Page 67 of Dark Rebel's Mystery

Kyra swallowed hard.

One of the overhead fluorescent lights flickered again, momentarily casting a strobe-like effect on the scene. As the women were herded around the corner, she heard a cell door open, then another.

Kyra clenched her jaw.

She had to find out how they intended to use these new prisoners. Her heart was pounding so loud that she was afraid the guards would hear it, and if they were enhanced like her, they might.

She felt guilty for not doing something for the young women, but there was nothing she could do. She needed to be patient, gather every piece of information, and devise a sensible plan.

After what seemed like the longest time, the coast was finally clear, and she rushed to the door of cell number twelve with dread curling in the back of her throat. Was the woman still inside?

Kyra inched closer, the squeak of the mop head on the worn linoleum covering the slight noise of her footsteps. Then, another cluster of voices echoed nearby, words in Farsi, Kurdish, and that third, more guttural tongue mingling.

The hair on her arms stood on end. What if those were the ominous higher-ups?

Kyra swallowed, the sense of foreboding clenching her gut tighter. She had to see if Twelve remained locked in that cell or if they'd moved her somewhere else or gotten rid of her altogether.

Fear propelled her onward even though every muscle screamed for her to run the other way. She paused one last time, hugging the mop handle, and then pressed forward toward cell number twelve, but something stopped her from peeking in. A sense of foreboding and a slight warming of her pendant preceded the sounds of more footsteps approaching.

45

KYRA

Kyra kept mopping, moving away from cell number twelve, her knuckles white from gripping the handle. The wooden pole would snap from the pressure if she weren't careful.

She forced her fingers to loosen.

Someone important had just arrived. Even the demeanor of the guards shifted. Backs snapped straighter, hands quit fidgeting. All around, tension crackled through the air.

She focused on the soapy puddle by her feet, working the mop back and forth with feigned diligence and feebleness. Through the corner of her eye, she caught glimpses of a small entourage moving along the corridor.

One was the commander, but his stance was deferential in a way Kyra hadn't seen from him before.

A second figure stood out immediately. He wasn't dressed in standard fatigues like everyone else. Instead, he wore some kind of tailored dark coat, its collar high and stiff, with small silver pins glinting along one lapel. Two guards flanked him, eacharmed and wearing similarly dark attire without insignias. That alone was strange, but it wasn't what made Kyra's breath grow ragged with alarm. It was the man himself. Something about him made her skin prickle, and it wasn't his good looks or air of authority.

The commander sidled up to him and all but bowed his head. "Amadan farman, aghayeh doktor," he said in a rushed tone. Kyra only caught fragments of what he said next, and she didn't fully understand what he was saying, but the context told her the commander was paying deep respect to the man he called Doctor.

The other responded in the same language she'd heard the guards speak before. He used several Farsi words that she could identify, like prisoners and schedule, but most of it was said in that unfamiliar dialect. It was harsher and guttural in places, pulling at the corners of her memory and stirring a sense of dread that made her palms sweat.

She hunched her shoulders, staying crouched over her mop. Her headscarf concealed her face, but they would see the fear in her eyes if they looked at her.

Just keep scrubbing. Don't look up. Don't twitch.

Still, curiosity warred with caution. Glancing up for a split second, she took in the doctor's face in profile. Sharp cheekbones, a slightly hooked nose, and lips curved in what appeared to be a permanent sneer.

He shifted a fraction, and she caught his eyes, dark-colored and intense. Something about those eyes lit a flare of recognition deep in her mind, but it balked at the memory as though a locked door slammed shut whenever she tried to glimpse behind it.

The commander answered with careful enunciation as if searching for the right words. "Yes… injections… tomorrow's procedure…" were a few terms Kyra recognized in Farsi. Then he slipped back into the other dialect, his tone hushed, as if fearful someone might overhear.

The man in the dark coat—the commander dressed as Doctor—clasped his hands behind his back as he surveyed the corridor. His gaze flicked from door to door, from guard to guard, as though assessing a laboratory setup. Kyra's lungs constricted at the clinical detachment that radiated from him.

She must have seen faces like his in the asylum, looming over her while she lay strapped to a bed like Twelve.

Kyra forced the thought away before it could paralyze her with fear.

She kept mopping, but she did it as unobtrusively as possible, making as little noise as possible. Yet despite her efforts, each pass of the wet rag squeaked across the floor. She willed her breath to steady and made her posture even more subservient.

"No mistakes this time," the doctor said in accented Farsi, and then lapsed into that unknown language again, issuing short commands that the commander responded to with hasty nods.

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