Page 173 of Knot Your Victim
I heard some guards talking about the supply of omegas getting cut off,Del had written.And how the people in charge were freaking out.
Dr. Sakarov grunted. “Don’t talk so openly in front of the subjects.”
I gritted my teeth as the needle withdrew, scraping against bone as it went.
Sakarov held up the vial of collected fluids, tilting his head as he regarded it. “Besides,” he said, removing the vial from the needle and placing it inside a machine set next to my metal gurney. “I have a feeling we won’t be needing any more test subjects.”
He turned back to me, looming over me with his thick glasses and masked face. A gloved hand stretched out, and he rubbed a thumb over my lower lip. The latex caught on my chapped skin, dragging at it. I froze, wanting desperately to jerk away from the touch.
Knowing there was no place to go.
His head moved sideways, regarding me the same way he’d regarded the vial of my blood and bone marrow a moment before. “You, my dear, are poised to make the members of this project very rich indeed.”
I tried to stiffen my lips, pursing them together to prevent his finger from moving them. A moment later, the thumb moved away.
“Take her back to her cell,” Sakarov ordered the guards. “I have what I need.”
My legs didn’t want to work properly as the guards unstrapped me and herded me back down the long, lonelycorridors. I kept stumbling over my own feet, the hallway tilting sideways at unexpected moments.
When I finally sank down next to Del’s wall in my cell, the door shutting and the lock clanking behind me, I wanted nothing more than to see my sister’s face and wrap my arms around her. Instead, I pressed my forehead to the cold concrete.
I wasn’t as clever as Del. I didn’t have a stolen sharpie hidden in my cell, or a pencil, or anything else I could use to write. Even though I knew it was pointless, I rolled my head to the side until my ear was pressed to the wall, hoping to catch a hint of her presence.
Anything.
Was she sitting on the other side, separated from me by inches that might as well be miles?
My eyes began to burn as I drew in a shaky breath
“I don’t know how, but we’re going to get out of here, sis,” I whispered. “We’ll go someplace far away, with trees and mountains and a river, and it will just be us and a bunch of dogs and cats and chickens. Maybe horses, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I paused. A tear spilled over, rolling down my cheek.
“Wouldn’t you?” My voice broke.
There was no reply.
