Chapter 111 The Ghost In The Machine

Chapter 111 The Ghost In The Machine
The heavy metal door clanks open, but I don't move a single muscle.

I just sit there on the edge of the narrow cot staring at the blank white wall, letting my eyes glaze over so completely that my vision actually goes blurry.

Dr Aris walks into the room pushing a metal cart, but he isn't moving with that arrogant clinical precision anymore because his hands are shaking so badly the glass vials on his tray are rattling together.

I don't turn my head to look at him; I just track him in my peripheral vision, and my stomach clenches when I see his throat.

It's covered in massive dark purple bruises shaped exactly like Kane's fingers.

Kane hurt him; Kane lost his temper and nearly killed the man who just wiped my brain, and I don't know why, but it makes the air in the room feel incredibly dangerous.

"Lie down," Dr Aris whispers, and his voice sounds like crushed gravel.

I obey instantly without hesitating or questioning him because an empty doll doesn't ask questions; she just does what she's told.

I swing my legs onto the thin mattress and lie flat on my back, staring straight up at the harsh fluorescent lights that hum like a swarm of angry bees in my ears.

My hybrid senses are sharp, so sharp it actually hurts, but I force my breathing to stay slow and shallow while he grabs my arm.

He secures the thick leather straps over my wrists and my ankles again, tightening the buckles until the leather bites into my skin, so I am completely pinned to the bed.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, wrapping a rubber tourniquet around my bicep. "I'm so sorry, if i don't do this he'll kill me."

I stay perfectly still. I don't flinch when he taps my vein or when the cold needle pierces my skin because I can't let him know I'm awake in here.

He hooks up a heavy IV bag filled with a thick yellow fluid and adjusts the drip, but his hands are trembling so much he keeps messing up the dial.

"Seventy-two hours," Dr Aris whispers to himself, his breath smelling sour with sheer terror. "Extracting an unborn hybrid pup for a blood ritual- he's absolutely insane; he's going to burn this whole facility to the ground."

The world stops.

My heart misses a beat and then slams against my ribs so hard I swear he can hear it; my lungs freeze, and everything goes completely ice-cold.

An unborn hybrid pup.

A baby.

I'm pregnant.

The realisation hits me like a physical blow, like a car crashing straight into my chest and knocking all the air out of my body.

Abel's baby.

I'm carrying Abel's child, and Kane knows. Kane found out from the bloodwork, and that's why he was so furious; that's why he strangled the doctor.

And he's not going to kill me; he's going to use my baby for a blood ritual in three days.

A scream builds in the back of my throat; it's so loud and so feral and so entirely desperate that it burns like acid, but I bite down on the inside of my cheek until I taste hot copper blood.

I can't scream, I can't react, I can't do anything because if Dr Aris sees my eyes focus, he'll alert Margaret and they'll put me in a medically induced coma.

I force my face to stay blank, letting the tears that prick my eyes fall silently down my temples like it's just a reflexive physical reaction to the needle.

"Just sleep," Dr Aris says, wiping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. "The nutrients will keep the host body strong until the eclipse; just try not to wake up."

He leaves the room and the heavy steel door locks behind him with a final echoing thud.

The second I am alone, the tether in my chest flares to life, vibrating with Abel's distant frantic energy, but I throw up the mental wall instantly.

I picture the lake, dark and deep and perfectly still, and I shove all my terror and my rage down to the very bottom so Abel can't feel it.

I have to protect him, because if he feels my panic right now, he'll storm this place blindly and Kane will slaughter him.

I lie there strapped to the bed for hours while the yellow fluid drips into my vein.

It makes me feel sick and heavy, but I focus on the magic humming under my skin, calling it up very slowly so it doesn't trigger the dampening alarms in the walls.

I am not a victim anymore.

I am a mother.

The thought changes everything; it shifts the fear into something so sharp and fierce and primal that it feels like razor blades in my blood.

Kane thinks I'm a battery for his ritual, but he forgot that a battery can electrocute you if you touch the wrong wire.

Around midnight, the harsh overhead lights finally click off, replaced by a dim red emergency bulb in the corner of the ceiling.

Sleep cycle.

I wait another thirty minutes listening to the dead silence of the hallway outside my door until I am sure no one is coming.

Then I go to work.

I focus my magic into my right hand, pushing the violet energy down to my fingertips until they tingle with heat, and I press them against the thick leather strap binding my wrist.

I don't burn it completely because the smell of smoke would alert the guards; I just heat the metal buckle from the inside until the locking pin warps and bends under the pressure.

Click.

The strap loosens, and I slide my right hand free, my muscles aching from being pinned for so long.

I quickly unbuckle my other arm and my legs, moving silently in the red dark, and I carefully pull the IV needle out of my vein, pressing my thumb over the puncture mark to stop the bleeding.

I stand up on the cold linoleum floor, and my bare feet barely make a sound.

I walk over to the heavy steel door and press my ear against the metal.

My wolf hearing kicks in, amplifying the sounds of the facility until the silence becomes a map of noises.

I hear the low hum of the ventilation system, the distant rhythmic dripping of a leaky pipe, and the heavy, steady footsteps of a guard walking a patrol route at the far end of the corridor.

He's pacing, forty steps down, a ten-second pause, forty steps back.

I close my eyes and reach out with my magic, sending a tiny invisible thread of energy through the crack in the doorframe to feel the electronic lock.

It's a simple magnetic seal, heavily encrypted but physically weak.

I wait for the guard's footsteps to fade to the far end of the hall, and then I pulse my magic directly into the magnetic coil, shorting it out with a tiny concentrated spark.

The lock disengages with a soft snick.

I push the door open just a fraction and slip out into the hallway like a shadow.

Sub-Level B is a nightmare of sterile white tiles and humming fluorescent tubes, but the night-shift lighting is dimmed to a pale grey.

I stick to the walls, keeping my centre of gravity low and my breathing perfectly silent, just like Abel taught me in the gym.

I need to find my mother.

If I can find where they're keeping her, I can send the exact coordinates to Abel on the burner phone, and we can coordinate the strike.

I close my eyes and flare my nostrils, filtering through the overwhelming smells of bleach and latex and stale coffee, searching for something familiar.

There it is.

Underneath the chemical smells, there's a faint trace of ozone and lavender, the signature scent of my mother's magic, masked but not completely hidden.

I follow it down the maze of corridors, slipping past a nurse's station where a bored orderly is scrolling on his phone, bending the light around myself with a simple witch's glamour so I just look like a trick of the shadows.

The scent gets stronger as I descend a narrow concrete stairwell that isn't marked on any of the evacuation maps on the walls.

Sub-Level C.

The air down here is freezing, so cold my breath plumes in front of me, and my bare toes go numb on the concrete.

I peek around the corner, and my heart sinks.

There's a massive reinforced blast door at the end of the hall, guarded by two heavily armed Hellboud enforcers holding assault rifles.

Above the door, a red digital sign reads: HIGH SECURITY STASIS - RESTRICTED ACCESS.

My mother is in there; I can feel the pull of her magic echoing against my own, but the door is sealed with heavy blood-wards that glow faintly in the dark.

I can't get through that door without setting off every alarm in the building and bringing Kane straight down here.

I press my back against the concrete wall and swallow hard, memorising the layout, the guard positions, and the exact location of the security cameras.

Three days.

I have three days to figure out how to disable those wards from the inside before the eclipse, or Kane is going to kill my baby and use the power to slaughter my mate.

I turn around and slip back up the stairs, moving like a ghost through the silent facility, making it back to Room 4 just before the guard's patrol route circles back.

I lock the door, reinsert the IV needle into my bruised vein, and strap myself back into the leather restraints, forcing my body to go completely limp just as the heavy footsteps pass my door.

I stare up at the red emergency light, and I don't feel scared anymore.

I feel like a weapon that's finally been loaded.