Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
RILEY
Beeping of medical equipment assaulted my ears. I breathed in through my nose and couldn't quite place the smell. It smelled like a doctor's office, but there was something different about it.
My stomach rolled with nausea as I regained consciousness. The feeling reminded me of waking up on the buoy and my hands tightened on something metal.
What the hell happened?
It felt like I had a really bad cold with heavy eyelids and a splitting headache. My ears felt like they had cotton balls shoved in them. The worst were my lips that stung as I wet them.
I tried to lift my arm, but the pressure of something cold and metal stopped the movement. I pried open my eyes and everything was in a haze.
Reality set in.
My mom telling me to run.
Jax, Morgan, and Blake.
The syringe.
My heart threatened to jump out of my chest as I tried to move my arms again.
Something was stopping them from moving.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my eyes and looked to my wrists that were secured to the arms of a chair, similar to the cuffs on an execution chair.
I wasn't hooked to any machines from what I could tell.
My eyes were still blurry, but when I lifted my head, I could tell that I wasn't somewhere I wanted to be. The room was cold and sterile, much like a testing facility or hospital. Except there weren't hospital beds with curtains.
There were tanks.
I swallowed to help the burning sensation in my throat. Was I going to be next?
The large tanks lined the wall in front of me. Floating inside were figures that slowly came into focus as my eyes cleared. The smell made sense now; it was salt water.
I squinted, trying to get a better look at what was in the tank.
Not humans.
The girl right in front of me was a sickly pale blue with long flowing dark blue hair. I could tell she was ill just from the way her skin looked. Her body floated in the water, a tube down her throat and wires hooked to her arms.
Other tanks had males and females, hooked up the same. My eyes cleared more and I gasped. They didn't have legs, but tails. Mermaids don't exist is what Morgan had told me. Then what the fuck was right in front of my face?
The beep of a door being unlocked and the whoosh of sliding doors opening came from behind me. I gripped the arms of the chair and my body tensed as footsteps approached. If I had my knife, I could easily cut free from the chair and escape.
"Ms. Kline, I see you're awake." A man's voice made me jump, but I didn't get far since my arms and legs were stuck to a chair.
Don't panic.
The man walked slowly toward me, the sounds of his shoes on the concrete floor growing closer and closer. He walked straight past me to the girl in the tank directly in front of me.
"Do you know why you're here?" He put his hand on the tank and bowed his head briefly.
The man was dressed like he had just come from a business meeting. He wasn't wearing a suit jacket, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows. His hair was cut short, and I saw how muscular he was through his light blue dress shirt.
I didn't speak. I couldn't speak. I was frozen in fear and my throat was as dry as a desert.
"Mason. Elijah. Get the girl some water."
I hadn't even been aware there were other people in the room. My body shook as another man came from behind, yanked my head back by my hair, and squeezed my cheeks until I opened my mouth.
I cried out, shaking my head vigorously as another man came and poured water in my mouth. They laughed as I nearly choked.
"Now. Let's try this again." The man turned around as I coughed. "Do you know why you're here?"
The man looked exactly like Jax. Finn West.
I gasped and shook my head. I had a vague idea of why I was drugged and brought to wherever the hell I was, but it was hard to wrap my brain around. It was as if I was living in a movie, only I was fairly certain someone wouldn't be coming to rescue me.
I looked back at the tank Finn was standing at. Now that my eyes had cleared, I could see the tank was sizeable and was closed on the top with a large window at the back of it, staring out into blackness.
The hair on the back of my neck and arms stood on end as it became evident to me we were underwater. I felt in my soul that we were well below sea level, and above us was nothing but the wide-open sea.
I turned my focus back to the girl so I wouldn't freak out. She was younger than me, possibly early teens. My chin trembled as realization struck.
Jax's sister.
"Tell me, Riley." He walked toward me, but stopped several feet away. "Do you know what happens when oil gets into the lungs?"
I could hardly hear him over the ringing in my ears. He nodded to one of the men behind me, and I gripped the arms of the chair, preparing to be assaulted by water again. I flinched as one of the men moved past me carrying a cell phone and then pointed it at me.
"Here's what's going to happen." Finn stepped closer and grabbed my chin, forcing my gaze up to him.
"We're going to send a little message to your mother and father since, clearly, my boy hasn't done enough to get their attention.
" His eyes blazed with a hatred I had never seen in a person before.
They were blue, like Jax's, but held something dark within them.
I was about to piss my pants from fear, so I nodded. There was no way I could fight off three men who were practically twice my size. They looked like they could break an arm or leg with no problem.
"Good girl." He let go of my chin and held out his hand.
"Please." My voice choked out the word as he was handed a white rag. "Don't hurt me."
He paused for a moment and looked back at the tank. "When my daughter swam through the oil your father spilled, it coated her lungs, damaging them. The doctors say even if she got new lungs, her brain has been too deprived of oxygen to survive without the assistance of a tube down her throat."
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked back at the girl in the tank and then to the others lined up next to her. They all looked just as sick as her.
He unfolded the rag in his hand. "Do you know what it feels like to drown, Ms. Kline?"
A strangled sob fell from my lips in response. He nodded again, and a blindfold was placed over my eyes and the chair was tipped back.
"I think you do." His voice was closer now, to the side of me.
I struggled against the metal securing my arms and legs. "No!" I managed to get the word out before a rag was placed over my face. I sucked in a breath of air just before water was poured over the rag.
It took a moment for the water to seep through the cloth. As soon as it hit my face, I tried to shake it off, but hands held my head in place. My body burned the longer I held in my breath, and when I couldn't hold on any longer, my breath left me and I gasped in a mouth full of rag and water.
I wasn't really drowning. My brain wanted me to think I was drowning. My heart was thudding so hard that I felt it in my fingertips.
The man holding the chair let go and I crashed to the ground, my head hitting the cement. A lightning bolt of pain shot through my skull. Luckily, I hadn't been that far from the ground in the first place.
Noise erupted in the room and an alarm blared somewhere in the distance. I moved my head from side to side, the rag sliding off my face. I gasped for breath and struggled against the restraints.
I couldn't see a thing, but the sounds of fighting filled my ears. I heard shouting in the distance.
The chair was tipped up and the blindfold untied. Morgan stood over me with wet clothes and blood dripping down from a cut over his eyebrow. "Fuck, vixen."
My eyes scanned the room to find Mason and Elijah splayed out on the ground. Jax had his father pinned against the glass of a tank with his forearm wedged against his throat. He was in nothing except dark blue boxers that clung to his ass like a second skin.
"You lied to me!" Jax's voice dripped with loathing, and he pressed into Finn's neck even harder. "I should gut you right here and now." Finn laughed and stopped struggling as Blake joined Jax. "Goodnight, father."
Blake stabbed Finn in the neck with a syringe and Finn shot murderous glares at them. His head lulled to the side and Jax lowered him to the ground.
I was so confused about what was going on. They had drugged me and gotten me into this mess, and now they were doing what? Rescuing me?
Blake came around the chair, and I flinched as he unlocked the cuffs on my hands and feet. "I'm sorry, we didn't know-"
"Save it, Huron. We need to go." Jax reached into his father's pocket and pulled out a keycard. "Now."
I rubbed my wrists and was too shocked to do any of the glaring or yelling I wanted to do. Morgan scooped me up from the chair and cradled me against his chest. He was stronger than he looked and moved like I weighed nothing.
I didn't fight against him. There was no other option other than to trust that they were getting me out of there. Had I just conjured up the idea of Blake stabbing me in the neck with a syringe? No. That was definitely real. My neck was still sore from whatever it was.
I bounced in Morgan's arms as they ran out of the room and down a hall that looked like something out of a spaceship. Everything was metal, with sensors on the doors and red lights signaling no access.
Jax stopped and used his father's card to open a door at the end of the hall. Inside were pods in the shape of large eggs lined up along the wall. They were completely see-through besides strips of metal here and there and the seat inside. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
He pressed a button, and one of the pods opened. It had a harness and roll bars to hold on to. I panicked and pushed against Morgan's chest, trying to get free. There was no way they were putting me in one of those things.