by Leigh Tudor
* * *
A woman in a white lab coat woke Mara early that morning, with instructions to follow her and to be quick about it.
Mara asked if Ava was coming too, but the woman ignored her.
Obediently, she followed her through several unfamiliar hallways, the floor so cold, she wished she had at least grabbed a pair of socks.
Thirty minutes later, she was lying on a bed in a white room, a number of machines and beeping screens surrounding her.
And she couldn’t move.
The room was full of dark shadows, mostly people fiddling with some sort of machine while avoiding all eye contact with her.
A tangible sense of foreboding enveloped her small body. The room smelled like the rest of the building, but the odor more pronounced—like the cleansers their mom used to clean the house with, but stronger.
Mara had silently cried the greater part of the morning, begging an attending nurse if she could please see her sister, Ava. But it was like the woman was too busy to concern herself with a patient’s emotional state.
Maybe more indifferent than busy.
Either way, others had entered to help her into bed and strap her in, moving in and out of the room, relentless in their quest to complete their assigned task.
Mara knew she was about to have surgery. She vaguely remembered having had another before, when she was younger. She didn’t know the purpose, or the results. No one had bothered to assure her if it was a success. Whatever success meant. All she knew was that when she awoke, she began to have visions, and felt an almost painful need to express them.
Shortly after her first surgery, she could recall one of the research staff had prepped a table and easel with a set of paints and brushes. An invisible ribbon had seemed to pull her toward the various items, and somehow, she instinctively knew what paints she wanted on what sections of canvas.
Soon she’d found herself completely overwhelmed by her inexplicable need to create. During her academic classes, she would doodle in the margins of her papers, and while in combat class, she’d pick up the moves as quickly as possible so she could return to the one place where she was allowed to escape and experience a different existence altogether.
A place where everything that was confusing and made little sense disappeared. Such as the memories of when her parents died in the car accident. Living in the foster home where Ava had spent every waking hour protecting her and Charlotte. Protecting them from the groping hands of the so-called foster dad, who smelled like beer and cheese with the tangy undertone of body odor.
And lastly, the memories of when they’d moved in with Dr. Halstead.
Originally, Ava had told her the grandfatherly doctor had adopted them, and they were moving into his home to live with him as his daughters.
Didn’t take long for that Pixar cartoon to change into a Grimm fairy tale.
Rather than drive them to a cute little house with a big yard and a dog her and her sisters had dreamed about, he’d headed directly to the Center, where severe-looking women in lab coats took them each by the hand and led them to their sleeping quarters.
Not to their bedrooms. A haven where you tacked boy band posters on the walls and picked out your own frilly bedspreads. But to a white-walled space the size of a closet, indistinguishable from an exam room in a doctor’s office, where they were told to drop off their bags and then spent the remainder of the day getting poked and prodded while taking all kinds of tests.
Somehow, she knew that this day in this white room was going to make it to the top of the list of memories she would fight to compartmentalize.
For at the moment, she was sitting nearly upright in a hospital bed, a metal cage surrounding her head and attached to something she couldn’t even see, and her hands securely tied to the metal rungs at her side, making her completely immobile. Her heart was about to leap from her chest due to the imprisoning apparatus and the beating became all the more erratic with each person who came into the room, refusing to acknowledge her or answer any of her questions.
Or bring her Ava.
If Ava were here, it would make all of this a whole lot less scary.
And if not her sister, at the very least, maybe someone could just talk to her. Just a few comforting words to let her know what they were going to do and assure her everything would be okay.
She heard footsteps outside in the hallway. And then about a half a dozen people dressed in scrubs with their faces covered with masks entered the room and set to work.
The area was now packed, half of them working steadily while it seemed the others were there to strictly observe.
Her eyes panned back and forth, trying to make sense of what they were saying, to get some idea as to what they were going to do to her.
A man leaned over with what looked to be a plastic mask in his hand and covered her face. She panicked, thinking she would suffocate, and began to yank on the ties, jerking any part of her body that wasn’t secured.
The man continued to bear down on the mask in response to the panic attack, and finally instructed her to, “Breathe.”
The one simple word gave her pause, and then she noticed his eyes boring into hers in a way that assured her he meant her no harm. She kept her eyes trained on his and took that first experimental breath, gifting this stranger with a leap of faith by inhaling and then exhaling.
And then she was out.
What seemed only moments later, Mara opened her eyes, trying to remember where she was and why. It all slowly came back to her, with the exception of the latter. Her head was still immobile, but to her surprise, they had released the ties on her wrists.
Probably because she lacked the strength to even bother with another panic attack.
She felt groggy and her eyes were having difficulty regaining focus.
Someone started talking, but they were standing behind her and the metal apparatus and draped cloths surrounding her head so she couldn’t see them. Another person, decked out in surgical scrubs, was pulling a table with a tray in her direction. Sitting on the tray was a sheet of paper, clipped to a board and facing her. They lowered the hospital bed rails to be able to maneuver the paper directly in front of her.
She felt someone touching her hand, lifting it so it rested on the tray, and she visibly twitched at the unfamiliar feel of a person’s soft touch, despite being covered in a surgical glove.
She then overheard, Dr. Vielle say, “The patient is awake for the craniometry and will help to ensure that we get the tumor without affecting her desired capabilities.”
One of the attending nurses picked something up from the tray table. “Draw until you’re told to stop,” she instructed.
Mara gladly did so, more than happy to do the one thing that would allow her to escape from whatever was happening around her and to her.
Whatever that was.
Instantly, she went to work. She was able to filter out the chatter, the beeping of the machines, and the clicking sound of metal on metal. A couple of times, her hand would suddenly stop moving. She would lose her grip on the charcoal pencil, watching it tumble to the tray, and her heart rate would begin to rise in concert with the sounds coming from one of the machines. But then she’d suddenly regain her motor skills, grabbing the pencil and picking up where she left off.
After a few hours of this, the tray with the sheet of paper, now covered with pencil strokes depicting a life-like picture of her mother, was taken away. She mentioned wanting to keep it, but once again, her wants and needs were of little importance.
One of the women in the room asked her to perform what sounded like brain teasers to, according to what she overhead, multitask her brain during the procedure. She asked Mara to match the letters of the alphabet with the next chronological number, such as A:1, and then B:2, and so on. She managed to make her way to the end of the alphabet, after which she waited for more instructions.
Throughout the surgery, she could feel a sense of tugging from above, somewhere aroun
d the crown of her head—but that was the extent of it. At one point, she heard Dr. Vielle say, “As you can see, with the help of the functional MRI, we are preserving the area of the brain required for her artistic function while removing the glioma, or abnormal brain tissue, which is the cause of the seizures.”
Seizure?
She was having seizures?
Her mind began to race, along with her heartbeat and the beeping machine, trying to think back to when that might have been.
Slowly it came to her. During a tactical drill, she’d been kicked in the head by one of the Israeli trainers, who had begun to instruct them in something called Krav Maga.
She had blacked out only to be awakened by Ava, who’d held her by the shoulders with deep concern written on her face. When Mara had asked what had happened, Ava said she had started to shake uncontrollably.
The second time it occurred, she remembered one of their trainers telling her she’d had another seizure. Ava had asked if they could take a break. Number Two, the nickname they assigned to one of their trainers—the other being Number One—had told her to get back into defense guard position or he was going to kick her teeth in.
Finally, after the surgery was completed and Mara awoke, one of the attending surgeons made the mistake of telling her that recovery time was estimated for anywhere between six weeks to three months.
She overheard him being fired the next day in the hallway outside the recovery room, the infringement being that he provided the patient with unnecessary and unwarranted information.
After that she heard nothing about the surgery. And had to assume the procedure was a success as no one informed her otherwise.
At just under five weeks, Mara was back on her feet, her daily agenda slammed with all of her regularly scheduled classes, including the brutal Krav Maga training sessions. Number One and Number Two showing no signs of reprieve or holding back on lethal kicks to the head.
Ironically, she became better at avoiding them.
Cara twisted the piano wire around the nail she’d hammered into the other, lower side of the supporting board to the handrail and tested it with her finger.
Yep, it was fully secure from one side of the stairwell to the other. Barely noticeable due to her finding a long enough wire, with the smallest gauge size, within the remnants of her piano and securing it six inches above the step.
With hands on her hips, she assessed her work while Nate stood on a chair next to the wall opposite from the staircase, testing his own contraption.
She turned toward him. “Why do I feel like we’re reenacting an updated version of the Home Alone movie?”
“Don’t discount the level of genius in a ten-year-old Macaulay Culkin,” Nate replied, testing his own wiring efforts. “That said, feel free to pass judgment once he reaches puberty.”
“Duly noted.”
Putting the finishing touches to the amount of tension on his contraption, he jumped off the chair and scooted it back to where he found it. He then kicked at the board he’d secured on the floor five feet in front of, and perpendicular, to the staircase, careful to avoid the line of protruding nails. It didn’t budge.
Whoever had chosen this basement to hold them captive didn’t take into account the dangerous combination of two geniuses with a full set of tools at their disposal.
Grabbing the can he found in a cabinet, he tossed it to Cara. “Sit against the wall in the same spot where you sat earlier today, and hold this can of hornet spray behind your back.”
Cara nodded, settling on the floor and loosely tying the rope around her ankles to give the illusion that she was still trussed up.
Nate switched off the light, and did the same. “You know what to do, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Just promise me one thing, Cara.”
His serious tone gave her pause. Suddenly, she was scared and wanted to cry.
“If I say to run—run. No matter what.”
She nodded and said, “I promise.” Unsure what scenario would warrant that since they’d literally gone over every single contingency for when Sam descended the staircase.
They waited for thirty minutes.
Cara wondered if Sam was even coming back, her nerves about to splinter in her chest and her bladder becoming all the more full and painful from drinking from the water faucet they’d found in the storage room.
The door at the top of the staircase was locked on the other side and pretty solid. They might have done all this for nothing, to ultimately die from starvation.
Then they heard it.
The sound of someone turning the key and unlocking the deadbolt.
Cara had never been more terrified.
She glanced at Nate one more time, and he gave her a reassuring nod.
The door swung open, illuminating the basement with a momentary burst of light, and then going dark again as it closed.
She sucked in a breath, fearing that whoever was at the top of the stairs had seen the fruits of their labor in the short time the light was on.
She watched Sam bound down the stairs, no longer sluggish but, again, frenetic and spastic. A good sign, as he seemed oblivious to the trap awaiting him.
Cara held her breath as he reached the last step, the toe of his boot tripping on the wire and his body spiraling forward. But his reflexes weren’t quick enough for his arms to break the fall, and with deadly accuracy, he fell perfectly centered onto the board with the five-foot row of nails protruding from it.
Cara stared in horror as she watched her friend’s father wriggling helplessly, his entire body affixed to the board, his face slightly turned her direction, his eyes wide and beseeching. In a grotesque attempt to pull himself onto his forearms and disengage, the bloody line of distended nails became clearly visible from where she and Nate sat on the floor.
Drool and blood dripped onto the concrete as his eyes bulged and he fought to escape. But the nail that had pierced through his skull must have been the kill shot as he finally ceased to struggle and dropped back down, impaling himself, once again, along the long row of spikes.
Nate sat instantly upright, but Cara kept her gaze glued on the first person she had ever witnessed die, let alone by her hands. Rumor had it that Loren had killed the man at Wilder’s Hardware, but she hadn’t even noticed with Mercy on her heels, and pulling her from the scene.
She, however, had never seen a dead person before. Let alone one she knew.
“Cara, move!” Nate yelled, tugging on her arm.
She finally pulled her legs from under her and stood, following Nate as he circumvented the body and hopped over the piano wire, and up the staircase.
“Watch the wire,” he cautioned, presumably aware that she was a bit dazed. Luckily, she followed directions until the door swung open, and the spray of light affected their vision.
“Now, where do you think you’re going?”
The sound of boots pounding the stairs had them both scrambling backward down the staircase, watching the man’s every move as he looked down on them as if they were no more than errant toddlers.
Cara and Nate stepped over the wire and stood at the bottom of the staircase.
“Stand against the wall. Now.”
They did as they were told, Cara shaking uncontrollably while Nate’s eyes darted around the room. They both held their breaths as he descended the stairs two at a time, skipping the last step and barely missing the trip wire.
The man looked down at the corpse at his feet. He attempted to kick Sam over and onto his back, but the nails did their job, securing him onto his impaled head and stomach.
“You two brats might be worth something after all,” he said with a chuckle. “You saved me a lot a trouble by killing this worthless piece of shit.”
He sauntered toward Cara and looked her up and down. “You must be the one who plays the piano. I hear you’re pretty good. That right?”
She couldn’t find word
s and swallowed with a slight nod as a reply.
“Maybe I’ll let you play for me,” he said with a wink that made bile rise to her mouth. “I think you and I are gonna be good friends.”
He turned toward Nate, who to Cara seemed even more thin and boyish when standing up against this man with a shaved head and neck tattoos running down the neckline of his shirt.
“And you,” he said, tilting his head toward Nate. “I hear you’re the bonus genius. Must not be too smart if you followed your girlfriend to my shithole rental in Raley.”
He sucked on his teeth as if contemplating. “No matter, it worked out for the best. We got two for the price of one.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Now why don’t you lead the way so we can get you ready for Amado?” Reaching out unexpectedly, he grabbed Nate by the arm and flung him like a gelatinous doll toward the staircase.
Cara yelped, but thankfully, Nate’s reflexes were quick enough that he was able to catch himself as he stumbled over Sam’s inert body. He regained his balance by grabbing onto the handrail and hopping over the trip wire.
He waved to Cara with a quick nod, indicating for her to go first as he kept an eye on their new and unexpected enemy.
She knew it wasn’t to be gentlemanly but wasn’t altogether sure what he planned to do for they hadn’t discussed their current situation as a possible contingency.
“You wanna play the big man with your woman?” the man gave an eerie chuckle. “Go ahead, ’cause it ain’t gonna last long.”
She started up the staircase, Nate letting her pass and following behind her, and the man following close behind. She turned in time to watch Nate stealthily reach to his left, pulling on a piece of wire he had tied to a nail in one of the rafters but making it look as if he were trying to maintain his balance.
Just then she felt what she hoped was Nate’s hand pushing down on the back of her head—forcing her to crouch low, hands on the steps for balance—followed by a faint whistle in the air and then a sickening thump. She turned, resting her elbows on the step behind her to see the man standing there with the wood chisel sticking out from the back of his hand. It seemed he’d grabbed onto one of the rafter boards for leverage, right into the trajectory of Nate’s chisel flinging catapult, unfortunately meant for the back of his head.