“What are you doing?” I asked, my gaze going to Mira.
She was so small and delicate on the table, and her middle... I nearly fainted, swaying dangerously into the wall.
“Call an ambulance,” I wheezed. “Quickly!”
“No.” Vargas’s voice was like a whip. “No ambulance. The girl has passed, sadly, and so has her baby.”
I shook my head, my thoughts rushing and confused through my head.
“The baby was alive. I saw it,” I stammered. “I heard it crying.”
“You’re confused, Katarina.” Pavol appeared at my back. He’d snuck up behind me while I was frozen in horror.
The needle sank into the back of my neck, and my gaze held Mira’s half-open eyes until the world went black.
PART V
I woke to the sound of the morning bell ringing out through the loudspeaker in my room. I bolted upright and immediately feltsick. My head thumped, and I was sweating. I glanced around wildly before last night hit me with a devastating smack.
Mira.
I got up and tried the door. This time it was locked. I waited impatiently for someone to come. After what seemed like hours but was probably only ten minutes, the nurse from the day before arrived. I flew past her, running as fast as I could up the hallway toward the infirmary.
Orderlies scattered before me, people shouted, patients screamed, but I didn’t stop. I burst into the operating room and stilled.
It was empty. Everything was gone. The blood on the floor, Mira’s body on the table.
There wasn’t a single sign that anything had happened there last night. Had I imagined it all? Had it been just another horrific nightmare? I got them often. I dropped to my knees, suddenly unable to stand for one more second.
I stared in a daze at the bottom of the instrument tray and saw it. Startlingly red against the chipped and yellowing ceramic underside of the table.
A spray of blood. A spot someone had missed.
I pushed myself to my feet. I had to do something, tell someone. I had to get justice for her, the teen runaway no one else would miss. I felt dizzy and sick.
I staggered back, crashing into the wall. My head hit something hard, and I turned to look at it.
A phone?
I grabbed it off the wall before I could second-guess it and called the police. It rang and rang, and then, finally, someone picked up.
“You have to come to Hallow Hall, the institute on the hill.They—they killed someone. They stole her baby. They’re crazy,” I fired down the line, trying to get everything out before someone could stop me.
“Calm down, miss, and tell me again, who?”
“Father Vargas, Father Benedict, and Father Pavol. They killed someone, I think they—I think they harvested her organs.” A wave of nausea passed over me at the words.
They’ll never believe you. You’re just another crazy girl.
This time, I was pretty sure the voice in my head was correct, but I had to try.
“Ah, Katarina, there you are.”
Vargas appeared beside me and tugged the receiver out of my hand, then put it to his ear.
“This is Father Vargas. Yes, Officer.”
He listened, and I stood there and waited for the officer to tell him that the police were on their way. There had been a report, and they had to investigate, right?