I went back to her body and lifted her up, buckling a bit under her weight. I lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips to one of the cuffs. It sprang open at the touch. “Perfect.” I reached over, pressing her fingertips to the other cuff, and Ash sat up, pushing her off his lap and back onto the ground. She flopped back, smacking her head on one of the machines that surrounded the chair. I had hit her hard.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, grabbing my hand and heading for the door. He looked left, and right, both leading into long hallways. “So, uh, any idea on how to get out of this place?”
“No idea,” I answered, promptly. “Come on, let’s go. We’ll figure it out.”
“Make it up as we go along,” Ash said as we went left and headed quickly up the hallway. “That’s always my favorite kind of plan.”
“Shut up,” I said mildly as we came up to another fork. I immediately turned right and was relieved when I saw the door to the stairs. We had to make our way upstairs. We could only find a way outside the facility if we made our way upstairs. We moved quickly up the stairs, careful to keep our steps as quiet as possible.
We finally reached a door that led to an actual floor. I peeked through the window and saw no one around, so I pushed the door open slowly. I motioned for Ash to follow me and we crept through the empty hallways, peeking in doors. There were a lot of empty rooms just like the one I had found myself waking up in, but none of them led to an exit. None of them even had windows.
“We have to find a way out of here,” I said as we continued hopelessly down the hallway. Ash squeezed my hand in response, and I immediately felt calm. It felt silly that a simple hand squeeze could make me feel better, but there it was. The warmth of his palm was the perfect comfort.
“There they are!”
We whirled around and saw several people at the end of the hallway, pointing at us. I looked up at Ash. “Run!”
We took off, running as fast as we could, skirting around a corner into another endless hallway. There were no other sounds except the falls of our footsteps and the heavy breathing as we sped through the hallways. I could hear them behind us, and I flashed back to us running through the woods, away from the Awakened.
We hadn’t made it more than a few feet before I went flying into a wall, landing with a smack. I fell to the floor and rolled onto my side. I saw a pair of heels clicking down the hallway toward us and felt a sense of dread.
“Did you honestly think that you would be able to get away?” Razi’s voice sounded annoyed but also a bit amused. “Someone pick her up.”
I was yanked to my feet, my arms held by two overgrown goons. I glared at both of them and saw Ash held up in between another two goons, both of whom seemed to be even larger than the ones holding me. Where did they get guys like this? Was there some sort of “evil company lackey” school that these guys went to? Was there a Craigslist ad that read, “Need ginormous men to work for evil genius”?
Ash coughed loudly, and I met his eyes, wincing at the blood dripping from his nose.
“You were foolish, both of you,” Razi said, looking back and forth between us. “Trying to escape from Sekhmet was bold, almost worth admiration but very idiotic. I’m only trying to help you.”
I met her eyes and noticed the bruises that were already forming on her face. Rich stood just behind her, and I had to suppress the smirk that was threatening to burst out onto my face at the bandage that was across his nose. I did that, and I was damn proud of it.
“We don’t want your help,” I said, firmly.
She pressed her fingertips to her temple as if I was giving her a headache. Good. I wanted to give her a headache, and stomachache, and all sorts of things that were massively unpleasant. “Don’t make me regret choosing you, Zoey, to be part of this new world. You are one of the strongest I’ve seen. You’re a survivor. You just proved that again, by attempting to escape. Let me help you,” she pleaded.
“No. Definitely not,” I answered again.
“Very well.” Razi shrugged and motioned to her minions.
“Dr. Cylon, should we stick to the original plan for the boy?” Rich said, coming up to stand next to her.
She eyed Ash carefully and my heart slammed in my chest, beating a rhythm against my ribcage. “No, no, I don’t think so.” Her eyes met mine and a smile crept across her face. “I think for now, I’d prefer to keep Mr. Matthews around. He might work as great…motivation for Ms. Valentine.”
The sinking feeling in my stomach multiplied as I realized what she meant. Ash and I looked at each other. They would not kill him, not yet, and now it was up to me. My compliance would be the only thing keeping him alive. The men holding him nodded in understanding and started pulling him away.
“No,” I said, struggling against the large hands holding on to me. “No, please, don’t take him, please. I’ll do whatever you want, just please don’t hurt him.”
“It is far too late for that, Zoey,” Razi said, her voice clipped and brisk. “But I love your attitude change.”
I watched helplessly as they dragged Ash down the hallway. He struggled, trying as hard as he could to break free of their grip. They pulled him to the elevator. His hands gripped the doors as they began to close. I strained against my own hold, but it was useless. I wasn’t moving. “Ash!”
“Zoey! Zoey!” Ash’s voice echoed through the hallway, and I was desperate. I was dreading the doors closing, that watching him being dragged away would be the last time I saw him, that it would be the last memory I ever had of him.
“Ash!” I looked at Razi, fury blazing on my features. “Stop them!” I screamed.
Ash’s fingers were slipping as the doors for the elevator began to close. “Zoey! Zoey, I…”
The doors of the elevator slammed shut, and then there was silence.
I AWOKE ONCE MORE IN the same room that I had been before, but this time I woke to an eerie silence. The machines were still there making soft noises, but there was a distinct lack of people. The lights were dimmed. I moved to sit up and noticed something else; I was not strapped down as I was before. I blinked in surprise at my hands and pushed myself off the chair.
The floor was cold under the soft fabric of my socks as I moved quietly toward the door. I reached for the handle, but it failed to turn under my palm. I was locked in. I should have known better. I sighed. Leaning against the door, I took a look around my surroundings.
The room was fairly large, much larger than it had seemed before, with several people inside of it. The chair sat in the middle of it, surrounded by several clean, smooth, empty counters. There was a sink in one corner, and a shower in the other, with no curtain or door for privacy. Most of the machines that had been beeping earlier were gone, but there were still a few, including the large touchscreen.
I crossed the room toward it, pressing my fingers to it. The screen came immediately to life, sending brightness into the room. There was only one option to press, the epitaph of the lioness woman, so I selected it gently. A request for a password immediately popped up, and I sighed in disappointment.
A smell reached my nose, and I squinted around the room. There was a tray I hadn’t noticed before, just beside the chair. It looked like what you got when ordering room service at a hotel. I moved over to it, my stomach rumbling. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten. I lifted the cover and was surprised to find a full meal there; a lightly seasoned chicken breast, a pile of peas and chopped carrots, and a mound of mashed potatoes covered in a dark gravy. My stomach rumbled again. When was the last time I had eaten a full meal like this?
I reached for the fork that lay on the tray beside it and was halfway to scooping up the mashed potatoes when I paused. This food had come from somewhere within this facility, and I trusted no one in here. It could have been poisoned or filled with a serum that made me grow an extra arm or something. My eyes darted around the room, and I finally noticed it, the small black globe on the ceiling in the corner of the roo
m, the camera. I looked at the food again longingly and forced myself to put the fork down. I could not give in so easily.
A few hours later, it was proving to be more difficult than I thought.
There was nothing to do, nothing but count the ceiling tiles or trace patterns in the speckled tile on the floor. I walked back and forth; I sang songs; I did everything I could without going crazy. I had no concept of time. I had no way of knowing how much time had actually passed. No one came to my room. There wasn’t a peep except for the now familiar hum of the machines housed with me. I worried about Ash, and I avoided the tray of food, pretending like it was not even there.
Thinking of Ash occupied the majority of my time.
I felt positive that he was alive, but in what condition, I didn’t know. After seeing him, it had become more apparent of how ill he had been. It wasn’t serious, but it was enough to worry me, and I had no doubt in my mind that they weren’t feeding him antibiotics and chicken soup. But Razi did seem intent on keeping him alive, to use him as a tool to get me to obey her wishes.
But what were her wishes? What on earth did she want from me? I was a survivor, representing the sort of ideal that she was looking for, but there had to be more of us out there, more than just a dirty, disgusting, confused eighteen-year-old girl. What could I possibly provide for them? I was no stronger than the goons she had sent after me, and no smarter than the team of scientists and doctors she obviously had.
I couldn’t take it any longer. My hunger was gnawing at me from the inside. I had experienced a lack of food in the past six months but not like this. I went with very little, but never had I gone with none at all. I grabbed the plate off the tray, knocking the fork to the floor with an astonishingly loud clatter. The food was cold, but tasted like heaven. I ignored the fork that lay on the ground beside me and dug into the food, tearing off strips of cold chicken with my fingers and stuffing it in my mouth.
When I had nearly licked the plate completely clean, I set it on the floor, feeling a pain in my stomach. I knew it was in part because I had eaten entirely way too much way too fast, but I also knew a part of it was guilt. I had not even lasted a few hours. Who knew what was in that food?
I drifted in and out of dreamless sleep, not bothering to stand up and return to the chair. The ground was cold, hard and uncomfortable beneath me, but I barely registered this through my exhaustion. I kept imagining the sound of footsteps just outside the door, but when I crept over, there was nothing, and I started to wonder if I was going insane from being alone.
Time passed. I didn’t know how long. It could have been hours or days. The only sign of life besides me was the delivery of food. I never saw it appear. I would fall asleep, my head rested against the tile in the shower, or lying across the smooth counter top, and when I would wake, a new tray would be there, ready with a new meal for me.
I gave up on the idea of avoiding food. I was hungry, and the taste of real food, the first real food I’d had in so long, was too much. My body was growing used to it and would growl audibly each time a new meal was delivered. I would consume it fast, stuffing the food in my mouth before I could really think about what I was doing. After the deed was done, I would be filled with an overwhelming wave of guilt and would retreat back to my corner, my knees curled up to my chest.
A week must have passed, maybe longer, when someone finally came into my room. I was dozing only half conscious when the lights in my room came on fully and I jerked up, startled. The door opened slowly. A week ago, I would have run for it, pushed whoever was there out of the way and ran for my life. Now, I could only look at them, my eyes glazed. There was no energy. I was only a listless bag of bones.
There were two men, young men, probably mid to late twenties. They were both dressed in similar outfits to mine, nurses’ scrubs, but theirs were pure white, and had the Sekhmet goddess stitched on the front pocket. One went immediately to the large screen, typing quickly and navigating so quickly I could hardly keep up. The other came toward me, and lifted me to my feet. I didn’t fight him; I just leaned uselessly on him. My eyes met his for a moment, and I noticed that he was fairly good looking. I wanted to speak, find some sort of sympathy in his kind, brown eyes. Maybe he wanted to be here just as little as I did.
He stuck me hard, with a needle, right above my hip, and I immediately lost any sort of sympathy for him. I glared at him, but he ignored me. A strange sensation was filling my body, and I started to lose feeling in my legs. I slipped, heading toward the ground.
He caught me before I could fall and swung me up into his arms. “Damn it. I didn’t really want to have to carry her all the way there,” he said, his voice full of disgust.
His companion laughed. “You shouldn’t have stuck her with that so early then. Besides, you’re the one that volunteered to come and get her. Hoping she’ll be your match, Tommy?”
Tommy looked down at me, his eyes thoughtful. “Well, she sure is pretty enough. Except for her messed up face.” He laughed, tracing a finger lightly over the curve of my scar. I reached up to smack him, but my arm wouldn’t move. It lay curled against my chest, useless.
The other guy, who still remained nameless to me, continued to work on the touch screen for a few more moments before we departed the room. Tommy held me in his arms as we traveled down the hallways to the elevators. I watched the numbers as we moved upward. We had been on the second floor. I stored that away for later, thought I didn’t know what good it would do me. We traveled only a few floors, the doors opening up at the 5th floor.
They took me through another series of long hallways before coming to a pair of double doors. The other guy (I had taken to calling him that, like it was his name or something) pulled a keycard from a key ring on his waist and ran it through a scanner. The door automatically opened, and we went into a very large room.
The room was massive. It alternately looked like a doctor’s office and a gym. There was medical equipment everywhere, but there was also a treadmill, a stationary bike and a lap pool. There was a small group of people that looked like nurses or doctors, wearing the same uniform that Tommy and his companion wore. In the middle of them, looking quite pleased, was Dr. Razi Cylon.
Tommy carried me across the room, depositing me on the hard, paper covered medical bed. There was a tingling in my fingers and toes as whatever Tommy had injected me with started to wear off.
Razi leaned over me, examining me from head to toe with her careful eyes. “Did you inject her already?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy said. “I was going to wait but given her tendency to fight, I thought it best to do it when she was cooperative.”
Razi nodded. “That’s perfectly adequate, Mr. Riviera. You are dismissed.” Tommy and his companion nodded and exited the room. “How are you feeling?”
I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. It was too dry, my lips nearly welded together from the lack of use. I felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.
Razi waved to someone, and they brought over a bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap and handed it to me.
I grabbed it and gulped down the entire thing, the plastic crinkling to nearly nothing under my palm. I wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand, letting the bottle fall to the ground. “You’re strangely nice for a kidnapper,” I croaked finally.
She sighed, her shoulders rising up and down delicately. “I am not a kidnapper. Soon you will understand that I am only trying to help.”
“You locked me in a room for days,” I remarked, running a hand through my disgusting hair. I hadn’t bothered to use the shower in the room, afraid that they would be able to see me through the camera. “I don’t see how that’s trying to help.”
“I was…” she paused, mulling over the words, “preoccupied and could not come to you sooner. That won’t happen again. You are very important to me and to everyone here at Sekhmet.”
I looked around and saw that she was not lying. There was a group of five adult
s in the room with us, the nurses or doctors I had noticed before, and they each had their own expression of eagerness on their faces. I shook my head. “Why? Surely you have managed to track down other survivors.”
Razi laughed, and the other doctors were a beat behind her. “Well, of course we have. But you are special to us.” I opened my mouth, but she cut me off. “You will find out in due course, I promise you this.” She stood up, offering me a hand.
I stared at her hand with disgust and kept my hands folded in my lap, clenched tightly together. I would not punch her again, not now, not when the game was so obviously in her favor.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “It would do you quite well to cooperate.” She held out her hand once more, and this time I took it, allowing her to lead me across the room.
The doctors tittered around me, helping me to lift off my scrubs and replacing them with a hospital gown. I felt a dark flush go through me, at these strangers seeing me in my underwear, especially my dirty underwear, but it didn’t seem to register on their faces. I might as well have been a golden retriever in a vet’s office.
They took my weight and measured my height. I gaped at the numbers at the scale; I had lost a considerable amount of weight since leaving New York. I ran my hands over my body, feeling more bones than I ever had before. My hands cupped my breasts and I sighed. Even now they remained a ridiculously large size.
They poked and prodded me, taking my temperature and my blood pressure. They looked in my ears, up my nose, down my mouth and made me take a vision test. One doctor took blood, missing the vein in my arm several times before finally securing the needle. Another doctor conducted a full reproductive exam, including setting up my feet in stirrups. I ignored the flames that were licking at my cheeks, and stared at the ceiling, hoping that it would all be over soon.
They even made me pee in a cup—right in front of them.
After they examined me to their satisfaction, they helped me back into the clothes I was wearing before and took me over to the gym equipment. I was told to lift weights, touch my toes, and bend in all sorts of ways while they wrote on their clipboards. I was in another place, going through the motions as they guided me through. I didn’t feel present; I didn’t feel real.
The Awakened Page 23
