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Gunther speaks with Ralph, leaving me battered on the floor with Seth. My cheek feels swollen, and my head throbs, but nothing is more important than protecting my son.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I soothe, smoothing his hair as he cries against my shoulder.
“How the fuck’d they get here so fast?” Gunther’s frantic voice fills the room. “How the hell did they even know where we were at?”
“Shit if I know,” Ralph grumbles. “They have helicopters, which means they probably have the means to find just about anything.”
Gunther looks over at me, his eyes full of fury. “Or that little bitch told them how to find us.”
“No!” I shake my head from side to side, terrified of what they’ll do to me and Seth if they find out the truth. “I told them nothing. I was scared that if I gave them what they wanted, they’d kill me. Even Irma said as much, and she hates me.”
“We could use her to bargain our way out,” Ralph says.
“Bargain our way out?” Gunther takes out his gun and waves it around. “Like I’m just going to up and leave this place?”
“Better to live and fight another day than to die in a goddamn mine shaft,” Ralph reasons.
Gunther chuckles darkly, his eyes flashing with malice. “They won’t let us live. Not with what I’ve done. Not with the raid. Best to go out on our feet than to give them what they want.” He points his gun at me.
“They don’t want me!” I shout.
“As if I’m supposed to believe they didn’t use your pussy,” Gunther snorts. “The only thing you’re good for.”
“It’s the truth. I was kept in a cell. They weren’t allowed to touch me.”
Gunther furrows his brow as if he can’t understand how a bunch of men could stop themselves from raping me.
And suddenly I think up my Hail Mary pass.
“They don’t want me, but they do want Seth,” I say, and silently hope he doesn’t sense the lie.
If I can get Gunther to surrender Seth to Cole, even if I don’t make it out of this alive, I know he’ll be cared for, and that’s what’s important.
Gunther cocks his head to the side. “What the fuck do you mean he wants Seth?”
“I don’t quite understand it, but they seem to care a lot about children. They asked relentlessly how many we had here, how many Russ had.”
“Irma never mentioned that…”
“Because she didn’t know. They think Cole is their friend, but he’s not. He and his men are smart, and they know how to get what they want.”
“But why would they want children?” Gunther muses.
“They have scientists!” I say, hoping to keep him talking. “Aren’t kids full of stem cells and marrow?”
“That could be it,” Ralph says, nodding his head. “They come in choppers, have all kinds of weapons and training. It makes sense that they would have a lab.”
“But why?” Gunther says, shaking his gun at me.
“We are stuck in a science fiction reality,” Ralph reasons. “Maybe it’s to cure the dead or to make some kind of vaccine against the bites.”
“That’s probably why he was willing to help Russ get Georgia back,” I say, playing into Ralph’s theory. “Aren’t fetuses full of stem cells?”
“If that were true, why wouldn’t they have knocked you up?” Gunther asks suspiciously.
“Who knows? Maybe they didn’t like my labs?”
“Labs?”
