"Young Master," a voice suddenly called out to Bell. "I believe that we have found where the girl is being kept."
Bell turned to Maya, whose face had remained tight with tension the entire time they'd been waiting there. A part of it was due to what Bell had told her, but most of it was because of her worries about Emily.
At the words that she might've been found, something shifted. The stiffness of her shoulders wavered slightly. A breath that had been held inside for a long time finally slipped out through her nose.
She wasn't relieved. Not yet. But there was more hope in her now.
"Lead us there," Bell told the voice that had no body to attach to at the moment.
Once he said that, the Facold member appeared before him as if he had been there the entire time.
"Understood, Young Master," they bowed.
The three of them moved quickly.
Maya followed closely behind Bell and the Facold member, their clothes flaring behind them as they swept through narrow streets and unmarked alleyways like hounds tracking a scent.
Although she had many thoughts she wanted to say, she kept them to herself.
Her eyes remained fixed ahead, but her mind was as chaotic as a cyclone.
She couldn't help but think about the conversation she had with Bell moments ago. Despite everything about him — the coldness of his eyes, his status as the son of Duke Agnus, his unreadable nature that didn't match up to any information she had about him — something about him was gnawing at her.
Why did it feel like he loathed himself more than she ever could?
More than perhaps even… Diana, his victim, could.
Their guide led them into a crumbling stone building with boarded-up windows and a door that was barely hanging on its hinges.
This was the home to many beggars and drug addicts who took sanctuary here at night or during heavy rain.
Inside, dust coated the floor, walls, and ceiling in a thick layer. The air stank of rot, mildew, rat shit, etc.
Heading straight to the staircase, they made their way down to the basement level.
At the base of the staircase, the Facold member crouched and shifted a wooden plank that was rotting forward. Reaching under the wood, he pulled it up and off. He did the same to a few more planks until there was a hole big enough for them to jump down.
Bell stepped forward and peered inside. He could see the silhouettes of the other Facold members waiting below.
They must've already scouted ahead, preparing the way for him and ensuring that there weren't any traps or immediate threats that would touch their Young Master.
The hole made under the staircase wasn't the actual entrance to the secret place underground, but it was the one that one of the members had "found" or more accurately, made.
Thud!
Thud.
Bell dropped down. Then Maya.
Her step was a little quieter than his.
They were now in this stark and sterile corridor that seemed to stretch for eternity. White tiles and harsh fluorescent lighting repeated throughout.
Every surface was so spotless that their reflections followed them on the floor, and any speck of dust was easily noticeable.
"Stay close to me, Young Master," muttered Jerman's father. He took point.
The further they went down the corridor, the stranger the sounds became. All of them were muffled, but they were loud enough for them to hear.
Mechanical thuds. Rhythmic whir of pumps. A faint hum, like something alive was breathing just beyond the walls.
As the sounds got louder, the silence of the group traversing the hallway grew heavier.
No one spoke a word.
Even the ever-so-curious Maya couldn't summon a question as she could feel herself getting closer to the truth, a truth that might not be what she wanted to see at the end of the corridor.
Eventually, they stopped before a large reinforced door, flanked by bolted steel panels.
One of the Facold members, specialized in breaking into places he had no business being, stepped forward.
"How long?" asked Bell.
"Two minutes."
With movements as smooth as water, he pulled out numerous tools hidden on his body and went to work on the lock.
Two minutes felt like two hours for Maya, who was trying her hardest to calm down.
She had trained herself to keep a steady mind and heart due to her hobby of stalking people, and yet, when it came to someone that she cared about, all of that training went away.
Click.
Hisssssss.
The door slid open, and what lay beyond would shatter Maya's world.
It was another corridor, larger than the one they had been in. This corridor was bathed in soft redlight, stretching further than she could immediately see.
Lining both sides of the corridor were towering glass tubes, each filled with a thick blue liquid.
And inside—
Children.
Little girls.
Dozens. Maybe more than a hundred.
They were suspended in the liquid like discarded dolls.
Some of the girls were intact, sleeping, unmoving.
Some were missing parts, like dolls found inside a trash can.
Others were even worse. Limbs missing, torso torn or half-intact. Tubes were threated into their mouths, arms, and spines.
Some weren't even full bodies.
Could they even be considered human anymore?
A ribcage.
A head with tubes instead of a neck.
A singular arm that was still twitching as if it were alive.
Organs that were being preserved for later use.
Maya stopped walking. Her breath hitched, and her legs locked.
A sound slipped from her throat — half gasp, half sob.
Clutching her stomach, she turned away from the group and vomited up everything inside of her stomach.
Bell didn't stop and continued walking ahead with the group, slow and silent as he looked around the tubes and took notice of the contents inside.
Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, Maya looked at him.
His unfaltering steps continued to reinforce her image of him.
Was he even human?
Did he feel anything at all?
He was right. He didn't deserve forgiveness. He was and will always be a monster.
But what she couldn't know — what no one could possibly know — was that inside Bell Agnus, there was a fire.
A storm.
Rage without voice.
Grief without sound.
Sadness without a tear.
The sun itself was burning behind his still eyes that didn't quiver once as he looked around.
Reaching the end of the corridor, it led into a room that reeked of chemicals, blood, bones, flesh, medication, etc.
Two empty surgical tables were in the middle of the room.
On one of them, there was still a puddle of wet blood dripping down slowly.
Notes were scattered across a metal desk and the floor below it. Charts. Syringes. Scalpels in disarray. The machines in the room still hummed.
Whoever had been here, had worked here, had left in a hurry.
Stepping into the middle of the room, Bell's boots echoed against the tile.
Scanning the room, he noticed that there was a stack of children's books.
Picking one up, he began to read a little before placing it back down.
The room connected to two more corridors, and he walked down one of them to find a playing room with a sandbox in the middle, a slide, a swing, etc.
'This room looks like it has been of use recently.'
Heading back to the room where the three corridors met, he saw Maya had stopped and was standing before a tube.
Her face had gone pale, and even with her hair covering her eyes, he could tell that beneath the curtains, her eyes were shaking uncontrollably, just like the rest of her body.
"Emily…" she muttered.
Bell recognized the girl who was floating within the tube to be the same girl who had pickpocketed him a while back.
Her arm was missing, her skin was bruised, a sign that she had resisted when she was kidnapped, and her eyes were shut. Her tiny frame was swallowed by the blue fluid.
"...Emily," Maya muttered again, this time dropping to her knees. She whispered with a shaky voice, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry… I-I should've found you… I…"
Then the sorrow in her heart began to twist. Warp.
Drawing her daggers from her hip, she screamed and raised them to shatter the glass.
She wanted to free Emily from the prison that she's been kept inside.
But before she could swing, a hand was placed on her shoulder.
"Don't," the voice of Bell sounded behind her.
"Why? Why?!" she shrieked. "We have to get her out of this damn—"
"This tube is keeping her asleep. Sedated. For all we know, it's what is keeping everyone who is still breathing in this corridor alive. Pull her out now, and she could die from shock. A child her age, I doubt they'll be able to accept that they've lost a limb so easily."
"But—"
"We'll call people who can extract them safely. Professionals who know what they're doing. People who will be able to save… those that they can. You'll risk killing the very person you came here to save if you act without thinking."
Maya's body trembled. Her teeth clenched.
But slowly — slowly, she lowered her arms and daggers.
"Fine. You're right," she said, her voice shaking with hatred. "But whoever did this to Emily… I'll kill them. No. I'll torture them and then I'll rip them apart with my own hands."
Bell said nothing.
The anger in him was no less than hers.
He just hid it better.
He turned to Jerman's father and said, "See if you can track down the person or people who escaped from here."
"Yes, Young Master."
"And get some help. We need to save as many of these children as we can."
* * *
In another part of the city.
A hunched figure in a dirty white lab coat weaved through the alleyways.
His coat was dragging in the dirt and snagging on broken bricks and puddles of oil.
His breathing came in wheezing gasps, each one heavier than the last. His lungs were burning from exertion but also from fear.
The moon that was making its appearance in the sky offered him no comfort; it was nothing more than a pale spotlight that was following him around, emphasizing the horror of their escape.
On his back, wrapped tightly in layers of cloth that he had tied around his body, was his daughter. A small, frail body that was barely hanging on.
Her head rested against his body, and he could feel her fever through the coat. Her sweat soaked as deep as his inner shirt.
Every few steps he took, her fingers would twitch — tiny and involuntary spasms that only increased his dread.
She was alive, yes.
But for how much longer?
Her illness was already starting to corrupt the new body parts he had given her recently. The tank that helped keep her stable was no longer available. The pressure on her organs that was failing by the second couldn't be regulated. The marrow he fed her wasn't an option. Even the machine he used to stimulate the function of a heart at times couldn't be used, as he had to leave it all behind.
It was gone.
Most of it.
The tubes.
The sensors.
The cooling gel.
The spare parts he needed to keep the pain away.
He had taken what he could in his bag from small tools, a few bottles of medicine, and important research logs. But that wasn't enough. It couldn't be enough when everything in the lab was barely enough.