Page 110 of The World Undone

One of the main control rooms was usually situated where we landed. But clearly, they’d made some changes since the last time I’d been here.

“Fuck.” I got my bearings as quickly as possible, but then did my best not to move. We were surrounded by cells, the glass walls encasing them the only thing separating us from the demons thrashing around on the other side.

Tex was growling, and stiffly put as much distance between us as he could, clearly responding poorly to his first shift in this form.

“Um, Atlas,” Wade muttered, at my back, “isn’t that her?”

I spun around, not exactly sure which ‘her’ I expected to find.

One glass wall was wider than the others and revealed ten faces on the other side.

The farthest one on the left, a short woman with streaks of gray woven through her blonde hair, watched us with the promise of pain in her eyes.

“Rebecca, I assume.” Bishop’s jaw was clenched as he watched the panel of protectors. “Never seen her in person before, but no mistaking those dark lines down her neck.”

The series of faces watching us weren’t demons. They were in an observation room. And we were in the center of some weird arena they’d boxed in for some reason.

Behind them were a series of security screens revealing various rooms from the building. All of them revealed still and calm loops, where I knew there was really panic and chaos above.

Rebecca followed my focus, brows arched.

“I see Arnell has disrupted our feeds again. Truly seamless work.” Her voice filtered in above us, grainy and voluminous through a speaker. She shook her head. “Shame we lost that boy’s skills, though I do hope we’ll welcome him back soon. I thought after the last time, we’d tightened up our security. I’d been assured that hacking in again would be an impossible feat. Clearly not. Thankfully, we’ve been expecting some kind of breach, so the alarms gave us enough time to collect ourselves. Just barely.” Her eyes narrowed, head tilted to the side. “I must say, I wasn’t expecting your teleportation abilities. Interesting, truly.”

All four of us remained silent, with Tex prowling the perimeter of the cages, hardly reacting as the people inside pounded and screamed against their barriers.

“A shame the girl isn’t with you.” The lines of her face were etched with disappointment, and the other protectors clustered around her seemed to all be alternating between either a strained, anticipated excitement, and fear. “I’ve been hoping to meet her, to speak to her. Another time, perhaps.”

“I don’t sense anything here,” Wade muttered to me, ignoring her and the other protectors entirely.

His focus darted briefly to Tex and back to me and I knew he feared the same thing I did. Wolves didn’t like being contained. And we’d effectively brought Tex into a cage through one of the most disorienting ways of travel conceivable.

If we weren’t careful, it was entirely possible he’d attack one of us.

I didn’t blame him. My lungs were struggling to pull in full breaths of air as I fought my panic. All I could smell was the medicinal cocktail of chemicals they pumped into the demons they kept here. Well, that, mixed with blood.

I knew that they often injected demons with things to suppress their power, but it felt like that shit was in the air here. My wolf was uneasy too and I could feel myself on the verge of transforming.

My flesh stung at the mere memory of living locked up in these cells, even if this wasn’t the branch where I’d been kept.

All cages were the same in the end.

“Do you?” Wade asked.

I swallowed back my fear, trying like hell to ignore the panic flooding my brain at the memories of being one of The Guild’s prisoners. My thoughts had already started cycling back to the terror that the Drude had played in my mind on loop.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, then tried to sense the shadow magic. But I knew if Wade didn’t feel anything, then chances were I didn’t stand a chance. He had a much closer connection to shadow magic than I did.

Nothing.

Until all I saw were flashes of visions I hadn’t suffered in weeks: Max dead at my feet. Wade with his head lying four feet from the rest of his body.

My eyes sprang open and I swallowed back the hot bile bubbling up in the back of my throat.

I took a deep breath, pressed the images down as far as they would go. Fuck this.

The shadow magic wasn’t here. We needed to kill this woman and get the fuck out. A wrongness hung in the air, and I could feel myself on the edge of losing the small facade of composure I’d built up these last few months.

“The stone,” I said, my voice loud and echoing off the walls. “Where are you keeping it?”

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