Page 14 of Born Wicked
“Sebastian brought me a ton of blood just after we got engaged,” I blurt as Roman and I sit in his SUV, unmoving. “He freaked when he found me feeding at the club. We know for sure that multiple vampires who got sick fed live the day they got sick. I think Sebastian put something in the water supply. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
“Shit,” Roman curses again as he puts the car into drive once more and pulls down the road.
“Did he just… dump something into Lake Michigan?” I muse, feeling my stomach sink. The lake is so big, it looks like an ocean.
“There are multiple water cribs out in the lake,” Roman reports as he starts down the road. Where he’s going, I don’t know. “They suck water into them from the lake, and then they get pumped to the purification plants through some pipes that are a few hundred feet below the surface of the lake.”
“So, the purification plants, maybe?” I question, my brows furrowing.
Roman nods. “There’s two. We’re headed to the biggest one right now.”
When I saw the other peninsula beside Navy Pier, with its flat concrete layout and rectangular shapes, I never realized it was the largest water treatment facility in the world. Who knew that under the surface there was a whole other city of pipes and chemicals providing over one million gallons of water to the city of Chicago per minute?
Roman parks at the beginning of Navy Pier, and we walk back out and around to the other peninsula. A road stretches along the water’s edge, and up ahead, we see a security gate.
“You ever been here before?” I ask as I evaluate how we’re going to get in.
“Nope,” Roman reports. His head is on a swivel, casing the place. “Never had a reason to be worried about the water. I do know security here is decent. It was deemed one of the potential major terrorist targets after the 9/11 attack.”
“Enough security that we need to be worried?” I ask.
“We’ll find out.”
It’s not all that bad. Not what I would have expected. There’s a security gate and two security guards. Roman and I watch for about two minutes. It’s prime time for workers to get to their places of employment this morning, so there’s a steady stream of cars coming in.
In the end, Roman and I wait for the guards to be busy scanning people in, and then we hop the gate, nothing more than a blur to the human eye. And in a lull between workers, we follow one vehicle down into the belly of the treatment plant. We slip inside the doors behind an unsuspecting man with a cup of coffee in one hand and a dripping pastry in the other.
We enter into a maze of pipes and whirring machinery. It’s an endless labyrinth of tanks and pipes. Thankfully, despite the parade of people coming in, there are very few in sight of where we are now.
“Where the hell do we even begin?” I breathe, completely overwhelmed.
Without saying anything, Roman steps forward, staying behind pieces of equipment along the way. On silent feet, I follow after him.
We scan the signs around, signs with words likereservoirs, basins, clearwells, settling.
Any of them could be what we’re looking for.
If only weknewwhat we were looking for.
The noise down here is overwhelming. There’s a constant rushing of water sound. Mechanics whir and spin. There’s constant thumping. I hear pumps working away rhythmically.
Roman and I duck behind a huge pipe as we see two women walking down the center aisleway. My eyes trail them as they pass. But a sign on the wall next to a door pulls my gaze as they walk by it.
Chemical Application.
I bump Roman with my shoulder and nod toward it. Those brilliant blue eyes shift over to it, and with a simple nod, he waits for the way to be clear, then darts to the door. In a fraction of a second, I’m beside him.
It isn’t locked. Thank goodness. Roman twists the knob, and we step inside.
We find a huge room full of gigantic blue silos with pipes running in every direction imaginable. Every one of those silos is labeled with a name. Chlorine. Fluoride. Other words I don’t know how to pronounce.
“It’s got to be in here,” I say, feeling something surging in my chest.
Finally, after all these weeks with no answers, we have to be close.
We have to be.
“Let’s split up,” Roman says. “Look for anything that looks aftermarket. Abnormal. Something tucked into a place that wouldn’t be visible if you weren’t looking for it.”