by Peyton Bogue
“He’s going to run us off of the road, Sage!” Hazel yells, and Sage slams on the brakes, trying desperately to get the Camaro to stop. The SUV slams into them a third time, pushing them forward, and then, suddenly, the Camaro veers off to the side of the street and smashes directly into the light pole at the edge of the precinct parking lot.
Everything seems to turn dark for a split second.
The first thing Sage is conscious of is the taste of blood in his mouth, sharp and metallic on his tongue. He feels pressure on his lungs, and the shallow breath he takes in is wet and harsh in his throat. He coughs, and the airbag in front of him spews red at the blood that settles onto it.
His vision is blurry, and Sage thinks that maybe there isn’t enough oxygen getting to his brain. His eyes are burning, and when he blinks, tears run down his cheeks, but he doesn’t think he’s crying.
His right arm is on fire. Pain stabs through his head and his entire right side. He feels like he can’t move his limbs.
The second thing Sage becomes aware of is screaming. He turns, and Hazel meets his gaze with wide eyes. She’s got blood soaking her hair, and a deep cut runs from her eyebrow to her hairline. She’s looking at him with tears in her eyes.
There’s not enough light for him to see the rest of the street, but Sage blinks and blinks anyway, trying to clear his vision. He belatedly realizes that there is smoke clouding his vision, but he dimly sees the SUV in front of them. Its brake lights are bright, and Sage feels like he needs to squint when he looks at them.
He’s so dizzy. His stomach rolls, and all he hears for another second is his pulse beating in his ears.
Panic races through him suddenly, and he immediately opens his eyes widely. Adrenaline spikes through his veins as he takes in the scene in front of him. His car is wrapped around a light pole. His car is wrapped around a light pole.
They weren’t like this a few minutes ago.
Sage tries to move his arms, but nothing is responding the way it should. Pain lances through his body, and a gurgled sob sounds over the blood rushing in his ears, but he doesn’t remember making a sound. His head is pounding.
“Hazel?” Sage asks after a moment, and his voice doesn’t sound good as his throat burns.
“Sage?” Hazel asks him, and she sounds much calmer than he is, even though he can see that she’s beginning to panic.
“Are you okay?” he asks her, beginning to fumble with his seatbelt. His entire body aches with his movements, but he can’t get the seatbelt unbuckled. His hands are clumsy and unsteady, and he pulls on the belt, but it doesn’t give way. He's stops trying after another second, his hands shaking from the strain.
“Yes,” Hazel replies to him even as she gasps in pain. She looks at him again, and her eyes are wild as she begins to hyperventilate. Sage swallows. He knows the signs of shock when he sees them.
“We’re okay,” he tells her, but his eyes look back towards the SUV, which hasn’t moved on the street in front of them. There aren’t any other lights around them, and Sage doesn’t see any pedestrians on the sidewalks. The precinct is empty, and at the very back of Sage's mind, he remembers that Mikalina sent everyone home early because of the ball. The ball that they were at less than fifteen minutes ago.
“Are you—are you hurt?” he hears Hazel ask him.
“I’m not sure,” Sage replies, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of the SUV. “I—I don’t know. I can’t really feel anything.”
He feels himself begin to cough, and his vision blacks out for a second from the searing pain in his chest. He tries to watch the SUV behind the spots in his vision, and he can feel something niggling at the back of his head, like maybe he should just give up and sleep for a while. He feels so tired.
Sage snaps his eyes open, and when he does, hot, salty tears stream down his face, but he can’t move his hands up to his face to wipe them away.
There is glass everywhere. His windshield is completely shattered when he focuses his eyes enough to look above the airbag. His car is totaled. He’s incredibly pissed.
Sage looks back at the SUV, watching when the driver’s side door opens. Someone walks toward the back of the car and Sage strains his eyes to see who it is. The part of him that always sees the best in people thinks that maybe the man he sees will help them, that maybe he didn’t mean to cause this accident. He and Hazel both probably need medical attention. Sage still can’t move his body.
The man in the SUV leans against the back bumper, and Sage focuses his blurry vision to look at him. He mumbles, “Hey,” to try to get the man’s attention, and the man’s head snaps towards him, and Sage’s breath catches in his throat.
He shouldn’t be surprised when he sees Steele leaning against the SUV and giving him a salacious grin and a mocking wave with the hand that Rhys didn’t break, but Sage’s entire body runs cold when Steele’s electric blue eyes flash menacingly in the dimly lit street.
“Hazel,” Sage says as quietly as he can. “The license plate of this SUV is 2-2-1-November-Kilo-Omega. You got that? You’re going to need to tell Kai that when he gets here.”
“What are you talking about?” Hazel asks him, and her voice is airy and dazed, as if she’s having trouble focusing on what he’s saying. Sage realizes a second too late that she sounds incredibly muffled in his ears, and he knows that’s not a good sign.
“Hey,” Sage snaps at her harshly, and she startles and meets his gaze quickly. “Listen to me. You need to call Kai as soon as you get out of this car. Tell him that the license plate on the SUV that hit us is 2-2-1-November-Kilo-Omega. Those words exactly. You got that?”
Hazel nods at him, and Sage watches as Steele begins to walk towards them.
“He doesn’t want you, okay?” he mumbles quietly, praying to whoever may be listening that Steele can’t hear them. He’s not very hopeful, regardless. “He doesn’t want you. Don’t say anything when he gets here. Don’t move.”
“Sage, what are you talking about? What’s going on?” Hazel asks him, sounding so far away now. Sage begins to hear static in his ears and can only slightly hear the panic in Hazel's voice as she strains to see where he’d been looking, and he winces when she cries out from the pain.
“Stop that,” Sage says harshly again, and Hazel lets out a strangled sob. “Don’t make a sound. Stay alert, but do not draw attention to yourself. Focus.”
She nods at him as a tear slips down her eye, but she turns away from his side of the car and doesn’t say anything else.
Sage looks out of the window again, and jumps when Steele’s smirking face greets him.
“Hey, Cap,” Steele says easily, his wolfish grin widening as he takes in Sage’s Camaro. “Who taught you how to drive, huh?”
He leans forward, and Sage holds his breath when one of Steele's claws runs down his cheek to caress his face. Steele chuckles at him, then reaches down and shreds the seatbelt keeping Sage stationary in one easy flick of his wrist.
“Don’t worry,” Steele says, his voice so quiet over the static in Sage’s ears, and when he grins again, he flashes his electric blue eyes and bares his canines tauntingly. Sage’s eyelids feel heavy, and Steele’s voice begins to fade away from him as he continues, “I’ll have you out of here in no time, Sage.”
And then everything turns black.
THIRTEEN
“I’m sorry, the number you are calling is not available at this time—”
Rhys pulls his phone down to his eye level, giving it a confused look as he presses the end call button. He huffs in displeasure as he tosses the phone onto the bathroom counter.
It’s not really that unusual for Sage not to answer Rhys’s calls, especially when he’s working, but he’s not technically supposed to be working anymore. Rhys will normally call him once, wait a few minutes before he texts Sage to see if he’s busy, and then waits for Sage to get back with him. Sage always responds to him within a reasonable amount of time, but this is the third time that Sage hasn’t answered.
He should have been home fifteen minutes ago. Rhys doesn’t ever remember a time where he didn’t hear Sage’s normal voicemail when he called, too. He’s never gotten a message that Sage’s phone wasn’t available.
Rhys frowns and grabs his sweatshorts and tugs them on. Maybe Sage’s phone is dead. He has a habit of forgetting to charge it sometimes. Rhys is always reminding him to put his phone on the charger before they go to bed at night. For as many calls as Sage gets when he’s working, he needs to make sure that his phone has enough battery to last him throughout the day.
Regardless, Rhys can’t help but feel slightly impatient as he eyes his phone. Sage needs to get his wrist checked out. It’s bad enough that Rhys didn’t put a stop to Steele’s threats before Sage got hurt. Sage is probably hurting right now. He’s been away from Rhys for nearly forty-five minutes, and Rhys hasn’t been able to keep taking his pain away. Surely the pain of his broken wrist has most definitely become almost unbearable by now. The thought makes Rhys’s heart clench.
The sound of a car door closing on their street lures Rhys's eyes towards the bathroom door, but as he continues to listen, all he hears is a heartbeat of a man he’s never met before enter their building and walk up the stairs to his apartment on the second floor. Rhys huffs again.
The sound of his phone ringing brings his eyes back to the counter sharply, and he picks it up quickly. He sighs when he realizes that it isn’t Sage that is calling him, but he presses the green button quickly and brings the phone up to his ear.
“Rhys,” Kai’s voice echoes through his ear before Rhys can even get a word out. Rhys pulls the t-shirt he’d picked out from their closet up and off of the bathroom counter, shaking his wet hair as he quickly pulls it on and brings the phone back up to his ear, frowning.
The distinct sound of police sirens sounds over Kai’s voice, and Rhys’s frown increases. He didn’t think that Kai would be called to a scene after what they’d all just done at the masquerade.
“Kai,” Rhys says gruffly, confused. “Are you okay?”
“Where are you?”
Rhys picks up his towel and turns the bathroom light off as he walks back out into their bedroom. He huffs once more. “Home,” he says into the phone, throwing the towel into he and Sage’s laundry hamper. A sliver of worry begins to coil in his abdomen. “Waiting for Sage. Have you heard from him?”
“Rhys, you need to get to the precinct immediately,” Kai says quickly, his voice slightly cracking as Rhys’s entire body freezes. Rhys's throat tightens at the panic he hears in Kai’s voice. The sirens around Kai seem to fade as the sound of Kai’s sporadic heartbeat floods Rhys’s ears. Something is definitely wrong.
“Why? What happened?” he asks tightly, biting back a growl. He doesn’t like the way Kai hesitates before he speaks again.
“There’s been an accident,” Kai says slowly, but Rhys can hear the way his heart blips. Kai’s voice is thick, filled with emotion. It makes Rhys scowl as the worry in his abdomen coils sharply. He can feel his eyes beginning to shift. He breathes roughly through his nostrils as panic begins to seize his chest.
“What happened, Kai?” Rhys repeats harshly, and this time, he can’t hold back his growl.
“You need to get here, now,” Kai says, and the way his voice falters makes Rhys’s heart plummet in his chest.
“Kai,” he snarls as his claws elongate.
“It’s Sage, Rhys,” Kai says, and he clears his throat wetly before inhaling shakily. “Something’s happened to Sage.”
◆◆◆
“Captain!” A soldier to his left screams, and Sage barely has time to look up before a round of bullets pierces through the kid’s tac gear. He falls to the ground before Sage can open his mouth.
“We’re getting shit on, Kaelan!” Grimes yells over the rapid gunfire, and when Sage looks over at him, the sight of blood is almost too much for him to process what he’s supposed to be seeing. Grimes’s leg is completely torn open from the calf down. Sage can see his bone protruding out from his flesh beneath his torn and soiled fatigues.
There’s a helicopter nearby; Sage can hear the blades over the sounds of an explosion far off into the distance. Glass rains down on them, and Sage brings his hands up quickly to shield his eyes. He yells, “Everybody down!” before the entire roof collapses down on top of them.
Everything has gone to absolute shit.
“They’re really close now!” Someone screams over the high-pitched ringing in Sage’s ears. He can’t tell if it’s Peters or Dawson from where he’s crouched against the wall.
“Get out of here!” Sage yells back, and when he moves again, he realizes that he can’t feel his legs. A quick glance down his body tells him that the concrete of the roof has his legs, abdomen, and torso pinned to the ground. He can’t lift it up.
“We’re not leaving you, Kaelan!” Grimes says, and another bullet grazes up against his ear, and he yells in pain, clutching at the side of his head in agony.
They won’t make it out of this alive if Sage doesn’t get everyone out right the hell now.
“I’m pinned down. I’m not getting out of here. All of you need to get your asses on that helicopter before you’re all blown to dust,” Sage says at the same time another kid soldier is shot directly in the head. “I mean it! Everybody get the hell out of here!”
“We’re not leaving you,” another voice reaches him, and more glass rains down onto Sage's hair. He’s not wearing his protective headgear anymore, but he’s not sure where it went. The high-pitched ringing in his ears increases.
“If we don’t get out of here right now, we’re all going to die,” someone says, but Sage has stopped caring who’s talking to him anymore. The kid yells, “I don’t want to die!” as four bullets rip through his skull.
“Get out of here right now,” Sage says, leaving no room for argument. He pushes at the concrete on top of his body again, but it doesn’t budge. “I can’t get this off of me. There’s no way I’m getting out of here. You all need to save yourselves!” he yells, groaning under the weight of the concrete. “You’re going to have to leave! Get the hell out!”
“Sage—”
“That’s an order!” Sage screams as more bullets pound against the walls of the room. “Stand down!”
“We’re coming back, Captain,” Peters says as he crawls across the broken glass and the remnants of the concrete ceiling. When he lifts his arms up to give Sage a salute, Sage sees that both of his forearms are shredded from the shrapnel and glass. “We’ll get you out of here! We won’t leave you behind!”
Suddenly, everything shifts. The concrete slab pressing down onto Sage's chest abruptly disappears and slams against the opposite wall, and air floods into Sage’s lungs. Sage coughs wretchedly as he looks around the room quickly, but there isn’t any debris or bullet shells. All of the walls are intact. He doesn’t see any of his team anywhere in the building.
“Hey, Cap,” a figure above him says, and Sage looks up quickly into glowing electric blue eyes.
“Steele?” Sage asks, confused as he pants. “What—What are you doing here?”
His entire body seizes up in fear when Steele grins menacingly, and the sound of an explosion near his head makes him groan in pain.
“I told you that I’d kill you,” Steele chuckles at him, and suddenly, he grabs Sage’s throat and slams his head into the concrete floor.
Pain erupts down his spine, and Sage gasps harshly when Steele squeezes his throat tighter. Claws nip into his flesh roughly, and the next breath he takes in is harsh and wet from the blood that seeps into his esophagus.
The ceiling above Sage pushes down, closing down on top of him as he writhes under Steele’s grip. The large, blunt claws against his throat are so hot from his own blood that he can feel the heat rippling off of them as Steele pushes him harder into the ground.
The claws grip him tighter. Closer and closer to making a complete fist. There isn’t anyone who can save him from this horrible pain.<
br />
God, the pain. It’s excruciating. He thrashes, struggling against the claws at his neck. They dig into his throat harder.
Don't fight me, Sage, a voice in the back of his head says. It’s going to hurt, and it’ll be so slow. There will be nothing left of you when I’m finished with you. I’m going to rip you apart.
A sickening crunch echoes in his ears, and then Sage's vision goes dark.
◆◆◆
Sage’s limbs flail as he abruptly shoots upright, tumbling into conciousness harshly as he thrashes and coughs. He tries to bring both of his hands up to run his fingers through his hair so that he can calm himself down, but they don’t budge from behind his back. He pulls again, and pain lances through both of his arms. It takes him a split second to realize that he’s retrained.
Lifting his head up hurts and a deep breath makes him cough harshly again. Blood runs down the corner of his mouth when he finally takes a deep breath, and he blinks blearily as he pulls against his restraints again. His hands don’t move from his bindings.
Sage's throat is raw, his mouth is full of ash and something that tastes like metal, and his face is soaked and sticky. His entire body aches.
“Oh, good,” Steele’s voice sounds somewhere in the room, but Sage can’t see anything. Everything is dark. He whips his head around, but everywhere he tries to look, darkness greets him. There isn’t any light anywhere. “You’re finally awake.”
“Where am I?” Sage asks, fighting a wave of nausea as he bites the words out. His stomach rolls, and he coughs and heaves.
“Ask me an important question,” Steele says somewhere in front of Sage, or maybe off to his left. Sage can’t focus enough to try to find him in the dark. His head is pounding.
Sage ignores Steele’s words as he tries to take another deep breath to calm himself down. He can feel the panic racing through his veins as he thrashes again. His lungs constrict tightly in his chest, and his entire body recoils harshly when he pulls at his hands. Everything hurts.
If he doesn’t calm himself down, he’s going to start panicking. He won’t be able to think rationally enough to free himself from his restraints if he starts to panic. He needs to relax enough to focus.