Chapter 21 #2
“Kellan,” Wren said. “Instructor Kellan has been abusing Damir since we were children.”
“Define abuse,” she asked.
“Is it a foreign concept to you?” Wren snapped. “Do you need a dictionary?”
“Wren,” Hart said softly. “Let us leave hostility at the door.”
“Let us not,” Wren said, shaking his head. “I think hostility is what I have been getting from Nexus my entire life, and those I love have fared even worse. I’ve earned this.”
“We have never done anything to hurt you,” Gwen said, but something in her voice showed she wasn’t as convinced as she had been just a moment ago.
“You know what? I’m not even gonna dignify that with an answer. We can all pretend that my time at Nexus was just a complete joy and leave it at that. But what Damir has been through…what he is still going through should be a reason for you to burn it to the fucking ground.”
“Nobody ever reported anything,” Gwen said, and Wren snorted so hard he was sure he popped a blood vessel in his sinus.
“Would you have believed us?” Wren asked. “Can you look me in the eye now and tell me you would have trusted a trainee you despised from the moment he walked into Nexus? I could have brought you videos of it happening in real time and you would have ignored them.”
“That isn’t true,” she said quietly.
“Yes, it is,” he said firmly. “And Damir was too scared and too closely watched to do anything. Kellan had been hurting him for years. Following him. Watching him. He never said anything, but he was threatened and held under a boot all in the name of your fucking institution and your blind trust in the people who work there.”
“You have no way to prove this,” she said, her fingers twisted around each other as she avoided looking at anyone.
“Damir has kept journals his whole life. Detailed accounts of everything. I have seen him being threatened and followed. His team has seen Kellan breathing down his neck since they were placed. Since I have been in Arcstead he has followed us, threatened us, twisted my arm, and made sure to let Damir know he would pay if he didn’t do what he was told. ”
“And what does he supposedly want?” Gwen asked and Wren was sad to admit he had no actual idea what his endgame was.
“I don’t know, but he’s the one behind the drugs made from animal venom hitting the market. And he’s the one who stole your artifacts and installed a crazy machine inside a warehouse and TRAPPED US INSIDE IT!”
“This is taking it too far, Wujia,” she said, standing up. “You have been through a lot and that machine clearly affected you because you are imagining things. I will have—”
“You will have nothing!!” Wren yelled. “I know what I have seen and I have witnesses! Avery saw it. Midas did too.”
Gwen whirled on her heels to look at Midas, who gave her a singular sharp nod, and Avery, who stood wide-eyed and nodding like his life depended on it.
“You both have seen a Nexus instructor do this?” she asked, never bothering to sign, and it pissed Wren off even more. Fucking bitch. Midas scowled immediately, jutting his chin out and refusing to engage with her.
Avery side-stepped to stand in front of him, squaring up to Gwen.
“We haven’t seen Kellan there, but we have seen the machine and the mess he left making it,” Avery said.
“So you don’t know it was him,” she said, sounding relieved.
Avery frowned even harder. “If not him specifically, then someone else from Nexus.” He turned to look at everyone around the room, signing so Midas could see.
“As I was saying before we got interrupted, the parts in that machine were classified and sealed ages ago. If anyone has access to them, it’s a Nexus higher-up or a PUMA director. ”
“But—”
“And what I also didn’t get a chance to say is this,” Avery continued as if she hadn’t tried to speak. “If what I managed to find in the last few hours is true, the machine we saw was a prototype. A trial run, almost. It wasn’t fully functional, which is why I think you’re relatively okay, Wren.”
“A prototype,” Wren said, cold dread settling over his skin.
“But that means…” Black started, eyes wide and lips parted.
“There could be another one somewhere,” Hart said and Wren decided he’d had enough.
Something inside him broke at the idea that he was sitting here, talking, trying to convince someone of something when Teddy was alone and probably scared somewhere, in pain and being used as a fucking experiment by an absolute lunatic.
“We’re done here,” he said, finally managing to stand up and locate a clean set of clothes draped over the back of one of the chairs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Fix asked.
Wren paid him no mind as he painfully tugged the clothes on and shoved his feet into a scuffed pair of sneakers someone had brought for him.
“This is pointless. She’s gonna defend her fucking cult until she chokes on it and I’m not gonna sit here and wait for her to come around. Kellan has Teddy and I won’t let him hurt him anymore.”
“Kellan did nothing but help you escape that warehouse,” Gwen said, positioning herself in front of him and cutting off his exit. “He cared for Damir. He brought him to the hospital to make sure he got here as soon as possible.”
“And where is he now?” Wren asked.
“Kellan?” Gwen asked.
“Teddy!” Wren yelled, and she flinched. “Where is Teddy?!”
“I was informed he was taken to intensive care. I wasn’t allowed in,” she said.
“Because he isn’t here,” Wren said. “He isn’t here. Kellan took him to do whatever it is he set out to do and I’m wasting my time here trying to talk to you as if you’ll ever listen. Fuck this!”
“You have no way to prove any of this, Wujia.”
He looked her dead in the eye and without a second thought grabbed her by the wrist.
“You want proof?” he asked, charging for the door and pulling her behind him while she struggled. She was a good head taller than he was, but Wren had always been stronger than he looked, despite everything that had happened to him.
He forced her out of his room and into a sickly green hallway, the lights making the disgusting color even more upsetting.
“Let go!” She struggled against his grip.
“I thought you wanted proof,” he said, dragging her behind him until they reached a wide double door held closed by several nurses and literally swarmed by people screaming over each other.
Wren recognized Trace’s looming presence among the rest of Teddy’s team, and there were two PUMA officers as well, accompanied by a few police officers with trained dogs leashed at their heels.
“You need to let us see him!”
“Nobody can access his room!”
“We are his next of kin!”
“The ICU doesn’t care about next of kin! They’ll inform you of his condition in due time. We’ve been over this.”
“I will be putting you AND your next of kin into intensive care if you don’t let us through right now.” Wren recognized Eerie’s voice among all the other raised ones.
“Nexus Head would like to see the patient!” Wren announced, yelling to be heard above all the ruckus.
The noise died down instantly and all eyes turned to them.
A doctor rushed to the front of the group, addressing Gwen directly, not sparing Wren a glance. He didn’t give a fuck. He caught Saint’s eye and frowned when Saint just shook his head desperately.
“What do you mean I’m not allowed to see him?” Gwen said. She was standing tall in front of a doctor who kept repeating the same phrase over and over and over again.
“The patient is being monitored and nobody is allowed into his room.”
“You will take me to him right now.”
“We can’t do that,” the doctor said.
“If you value your jobs you will find a way,” she said. “Damir is a cursebreaker and as such Nexus has guardianship rights over him. You cannot legally stop me from seeing him.”
“B-but…”
“You either take me to see him, or I walk in there by force,” she said, raising her hand, her fingers moving in a way only a caster would know. Wren knew she was powerful—she had to be to run Nexus—but the instant silence that followed the move was chilling.
“Madam Head,” the doctor said, shuffling his feet, clearly uncomfortable.
“He isn’t here, is he?” Wren asked finally, and the doctor jerked his head toward him, eyes wide and shocked at the words. “You fucking assholes are working with a psychopath and covering for him, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“Answer his question,” Gwen said loudly, and Wren nearly fainted at the way she backed him. He found her looking angry and tense when he glanced up at her face.
“We were told to make it look like he was brought in,” the doctor mumbled.
“Told by who?” Gwen asked.
The doctor swallowed hard before responding. “Kellan.”
All hell broke loose.
The Arcstead team jumped like enraged hyenas, throwing themselves bodily against the barriers, trying to get their hands on whoever they could, looking for answers and revenge.
Gwen stumbled back at the words, face falling and eyes looking dimmer than they ever had before. Wren watched in real time as all of her beliefs crumbled to the ground before her, as she realized the institution she held in such high regard had provided shelter to someone so depraved.
She opened and closed her mouth, chest heaving with breaths she couldn’t quite force into her lungs.
She was falling apart, but Wren didn’t care anymore.
He pushed through the crowd toward the first exit he could spot, shoving the door open and stumbling through it into the murky day outside.
Tiny drops of rain caught in his hair and a chill wind danced along his back, but he was blind to it all.
All he could see was Teddy, alone and scared and waiting for him to come. All he could focus on was finding him.
The rest of the world could fucking deal with their own bullshit. Unless Wren razed it all to the ground in his search.
“I’m coming,” he whispered into the air, striding in the direction of the warehouse where he’d last seen Teddy.
If he was to have any hope of finding him, he had to go back and follow whatever trails he could find from there.
He had to—