第6章

There was no day or night underground.

The only way I could tell time was the countdown on the screen. The children had been gone for eight hours.

Ward had put silver alloy bands on their wrists, claiming they monitored heart rate. On the surveillance feed, all six were shivering. The isolation chambers were kept at fifty-four degrees. The bands suppressed their abilities. They couldn't even shift into snake form to warm each other.

I recited every temperature and feeding record from my pregnancy journal to the medical staff and demanded they add it to the charts. Ward had my words logged as "delusional parenting protocols," then had the temperature dropped another four degrees. Two minutes later, Asher started shaking. The observer immediately wrote "thermal instability" in the report.

The food sent in was only bread, vegetables, and a sliver of meat.

Asher gave his portion of meat to Finn and told Blake to hold their youngest brother. He sat down against the wall himself. His color drained steadily until he finally pitched forward beside the metal bed.

"Raise the temperature!" I slammed my palms against the glass. "They need high-calorie food. Take the bands off. They're going to die!"

Ward pulled up a video.

The footage showed me thrashing and kicking after the stun gun, blood smeared around my mouth. Everything before that had been cut. All that remained was an out-of-control mother.

"We have reason to believe you've been fabricating the children's symptoms to maintain your role as caregiver," she said. "Until the psychiatric evaluation is complete, you're excluded from all medical decisions."

"Then why are you even talking to me?"

Ward placed a blood-draw kit on the table. "Because maternal samples help us understand them. Provide blood and reproductive tissue, and you can have ten minutes of visitation."

I knew she was using me.

But on the monitors, Finn no longer had the strength to sit up.

"I see all six children first."

"After the samples."

When the needle went in, I realized they'd used the line to sedate me. When I woke, my abdomen was covered with unfamiliar markings, and old delivery injuries were throbbing again. Ward said the exam was routine. She never told me what she'd done, and she never asked for my consent.

The ten-minute visit finally began.

All six children were brought into the same room, but they were too weak to stand. I had barely gathered Finn into my arms when his body went slack.

No breathing.

"Finn!"

I pressed him against my chest, trying to warm him with my own body heat. I gave him mouth-to-mouth and counted the seconds.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen...

The other five gathered around me. Asher was barely conscious himself, but he pressed his hand against his brother's foot. Blake bit down on his own lip, not daring to cry.

On the eighteenth second, Finn finally gasped. A cry as weak as a kitten's escaped him.

Before I could hold him tighter, Ward snatched him away.

"Note: following maternal contact, the subject exhibited severe respiratory suppression."

"It's the silver bands and the cold!"

"Take her back."

Before the door closed, I saw Finn reaching for me over the nurse's shoulder. His arm made it halfway up before it fell.

Ward delivered six transfer orders.

"After the observation period, they'll be sent to six different states. Sign permanent guardianship transfer, and you'll at least receive an annual report."

"And if I don't sign?"

"Finn's temperature can't stabilize. We'll prepare him for a Level Four core biopsy before midnight."

I flipped to the back of the document, where a line in tiny print read "possible damage to transformation core." Ward pulled the papers away before I could read further. But I memorized the project number and the lead surgeon's name, scratching them into the underside of the bed frame with my fingernail in case the drugs made me forget.

She made it sound like a routine exam. She never told me what the needle would extract from behind Finn's sternum. She never mentioned he might die on the table.

Third Person’s POV

At that same moment, Cassian stood inside our cabin.

Seven unwashed bowls still sat on the table. Wedged in the floorboard cracks were the metal barbs from a stun gun, next to a dried smear of my blood. In one corner of the basement lay the black-gold snakeskin Asher had just shed.

When Cassian touched the blood, the mate mark on his palm cracked open. The pain dropped him to his knees.

A few seconds passed before he stood again.

"County transfer records point to the St. Grace Foundation," Hayes reported. "Once the files entered the state system, the addresses were changed to twelve shell facilities."

"Seal every record." Cassian looked at the seven bowls. "Cross-reference cooling power usage, medical transport vehicles, underground construction, and midnight data overwrites. I need an exact address."