I tapped Juliyana on the shoulder and she moved forward silently. Then I tapped when we reached the next door because I knew that Dalton would not let us pass it by.
He stepped over to the panel and touched it, while glancing at Sauli.
“Touch the green one,” Sauli murmured.
Dalton pressed the green square and the doors clicked and slid open. Lights flickered on.
Juliyana had already pivoted to cover the door. Now she moved forward to fan the gun over the interior of the room, before nodding and moving aside. Dalton and Fiori and Jai all pressed forward, anxious to examine the room.
It was a replica of the one we had just busted out of, only this one was at capacity. Every single box had a human in it, and none of them were moving. They all had their eyes closed and as far as I could see, they weren’t breathing.
Fiori and Dalton rushed down the length of the room, examining each face in each of the pods, until they reached the end.
Then they turned and trudged back to us. Dalton looked grim. Fiori, though, had shifted into medic mode. She examined the people more closely and when she reached us, she tapped the column of lights next to the shell. “These are all showing green and holding steady. The empty ones in our room flashed through the colors. And I don’t know what they were doing when we were in the shells ourselves. I couldn’t see them.”
“These people are in cryogenic sleep?” Jai asked.
“Or something like it,” Fiori replied.
“These aren’t our people,” Kristiana said firmly. She pointed at the nearest one, a woman who looked like she was long past time for her next regenerative therapy course. She had grey hair and fine wrinkles, especially around the throat. But Kristiana was pointing to the garment she was wearing, which was…odd. “This isn’t any fabric I’ve ever seen,” Kristiana said. “I can’t tell if this is a dress or pants, either,” she added. “It’s…weird.”
“And she would know about garments,” Sauli added. “She owns all of them.”
Kristiana rolled her eyes at him. “I think these are more of the blue people.”
“Can we wake them?” I asked Fiori.
She chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “I could prod the buttons like Sauli did for the door, but that might injure them. Maybe there’s a whole medical procedure for waking them that requires secondary equipment. Or a full surgery. I just don’t know. I can’t even say for sure that this is cryogenic sleep, as I’ve never seen cryogenic sleep before.”
“We can’t save them, Danny,” Jai said softly.
“Mace might be in any of the other rooms, too,” Dalton added.
I nodded reluctantly. There was no way I was going to tell Dalton he couldn’t look for his son, even though the idea of stopping at every single room to check made me feel sweaty and prickling with worry for the delay it would cause. We couldn’t go for much longer without running into one of the armored slavers, even though they clearly didn’t bother checking on their slaves once they had them in the chambers. Why bother? They had better things to do, like finding their next batch of slaves.
I felt even sicker at that thought. These people were far too practiced and efficient at herding humans.
My gaze fell on the domed dash at the end of the room. It was a replica of the one in ours that had puzzled me, only at the opposite end of the room. The wall there did look transparent, only there was another white layer behind it. Why make a wall transparent on one side and opaque on the other? That didn’t make sense…but there was little about these people that did make sense. Yet something still nagged away at the back of my brain.
I turned away. “Next room. As fast as we can.” I slapped Yoan’s shoulder, for he crouched in front of one of the shells, frowning as he peered at the panel next to it. “Come on,” I urged him.
We moved onto the next room, which was empty, and the next, which was full of more sleeping people. We quickly developed a fast routine for checking each room and moved down the corridor swiftly after that, moving as silently as we could.
“Why are all these people asleep but we woke up?” Lyth asked in a barely audible voice.
“Just lucky?” Sauli replied.
“Everyone we’ve seen, so far, are blue people,” Kristiana pointed out. “I think…maybe…there must be a difference between them and us, after all. Whatever the difference is, it makes the cryogenics work for them.”
“That headache I woke up with was like nothing I’d ever felt before,” Marlow added.
Fiori was still frowning. “It could be residue from the snake thing. Or the cryogenic process. There’s no way to tell.”
We checked the next room. More sleeping people.
“Is anyone keeping count?” I wondered aloud.
“Twenty-four in each room,” Lyth said. “Seven rooms fully occupied, and two empty, so far.”
“They’re not at full capacity yet,” Jai said, his tone disgusted.
“Keep going,” I urged everyone.
Three rooms later, when Sauli opened the door, we all staggered back a pace or two, for the smell that wafted into our faces was putrid and unmistakable. Rotting flesh, human waste and decay.
Calpurnia moaned, her face draining of color. She swallowed. “I can’t go in there,” she whispered and moved along the passage, away from the door and put her back to the wall. “Give me the gun,” she told Juliyana. “I’ll keep guard.”
Juliyana silently handed her the gun and gave her shoulder a squeeze, then turned back to join us. She raised her brow at me. “Cal isn’t good with gross stuff.”
Fiori, who had probably seen worse than this in her career, hurried into the room. Dalton was right on her heel. I reluctantly followed them, because this was something new and needed to be checked out. But I gagged more
