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I nod in agreement. I, too, had been surprised to see her looking so healthy.

"She's pregnant," I comment. "Do you think that man is the father?"

It hadn't been hard to guess that there was something between the giant and Katya, not with the way he was ready to defend her with his life. But the entire premise of captivity seems antithetic with a budding romance.

"I'm not sure," Vlad replies. "I don't know for sure what the purpose of that area was, especially since the other prisoners were all under twelve. But I do have an inkling," he adds grimly.

"You think he was breeding them," I say what he'd already theorized months before. Because while Katya didn't have Vlad's condition, she might have been a carrier for it.

"Yes. And it's much more plausible if Nero's brother was used as a sperm donor, since hehasthe condition."

"But that would mean…" I trail off, the thought horrifying.

"Yes. That would mean this isn't her first pregnancy."

It's been almost ten years. I don't even want to imagine what she's been through and how many children she's lost because of that monster. Having gone through something similar myself, I know how much of a hole the loss of a child produces in one's soul. But there's a world of difference in comparing oursituations, and my heart weeps for what she must have been through.

Going over potential theories, it's getting increasingly clear why Miles would resort to carriers of the gene for his human incubators instead of people who actually had the mutation.

"Because they are so rare, Miles wouldn't waste their potential like that. Not when he already had a shortage of people to include in his experiments to begin with," Vlad explains.

Miles would keep the girls with the mutation for his experiments and breed the ones with the carrier gene. It would also explain the differences in how the former were treated versus the latter. Because for all the trauma Katya nonetheless had endured, the conditions in which she was living could be considered luxurious compared with the others.

This should be a crime against humanity.

I can't help but shudder the more I think of the horrors these walls have seen, and all the suffering they've absorbed from all the innocent children who've lived and died here.

It doesn't take us long to reach Bianca and Adrian, both of them waiting outside a door.

"You didn't go inside?" Vlad asks.

She shakes her head.

"We didn't know what to expect since it's a huge open area," she grimaces. "I threw in a mini mobile camera to get some footage, though."

She removes a small tablet from her bag, showing us the video feed from inside.

"There are cameras everywhere," I point out with my finger, surprised to see it's not just CCTV. No, these are big, professional cameras fully equipped with ring lights and speakers.

There are stairs on each side of the room, leading down to the main field. All around, I see a seating area for spectators, and I realize that this is exactly like a stadium.

"He's broadcasting the events," Vlad comments. "Smart." He smirks in spite of himself. "Since these are life and death trials, never mind the fact that it's mostly children competing against each other, a lot of people on the dark web would pay good money to see it."

"How are we going to go inside, though? Bianca is right that it's too open. They could hit us from all sides," Marcello asks, pursing his lips.

"Leave that to me."

Vlad doesn't even wait for us to reply as he pushes the door open, almost flying down the stairs and striding inside the stadium until he's in the middle of the field.

"Long time no see, Miles," he shouts.

I don't even think as I follow after him, my brother and the rest are hot on my trail.

And just as we reach Vlad's side, the entire stadium comes to life. The big lights we'd seen earlier flash, light infusing every corner of the stadium.

"Welcome, welcome," a chuckle resounds from the speakers.

Vlad turns his face toward a big booth on the right, a twisted smile playing at his lips.