It’s eerily quiet when I open the door and step inside the building where I make my way down the dusty hallway with my knife poised out in front of me; always ready, always on guard, focusing one step ahead, focusing on fighting. I have to be. I don’t know when anything’s going to show up.
I hear some movement and rustling towards the back of the hallway, and as I get closer, I see Mathew through the doorway to his lab. He’s wearing a white coat and is holding some vials filled with various colors of liquid, carefully measuring as he pours each one into a large, silver flask.
He glances up from the flask as I enter and startles back with a concerned look on his face. At the same time that he ends up spilling a drop or two of the liquid onto the silver table in front of him.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, setting the empty vials down, his fingers trembling. “Have the Highers’ army arrived already?”
“Not yet.” I cross the room and glace at the jars on the counter filled with an array of liquids. I wonder what is in them. “Sylas went to get the other Day Takers to help us.” I wonder if I should tell him about Maci and her gift. “And Nichelle’s setting up around town, but honestly it could be days before the Highers’ army shows up. Or even weeks, depending on how hard it is for the Highers to reach a decision.”
He sets the flask down onto the table beside the vials. “Well, at least we’ll be ready for them when they get here. And Nichelle is a very good fighter... I’d trust her completely with my life, but she isn’t you, Kayla. I’d feel better if you were the one in charge of the others.”
“That isn’t what I’m supposed to do be doing.” It sort of slips out of me and there’s no taking it back.
“What do you mean by that?” he wonders, resting his weight against the table, his skin dripping with sweat.
I dither, deciding if I should tell him about Maci. He seems trustworthy, yet at the same time, a lot of people do. Then again, Maci said I should talk to him. “Maci told me that I’m supposed to protect you and that I need to talk to you about why I do.”
“Why would Maci tell you that?” he asks.
“Because…” I sit up on the countertop, letting my legs hang over the edge of the corner, and put my knife in my lap. “She can see things before they happen… she told me that I was going to save the world.”
Mathew crosses his arms and his pale eyes flood with curiosity. “I wonder if that was from the experiments.”
“She wasn’t just born that way?”
He shakes his head. “Humans weren’t born with extraordinary gifts, which are why the Highers were so determined to create them.”
I’m not sure if I believe him or not, though, considering he used to be one of the doctors and the cause for all this messing around with humanity. Maybe it was that thought process—that humans had no gifts—that helped their strive to perfection escalate.
He scratches his head. “Did Maci by chance tell you how to save the world? Or how to find the cure even?” he asks, hopeful. It makes me have less hope that he’ll be able to find a cure.
His expression sinks as I shake my head. “She didn’t tell me how to save it… she never gives instructions, just tidbits of information that will lead me to do the right thing. And she told me that I needed to protect you,” I tell him.
He sighs and turns back to the vials on the table. “Yeah, I guess things can’t ever be that easy.”
“No, they really can’t,” I agree, reflecting on my difficult past and everything I’ve gone through to get to this exact point. “But what about you?” I ask. “Did you figure out anything at all yet?”
His pales eyes light up as he picks up a glass vial and holds it up to the light. There is a purple liquid inside the vial that reflects through the glass. “Not yet.” He lowers the vial. “But in the papers Aiden left behind, Monarch made several references to how you seemed not to be immune to the original virus in the beginning… that your body reacted to the virus just like everyone else, which means that somewhere along the lines, that changed; you became immune.” He places the vial back down on the counter. “So I think the answers might start with you.”
I already knew that. I hop off the counter and walk over to him. “So, wait a minute. Are saying that he purposefully injected me with the virus to see if I would turn into a vampire? And then what? I’d turn? How the hell did he change me back?”
“That’s the answer we need.” He gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Kayla. He was determined to find a way to create perfection and he didn’t care about those he was hurting. Or killing.” He pauses. “He did try to make up for it—tried to reverse the damage he’d done.” Mathew starts organizing the vials in rows.
I’m burning in my own anger. Monarch had changed me into a vampire at one point. I was once one of those disgusting monsters crying out at night; hungry and looking to eat flesh and blood. Just like Sylas before he changed.
I swallow my emotions down because I know that I have to—or maybe it’s how I’ve been programmed. “Mathew, there’s something I have to tell you.” I watch as he sorts through vials, reading the label on them. I hope that I can trust him. “Something important.”
He glances up at me with a concerned look on his face. “Kayla, what is it… you look a little ill.”
I touch my cheek to my hand, wondering what ill looks like on me. “I feel fine, except I need to tell you something… I just need to know that I can trust you.”
He nods, standing up as straight as his crooked back will allow him to. “You can trust me with your life. I promise.”
I absorb his truth, feeling a little better. “Back when I went to get the papers and Sylas was there… well, he wasn’t there as himself but a… but an abomination…”
He holds up his hands. “Wait, Sylas was an abomination?”
I reluctantly nod. “He was, but then he bit me and well…” I trail off as Mathew’s eyes widen.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asks in disbelief, dropping the vial he’s holding onto the floor. It shatters at our feet and scatters into fragments around us.
“Because... I wasn’t sure I could trust you,” I say. It’s my initial instinct to mistrust, to keep things to myself, to put walls up. “And besides, it doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t turn back into a human… he turned back into a Day Taker. Plus, he’s bit me before and it didn’t do anything at all to him; just made me pass out.”