Chapter 38 Jo
thirty-eight
Jo
West chuckles as he forwards the proof-of-safety picture that Ozzy just sent to Leslie.
“What?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat. West tilts his screen to me, showing me the photo. It shows Fuzzy, Ozzy, Roland, and a child that must be Hudson, sticking out their tongues and flipping off the camera.
I snort.
When West shows Sam and Hayden, Sam rolls his eyes. “The future grandfather of our children, everyone.”
West’s phone pings. “Leslie says she’ll meet us around back at the entrance for food delivered. I’ll text Kole and let them know they can move to the lab.”
Kole and the guys will use the same hole in the gate we used to escape to infiltrate the underground lab. And if they fixed the gate? I guess they’ll just have to make a new one.
Nodding, Sam starts the van up and pulls out of the spot we had been hiding in. We had stopped about two minutes from the entrance, and when the gates for the Thornfield Asylum for the Criminally Insane come into view, I shiver.
Hayden’s hand finds my knee, and when I look over at him, he gives me a determined look. “They aren’t keeping us, Fireball.”
My hand clasps over his, and I meet his steely gaze. “Burn it down?”
He smiles. “Burn it down.”
It’s only been about a month since we broke out, but so much has happened in the meantime, it feels like a lifetime ago. The Jo that entered these gates the first time is completely different from who I am now.
We pull up to a back gate I’ve never seen before, just in time to see Leslie rushing toward us.
She squints at the headlights shining in her eyes as she starts to undo the lock on the chain holding the gates together.
The woman who looked so put together and utterly fabulous the first time I met her is practically falling apart, her hair limp and circles under her eyes.
She pulls the gate open, waving us in. Sam pulls forward, parking behind the cafeteria.
Shuffling out of the car, I notice the way Leslie’s eyes dart around, like she’s expecting someone to pop out at any moment.
“Hurry,” she hisses, waving us in. “We don’t have much time.”
The four of us move together behind her until we reach the corner that goes between the cafeteria and the medical wing.
“This is where I leave you.” She glances around again.
“Everyone should be at dinner right now. Just keep in mind, things aren’t the same since you left. Doctor Whitmore's been giving—”
My head snaps up. “Whitmore? He’s here?”
Leslie looks confused. “Of course he is. He came back about two weeks ago. And he’s…” She shivers, shaking her head. “You’ll see for yourself. Please be careful.”
Sam gives Leslie a look of understanding. “My dad has Hudson. He’s in good hands. Do you still have access to the lockdown protocols?”
“Yes.”
“Lock the doors to the staff housing. But set it on a timer to unlock in…” he checks his watch, “two hours.”
Jaw tight, she nods and disappears into the night.
Taking a deep breath, I double-check all my supplies again. Knives strapped to my legs, pistol at my side. It’s go time.
“Are we sure about this plan?” Hayden hisses, sounding unsure for the first time. “If things have changed as much as Leslie says—”
“We don’t deviate.” My voice is hard. “Let’s go.”
My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and when I check it, I curse. “Aidan says we have five minutes until the cameras in the Monroe house go live.”
“Let’s get this over with, then,” Sam mutters, and we all follow behind him.
Pasting a slightly maniacal grin on my face, I kick the doors of the cafeteria open. A sea of navy blue and orange jumpsuits greets me, bringing back way too many memories. The noise has the inhabitants jumping though, and then all eyes are on me.
Conversations hush, and then…silence.
“What’s up, bitches?” I grin, striding forward into the center of the room and looking around. “Did you miss me?”
“Holy shit,” someone mutters behind me, and then a flurry of gasps and whispers flow throughout the room. Guess they didn’t recognize me at first since I’m actually healthy now.
Three orderlies lining the Cafeteria go pale, and one looks like he’s about to bolt, but then my guys are coming into the room behind me, West and Sam standing in front of the doors.
Turnip squeaks, scrambling out of my jacket pocket and climbing to my shoulder, where she proceeds to let out a series of chitters that I can only hope to interpret as “What’s up, human bitches, did you miss me?”
“You’re supposed to be dead!” a dreadfully familiar voice shrieks, and when I look over to the source, I see that, yep, it’s Paige Lawson.
Dead? Huh. I guess that’s how they covered up our disappearance. Telling everyone we died.
“Yeah, and you’re supposed to be smarter than a bag of rocks, but here we are.” My hand goes to my hip as I look around, spotting Tilly-the-Bitch, Beta McGrabbyHands, and Lars fucking Devereaux. Even that alpha they accused me of tranquilizing before I got sent to the Cathedral stares at me.
As if triggered by my eye contact, Lars stands abruptly from his table, making his drink spill. “She will be dead,” he snarls, stepping over the bench and starting to stalk toward me.
He stops dead in his tracks at the sound of Sam’s shotgun being cocked. “Take one more step, Devereaux,” he growls. “Give me a fucking reason. I’ve wanted to blow your head off since I saw you attack her in the hallway.”
My phone vibrates again, and my anxiety spikes.
“We’re live,” is all the text says. That means that, at this moment, the meeting of Beta Supremacists is being broadcast all over the state. I can only hope they didn’t choose this particular meeting to discuss something boring and not evil—like a budget discussion or something.
“Listen.” I project my voice as loudly as I can. “I—” I glance behind me at my guys, and Hayden threads his fingers through mine. “We came back for a reason. This place isn’t what you think it is—”
“Yeah, we know,” Tilly snaps from her seat. “We all agreed to be tested on when we came here so we wouldn’t be put in the Cathedral.”
I want to snap back at her, but for this plan to work, I need them to believe me.
I shake my head. “That’s not what I mean.
West, could you get hooked up to the projector?
” I turn back to the room as West goes to the front and pulls down a screen.
“What they told us in the beginnin’, about the medications simply tampin’ down instincts to make it safer for everyone to live together… it’s not the whole story.”
Hushed whispers.
Distrusting looks.
One of the orderlies—Tate, I believe his name is—inches to where Sam is still standing.
But my alpha doesn’t see him—his focus trained on Lars.
My hand finds a knife and flings it across the room.
The blade embeds itself into the wall, right in front of his face.
“Do not take another step,” I snap. “Y’all need to hear this.
Doctor Brooks…Doctor Whitmore, their whole plan was to make a drug that would entirely erase designations. ”
Somebody gasps. Another person scoffs. Mostly, they look at me in disbelief.
“So?” Paige sneers. The response earns her some disparaging looks from her tablemates. “What?” she asks defensively. “Omegas and alphas aren’t better than betas.”
“You’re right.” I swallow, looking around the room. “But betas aren’t better either. Think about it. If you take away designations, you’re not just makin’ everyone betas, because a beta can still be bonded. Still have a true scent match.”
West plugs his phone into the projector, pulling up the live stream.
“The man—the beta—that you all know as Doctor West Monroe…he’s my true scent match.
We’re bonded.” Scandalized whispers travel through the room, even as West looks over at me with love in his eyes.
“So are Hayden, Sam, and Kole Vasiliev. If you get rid of designations, you get rid of it all. Bondin’.
Scent matches. The chance to know for sure one way or another if the person you’re with is your soulmate. ”
With that, West plays the live stream.
Sam hits the lights. We’re met with a high view of a large living room, chairs lined up and no less than fifty people watching a man at the head of the room.
Isaac Thornfield.
The meeting has already started, so we only catch half of his sentence.
“...Prometheus is unable to be here with us tonight due to a personal matter. But rest assured, our plans to finally eradicate the plague upon the human race are well under way.”
A hand raises in the audience. “Mr. Thornfield, you promised that you would have a solution soon. My daughter is weeks away from her eighteenth birthday, and I’m afraid she’s exhibiting…
” his voice goes quiet, “omega tendencies. I need this drug available now! What are our dues going towards if there’s no promise of it being in my daughter’s veins before she presents? ”
“Joseph. I understand why you would feel that way.” Isaac’s voice is calm. Placating. “If you are so concerned about her designation surfacing, why don’t you send her to Thornfield? You know that I allow Felix to keep his girl pampered. What’s her name again? Paige?”
The whispers that travel throughout the room are all aimed at the beta in question, and even in the low light, I can see her face turn red.
“No, thank you,” the man named Joseph answers. “I know enough about how you treat people there to not want to make my precious Penelope one of your subjects.”
Isaac’s mouth forms a tight line. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating—”
“I’m insinuating that half the people in that hellhole don’t even belong in an asylum, but they’re made to eat next to psychopaths who have murdered and kidnapped people!”
“You know that we keep them under control.” Thornfield’s voice is hard. “It’s one of the benefits of the patients not being allowed to ask what’s being injected into them.”
That has the room sitting up straighter, their eyes trained on the screen. Except for Paige, who sinks further down in her seat.
“Let’s just calm down for a second,” a woman speaks up on the stream. “Isaac, what is the word on Doctors Brooks and Whitmore? Have we determined where the leak came from that revealed Senator Pierce’s involvement with the missing omegas?”
“Prometheus is in the process of obtaining Doctor Brooks as we speak. As for Whitmore…he has disappeared entirely.” I frown, watching the screen as the attendees of the meeting whisper amongst themselves.
“Whitmore isn’t missing,” Beta McGrabbyHands says, clearly confused. “He’s here. He’s been giving us new medications while Brooks has been gone.”
“I know that,” I snap, fixing my attention back on the livestream. “Hush, McGrabbyHands.”
“My name is Peter! Peter Carson, not that you ever—”
There’s a bang on the doors of the cafeteria cutting off Carson, and a loud voice calls out, “What is the meaning of this?”
Speak of the devil.
Whitmore.
Sam meets my eyes, and grinning, quickly opens the door, dragging Whitmore inside before shutting it again. Hayden leaves my side, sliding Sam’s shotgun between the door handles.
My alpha grins as he holds up the beta. “Ah, Doctor Whitmore, so nice of you to join us.”
“Wright!” Whitmore’s eyes are panicked as he looks at Sam, and then they nearly bug out when they fall on me. “Josephine!”
“Well, howdy there, Doc.” I grin, looking up at him. “We were just watchin’ the live stream of the Beta Liberation Union, right along with the rest of the state, I’m sure.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he sputters, and it’s then that I realize one of his hands is nothing but a bandaged stump. Guess getting a radio blown out of your hand by a sniper rifle will do that to you. “You were never supposed to come back here.”
“Ah, is that why you chose this as your hidin’ spot from Xavier Bowen?” My smile pulls tight. “What a delight! He’s on his way here right now, and I bet he’d love to see you. The question is, what will he do when he finds out Mr. Thornfield has been concealin’ your location all this time?”
Whitmore goes pale.
And Tate, who, apparently, has not learned his lesson, lets out a roar and starts to charge at Sam.
Fucking hell.
My pistol is out of my holster faster than he can blink, and in the next instant, the bullet leaves my gun and goes through his knee.
Thank fuck for silencers.
He crumbles to the ground. He screams, holding his leg. The cafeteria is silent. Violence is the only language they understand, and I just made the ultimate declaration.
I’m the one in charge here.
Hayden barks out a laugh. “Damn, Tate. Can’t contain your hard-on for Whitmore for one second, can you?”
When I look at him in question, he grins. “Tate was the asshole who reported the lockdown to Whitmore when we were breaking you out.”
Snarling, I turn back to Tate. “You want me to take out your other knee too?”
Whimpering, he sputters, “N-n-no!”
“Then stop fuckin’ tryin’ to hurt my alpha!” The words leave me, my command echoing off the walls in the silence of the room.
“What’s your end game here?” It’s a random beta that I’ve never interacted with before who’s speaking to me. “You told us about this Beta Liberation Union bullshit, but I don’t know why.”
My Southern charm comes back full force as I turn toward the only helpful patient in the room.
“What an excellent question, I am so glad you asked.” My voice is as sweet as honey.
“In about…” I check my phone, “thirty minutes, the FBI and the mysterious Prometheus, who is actually a prick named Xavier Bowen, will be here. With him, Xavier will have the sweetest girl with him, a pregnant eighteen-year-old beta by the name of Adela Olivier.”
Concerned looks are exchanged throughout the room, and I see the group of betas Adela hung out with before me covering their mouths in shock.
At least even the craziest people can recognize that a girl like Adela Olivier doesn’t belong here.
“Now, Xavier is tryin’ to put Adela back into the asylum so that I’ll give him what he wants, which is Doctor Brooks.
I cannot let that happen. I’m hopin’ that this newfound information will make y’all more inclined to… help me. Help Adela.”
The beta looks around the room before shrugging. “What do you need?”
My smile is sharp. “Have y’all ever been interested in stagin’ a mutiny?”