Pearl

Chapter Thirty: Something Mine

The elevator's sharp ding echoed into the subterranean parking garage, and Randal shifted exhaustion-puffed eyes over to the door. He braced himself against rough concrete floor and the cool side of the SUV where he had remained slumped since Lyly had dropped him, readying himself for another round of office-worker screams.

The scene had played itself out twice now – the elevator opened, the occupants screamed, the elevator closed. He remained, legs boneless with fear and defeat, watching from across the garage.

When the slick metal doors slid open this time, however, they revealed a silhouette and a sight that sent a spike of adrenaline down Agent O'Lane's numbed body. His heart began to pump again as, for the first time, he realized just how out of control the situation had become.

The tallest peak of the silhouette and the first to exit the elevator was the farmer, Theodore McComb. The first known person to make contact with the missing young woman, Theodore was under watch by the agency. The medical anomalies that characterized the man's recovery from the attack on the farmhouse – the elevated hunger and need for rest – were suspicious enough that he had been marked a likely subject for measuring the effects of exposure to the missing woman.

His appearance here indicated, to Randal, that they were right to suspect the man and to keep him quarantined.

Behind the farmer trotted out one of the famed mutant collies. O'Lane had encountered the dogs twice before, but every time he saw them he shivered deep in his gut. This time was no exception, especially now that he had witnessed Lyly's hair trick up close and personal.

After all, it was now all too easy to recognize that particular shade of pink.

And last, dragged out seconds before the elevator doors slid shut, was the trailing form of Martin Harper. The man's torso was almost completely obscured by the pink tendrils that wrapped around it, and his audible gasping made it clear that his diaphragm was too compressed for more than a little air to make its way into his lungs.

O'Lane braced himself against the car door, slowly staggering his way to his feet. Stabbing pain pierced him from temple to torso, and his whole body ached from Lyly's attack. He sucked in a few deep breaths to help settle his head, which spun with wild abandon once he was elevated to his feet.

"Lyly," he began, or rather, tried to. His voice was a dried-out wheeze, like how he'd imagine the first breath of a resurrected mummy might sound. The word died in his throat, and he forced himself to swallow several times to bring moisture back to his mouth.

Lyly remained crouched, allowing the pile of bodies to separate her from the newcomers who approached.

Theodore wasn't moving right, Randal observed as he leaned over and braced himself against the car with one arm. The farmer was walking just fine, sure, but robotically. He looked straight ahead of himself, neither acknowledging Randal nor reacting to the grotesque twisted bodies piled just feet away from where he stopped.

Randal panted as he tried to push away from the car, unsure of what was happening, less sure of what was about to happen, but entirely certain that he needed to do something. He heard cloth scraping against concrete and looked over to watch as Martin's tethered body was swung around the collie's body to face Lyly.

Martin gurgled his disgust, and Randal knew that he had made the right choice not to look any closer at what Lyly was doing to the corpses. Up close and near enough to touch the pile, Martin had no such luxury. He witnessed with bulging, oxygen-deprived eyes as the young woman's hair extended out from her head, branching repeatedly as it slithered forward along the faces of the men and women he'd ordered to test her, watched as that hair burrowed itself deep beneath the rapidly cooling skin of the unmasked corpses.