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The guard, was my second thought.
By the time I’d gasped and said, “What is—” which was a stupid, useless warning, the doctor had spun to look, and the two guards Jacob employed had yelled, “Don’t move! Hands up!”
There was a contradiction in those words, but I raised my hands. My heart thudded in preparation for flight, but here I was frozen with fear. My lips turned cold.
Our own guard had pulled his gun and trained it on Cassius.
“Move into the middle,” Jacob’s ugliest guard indicated with his weapon. Guard One, I designated him. Guard Two was the other.
Betrayer Guard was the one employed by Dr. Romanus. If not for the gun he aimed at the back of Cassius’s head, from barely a foot away, I thought Cassius might have tried something by now—he looked quietly furious. Me, my legs had decided to quake. If I’d had a gun to shoot, I’d probably hit a pigeon on the outside roof before anyone in here.
All of them held their pistols to eye level and were unwavering. They seemed keen on aiming at Cassius or the doctor. I was the lesser threat.
“Good evening, Jacob,” the doctor said. “Let me guess, you want to be cured of cancer?”
“I do.” Pushing the table, its wheels squeaking, he brought it to where it had originally been placed. The wheels left bloody tracks. Then he sat on the nearest of the red sofas. Those still formed a half-circle, as if ready for an audience.
“As you can see, I’ve tried by myself.” He gestured vaguely at the dead woman. “It didn’t work, though I suspect it was more a matter ofshedidn’t suit the ritual, than the ritual being wrong?” His gaze drifted to me for a moment, before returning to the doctor.
A greater chill settled over me until my heart seemed likely to freeze in the utter cold.
What was this?
Jacob’s pallor made me wonder if he’d declined hospitalization due to some desperate hope that the doctor knew a secret cure. A gory secret cure.
The dagger in the woman was impossible to ignore.What had I missed, my brain was asking me. There was a ritual, and it was a sacrificial one. Jacob had always seemed fixated on this idea.
“Why did you have to kill her?” The doctor was staring sadly at the woman.
“Because you would not help me. It was a simple ask.” He coughed into his hand. “So, you will help me do this properly. We will all get out of here alive…or almost all, and then we can discuss the removal of the CNC security detail that’s out there, and how to use this immortality to the best advantage. Yes?”
“How did you get past them?” the doctor asked, hands still high.
“We arrived before they did. Simple.”
I’d been slowly lowering my hands, and no one cared as far as I could tell. I pretended to be fascinated by the dead woman, by the blood on her, and that dagger. I was fascinated, as well as severely nauseous. So. Much. Blood. My legs were still shaking. The dagger was obscene.
Her chest had a gaping hole where I thought they’d removed her heart.
This all fitted the diagram in the first book the doctor gave me.
Theroomfitted the diagram.
The black-and-white tiles were not random; they matched what that original drawing had showed me, weeks ago.
Fuck.I swallowed down bile.
This was what the doctor had failed to tell us and, of course, why he didn’t do that was now screamingly obvious.
This woman must have screamed, despite the gag wrapped about her mouth.
“Perhaps I can help.” The doctor’s words seemed to arrive from a distance. “Have you any implants, Jacob? Anything left inside you?”
“No. Is that key. Is this what I missed?”
Unsullied. Jacob was unsullied.
“Will my people survive? You’ll let them live?”
