Page 78 of After the Fall
“Oh, no.” Joe jumped back, stumbling into my chest. I made sure he didn’t fall, holding his shoulders while he composed himself. His body shook as he tried to catch his breath. I looked up and saw what had spooked him. In the last three cages, the creatures weren’t standing. They were sprawled on the floor, and it didn’t take a doctor or a scientist to see that they were dead.
Where the hell was Atticus? I turned Joe to face me. “Look at me, Joe. You need to pull yourself together.”
Joe gulped and nodded.
“What do you think happened to those ones?” I tried to shield the view of the bodies as we walked past those cages.
“I-I-I don’t know,” Joe stammered. He looked over his shoulder as I nudged him along. “It looks like all the ones that didn’t make it have a bandage on their head. They were probably trying a new experiment, one that they started after I left. I haven’t seen anything like that before.”
The lights in the building flickered and another bank of fluorescent lights blinked on, bathing us in glaring blue light. The door behind us buzzed.
“I thought it was the night shift.” I stepped in front of Joe, frantically searching for a way out of the disturbing room. “There.” I pointed to an open cell. “Hide under—”
Before I could shove Joe into the empty cell, a shot rang out. But I didn’t feel any pain. A net had shot out, wrapping around the two of us. From the other end it pulled tight, knocking us both to the ground.
The shadowy figure who held us was strong, and dragged the two of us from the prison room. I wriggled and fought as hard as I could, but the webbing was like a Chinese finger trap. The more I struggled, the tighter the ropes around us became. By the time we were dragged to a room with three stainless steel tables that resembled a veterinary surgery lab, I felt like I was wrapped in a cocoon. I couldn’t even turn my head.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
It wasn’t Michelle Carder’s voice, but it was one that I knew – Maximus Carder, her husband. The fucking evil mastermind behind everything happening at Genocorp.
“Let us go,” I seethed.
“Wyatt Westwood. I always had a feeling you were too big for those fancy britches you like to wear.”
I struggled, but the ropes tightened even more, this time constricting my rib cage like a python. If I kept struggling, I could injure Joe.
I took a breath and tried to remain calm. “And I thought you were just a boring businessman,” I chided.
Maximus’ laugh echoed through the room. “I might be a boring businessman, that’s true. But I’m about to become the richest, most boring businessman in the entire world.”
“No,” Joe’s voice croaked. “Your army isn’t ready yet. You need the information I stole. Or…me. Let Wyatt and that friend of his that you captured go. You can have me.” The last few words came out hushed and somber.
It wasn’t exactly how we’d planned on executing the trade, but Joe was a smart man. He knew this could be our one and only opportunity to escape from Genocorp, and our twisted prison.
“Oh, Joe.” Maximus circled our cocoon. “You’ve been in the woods far too long. We no longer need that data, or… you. Our creatures might not be perfect, but we realized we don’tneed perfect. We just need fighting machines, ones that will doexactlywhat we tell them to do.”
My heart sank. Perhaps Maximus was bluffing, but the strength in his voice dripped with the kind of confidence that I knew came with having no skin in the game. In business, the person who won the negotiation was the one who wasn’t attached to the outcome. We needed the trade to happen to save Atticus, and now me, but that would only happen if we had something they needed. And apparently, we didn’t.
The other lesson I’d learned in business was to shut up and let the other guy talk. There had to be a way out of this. The more I let Maximus speak – and he was egoic enough to go on a soliloquy – the more we had to gain.
Thankfully, he didn’t disappoint.
“But we could still use you, Wyatt. You’re well respected in the business community, and you have connections with world leaders that, let’s just say, don’t have the same respect for the Carder Corporation as they do for Grandview. With you on our team, we’ll be able to get even more money for this army.”
“I’ll never do it,” I growled.
“I thought you might say that.” Maximus rubbed his hands together. “That’s why we put together something to make you a little more…cooperative.” He emphasized that last word, and then clapped his hands, shouting, “Hamminax.”
A man in a knee-length coat stepped into view, holding what looked like a giant version of the microchipping machine Tim had used on the dogs. “Give them the upgrade,” Maximus snarled.
Hamminax, a tall, skinny man with greasy black hair and a vacant stare, pulled out what looked like a small microchip, inserting it into the machine.
Joe struggled beneath me, our binds tightening.
“That’s it,” Hamminax chuckled. “Tighten things up. This tends to hurt. A lot.”
Whatever was about to happen to us, Harper’s smile was the last thing to flash through my mind. Her laugh echoed in my ears, drowning out the whirling of the machine.