Page 44 of The Nightmare's Kiss

To be honest, I was still hesitant about trusting Dr. Wright after she lied to me before. Nothing could’ve convinced me like seeing her with her own beloved subject; nobody can fake that kind of tenderness. I turn away to give them some privacy, because it feels like I’m intruding. But even as I will myself to give them some time to themselves, I’m all too aware of the seconds ticking by with Somnus still in danger somewhere.

Just when I’m about to turn around and barge in on them, privacy be damned, I hear the door open and turn to face them. To my surprise, it isn’t an alien that emerges, it’s a human man I don’t recognize in a lab coat. There’s something notquiteright about him when I look harder, similar to the Siren. His bones are protruding a bit too much, his teeth a bit too sharp, an odd blankness to his expression. Dr. Wright is clasping one of his hands.

“Shapeshifter?” I ask, looking up at him.

“Yes,” the strange man—alien… subject?—answers. He fixes pale eyes on me and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. He really is vaguely unsettling, but I try to fight off my body’s natural reaction of fear and force a smile instead.

“X is very talented,” Dr. Wright says, glancing up at him fondly.

There’ssomuch I want to ask about him, his origins, and the obvious affection between them. But Somnus is still in danger, so instead, I look at the shapeshifting alien and say, “I hope you can fight too.”

He grins. For a moment, his eyes glint in the light, and his canines look far longer and sharper than they have a right to be. “Oh, yes.”

I match his grin. “Good. Let’s go get the Nightmare.”

27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Dr. Wright leads us deeper into the heart of the facility, her alien stalking at her side. They make an odd duo—her so slim and proper in her business attire, him so tall and moving with an odd off-kilter gait—but they walk with a shared determination and a predatory sort of grace. They fall into the same rhythmic step without seeming to notice, while I hurry along behind them, trying to keep up and desperately wishing Somnus were here.

The hallways grow narrower, the doors sparser; it feels like we’re traveling into a maze. It’s all a bit dizzying, and I’m glad to have Dr. Wright here with me instead of trying to find my way through alone. Subject X-11, orX, as Dr. Wright calls him, is a steadying presence as well; unnerving and uncanny to look at, yes, but if he’s anything like Somnus, I know we’re lucky to have him on our side.

Yet still, I can’t fight the sensation that I am only going further and further into enemy territory. The sort of place that someone doesn’t come out of alive.

I can’t stop thinking about what Dr. Wright said, and Somnus somewhere in this building, helpless and hurting, at Director Ramsey’s mercy. I need to save him, no matter how dangerous it is. I don’t know what will happen to me if I continue to pursue this path—even if we escape, what future can Somnus and I really have after this plan has gone so horribly, bloodily wrong?—but I do know that I refuse to live the rest of my life without him.

The depth of my feelings for him frightens me. I don’t know when I started thinking about him as a necessary part of my life. He’s far more than a monster, or a test subject, or a deliciously dark dream. The way I care about him is something I haven’t let myself feel in a very long time. But even though it scares me to feel like this, now that I have him, I willnotlet him go.

Eventually, Dr. Wright brings us to another door. It has a thumb-imprint lock, rather than a keycard.

“This leads to Ramsey’s personal working space,” she says. “I’ve never had the clearance to enter. But…” She looks up at her alien. “If you could, X? Director Ramsey.”

“I remember him well,” X says, and raises one hand. It shifts in front of my eyes, and he presses a thumb to the pad. The door clicks open.

“Wait,” I say. “If he can just turn into Ramsey, then he can stop this—”

“No,” Dr. Wright says before I can even finish. “I’m sorry, truly, but we can’t risk that right now.” She meets my eyes, her own gaze steady. “I’ll explain everything later. Right now, focus on getting to X-13. Then we can handle the rest.”

I bite my tongue and we enter another control room.

It’s smaller than the last but has video feeds covering areas that the last one lacked. It’s fully abandoned, like the other one. Yet somehow I doubt the director fled the building when the chaos started. If anything, it may have driven him to proceed with his plan to dispose of the Nightmare more immediately. My chest goes tight at the thought, and I frantically search the screens for signs of Somnus’s shadowy form.

I suck in a startled breath as I finally see him. The camera feed is like something straight out of a horror movie. Somnus is strapped to a table. He flickers around the edges and shudders in agitation, in a way that reminds me of how he responded to sound 3 when I first tested it. The director must be using that noise to keep him contained and weak; I can’t imagine how he could be held down like that otherwise.

Director Ramsey is standing in the room, looking down at him with a terrifyingly cold expression. On the wall behind him, I catch a glint of metal, and realize with a lurch of my stomach that it’s a set of tools. Scalpels and saws and other surgical instruments made of a multitude of materials. Dr. Wright was correct: he intends to try to dissect the Nightmare, after somehow making him physical enough to contain in one form. Judging by how weak Somnus appears, he won’t be able to defend himself.

I press a hand to the screen, wishing I could reach out to him. “There,” I tell Dr. Wright, my voice wavering. “How do we get to him?”

When she doesn’t respond immediately, I tear my eyes away from the terrible sight and look at her. Her attention, and that of X, are focused on a different screen, one featuring a group of armored, armed forces moving carefully through the halls.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“Looks like he called in reinforcements,” Dr. Wright says. She chews her lip as she glances through the other screens and pauses on one featuring the gore-stained Siren, wandering through the halls. “She’ll slow them down, but I doubt she can stop them.”

“What can we do?” I ask. “Is there any way to lock down the facility from here, prevent them from following us?”

She shakes her head. “If they’re here at all, they’re on the director’s orders, and he’s granted them full clearance.” She jerks her head at the feed of him standing over the Nightmare. “And I would guess he knows we’re here, and knows exactly what we’re trying to do. They’ll be coming for us.”

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