Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(73)

I closed my eyes as he trailed one finger up the side of my neck and over my chin. “Just tell me.”

“Ask me nicely.”

I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes. “Tell me please, Dr. Vandekamp.”

He laughed and took a step back. “No.”

*

Deep in the bowels of the infirmary, Pagano took me down a hall I’d never noticed before, which shouldn’t have been possible. I’d been in the infirmary half a dozen times to deliver lunch trays, that I could remember, and my duties had taken me all over the building.

Halls don’t just suddenly appear. But they can be made to disappear. Or rather, to go unnoticed. Which meant that Vandekamp had cryptids in his collection that I’d never met, or even seen. Cryptids with very interesting abilities.

Or maybe I had met them, but couldn’t remember.

My handler opened a door near the end of the strange hallway and led me into a small, unoccupied room, where a single barber-style chair was bolted to the floor. Laid out on a counter that ran along one wall was a set of gray scrubs.

“Change clothes and put the costume and shoes on the counter.”

Pagano watched while I changed, but again I saw no real interest in his assessing gaze. When I was dressed in gray scrubs, the tile floor cold against my newly bare feet, he gestured at the chair in the center of the room.

I sat, and he pressed a button on his remote.

The realization that I couldn’t move brought with it that familiar sense of panic, but when I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge a psychological lump, I realized he hadn’t turned off my voice. There had to be a reason for that.

“How does this work?” I asked as, on the edge of my vision, he took up a position next to the door. “How do they take my memory?”

“I don’t understand the process,” the handler admitted. “But I can tell you it won’t hurt.”

“Yes, it will.” Would I wake up in my cell again, missing nine and a half weeks, instead of eight? Would I have to re-discover my own pregnancy? Reimagine the horror of the conception?

“But you’re always happier afterward,” Pagano insisted, and his confidence caught me by surprise. Did he seriously think having someone mess with my head was in my best interest?

People have to be able to remember trauma in order to deal with it.

“They’re going to keep taking until there’s nothing left of me, and not being able to remember the loss doesn’t mean I won’t feel it.”

To his credit, he didn’t try to argue.

“How long will I last?” My voice carried almost no volume. “How long do most of us last here, before Vandekamp decides that watching us die is worth more than making us work?”

Pagano cleared his throat. “We’ve never had one like you before. This...” His broad-armed gesture seemed to indicate the entire room. “This isn’t the norm.”

“How long, Michael?”

Maybe it was my use of his first name that made him answer, or maybe he had a rare moment of true compassion. Or maybe he just knew I’d forget it all in a few minutes anyway. “Weeks, for those who go straight to the hunt or the arena. Gallagher and Eryx have both had a great run, but eventually the boss will find something that can kill them. Or he’ll pit them against each other.”

I closed my eyes, and tears rolled down my cheeks. “How long for those of us in the dorms?”

“A year. Two at the most, for the ones that don’t get much personal interest. But the client favorites...they have it hard.”

Two years.

Even if I managed to carry the baby to term, I would never see it grow up.

I might never see it at all.

Someone knocked on the door, and Pagano opened it, but I couldn’t see who he’d let in until one of the few female handlers led a child into my field of vision. The girl was small, with wide yellowish eyes and long dark hair, and she couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.

I recognized both her and her guard from my lunch route, but I had no idea what her species was.

“Okay, Sandrine, do your thing,” the female handler said, and as the child approached me, both guards stepped out of my vision to continue a conversation they’d evidently struck up on some previous occasion.

Sandrine stood on my right and looked down into my eyes. “Hello, Delilah,” she whispered, and though her lips moved, her voice seemed to come from within my own head.

“Do I know you?”

“No.” Again her mouth formed the word, but the sound seemed to belong only to me. “And you never will.” Her hands came toward my face, and even as panic dumped adrenaline into my bloodstream, I realized that something was wrong with her fingers. Something subtle, but real. They were too...smooth.

Sandrine had no fingerprints. Her palms had no lines, as if the everyday motion of her hands left no imprint upon her skin.

She laid one hand across my forehead, and her touch was impossibly light. Her eyes closed. “Tell me about the house,” she said, and I understood why Pagano hadn’t taken my voice. “Just enough to help me find it.”

“Wait!” I whispered, and her yellow eyes opened in surprise. “Sandrine, don’t do this. I need this memory. Please.”

“There are rules...” The words bounced around my head as if they’d been born there.