When I finally peered through the glass, I saw that rows of hospital beds lined the walls, each one outfitted with medical equipment and glowing monitors.
Casters and Incubuses were lying, unmoving, in the beds. The only clue that they were still alive was the lines zigzagging across the monitors.
A boy was lying in the last bed. He was about my age, and unlike the others, he was awake. There was no mistaking the expression on his face as he twisted and writhed in the hospital bed. This kid was in serious pain.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” The voice came from behind me, and I almost jumped out of my skin. A skinny, nervous-looking Caster in a white lab coat stood behind me.
“I—I’m lost,” I stammered, praying he’d believe me.
“This isn’t a place you want to get lost. You need to get out of here before anyone else sees you, or you’ll end up like him.” He pointed at the boy twisting in the bed.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“You’re not too smart, are you? Unless you want him experimenting on you next, leave now.”
The sound of footsteps echoed through the hall, and the doctor—or whatever he was—panicked. He opened a closet behind me and shoved me inside.
“There’s someone out here,” a harsh voice said from the other side of the door.
“Relax. It’s just the Chemist,” another man said.
“What are you doing outta the lab?” the harsh voice snapped.
“I—I needed a moment,” the Chemist stammered.
The other man laughed. “Can’t stomach your job?”
“I was told this was a genetics project. Putting a kill switch in a child and experimenting on Casters isn’t what I signed on for,” the Chemist responded.
“You signed on for whatever Abraham Ravenwood says you did. Now get back in there.”
I waited for what felt like hours before I crawled out of the closet, and I promised myself I’d never go back there again.
Nox shook off the memory as he climbed the last flight of stairs.
I’ll find you, Ridley. I promise. Just be alive when I get there.
The eighteenth floor was definitely no penthouse. With its broken railings and missing doors leading into uninhabitable apartments, it looked like the whole floor was in the process of being demolished. Only one door remained intact, with the number thirteen spray-painted across the front.
He paused at the door, praying the Chemist was alive inside. If the rest of the eighteenth floor was any indication, it was doubtful. He banged on the door and waited.
Nothing.
Screw this, Nox thought, turning the knob. It rattled a few times, and he gave the door a hard shove. The rotted wood gave way, and the stench hit his nostrils the moment the door opened—the smell of spoiled food and mold and rot.
The Chemist had to be dead. Nothing short of a decomposing corpse could smell this bad. But Nox had to know for sure. He crossed the threshold just as an old man in a filthy lab coat turned the corner.
Nox did a few mental calculations. The Chemist couldn’t have been more than forty years old the first time Nox saw him, but the man standing before him now looked closer to seventy than fifty. His fingertips were burned, a result of smoking from one homemade aluminum pipe too many.
The man in the lab coat gave him the once-over. “I can cook up whatever you’ve got and double it, if you give me a taste.” The man swayed on his feet and reached out for the wall to steady himself.
“I’m not interested in getting high,” Nox said, disgusted. “I’m looking for the Chemist.”
The man in the dingy lab coat backed away clumsily. “Sorry, don’t know anyone by that name.”
Nox pointed at his coat. “You sure about that?”
It took a moment for the junkie to realize he was wearing his lab coat. “This thing? I found it down on the first floor.” The Chemist’s voice sounded much younger than his appearance suggested, and Nox had seen enough addicts to know how drugs aged a person. He also knew what made junkies talk. He held up another hundred-dollar bill.
The Chemist’s eyes widened.
“I need some information, and I’m willing to pay for it.” What was left of this guy wasn’t worth wasting Nox’s powers on.
The desperate man shoved his hands in his pockets, practically salivating. “What is it you need to know?”
Not so fast. I have to be sure.
Nox pulled his hand back, and the junkie’s eyes followed the bill. “You can’t help me,” he said. “Only the Chemist can help me, and you’re not him. Right?”
He could almost see the internal battle waging in the man’s mind.
“What kind of information does this Chemist have that’s so important?” the man asked.
“One thing. The location of the lab where he used to work.”
“No.” The man shook his head. “You should forget whatever you know about that place.”
“Are you saying you know where it is?” Nox asked.
The Chemist’s eyes darted to the doorway. He ran his hands through his hair, almost compulsively, like he was trying to pull it out. “We shouldn’t be talking about this. If the wrong people heard you asking these kind of questions, they’d kill you—and me.”
“You let me worry about that.”
“No. That’s how people die. That’s how everyone dies.” His eyes moved restlessly, avoiding Nox.