Page 15 of Sergi (Of Blood & Dreams #7)

Chapter Fourteen

What had I been thinking?

I hadn’t left my bed since returning to my room the previous night, and now I leaned against the wall, knees pulled to my chest, and stared at the door. I’d barely slept the last two nights. All I could think about were the two rag-wrapped packages tucked under the far corner of the slim mattress. The only thing saving me was that, like on level three, each prisoner was responsible for keeping their cells clean except for the waste bucket and receiving fresh water.

The day before, I’d been assigned, along with S-272, the extensive cleaning of the second lab. It had been similar to the previous day. All cabinets, drawers, and the refrigeration unit had been cleared out, and once again, I’d taken more vials of blood that were to be tossed.

S-272 had seen me tuck the package into my lab coat, but he’d quickly turned away. I questioned whether I should have taken it out of the lab, but I’d begun to trust S-272, who wouldn’t share his name, though he’d begun using mine when we were alone.

I couldn’t put a defining point on why I trusted him, but as I considered it in the silence of my cell, I believed it came down to his eyes. Eyes that still held a fire deep within. Eyes that, when I’d first met him, seemed lost but now flickered with hope.

The day before, when I was on the third level, and before taking the second package of vials, something had changed with the vampire prisoner. The torture had stopped, but the guard expected his cell cleaned. The mug had been empty, and after refilling it, I noticed the cooler with blood vials was still under the table.

The guard hadn’t bothered to stay, and after I cleaned the floor, I dusted off the table where the sharp instruments still lay. I was tempted to take one of the knives, but it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

The waste bin had only one item in it—a syringe. The label identified it as MP-32 with a date of a month ago. They must have dosed the vampire with something. Perhaps some new drug that could induce him to talk or some other pharmaceutical form of torture. My gut twisted at another thought. Not a form of torture but an experiment. Though there wasn’t much difference. Would I come down here one day and find nothing more than pieces of flesh and bone?

The vampire had been quiet, as he always was. His head hung down, and a muscle occasionally twitched. I ran a warm towel over him, still fascinated by his tattoos and his muscles. He was a warrior or had been long ago. It was impossible to tell how old a vampire was, but the same could be said of most shifters, though most of us didn’t live nearly as long.

I was wiping his body dry when he lifted his head.

I fell back a step. His gaze glowed red with the beast. Something I’d seen often enough as a captive, but then his gaze quickly returned to the warm brown I’d expected to see.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was rougher than before.

I stared into his eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, vampire.”

He watched me for a long moment, and I could have sworn I caught a slight grin. It might have been a grimace of pain, but the fine lines at the corner of his eyes crinkled. “You should be.”

Then I laughed. It was short, and I couldn’t believe it had come from me. I placed a finger on his chin. “I’m not the one mounted on the wall.”

His gaze turned hard. Not mean but serious. “We’re both trapped here.” His head dropped. He’d expended too much energy.

I tossed the rags in a bucket, locked his cell door, and pushed the cart back to the elevator, where I waited five minutes before the guard arrived to take me to the labs.

After all the vampire had been through in a few short days, he still showed resilience. I doubt he’d given them any information. So, why had they stopped the torture? It had something to do with the empty syringe. I couldn’t think of any other answer.

The syringe had been empty but a thick, red substance had settled at the bottom. After seeing all the vials while deep cleaning the labs, none had been labeled MP-32. The consistency was the same as blood, but the MP made no sense.

I’d considered asking S-272 if he understood the labels, but there had been too many staff members in the lab, and I didn’t want to risk a vampire overhearing us.

I glanced at the far corner of my mattress. I wasn’t sure what to do about the blood vials or why I’d taken them. The safest thing to do would be to take two or three at a time and drop them in a third-level waste bin.

Before I could make a decision, the bang of the billy clubs snapped me to attention. When the door was thrown wide, I cringed. Did they suspect something?

“S-473. Hurry up. You’re eating in the cafeteria this morning.”

The guard stared at me as I scrambled from the bed. I slipped on my shoes and followed him, relieved my secret was still safe. S-272 was sitting at a corner table with two other shifters. He kept his head low as he gulped the porridge. It was rare to see him in the cafeteria, but I didn’t get to eat there often, so maybe they only let one of us eat there at a time.

His gaze caught mine as he dropped his tray on the wash racks then turned to meet the guard who would take him to the lab. I don’t know what I read in that glance—worry, irritation, fear?

After breakfast, I was led down to level three. Dallas, the guard who’d given me a tour on my first work day waited for me. I hadn’t seen him since that day. Had something changed?

“S-473. The guards have been given new rotations, and we won’t have time to babysit you anymore.” His eyes were kind. Unusual for the guards, or was something happening I wasn’t going to like? “Based on your work in the lab and down here, the Master believes you can be trusted to work on your own. Someone will still bring you down each morning, but you’ll be responsible for collecting and preparing your cart before your duties. Most of the prisoners have been moved upstairs in preparation for the next round of experiments. Those who remain will be secured during your cleaning schedule. You’ll be given two hours for your tasks, and a guard will be waiting at the stairs to escort you to the labs.” He gave me a long stare. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Then he turned and was gone. They trusted me?

I thought of the vials of blood under my mattress and smiled.

Sergi woke when the door opened. He’d been lost in memories again, but they were better described as nightmares. He suspected it had something to do with Gheata’s earlier visit and a second injection of what he’d been told was Magic Poppy.

“They tell me you’ll start feeling the changes after the second dose.” Gheata’s macabre smile didn’t get a reaction out of Sergi, at least not a visible one.

Gheata paced in front of him, his eyes shifting to the table of torture instruments, and Sergi was curious why he didn’t pick one up and start carving. They continued to feed him a daily vial of blood, but he didn’t understand why after injecting him with Magic Poppy. And why stop the torture?

Gheata’s hands flexed into fists. He wanted to inflict pain but had been told no. Maybe they wanted to see what the Poppy would do without adding additional pain.

There was one thing that would give Gheata his satisfaction. Sergi had already begun to feel the effects from the first injection. His beast, already irritated by the restraints, was doing its own pacing, pausing only long enough for it to howl with hunger. Maybe that was the answer. They wanted to bring out the beast without the emotions typically required to evoke it. Or maybe he was already losing part of himself.

He chuckled, which made Gheata turn, his face inches from Sergi’s.

“What do you find so funny?”

Sergi smiled. If he had contracted the rare blood disease, what did it matter if his beast took over? Wouldn’t that be a better end for a warrior than wasting away day by day for decades? Gheata would understand. Instead, Sergi dropped his head, unwilling to play his game.

Once he’d fallen asleep, the nightmares came again. This time he relived Devon’s readdiction to Magic Poppy after Boretsky’s murder. Was that how he’d end up? Trapped in his beast form, forever changed. Would he even recognize his friends? What was the end game? A mindless beast always hunting.

When the door opened, he remained still, feigning sleep. He recognized the soft shuffle of feet seconds before her scent washed over him. The shifter. He sensed her fear, anger, and the briefest sweet whiff of her wild nature.

He lifted his head. He hadn’t heard the guard. She was alone.

She glanced his way once then ignored him as she dusted off the table. After she replaced the mug of water, she looked over her shoulder, appeared satisfied they were alone, and opened the cooler. She gave a slight nod. He wasn’t sure why, except to confirm the decreasing number of vials. She closed the cooler, picked up the waste bin, and stared into it. She reached in and pulled out the syringe Gheata had thrown out. She studied it, then turned her gaze to him.

He caught her eyes. They were hazel. She was too far away for him to have determined that in the shallow light, but he remembered from her last visit when she’d stood inches from him after washing off his body.

She stepped closer, and it didn’t escape his notice that her steps weren’t tentative as they had been in the past. Her curiosity had been piqued, and she showed him the syringe.

“Do you know what was in this? It has a different label description.”

A different label description. Had he heard that correctly? Different than what? Maybe she was talking about the blood vials in the cooler.

He never took his eyes from hers, and she never turned away. There was a fierceness in her he’d only caught quick moments of before.

“Magic Poppy.” The beast raged at his words, and he used every ounce of strength to silence it. Each time he had to suppress, it became more difficult.

Her forehead scrunched at his words. “I’ve heard of that.” She paced in front of him, her gaze going to the door again. She turned her head as if listening. Sergi didn’t hear anything, and she must not have either. She stared at the label on the syringe then snapped her fingers.

“This is the drug that makes vampires go crazy.” She spun around to face him, her eyes wide. Yes. Hazel eyes ringed with a smoky blue circle. He slowly nodded, and she squinted, little lines forming over her nose. “But why?” She went back to pacing. “Unless they’re trying to control you through your beast the same way they’re trying to control shifters. Maybe.”

Control shifters? Is that what they’ve been doing here? It seemed Venizi had his fingers in many pots. But it made sense. An army of mind-controlled vampires and shifters. He wasn’t sure it was enough to crush the humans, but what other reason was there?

“Is there a cure for this?” She held up the syringe.

“I don’t know. I think this is a different formula than what I’ve seen before.” His voice was ragged, and he dropped his head, unable to hold it up.

She looked at the label again. “Magic Poppy. That must be what the MP on the label means. It’s the same dose they gave you yesterday.”

She was a smart one. But what game was she playing? She tossed the syringe in the trash and left to empty it. Once she placed the bin back in its spot, she strode to him.

“Why are you here?”

Was this a trick? Did Gheata send her? Had their experiments worked and this female was a test?

Her expression was encouraging, but after a moment, she grinned. “You think their Master sent me. I understand. But I could say the same of you. Purposely sacrificing yourself for the common good. Try to find troublemakers within the shifter slaves.” She shrugged. “I suppose it’s too late to do anything about it now. There are shifters who work for our captors. I used to hate them until I witnessed the experiments. Some would do anything not to be a test subject.”

Her face paled in some memory, and when she looked up at him, her anger was palpable. “I have another question for you, vampire. Are you someone who can help us, or will you be our ultimate ruin?”

She shuffled to the door. Before she closed it, he croaked, “Blood Poppy.”

She turned back to him.

“I don’t know if it’s a cure, but Blood Poppy might work.”

She studied him, and without responding, she walked out.

When the bar locked in place, he tried to sleep. When the beast pushed to be set free, he found peace in hazel-colored eyes.

After stowing the cart in the closet, I followed the guard to the cafeteria. It hadn’t been that long since breakfast, but I wouldn’t complain about extra food, especially since I’d missed lunch the last two days.

I sat at a table filled with shifters, but with the rule of no talking we might as well be sitting at tables for one. Today, I was grateful for the rule because my mind whirled with the few statements the vampire had shared with me.

Was he a spy for the Master? Would a vampire be willing to go through the amount of torture he’d endured in the hopes of getting information from me? It was crafty, but based on my experience living in this hellhole, it seemed overkill. All they had to do was threaten us with an injection of their serum and most shifters would tell them whatever they wanted to know. Even if we knew we’d end up in that silver cage anyway, there was always a chance of living one more day.

I’d know soon enough whether my last encounter with the vampire had been a well-laid trap.

Magic Poppy. My uncle had mentioned it before and considered it a major threat to shifters. Vampires, their beasts raging out of control would not only be a danger to shifters but to humans as well. Though, I’d never heard of Blood Poppy. The vampire seemed to think it was a cure for Magic Poppy. Had the Blood Poppy been created as an antidote?

I thought back to the vials from the refrigeration units. H appeared to symbolize human blood. The MP was now confirmed as Magic Poppy. All the other labels started with an S, which I assumed were the drugs being given to the shifters in the experiments.

Maybe the Blood Poppy didn’t need to be refrigerated. Each lab had at least one locked cabinet, but S-272 had cleaned those.

When they called for S-473, I dumped the remains of my lunch, placed my tray on the rack, and followed a different guard to the labs. However, instead of going to the main labs, we stopped at a supply closet.

“You’ll need the cart.” He stepped aside and waited patiently for me to step into the closet, review the items on the cart, then push it out to follow him down a hallway with multiple rooms.

These were smaller, private labs for the various scientists and lab assistants. From what S-272 had shared during our short chats, these labs were where the formulas were created and tested before being used on live subjects. While I’d been aware of them, I’d never been in any of them.

The guard, who’d stood close enough to determine he was a vampire, was chattier than the others. “The next phase of testing has been pushed another day, and the shifter that usually cleaned these rooms is no longer available.” I didn’t dare ask why that was. “Until we can train a suitable replacement, and while the labs you’re typically assigned to are in standby mode, you’ll clean these labs.”

He slid a keycard over the panel to open the door to the first lab. Stainless steel cabinets ran along two sides of the room, a round six-person conference table was in one corner, and a desk covered with files and books was in another. Beakers, racks of vials, Petri dishes, and a computer currently in standby mode covered the top of an island positioned between the counters.

“Dr. Lister is at lunch. You have twenty minutes to clean the office. Don’t touch the counter where he has important research underway. It will be noticed, and the punishment for such an act is severe. Do you understand?”

The scientist was at lunch. That made sense. When I noticed theguard staring daggers at me, I responded, “Yes.”

His forehead scrunched, his eyes narrowed, and his lips thinned as he assessed me, as if he didn’t understand how someone so slow could be allowed to work in the labs. I ignored him and stepped outside the room to grab the basket of cleaning supplies from the cart. His glare followed my every move as I removed a rag and bottle of disinfectant spray and began cleaning the cabinet doors and empty counters.

After a couple of minutes, he growled, “I’ll return in twenty minutes to take you to the next lab.”

He didn’t seem any happier when he returned to find me waiting at the cart. “Why are you standing there? Was there something missing from your cart?”

“I’m finished with this lab.” I kept my expression blank but grinned when he left to prowl through the room.

When he returned with no complaints, I pushed my cart to the next room. He’d barely swiped the card before walking away, his mumbled words barely audible. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

The only disparity among the individual labs was how clean or messy a particular scientist was. Other than whatever research or tests they were performing, everything else was the same from lab to lab. Besides the general layout, two security cameras were positioned at each end of the room, and an apartment-sized refrigerator and a single cabinet were next to the cabinets on the lab side, both requiring a keyed combination. What were the chances the codes were the same as the main labs?

I didn’t touch the top of the island counter where the staff appeared to do most of their work, but I peeked at the files and specimens as I swept the room.

All of the rooms had racks of vials with an S on the labels. These were the shifter formulas they were perfecting. Though what result they strived for continued to be a mystery. Only one of the labs had a rack of files with an H on the label. They must be working on something that either required human blood, or they were testing the effects of their formulas on it. Somehow, that idea was as horrifying as what they were doing with the shifters.

Maybe the rack of vials was nothing more than the scientist’s mid-afternoon snack. I stifled a macabre laugh at the possibility, then lowered my head so the guard wouldn’t see it as he led me to the next lab. When it appeared I’d finished the last one, I was turning my cart around when he stopped me.

“I was going to leave this corner office for tomorrow, but you’re ahead of schedule, and I just received notification that the director is coming back early. It would be best to clean his office before his arrival.”

He opened the door to a room befitting a CEO. If the building hadn’t been inside a mountain, there would have been floor-to-ceiling windows to show off an amazing view. And it appeared the director was a scientist as well as an administrator.

The room had been divided into two equal parts. On the left was a replica of the smaller labs, including a locked refrigerator and cabinet.

On the right was the administrative side. A massive desk with two visitor chairs, a row of dark oak filing cabinets, two bookcases stuffed with books, ledgers, and stacks of files that appeared to have been stuffed in any open crevice. A dull gray couch with two matching side chairs was against the only open wall. The painting above the area was monochrome in various shades of brown and reminded me of similar impersonal works in corporate offices and hotels.

Between both sections was a rectangular oak table that seated eight. It seemed to represent both a separation between the two sides of the office and a connection that tied them together.

“The director didn’t have time to complete his current work so, like the other labs, refrain from cleaning the island. You have a full hour for this office. Make it sparkle, girl.”

I placed the cleaning supplies on an available counter and took a moment to survey the room as if I were planning where to start. There were two security cameras, which surprised me for the director’s office. Were they concerned about unwarranted visitors, or was no one trusted—not the staff or the director?

Like in the other labs, I scanned the director’s experiment as I swept. My gut lurched when I noted the labels on the racked vials. There were five vials. One was labeled MP, one was labeled with an S, one was labeled with a V, and two were labeled with BP.

BP.,,Blood Poppy? If the vampire hadn’t mentioned it, I might have questioned what the initials meant but wouldn’t have given the vial a second look.

MP was the Magic Poppy, the S a shifter formula, and I suspected the V was a vial of vampire blood. I didn’t have time to read the paperwork in the open file folder, but with the number of printouts spread across the counter filled with rows of numbers, graphs, and grids, he’d been documenting a great deal of data. What kind of data, I couldn’t tell.

When I completed the lab area, I dusted the file cabinets, the coffee table, and the bookcases. The director wasn’t a neat man. His desk was covered with more files, books, science magazines, and what appeared to be several days of mail that had been dumped on top of everything.

I glanced at the door and listened for voices or boots. Not hearing anything and guessing I had another ten minutes before the guard returned, I searched the desk for anything of interest as I wiped a clean rag over everything. While the desk was messy, it didn’t mean the guy didn’t know where everything was. I’d known a few shifters with similar organizational skills. One guy, a good friend of my uncle’s, could find a single sheet of paper in a mess like the director’s without blinking an eye.

I was taking a second deeper look, keeping my back to the single camera with a view of the desk, when my fingers touched something unexpected under a file folder. I pulled the object out and blinked. A vial of a thick, red substance.

My heartbeat ratcheted up as I read the label. BP-43. The date was from the previous week.

Why wasn’t the vial locked up? The director had either been lazy, distracted, or had merely forgotten about it. Without a second thought, I palmed it, gave the edges of the desk a final wipe, then stuck the vial in my lab coat along with the rag.

I stood back, turning in a circle as if I was checking for anything I might have missed in my cleaning, then picked up the bucket of supplies and carried them to the cart.

My heart was racing, and I sucked in a few breaths, forcing a calm I didn’t feel.

I couldn’t let the guard pick up on my anxiety. The only good news was that he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I leaned against the cart, and in a flash, I moved the vial from the pocket to under my shift as I had with the others I’d pilfered from the labs.

The guard returned five minutes later, and by then, I’d had time to settle my nerves and consider my actions. There were too many questions and not nearly enough information to connect the dots. But one thing was clear.

While I hadn’t decided on whether I could trust him, the vampire pinned to the wall was the only one who could provide answers.