Revolutionary

by LeAnn Mason

  I remembered then that on the side of the medical bed there should be some type of call button or a rip cord to pull in case of emergency that should get someone running to my room. Well, maybe running was a strong term, but it should produce results. That’s the point. I looked all around the rails but didn’t see anything obvious. In fact, someone should have come in to check on me once all the machines went haywire.

  “What the Hell is going on?” I mumbled as I turned my head in a slow circle, checking the too-white room from ceiling to floor, a bit more thoroughly than I had initially. I noted several cameras mounted along the ceiling—one in each corner, to be precise. I assumed someone was watching, but why? And why wasn’t anyone coming in?

  The longer I turned the questions over in my mind, the more certain I became that I didn’t want to know. So… not standard operating procedure…

  After searching the room high and low for anything that could be deemed useful as a weapon, I once again perched on the monochrome medical bed. My shoulder was throbbing painfully, and I was getting lightheaded every time my head so much as tipped off-center. Of course, my labored quest produced nothing. This place was buttoned up tight. There may have been useful items such as syringes and needles, maybe some cleaning supplies in the drawers, but the cabinets were all locked—an actual key was needed to open them. Figures.

  A buzzing sensation in my head alerted me to someone’s approach. A person was definitely coming my way, but was it just in passing or was this room their destination? It slowly became clearer, turning into more coherent thought—well, kind of, it was still pretty broken. It was definitely male, older, guessing by the comments flitting through his mind about the “pretty young things.” Ewww. Another mental signature was there, as well, not nearly as crude except in their assessment of their companion. There was no love lost between the men. I also gleaned that one was Enhanced while the other was not.

  The door clicked, opening wide to admit the lewd thinker. He was tall and broad, with a bit of a limp to his already lumbering gait. If a face could be described as cruel, that’s what his was. The lines present were from creasing his brow and pulling his mouth down into a hard frown, but his eyes scared me the most. Those eyes were glittering with promise of misdeeds as they peeked through the stringy mass of too-long dark hair. His mind spewed all kinds of filth in my direction, though nothing left his mouth. There was something oddly familiar about this man, but that didn’t keep me from retreating as far from him as possible, backing me into the corner away from him.

  “Eat, girl.” His twisted smile showed pearly-white, straight teeth that reminded me too much of a wolf. The grin only added to the visage as my mind conjured creepy lines from Red Riding Hood. I was completely sure that I was staring into the eyes of a predator. The bright red scrub-type uniform didn’t sway that in the least.

  “Where are my friends? Where am I? Who are you?” The questions spewed from my mouth in rapid succession and with the force of a bullet as I stayed plastered to the wall. I wanted answers. Seeing as this guy was the first person I’d seen, he’d have to do.

  “Nowhere good, blondie. If you’re here, you ain’t leaving.” Then, he dropped the plate of whatever he was carrying with a clank, spun on his heel, and strode back toward the door.

  My instincts finally kicked in as I realized that was my opening. The freaking door was open, and I needed to get out of this room. I sprinted from my spot wedged in the corner and charged the man’s back, hoping to get past him. I’d knock him out if I had to, and the speed would help with that. I was getting out of there.

  Only, he sensed me coming. Just as I came up on him with a fist cocked, he turned on me, ready. He easily stepped around my errant appendage in a way that had me feeling like a floundering child, retaliating smoothly with his own strike to my injured shoulder.

  I crumpled to the pristine white floor in a heap of writhing, screaming agony while he stood leering over me with that same twisted smile and malevolent twinkle in his eyes. Torture was what brought out a smile in this man. “Now, now, girlie. That’s not nice. And look, now you’ve reopened your wound.” He pressed a too-white sneaker to my injured shoulder, effectively pinning me.

  Sure enough, the previously spotless floor behind me now sported specks of bright crimson, my blood once again attempting to flee my body. “Holden…” I groaned as I rolled to my right, so I could get up. I definitely couldn’t push up from my left.

  A new look took over the big man’s face—confusion—before anger flooded his features. It looked at home there, and his mind confirmed that he wasn’t the most impressive thinker. It also revealed that… “No.” It couldn’t be.

  “Holden? I used to have a boy named Holden.” Those eyes were steel.

  “Primal, what is taking so long?” Finally, the other man spoke up, though I still couldn’t see him with Holden’s… dad… standing threateningly above me. His crimson-clad legs were like tree trunks—too big to see around. “Don’t mess her up any more. She’s valuable to the doctor.”

  My assailant, if you could call him that when I’d actually initiated the attack—and failed miserably at it—moved toward the open door with an audible grumble, pulling it closed behind him without another look.

  My head was spinning, both with fatigue and the information I’d just absorbed. I now knew three things for sure.

  Someone here thought me “valuable.”

  I was a prisoner here, wherever “here” was.

  And lastly, I’d just been face to face with Holden’s rat bastard of a father. The man who’d nearly killed him a decade before. The man who was supposed to be in Enhanced Prison.

  Where am I? I didn’t like the answer that my mind gave me, both the only logical explanation as well as the most far-fetched idea I could think of. I was in Enhanced Prison.

  Pulling myself upright, I shuffled toward where Mister James had dropped the tray of food, not remotely hungry but knowing I should eat, so that I was as functional as possible. I’d need whatever my body could give me while I was a… patient? Prisoner? Whatever and wherever I was, it seemed I was on my own. My team wasn’t here; that was obvious. I could only rely on myself to get out of this predicament. Please, God, let me succeed, I prayed silently as I plopped the tray across my lap, coming to a seat in a chair nestled in the corner just behind the door.

  My meal was a turkey sandwich, a bag of chips, some carrot sticks, and a juice box. I felt like I was in kindergarten again, with a brown sack lunch that Dad had packed for me. My heart ached at the thought of my father. He must be so worried—if he even knew something was wrong. He’d blame himself, as usual. Maybe Mom would even show some emotion, act as though she cared that her daughter was missing.

  That was unfair. Mother loved me, I knew that, she just wasn’t the warmest. I could forgive her for that, if I ever made it out of there. I’d need to find answers, which meant I needed someone to come give them to me. Patience was definitely not my strong suit. For the time being, I settled in to eat my elementary meal—probably laced with some kind of drug—and wait. I finished the meal in record time, cleaning the plate, and felt myself once again drifting toward slumber. Well, I wouldn’t have to find ways of entertaining myself in this sterile room. As sleep tugged at the edges of my mind, I found myself wishing—like so many times before—that I had my music.

  Wait… did I? I looked down at myself in the lovely hospital gown, the same as I’d been in when the wound had been cleaned… I think. Blue jeans peeked out from beneath the hem at about knee level, and my black boots were still on my feet. I was more than a little relieved to know that no one had taken the liberty of undressing me while I was unconscious. At that moment, it was about the only bright spot I could see.

  I felt around my right front pocket, feeling the tell-tale lump of my music player. Thank God. I might not go crazy now. I sent up another silent prayer that the device still held a charge, so that I could actually listen to it. I didn’t have a way t
o charge it, so once it went dead, that was it, but at least it could take the edge off right now. I pressed the power button, excited when it flared to life and even more so when it showed I had about half a charge. Seeing as the thing only played music, it seemed to have a pretty decent battery life. I’d never been more grateful for that than at that moment. Next step was to hope that the earbuds were also charged… success!

  The headphones gave their telltale startup beeps, the automated voice telling me that battery was medium. I’d take it. After scrolling through the songs, I decided to just press random and take whatever came. I wasn’t going to be picky, I just needed some tunes to keep my mind off of the situation that I now found myself in. The situation that I still didn’t know the extent of and probably hadn’t even scratched the surface of.

  My mind kept drifting back to the same thing: I’d met Holden’s father. The man who was responsible for the man I love’s inability to speak. I needed the music to ground me, so the hate didn’t bubble up. If I was going to heal, I needed food and sleep. I’d had my food, so it was time for another round of sleep. Reluctantly, I pulled the earbuds out and turned everything off. I needed to save the battery, and there was no sense wasting it while I slept.

  It was a catch twenty-two. Healing was most likely exactly why I was here and may just keep my captors interested. If I delayed my needs for repair, they may lose interest, but I would stay at a physical disadvantage and hinder any attempt of escape, as demonstrated when one strike from a meaty arm flattened me. The last thought that flitted through my exhausted mind was that maybe I was worried over nothing and nothing had changed. Maybe it was some sort of fever dream and Holden was really sitting right next to me. I’d see him the next time I opened my eyes. With that rose-colored dream, I let myself slip out of wakefulness.

  My respite was short-lived, or so it seemed. It felt like I had just closed my eyes when the beeping one associates with electronic keypads began pulling me back to consciousness. My mind and body were well aware that they needed to be as sharp as possible while there were so many unknowns in front of me. I tossed, as if still in slumber, to face the doorway but didn’t open my eyes more than the tiniest slit and tried to keep my breathing slow and regular to disguise the fact that I’d awoken. I was doubly glad I’d extricated myself from all the beepy machines that would out me. The most was learned when people didn’t realize they were being observed, after all. It was what made surveillance so effective.

  A smaller shape entered the room in front of a large, bulky one in crimson duds. Daddy Asshat returns, I thought bitterly. His presence made my ruse that much harder to maintain. All I wanted to do was leap at him and tear out his devilish peepers. The woman, though, dressed in fine clothes and overlaid with a long, white lab coat was the true surprise. Recognition caused my heart rate to spike. For the second time, I was thankful I’d removed all the monitoring devices, or they would be shrieking my lies, and my covert action would be ruined.

  She figured I wasn’t asleep but went about her business, opening up various cabinets and drawers with a key on a bright-red, stretchy coil around her wrist, making no attempt to keep the noise down. Another indication she either knew I wasn’t asleep or just didn’t care if she woke me up. She was like my mother, reciting random lists and procedures that I had no knowledge of while she moved around the far end of the room, going from place to place to extract what she wanted from wherever its home was. It was a very effective tool for keeping anything of interest out my mental grasp.

  She would use such a trick. She knew me fairly well, after all. Her presence only caused a million more questions to light up my thoughts until, finally, I hit upon three influential factors. Doctor Parmore was a geneticist. She was a Sage, so her thirst of knowledge and pragmatism outweighed any reservations she might have. I’d recently outed myself as having accelerated healing.

  My dad was right, I never should have made it obvious. I was a unicorn, a previously-unknown mythical creature who held strength from both castes and no debilitating flaw from either. I was sought after, a puzzle to be solved and applied to others. Did the test subject ever actually ever survive testing?

  I was so screwed.

  She finished her scrounging and headed toward where I lay, forcing me to fully close my eyes to keep up appearances. “I know full-well that you are not asleep, Nathalee.” She pulled the chair from the corner of the room, its metal legs scraping across the floor. The sound was not unlike that of nails on a chalkboard, and I couldn’t keep from cringing—no doubt, that was her purpose in doing so.

  As I cracked my eyes open, my former boss raised a contoured eyebrow above her eyeglass frames, a silent show of superiority, before asking, “How are you feeling this morning, Miss Dae?”

  I couldn’t help the moment of surprise that lit my face at the mention of morning. The room had no clocks and no windows, so I now had no concept of time while I was in it, which was messing with me. It would only get worse, the longer I stayed; isolation had a way of turning sane people mad, so it would drive me batty rather quickly.

  “I’ve been here, wherever here is, for a full day… at least?” I asked with choked disbelief. Somehow, the knowledge of time passed made the reality of my situation even more real. No one was there with me. I was alone.

  “Yes, actually. We kept you slightly sedated to aid in your… recovery during the most painful hours. We hoped it might actually speed up the timeline. Call it experiment number one.” The woman was watching me with a serene smile plastered to her gloss-laden lips, but it didn’t reach her too-shrewd eyes.

  “I’m pretty sure you don’t heal gunshot wounds overnight,” I deadpanned, casting my gaze between her and her… goon, who looked on with bright eyes from the closed doorway. Waiting for the go-ahead to cause harm. It was all he was good for. Seeing him and not kicking his ass—or at least, attempting to—would slowly kill me. I’d just need to remedy that and make sure he felt my wrath. My lips curled into a malevolent smile as I stared him down, my lips matching the twinkle in his eye. The difference between us was that he enjoyed hurting people while I just wanted to hurt him.

  “Once you’ve eaten and done your morning evacuations, we can move forward with the testing.”

  That shook my focus loose. “Testing? What testing? My shoulder wound has been tended to, and I’m sure will begin the process of slowly healing so that I can function. The purpose of the hospital has been fulfilled. I should be leaving, heading home with my team.” I made a point to look around in search before I continued. “Where are my friends, by the way? Why have they not been admitted to see me?”

  Doctor Parmore rose fluidly from her spot in the chair to my side and ran her hands down the front of her ensemble, to smooth invisible wrinkles, before deigning to answer my questions. Her mind was giving me no advance answers, at least not at the moment. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was calculated on her part or if that just wasn’t how her mind worked through things.

  The oaf, on the other hand, was shit at concealing his thoughts. My head snapped back to continue our stare off. “What do you mean ‘they’re gone’?” I ground out slowly. “Why was I moved from the Regional Hospital?”

  Because you’re ours now, Holden’s dad taunted mentally.

  “What do you mean, I’m yours?” I sneered back.

  “He means that you… and your abilities… are quite valuable to what we do here, to what I am trying to achieve,” the doctor answered. I was surprised that she’d been so verbally open but then, she knew what my telepathy entailed.

  “What exactly is it that you are ‘trying to achieve here’, as you put it?”

  “I am going to engineer a superior human. One not bound by Sage, Primal or Non-Enhanced limitations… just perfection.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The speech was delivered with more passion than I’d ever heard from Doctor Parmore. Her eyes were bright. Her thoughts were fevered. Her mind was a single track, one she’d apparently been
on for years, but it was me—my special abilities—that she hoped would help tie up loose ends. She’d never had a healer she could observe and document.

  “You still don’t have a healer,” I said with as little inflection as I could muster.

  “Oh, now, you don’t think I’d actually believe that, do you?” She laughed haughtily. “You practically told the town when you had a perfectly-intact arm that had been in a cast for what… two weeks?” She gave me a placating look, but her thoughts were smug. Triumphant, even. “Davidson confirmed it, and we set things in motion to get you here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Davidson confirmed it’?”

  Doctor Parmore shrugged as she headed toward the door, pausing in front of her bodyguard to wait for me. I was stunned and disappointed, immobilized, reeling from the thought I’d caught.

  Steve. Steve had told his father about my healing ability. The duplicitous Councilman had then readily given the information to the ninnies pulling his strings and put our team’s “outing” into motion. The whole point of our team leaving Minefield was to get me into Doctor Parmore’s hands. Just who all had been involved? I’d kill Boat Shoes when I got out of here, and I would get out. I just needed to figure out how.

  Tired of waiting with feigned patience, the doctor looked back at me from over her shoulder. “Well? Are you coming?” In that moment, she reminded me of a spoiled schoolgirl instead of an accomplished professional. I vowed to make her life with me as difficult as possible.

  “Where would you like me to go?”

  “I assumed you’d like to relieve yourself, maybe freshen up a bit. Maybe not.” She shrugged again. I was really starting to hate that movement.