“I’ve never tried this on a human being before,” William muttered, pressing some kind of mechanical syringe into the chest of the molten creature on the table. He wrenched the tool sideways, extracting something with great difficulty. The syringe was opaque, and Carlton could not see what filled it, but his heart raced as he began to suspect he knew where this was going. He tugged harder at the cables that bound him, but each time he pulled, he only wrenched his shoulders from side to side. Afton pulled the syringe out of the creature and gave a satisfied nod, then turned to Carlton.

“Usually this goes into something mechanical; something I made. I’ve never attempted it on something … sentient.” William gave Carlton a measured stare. “This will be an interesting experiment.” William lifted the mechanical syringe, carefully placing it over Carlton’s heart. Carlton gasped, but before he could try to move, William plunged the long needle into his chest. Carlton screamed, then realized distantly it was really the blond boy in the corner screaming: Carlton wheezed and gasped, but could make no sound as his chest burned with a blinding agony. Blood soaked his shirt, and it clung to his skin as he convulsed in his bonds.

“For your sake, you’d better hope my little experiment does something; because I doubt you will survive otherwise,” William said mildly. He nodded toward the cables and Carlton dropped to the ground; the pain in his chest was unthinkable, he felt like he’d been hit full-on with a shotgun. Blood sputtered from his mouth, dripping onto the floor, and Carlton curled around himself, squeezing his eyes shut as the pain intensified. Please make it stop, he thought, then, Please don’t let me die.

“Maybe the heart was too direct,” William lamented. “Well, that’s the point of this, to learn, trial and error.” He turned his gaze toward the blond-haired child, who still huddled weeping in the corner.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Steps echoed endlessly in the dark, pacing back and forth across the enclosed space.

“Are you still listening to me?” a voice rang out.

Charlie was lost in the dark, spinning silently and trying to get to the surface of whatever void she was in.

“Unlike you,” the other Charlie uttered, unseen, “I was real. I was an actual little girl, one who deserved the kind of attention showered over you. You were nothing.”

Charlie opened her eyes, the room still spinning. She tried to breathe but all her breaths stopped short of going in or out. There was a doll laying on the floor a few feet in front of her. She reached for it convulsively, like gasping for air.

“Do you want to know where my hate comes from? It’s not from this machine that I reside in, and it’s not from my past life, if that’s what you want to call it.”