“Alessia,” he breathed in her ear and she shuddered a little too much for the witnesses they had in the room.
God, she missed him. One time together hadn’t been enough. She could feel her cells singing from the contact with him, the way the hairs on her arms stood at attention like she was walking through a field of static electricity. Her body remembered him, remembered his smell and the feel of his arms around her, his breath on her neck.
“All right, keep the PDA to a minimum,” Lana said. “We’ve got fifteen minutes. Talk.”
Then she moved away and Drake’s face turned from the softness of their reunion to complete confusion. Alessia let her hand run along the side of his face and nodded her assurance. She didn’t know how to explain to him what was going on because she wasn’t even really sure she knew. But she could at least assure him this place was safe. What they were doing was helpful.
She moved away from him, despite how cold her skin got from the lack of him, and moved to sit in that same chair that faced him from the other side of the table.
“I think they’re going to try to break us out of here, or stage a coup or something,” Alessia said, quietly. Drake’s eyes widened.
“What the hell makes you think that?” he asked.
“They had me have this same secret meeting with Erik and Lana said some things,” Alessia said.
“You don’t know James,” Drake said darkly. “You’ve been a captive here for days, time blurs together, you haven’t seen the sun. There’s a lot of variables that could go into your thought process right now, including an unrelenting desire to be free.”
“Turn off the professor for a second,” Alessia said with some frustration. “This is weird, right? The cameras are off.”
“I don’t trust James.”
“I don’t think they do either.”
“This isn’t a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Drake said. “Things in this world don’t work that cleanly. We’re in a massive power vacuum right now and everyone is rushing to fill it before the rest of the world decides what they want to do with the shifters. Everyone is ready to step on everyone.”
“I know,” Alessia said and felt a felt a little stupid saying it. Of course she didn’t know. This wasn’t her world. As much as she wanted to help and be a part of things here, she couldn’t force it. She didn’t know. But she was learning. She could be a player in all of this.
“No, you don’t,” Drake said, not unkindly but with that same tone that he used for the first few weeks they’d known each other. The tone that wouldn’t let her have a say in anything in the classes they were meant to be teaching together.
Alessia sighed. She sat back in her chair. She crossed her arms. She thought it would have been easier to talk to Drake than Erik but there they were having a glare stare down. It wasn’t entirely A-typical, but it was still frustrating to Alessia. He was stubborn and captivity had only made it worse for him and Alessia felt her irritation rise.
“We need to figure this out,” she said. “They’re giving us resources and I say we use them as best as we can.”
“You don’t know these people like I do—”
“Oh, will you knock it off?” Alessia said. “I’m getting real sick of the whole ‘older and wiser’ crap.”
“Well, I do have tenure and you have two more years of school and a mountain of student debt to overcome,” he snapped.
Alessia felt, for a moment, she might have a dragon inside her waiting to jump out as well as her blood seemed to boil beneath the surface. He noticed because he was looking at her and she saw the ghost of a smirk. Angry as she got, she had nothing to show for it and they both knew it. He was a stubborn ass and she couldn’t force him to do a single thing.
“I’m getting out of here,” she said. “I don’t care what you think I do or don’t know about your fucked-up inner politics. I came here to find you and I did. So I’m leaving with you too and then we’re going to sort out this superiority complex you have and then you’re going to take me out for an apology dinner.”
His smirk changed to that of a genuine smile and he chuckled. He sat back, his defenses lowering, his attitude diminishing. He was calming down. It didn’t make Alessia any less angry at him. But it didn’t hurt. She sighed.
“Maybe let Erik and I take the lead on this one,” she said. “You’re smart, no one’s denying it. But we don’t have your weird baggage. Whatever we do, just go with it.”
“Unless I think it’s going to get us all killed.”
“Fair enough.”
Chapter 7
Alessia stayed up late that night with Lana who produced a small metal flask after she returned her to her cell and immediately chugged it back before passing it to Alessia through the bars. Alessia hesitated, eying the camera in the corner.
“Is that smart?”
“It’s absolutely never smart to drink alcohol,” Lana said. “It’s a depressant drug, it dehydrates, and it weakens the immune system. But where would human society be without it?”
“I mean the cameras.”
“James conveniently leaves watching that crap up to myself and a few others.”
“And let me guess, everyone’s in on your strange little game you’re playing.”
“Correct, my dear. Now take a drink. You’re making me feel self-conscious.”
Alessia hesitated for just one more moment before Lana delivered a severe glare and she took the bottle. She took a sniff. She was never much good at distinguishing liquor from each other by smell. It was all pure, eye-burning alcohol as far as she was concerned.
“Jesus, it’s whiskey not arsenic or should I get the poison tester, your highness?” Lana asked in a groan and finally Alessia tipped the flask back and into her mouth.
She took in a lot more than she meant to. She swallowed a good portion of it before she was forced to cough the rest back up and out of her mouth as the fumes alone were too much to handle and the sharp, cutting flavor hit her tongue with a vengeance. Lana rolled her eyes and watched the coughing fit with crossed arms and little interest.
Eventually, with several coughs and aggressive throat clearings, Alessia got a hold of her breathing and swallowed once more. She passed the flask back to Lana with a cringe. She took it and had another sip, smooth and simple with a hint of discomfort. Alessia thought people only drank that way in movies because it was always a bottle filled with water or iced tea. But there was Lana, taking it in like it might have been her grandmother’s lemonade.
“Don’t feel bad,” Lana said. “I’ve got a bit of an immunity to burning sensations.”
“Can you get drunk?”
“Oh, yes. That’s the plan.”
She poured back more of the drink and handed it to Alessia who took a small, more measured sip. She avoided coughing most of it back up but didn’t exactly get it down without a look of utter discomfort. He didn’t understand why people forced themselves to pretend they liked this stuff. Well, maybe someone like Lana did. She had that sort of ironclad exterior that seemed like taking down shots of hard liquor might as well have been orange juice.
“What’s the occasion?” Alessia asked.
“The occasion is I’m probably a functioning alcoholic, but I figured we’re at the point where I can turn you into a partner in crime of sorts,” she said.
If this was some bid for Stockholm Syndrome, it was the strangest and most involved that Alessia had ever imagined. She took the flask as it was passed back to her; by the end of her sip, she felt the effects, the way her limbs were a little bit looser and her skin buzzed.
“So, what’s the deal then with you and professor stuffy?” Lana asked. “You two actually a thing or was that just the kinkiest booty call in history?”
Alessia went red but the numbness on her skin became too much to focus on to be overly embarrassed. She shook her head. “It was building. We’re not together or anything—”
“But you want to be.”
“P
laying the most fucked-up version of house inside a prison cell for the past few weeks hasn’t exactly been the best place to try to explore our relationship options,” Alessia said.
“So, what is it about him? Is it the muscles? The bad boy image? The forbidden fruit of a professor?” Lana asked with a smirk and a tip of the emptying flask.
What was it about Drake? It was one of those things where she never sat down to think about why it was she liked someone, why she felt attached to him. Certainly, with little crushes she could say someone was handsome or smart or had a good sense of humor. Alessia wouldn’t say that Drake excelled in any of those departments. And he pissed her off more often than he didn’t
But something drew her in. Maybe it was the red string of fate like the Japanese said or all those frilly quotations about soulmates. She didn’t have to like someone to love them—not that she loved him. They weren’t there yet. But he occupied her thoughts so constantly she knew it was more than a crush; it had to be more than just lust. Especially since she’d slept with him, she got it out of her system, and she still managed to find herself wanting more. Even if it was just his arms holding her, she liked the idea of having him near her, the smell of him on her.
“Jesus, I didn’t mean to make you flashback down romantic memory lane,” Lana said when she didn’t answer for a long time. “I don’t really care all that much.”
“Why does anyone like anyone?” Alessia finally said.
“Oh fuck, I’m cutting you off. You’re at poetic drunk level.”
“No. I just mean I think that’s why you know you like someone, right?” Alessia said. She was certainly rambling and the contents of the flask were the cause of that, she was sure, but she felt as though she was moving towards something profound. “Like, I could look at Erik and say I think the annoying way he plays devil’s advocate is endearing—”
“So, there was some Erik action for you then,” Lana said with a smirk and a little too much excitement.
“Can you shush?” Alessia said, stumbling forward a little bit to place a finger over her lips. “As I was saying. I can list all the qualities about Erik that I like and that sort of draw me to him. But I can’t list a single one for Drake.”
“And that’s supposed to be a good thing?”
“I still want him and I can’t pick out a formula of why. That means it’s spiritual and that it matters,” Alessia said.
“If you say so.”
Lana went back to rolling her eyes and throwing back her flask. Alessia knew she was right though. It was like a personal revelation for herself as well. She hadn’t seriously been considering Erik as an option, despite Lana’s teasing. They worked well together and recently he’d been on her good side more than he ever had been before. But that didn’t make them bedfellows or anything like that.
Drake was a constant presence in her mind while Erik was a few blips of bright light that occasionally stole all her attention. It was interesting while it was there, but there was a bigger prize for her to focus on. She just needed some time alone with Drake. They’d been nothing but nonstop for weeks now and even while they were still at the college, their relationship hadn’t had time to breathe. It was a lot of tension just begging to boil over.
“Well, time’s up for figuring out your shit, princess,” Lana said. “You jailbirds are going free tomorrow.”
“What?” That woke Alessia up out of her trance very quickly. “What’s happening?”
“It works better if you don’t know,” Lana said. “Or it hopefully will. Who knows? Maybe we’ll all be dead by this time tomorrow.”
“Is that what the drink is for?”
“There’s only one way to face the end of the world.”
Alessia didn’t get any sleep after that. A mixture of alcohol swimming in her head and the anxiety that Lana had placed there. The plan was happening, whatever strange plan it was. Alessia wondered how the pieces would fit together in it all, she couldn’t see the grand design—if there was one—of whatever it was Lana tried to create for their great escape and revenge against James.
Alessia, Erik, and Drake were pawns. That much was clear. She would be moved across this board however Lana and her cronies decided. Hell, they might even end up killing her at the end of all the action. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t at least fight for herself.
She’d gotten this far in life, she was working on her doctorate, she wore down Drake, she managed to find him. She wasn’t nothing. These weren’t some earth-shattering achievements like Joan of Arc or Elizabeth II but for her, it meant that they built her into the woman she was now. She was an adult, she had a good head on her shoulders, and knew one thing—she didn’t want to die.
So, whatever happened, she was getting out alive to call her mother and eat an entire pint of ice cream and then maybe run for president one day. The possibilities were endless. She just had to get out of this prison hellhole first.
Chapter 8
Whatever Lana’s original plan was, it had broken down profusely, that much was clear from how the day started. The first signs that something was going on was that breakfast didn’t come and Lana wasn’t there to greet her in the morning. Something had already begun, and Alessia was on guard. She was groggy, she had a headache, she refused to admit she was a little bit hungover in a jail cell of all places, but she quickly made herself ready to deal with whatever was coming.
That was just it though. There was silence. There was nothing. It was like some episode of After People where they talked about how Earth would continue to spin without humans and all the weird stuff that would entail. Nobody was here and the sounds of distant footsteps couldn’t even be heard down the corridor. Something was off and Alessia wasn’t even necessarily sure it was off in her favor. If Lana had shared her plans, she could know if she was meant to panic or not.
So instead, she did the one thing she hated more than anything else in the world: she sat there and she waited. Lana had told her that she would have to go along with whatever was happening. So, she did what she thought she was meant to do. She sat and listened to new sounds that she hadn’t noticed before, the drip of some far-off pipe, not quite tightened. There was the rattle of the heat which was, evidently, still working.
It felt like she might be the only person in the world and it was after what easily could have been an hour that she realized there was a very real chance she had been played. Maybe Lana had decided to head out with her gang on her own. It would make sense. After all, it wasn’t like she and Alessia were necessarily good friends or that she warranted some kind of rescue attempt. Sharing a drink and some pop culture references didn’t exactly inspire a need to die for one another.
So, what would her next move be? What would she do for herself to get free. And that was when the next thought she didn’t like came to her: she was helpless. She’d been at the mercy of Erik’s knowledge, then Diego’s, and now the promises of Lana.
If she got out—when she got out—she would snuff that out while she could. Relying on others had gotten her absolutely nowhere so far.
Why wait?
Solid metal bars stood between her and freedom. She couldn’t do much about that. The keys to open the gate were off on the hip of someone who could be several counties away by now. She wasn’t versed at picking locks even if she could find an object suitable for that. She didn’t have the strength to bend them in any way to try to squeeze herself through.
“This is going well so far,” she sighed.
So, the master escape wasn’t exactly a thing. Meanwhile, God knew what was happening around outside her. Her friends could all be dead. Or maybe they’d left without her. Would Erik do that? Would Drake? She felt a chill up her spine. No. They wouldn’t leave her behind. If they weren’t here for her, that meant something was wrong. It just wasn’t time for that part of the plan yet.
“Oh, come on!” she yelled and kicked into the wall and immediately regretted the action as pain sprang up from her toe a
ll the way to her ankle. So apparently, that’s all she was good for, breaking her foot in the middle of a crisis and being left behind. “So glad I dropped the twenty grand on grad school.”
It was another twenty minutes of wallowing in self-pity before, suddenly, there were sounds. A crash echoed from somewhere down the hallway. Then there was a yell and she felt like Noah after he first found the fovea that brought the olive branch to him proving there was, in fact, life out behind his eyes.
“Hello?” she called down the hallway. “What’s going on?”
It was better to pretend she knew nothing over admitting her guilt. She could still play that card. She was still in this.
“Calm down, princess,” Lana called from down the hall. “I’ll be there in a second.”
She felt a weight lift off her shoulders. She hadn’t been left behind. She hadn’t been forgotten. She still had friends. But that didn’t alleviate the fact that she was still just at someone else’s mercy. That wasn’t exactly what she was hoping for. It was better than nothing though when Lana turned the corner with a jangle of the keys and a smirk on her face.
“Say please.”
Alessia glared and Lana left, putting the key in the lock and turning and it seemed like it would take forever. But when the door opened, something happened that she didn’t expect. Suddenly, she found a cloth in her face and the world went black around her just before she felt herself hit the floor.
Chapter 9
When Alessia woke, she was in another place entirely. She’d come to regard the dank and damp smell of her cell as her home. It had built up a familiarity she tried to avoid. She didn’t want that place to become her home. But she had no choice. After a certain amount of conditioning, the mind will do what it does. So, when she woke again, with only a vague and fuzzy memory of what transpired before she got out of the cell, without the familiar hard floor beneath her thin cot and the smells of a dungeon, she was alarmed.
She opened her eyes to night air and felt grass beneath her face, tickling her skin and providing a somewhat soft pillow for her to rest her head. But it was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be outside. And why was her head throbbing? Had she hit it? Was she drugged so bad? Would the chemicals that knocked her out cause lasting damage to her neurons or brain? As these questions built up, so did the energy inside her.
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