Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [784]
“Check this out,” Kade called from the far side of the lab. He indicated a lidded stainless steel drum that looked like a giant pressure cooker. “Now, what the hell do you suppose this thing does?”
Reichen and Tegan walked over with Brock and Nikolai, glancing inside the large cylinder as Kade popped the seals on the top and opened the lid. It was no longer plugged in, so the temperature inside had warmed considerably from the deep freeze maintained while the unit was operable, and the contents had all been removed. Still, there was no mistaking the machine’s purpose.
“It’s a cryo container,” Reichen said.
Tegan nodded grimly. He jerked his chin toward another nearby room, where a skewed fleet of clear Plexiglas boxes like one might expect to see in the maternity wing of a human hospital had been parked haphazardly along the far wall. “Incubators. Jesus Christ. Dragos is running a fucking breeding factory down here.”
“Or was,” Nikolai said. “He obviously cleared out in a hurry.”
“Maybe he knew we were coming,” Brock suggested. “Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m starting to get a real bad vibe.”
Kade gave his buddy an affirming look. “I don’t like it, either. Getting in was too easy. This could be some kind of trap.”
“All the rats do seem to have fled this ship,” Nikolai added. “Maybe they were on to something. Dragos wouldn’t leave a facility like this vulnerable to attack unless it was deliberate. I’d bet my left nut that he’s long gone from here, and took everything of value with him.”
“Dragos may be gone,” Reichen said, “but Wilhelm Roth is in here somewhere, and I mean to find the son of a bitch.” Anger spiked as he dismissed his own sense of unease to focus on a more immediate, crucial goal. “Turn back, if you want. I won’t begrudge any of you for it. But I’m going to push on.”
Tegan’s green eyes glittered dangerously. “Too many unanswered questions down here to turn back without covering every square inch of this hellhole. Fuck you very much, if you think we’re gonna let you do this on your own, Reichen.”
Reichen held that verdant stare and knew a deep appreciation for the kinship he’d formed with this warrior. With all of the Order, in fact. The rest of the warriors didn’t hesitate to nod their agreement with Tegan, or to fall in beside Reichen and him as they headed deeper into the empty facility.
Just when Dragos’s secret operation seemed it couldn’t get any more disturbing, Reichen caught his first glimpse of a long wing of prison cells, just as Claire had described from her dreamwalk with Roth. Except none of them contained captive Breedmates, a fact that gave little comfort when it was obvious from the condition of the cells that they’d only recently been evacuated.
“Holy hell,” Niko murmured as the group of them strode into the area to see them up close. “There’s got to be fifty cages here. If these were occupied with imprisoned females, what has Dragos done with them all?”
“Moved them, no doubt,” Tegan said. “Possibly to the same place he relocated all of his staff and equipment, although he might be splitting up his assets now that he’s been forced to leave this location in a hurry.”
“That is one sick fuck,” Brock remarked as he peered inside one of the cells and ran his big hand over his skull-trimmed head.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Kade had walked over to a heavily bolted door perhaps a bit too conveniently unlocked now. He stepped into the room on the other side and blew out a low whistle. “What. The. Fuck.”
Reichen and the others followed him inside. A shocked and prolonged silence fell over each of the Breed males, from the youngest of the