Chapter Seventeen
White Ravens
Gage
The pounding on the door ripped Gage out of the best sleep of his life.
He jerked upright, a little disoriented, knocking the warm, scented mask from his face.
For a second, he didn’t remember where he was.
“G!” Roz’s voice was loud and urgent. “Get up!”
He rolled until he got to the edge of the bed and his feet hit the warm floor. He rubbed at his eyes as he staggered toward the sound of Roz’s voice.
“I’m coming,” he rasped.
He hurried to the bedroom door and flung it open.
“What is it?”
“They said Scar’s here,” he blurted.
Gage’s fog evaporated, adrenaline knifing through his veins.
“Where?” His heart started pounding hard enough he could hear it in his ears.
“I don’t know. All Rose said was the Blacks’ helicopter just landed, and they’re moving him now.”
Moving him? What does that mean?
“Clothes,” Gage said, reaching blindly for the wardrobe. “Grab me something.”
Roz’s heavy footsteps ate up the hardwood floor before he heard doors sliding on a track, hangers scraping metal and fabrics rustled.
“What the…? Why is ninety-nine percent of this shit white?” Roz muttered. “This is like…winter couture, man.”
“I don’t care,” Gage snapped, pulse racing. “Just give me something.”
Roz pressed some clothes into his hands, and he made quick work of shoving on the fleece-lined joggers and pullover. He didn’t bother with socks, just jammed his feet into his shoes and ran toward the front door.
Rose was there waiting.
“Gage.” She used the same unhurried, warm, professional voice from earlier. “If you’d like, I can take you to Scar right now.”
Do I want to face Scar again?
The question barely formed before his answer was out.
“Yes,” he said, reaching for Roz’s forearm. “Take me to him.”
It wasn’t a request.
The air was cooler in the hallway and even colder in the elevator, but he was overheating with anticipation of feeling Scar’s intense presence.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Three forty-two,” she answered.
When the doors opened, the world exploded in sound. Harsh, urgent voices snapping orders and barking questions.
“BP’s good. Sedative’s still holding.”
“How long has he been out?”
“Almost two hours.”
“His airway is clear but I want O2 levels and heart rhythm monitored for the next six hours.”
Jo’s voice rose above the rest, cutting through the chaos. “I want a full report, Meridian. Every step. Every choice. Now.”
Gage’s heart knocked hard.
Each word they spoke made his stomach twist.
“G, slow down,” Roz said.
He didn’t.
Gage let go of Roz’s arm and bolted toward the rush of noise, arms outstretched. Shapes brushed past him and air sifted through his hands. Someone called his name and told him to wait, but he ignored it.
His knees hit something solid that was about waist high. Pain flashed up his leg, as he braced himself, hands pressing down on thin mattress padding between metal railing.
A gurney.
He reached out and hit an ice cold boot, flinching in response.
He hated how his hands began to shake as he dragged them up a denim-clad shin, to the ridge of a knee cap. He kept going, squeezing a thigh that felt as if it’d been carved out of stone.
“Scar,” he breathed, fear surging. “Scar!”
Hands brushed against his arm, trying to guide him back.
“Sir—”
He jerked away, shoving wildly at the bodies crowding the stretcher.
“Don’t touch him,” he snapped.
“Gage.” Jo’s voice was close and edged with command. “He’s not hurt. He’s sedated.”
“Why?” he barked in her direction. “It couldn’t’ve been by choice.”
His fingers found Scar’s chest, broad and solid, rising in slow, even breaths. He slid them higher, searching until he reached his warm throat.
Scar’s pulse was strong and steady.
He exhaled shakily but didn’t let his anger go.
“What did you do? You said we were safe here.”
A new voice answered. Deep and unnerving. The kind of calm that came from men who exuded so much fear they no longer needed to raise their voice.
“He wouldn’t stop running. And I wasn’t interested in a ten-mile foot chase through across South Chicago.”
Gage scowled in the direction of that voice. “So you treated him like a rabid animal.”
“It was a mild tranquilizer,” he said boredly. “He’s fine.”
Gage squeezed Scar’s shoulder, shaking him gently.
“Hey,” he croaked, fear lacing his voice. “Scar. Scar, wake up. It’s me.”
Nothing. Scar’s body stayed heavy and unresponsive.
“Corvo,” Jo called over the scuffing of movement. “Report.”
“The sedative dose was approved,” another man answered from somewhere to Gage’s left. “Vitals were stable all the way in. No signs of distress or reaction. He’s just out.”
“Gage, I told Meridian to bring Scar in without being harmed. But Scar was putting up a serious fight, so I understand his use of the sedative.” Jo said, her breath brushing across Gage’s chin.
“His gang was hunting him, we needed to get him out of Chicago fast. When he wakes up, if he doesn’t want to stay, he can go.
Just like you can. No one here is captive. ”
The gurney jerked and started moving again.
“Where are you taking him?” he demanded, tightening his grip on the rail.
“To the medical wing for monitoring,” a woman said in a clipped, distant tone. “It’s standard protocol after field extraction—”
“Over my dead body.” Gage planted his feet, bringing the gurney to a hard stop.
“You’re welcome to stay beside him the whole time,” Jo said.
“Right,” Gage bit out. “When I can’t see what you’re doing to him.”
“You won’t be alone, Gage.”
He recognized Valor’s growly voice. “Roz can stay with you. Zorion will also be inside, and I’ll stand outside the door. No one gets in without your say-so. Not even Jo. You have my word.”
Gage hesitated as Scar’s pulse thumped steadily under his fingertips.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But if anyone tries anything, I’m done being polite.”
“Understood,” Jo said quietly. “Dr. Jules, take them to med bay C.”
The gurney rolled forward again. Gage walked beside it, one hand glued to the side rail, the other on Scar’s forearm, feeling the flex and slack of drugged muscle under his palm.
They made a sharp left, as a set of doors swished open, and frigid air wrapped around his bare ankles.
The room they entered sounded bigger, their footsteps echoing off the walls. The sharpness of antiseptic and the metallic tang of surgical tools made Gage’s stomach churn.
The gurney clanked and locked into place.
“Gage, I’m Dr. Jules, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer,” she said in a relaxed manner. “This is a pulse oximeter monitor I’m putting on his finger, so I can keep track of his heart rate and oxygen levels.”
Gage tensed.
“I’m watching, G,” Roz reported from the other side of the bed. “Did you know his hair was white?”
I remember it turning, but I never saw the final result.
Gage heard the snap of latex gloves, a tiny click of plastic, then a monitor whirring to life before it started a steady beep.
He slid his hand down, mapping skin and bone until he found the device and rested his own hand over it like a guard.
“His heart rate is steady, and his oxygen level is ninety-eight percent. The sedative will wear off over the next couple of hours. I’m going to dim the lights so there’s no ocular strain when he wakes up.”
“Here, G, you can sit down.”
Roz rolled a stool toward him until it bumped the back of his knees.
“If his vitals change, my tablet will alert me,” Dr. Jules said. “There’s a phone on the wall to your left. If you need anything, just lift the receiver, and someone will respond right away.”
Gage lowered himself into the chair. It was one of those cushioned office ones, too firm but not terrible. He stayed leaning forward with his elbows braced on the edge of the mattress, and his hand over Scar’s forearm.
The door whispered open again, and he tracked the doctor’s footsteps down the hall until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
“Zorion is in the corner and Valor is right outside,” Roz said quietly. “Jo tried to follow us in, but Valor shut the door in her face.”
Gage nodded.
The room softened to hushed beeps and the low hissing of the ventilation system.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Scar’s chest rose and fell under his palm. The sedative had loosened and taken the edge off him. The man who always vibrated with fury and defiance lay slack and still under his touch.
Gage could literally feel the difference in Scar stripped of his armor of rage and fire.
Roz blew out a long breath.
“I don’t get you, G,” he murmured. “This dude loathed you. Any time he saw you around the hood, he gave you shit.”
Yeah, he remembered.
But Scar had been all bark and no bite. He’d get in his face but never laid a hand on him.
“And now you’re acting like his bodyguard.” Roz’s chair creaked. “It makes no sense.”
Gage understood his friend’s confusion.
“Trust me, I know.”
“Then why?” Roz pushed. “He terrorized my crew day and night…especially when you were around. And he left you freezing in a barn a few days ago. Why do you feel you owe him?”
Gage curled his fingers around Scar’s wrist.
“I can’t let him wake up alone in here,” he said. “On another hospital bed, smelling the stench of this danggone lab. Hearing strange voices. Thinking he’d ended up right back in the same hell we just escaped from.”
He shook his head, then sighed.
“I was terrified when we landed on this rooftop, and I was conscious. Scar’s about to come outta’ this deep sleep, not knowing he’s safe. So maybe if I’m the first person he sees…”
“If he touches you, I’ll—”
“Roz. Stop.”
Memories flooded back like a breached dam, roaring through him before he could brace for the impact.
“There’s stuff I didn’t tell you,” he said. “About the other facility. About Scar and how he was just as much of a lab rat as I was.”
He slid his hand up Scar’s arm, over the hard swell of his bicep, and across his shoulder. The skin there was riddled with small, jagged ridges. The same injection and IV scars as his.
“The first time I saw Scar in there”—Gage’s voice dropped—“I still had most of my sight. Things were blurry, but I could still make out some shapes and colors. I’d spent a week being dragged in and out of some testing center.
Every time they finished sticking me and pumping me full of crap, the world got fuzzier. ”
He could still feel it if he allowed himself to—the sharp sting of whatever they’d pushed into his veins.
“They dumped me in a different room one day,” he went on. “One side of it was a glass wall.”
Scar’s face was burned in his memory from that day. Creased forehead from the permanent scowl, cold eyes glassed over like winter ice, jaw set hard enough to crack his own teeth.
“He was on the other side. And believe me, Scar was just as shocked to see me as I was to see him. He started banging on the walls, yelling every curse word he knew.” Gage’s breath hitched. “At them…not me.”
Roz was quiet, listening.
“I tried to make a run for the door, which was stupid since three men were blocking it. One of the guards hit me in the stomach with… I don’t even know what. It felt like a steel bar, but it dropped me.”
He heard it again in his mind, the animalistic sound that Scar had made.
“Scar lost it,” he whispered. “He was pounding his fists on the glass so hard it shook. Screaming at them not to touch me again. Telling them he’d kill them all. He was so strong. I thought he’d break every bone in his hands.”
Gage ran his thumb along the thick tendons in Scar’s wrist.
“I was on the floor, gasping, half-blind. I was so sure I’d die in there.
Every time they pumped something else into me, my vision went darker.
But Scar had been on the other side of that wall, yelling at me to be strong.
” The corners of his mouth turned down. “Telling me I wasn’t alone and swearing he’d find a way to get us out. ”
“Wow,” Roz exhaled.
“For two months,” he said, his voice almost a whisper now, “we went through that storm together. I’d hear him get yanked out, then dragged back in, shaking so badly his bed rattled.
He’d be in so much pain, but he still talked to me.
Told me stories about the block, about stupid stuff he used to do, and about the smart things that’d saved his life.
Told me to stop thinking I was gonna’ die because he had a plan. ”
The next sentences were hard for him to get out.
“He wasn’t the Scar I knew from the South Side anymore,” he said. “He was…still him. Still mean as hell. Still angry. But he…cared. He wouldn’t let me just lie there and cry. I think… No, I’m sure that, without him, I would’ve given up.”
“Shit,” Roz muttered.
Gage grazed his fingers over Scar’s, the warmth from his skin seeping into his. His eyes burned, the constant ache behind them flaring a little hotter.
“So yeah, Scar’s done a lot of evil, and he’s still a jerk most of the time. I’m not stupid, Roz. But when I was in that place…and the darkness was closing in…he always reminded me he was still there.” He turned in Roz’s direction. “Now can you understand why I can’t let him wake up alone.”
Roz didn’t say anything else.
They sank back into a silence. After another hour, Gage’s muscles ached in that deep, post-adrenaline way. His eyelids felt weighted, but he refused to close them or remove his hand.
Time scraped past in long, grinding minutes.
Scar’s fingers twitched under his palm and Gage straightened, every nerve waking up.
“Scar,” he leaned in, keeping his voice low. “It’s me.”
The door whistled open, but Gage trusted Roz to let him know if he and Scar were in danger.
Scar locked his fingers around his like a shackle.
“Easy,” he murmured.
Scar still wasn’t fully awake.
“Gage…” Scar’s voice was hoarse, almost broken.
“You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
“…m’sorry…I left you…”
Gage’s breath punched out of him.
Scar’s mouth moved sluggishly, his eyelids barely fluttering, still trapped somewhere between sedation, memories, and consciousness.
He leaned closer, his forehead brushing Scar’s temple.
“I forgive you…just don’t ever do it again.”
“Finally,” Valor huffed. “The White Ravens.”