Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
He smiles, his lips bloody. “You’re one of your boss’s least favorite whores.” He spits in her face.
She throws him against the back wall in a blur, the spittle missing her as she moves like a ghost, so fast it sends alarm bells blaring in my human mind, warning of a danger so visceral I feel myself freeze.
Catching him by the throat again, she squeezes until his eyes bulge and several cracks reverberate from his twitching, struggling body. With nothing but the faintest effort, her hand closes, severing his head in a burst of blood. Again, she steps away so quickly that not a drop touches her. Then she’s standing in the cell’s doorway, her hair still a silken waterfall, her suit unblemished. There’s not a mark of temper on her—no color in her icy cheeks or dead eyes. There’s nothing there.
Then she turns her gaze on me again, and with a tone as cold as Sheila’s body, she says, “I suppose this one will have to do.”
2
Recovered Journal of Dr. Georgia Clark
February 1, Year 1, Emergence Era
It’s the little things that change the world. Big events on the tiniest of hinges. Nothing more than the right combination of proteins and cells. The details are what promise change. But the smallest minutiae are also what leave us in the dark, stumbling blocks that keep us forever falling into either discovery or failure.
The 72 steps lead to another dark corridor. The lights overhead are closer now, no longer caged away from grasping fingers. They hum away as if they preside over nothing more than an accountant’s office or perhaps my old lab. Instead, they illuminate horror.
The concrete floor is stained almost black with old blood. Barefoot, I feel the chill of every spent drop. Crying and suffering echo around me. How many humans are trapped in this underground vault? No, not a vault; a larder. The smell of rot and putrescence is fuller now, hitting me with each ragged breath.
The guard pulls me along. I don’t see Vince or the military woman, and the white-haired vampire has already disappeared ahead of us. Mind muddled from the knock against the wall, I can’t count steps or memorize the layout. I can only be borne along, my body aching, fatigue in my bones. I know I’m on my way to die. With what’s left of my will, I try to yank my arm free from the guard.
He doesn’t respond, doesn’t loosen his grip, just continues as if I’d done nothing at all. His perfect features don’t change. That’s one of our many mistakes. Humanity’s, I mean. We had no grasp on the eternal, didn’t know that endless life was the catalyst for unimaginable cruelty. The sort of malice that, to the vampires, is commonplace. We weren’t prepared for it. How could mortals understand the depth of depravity created by the promise of forever? Impossible. A butterfly could sooner understand nuclear fission.
We keep going, moving up stairs and through other corridors. By the second set of stairs I can’t catch my breath. When I finally stumble and fall—my ribs blooming with white hot pain as I crash onto the corner of a step—the guard yanks me to my feet and shoves me against the wall.
“Walk.” He snaps his fangs at me, his face only inches from mine. I don’t flinch. I can barely breathe.
Then, after swiping his finger along one of his fangs, he jams the bloodied appendage into my mouth, splitting my lips from the force of it. That’s when I feel the pins and needles creeping along my skin, burrowing underneath and making a home. Compulsion. I’m too weak to fight it. My blood obeys his. He forces his will into my own, taking over my resistance, my weariness. Like someone dousing a rotten fence with a fresh coat of paint, he drowns out my mind. I’m a passenger in my own body, strapped to the automaton he’s made of me. I trudge forward, continuing for more sets of long hallways and screams and blood. More stairs. And finally, an elevator. The freight kind with scraped steel walls and an array of buttons, though none of them bear any marks.
The compulsion drains away, leaving me empty and cold. I sag against the wall as we travel upward so quickly my ears pop and my knees start to give. He cuffs the nape of my neck, holding onto me like I’m an unruly kitten.
“So weak.” He almost spits the words at me, his grip growing painfully tight. “Just like all your kind.”
“Theo would beg to differ.” My hoarse voice still manages to carry in the small space.
His nostrils flare the slightest bit, and he squeezes so hard my neck cracks and streaks of pain race up and down my spine. I sag, his hellish grip the only thing holding me up.