Then I stepped over another crumpled form as I entered what looked like an operating room. Medical equipment hung from the ceiling in various spots, while scalpels, bone saws, and other sharp instruments rested on a table next to a large metal slab with restraint straps. That table was empty, but the tubular machine on the far side of the room wasn’t. Tate was inside it, tubes protruding everywhere from him, while Juan and Cooper stood next to a control panel.

Dave came out of the corner, lowering a bloody M-4 carbine.

“Damn glad to see you, Cat,” he said, giving me a brief, fierce hug. Then he held on to my arm when I tried to get to the others.

“Wait. They’re getting the liquid silver out of Tate.”

I looked around with grim understanding. I didn’t remember being here, but this must be the machine Dr. Obvious alluded to when she said the liquid silver had been dissolved with nitric acid and flushed out. That meant the restraint table and multiple instruments were for lesser cases when the silver could be cut out, not that it would make it any less agonizing.

“How did Tate get silvered?”

Dave started to answer, then stared over my shoulder. Denise and Bones were behind me, and it was a toss-up as to which of them had shocked him more.

“Denise can shapeshift, and Bones was playing possum,” I summarized. “He’ll regenerate fully when he drinks more blood.”

“Now I’ve seen everything,” Dave muttered, shaking his head. “Tate’s restraint clamps were still on when they put him back in his cell after you drank from him. When the doors unexpectedly opened, we went for the pricks, but one of them managed to hit the switch that turned on the juice in them.”

Flooding Tate’s body with liquid silver. I shuddered at the memory of how excruciating that felt.

“They’ll have it out soon, it didn’t get too deep,” Dave went on.

“How do they know how to operate the machine?”

He gave me a bleak look. “They picked it up after all the times it’s been used to get silver out of them.”

Tate mumbled something that sounded like my name, but his voice was barely audible above the noise the machine made.

“I’m here,” I called out.

“Not you, querida,” Juan said, glancing up before he pressed more buttons. “Katie. She ran when the cells opened. Have you seen her?”

“Is she an employee?” If so, I hated to break it to them, but she was probably dead.

“The little girl,” Cooper said impatiently.

I winced. How awful if someone had brought their kid to work today of all days . . . wait.

“The child in the cell?” I asked, memory surfacing of the one I’d glimpsed when the guards wheeled me past.

Dave let out a grunt. “Yeah, that child. Seen her?”

“Footsteps,” a guttural voice stated behind me.