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“I hope they do come for you,” Parker said, shifting to face forward in his seat again. “I hope all of them come. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
The van made a hard right before coming to a sudden stop. Without a word, the driver and Parker opened their doors and got out. I strained and squinted to look through the tinted window, but all I saw was more forest. I couldn’t tell where we were, but it still felt like the middle of nowhere. Part of me washopeful because I knew we hadn’t driven that far. We were still pretty close to where I’d been taken, close enough that the others might be able to track the van. Tire tracks cutting through the forest had to be obvious, right?
Then again, if Parker was counting on them finding me, maybe that was the point.
The van’s back doors opened, and the soldiers hopped out, dragging me with them. It wasn’t until I got both feet planted firmly on the ground that I realized where we were.
On one side, it was all trees and forest as far as the eye could see. I could spot where we’d drove through, but everything else was wild Michigan woods.
The other side of the van was a different story. The remains of a ruined building stood behind several layers of caution tape and military-style barriers. Signs posted everywhere warned people to keep out, or that the area was hazardous and unstable. Some even said there were potential gas leaks or nuclear waste. Whatever walls had once been there had been cleared away, along with a fair amount of debris. It was mostly just a big concrete slab with some metal supports jutting up out of it until about fifty feet out. There, stairs descended into a yawning black pit.
The soldiers pushed me toward the barricade and made me climb over two of them before dragging me toward the pit.
I swallowed, peering down into the dark. “What’s down there?”
“The future,” Parker said proudly, and started down the stairs.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but a mostly intact military base wasn’t it. The first few floors were largely demolished and empty, except for some trash and graffiti. Peering out into the building itself, I spotted some overturned chairs, piles of bricks, and some random office supplies lying in piles.
When we reached the landing on the fifth level, we encountered a locked door. Parker removed a key from around his neck and opened it. Fluorescent lights flickered to life beyond, illuminating a hallway with doors on either side. It didn’t look like part of a ruined building at all. Instead, it looked like the hallway of a typical office building. Thin carpet muffled our footsteps as we walked down the hall to the door at the other end, which required a different key. The door opened, revealing a small elevator beyond. Parker, me, and the four soldiers accompanying us crammed into the elevator, where Parker used yet another key to send it shuddering downward with an ominous groan.
I glanced at the ceiling as elevator music versions of Christmas carols came on over the speakers, except the music was all distorted. “Well, no wonder you’re fucked up. That’s enough to drive anyone crazy.”
Parker sighed and looked at his watch. “The bloody music has been stuck ever since Kringle blew the place to hell,” he mumbled. “It’s not my fault it plays damn Christmas music.”
“Is this where you kept them?” I asked as we sank further into the base. “Ollie, Bud, Ghost…You kept them prisoner here, didn’t you?”
“They were never prisoners,” Parker huffed, folding his hands in front of him. “The word prisoner implies they were here for punishment. That was never the case. My subjects were…” He took a deep breath in through his nose and closed his eyes. “They were my children, in a way.”
“Is that why you tortured them?”
His eyes snapped open, and he gave me a sharp look. “I did nothing of the sort. That was one of my predecessors.”
“But you want to continue his work,” I pointed out.
“For science.”
“For evil.”
He folded his arms and turned to face me. “Does it please you to think of me as some mustache twirling villain who sits in the dark making dastardly plans? Because I assure you I’m not. Such a person doesn’t exist. You might condemn my work, but you’d embrace it if you didn’t know how it came to be. The advancements I’ve made here would better your life and the lives of others. No one ever questions where new technologies come from, or how discoveries are made. There’s always a price. Advancement for some comes at the expense of others. That’s how it has always been and how it will continue to be until the end of time.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, glaring at him. “Besides, the shit you were developing down here? It was never to make anyone’s life better. You were making advanced weapons, working to create better soldiers, better armor, better—”
“Betterlives,” he said as the elevator slowed. Parker stepped up to me. He was a good foot shorter than me, but that didn’t stop him from staring me down like I was nothing. “Sometimes, the price for your quiet, insignificant life here means better equipment for soldiers overseas. It means fighting wars smarter, faster, being more deadly than the other side because the alternative, Mr. Rose, is that we lose those wars. Is that what you want?”
I leaned down until we were nearly nose to nose. “I want the people in charge to do better. I want more love, less war, more life and less killing, more hope and less hunger in the world. And nothing you do here is ever going to build that. All you’ll do—all you’ve ever done—is hurt people. There’s no justification for what you did to Ghost, or to any of them, and there never will be. So get the fuck off your high horse and just admit it. This isn’t about helping anyone. This is about youwinning.”
He narrowed his eyes, but took a step back as the elevator doors opened. Beyond was a pristine white tiled roomwith stainless steel equipment set up everywhere. My throat tightened at the sight of a large exam table in the center of the room.
“Gentlemen, help our guest get more comfortable,” Parker ordered.
The guards shoved me into the room. I dug my feet in, but it didn’t do any good. When I refused to move toward the chair, they carried me, kicking and fighting every step of the way.
Parker smiled and went straight to the sink to wash up.
“They went this way,”Ziggy said, leaning over a dark spot in the dirt.
I growled from my place in the trees and climbed higher, hoping to get a glimpse of whatever evidence he’d found, but there was nothing that I could see. Just dirt and trees everywhere.
