He said nothing. He just stared at the message with an address he didn't recognize and the word “stat”.
Before the car even fully stopped, Zayne opened the door and sprinted past storefronts to a bakery. Inside, everything looked normal, chairs on top of the tables and the lights out, but soldiers lined the back of the shop. Joining them, Zayne saw the broken tiles on the floor and the hole with a ladder leading down.
A hidden basement.
He climbed down the ladder, feeling like he hovered above his body when the scent of metal stung his sinuses. And he knew there was no preparing for what he'd see.
Downturned shelves and wooden chairs lay busted on the ground. Blood painted the walls and ceiling in sprays and smears. But the dark pool that glistened on the floor like a warped mirror ran at least an inch thick.
Bile climbed his throat.
In the center of the room, directly before Zayne, the Phaedra reclined in a tall-backed chair reserved for the elders. His booted feet were planted in the blood of the Followers.
An older man knelt down before the Phaedra, his head bowed to the floor. The room had been bathed in gore, with bodies piled against each wall. A hole in the ceiling let the sunlight in. Ropes dangled from it with a stretcher attached. They'd already removed some of the bodies, and still Zayne counted more than a dozen in the piles.
He stepped on a handful of black hair and held in a grimace as he walked closer to the Phaedra.
The numbness didn't sweep over him this time, but consumed him in an instant. He felt nothing, not his hands, or his tongue, or his heart, though he heard the blood rushing through his ears.
This wasn't real.
They lost the connection to Becka during the meeting, and Zayne destroyed their communication channel. They stopped this.
Puckering his lips, the Phaedra blew out a ring that floated up to the ceiling and dissipated. Sweet smoke mingled with the coppery smell of slaughter.
How?
Soldiers lined the perimeter of the room. The Phaedra found out what Zayne had done and brought him here to kill him. Right? They all looked like they were waiting. But he couldn't die with Kira still in the prison. He needed to take her home.
A high-pitched scream shattered the numbness in his chest, and pain shot through his heart when he turned to see a soldier shove Kira into the room. She slid on the blood, nearly falling onto her face before catching herself.
If the Phaedra knew Zayne betrayed him for Kira, then he wouldn't leave her in a prison cell. He'd make Zayne watch her suffer until her last breath.
With all these soldiers, he'd never get his gun into his hand. Calm descended over the panic, allowing him to think. How did he get Kira out of here?
“Zayne?” She gasped on a broken breath.
A scream raged inside of him, one he couldn't unleash. One he shoved down with the last remaining speck of himself into the abyss.
CHAPTER 46
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
The stench of massacre choked Kira's lungs. She couldn't register what she saw, no matter how hard she looked. Everything blurred.
“Welcome, Ms. Stiles.” The Phaedra held his cigar, smoke clouding his face. “Your mother finally proved herself useful. We held the line a few seconds longer than we first believed and recovered enough of the address to find this sleeper cell of terrorists.”
Her vision of the room narrowed to a pile of clothes and matted hair behind the Phaedra. Where were the people they belonged to? Blinking a few times, her sluggish thoughts bubbled to the surface of her mind, and she realized she was staring into hazel eyes.
They were dying.
All that blood.
