He gestures again after blowing out an incoherent sound that I assume was meant to be words, to follow. I shrug and do it. I don’t see any reason not to, he’s proven himself to be a half decent human who isn’t out to hurt me, and a voice at the back of my mind is telling me this is how I get close to her. As soon as he knows I’m with him he turns on his heel and we head back to sierra.
“Help me… here to here” he motions wheezily when we get in her room beside her, from her bed to the new one he wheeled over here. His voice is low and labored and he’s struggling to get sound out. Definitely been running about like a maniac before coming down here, and I can feel his heart rate pulsing rapidly in the air around me. He’s composing himself as he works, but it’s obvious he’s not in the best physical shape.
I turn my eyes to our sleeping beauty, surprised at this distance how unwell she looks, and a whole lot less ethereal. Sierra up close, looks like a porcelain doll, so silently still and unresponsive, with flushed, rosy cheeks, on a milky pallor, dark lashes fanning her face under smooth dark brows, and I can see Colton in her features immediately. I don’t argue but take her upper arms under her armpits as firmly as I can without hurting her and lift her over while he gets her legs.
She’s light in weight, surprisingly so, nothing to her, and painfully thin as the blankets pull away and I see her body under her own thin medical gown. Her skin is almost translucent from lack of sunlight, yet she seems so very warm and alive, and I’m convinced she’s going to open her eyes at any moment. It’s unnerving, and I can’t stop staring at her face as we place her on the new bed, brushing her dark hair from her face as he tends to her limbs, and tubes, and settles her neatly.
“What are we doing?” I whisper it back, keeping my voice hushed as it’s pretty obvious with the lack of helpers he’s not meant to be doing this. As soon as he fully arranges her on the gurney, he takes a moment to inhale, calm his breathing by pressing a hand to his chest and points at the door.
“We’re taking her and leaving…. I drugged……. Fixed…. phew…” he struggles, wiping his brow with the back of his hand and takes another exaggerated breath, annoying me to the point of getting frustrated with his lack of vocabulary, and he tries again. I raise my brows at him and throw a ‘and?’ look his way. “I drugged dinner; we don’t have much time…. few hours at the most.” He wheezes and goes back to picking up tubes and arranging them around her in a hurried fashion.
“You did what?” I gawp at him, this unassuming little feeble doctor that wouldn’t stand up to Deacon earlier, and now it registers how quiet this place is when he’s making so much noise with carts and beds and no one’s appeared. My face pales as my blood drains away and my brain catches up with exactly what’s happening.
He nods at the bay outside her room and motions to start pulling her bed. Making it clear I’m not dreaming, and we are in fact staging a bust out, and a heist, in that Sierra is the gold, and we’re taking it. I swallow hard, pull myself together, and throw a glance up at the roof and a silent’ Thank you’ to the fates. They answered my prayers.
I do as he motions, tugging it backwards out the door with all my might to get it rolling, as he throws machines and such almost on top with her as we begin to move. He picks up, and dumps more items on the bed as we pass a couple of free-standing trolleys, pulling the saline drip, and bag feeding her fluids with him, and its trolley at the end while stretching all her tubes almost taut.
“I doped the soup and pretended to eat in the canteen to watch that they all did, we always eat together. Had to wait on them all passing out…. to the truck over there.” He nods at my shooting point and I pull the bed and aim for it, gaining speed as we go, and he grabs the medical trolley in passing to tug behind him too, making it awkward for him to keep hold of the bed at all, and I end up pulling it alone as he deals with that and the other wheeled necessities he’s hauling, dropping things as he does so.
If this is an escape, it’s a haphazard one, and he’s the worst kind of saving hero ever. He’s making enough noise to wake the dead, and I’m not convinced he’s not going to keel over and have a heart attack with how unfit he is. He’s puffing, and heaving, and losing more than half his weight in body sweat, and I think he might need to lie down. Humans really are a weak race.
“How are we meant to get out of here? We’re on the lowest floor and the elevator is that way?” I nod with my head in the direction we came from, a growing tight knot of anxiety that maybe the doctor’s plan is not the best. He waves at the trucks again, reminding me of their presence, but I’m not sure how they will help down here.
“The one on the end, it’s a medical truck, and that platform lifts up to the ground above. It’s how we store them and transport things in and out.”
As soon as he says it, I spin my head, eyeing the last green military truck that looks like its half-brother was a tank, and see the gears of the platform on the space behind it. The poles and hydraulics lining the steel wall in shadow and look up into a cavernous space that opens over your head when you get up close to them. From my room I couldn’t see it, but this space goes up some hundred or more feet to a set of closed metal doors on the top ceiling.
“And then what? We drive around until she wakes up?” I gasp, bumping the bed onto the edge of the platform, still helping while dissecting the absurdity of this and he shoves it fully. We come side by side with the truck we are aiming for and he motions me to keep it going to the rear. I eye him warily, real tension ripping through me as panic rears its ugly head, at his lack of a proper plan.
“Yes, sounds right. She’s been in a coma for eight years… we need time. I need to wean her awake and even then, I’ve no idea what state she will be in, physically, or mentally. All I know is we can’t stay here and do that without getting caught, and I owe her. I won’t fail my friend again!” the doctor has regained some of his equilibrium and leaves the bed with me to go run to a metal cabinet on the wall which houses keys and scoops up a set, coming back to open the truck and motions to bring the bed around.
“So, what you’re saying is … there’s no plan beyond getting out?” It’s a dry, non-amused response and I stare at him as everything inside of me grips tight. I have to swallow down the rising panic and he half-heartedly shrugs at me.
“I’m a doctor, not a masked villain who kidnaps people for a living. I figured your fates would somehow… I don’t know… help!! I mean you came and …. you’re here!”
“Oh my god!” it’s the only response as I have as words fail me, and I bite down on my lower lip and try to focus everything on helping him, and not the fact that after we get out I have no god damn idea what we’re meant to do. The guards won’t sleep forever, and they will come after us. At speed, with guns, and lots of them…. And inform Juan.
We make light work using the ramps inside the truck to get the bed and trolley in and he braces them in place which special metal clamps, hanging her saline bag on a hook coming from the interior wall, and pushes the mobile one into a corner and ties it down. He pushes the devices into clamps, and clips, along the wall parallel to her bed, and settles everything free standing into holders, or ties them in place expertly. Making light work as I can only stand and frantically race a million ideas through my head about what we’re going to do.
“I have a cabin, my home I guess, when I’m not here. We should go there and try and get her to wake up. They’ll track us, but we have a good head start and I don’t know if we can lose them. No one knew about my cabin.” It’s a weird little look, a half happy he came up with a plan, with a heavy dose of please tell me that’s a smart idea. I can only shake my head and stare.
He’s not thinking this through, or really envisioning how well a wolf can track, or how much faster they can be on foot when needs be. They won’t just dawdle when they find Sierra and me gone, they will come tearing after us like demons on the warpath and Juan will too, with his four crazy loyal subpacks, who annihilated my entire bloodline and go
t away with it. There’s no being safe in some cabin in the middle of god knows where.
“That won’t work… you’ve no idea how well they can hunt us. And Sierra… if Juan killed people to keep his dirty secrets silent, then he’s going to send a tsunami after her to make sure we don’t wake her up.” I point out, tucking Sierra’s blankets in tight to hold her neatly while he applies straps over her body to keep her in place. All I can do is keep helping, even if nausea is almost strangling me with so many possibilities and ways to die at Juan’s hands.
“Well do you have a better idea? … We need to protect her until she wakes, we need to find a place we can fortify. I don’t know people outside of these walls… I can’t fight or shoot an army of wolves.”
No place can be fortified against a pack of angry Lycans. Especially not when all you have is a bound wolf who can’t use her gifts, unless in serious threat, a human aging, unfit doctor, and a sleeping witch. We are so screwed.
I wrack my brains, trying to think of a million places I passed these past weeks alone, and how none of them are any good to hide, and no amount of hiding will stop them tracking us. It was different when I ran, I was solitary, and only Colton had reason to follow, and I had a couple of days head start to let my scent fade to nothing….
Colton!!!! Of course!
I can’t believe how stupid I was not seeing the most obvious answer to this question. Of course, the fates would bring me full circle and back to him, they’ve never stopped tormenting me mentally when it comes to that boy, making sure I couldn’t forget him if I wanted to. This is why. This moment of need.
Colton’s mom… Colton has an undying love for her and a need to find her. He also has a sub pack, and some fierce ass wolves who would do anything for him. One of the fiercest in the valley. Colton is our protection and I just need to get outside to link him, so he knows I need him. We need him.
“Yes…I do. I have her son… and he has a pack, and I know he won’t leave me to fight this alone if I tell him I have his mom.” He won’t fail her; he’s been looking for her. I know his heart and it’s not like Juan’s.
“You can trust him? Even after ten years with his father?” The doctor flashes me a wary look and I nod with no hint of hesitation. I know why he would query it, assuming under his father’s guidance that he might have twisted his son into a mini clone in all these years, but Colton is far stronger than I ever gave him credit for. He is his own mind and he doesn’t agree with how Juan hurts his people.
“Colton won’t let me down. If he knows I need him, that she does, he’ll come. I have no doubts in this. We’re linked, it’s not hard to find him.” Unless the fates took that from me when he marked Carmen, but I guess I’m going to find that out. I don’t think they would be so cruel in taking away something like that when I really need to use it to get Sierra out of this place in one piece. The fates in all of this, have been trying to address the balance and bring us back to what Juan destroyed.
“Okay, once we get free of the building, you should be able to use your gifts. So, I tell you where we are and where we are going, and he can possibly help. Plan? Yes, I think so. I don’t fancy dying tonight, so we better make it snappy.” The doctor is starting to lose his adrenalin rush, his panic panting, and instead seemingly in the ‘regret and what have I done, but to hell with it’, mode.
He ushers me to the front of the truck, pulling the doors shut behind us and he locks them in place from the inside. I can walk straight through with crouching, in the dark confines of the small space to the front seats and sit down in the passenger side with a quizzical look aimed right at him as he too gets settled in his driver seat.
“How do we go up, if we’re in here?” I point out, assuming he forgot that minor detail, of the fact we’re underground, but he picks up a very heavy-duty looking radio device from the dash and waves it at me.
“This is a very high tech and expensive facility. They like remotes. Boy toys.” He presses a button in the center of the military green controller and I almost have a heart attack when the entire platform shunts into motion, jerking us harshly, and begins to lift. Not just this one truck, but with all three on the entire floor and we slowly start to raise up and leave the bay level behind.
This is when my panic sets in and nerves get the better of me as I realize our escape is probably going to go down in the history of worst ever attempts. Its louder than hell; crunching, and groaning, and echoing around us like crazy, and probably scaring off all the wildlife above ground in a three-mile radius. I hope to god he was right about knocking those guards out, because otherwise they are definitely going to know we are running away. I cover my ears, cringing, and recoiling into my seat, and have to resist the urge to shut my eyes in the hopes this is a bad dream.
“Once we get up there and out into the open, the building no longer has any bind over you. The walls work on some sort of ingrained frequency that’s impossible for us to hear, but out there it doesn’t work. It has to surround you, you see.” The doctor yells over the noise, telling me facts about something I currently couldn’t care less about, but it hits a nerve and I sit up, blinking as my attention peeks.
“A frequency?” I turn to him, startled, some memory from before, tingling at my brain and I don’t know why that’s important, but I feel like it should be. My moment of fear dissipating when suspicion starts hiking up inside of me.
“Yes, years of research has shown that certain frequencies alone are some of the biggest weapons against your kind’s gifts. Truly fascinating. We stumbled upon it when looking at some’s ability to emit ultra-sonic sounds as a weapon.”
That’s it… the weapon. The one the vampires used to attack the home and it was frequency based too. I blink at him, not sure if I am piecing it together right or if I’m way off. The doctor is off on a nervous tangent, babbling away like a runaway cart as a reaction to stress I guess, and I have to butt in on the meticulous details of frequency being used to detain and disable my species.
“Did Juan ever use this facility to make any sort of portable isolation tank, that throws out the frequency instead of putting it in the walls?” Clutching at thin air as I try to fit together puzzle pieces I don’t know belong together. I don’t know how that would fit, given they almost killed me too and in turn would have killed Colton, but it seems a little too coincidental that this is how an isolation tank is made.
“No, my dear, but he did sell the research a few years ago, claiming it was a profitable, but overall harmless, discovery.” The doctor casts me a confused look and I can tell he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Harmless? The vampires attacked our mountain using a frequency to disable us all from turning. I almost died because of that stupid black box, and if Colton hadn’t….” I shudder at the memories, warmed slightly by the notion that Colton is where I’m heading once more, and even though it’s stupid and I should hate him, there’s a tiny ray of hope inside of me, an aching to go back to him. My own stupid weakness kicking in and finally after weeks of being heavy and hurt, it’s raising a tiny little beam of sunshine in my dark days.
“It was turned into a weapon… by vampires? I thought their kind were long driven underground and no longer a threat. Forgive me, my dear, we don’t get any kind of news here.” The doctor’s clueless, and the shock evident on his face, eyes wide, mouth gaping slightly as he takes that in and looks out of the window in front of us as he wraps his head around it, resting his hands on the wheel of the truck and shaking his head so very slightly.
“A month back, take or give, maybe longer now, I don’t know, I lost track. They attacked out of the blue and sent the mountain into chaos. A war is coming, and the wolves are all being dragged back to the mountain for Juan to control.” I sink back in my seat and watch as we climb the last few feet. Climbing the darkness while surrounded by eerie tones of groaning and grinding and I try not to think too much about how high we are on this rickety sounding platform. The roof begins to open up a
nd the dull grey of an ending day peeks through the cracks and makes me aware I’m about to taste fresh air once more. The urge to leap out and feel it on my skin distracts me and I turn to face the now silent doctor instead.
“Using a device, not too dissimilar to what we created? And they attacked Juan’s mountain and his people….” He mumbles more to himself than me and I can tell he really did not know. I can almost taste the suspicion in his tone, as he too comes to a conclusion I thought about but realize it’s stupid, and I’m letting paranoia and hate cloud my judgement.
“Yeah, but if you’re thinking Juan had something to do with it then, one, we hate vampires so no. Unlikely he would coerce with them, and two, Colton saved me when I was almost toast. If I died then Juan would have lost his son and heir, and no, that’s just no. I don’t care what kind of monster he is, he puts Colton on a pedestal and always talks about his ruling one day. He wouldn’t let his own son die. No matter what, I do believe his legacy is the most important thing next to being king of all he sees. He only has one son.”
“But hear me out ……. If Colton died, then Juan would have had reason to tie up his people in his control and use the attack to rally the wolves to unite as a pack. If he fabricated a war, or even gave them the means to start one, then it all plays into what he wants to be…. the prophecy. Uniting the packs against a war and thus forcing his position to fill what the prophecy wanted. A wolf to reign the people. He’s still so obsessed that it should be him!”
My blood runs cold and as crazy as it sounds it starts to fall into place. The doctor has a point and yes, Colton dying would push those loyal to Colton to rally with Juan in avenging his death. A common enemy is a great way to instill fear and make the people look to a leader to save them. Something doesn’t sit right with it though, and I’m trying to decipher it.
“You think he enabled the vampires and prompted them to hit the orphanage in the hopes Colton would die when I did? As a catalyst to get the people under control and mounting an arsenal.”
Awakening: Book 1 Page 38
