When No One Is Watching(83)

The corridor seems to go on forever, the rooms and their inhabitants in various states but almost every damn room occupied. They’re soundproofed, I realize at some point, so the strangled cries I hear echoing in the hallway are my own.

Test Subject 18. Mr. Perkins sits on the edge of his gurney, staring at the floor. He looks so thin compared to just a few days ago, the wrinkles on his face hanging like heavy pleats in fabric.

I tap frantically at the window and he slowly raises his head. He stares at me, no recognition on his face, but stands and shuffles toward the glass.

His movements are jerky; his head lolls to the side.

And then he lunges at me, beating his fists on the window. I can’t hear him, but his mouth stretches wide in a scream and his spit flecks the window. His eyes are full of rage—I’ve never even seen him angry before.

A siren sounds in the hallway, but I stand there frozen. Even when arms close around me and haul me back into the recessed doorway of the room across the hall, I hold Mr. Perkins’s rage-filled gaze.

The double doors that cap this wing open slowly with a prolonged whoosh, automated, and two white women rush into the hall, one brunette, one gray haired. They’re dressed in jeans and T-shirts, but wear white lab coats. The gray-haired one, who has a short pixie cut, swipes her ID against the lock to Mr. Perkins’s room, and they rush in. As they do, his wails fill the hallway, and I hate that I recognize his voice in this cry of pure pain.

Key, Theo mouths, and he slips past me, giving me a firm press back against the door that’s an order to stay there. He didn’t have to do that—I can’t move. The horror of everything has wrapped me up tightly, strapped me down like I’m on that gurney instead of Ms. Gianetti’s lifeless body.

He stalks toward the room, tucking into a crouch and then peeking around the door frame. I expect him to just burst in but he waits. And waits. Fury starts to build in me as Mr. Perkins’s howls fill the hallway, but then I remember.

“My aim isn’t as good as yours.”

He’s waiting to make a clean shot.

He doesn’t want to hurt Mr. Perkins.

The howling subsides and the first woman steps through the door and back into the hallway, and then the second. Before they let the door swing shut, Theo stands up behind them and says, “Don’t move.”

Both women freeze, but the brunette’s hand keeps going toward the bulge in her pocket. Whatever constraints were on my body immediately release as I instinctively recognize the motion—she’s reaching for a weapon.

I step out from the doorway and shoot. She grabs her stomach and falls to the floor, screaming in pain, sounding not so different from Mr. Perkins.

“Oh my goodness. Julia!” the older woman calls out, and Theo rushes up to her, stripping the ID from her and searching her for weapons.

I pat down the woman on the floor and she clasps at my hand.

“Help me,” she says as tears well from her eyes and course into her hair.

I shake her hand off and search her for weapons—I’m second-guessing myself, wondering if she’d gone for her phone and I’d just shot someone for no—no, it’s a gun.

With a silencer. Like the one Theo took from Con Dead.

“Don’t let me die here, I have a son. A husband.” She grasps at her stomach and then cries out in pain.

Pity and guilt spear me, and I remind myself that all the people locked up here have families and lives, too.

“What did you do to Mr. Perkins, Julia? To all these people?”

“Mr. Perkins?”

“Test Subject Eighteen,” I grit out.

She coughs, averts her gaze from mine. “. . . My job.”

“Which is?”

She starts crying in earnest, locking her gaze on mine. “Please help me, it hurts so much!”

I want to cry, too. I did this to her. Does she deserve it? Did Ms. Gianetti? Who was I to decide? What if I was wrong?

My vision starts to swim and I suck in a breath.

“I’ll help you when you tell me,” I say through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just need to know what’s going on here. I can’t help you until you tell me.”

“We’re researching how to cure opiate addiction,” she says quickly, hope glinting in her eyes. “We needed test subjects, and federal regulations make true progress too difficult. There’s a methadone clinic near here, we picked up people there. And the others—”

“Shut up, Julia,” the older woman says, then yelps as Theo tightens his hold on her.

I tug at Julia’s collar to draw her attention back to me. “Why like this? You already won the bid for the new research center. Why do things like this?”

“New research center? Not new. You mean official.” Julia’s words are sluggish, and when she smiles, her teeth are sheened with blood. “And we do it because we can.”

I back away from her, holding the gun, and she writhes on the floor and screams. “Help me, you bitch!”

“Go start unlocking the doors,” Theo says from behind me, handing me a key card. “Start at the other end of the hall.”

“But—”

He takes her gun from my hand. “Go.”

His voice is hard, but not mean.

I run to the other end of the hall, frantically swiping the card over the locks and opening every door. Most people aren’t in a state to move themselves, but some of them can start making their way out. At the very least they’re no longer locked in. We can’t call the police or an ambulance. We can’t trust anyone.