The Retribution of Mara Dyer

The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin Read Free Book Online
Authors: Michelle Hodkin
develop based on what you show us, the applications they could have—” Her voice grew passionate. “They’re far reaching. So far reaching that I don’t even know the extent of them yet. No one should have to suffer the way people have been suffering because of G1821, especially not teenagers. Listen,” she said. “Anemosyne and Amylethe, they corrupt the findings. They change the outcomes of the studies we need to conduct to make sure Mara and the others can be released safely. I need to be able to study someone without those drugs, to map a manifested brain with an MRI and CAT scans, to study how it responds to stimuli and fear and stress. The answer isn’t in the blood—it’s in the brain. So blood work, test tubes—they’re not going to give me what I need. I need to study patients while they’re awake, and conscious.”
    Dr. Kells leaned forward and ran her hands through her hair. “I need to study you .”
    “What do you want me to do?” I heard Noah ask, before the screen went black.

9
    I STARED AT THE BLANK screen, as if just by looking at it, I could make Noah appear. But he didn’t. Nothing did.
    “Did you see a date stamp on that video?” Stella asked, looking at both of us. Jamie shook his head. “Mara?”
    I hadn’t. I was still staring at the screen. It had been Noah’s voice. He was alive. And he was here.
    “Okay,” Stella said. She pressed the power button, but nothing happened. “I don’t think we can turn it on or off from here, which means someone somewhere else is doing it.”
    “So let’s figure out where somewhere else is,” Jamie said.
    That was where Noah would be. Everything in me knew it.
    “Jude said there was a map.” I looked around us, at the messof papers and files and notebooks, and then remembered the scrolls.
    I pointed at them. “Guys, some help?” We began unrolling one after another. There were maps and charts, as I’d suspected, but we didn’t find what we were looking for until we were almost out of scrolls.
    “Let’s spread it out over there,” I said, tipping my head toward the desk. Stella stacked notebooks over the corners to hold it open.
    We were looking at detailed architectural plans of the Horizons Residential Treatment Center.
    Except it wasn’t just a treatment center. It was a compound. The treatment center was just the part we could see. Beneath it, below ground, was a sprawling, windowless structure, segmented off into different areas that together comprised the “Testing Facility.”
    “Holy shit,” Jamie whispered.
    Stella examined the map and explained what we were looking at. “So I think we’re underground again, in the lowest level of the testing facility. See there?” She pointed to some small shapes within the larger shape. “It looks like these little rooms might be where they were keeping us. You found Jamie on level 2.” She traced her finger to an area labeled KITCHEN , not far from where Jamie said we’d entered Kells’s office—the decoy office.
    “Level 3 is where we are now—not too far from where westarted, actually. And we’re still on No Name Island, it looks like.”
    I narrowed my eyes. “Where else would we be?”
    She ran her finger across a long line that ran the length of what seemed to be a tunnel. “There are three other structures. On a completely different island.”
    I peered over her shoulder and read the labels: MAINTENANCE, CONTAINMENT, STORAGE.
    “That’s a power line, I think. And there,” she said, squinting at the blueprints, “that’s the power grid. It’s in the maintenance area. That’s where Kells is, probably.”
    And Noah, too.
    “One way in, one way out,” Jamie said, pointing at the tunnel. It wasn’t far from where we were now, but we’d have to go back up to the fake office to get there. I was already moving toward the ladder.
    “Mara, wait—” Stella started.
    “For what?” I called out over my shoulder.
    “What are we going to do, just walk in there?”

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