The Pursuit (The Permutation Archives Book 2)

by Kindra Sowder

  “If you don’t stop I’ll be forced to sedate you,” she said as she attempted to roll herself back over to him, but he sat up and spat pained words at her instead, each word garbled into an incoherent mess because of the agony he was in.

  “Just do it, Doc. Use the Paralisix if you have to,” Caius spouted as he came into the tiny enclave.

  My eyes shot to him, shock evident in my face and my posture. “You guys use that stuff?”

  “Very sparingly I can assure you,” the doctor said as she rolled her stool to a drawer that contained pre-filled syringes of the medication. It was a color I recognized, causing my breath to catch in my throat. I wanted to believe her, but the white coat made it hard, and I was beginning to see red. She reached into the drawer and plucked a syringe from within it, removing an alcohol swab from a box on the counter.

  I took a step forward. “You’re not using that on him,” I demanded. “I won’t let you.”

  Each pair of eyes turned to me, images of my own dosages of the drug forcing themselves into the forefront of my memory as the syringe in her hand glared at me. One of them had even been given by Ryder on the plane when I was being taken to the compound. He knew what it did. How could he stand by and let them use it? The doctor seemed the most stunned by my actions, Julius wasn’t shocked by anything anymore, and Ryder and Caius just looked annoyed now. I found myself not caring. Ajax grunted through the pain, lying down on the table as sweat broke out across his forehead.

  “Just do it, Doc. I can handle it,” Ajax said as calmly as he could.

  My mouth dropped open, surprise flooding my mind as the doctor swabbed his flesh and then injected him with the medication. Within mere seconds he was closing his eyes, his body relaxed, and his breathing evened out. I had never actually seen the drug affect someone. I had always been on the receiving end of it, but that never made it any easier. The dose hadn’t been anything near what I had been given, but that left little solace. A tear rolled down my cheek as I watched it pull him under.

  “If it helps, we have a medication we can use to counteract the drug, which I will use once I am finished here,” the doctor explained as she leaned down to examine the wounds on Ajax’s leg. “Then, after I stitch this up, he will be given a course of antibiotics and a rabies shot just in case.”

  That did nothing to stop the flooding of memories of my body becoming numb, paralyzed by the liquid that had been forced into my veins more than once.

  “What is your name, Doctor?” I asked her, my stare never leaving hers. She looked up at Ajax’s leg for all of a second before turning on the stool to grab what she needed from a nearby cabinet. We all watched as she removed sterilizing supplies and what she needed to administer the stitches Ajax needed. I would let her do her job now, but there was something she was going to know about me before I ever allowed her or any other doctor in the place to touch me.

  “I am Doctor Adelaide Devi,” she paused, cleaning the wounds with extreme precision and concentration. “And I know exactly who you are, Mila.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, since you already know who I am there is one more thing I think you should be aware of.”

  Adelaide prepared the stitching kit, watching her movements and only taking her eyes off of it long enough to glance at me, her eyebrows rising in amusement. “And what is that?”

  “I don’t care how badly injured I am. You, or any other doctor in this place, are not coming near me with that stuff. Got that?” Along with the words, I pointed at the syringe she had just recently had in her hand, now laying empty beside Ajax on the gurney.

  “I wonder how long it’ll be before you beg for that ‘stuff.’” Adelaide had already started working on stitching up the wounds on his leg, pausing for just a moment after her statement. “Paralisix has helped me save a lot of people because, without it, the pain would’ve been so bad that I couldn’t hold them down long enough to administer a test or treatment. And some people are known to react violently to pain.” Her eyes had grazed over Ajax before she turned back to her work. “So, while you say that now, you never know.”

  An awkward silence filled the space as I stared open-mouthed at the doctor in front of me. I knew she had dealt with a lot of irrational, scared, and injured people. Especially when in the middle of a rebellion, but I was determined not to be one of the people that depended on the drugs to deal with the agony. Not even the psychological kind no matter how tempting it was to sit down with a bottle of awful tasting brown liquor and go to town on it acting as if I didn’t have a care in the world. If only I could. I crossed my arms over my chest, and Ryder took a step toward me.

  “Mila? A word?” he asked, his green eyes sparkling so beautifully in the fluorescent lights despite his slightly irritated demeanor.

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  He walked past me, and I followed, him holding the privacy curtain open so I could come through and dropped it as soon as I was past him. Before I had a chance to say anything, he placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, those eyes glittering perfectly as I watched his face switch from emotion to emotion within seconds, making it impossible to decipher what any of them were.

  “Look, I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for all of us, but how about we keep some of our thoughts to ourselves instead of berating the doctor that’s trying to help our friend.”

  Great, I was getting a lecture from the man I cared about. The one who had helped save me from King’s clutches, only to help my mother thrust me into a war I hadn’t wanted any part of. Well, at least for a little while until everything had been spelled out for me. But it wasn’t just my mother, King or Ryder that had helped give me the push I needed. Cato did and, as I stared into Ryder’s face, Cato’s flashed into my mind. The same look he had on his face in the dream he had used to visit me, a broad smile on his face that was contagious. I closed my eyes and let out a sigh, my shoulders sagging as I let my defenses crumble.

  “I’m sorry.” I opened my eyes and looked into his, trying to force a weak grin onto my face and failing miserably. My body broke out in a sweat again, heat flushing through my entire body as anxiety flared once again. Being asked to trust anyone, or even act as if I did, was something I wasn’t prepared to do. It made me a liar just like so many I had been running away from. “I’m just tired.”

  He pulled me into his chest and wrapped me up in a hug, placing a gentle kiss on the top of my head. His heart beat slow and rhythmic at first, speeding up as soon as I wrapped my own arms around his waist. I let out a contented sigh as all of the tension and the fear melted away and floated away down the same river that helped lead us to King’s Forge. And now, here we were, miles deep below the city in yet another compound filled with labs, doctors, white coats, and so many other things I couldn’t even fathom. And I kept asking myself if I actually wanted to know. I guessed I did. I wanted to know everything there was to know, even if it meant tearing myself apart from the inside out to save what I could.

  “I know. We’ll get some rest tonight and hopefully, by the morning, we can get everything sorted out and be on our way.”

  That got me thinking about our missing companions. My mother, Doctor Aserov, Noah, and Famke were still unaccounted for, and I was worried sick. Did King grab them up and take off with them, or were they out there in the woods fighting for their lives? “Where do you think they are right now? Or what they’re doing?”

  “Well,” he answered as he rested his cheek on the top of my head, “my hope is that they’re out there in the forest making their way either here or to the Paradigm’s headquarters.”

  “You don’t think King has them, do you?” I turned my head and looked into his eyes, the somber look inside of them not doing anything to reassure me that they were safe and sound somehow despite our circumstances. His stare met mine, the frown on his lips causing his brows t
o furrow and worry to bloom in my chest again.

  “Everything happened so fast when we all were separated it’s hard to know for sure. First, the EMP, then you were shot with a dart, and that thing took off with you, and it went crazy from there. I can’t even say I remember exactly how I got on the plane, to begin with. I guess it’s going to take a little while to sort all of that out, huh? Unless we were all drugged and can’t remember.”

  I took in a deep breath and rested my cheek on the center of his broad chest, letting it out through pursed lips as my hope that they were alright began to dwindle.

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  After another thirty minutes, Adelaide, Caius, and Julius came out from behind the blue privacy curtain. Caius refused to look me in the eye, watching the ground at his feet instead of facing me when he knew he should. He waved at us as Adelaide followed him, expecting us to do the same, which we did. Mostly because we had nowhere else to go.

  “Come on, let’s get you guys settled for the night,” he said, eyes darting between the others, but not once to me.

  Ryder took my hand, and we followed blindly, only wanting to see more of what was under the ground than this one large room that made me so anxious my muscles ached from the tension. Each white coat I attempted to ignore caused my anxiety to spike and my heart to race even faster until I felt as if I could pass out from the stress, dizziness and nausea coming in waves that I continued to shake off in order to function.

  “Are the rest of them here?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be before anyone had to open their mouth and say a single word. They weren’t but it never hurt to ask. It never hurt to have that confirmation even though I knew the inevitability of the answer was a crippling weight on my shoulders. I felt as if I was responsible for them and I had failed to keep them safe from King’s grimy fingers.

  “No, I’m sorry, Mila,” Adelaide answered for him. She knew the question was directed at Caius, but chose to answer for him because he felt the same guilt I did. Even I could see the remorse in the way he held his body as he walked, even with the shuffle of feet and limp caused by what was done to him in the compound under King’s command.

  We turned into a long, bleach white hallway, the lights reflecting off of the white wall and white floors in a painful way that caused my eyes to ache. Each person in a white coat barely broke up the glaring sterility of the place with each shade of skin that could possibly exist, their colorful clothes covered by the lab coat almost entirely.

  “How did you get here, Caius?” My question was greeted with silence as we walked, passing door upon door, each one closed off to the commotion of the hallway. When he didn’t look at me, I felt like begging even though I had done so much of that lately I was beginning to grow tired of it. “Caius, please.”

  I was practically pleading now as we moved through the hallway, following Adelaide and Caius as we made another left turn. Adelaide looked at Caius as they moved, clearly wondering herself when the question would be answered. I could see it in the set of her jaw. But we were still greeted by nothing, which caused my temper to flare, the power inside of me blooming within my gut and moving upward. My fist clenched and unclenched, and I let go of Ryder’s hand, lunging at the man’s back before anyone had time to react. I was tired of playing games, and everyone was about to know it first-hand, my fury robust enough to be felt palpating the air around me. My hands gripped the back of his shirt and spun him around to face me, and then I clutched the front of his shirt and pushed him into the bright white wall behind him. Everything around me stopped. All movement, all speech, everything frozen in time as those walking down the hallway stopped and stared at the spectacle I was causing by finally acting out on my growing anger. Adelaide was right behind me shouting while the other two men knew I wouldn’t harm Caius at all and this was just an act of utter frustration at his silence. At least, they had hoped anyways. I wasn’t so sure anymore as I felt the urge to punch something.

  Caius had his hands up in a sign of surrender in an attempt to show me that he wasn’t a threat. “Wow, wow, wow, Mila. I’m not the enemy here.”

  His breath was hot on my face as the rage flared inside of me. I knew he wasn’t the enemy. I knew it all too well. I was just tired of the secrets and half-truths I saw at every turn. Every averted gaze when someone refused to answer a direct question.

  “You may not be, but I’m tired of playing games. How did you get here before any of us? And you better start talking...fast because my patience is growing thin.”

  “You don’t think this is something we can discuss out of the sight of prying eyes?” Adelaide asked as she moved to stand by my side, placing a gentle hand on my arm. I could see her out of the corner of my eye and it was a struggle not to push her away because of how angry I was and her proximity.

  Without taking my eyes off of Caius, I said only one word through gritted teeth. “No.” My eyes narrowed at Caius, his blue ones penetrating mine with guilt and sincerity as tears welled up in them, creating a gloss over them their slick surface. “You going to answer my question?”

  His eyes flicked to Adelaide beside me and the two men behind me, finally settling on me again as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “I was born and raised here, so this was the only place I knew to go. I had a feeling that, if anyone else were still out there, they’d come here first,” he replied, his words rushed as they flew from his mouth. “King’s men had brought plenty of means of transportation with them, and everything happened so fast. We all got separated after they took you. These two,” he nodded toward Julius and Ryder, “ended up on the plane and your mother and the others took off and I lost track of them. I found one of their Humvees and high-tailed it out of there as quickly as I could and came straight here. It was the only thing I knew to do. I don’t want you to hate me, so all I can do is apologize.”

  “You left us out there? You left them out there?” My hands clutched the front of his shirt even harder, my knuckles turning white.

  The rage was beginning to build even more now, causing my body to stiffen and the adrenaline to pump through my veins in a rush. My muscles were trembling, and all I saw was red. Like a bull charging at a Matador. I didn’t even see what I did next coming. Everything happened in a flurry of actions and words, leaving no room for thought and the anger boiling up inside of me, causing my blood to turn hot inside of my veins. It needed an outlet as well as a target, and there was only one directly within reach. Before anyone could grab me and pull me away, my fist went flying backed up by my power as I thrust so much into it, knowing I could very well kill Caius because of it. It connected with his jaw and arms came around me to pull me away, and I spat insults as Caius as he slumped against the wall, his hand rubbing his jaw with a face set in agony.

  “You left us there, you coward! You left us,” I shouted as my anger flowed out of me, tears streaming down my face, nearly cracking the wall next to Caius with the power of my emotions. I felt it pressing on the drywall around him, threatening to tear the entire place down within the ground. My ability began to weaken then, my anger replaced by sorrow and grief as the pair of strong arms held me around the waist and away from the man I had once respected. I wasn’t sure who it was, but that didn’t matter. A few doors opened, eyes peering out at the commotion, but that didn’t stop my next words. “We should’ve left you there to rot.”

  Even as I said the words, I knew I didn’t mean them. I had come to adore the man, and I was certain that he knew it despite what I said or how many insults or obscenities I aimed at him. I turned away from his shocked and hurt expression to find myself sobbing into Ryder’s chest, Julius’s hand coming to rest reassuringly on my back and rubbing in comforting circles. Ryder began to make soothing sounds as he smoothed down my hair, trying his best to comfort me and end my sorrow. It wasn’t going to be that simple. Not until all of this was finished. Not u
ntil King was so much ash beneath my feet and the constant betrayal ended.

  “Doctor Devi, if you can just show us to where we’ll be staying tonight that’d be great. Then we can handle this in private,” Julius said as he turned to the doctor, who was still stunned by what had just happened, her hand resting just over her heart and her eyes wide. She was still staring at Caius, her breath coming in short gasps with the anticipation of even more violence.

  I guessed she had never once seen violence up close and personal or had seen this much raw human emotion leave someone in such a way that it shook you to the core. Well, I’d had enough at that point, and I was done playing nice. I turned my head against him just enough to see Adelaide nod like she was coming out of a trance, her eyes not once leaving Caius. I couldn’t look at any of them, so I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to close them out altogether, but knew it was impossible because everything said now was caused by my actions.

  “Yes, I think that would be best.” Doctor Devi’s shoes clicked on the linoleum floor as she moved away from the wall and began to lead us away. Ryder tried to lead me in the direction she was taking us without letting me go. And I wasn’t ready to be let go of. If I could’ve stayed wrapped in his arms forever, then I would have.

  “I’m sorry, Mila. I didn’t mean…” Caius began as we started to make out way toward another section of the underground compound of the Paradigm.

  I turned and pulled away from Ryder whose arm came out to grab mine as I took a step toward the man and pointed at him, fury causing my blood to boil once again. I let Ryder’s hand close around my wrist to hold me back as Julius’s came out in front of me in an attempt to stop me if I were going to hit him again. I wasn’t going to, but I was angry enough to do so. My eyes met his as he stood there, pressed against the wall that my energy has already started to crack from the floor to the ceiling.