Page 40 of Minding the Minotaur
“I’ll leave you both to enjoy breakfast,” he says. “Have a productive day.”
When he’s gone, Sammy and I both fall about laughing.
We finish our breakfast in a leisurely way, and Sammy asks me about life here in the Labyrinth. I love that she’s so interested, but I feed her small bites of information, mostly about my escapades at school. Nothing too heavy. There’s centuries of conflict and bloodshed in our past, and all she’s ever known up until a few days ago is Sparkle City. I don’t want to say anything that might scare her.
Even so, when Tippy comes to take our plates, I realize we’ve whiled away a good hour. I’ve got almost as much of a buzz from Sammy leaning her pretty chin on her hands, big blue eyes trained on my face as she listens to me, as I did from our passionate make-out session last night.
Almost.
“Guess I’ll see you at the car in ten minutes,” she says as we finally vacate the table. “Anything specific you’d like me to wear—under my uniform?”
My tail twitches as I consider this.
“That sexy bra you had on yesterday. Be prepared for me to rip it off you,” I growl.
She waggles her brows, eyes dancing. “Your wish is my command,” she says as she skips out of the room, her ponytail bouncing.
Len is waiting in the jeep when we walk out. He gives his usual sharp-toothed grin, scaly lids sliding sideways over yellow eyes.
In the back seat, Sammy and I furtively touch fingers, and I feel the excitement in my groin rising as each tunnel passes. The clinic is relatively close to my house, so there’s not much to see on the drive—just residential homes like mine built into the rock walls, most without any garden at all, just a pot plant or two kept alive under a solar lamp near the front door. Sammy’s nose is glued to the window, nevertheless.
“Don’t you get claustrophobic in these tunnels?” she asks.
“I guess we’re used to it.”
“What happens if there’s a fire?”
“How d’you mean?”
“From the flames in the sconces.”
“The gas is actually cool,” I explain. “You could hold your hand in the flame with no ill effects at all.”
“Wow! Really? What is it?”
“It’s called looma. We dig it out from level nine. Sparkle uses most of it, but you wouldn’t have been told that.”
She pulls a face. “Like everything else we’ve not been told.”
When we draw up outside the clinic, Sammy gazes upward, clearly impressed by the glass façade that fronts the building. The clinic is set into a higher part of the Labyrinth, so the ultra-modern building stretches up several stories, made of iridescent reflective glass panels. Each panel is subtly lit up from behind with blue light. Above the revolving doors (the only set we have here in the Labyrinth) is the insignia of the human company that runs it: a double helix topped with a serpent’s head. We’ve never been told the company’s name, but we monsters are all familiar with what we call “the Human’s Serpent” logo. It’s on all our medical forms and medicine bottles.
“This building does remind me of Sparkle,” Sammy muses.
“It’s owned by humans, so yeah, I guess it would,” I answer.
“So what else happens here?”
I shrug. “They give us regular health check-ups, and there’s a vaccine program for different species. I guess the rationale is that we need to be in good health to do the work.”
She twists her fingers together, frowning. “I’m so sorry, Arlo.”
“For what.”
“For the way you get treated, like our… slaves.”
“It’s not your fault,” I reassure her. I would never blame Sammy for the authorities’ behavior; she’s been kept in the dark as much as we have. “Some of us do quite well out of the research projects. Like me. And at least we’ve got decent health.”
“I guess, but you pay a big price.”
