Chapter 30
Laurie
I charged down those stairs with one goal in mind.
I had every intention of blowing the Doctor’s head off on sight. I was ready. Ready to put a bullet in his skull before he could draw a single breath or speak one poisonous, paralyzing word. My grip on the gun was certain, steadfast—
Until I saw him.
He stood under those humming fluorescents, skin ghost-white, smile polite like he was welcoming a guest. He was exactly as I remembered him. The same white hair, the same pale hands that had cradled my chin when he called me extraordinary.
My lungs seized and my breath stilled and locked doors in my head blew open—needles, restraints, and flaring lights. All of it covered up with kind words and a smile and vibrant green eyes.
I hesitated—and he spoke.
“Laurie.” The Doctor stretched each syllable longer, like he was savoring the name on his tongue—a tongue that flicked out like a serpent testing the air. “Finally. How I’ve missed you.”
I forced a step forward, gun leveled at his chest. But the muzzle trembled, tracking a jittery path from one shoulder to the other and back again.
My knees threatened to buckle. I couldn’t handle it—I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t prepared to look into those eyes.
Not when I couldn’t bring myself to feel real hatred for him.
Despite the deadly weapon pointed his way, the Doctor smiled, pointed fangs present under thin lips. “Laurie, you don’t want to do something silly. Why don’t you put the gun down?”
I flinched, jaw locking tight. The barrel dipped an inch. Don’t trust him. But I could still hear the soft words he’d spoken back then, still felt his hand smoothing my hair after a rough procedure.
I hated that memory, hated that I’d mistaken his manipulations for love. You don’t mean anything to him, the rational part of my brain reminded me, you’re his prized experiment and nothing more.
But, my hands shook, gripping tight to the cool metal of the gun, but he was kind to me.
It was false, I knew that. But I couldn’t shake the lingering dependance, the overwhelming urge to simply do as he said and give in. I was stiff and indecisive, flailing in a sea of memories—the good, the bad, and the moments I couldn’t categorize as one or the other.
“Laurie,” he spoke again, soft and sympathetic just like he did back then, “you don’t need to keep running—you must be so tired.” He stretched out a hand, long, pale fingers reaching for me. “Why don’t you come home?”
“Stay back!” My voice cracked. The Doctor paused, gentlemanly as ever, but triumph flashed in his neon eyes. He saw the shake in the gun, the tremor in my stance.
Rage should have flared in my chest, but guilt stabbed hot and sharp instead. Maybe all of this wasn’t his fault. Maybe it was mine? I was the one who ran from the facility, and I’d lost my child because of it. I’d left others behind. I was the one to blame for my own suffering.
The gun wavered.
Maybe it would be better to just give up now? To return to the cage I was comfortable in. It’s not like life had really gotten much better on the outside. If anything, it was worse—
“Laurie, get out of here!”
A new voice, a presence I hadn’t even noticed until now, called to me from behind the Doctor. Someone familiar, someone… kind. Not the false kindness I’d come to know in the facility, but real kindness. A kindness that asked for nothing in return.
I peered past the Doctor and that calm, collected smile of his, and saw… My heart thumped, hard, against my ribs. “River?”
River was here.
How she was here, I had no idea, but she wasn’t alone. There was another vampire woman with her—the woman who wore shadows like a veil—and behind them, Arlon. He was bound and unconscious, slumped in an open locker.
All at once I realized I’d been played. Grabbing Arlon, leaving his location on, this was all part of the vampire man’s plan to lure me here. To get me back. To take me ‘home.’
I met River’s eyes, stomach plummeting. She had no idea of the danger she was in. She wasn’t aware of the Doctor’s true power. “River.” I struggled to get the words out, my mind a muddled haze when what I desperately needed was clarity. “You have to–”
“Forget about them.” The Doctor sliced a hand down between me and the other three, severing invisible threads. He gestured at the gun, still pointed at his chest, curling fingers to grab my attention. “Look at me.”
I fought it as long as I could, fought to keep my eyes on River’s, but when he said it again, I had to obey.
“Look at me, Laurie.” His words poured over me like anesthesia and my head felt heavy when I met those piercing eyes.
“You’ve been running long enough,” he murmured, voice dipped in the same gentleness he’d used after every needle, every incision.
“Lower the gun–I’m no threat to you. You’re safe with me. ”
Safe. The lie felt warm, comforting. My wrists remembered restraints. I swallowed, stiff limbs eager to cooperate.
One command pulsed through the chaos in my head—shoot.
Just pull the trigger and end this already.
But the barrel was weighted with every awful memory, every shred of doubt.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t fire. Every vile experiment replayed behind my eyelids, each one ending with his soft praise.
His promise that next time, next time, it won’t be so bad.
My finger hovered on the trigger, numb. I drew in a breath, fought for control. “I—”
Before I could speak, River moved. Faster than I could track. Faster than I could scream out a warning. She lunged for the Doctor, talons elongating as she swiped at his back—but she just wasn’t fast enough.
The Doctor barely twitched. He didn’t so much as blink. Not once did he take his eyes off me, even as blue-white light erupted from his palms.
He brought his hands together with a resounding clap, and a crackling circle of electricity rippled outward. The electric charge bent and whizzed right past me, his prized experiment protected from harm, but the pulse hit River and her partner like a sledgehammer and threw them both off their feet.
River slammed into a metal table, denting the tarnished steel. The other woman was thrown into the wall. Both of them slumped to the floor, twitching violently. Sparks danced across their prone bodies, crackling and sizzling with a smell like burnt hair.
My heart stopped at the sight, but I couldn’t summon my voice, couldn’t force my feet to carry me closer.
Arlon, thankfully, was saved from the blast, no doubt a tactical decision on the Doctor’s part. I knew what that small mercy meant. He kept my friend safe from an attack that would have killed him—so now I was in his debt.
“Your friends are very rude.” He dropped his hands to his sides, still alight with stray sparks. “Come, Laurie.” There was an edge to his words now, irritation apparent in the set of his jaw. “Enough of this nonsense. Lower the gun.”
I was speechless, paralyzed. If I didn’t cooperate, he could hurt them.
Really hurt them. They would die because of me, and it would be just like before.
When I ran from him and the facility the first time, I lost something precious.
My eyes were fixed on River, my pulse thrumming in my ears.
If I were to run from him now… I could lose even more.
It would be my fault. It was always my fault. All of this pain and suffering and loss. I brought it on myself.
“Laurie—now.” The Doctor raised his voice and I flinched, slowly dragging my gaze back to him.
All of my time spent fighting, two years of my new life spent running from my past—for what? What was it all for? What was the point?
I’m so tired.
I drew in a breath. The barrel wavered, then drooped. My shoulders caved. Failure seeped through my bones as I lowered my arms, and the gun—my only trump card, my last shot at revenge—hung useless at my side.
“Good.” The Doctor switched tones, switched tactics. His voice was warm with praise, and I hated the effect it had on me. That small flicker of hope that maybe this time, if I could follow his orders without complaint, his kindness would be genuine.
He stepped closer, close enough for me to smell the sterile tang of antiseptic and that cloying, flowery scent of his. “Now we can start fresh.”
I couldn’t look away, my eyes fastened to those rings of sickening green.
“But first,” he paused, one step away from me, and reached for the barrel of the gun, “a test of loyalty.”
He didn’t take it from my hand. Instead, he guided it upward, directing the barrel at a new target. At the lithe, beautiful woman lying incapacitated on the floor. The kind vampire woman, who had gone out of her way to protect me at every turn.
River’s eyes fluttered open, hazy gaze meeting mine—pupils blowing wide when she noticed the barrel pointed at her heart.
The Doctor’s voice in my ear was quiet, clipped. Expectant. “Prove to me you’re ready to come home.”
My fingers tightened around the grip. It was unthinkable, impossible. Not after everything she’d done for me, not after all of her kindness, everything she gave without expecting anything in return.
I understood then what the Doctor really wanted.
Taking me back to the facility by force wouldn’t work for him—he knew I would fight him for the rest of my life.
He wanted me to come willingly. He wanted me to cut off every connection with the outside world, so that I would have no one to depend on but him—and no one to blame but myself.
River’s eyes were locked on mine. Not hateful or angry, but steady, trusting. Certain.
In them, I saw the short time we’d spent together. Every twist of fate that had our paths crossing, over and over again. I saw her cluttered home stuffed to the brim with trinkets. I felt the bulge of the spare key tucked into my back pocket.
An invitation to come home.
I closed my eyes and remembered the sound of rain—a steady downpour of water—and what that sound meant to me. I heard it in my head, drowning out everything else, and I made my decision.
In the split second it took for my lids to fly open, I lifted the gun.
I aimed it directly between a set of luminous green eyes, set wide and incredulous under furrowed white brows… and pulled the trigger.