Marked

by Penelope Scott

  "Sorry Shy," Bold said to his sister.

  "If you come out of there dead," Shy growled back, "I'll kill you."

  Bold could feel her protectiveness and concern through their bond. He smiled in spite of himself. Sometimes it was nice to know how much someone cared for you.

  Near the back of the bus, the rest of the group was getting equipped. Angel and Bambi had just left to keep the main labs distracted while they snuck in the back route. They had armed themselves to the teeth. Bold thought they looked like they were heading out to war. They almost were.

  Angel's face had been a mix of determination and eagerness. It may have just been adrenaline, but Bold could have sworn that she was actually looking forward to holding up a medical lab. He felt a little bit sorry for the innocent scientists in the labs. Most of them, according to Lucien, had no idea what kind of secret experiments went on in the basement. Remington Medical Labs was just a front for something much more sinister.

  "Everyone ready?" Maddox asked, "Lucien?"

  The boy looked up from his lap: he had found Remus' computer among their possessions and had gotten very excited over it. Apparently it was well equipped to guide their mission from the safety of the bus. "Everything is ready. I can hack the systems from here and get you all inside. Once you are inside, the lab will probably go into lockdown. No one will be able to get in or out, so you must be inside before that happens." He paused a moment, "Angel and Bambi are almost in position. You should move now."

  Maddox nodded and gathered everyone together. There weren't enough weapons for everyone to have a gun, as Angel and Bambi had taken most of them, but Maddox had one, as did Irvine. For some reason the third and final gun had been entrusted to Echo. The firearm was massive in her hands and she was very shy about holding it. In fact, she looked pretty ridiculous.

  Bold was wondering about the wisdom of giving a gun to someone who was so clearly afraid of it. But Lucien had insisted that Echo have it, and Maddox had gone along with it. Apparently he really believed that Lucien was privy to some greater wealth of information than the rest of them.

  "If you're not ready," Maddox growled, "It's too late to turn back now. Everyone stick together." With that, Maddox ducked out of the bus and dashed through the alley behind the research labs. They all clustered around the door while Lucien hacked the door's electronic lock and it beeped and opened.

  As soon as they were inside they heard gunshots and a few terrified screams. If she listened closely, Echo was certian she could hear Angel's voice. "This is a stick up!" She sounded like she was in control. It made Echo feel a little better.

  Maddox found the stairs down into the basement where the true labs were. And, hopefully, Lochinvar and other captured Chosen.

  Echo could hear Lys' laboured breathing behind her. She glanced back and saw the anxiety in his eyes. His knees were practically clattering together. He was terrified. Echo reached out and squeezed his hand encouragingly.

  Lys looked surprised, but then he smiled at her, and he seemed to get a hold of himself a bit. He squeezed her hand back, but let go when Maddox got the door to the lab proper open and waved them all inside.

  They'd barely taken three steps when the alarms began to sound. The door behind them whizzed shut and locked so suddenly Echo nearly jumped out of her shoes. They had been expecting this to happen, but it still managed to get her heart thumping.

  The feelings had begun to scream at her. Bad idea! Bad idea! Bad idea! But she had made her choice, and now there was no turning back.

  The labs had gone almost completely dark but for the flashing red lights. A piercingly loud alarm wailed that intruders were in the building. Echo tried her best to ignore the noise and flashing lights and focus on her mission. She'd never before understood why everything about alarms seemed to be designed to induce panic in people. After all, the best thing to do in an emergency was stay calm, right?

  Now that she was on the other side, being the reason for the alarm in the first place, she thought she understood a little. The noise and lights also served to panic the intruders. She found it increasingly difficult to concentrate, and the alarm was so loud that they could barely communicate with each other. Fortunately they had gone over the plan a thousand times before, and Lucien had given them blueprints to study so that they wouldn't get lost once they were in there.

  Before them the was a T intersection of hallways. They stopped there and peered around the corners, but so far they had not run into anyone. Maddox made some hand motions which Echo understood to mean 'this is where we split up'.

  Echo, Lys, and Ro were going towards the holding cells to release whomever they could find while Irvine, Maddox and Bold went to secure their exit. Echo, being the one in her group with a weapon, got to go first.

  "You can do it, Echo," Ro told her encouragingly, patting her shoulder. "We're right behind you."

  Echo took a deep breath and nodded. Holding her gun the way Maddox had shown her, she inched slowly down the hall, keeping her back to the wall and carefully looking around corners before she moved. She absolutely dreaded the moment when they would come across someone she might have to shoot at. There had been so much death and suffering the last few months of her life, but Echo had never been the cause of any of it. She wasn't looking forward to this at all.

  They began to see doors along the way. Echo checked into each one, but they all looked hastily abandoned. All of the scientists must have evacuated to somewhere once the alarms started going off.

  Echo peered around another corner and locked eyes with a panicked man dashing down the hall further down. He barely hesistated a second before he raised something metallic and black and pointed it at her.

  Echo leapt back behind the corner, crashing into Lys and barely avoiding being shot. The bullet struck the door behind them and ricocheted away.

  "Shit," Lys cursed. "Get him, Echo!"

  Not knowing what else to do, Echo inched around the corner and fired.

  The man fell without a sound. Lys and Ro dashed around the corner and checked his body. Lys took the man's gun. Echo felt like her arms were made of pudding. The gun in her hands nearly slipped to the ground. She had never shot anyone before. Never killed anyone. Never...

  "Stop thinking about it!" Lys cut her off, shaking her by her shoulders roughly. "Stay focused, you can think about it later."

  It took every once of willpower Echo had to meet his eyes, push her revulsion and horror back to the furthest recesses of her mind, and nod stiffly. Later. She would think about it later. For now she was in 'mission mode'. She couldn't lose her head yet. People were counting on her. They trusted her with their lives. That's what Lucien had told her. She coudln't let them down. "Let's go," Echo said, her voice was surprisingly cold even for her.

  Lys seemed put off as well, but only for a second. "Let's find Loch," he agreed. Together they took off towards where the cells were supposed to be, Ro trailing nervously behind them.

  *

  Lucien's hands flew across the keyboard so quickly that Shy could barely see them. She looked at the screen but she had no clue what was going on. "What is he doing?" Shy asked Athena.

  The young girl only shrugged. "Something important, I think." She stared at Lucien while he worked. Suddenly, Lucien stopped typing and his eyes seemed to lose focus.

  "Now what is he doing?" Shy hissed.

  Athena studied him for a long time, "I think... I think he's trying to contact someone inside."

  "Like he did when he called Angel and Bambi to us?"

  Athena nodded.

  "Will this person be able to help out?"

  "It's hard to tell, I think it's hard to reach them inside that place. There's only so much he can do-"

  "Found him," Lucien whispered suddenly.

  "Who?" Shy wondered.

  "I can only urge his emotions a little..." Lucien continued, "But hopefully it will be enough." A few moments later, the computer started freaking out. Window after window popped u
p on the screen, something near the bottom of the screen was blinking, and little widnow boxes were popping up all over the place.

  "What's going on?" Shy demanded.

  "The lockdown has been initiated," Lucien informed them. "The rest is up to them."

  *

  Echo didn't know how long she, Lys and Ro were weaving their way through halls and dodging bullets. Looking back it felt like hours, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes. The obnoxious alarm was still going off and Echo was sweating through her sweatshirt already. When they had arrived the lab had been cold, now Echo wanted nothing more than to strip down to her bottom layers and lay down on the cool floor. But she couldn't afford to stop. Not yet.

  Finally they found the door leading to a stairwell. If Lucien's blueprints were correct, the next floor down was nothing but holding cells, while up here were the labs. They approached the stairs carefully, looking out for more scientists or security guards. They had acquired two more guns along the way, so now Ro had one, and Lys carried a second in his belt.

  "There's a panic room down in the sub-basement," Lys reminded her, "Most of them are probably locked up down there. This will be the hard part."

  Echo nodded her understanding and led the way to the stairs. She kicked the dor open and aimed the gun inside, eyes frantically searching for someone who might pop out from behind a corner to kill them all.

  No one came. "Clear," Echo told them. The crept carefully down the stairs. As they approached the exit to the stairwell the alarm finally cut off. Echo could still hear it ringing in her ears. Now the building was eerily silent. She could hear her breath, heavy and erratic. She was afraid to open the door no. She wished the alarm would turn back on. She wished something would cover up the sound of her breathing.

  "What are you waiting for?" asked Ro. "Open it,"

  Echo took a deep breath and did just that.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ~*Loch*~

  He didn't know how long he'd been in there. Whether it had been weeks or months or even years, he couldn't tell. There were no windows down there, and no sunlight beneath the earth to tell the days apart. The scientists seemed to be buzzing around the labs at all hours of the day. He thought his food might have come once a day, but after a few weeks he could no longer be sure. Things just blurred together. He would fall asleep after eating and wake up only to find another plate in his cell. Or he would spend what seemed like hours going through whatever bizarre tests the scientists wanted to put him through and then return only to wait endless more hours for his meals.

  There were scratch marks on the wall of his cell underneath the cot that counted the days, but he had eventually given up on that as well after forty-eight days were marked on the concrete wall. Sometimes he counted the scratches to combat the boredom. Most of the time he just slept.

  None of the others had been there as long as him. The girl who had been in the cell across from him when he'd arrived had been carried out by two lab grunts a week after he'd gotten there, blood dripping from her cold body onto the floor. He watched in horror as they carried her - a sweet fifteen-year-old with a lanky, boyish build - unceremoniously between the two of them, past all the other frightened Chosen without so mush as a sheet to cover her blue-black face. Her name had been Jessie and it had been her dream to be a singer.

  All the others who had been there when he'd arrived were no longer there. One by one they had been carried the same way to be disposed of when their bodies could no longer take the brutal testing.

  Eventually he stopped bothering trying to make friends with those around him. He didn't want to learn their names, although a few insisted on giving them anyway. Sometimes he talked or argued with them, just to pass the time, but he tried not to get attached.

  Most people only lasted a few weeks here. He wasn't sure how he had survived so long. He felt like he was living in a nightmare that just refused to end. Some days he looked forward to death. Wishing that it could finally end. He thought about taking his own life a few times.

  A man they had called Spider had managed to cut an artery with a spoon he'd sharpened on the floor. After that the doctors took away eating utensils. He remembered the day Spider had died. He could see his blood leaking out from his cell. It had pooled and dried until it was black before the doctors found him.

  He was thinking about Spider when the doctors came for him again. He didn't bother to fight them as he had in the beginning. He wished that maybe today they would finally kill him. He was getting sick of being strong enough to survive these experiments. Since the first day he had arrived there the dreaded feelings and the horrible dreams had intensified. The feeling hounded him all waking hours, screaming that he had to get out, and the dreams made it impossible to sleep comfortably. It was enough to drive a guy to insanity.

  Two burly guys grabbed his arms and led him around several bends to a small room where many experiments were done. Another Chosen was already in there. He was a montrously large young man that the others around the lab had taken to calling the 'Friendly Giant'. It was a bad name. Even though he was a giant, he defiitely wasn't friendly.

  Currently Friendly was strapped to a table and heavily sedated. It was rather pathetic to see him that way, actually. His meaty chest rose and fell steadily in synch with the machines he was hooked up to. Electrodes were taped to his head and chest and were monitoring all kinds of bodily functions.

  The scientists were currently very interested in how the Chosen's brain reacted to stressors. They liked to see what happened when a Chosen was in trouble by torturing them and then oohing and ahhing over the activity that their equipment showed them.

  'Poor brute,' he thought. He didn't particularly like the Friendly Giant, but he didn't believe that anyone should be treated that way. He was forced over to a second table and made to lie down. He didn't pay attention as they prepared a sedative for him as well. He was too bust watching Friendly. He winced painfully as a scientist schocked Friendly with a mean-looking rod and the giant jerked violently and then went still again.

  "Tie him down securely," the head scientists was saying to his underlings. "We -" a tiny light near his computer started to blink rapidly and it started to beep. A pleasant-sounding woman's voice chimed in moments after. "Intruders have infiltrated the secondary laboratories. initiating lockdown"

  And just like that, Friendly suddenly roared to life, his eyes tight and bloodshot with what he could only assume was rage. He lurched forward and snapped the restraints like Frankenstein's monster, muscles bulging and eyes twitching. The scientist with the rod stumbled back in fear and Friendly grabbed him by the throat and all but tossed him across the room into the rest of them.

  "Get a sedative!" The head scientist screamed, just as the alarm started to sound. The lights all went out except for a horrible blinking red one, and the speaker systems started to wail irritatingly.

  He wasn't about to waste this opportunity. He pushed the distracted doctor who had been trying to strap him down across the room and sent him stumbling over Friendly's table. He quickly undid the rest of the straps and aimed a pretty visious right hook at the nearest doctor.

  Friendly was going on a wild rampage, throwing tables and equipment around like a wild beast. The scientists were all so preoccupied that it didn't take much to rob a passcard from one of them and dash out the door.

  "Intruder alert. Lockdown Initiated." The pleasant-sounding woman intoned over the speakers. Lockdown would mean that all the elevators and automatic-locking doors would be impossible to open. Which also meant their was no way out. He cursed to himself, wondering what they hell he could use his stolen passcard for it wasn't working anyway.

  Where could he go? How could he escape? Who were these intruders. He hoped they were people who were on his side.

  He found himself back at the cells, where several Chosen were sticking their heads through the bars, trying to see what was going on.

  "Let us out!" Someone cried to him, see
ing that he was out. He turned to see who was calling to him. It was Mama, a nice old, matronly lady who had arrive about three or four days earlier. He wasted no time and swiped his stolen passcard through the lock. It didn't work.

  He cursed his luck colourfully and made a sympathetic face for Mama. Only a quick feeling warned him of the beefy man who had snuck up behind him.

  Behind you!

  Trusting his instincts, he dropped to the ground and spun to face his attacker. The man was a low-level grunt, as far as the scientists were concerned. He recognized him as a particularly mean-spirited bastard. The bastard had a gun, but that didn't worry him. He thrust his hands upwards and pushed the gun into the air.

  The bastard tried to struggle, but he was no pushover. He headbutted the bastard in the face and grinned as he fell back, blood streaming from his nostrils. He kicked the bastard again, not waiting for him to recover. He kicked and punched and attacked until the bastard lay unconscious on the floor. He stepped over the man and casually picked up his gun.

  All around him the other Chosen were rattling the bars of their cages, cheering and screaming his name.

  "Loch! Loch! Loch!"

  *

  There was a lot of noise down in the sub-basement. Somewhere deep within the lab Echo could hear voices and excited chattering accented by the occasional gunshot. She couldn't tell if it was the scientists babbling or something else, but it made her nerves tingle.

  The three Chosen crept as quietly as they could through the halls, trying to get close enough to make out what the voices were saying. It was too muffled to make out.

  The cold, barren hallway stretched for what seemed like miles. Every inch of it was pristine and white. The flourescent lights had come back on when the alarm stopped. The light made Echo have to squint.

  Lys had taken pointe, for which Echo was grateful. She'd had enough of going first. Just thinking about it made her chest constrict. Echo kept her eyes trained on Lys' back as they moved. It was the only thing that was stopping her from turning and fleeing. The feelings would not shut up about how screwed they all were. Ro was grabbing at Echo's sleeve and Echo could feel her hand shaking. She was a total wreck.