Page 13 of House of Kallan
We wandered the halls and stopped at the nurse’s station for them to coo over him, which Shadow seemed to enjoy. We visited a few of the pregnant women’s rooms so they could see that not all monstrous babies were scary. Sure, maybe Shadow wasn’t the best example of that, since there was definitelysomethingabout him that felt scary.
But then, I wasn’t bringing around toothy girl. She was sweet enough, but you just knew when looking at her that she was genetically created to cause damage. Absently, I wondered what Silence would have done with her had she been born in theirfacility. That always began my musing over what they did with the infants thatwereborn into their hands. And what did they do with the mothers?
Swallowing, I shook my head. I didn’t want to know. For my own peace of mind, Icouldn’tthink about it. I had to just pretend that we rescued them all before it was too late.
Lydia really enjoyed Shadow, and Shadow was fascinated with Tate. He touched him, his eyes wide. Then he looked at me with wonder. Of course, he liked Tate a little less when the newborn’s tentacle touched his stuffed fox. Shadow immediately tried to get further away.
Curiously enough, he still didn’t make a sound. There was no movement of his throat or his jaw. His mouth. No attempt was made at all.
When we left Lydia, Taylour found me in the hall. She immediately crouched down to tell Shadow how handsome he was. This he liked. Once more, he offered a smile. Small and unassuming.
“He’s going to be a heartbreaker,” Taylour said as she got back to her feet. “Who is this?”
“Shadow,” I answered.
“Oh,” she said, looking down at him again. “One of the Shadowkind.”
“As far as we know, the original Shadowkind. He’s the oldest.”
Taylour nodded. “Are you looking to place them?” she asked.
I sighed. It was my own curiosity and attachment that made me want to say no, but I nodded anyway. I knew that what was best for them was to have homes. Families. To be surrounded by love and support in a safe environment. Especially if they were a very dark baddie. “Yeah, but he’s not the top priority right now.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, pulling a tablet out from her bag. I watched as she turned it on and flipped it toward me. There was a very long list and as I started going down it, I recognized many names. “This is a list of yourresidents who placement is being requested for. I’m going to need to talk about a priority system.”
She tapped away and the list rearranged, being broken down into classes. I assumed it could be broken down further into species. “We’re finding the biggest chunk of our list has been added into an ‘unknown’ category. As you can imagine, this doesn’t really work for easy placement.”
Sighing, I took the tablet from her and read the first few names. “This shouldn’t be filled out until they have an idea,” I said. “I’ll talk to my staff. Can you send me that part of the list and I’ll reassign them? Then let’s take the ‘unknown’ option out.”
“I thought about removing it, but I don’t want them just choosing one randomly. That could be detrimental to all involved.”
“Fair. Is there a way that I get notified when an entry has been marked unknown and who filled out the form?”
Taylour nodded. “Yep. I’ll have that changed right away. Now, back to the list. I think I have a sea monster family ready, but oddly enough, you don’t have any water babies?”
I smiled. “Oh, I do. They’re just not ready. My thought is to keep them here for a few months to make sure mom and child bond and so we can make sure that the baby is healthy without any side effects of the genetic twists they were given.”
“Got it. Okay. Outside of the unknown, we seem to have an abundance of those marked demonic. Is that accurate?” she asked.
“This data would definitely be fascinating to see,” I said.
Taylour smiled. “Don’t worry. I have a lot of graphs to share at the next meeting. Itisfascinating.”
I nodded, grinning. “Perfect. Then… yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more demonic offspring than others.”
“Equally curious as to what the most common are, is that there are some classes missing entirely. There are zero reported offspring of the divine or storm,” she noted. “And there are veryfew magical or mythical. I think that some of the demonic might be broken out into nightbreed or monster classes because I’ve looked into a few out of curiosity, but I don’t disagree that the majority are demonic.”
“No divine or storms,” I mused. “Lack of magical or mythical. I swear, there’s something in that data that might help something. Or give us an idea of what’s going on.”
Taylour nodded. “Believe me, I know. I’m excited to finish running stats so I can hand them out. While I wholeheartedly hope that this last retrieval was the end of the experimentations, I’m realistic that it’s not likely the case. So, I only feel slightly awful saying this, but I hope we get more in soon to keep feeding the data. It’s like we’re on the verge of something here, on top of the more important aspect of actually rescuing these women.”
“I think you’re right to assume this wasn’t the last retrieval. I’m disturbed a little more every time we get new women.”
“You know,” Taylour said, looking down at Shadow, “I’m just waiting for the day when we discover what they’re doing with the human men they take.”
I shook my head. “You haven’t heard?” Taylour shook her head. “The report was that Silence had an entire department dedicated to attempting to stitch humans and monsters together. A Frankenstein creation. It was… barbaric, to say the least.”
“Oh my god,” Taylour said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
