“Oh, Peter,” I whispered, playing with his impulses. “This is a serious problem,” I tilted my head and lifted my eyebrows. “Always wanting what you cannot have.”
And then, I shook my head, letting out a sigh, showing him what a hopeless cause he was. And then, I prodded his nose with my gloved index finger and left.
I knew he wouldn’t follow me as I left that room. Because of that I made my way towards the pit, knowing that the other beasts had to be exercising there. I counted on the fact that Peter had given me full access to the area where “my kind” was, expecting me to be reminded that, in the end, I was nothing more than a test subject, too. Maybe not a prisoner, but still a captive.
I had no idea how much time I had until Peter would have me found, so he could see what I was up to.
Time is of the essence. I had a few weeks to prepare everything that I needed on the outside, but I knew I had not so much luck on the inside. The only thing I couldn’t ask of Peter was meeting the others. If I had requested to see them, or to watch Jay exercising with them, he would have become suspicious of my intentions. He would have known that I had never intended to stay here, but would try to leave and take everyone with me: Everyone, not a handpicked few who would blindly follow Jay into death.
Yes, I had received a nod in return, but that wouldn’t mean they would follow me. It was highly important to me that the other beasts would do just that: follow me, not obey me. I wasn’t a soldier, I wasn’t an officer, I wasn’t in command. But I was a beast. And, possibly – if there was something like that at all – an alpha. I could be their alpha if they wanted me to be. It was important to me that they would choose me, because they wanted to follow me, and not because there was no other option.
They heard the door opening and closing, and at first, they didn’t react to it until they realized that it was me. All of them stopped what they had been doing and turned to stare at me, but they didn’t move. They didn’t move until one of them did, walking towards the fence where I was headed to. I instantly recognized her. Nina.
She had been brainwashed, too. I knew that from Jay when he was my prisoner. I’ve read it in the diary Gray brought me so we could communicate. So, of course, I was worried how much of herself she had lost already.
“Meghan,” Nina Torres greeted me, but I didn’t dare to feel relieved about that.
“Nina,” I responded and nodded.
In Jay’s absence, Nina was in command as his second. If she was still under Peter’s control, there was no way for me to take any of the beasts with me. But there had been hope in the diary. Maybe Jay’s doubt, Jay’s attempt to fight whatever memories they had implanted in his mind, had affected Nina, too.
“What do you want?” she demanded to know, her face and voice unreadable.
“To get all of us out of here,” I chose honesty.
Even if she was still under Peter’s influence, maybe me not lying could make the difference. I knew she was listening to my heartbeat and the evenness of my breathing and voice. She would have no reason to doubt my words. Her reaction, however, took me off guard.
“Good,” she grinned at me.
“You got me there for a moment,” I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Ever since Jay told me to stop drinking the water, we all did,” Nina explained. “We were trying to figure a way out of here, but without help from the outside that’s not possible. Peter has his claws deep in Jay's mind. I did the best I could to try and help him protect his mind, but,” she shook her head. “I’m not the right person for that task. It’s you. Do you know where he is?”
My hesitation and attempt to find the right words told her more than I wanted to. Nina frowned, her expression darkened.
“Peter injected him with the anti-virus he got from me,” I was honest again, but Nina wasn’t furious at me. “He is currently in a fever induced coma, fighting it,” I continued. “I don’t know if he is going to make it, or if he will be a beast or a human should he survive.”
“It’s up to him now, Meg.” Nina pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded, sad and worried. “Tell me about your plan.”
Day 403
I think that day was the worst day of my life. If I truly hate something, it’s not being able to do anything and having to wait. After I removed and added stuff to my wish-list on our fake online shop there was nothing else to do but wait.
I knew where Jay was, Gray knew where Daniel was, I had no clue where Peter was. And that was it. I couldn’t stay with Jay the entire time, since it was unclear whether I could be infected or not. And standing on the other side of that mirrored window was just as unnerving as sitting on my bed, trying to read, watching TV, or scrolling through the internet.
But I had to wait. We all had to wait. For Jay to wake up, or to die. Never before in my life had my patience been tested like this. All I wanted was for him to get it over with and make a choice. And then I remembered.
I remembered those lines he wrote about when he was in the coma being transformed into a beast. He had been dying then and he was dying now. He had written that the world around him had faded, and all his senses along with it. Had he been able to hear my words? Or had they been drowned out by the darkness, that slowly, but inevitably, claimed him. All he had felt was being consumed by lava. And now his body was burning up again from fever. Again, he was a prisoner in his own body, locked in by a coma. Jay was going through the same exact thing for a second time. He was given a second chance to decide where to go.
I tried desperately to remember those exact same lines he had written all those months ago, to explain to me how it felt to become a beast. I went through a transition, too, but for me it still had been different. Maybe it was for him too, this time. I hoped so, although I had a feeling that it wasn’t. He was literally burning up. They were cooling him down, cooling the room down, every time no one was with him, to keep him alive.
I ended up walking up and down in that monitoring room, not able to keep my eyes off him, not able to tear my eyes away from him. I couldn’t go and talk to Daniel, because I needed to confuse Peter. I needed to make him believe that Jay was far more important to me than Daniel was. I needed to keep Daniel safe; because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing them both. That was my sole weakness, and I couldn’t show it to him. I already had made the mistake of sleeping with Dan, and all I could do was hope that Peter underestimated the importance of that action.
Day 404
I woke up early on that day, just when my outside imitating TV screen showed the first light of the day. I was feeling off, like something had happened, and I instantly thought of Jay. I put on some clothes as fast as I could and tried not to run, to not alert anyone else but Gray, who would know I was leaving my apartment the moment I opened my door.
It’s still hard to believe that Peter really didn’t see that coming, that his confidant Gray would switch sides, when it was so obvious. People closest to Peter tend to end up dead or worse. How couldn’t he see that?
The distance between my room and Jay’s seemed to be longer than before as I rushed through the corridors. My heart was beating panicky in my chest, hammering against my ribcage as if it wanted to break free. My mind was still half asleep and I was incapable of reading the notion my body and instincts had. I just knew it was Jay.
I heard the flatline the second I opened the last heavy door giving way to the corridor on which Jay’s room was. My heart stopped dead, which hurt me far more than the rapid beating from before. Acidy tears gathered in my eyes as I forced myself to continue moving towards that room.
This didn’t fit to the sensation I had earlier. This wasn’t right. I felt as if I had woken up from a deep sleep, only to realize that I was in a different reality than before.
All the sudden, I felt so heavy, tired, as if my pregnancy was affecting me big time. But I wouldn’t let that wear me down. I wouldn’t accept a reality I hadn’t seen with my own eyes. If Jay was dead, I woul
d have to see it myself, I would have my hearing listen for his heartbeat as well as his breathing, I would use my scent search for the stench of death. Only I could tell myself that he was gone.
So, I continued walking while that constant noise the heart monitor created drowned out everything else, and began to hurt my ears the closer I got, as if someone was turning up the volume with every step I took. And, suddenly, it was gone.
I couldn’t stop myself. My body acted on its own, as I sped towards the door and yanked it open. No one would be allowed to move him; no one would be allowed to even touch him, before I had laid eyes on him for the very last time. I was about to beast out and claw my way through whoever was in that room, standing in my path, or dared to do anything without my say-so.
There he was. My Jay. He was standing in the middle of the room, all alone, his hand still on the off-switch of the monitor, looking at me, startled. I moved, following my first impulse to throw myself into his arms, until my mind reminded myself that he still might be infectious. It was killing me, not being able to hug and kiss him, but was only killing me a little bit. Because, Jay was alive and well enough to stand on his feet.
There was no time to waste.
I didn’t need to know if he was still a beast or had returned to being nothing more than a human being. As soon as Peter realized that Jay was alive he would stop at nothing to take him away from me.
“We need to go,” I told Jay, speaking softly. “Do you think you can walk? Or maybe even run?”
As an answer to that Jay wobbled on his legs. I nodded and turned around, opening the door, harkening for steps. I could hear one set of feet approaching us, and I already knew who it was.
“Who are you…?” Jay started talking and I closed my eyes, head-shaking, and faced him, cutting him off before he had a chance to ask more; there was no time to explain to him who I was, who he was, or what we were doing.
“Jay, there is no time to explain, you need to trust me,” I told him. “Do you think you can trust me?”
He frowned, almost as if he didn’t understand, and then he responded. “Of course, I trust you, Meghan. Who are you hearing?”
This was a kind of relief that challenged a cool shower after a marathon beneath a relentless sun. Again, I battled my impulse to run over to him and kiss him.
“John,” I smiled at Jay. “I mean the guy I call Gray. He’s our inside man, remember? He’s coming and I need you to trust him, too.”
There was a chance that Jay only heard Gray’s steps as he approached the door I was standing at.
“If you trust him, I trust him,” was Jay’s answer and I wanted to kiss him all over his face.
“Get in,” I told Gray and closed the door behind him even though I knew that the cameras were rolling within this room; Gray obeyed and I continued: “You need to get him out of here ASAP and give the green light. Go.”
Gray nodded, pressed something cool and smooth into my hand, as I had instructed him to should I leave my room at an unusual hour, and went over to Jay who had sat down on the bed, obviously exhausted. I silently prayed getting him out of here wouldn’t kill him. John silently grabbed one of Jay’s arms, placed it around his own neck, and helped him onto his feet, all the while he made sure that the cameras did not catch his face.
“You’re not coming with?” Jay asked, looking confused and worried.
“No, Peter’s not going to be concerned with you when he can’t find me where he expects me to be. As soon as spots me, he will go after me,” I explained. “You need to get out of here.”
Gray was already maneuvering Jay towards the door while we spoke, and I moved towards the middle of the room, and looked at the camera when both men left. I knew Peter would look at the tape. And he would stare at it for as long as I was looking straight at him, expecting me to say something. But I didn’t. Instead I lifted my hand and showed him the middle finger.
I bought Gray and Jay some time, and pissed of Peter, so that he would forget about Jay and go after me and me only. Now, all I had to do was stay in the blind spots of the moving cameras in the corridors, which I had studied the moment I had arrived here.
Peter would expect me to go for Daniel next, because his biggest mistake was believing everyone’s mind worked exactly like his or his brother’s. The entire time I had been back here, I tried to imitate his behavior, or irritate him, be acting precisely as he expected a woman in love to act, so that he would believe he knew my next steps. I had to count on his ego and that he wouldn’t listen to suggestions of his employees or peers.
I had to get to the others first. Fighting against my need to know if Daniel was okay was one of the hardest things I had to do. But Peter would look there first, and not finding me there, not finding me on my way there was important, because he wouldn’t punish Daniel for that. He would tell Dan that I didn’t care about him enough to save him first, like I had Jay. Peter would go for the emotional pain, because it usually struck deeper, and Peter had already used the anti-virus on Jay. I had to trust that Daniel knew how much I loved him.
So, I ran for the pit. I ran as fast as I possibly could, carefully monitoring Danny and my body as I did so. Peter had no idea how fast I could really go. The fact was that I was fast enough and knew the cameras well enough that no one would be able to see where I was going.
Nina and I agreed on her having someone stationed at the pit 24/7, so that I could give the signal to move out. The beasts already had found a way to manipulate the doors of their cells leading to the open space in the middle of the compound, which wasn’t as heavily guarded or monitored. The locks on these doors were simple, because no one considered the pit as a way out.
They hadn’t thought of an enemy being granted access to parts of the compound. And they hadn’t thought of me.
When I opened the door towards the pit I could hear someone stirring at the other side of the place get up and move towards the electrified fence to meet me, because me showing up didn’t instantly mean it was time to rock and roll. Ramirez – that’s what Nina had called him – raced towards me at inhuman speed, and stopped a mere inch in front of the fence.
“Ma’am,” he greeted me as if it was the most normal thing to do and I answered saying his family name with a nod; I could sense that that pleased him.
“The black king’s knight is on his way out,” I told him in the code Nina and I had agreed on. “It’s time for the white king to know what ‘check’ feels like. I’m going for my knight now.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Ramirez grinned at me. “King’s bishop going for check.” And then he sped away, reaching his door as I reached mine.
I warped my right hand only to destroy the lock, so that Nina, who was the king’s bishop, could gather all the beasts and lead them through the corridor, following me – the black queen – in my tracks. Jay was the black king’s knight, and that king was no one else but our son.
By now, Gray would have alerted Peter, since he still had his part to play, as the black queen’s rook, my rook. Pun intended. Peter would have watched the video tapes and be distracted by me glaring at him. And I knew that if I had been fast enough, he would either be already leaving Daniel’s cell, or would meet me as I was going to get him.
I wasn’t sure which scenario I would prefer. So, I was glad that it wasn’t up to me what would happen. When you plan things, you always must give a little room for error and a little room for fate.
I guess I have my own wits and speed to thank for it that when I arrived at Daniel’s cell, that he wasn’t only there, being able to talk, but that Peter was there, too. And, of course, he was doing exactly what I had expected.
“She’s gone,” Peter spoke icily. “She took Jay and left.”
I couldn’t help but listen. Not only because Nina and her men needed time to gather and move out, taking every enemy down that crossed their path, which led straight to me, but also because I needed to hear if Daniel was really believing and trusting me.
“The black queen won’t ever leave behind her knight,” I could hear Daniel grin, and I closed my eyes with a smile.
He had heard me, of course. Dan would always be able to sense me, no matter what. I tried not to giggle.
“What are you talking about?” Peter frowned.
And right then and there, I realized something. Despite his ego, despite his belief that he was unbeatable, Peter had been afraid to completely commit to the cause. He was just a half breed in his own right, because he feared what he might become should he ever completely transform. Peter wasn’t a real soldier, and because of that lacked discipline, and training. And he didn’t have a working moral compass either. What kind of creature would he become, if he had completed the procedure?
We would never find out.
Machine gun fire caught our attention, and I had to go.
“He’s talking about me, never leaving him behind,” I whispered into Peter’s ear after I flashed into the cell and wrapped my left arm around his chest, holding tight to his neck from behind.
I didn’t wait for him to answer, or realize I was there, standing behind him, clawing my hands into his neck. I plunged the syringe into his neck, injected the anti-virus into his body, tore his bracelet from his wrist, and pushed him against the bars of Daniel’s cell with all the force I had. I think I heard at least one bone break. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to dig my claws into his body and pull out his spine. But that was too easy and too clean for someone like Peter, so I sped up again, as he collided with the floor, and jumped.
I could hear his pelvis crack with a smacking sound, along with a few vertebrae. He would be lucky if he only needed a cane after that.
Throwing Daniel Peter’s bracelet, I quickly avoided contact with Peter but leaned down, so that my mouth was close to his ear.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I spoke lowly. “I’m not going to take you with me to torture you. I’m not going to give you to the authorities who are entering these premises as we speak. I haven’t revealed your identity to WikiLeaks or the press, who have received all of Valerie’s files as I am talking to you. I am leaving you behind for your men to find you and save you. You will battle with the anti-virus and loose. I don’t care whether you live or you die. I will leave here smiling, knowing that the only thing left of your brother’s work is you.”
My Beasts And Me (The Beast And Me Book 7) Page 10