Angelique eyed Liv and Link coldly. “I’m sure the two of you are familiar with the terms. Mortals have all sorts of symbiotic relationships. It’s not as if you people can survive on your own.”
“Us people? You’re getting a little personal, aren’t you?” Liv sounded offended. “We all want the same thing. To stop Silas and right the incredible wrongs that have been perpetrated here.”
John paced in front of the door. “If Silas is siphoning off their powers for his Frankenstein Caster experiments, where are the Casters he’s putting them into?” Like he did with Angelique—that was the part he didn’t say.
The Cataclyst shrugged. “I was already part of the Menagerie, so he took me right out of my cell. I don’t know about the others before me. And honestly, I don’t really care.”
Liv looked up from the lab notes. “It says something in here about ‘incubation’ and ‘long-term storage for SD Sample.’ ”
“Does it mention what kind of methods he’s using?” Necro asked.
John peered through the window cut into the door. When he turned around again, he looked sick. “I’m not sure you want to know.” He looked right at Link. “But you need to see this, man.” He paused, frowning. “You all do.”
Link worried that being back in the labs was messing with John’s head more than he was letting on. Sure, this place was creepy, but they were in Silas Ravenwood territory, and he was even more twisted than Abraham.
“What kind of freak show does Silas have in there?” Link asked, making his way over to the door. “Vampires and werewolves?”
“Worse.” John pushed the door open, and a trail of luminescent light stretched across the floor.
Link gave John a gentle whack on the shoulder as he walked by. “Everything’s gonna be okay, dude.”
John swallowed hard. “There’s nothing okay about this. There never was.” Liv slid her hand into his and squeezed it.
Link caught a glimpse of the room out of the corner of his eye.
What the hell?
It was dark inside, illuminated by hundreds of thin filaments hanging from the ceiling like glowing fishing lines. The lines were connected to what looked like magical cocoons spun from the same luminescent filament.
Link heard footsteps behind him, and someone gasped. He probably would’ve had the same reaction, except he was holding his breath, convinced the slightest sound might snap the magical strings and send the cocoons and their fragile contents crashing to the ground.
Their contents.
Link couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing—dozens of men, women, and guys and girls around his age hanging from the ceiling.
Angelique glided past him and walked to the center of the room, her face tilted toward the human cocoons above her. “You’ve been busy since I left, haven’t you, Silas? It’s a regular factory in here.”
“A power factory.” Liv shuddered.
Floyd stumbled toward Angelique and Necro, who was already walking in the Cataclyst’s direction. “What is he doing to them? They look dead.”
“They’d probably wish they were if they had any awareness of what Silas was doing to them,” Liv said.
“Which is?” Sampson asked, walking up behind Floyd.
Liv stared up at the imprisoned Casters. “Suspended animation.”
Link followed John and Liv as they joined the others in the middle of the room, below the sea of bodies. He tried not to imagine one of them falling on him, but it was tough.
“It’s all right here in the notes.” Liv tapped on the page. “He’s using them as incubators until he’s ready to drain their powers. Then he moves them into the room we were just in to do the extraction.”
“And he has other rooms for the infusions,” Angelique said.
“We’ve got to cut them down,” Sampson said as Lucille wove her way between his ankles.
“Only if we want to kill them.” Liv was still reading. “According to these notes, it’s a Cast—the Dreamless Sleep. If you touch them without breaking the Cast first, they’ll die.”
“We can’t leave them here like this,” Floyd said.
“You’re right.” Sampson walked over to the steel drawers lining one side of the room and started pulling them open and rummaging through the contents one by one. “There has to be a way to help them.”
“That’s the problem with Mortals,” Angelique said. “No sense of self-preservation. You’re always so worried about everyone else. You’re like Boy Scouts, and just as goofy. No wonder you’re always getting yourselves killed.” She swatted Liv on the back of the head as she walked by. “It’s the way we get you every time. We give you a shiny ball to keep you occupied while we kill your friends … destroy the world … I’m sure you can fill in the blank.” She pointed up at the bodies. “Those are the shiny balls. Would you rather stay here and try to break a Cast we know nothing about or find your friend?”
“Shut up,” Link said.
“I’m laying out the odds for you, because they’re not in your favor. What are you going to do, save the world? That only happens in Mortal movies.”
Sam shut a metal drawer a little hard, and Link looked over at him. The Darkborn had a weird look on his face. “I found”—he held up a glass vial—“something.”