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“Where is he?” I shouted over the mechanical noise.

Michio and Blondie carried my cage through the open space, and Elaine scurried up beside Michio, her eyes following the nearest aphid about thirty feet away.

I felt him before we reached the next turn, his presence a dark beacon amid the aphid vibrations, chilling and malignant, thrumming with power.

They carried me out of the generator room, through narrow walkways lined with breaker panels, down more tunnels, and stepped into an open doorway.

Elaine held back as they dropped my cage on the concrete floor of an unfurnished room the size of a large office. The blond man slipped out and closed the door. Michio remained beside my metal prison, and Elaine never stepped in. Maybe she couldn’t stomach whatever was about to happen to me. Or perhaps she went to ready her bed for Michio. Neither of those thoughts helped my burgeoning dread.

A mattress lay on the floor, the only furnishing, unless I counted the metal shackles drilled into the concrete wall above it. Fucking great. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the metal box or the waiting chains.

Seven unarmed men stood in a line, six of them wearing the empty expressions I’d come to expect. The seventh man in the center smiled at me, all fangs and onyx eyes.

The Drone’s swarthy face drooped with melted skin, his flamboyant cape wrapping around his shoulders and concealing his wings. “Eveline. How was your trip?”

I had so many questions my throat convulsed with the urgency to spit them all out. But the Drone was all about respect and authority. I’d play along, because eventually he would fill me in on his big plans. He was vainglorious like that.

I leaned against the chain-linked wall and stretched out my legs. “Accommodations were top-notch.” I patted the side of the cage. “You really out did yourself this time.”

He touched his cheek, fingers slithering over the wax-like flesh. “Only the best for the woman who melted my face.”

“How did you survive?”

He unbuttoned the cape at his neck and let it drop to the floor. Dark, twin peaks rose above his head and stretched like webbed arms behind the line of men. Finger bones framed the top of each wing, bending at a joint, similar to the elbow or shoulder. The tip of the joint hooked up and out, shaped like a lethal-looking claw.

The webbed sections were obscure, leathery, and lined with veins, but toward the tops, they hardened, shell-like and smooth. They were a hybrid between a bat and a beetle, which might’ve been strange on a winged animal. But on a human, wings of any variety were enough to make my breath stick in my throat, which of course was the purpose of his little display. Oh, how he loved to intimidate.

The ghastly things folded back in, and the nearest man grabbed the cape from the floor, spreading the black fabric over the wings and hiding them from view.

The Drone’s head tilted. “There was a passageway beneath the overhang. I flew to it, but as you can see, my face skimmed the surface of the lava.”

That close to the lava, there shouldn’t have been anything left. Apparently, he was able to heal, like Michio, but not completely given the disfigurement. Next time I killed him, I needed to remember to rip off his wings first.

He stepped toward the cage and leaned over it. A slippery toxicity oozed from him, infecting the air, burrowing into my skin, and making a shivery home in my pores.

His eyes took me in from head to toe, his expression unreadable beneath the hideous sag of flesh. “I expected you to return to me in much worse shape, Eveline. You suffered harsh conditions, unable to stand for two weeks, yet here you sit, without any assistance. You’re pale but not sick. Weak but still alert. Blistered but not broken. It’s as if you’ve tapped into a hidden, superhuman energy source.”

I molded my expression into one of disbelief despite the wild beat of my pulse. He was right. I should’ve been half-dead. I mean, I was healing like a normal person, slowly and painfully. Blisters covered my knuckles, my muscles and bones ached, and spasms hammered along my spine from slouching for so long. But beneath the bruises and sores, my body hummed with vitality, pushing my mind past the pain and keeping me awake and focused.

What would he do if he knew I was evolving? Hell, what was he going to do regardless? I assumed everyone here had been bitten, and through that venomous bite, brainwashed. Except Elaine. She was just as nasty and ignorant as ever.

I glanced up at Michio and searched his face, finding his gorgeous eyes cold and flat. My heart broke every time I looked at him, my fingernails curling into my palms. “What did you do to him?”