Vagabonds

Chapter Fifty-Four: The Butterfly and the Wasp

Eliza pressed her body against the door, watching with wide-eyed horror as Amile Robillard pulled a needle out of her arm with a delicate shudder.

"How... strange," Amile said, cracking her neck, black hair glistening like oil in the fluorescent lights that had just surged back on.

"Run, Eliza!" Aquila shouted, strapped to a misshapen table beside Amile, tugging against the metal restraints. "Get out of here! She's dangerous, run!"

But Eliza was frozen, unable to move as Amile bounced the syringe in one hand. Even if Eliza wanted to escape, there was nowhere to go. She could hardly run back into the bloodstained hallway with the two men she'd wounded. Or into the base that was now crawling with soldiers.

And no matter how terrified she was, Eliza had no intention of leaving Aquila behind.

Amile's head was cocked, her frown curious. Like a child examining something astonishing. Her dark eyes flicked up, drilling into Eliza, threatening and malevolent and filled with the crackling fire of a woman possessed.

Then she cocked her elbow and threw the syringe at the side of the lab.

The flat end of the plunger embedded itself into the drywall.

"Amazing," Amile purred, staring at her hands. "I never expected it to work so quickly."

Eliza's gaze slid over Amile to Aquila and then to the man hovering behind Aquila's table. Old and gray with wild white hair and hunched, protective shoulders.

There was a local man — a scientist — who told me about an experiment that could change human genetics in real-time.

That must be him.

Could Eliza convince him to help?

But then Amile was stepping forward and Eliza's attention caught on her like clothing on a barbed-wire fence.

"How marvelous," Amile said, circling around Aquila's table and ignoring the jangling of his struggle to escape. "I was hoping I'd have a chance to test out the virus for myself. For months I've been watching my men and women go through the transformation, only to see them fall apart." Amile stretched her arms wide, like a ballerina about to pirouette. "Well, now it's my turn to feel the power of what science is capable of. Fitting, don't you think, that I get to be the first functional beneficiary of the Superman Virus."

"That's stretching the word functional," Eliza said, her eyes flashing around the room, looking for a weapon. A shield.

Anything.

Amile took another step toward her, grinning like a bobcat.

"Time to teach you some manners, Miss Mason."

And then Amile launched herself at Eliza's face.

~~~

Aquila's muscles bulged and his neck strained, but it was no use. He could only watch helplessly as that awful woman scratched her nails along the wall, narrowly missing Eliza as she backflipped out of the way. The urge to help, to fight, to protect welled up in him like a tidal wave, but he was trapped.

He twisted his head around.

His eyes met Dr. Oleander's.

The old man was watching Amile leap onto a table, fly at Eliza. The two women crashed into an array of monitors with a snarl. Aquila tried to ignore the cascade of equipment, focusing on the old man, whose face was papery and pale, gaze distant and weirdly detached. 

"Sir," Aquila said.

Dr. Oleander swiveled to face him, expression unreadable.

"Sir, please," Aquila continued. "I know you don't want this." He shifted his body to one side, suppressing a wince as the grooves dug into the tender bones of his wings. "You cared about my brothers once, didn't you? When you made us?"