“This is what you are, Jenny,” Ward said. “You are a killer. You’ll never change that. Your nature is to bring death to others. It’s your responsibility, your obligation, that you use it to kill the right people, and not the innocent...”
Jenny pressed her lips together and said nothing, but she couldn’t stop her flesh from turning bleach-white. Inside, she was in turmoil, sick and angry, full of hate for Ward and for herself.
A picture of her mother appeared, the one that had hung on her wall all her life, and she almost cried out in pain. She had killed her mother. She would kill her baby.
“No mercy. That’s what I respect about you, Jennifer,” Ward said, as more pictures of the infected from Fallen Oak took their turns appearing on the screen. “You’ll kill anyone who gets in your way. And there’s a place for that, there’s a use for that, don’t you understand? That’s all I’m trying to show you. Just accept what you are and why you need to work with us. Stop fighting, Jenny. We should all be on the same team.”
Jenny looked from Ward to the grisly images of those she’d killed.
“I don’t do teams, Kranzler,” she said. “I’ve been on too many.”
She expected him to ignore the word Kranzler like he always did, but this time he pounced on it.
“Kranzler, Kranzler,” he said. “It’s interesting, Jenny, that you call me Kranzler. I called a friend in Moscow who has access to a certain deep archive of captured Nazi documents. He found a few details about this place. There was a Nazi general—a Gruppenführer, was the S.S. term—in charge of this base when it was originally built. Can you guess his name?”
“Do I have to?” Jenny asked.
“Helmut Kranzler. The name you keep calling me.”
“What else came up in these files?”
“First, explain yourself. Why call me that name?”
Jenny shrugged. “You already know. You were Kranzler. You brought us all here before, believing we were some kind of highly evolved humans. It was a Nazi eugenics program.”
“A Nazi?” Ward snorted. “You’re calling me a Nazi?”
“Exactly. And here we are again, doing it all again.”
“How did it end last time?”
“The only way it could have.” Jenny gave him a thin smile. “Perhaps those old files will tell you. They should. You wrote them yourself.”
Ward looked her over, but he fell silent, and she knew he couldn’t figure out how to proceed. “Enjoy your entertainment,” he finally said as he walked away.
The lights in the lab turned all the way out, leaving her in darkness except for the glowing images on the screen. Ashleigh’s parents, Neesha Bailey, Mayor Winder and Cassie. Screams sounded over the intercom, startling her. They went on and on, like some kind of sound effects CD for a haunted house, accompanying the scenes of agonizing death that kept playing in front of her.
She sat down and closed her eyes, but it was impossible to scrub away the pictures, or to block out the shrill screams. Ward wasn’t going to break her down this way, she told herself. He didn’t know even a fraction of what she’d done—the plagues she’d inflicted on Athens and other ancient cities, the horrors she’d performed for evil monarchs in the age of the Black Death...
Strangely, the one to which her mind kept straying was only a single man, lashed to a hospital gurney, whom she’d killed in cold blood because the love-charmer had told her to. It was hard to believe that she’d once been enthralled to Ashleigh, worshiping her as she’d seen so many sycophants do in so many lives...though the charmer’s name hadn’t been Ashleigh then, it had been Alise.
* * *
Juliana had been up all morning, practicing for the moment when Alise would walk through her door. Her roommate Mia was gone, had been gone all night without warning. Juliana didn’t know whether Mia had escaped or something terrible had happened to her. Alise would be the person to ask, but if Mia had run away, Juliana wasn’t going to be the one to point it out. Juliana would want her friend to have plenty of time before anyone starting searching for her.
Alise finally entered, all smiles as usual, as if she hadn’t just forced Juliana to murder a man the day before.
“Good morning!” Alise said, her gray eyes full of cheer. “I thought we could go to breakfast together. And good news! Gruppenführer Kranzler says he wants me to spend the day with you. Lots of tests for you to do!”
“No more people,” Juliana said. “No more animals, either. I’m not killing anyone else.”
“Juliana.” Alise tsked her tongue. “We’ve already talked about this. Let’s not start over. Here, I know just what you’ll need to feel better.” She took a deep breath.