Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(76)

“Delilah. Come on,” he said, and when I didn’t move, he pulled the cart into the foyer, then hauled me out of the elevator by one arm.

“Finally!” An unfamiliar man looked up from the form he’d been scribbling on and pulled one of the frameless glass doors open. “You’re late,” he said as I pushed the lunch cart into the lab. I was supposed to hand him the last tray. But I couldn’t move.

Why had I been in there before? Had I buried the memory for a reason, or was my time in the basement lab just collateral damage from my two-month system wipe?

“Delilah. Wake up,” Pagano said, and I lifted the tray without feeling its weight. Without smelling the food.

The man in the lab coat rolled his eyes and snatched his lunch from me.

“Sorry, Dr. Hill. She’s been acting pretty weird lately.”

I studied the doctor’s face, but it didn’t set off any mental or psychological alarms. He was not the source of my discomfort in the lab.

“Delilah?” The voice was soft and it cracked on the last syllable of my name, but I would have recognized it anywhere.

I turned to find Lenore staring at me from one of the padded tables, holding back the curtain between us with one arm. The siren’s eyes were glazed, and her voice carried more pain than I could fathom, but no compulsion whatsoever.

“Lenore!” I jogged across the floor toward her, and when the doctor tried to grab me, Pagano blocked his reach.

“It’s not safe to touch her with bare hands.”

“What happened?” I pushed back the curtain to see that Lenore was covered by a white hospital sheet. “Are you okay?” If she was sick, why wasn’t she upstairs on the main infirmary floor?

“Get her out of here,” Dr. Hill said, but I hardly heard him.

“They took it.” Lenore’s words were slurred; she’d been sedated. “I don’t know whether I wanted it, but now that it’s gone...” Tears slid down her cheeks and left wet spots on the paper-covered pillow beneath her head.

They took it. Magnolia’s face flashed behind my eyes, but it was Simra’s voice I heard, explaining what happened to captives who got pregnant.

“Oh, Lenore.” I brushed hair back from her face and blinked away tears of my own. This basement lab, only open as needed, was where Tabitha sent them to have the problem removed.

So, why had I been there, if not to end my pregnancy?

To confirm it with a test or an exam?

“Don’t tell Kevin.” The siren eyes fluttered closed as she spoke. She’d passed out, which meant I didn’t have to remind her that her husband had been arrested along with Alyrose and Abraxas for helping us take over the menagerie. Kevin was in prison.

His wife was in hell.

“You did this to her?” I turned on the doctor and felt my hair begin to stand up at the roots. “You operated on her without her consent?”

“Consent?” He crunched into a carrot stick from his tray. “She’s not a patient, she’s a cryptid. If you ask me, you should all be fixed when you’re brought in. That’d be cheaper in the long run.”

“Fixed?” The furiae roared within me, her outrage echoing through every cell in my body.

Lenore would be avenged.

“Delilah.” Pagano had one hand on his stun gun, but he hadn’t pulled it yet. His other hand held the remote control. With one click, he could immobilize me, but he was waiting. Giving me a chance to rein it in.

“It’s okay,” I lied. My voice sounded strangely full and my vision was so sharp I could see individual threads in the weave of his uniform. “Let’s go before I lose control of it.”

Pagano didn’t holster his remote, but his stance lost a little of its tension.

“Control of what?” the doctor said around his carrot. “What’s her deal?”

I headed toward Pagano, and his gaze was glued to my eyes, which were no doubt absent irises and threaded with black veins. As I drew even with Dr. Hill on my way to the door, I sucked in a deep breath. Then I leapt at him.

“No!” Pagano pressed the button on his remote, paralyzing me even as pain shot through my entire body. But I was already airborne. Momentum drove me into the doctor, throwing us both to the ground.

The doctor’s elbow cracked against the floor, and he howled in pain.

“Don’t touch her!” Pagano cried, but Hill shoved my limp, pain-racked form onto the floor. His hand brushed my arm, and my pulse surged as rage poured out of me and into him. As fire raced through my veins from my collar, scorching every inch of me.

The doctor froze. Then he pushed himself upright, while I lay panting on the ground at his feet.

Both my paralysis and the sadistic electric current ended.

“Dr. Hill?” Pagano seemed to have forgotten me as he watched the doctor, well aware of the brutal inevitability of whatever was about to happen.

The doctor picked up a scalpel from a tray of tools on the counter.

I pushed myself up and scooted back until my spine hit the cabinets, trying to ignore the pain still echoing in my every nerve ending. From there, I had an unobstructed view of the doctor as he lifted his shirt and sliced his own belly open, just below the pooch middle age had given him.

“Oh, fuck...” The guard pocketed his stun gun and pulled the radio from his belt. Static burst through the silence of the lab. “This is Pagano. I need backup down in the infirmary basement lab. Delilah freaked out again, and Doc Hill just opened himself up with his own scalpel.”