31. Chapter 31
Riley
When I woke, the room was dark, and not even the camera’s red eye blinked in the corner. The small window near the ceiling showed a square of night sky.
My ribs throbbed, and my stomach felt queasy from the sedative they kept giving me. My implant cataloged my vital signs as I struggled not to throw up. Heart rate elevated, blood pressure low, pain level significant but manageable.
It had learned my pain threshold and adjusted its parameters accordingly. Marlowe might be coming for me, and Wilson planned to torture me. I’d rather die than go through that again.
I couldn’t afford to wait anymore.
My hands were still encased inside the thick rubber mittens, but they hadn’t bothered to put the restraints back on my wrists.
The grounding wires trailed from the mittens, keeping me powerless, but I still reached out for energy.
It came to me sluggishly, gathering in my palms and warming the rubber.
I pushed harder, feeling the charge build.
My hands grew hot, sweat beading under the thick material.
Then the energy rebounded, slamming back through my nervous system like a closed circuit and hitting my heart like a sledgehammer.
My vision darkened, and a violent, irregular flutter rocked through me, seizing my chest. The implant registered the arrhythmia and flooded my system with cold, corrective blasts.
Darkness crowded me, and I started falling backward into nothing, lungs not finding air. The implant sent another shot through me, harder this time. My heart shuddered, skipped, then caught a rhythm, fast but steady.
I lay there, trembling, tears streaming silently. The ceiling tiles swam above me, and my chest ached with every breath. Devastation settled over me, thick and suffocating. I couldn’t use my energy because of the thick rubber and grounding wires, and I’d nearly killed myself trying.
The implant took inventory as I lay there feeling sorry for myself. Energy manifestation not limited to upper limbs. It was telling me to use my feet.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out exactly how to do it.
This was going to hurt. The thick nylon straps around my ankles had no grounding wires.
I flexed my toes, testing whether I could gather energy there.
It felt strange, like writing with my left hand, but the energy responded, and a faint tingle spread down my calves to my toes.
It took a few tries, but I drew in the energy slowly, letting it build in a controlled rise.
Heat spread through my feet and ankles, warming the nylon straps.
Then I pushed.
The pain turned vicious. The straps heated and seared into my flesh. The smell hit me first—burning nylon, acrid and chemical. And underneath it, the nauseating scent of burned skin. I gritted my teeth and held the charge, watching as the nylon began to blacken and curl. God, I wanted to be sick.
The strap across my right ankle gave way, the nylon melting through in a sizzling hiss. I yanked my foot free and screamed into the pillow, the sound muffled and raw.
Turning my attention to the left ankle, I poured energy into the strap until it too began to melt. The pain was blinding, but the strap finally gave way, the smell of burnt nylon and seared flesh filling the small room again.
I lay there panting, tears streaming freely now, my ankles throbbing in unison. The implant sent another blast, this one targeted at my pain receptors, and the agony dulled.
Sitting up, I brought my foot up to one of the mittens, the position awkward.
But my body contorted on the narrow bed, and I managed to press my bare foot against the strap holding my left mitten on.
Heat built again, and the strap began to blacken.
I turned my head and buried my face in my shoulder.
When the strap melted through, I yanked my left arm free and clutched it against my chest, silently sobbing. Then I worked off the rest of the ruined straps and the other mitten. The skin around my ankles and wrist was a blistered, weeping mess.
I scrambled off the bed, but my legs buckled. I caught myself on the edge of the mattress and half-crawled, half-stumbled to the small bathroom attached to the room.
Leaving the light off, I cranked the cold water and thrust my burned wrist under the stream. The relief was immediate and brutal, cold shock followed by blessed agony as blood swirled in the sink.
Carefully, I pulled myself up on the counter and put both my feet in the sink, running cold water over my ankles. Blood and pieces of nylon came away and swirled down the drain. My ankles were worse, and the skin was blistered in places.
I sat for a long time, shaking and watching the water run. The implant hummed steadily, processing the agony and filing it away under survivable. The thing had kept me alive when I’d gone into arrhythmia.
Slowly, I climbed off the counter and washed my face. My wild hair, blotchy skin, and swollen eyes made me look half-crazy in the dim light. Fear and rage bled through the haze in my mind.
I was sick of being used and hurt. Maybe giving myself second-degree burns was extreme, but I refused to be their victim anymore. I was still in a building full of hostile people, though.
Wilson’s promise of “more persuasive methods” echoed in my head.
The cold water had numbed the burns a little, but my hospital gown was bloodstained, and my wrists and ankles looked red and angry, the skin blistered and weeping.
My ankles protested when I put weight on them, but the implant flooded my system with enough neuroinhibitors to let me function.
I limped to the heavy door with its automatic lock and pressed my ear against the cool metal. Nothing. The hallway beyond seemed quiet. I studied the locking mechanism and realized the only way I’d be getting out is when someone opened it from the outside.
So I sank to my butt next to the door, pulled my knees to my chest, and waited.
The wait was excruciating. My burns throbbed in time with my heartbeat, and my brain kept trying to replay what had happened.
Freda unconscious in the waiting room, waking up strapped to the bed, the doctor’s fingers inside me, Wilson planning to torture me.
I pushed my thoughts down and focused on breathing.
My implant hummed quietly, running scenarios. My escape probability was low. I was in a hostile environment with minimal resources and a compromised physical state. But it wasn’t hopeless.
Wilson and Langston were probably gone for the night, and I was stuck here until morning. If I tried to blast the thick door open, everyone would know I was no longer restrained.
Then I heard footsteps outside, and I stood.
The footsteps stopped outside my door, and it hissed open.
A man in pale blue scrubs wheeled in a small cart loaded with medical supplies.
He had thinning brown hair, a paunch, and the hollow-eyed look of someone working a double shift.
He didn’t see me. His attention was fixed on the IV pole, where an empty bag hung, but he’d soon realize I wasn’t strapped to the bed anymore.
I didn’t give him time to sound an alarm. Instead, I zapped him in the back.
Electricity hit his nervous system, and his body went rigid, his back arching. Then he toppled forward, crashing on the floor.
I stepped back, breathing hard. The surge had cost me, and the fresh pain in my wrist was bright and nauseating.
The orderly lay twitching on the linoleum.
His eyes were rolled back, showing white.
He was still spasming, making small, choked noises, but he was conscious enough to know what was happening.
His eyes were wide with terror as I grabbed the sedative off his cart and shoved the needle into his neck.
His pockets yielded a plastic keycard on a lanyard, a cracked iPhone with a passcode lock, a ring of keys, and a wallet containing forty-three dollars and a driver’s license that said he was Dennis from Henderson.
My clothes were nowhere to be seen. I’d have to make do with the bloodstained hospital gown and hope I didn’t run into anyone who looked too closely.
I was getting up when the door hissed open again, and a woman in green scrubs walked in, carrying a towel and a bath caddy. She was maybe forty, with a lean, efficient build and her black hair scraped back in a bun.
When she saw the unconscious orderly on the floor and me crouched next to him, she threw the caddy at me and turned to run.
The woman moved fast, but my hand came up on instinct, palm out. Energy shot down my arm as my wrist screamed. The bolt hit her square between the shoulder blades, and her back arched, arms flung wide. She hit the floor and didn’t move.
My nose started bleeding, warmth flooding my upper lip. I swiped at it with the back of my hand as the room tilted and my knees buckled. I caught myself on the edge of the bed.
The implant sent a cold pulse through my system, trying to stabilize my blood pressure and clear the gray fuzz clouding my vision. Two bolts in under five minutes meant the blowback was coming.
I crawled to the woman and started pulling off her shoes. I needed her clothes.
Stripping her was harder than I expected. I managed to get her scrub top off, then the pants. Putting on the pants was its own special hell. The fabric scraped against my burned ankles, and I bit down to stop from screaming.
The shoes were practical sneakers, at least a size too big, but I slid them on anyway. I found a hairbrush in her shower caddy and tried to tame my hair. Finally, I stole her elastic hairband and pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
I picked up the orderly’s phone and held it to his unconscious face. The screen lit up, and I opened his maps. My location was in Las Vegas next to Nellis Air Force Base, but that was about all I could make out. I pocketed his keycard and took his cash.
The door had a card reader beside the handle. I took the woman’s card too. The lock hissed open, and pushing the door open a crack, I peered into the hallway.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting the empty hall in a sickly glow. The hallway stretched in both directions, identical doors spaced at regular intervals. I saw the stair sign to my right above a door, and went that way.
The scrubs were too big, and the oversized shoes slapped as I walked. Another drop of blood ran down my lip. My heart hammered as I walked. A man in a lab coat stepped out of a room two doors ahead of the stairwell as I ducked into it and started down the steps.
I breathed a sigh when he didn’t come after me and pulled the stolen phone out. The only number I remembered was Parker’s, but my hands shook so badly I had to redial.
“Yeah.” Parker’s voice was hard and guarded.
“It’s me,” I whispered.
Parker exhaled. “Jesus fuck. Are you hurt? Is someone forcing you to call me?”
“No. I’m alone in a stairwell in some building. I shocked the orderlies and stole someone’s scrubs. I don’t know where–”
“We’re tracking you,” he cut in. “You’re at an Apex Mentis health clinic next to the Nellis Air Force Base. We’re about three minutes out, and Conall’s with me. So are Jamie and Ash. Go to the underground parking garage and find a place to hide.”
A door opened somewhere above me. The heavy clang of metal against concrete carried down the stairwell.
“Someone is in the stairwell,” I breathed out.
“Walk normally down to the parking garage,” Parker advised me. “Stay with me.”
“Okay.” I pressed the phone harder against my ear and kept going down, trying to make my footsteps sound casual. The oversized shoes slapped awkwardly.
Someone was walking down the stairwell with me, maybe three flights up. The implant calculated the body mass, distance, and speed from the person’s tread. Male, at least two hundred pounds, moving at a controlled pace. Not running, but moving briskly.
I tried to keep my breathing even, but panic and fear were setting in. The implant sent a sharp vibration through my nervous system, trying to force me to calm down.
The stairs seemed endless, and my body ached. The burns on my ankles had begun to weep through the scrubs. The footsteps behind me matched my pace. Not speeding up or slowing down.
I hit the bottom of the stairwell, pushed through the door into the parking garage, and started walking faster. Just a nurse heading to her car after a long shift. Nothing to see.
I followed the signs to the entrance, wanting to meet up with Conall and Parker as soon as possible.
Halfway down the aisle, something made me turn. Langston’s remaining uninjured ogre, Garrett, stood in the stairwell doorway. His gaze locked onto the white streak in my hair.
“Stop!” he roared, his voice echoing off the concrete as he raised his gun. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot you in the fucking back!”
I ducked and ran.