“Just do it. Nothing you do to me will be worse than when he leaves my head.”

As Sato readied the syringe, the needle only an inch from the vein, he looked up at Renee’s face. “Sometimes you talk like you’re this Chu guy, and sometimes like yourself. You really are crazy.”

“You wouldn’t understand unless you were infected. Stick me.”

Sato held his breath, then jammed the needle into Renee’s vein. He quickly pulled back on the syringe pump, relieved to see dark red fluid fill the plastic vial. He finished, pulled out the needle, then replaced the plastic cover. He put the whole thing into his right pocket. He put a bandage on her arm to stop the bleeding.

“Done,” he said, finally taking in a huge breath like he’d just surfaced after diving for oysters.

“That blood will never see the light of day; you understand that, right? The only way you will leave this mountain is by giving it up.”

“Just show me what you wanted to show me.” Half of him wanted to push her down and run for the elevator, but he knew he couldn’t. George would desperately need any information he could gather in his quest to find a cure or antidote.

“This way.” She walked toward a branch of the tunnel leading to the right, but paused after a couple of steps and turned toward Sato, her face devoid of expression. “What you’re about to see, you’ll never forget. Never. I promise you.”

Chapter

28

~

Trapped

With each step down the wet and musty passage of stone, the noises around Sato grew in volume. The screams and wails and shouts and piercing cries for help made him feel as if invisible bugs were crawling across his skin, trying to find a place to burrow toward his heart. His stomach clenched into a tight wad of tissue. He braced himself for the sight ahead, wondering if he’d ever see George or Mothball or Rutger or his other friends again.

They reached a place where a dirty curtain was stretched across the entire width of the hallway, swaying slightly from a breeze behind it. The awful sounds became ear-piercing, no longer muffled by distance. Sato was now only a few feet away from discovering whatever was wrong with these people.

“Prepare yourself,” Renee said. Then she reached out and yanked the curtain to the side.

For the second time in the last hour, Sato’s knees buckled. He fell to the ground, his shins slamming onto the hard stone as he stared at the chaos in front of him.

The passageway opened into a large chamber, tables and chairs scattered about the raggedy carpet, most of them broken or turned upside down. Hundreds of people—horrible, terrified, creepy-looking people—filled the room in a state of utter madness.