Lust and Desire in a Zombie Apocalyptic World

Chapter 257: Chapter 256 - Back To The Lab

Iyisha’s POV

Iyisha woke up cold and moving before she understood where she was. Her shoulder hit glass, her knee slipped against the white floor, and pain stabbed through the back of her neck when she tried to sit up. She grabbed the sore spot with one hand and opened her eyes to glass in front of her, glass behind her, thick metal on both sides, and a small camera fixed high in the corner.

She looked down and froze.

They had taken everything. Her clothes were gone, along with her knife, Malcolm’s gun, and the strap around her wrist. She crossed one arm over her chest and pulled her knees up, but the room gave her nowhere to hide.

The floor was white. The walls were bare. There was no bed, no chair, no blanket, no loose tool, only a drain in one corner and the camera watching from above.

"No," she said, pushing herself up too fast.

Her palm hit the front glass. Then her fist. The sound came back dull, and the glass did not move. She hit it again, harder, then again until pain cut across her knuckles and blood smeared against the surface. "Let me out!"

She already knew it would not break. Members of the TAL had shot this kind of glass during the raid, and the bullets had only marked it before dropping to the floor. That did not stop her. She kept hitting until her breath broke and her hand shook too hard to close properly.

She turned away from the glass and searched the metal walls with both hands. Her fingers ran along the corners, the floor seam, the side panels, anything that might give. Nothing moved. She dropped to her knees and checked the drain, digging at the edge until her nails scraped the floor, but it was fixed tight and too narrow to matter.

Her neck throbbed again.

She touched the swelling, and the memory came back.

Lance had swung the pipe at the soldier’s rifle. The shot came before he reached him. Lance folded around his stomach and dropped, and Iyisha screamed while the soldier dragged her toward the back room.

She caught the doorframe with both hands and held on, nails scraping against the wood, shoulder burning as he pulled. She kicked back, twisted, tried to slam her heel into his knee, then looked back once and saw Lance on the floor with Marybeth dropping beside him and blood already spreading under her hands.

Malcolm was still outside.

Iyisha had opened her mouth to scream for him.

Then something hit the back of her neck.

Hard.

The memory ended there.

Iyisha’s hand fell from her neck. She stared at the glass, breathing too fast now, her chest pulling tight as the room came back around her. "Lance," she said.

No answer.

She stepped closer to the glass. "Marybeth."

Nothing.

She hit the glass with both hands. "Malcolm!"

The corridor outside stayed empty.

Only then did she see the other rooms across from her. Glass cells lined the opposite side, each one separated by thick metal walls. People lay inside on metal beds with tubes in their arms and masks over their mouths. Some had machines beside them. Some were so still she had to watch their chests to know they were breathing. One woman’s fingers twitched once, then stopped.

Iyisha backed away until her spine hit the metal wall.

She was inside one of them now.

Her stomach turned, and her hand went there before she could stop it. She pulled it away fast and pressed it against her mouth instead.

"No," she whispered.

Lance might be dead. Malcolm would come if he knew where she was. They had known exactly when and where to pull her away. Where they we’re going.

She looked up at the camera.

The red light stayed on.

Iyisha wiped her bleeding knuckles against her thigh and forced herself to stand straight, even with her legs shaking and nothing covering her.

"You wanted me," she said, staring at the camera. "You have me."

Her voice shook, but she stayed on her feet.

A woman’s voice came through the speaker above her.

Clear. Calm. Educated.

"Iyisha Clarcke. You are inside the ERF Laboratory. You are in a secure holding room. If you remain cooperative, you will not be harmed."

Iyisha kept her eyes on the glass in front of her. Her knuckles were still bleeding. Her chest was still rising too fast from the panic, but she forced her face flat.

"Let me out."

"You are safe."

Iyisha almost laughed.

"I want to talk to Dr. Frankenstein."

There was a short pause on the other end.

The woman answered in the same even tone. "Dr. Stein has been informed that you are awake."

"I’m not answering anything until I see him."

The woman did not rise to it. "Your cooperation will help us move this process faster."

Iyisha said nothing.

The speaker went quiet.

She stayed standing for a while after that because sitting felt too much like giving in. Her back hurt. Her neck throbbed where they had struck her. Her skin stayed cold in the white room, and every few seconds she had to fight the urge to cover herself again even though there was no point. The camera in the corner saw everything. The glass across from her reflected enough of her shape back that she wanted to smash it.

She did not know how long passed.

A few minutes. Maybe more.

Time blurred in the room. There was nothing to measure it with except her own breathing, the ache in her legs, and the blank stretch of corridor in front of her. After a while, even the other glass rooms seemed to fade at the edges. Her eyes stayed open, but her thoughts kept drifting and snagging on the same image.

Lance dropping.

Marybeth on her knees.

Malcolm outside.

Then black.

She stared ahead until the corridor looked flat and unreal. Her mind went somewhere else without fully leaving. The room stayed in front of her, but it felt far away. Even the cold did not reach her the same.

The sound of locks snapping open pulled her back hard.

The whole front glass slid up with a low mechanical hum.

Iyisha took a quick step back.

Two soldiers stood outside with rifles on them and stun batons strapped at their thighs. Same clean gear. Same blank faces. One was the man who had held her arm in the store. She knew the shape of him now. The stance.

"What do you want from me?" she asked.

Neither answered.

The speaker came on again. The same woman.

"Dr. Stein is now available to meet you."

Iyisha looked at the open doorway of her glass room, then at the two soldiers waiting there. She thought about refusing. Thought about making them drag her. Thought about biting, kicking, clawing, forcing them to show their hand.

But she knew that would change nothing so she walked forward.

The cold hit worse outside the room.

The corridor was colder than the glass cell. Cleaner too. The floor shone under the overhead lights. There was no dirt anywhere. Everything looked wiped down, arranged, watched.

She kept her chin up as she walked between the soldiers, but the exposure still crawled over her skin. Naked. Barefoot. Bloody knuckles. Bruise forming on her neck. Every step reminded her exactly what they had taken from her.

They passed the other glass rooms.

Up close, they were worse.

Some of the people inside were hooked to more machines than she had seen from a distance. One man had dark restraints around both wrists even in whatever coma they had him in. Another room held a woman with half her head shaved and gauze wrapped around one temple. Her eyes were open, but they did not track anything. She looked through the ceiling like her body was there and the rest of her had gone somewhere else.

Then one woman saw Iyisha.

Her eyes widened at once. Recognition.

She lifted one hand weakly and pointed through the glass.

Iyisha knew her.

She had been one of the people in the rooms when they had first broken into the lab. One of the ones who had looked half-dead and half-gone. Iyisha dropped her gaze fast and kept walking.

That woman had seen her outside the glass.

Now she was the one being led past like a specimen.

They walked deeper into the facility. Past more sealed doors. Past two turns in the corridor. Past a heavy security door that opened only after one of the soldiers pressed his hand to a panel and leaned his face into a scanner. Every step inward made it clearer.

This was not a holding wing.

This was the center of it.

They stopped at a small room with no windows.

Inside was only a metal table bolted to the floor and two matching chairs bolted across from each other. A folded set of clothes sat on the table. Gray drawstring pants. A plain black shirt. Underwear. No shoes.

Iyisha’s body moved before her pride could stop it.

She stepped inside.

One soldier stayed at the door while the other motioned once at the clothes. "Get dressed."

She grabbed them at once and pulled them on fast, fingers clumsy from cold and dried blood. The shirt smelled clean. Too clean. Like detergent and storage. The pants were slightly too big, but she cinched the drawstring tight and did not care.

When she was done, the soldiers backed out and the door shut behind them with a heavy click.

A camera sat in the upper corner of the room.

The speaker cracked on.

"Sit down and wait for Dr. Stein."

Iyisha looked at the chair.

Then at the camera.

Then she sat.

Not because they told her to.

Because she wanted to be steady when he came in.

She rested both forearms on the table and looked at her knuckles. The blood had dried in dark lines down the sides of her hands. The skin around the cuts had already tightened. Her neck still hurt. Her stomach turned once, then settled into a dull sick feeling she could not shake.

She kept her eyes on the door.

It opened after a few minutes.

Dr. Stein walked in alone.

He looked older than she remembered from the raid. His hair sat uneven on his head, dark in some places, streaked with gray in others. Large glasses sat on his face, thick enough that his eyes looked bigger behind them, sharper too. His jaw had gone rough with gray stubble, and the collar of his lab coat was slightly crooked over a dark button-up shirt.

He closed the door behind him and stood there for one second, looking at her like she was the answer to something he had spent too long chasing.

Then he came to the table and sat down across from her.

He did not speak right away.

He set a thin folder on the table, straightened it with both hands, and tapped two fingers lightly against the metal surface.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and dry. The foreign accent was not heavy, but it stayed in the clipped ends of his words and the hard way he shaped certain consonants.

"I am glad to see you awake, Miss Clarcke."

Iyisha stared at him.

"You asked for me," he said.

She leaned forward. "What do you want from me?"

"Direct," he said. "Good." freewebnoveℓ.com

His finger tapped the metal table once.

"What I want is you. Plain and simple."

Iyisha’s jaw tightened. "I was here before. You had me in this building. You didn’t care then."

"I cared."

"You let me walk out."

"I let many things happen that day."

Her hands curled against her knees. "Now you saw what I can do, and I’m valuable?"

"Yes."

The answer came too clean.

Iyisha’s stomach tightened.

Frankenstein tilted his head, watching her reaction through the thick lenses. "Your DNA was always unusual. That part is not new. The problem was never finding unusual bodies. The problem was finding one that survived the change properly. I let you go for data"

Iyisha’s voice stayed stiff. "Data for what?"

Stein’s eyes sharpened behind the glasses.

His finger tapped faster.