Whisper (Whisper #1)(82)

There is not a single part of me that wants to open the door. My heart hammers at the mere thought of finding out what waits on the other side. But I’ve come this far. I can’t leave now — not without seeing the truth for myself. So I tuck the glasses and glove away and reach out a hand to test the door.

The moment my skin makes contact, it must act like some kind of sensor, since the locking mechanism deactivates and the door slides open with a whoosh. I’m left blinking at the space in front of me that no longer provides any kind of hiding place, and I keep my body frozen, attempting to draw as little attention to myself as possible.

And that’s because, on the opposite side of the large room, there are three gray-uniformed guards leaning up against the wall, staring at me.

Or, on first impression, it seems as if they’re staring at me, but when none of them so much as blink in the space of the whole minute where I’m experiencing a mild cardiac arrest, I realize that they might be looking at me, but they’re not seeing me.

After risking a glance to the left and then to the right and finding no one else in the room, I edge my way inside. I continue until I’m only a few feet away from the guards.

“Can you — can any of you hear me?” I whisper, being very careful with my words, knowing that the adrenaline coursing through my body could make me more liable to slip up.

When none of them respond, I reach out to the one closest to me, a woman, and place my hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t react in any way, not even when I shake her.

“Creepy,” I say, feeling the need to fill the nightmarish silence.

I turn away from the three of them to take in the rest of the room, something I should have done upon entering it. As my eyes travel around what is clearly a professional medical laboratory, goose bumps cover my skin and I start to tremble. I’m used to Vanik’s lab downstairs, the one I visited every day during my “initiation.” I thought it had everything possible to make my life a living nightmare. But by the looks of it, that lab has nothing on this one. I don’t recognize most of the equipment in here — but I’m certain none of it is used for anything good.

And it gets worse — because unlike the hallways I’d traveled to get here, the walls of the lab are a glossy black.

Karoel.

The whole lab is encased in the nullifying mineral. Any words I create in here will require much greater effort, keeping me in check. That kind of limitation is not something I need right now, given what I might be facing.

Turning back to the three zombie-like guards and not allowing myself to consider why they might be here — or what has prompted their current senseless state — I say, “If you can hear me, I’m getting you all out of here. Right now.”

Before I can figure out how to do that, I hear clicking shoes and low voices approaching from the hall. My self-preservation instincts kick in, and I jump behind one of the larger medical machines — I think it’s an MRI scanner — just in time to hear the door slide open and the voices become significantly louder.

“… not saying I won’t figure it out eventually, just that it’ll be faster if you let me —”

“I’ve already told you where I stand on the matter,” Falon’s voice interrupts Vanik, and I feel my heart sink. Clearly, Kael was wrong about him being an unwilling puppet.

“And as I keep telling you,” Vanik’s nasal voice responds, “you should strongly think about reconsidering. You know what her worth would be to the project’s overall success.”

I peek around the MRI machine in time to see him gesture toward the zombie guards as he adds, “None of them would be necessary anymore, not if you give her back to me.”

Something about his words increases the trembling in my body.

“Alyssa Scott is off-limits,” Falon says.

I close my eyes in resignation because they’ve just confirmed Kael’s claim. They have known my identity all along.

So many lies.

So many secrets.

“But, Maverick,” Vanik argues, “just think of how much I could achieve by working with her again. Especially if you let me carry out all the proper tests, not just the child’s play you limited me to for her initiation.”

Child’s play? I don’t want to imagine what the alternative might have been.

“You could also damage her beyond repair,” Falon says, and I shudder involuntarily. “You already nearly did, if I recall. If it hadn’t been for Landon —”

Vanik makes an irritated sound. “Ward coddles her. You should never have brought him into this.”

“You were getting nowhere with her,” Falon disagrees. “For over two and a half years, neither you nor any of her other evaluators made any kind of headway. No one heard so much as a peep out of her until Landon managed to break her down.”

The betrayal stings almost as much today as it did when I first found out.

“So whether he ‘coddles’ her or not,” Falon continues, “even you have to admit that he’s getting results. And I won’t have you jeopardize that, not prematurely.”

“Maverick —”

“I said no, Kendall,” Falon states firmly. “Perhaps things will change when she has a better handle on her control. Until then, she’s just as likely to blow a hole in the middle of Lengard as she is to channel her power into something you can use for your experiments.”