City of Light (Outcast 1)

“Did you see a pick on the vampires? I didn’t.” Not that a pick would have been easy to see given the situation, but that was beside the point. “And, as I said, why would they want the grate open when they could shadow and flow through it?”

“They wouldn’t,” Nuri said. “Unless, of course, they were checking the code for someone else.”

I nodded. “Hence my asking whether that darkness contained any hint of vampire. It might be possible that we face not only a coalition of wraiths and someone in Central, but vampires as well.”

“Not a possibility I wish to contemplate,” Nuri murmured.

“We may not want to, but we can’t ignore the possibility, either.”

Nuri leaned back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. “Any idea where this vamp-infested lab might be?”

“No.” I tore off some more bread and scraped the remains of the stew out of my bowl. “But, as I said, it was an old military bunker, and there were several disused labs that reminded me an awful lot of the labs within my bunker—though I was under the impression the humans of Old Central had only the one déchet base near here.”

“They did. The others were in Crow’s Point and in the Broken Mountains.” She pursed her lips. “There were several satellite military installations, of course. It’s possible we’re dealing with one of those.”

“There were old uterine pods and neonatal medibeds in the disused labs,” I said. “Not something the regular military would need, I’d imagine.”

“No.” Her gaze met mine. “Are you sure it wasn’t some part of your own bunker, a section you haven’t uncovered yet?”

“I’m sure.” My reply was a little sharper than necessary. “Aside from the fact there didn’t appear to be any ghosts in this installation, my bunker isn’t infested with vampires.”

“That you know of,” Jonas said. “It’s possible the inaccessible areas could be.”

“No, they’re not, because the ghosts don’t have my restrictions, and they’d tell me if the vampires were there.”

He raised an eyebrow. Though there was little in the way of expression on his face, in the bright depths of his eyes curiosity, distrust, and desire all burned. It was a mix that was oddly compelling. “Yet you yourself said not all the ghosts talk to you.”

“The adults don’t.” He was still baiting me, still trying to trip me up, even if the question was a logical one. “But the children have been there for over one hundred years, and they know that place inside out. They’d tell me if vampires had suddenly become a feature.”

“Which means it must be one of the other déchet facilities.” Nuri tapped the table lightly, the sound echoing. “Although it seems odd that if the people behind this are based in Central, they would have their lab facilities so far away.”

“But it’s not that far away. Not when they’re using the false rifts to transport there and back.”

“Yes, but the rifts are hardly practical if they cause so much damage to the user.” Jonas crossed his legs under the table, but his calf brushed mine in the process and sent warmth spiraling through the rest of me.

This attraction, I thought, as I edged my legs away from his, was getting ridiculous.

“Just because the false rifts harm me doesn’t mean they similarly affect those who created them. If they have the skill to make them, then they also have the skill to program their DNA into them. I doubt they would suffer the same sort of difficulties I did when using it.”

“Penny suffered much the same type of wounds,” he said.

“Yes, but why would they bother programming the DNA of the children into it? The number of them alone would make it too hard.”

“It would also take too much time and energy, for little gain,” Nuri agreed, voice heavy. “From what I could glean from Penny, they’re using these children as test subjects and don’t exactly care whether they live or die.”

“And yet,” I said, “they’re not truly mistreated. Penny is undernourished, but she isn’t ill.”

“That might only be due to the authorities finally seeing the pattern in the disappearances. Best to take care of the test subjects you have if getting new ones is increasingly more difficult.” Her sharp gaze came to mine, and again her power swept me, intense and oddly filled with expectation. “The question is, w

hat’s your next step?”

I leaned back in my chair and contemplated, once again, the wisdom of trusting these people. Cat stirred and her emotions washed through me, urging me to trust, to help. To find the children and make them safe. And it was that, more than anything, that remained the controlling factor here. If not for the fact there were children involved—children who might yet be saved—I definitely would have walked.

I scrubbed a hand across my eyes, then said, “That depends.”

“On what?” Nuri asked evenly.

“On how fast you can get me working ID for Central. The friend I’m meeting tonight said he might be able to arrange an interview with the recruitment officer at Winter Halo.” My gaze flicked to Jonas as I said it, though I’m not entirely sure why. It wasn’t like he was going to show any reaction given we were strangers and he refused to even acknowledge the attraction between us. “He’ll tell me tonight if he was successful or not.”