s in here!” a man’s voice called outside the door.
Her whole body tensed, but there was only one thing on her mind right now. Getting to Viktis. Whatever the cost.
The door opened, and a burly man entered, dark hair curling in a halo around his moon-shaped head.
“We’ve got her!” he called back into the corridor.
“You think so?” Renna asked, crossing her arms.
He held up his robotic right hand and flexed it, the chrome shining in the helolights. “I know so.”
Her head pounded like a motherfucker and everything was still slightly blurry from Samil’s virus, but she smiled slowly. Show no weakness. “Come and get me then.”
Renna gathered her strength, and as he moved toward her, she kicked out, catching him dead in the abdomen. “You might have that fancy arm, but I don’t think Samil has created a metal stomach yet.”
The man doubled over, and Renna kicked out again, using the Bumani techniques Finn had taught her so long ago in this very building.
Another kick and he dropped to the floor clutching his midsection. He writhed and moaned, oblivious as Renna leapt over him and yanked a handful of wires from the control panel.
The entire facility went black. Panicked shouts echoed through the building as Samil’s men searched for the cause.
Renna froze where she was, blinded by the sudden darkness. “Night vision,” she ordered, but her implant didn’t obey. Around her, the screams and cries of Samil’s hybrids filled the blackness, and she closed her eyes. She’d have to do this the hard way.
Fumbling against the wall, she found the door and slipped back into the hallway. Her sense of direction was still all right, and she headed north toward where she’d seen Viktis and Larson. She trailed her fingers against the wall. Her stomach swooped with each painfully slow footfall, as if she expected the ground to disappear from beneath her feet at any moment.
Dammit. She did not have time for this. Viktis did not have time for this.
“Work, damn you,” she ordered, shaking her head like a dog after a bath. But still nothing happened.
Her whole body trembled as she moved forward. Her fingers hit the edge of the wall, and she froze. Now which way did she go?
Precious seconds ticked away as she stood, undecided. The scrape of footsteps sounded nearby, and her heart jumped into her throat. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it now. She turned right, away from the sound of pursuit.
Move it, she ordered herself.
Her fingers trailed against the smooth metal of a door. She fumbled for the handle and pushed it open, listening for Larson or Viktis.
Nothing.
Her own breathing sounded ragged and loud as she crept farther down the corridor. This whole place made her skin crawl. What other horrors would she stumble on here?
The next door was locked, but luckily she could pick it blindfolded. Her fingers trembled as she fit her lockpicks into the slot and she forced herself to steady. The throbbing in her head was getting worse. Maybe the virus was finally taking hold. Maybe Samil was trying to use her network to control Renna.
Stop it. She did not have time to freak out. Viktis needed her.
Steadying her breathing, she made quick work of the lock and pushed the door open, just as the lights in the facility flooded back on.
Renna straightened from her crouch, hand pressed to her mouth to stifle her scream.
It wasn’t Viktis. It was worse.
THIRTY-FOUR
Crimson blood streaked the white, tiled floor, pooling around the drain in the center of the room. The stench of death mingled with acrid chemicals, burning Renna’s eyes and making her chest ache. She stared, wide eyed, at a dozen stasis trays sitting along the far wall. They were filled with body parts—amputated arms, parts of legs, eyes, even hearts.
