Page 43 of The Nightmare's Kiss

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Chapter Twenty-Six

I shut my eyes against a flood of sudden tears, sucking in a breath. “He can’t,” I whisper. “The Nightmare is…he’s alive. He’s intelligent. He’s sentient, and—he’skind. The director can’t treat him like this!”

“He knows,” she says, her voice gentle. “Everyone up top knows, and they have known for a very long time. Most of the subjects are the same as your X-13, Mara. They think, they feel. They are not mindless beasts, and everyone knows it.” She sighs, shutting her eyes for a moment before opening them again. Part of me wants to scream at her for allowing this to happen, but I can see the genuine pain in her expression. I remember the way she tried to guide me away from revealing what I knew to Director Ramsey, and I think I finally understand. She was trying to protect me…and show me how to fight from the inside, as she herself must be doing.

“The Director is aware, like all those who came before him. Like that asshole he hand-picked to succeed him.” She must mean Ethan; the thought of him taking over this place makes me absolutely sick. “He has access to decades of files that prove it. Decades of people like you—likeme—who realized that they’re more than monsters. But it won’t stop him. He sees them only as a means to an end. Something to be experimented with, and picked apart, until he can understand it well enough to use it.”

“But why?” I ask, my voice trembling, barely a whisper. This truth is even more horrible than I could’ve imagined. “What is the meaning of this place, all of this research? What can it achieve other than cruelty?”

She shrugs, the gesture small and helpless, uncharacteristic of her. She looks as sad as I feel, like some wall within her is crumbling. “I wish I knew,” she said. “I’ve been working here for a long time, Mara. But the more I learn, the harder I find it to understand. The best guess I have is that men like him hate anything that they can’t control, whether it’s monsters or women like us.”

I think back to my encounters with the director, and I know she has a point. The things he did were cruel, yes—but even worse than that, there was a sadistic sort of glee in him. Like he found joy in toying with my emotions, putting me in my place. “He’s a fucking sicko,” I whisper. “How can you stand to work for him?”

“Because I have a plan,” she says, her mouth firming with resolve as she looks at me. “A plan to bring in more people like you, then eventually destroy this place from the inside and rebuild it new, and better.” Then the expression cracks a bit. “Well… Ihada plan, that is. I’m afraid you’ve thrown a rather heavy wrench into it.” She grimaces. “And I suspect the director knew all along. He ordered me to stay here, deactivated my security card…” She tosses aside the useless piece of plastic and glares at it. “I believe he intended for us both to die here.”

Fear ripples through my chest. Is it possible he knew aboutmyplan, as well? I thought I was pulling this off, but maybe I was just being lured deeper into a trap. Still, there’s nowhere to go but forward. “Well,I’mnot ready to give up,” I say.

For a moment she hesitates. Then she straightens, and I feel like she’s figuratively brushing herself off and readying herself for another go. “No. Neither am I.” She sighs, shuts her eyes before she speaks. “I wish you had come to me,” she says. “I have a plan a long time in the making. I’ve worked so hard, gaining trust and power here, bringing in new hires like you and Belle in the hope you would someday be allies…”

“Itried, Calliope,” I argue, thinking back to when I visited her house. “You lied to me.”

She sighs, nods slightly. “I know. You’re right. I thought it was too early to play my hand, but…look where that’s led us.” She folds her arms over her chest, forehead wrinkling in thought. “Well. The best-laid plans, as they say. But perhaps I can still salvage the pieces.” She opens her eyes and her expression changes, like she’s steeling herself. She lifts herself up from the chair and brushes herself off. She looks around, and I can sense the gears in her head turning. “Yes. Maybe this chaos will be good for something, after all.” Her gaze settles on me again, and she takes a deep breath. “But we’re going to need help.” She turns to the control panel and presses a button to unlock a cell.

“I need to turn the temperature down first,” Dr. Wright says, her hands darting over the control panel in the observation room for the cell she opened: X-11, the plaque reads. Through the viewing panel, I see an all-white room like the one that held the Nightmare, but bare except for a single metal chamber in the center. It looks like a huge chest freezer. “They have him in hibernation.”

Though Dr. Wright’s expression is as carefully controlled as always, her hands are trembling, and she keeps fixing her outfit like an anxious tic. Once she’s done with the controls, she steps back and rests her hands on her hips, one foot tapping nervously against the tile.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

She swallows. “Yes.” At first I think she’s going to leave it at that, but then she continues, “It’s been a very long time since I was able to see him.”

Realization hits me later than it should’ve. “This is the subject you had that ‘close encounter’ with.”

She nods. “X-11,” she says quietly. “X. The Alien.” That sends a shock through me, but she continues without a pause. “And I…may not have been entirely honest with you,” she confesses. But even if she hadn’t, I could see it in the way her eyes hover on the viewing panel in front of her, the change in her normally icy demeanor.

“You care about him,” I say softly.

“I always have.” She bites her lip. “It’s why I stayed working at this godforsaken facility. Why I tried so hard to claw my way up through the ranks. I knew I had to find a way to set him free. All these years, I’ve planned for it…” She glances at me, and her lips twist wryly. “And then came you.”

I flush. “If you had told me…”

“I know. I should’ve told you the truth as soon as you opened up to me about your own feelings. I shouldn’t have thrown you under the bus with Ramsey out of fear it would ruin my own plans. We could have worked together and prevented this. It’s my own fault.” She shakes her head. “Regardless, we’re in this together now.”

Before I can respond, there’s a beep of an alarm from the control panel. Within the cell, the top of the chest freezer slides to the side. I hold my breath, realizing I’m about to get my first glimpse of an extraterrestrial being. At my side, Dr. Wright is frozen just like I am, her eyes locked on the chamber. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, a pale tentacle lifts out of the chamber, pokes tentatively at the air, and crawls over the side. Another emerges from the other side, and a creature lifts itself out.

I would’ve thought that seeing the Nightmare and the Minotaur would prepare me for more things that defy belief, but this is a new shock. It’s hard to make sense of what I’m seeing at first. The creature is huge, and somewhat humanoid in shape, though its knees bend the wrong way and its arms are proportionally longer than a human’s. Then there are the eight tentacles coming out of its back, whipping around the room as if exploring it. Its eyes are large and inky black in a bluish-white complexion, and its mouth is huge and full of prominent, sharp teeth.

I’m terrified, even after my encounters with the Nightmare taught me not to judge a creature by its appearance. But Dr. Wright practically throws herself at the door.

“Let me speak to him first,” she says quickly, and before I can say anything, she’s heading into the hallway, and then into the cell, shutting herself in alone with it.

Him, I remind myself. Dr. Wright saidhim.

She approaches the subject slowly, speaking soft words that I can’t hear from outside of the cell, but the tenderness and fragile hope is obvious on her face. I press a hand to my mouth as the alien stands perfectly still, regarding her with a tense posture. She said it had been a long time, and it sounded like the history between them was complicated… What if she’s wrong about him? What if his feelings have soured after years of being trapped here with her on the outside?

As the alien’s tentacles abruptly lunge for her, I gasp and reach for the door handle, but then they grip her and draw her in with utmost gentleness, and the two embrace. He leans down to press his forehead against hers, and she melts against him, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I ever could’ve imagined.

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