I’d never been more alone.
“Hi, Mrs. Dmitrova,” a warm voice said.
My mother turned.
Mira stood beside us, belly huge, a big smile on her young face. She was my friend, the only one I’d made at Hallow Hall. Pregnant at sixteen, she’d been taken in by the institute to help her through her difficult situation, whatever that meant. She had no family and had been on the streets before coming here.
“Ah, Mira, you must be due soon.” My mother was clearly grateful for the change of subject.
Mira nodded. “This week.”
“This week! Goodness.”
They chattered away while I tried not to fall asleep.
Another visitors’ day passed, and my mother did nothing to help me.
Another day, left alone here to rot.
PART IV
Wake up. She needs you.
I woke with a start. The sedative had finally worn off, and I was in control of my body again. Usually I was out all night after a Sunday dosing, but maybe I was building some kind of tolerance.
I lay in bed and wondered what had roused me besides the voice in my head. Then I heard it.
There it was, a far-off sound.
A scream.
I got up and fumbled toward the door in the dark. It opened, and I rushed out into the hallway. They didn’t usually lock our doors at night, considering that patients like me were under heavy sedation and usually slept like the dead.
Mira. I ran toward the infirmary. It had to be Mira and the baby. I had no idea why I was so sure about that, I just was. I needed to see if it was her. I didn’t want her to be alone for such a scary thing.
The infirmary wasn’t teeming with doctors like I’d thought it would be. In fact, it was quiet now. I slowed and walked more cautiously through the darkened rooms. Ahead, a light glowed under the operating room door. The institute had a bare-bones medical team headed by my own physician from before I’d arrived here, Dr. Blackwood. Silence pulsed through the air of the infirmary, and tension notched along my spine. Why wasn’t Mira screaming anymore? Had she fainted? Was she unconscious?
I crept closer just as a cry split the air. A baby’s cry. It was jarring and out of place in such darkness. I crept closer, trying to see.
The baby cried and cried, and a sister in a nun’s habit appeared, bustling out the door and pushing the baby, surrounded by blankets, on a small cart. She didn’t see me.
Mira.
I swiveled back to the room just in time to glimpse blood on the floor, dark red against the white, aging tiles.
I went to step forward, but Vargas’s voice stopped me.
“Call the extraction team in. She’s young, it’s a good yield. Fresh.”
“She’s still breathing.” Pavol’s voice.
“Not for long, without lifesaving measures. You could have shown a little more finesse with the C-section, Pavol. I can seewhy they took your license away. Regardless, she’s worth more to us in parts than alive. Take the blood, though. Don’t let it spoil. The rest the extraction team can take when they get here. The kidneys and eyes will fetch a pretty penny.”
What are they talking about?
As if in a trance, I walked through the swinging doors of the operating room, forgetting to hide, forgetting everything but the words they’d just said. There were three men in the room, all dressed in scrubs. Vargas, Pavol, and a third, Benedict. He was the father in charge of the medications at Hallow Hall. It was jarring to see them without their robes.
“Katarina!” Benedict snapped, and looked hurriedly at Vargas.