I’m deciding whether to knock Sylas out or the guards—which way would make things easier—when Mathew arrives at the top of the wall. He peers down at us with his pale eyes, taking in the situation, then turns and very unsteadily climbs down. The guard with the weapon aimed at Sylas says something to him in a low tone when he approaches us.
Mathew shakes his head and shoves away the knife the guard’s holding then smiles at me. “I’m glad you made it back and that you brought Sylas with you.”
Sylas is startled, but he still keeps his head down because he has to. “How do you know my name?”
He ignores Sylas’s question, eying the knife in Sylas’s hand still pointed at the guard. “Let me apologize for the way the guards treated you. Sometimes they get a little too protective of our colony, but then again, I can’t blame them.”
Sylas hesitates, his muscles stiff, then finally he turns the weapon back around and hands it to the guard with an irritated look on his face.
“I’ll let it go this time,” Sylas says in a low tone. Even though I can’t see his eyes from below his hood, the warning in his tone causes even me to shiver. “But next time I won’t.”
The guard takes the weapon, glaring at him, yet he doesn’t say a word. He quickly climbs back up the wall and the other guard follows.
Mathew motions for us to follow him and we all climb up the wall and down the other side. As we move, I notice that Mathew looks different then when I saw him just a couple of days ago. His eyes and skin seems to be much more pallid and he really struggles to get up that wall. I wonder if he is starting to change faster now.
Mathew picks up his walking stick and then we head down a dirt path towards a building. “Did you find the papers, Kayla?” He looks at me inquisitively, waiting for my response.
I pat Sylas’s pocket. “They’re right here,” I tell him.
Relief floods across his face as his legs shake in the attempt to bear his weight. “Good. Let’s hurry inside my lab and see if I can make sense out of them.”
The word lab sends a red flag up in my head and apparently in Sylas, too, because he slams to a stop, grabbing my arm and pulling me back.
“Wait just a minute... you knew my name…” He trails off, muttering under his breath. “Yet you can’t really see my face beneath the hood.”
“Because I could tell who it was,” a familiar voice rises behind us, causing Sylas and I to spin around.
My jaw drops at the sight of Aiden standing behind us with his hood pulled down and a dark smile on his face. “Glad to see you’re back to your old self, brother.”
Aiden stares at us as we remain silent, looking back and forth between the two of us like he’s waiting for us to say something. We don’t because we don’t know what to say; what’s going on? Why is he here? Does he remember telling Monarch about the papers? Or maybe he doesn’t even understand any of this?
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he asks.
I manage a fake smile, deciding that I’ll play along until I figure out what’s going on. “Of course I am, but… what happened to you? Sylas and I tried to find you after we were separated.”
“I managed to escape the abominations,” he says. “I went back to the cave and waited, but when you didn’t show up, I decided that maybe I missed you and you’d come back here.” He gestures at the town that surrounds us. “So I came back, too.”
I’m not buying it at all, though at the same time, maybe that’s what he thinks really happened. Especially after what I heard Monarch say to Gabrielle in the street about him telling the truth against his own free will.
Aiden assesses Sylas with his brows dipped together. “I thought you changed into an abomination?”
“Apparently, their bite doesn’t change Day Takers like we thought,” Sylas lies. I’m glad he does. “All that happened was that I got sick... Kayla found me hidden inside one of the buildings.”
He looks skeptical as sunlight bathes over him, reminding me what he is. “Well, it’s good to know that you’re both safe… and alive.”
He’s not lying, which isn’t what I expected.
Mathew clears his throat behind us. “I don’t mean to break up this little reunion, but I really need to get to work on the cure if we want to have any hope of deciphering it.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer from any of us; he simply turns and walks across the path towards a two-story brick building that has two more guards by the door.
Sighing, Sylas and I follow him while Aiden stays behind us, making me uneasy and on high alert. I’m not sure what’s going on; if he’s good, bad—what the hell he is at the moment, since he’s always all over the place.
The guards look at us from the corners of their eyes as we walk by, but do not bother us. Mathew leads us inside of the building where we walk down a narrow hallway and into a room at the end, a few guards following at our heels. Everything inside the room is white, and there are glass shelves with bottles of some liquid on them. It reminds me of the room Monarch worked in; the one where I received all of my injections. I tense when I realize this.
There’s a table in the center of the room, shiny and made of metal, which Mathew walks over to. “Can I see the papers?”
I glance at Sylas, wondering what we should do. He wavers, looking at Aiden and then at Mathew, knowing we don’t have much time. I can tell Aiden and this room is making him nervous. Still, he takes the papers out of his pocket and puts them down on the table.
Mathew picks up the stack of papers and thumbs through them. He shakes his head as he begins to place them into separate stacks. As he continues to place the papers into various piles, Aiden looks around the room, seeming bored, while Sylas watches Aiden with a look that says if he makes one move, Sylas will hurt Aiden badly. The problem is, I’m not so sure Sylas is stronger than Aiden anymore.
“There, that should do it,” Mathew says. He quickly picks up the stack of papers and starts reading them over. “I’m going to need a bit of time to go through them.” He has an intense look on his face as he reads whatever’s on them. “You might want to go check on Maci, too, Kayla. She was asking for you.” He sets one of the pieces of papers down. “She’s in the next building over.”