Awakening: Book 1

by L. T. Marshall

  I try to take some calming breaths as it all filters through my head, and I keep on telling myself I’m overreacting. This is just a drill, or a thing, or normal. I’m fine…. I’m sure I am.

  The whizzing whistle of air that skids past my left ear and physically inflicts a searing pain with the high pitch velocity it passes me with, makes me jump sideways and crash into bushes as I run at speed. I almost swallow my own tongue and my stomach lurches, about jumps out of my body with the scare. It gives me a near heart attack, and I scramble in stinging, scratching bushes to fight my way back out. I get caught up in thorn heavy vines and trip back over my own muddled legs.

  The fall makes me tumble and roll into hedge way, knocking my shoulder on rocks and stops my scrambling for a second. I take a moment to look back at the surging sunlit bright area I left behind, gasping as I see the pouring of black dressed men coming from some ground level hatch near the main door, like a concealed lid lifted from the gravel, and four maybe five bodies appear on the ground above. There are already two outside the gates and both are facing this way, looking intensely into the wood where I ran, and pointing big ass guns with sights trained in here.

  I don’t know what flew past me, I don’t think I want to know, and my doubt that I wasn’t in any kind of danger, dies an instant death. The blood draining from my body so I turn cold and statue like as it sinks in, they are definitely looking for me. I don’t stop to wait for even a blink longer, terror once again ripping through me at speed and activating my run like shit button. They all face this way and come thundering after me as soon as they see the rustle of the bushes I dart from.

  Gifts that are remarkable or not, I can smell them from here, wolves, and they are all armed. A little patrol of male wolves in black uniforms and they’re clearly coming at me. I don’t care who you are, what story you’re in, that never bodes well in any situation and I don’t think they’re trying to invite me in for coffee and cake. I’ve obviously stumbled across something I shouldn’t have.

  Pure instinct takes over and the urge to turn is almost killing me with the rate my human body is pounding itself to shreds with sheer adrenalin. I run, I trip, I fall, and I know that human form is only slowing me down and making it more likely they catch up with me. I know only too well that wolves will not be kind and show me mercy at being caught in their lands. I have one set of clothes… and that’s it.

  I need to think about survival now, even if that means ending up naked, and backpack less, miles further into the undergrowth. I just need to find another way to gather the things I need later and curse myself stupid for ever venturing this way, near this dammed building. It’s obviously not an inconspicuous power station. Those men were guards, and whatever they’re guarding, is important enough to carry weapons and stay in the multiples.

  I’m so god damn stupid. Fuck you, Sierra, and your damn dreams and pushing me East. Fuck the fates. Fuck Colton for making me leave the mountain and fuck Juan for being the root of all my woes and how shitty my life has been for a decade. This is all his fault!

  I turn. My inner wolf almost howling with an intense release, glad to be free finally. Head down, clothes shredding pitifully as I leave the last of my worldly possessions in the dirt and run like the wind. Nothing else that I can do about it now, and they are in fast pursuit.

  I fall, wedging between trees that are too close to get through and break free noisily with sheer strength and will power. Wood splintering, branches crackling, but being silent is no longer my concern as the noise of their pursuit out sounds mine. I can feel them coming, hear them, smell them, I can even feel their heart beats synching with mine as scent follows me close on my heels.

  Panic spreads through my veins and I hope that angry numb I gained with the bear, kicks in soon, or else I’m screwed. I can’t even stop to try and use any sort of gift right now, when I don’t even know how. The last few days of trying to conjure it up proved futile. I’m scared right now, not angry, and I have no hope in hell of conjuring any other feeling.

  Something else whizzes over my head, like a small shooting tunnel of air that makes my hair tingle and pull in its passing. It shoots directly into the tree several feet in front of me, and stabs viciously into the trunk, standing proud and straight when it comes to an instant halt. I only catch sight of it for a split second, a clear tube, filled with watery liquid, a red feather tail, embedded deeply in the rough wooden skin of the poor tree. It catches me eye, draws my attention, and before I can run past it while still trying to figure out what it is, something fires into my spine insanely stab-like, right between my shoulder blades with a stinging pain so intense it makes me howl involuntarily. A loud wailing noise that hurts my own ears.

  The impact is hard, the pain unexpected, and the combination makes me trip and crash face first into the branches and rocks on the ground I’m crossing at speed. I roll, hitting the rough floor of the forest like a dead weight and skid ungracefully, pulling debris and dried leaves with me, kicking up a cloud of dust and choking on it, across a tiny clearing knocking whatever was sticking in my back off as I do so. I feel it being yanked out with a stomach-churning tug.

  I land on my face, legs sprawled as my body betrays me and turns back to human form without my say so, and my eyes focus on the tiny thing only feet on front of me. Dazed, trying to catch my breath as this unearthly warm and strange sensation pours through me from the connect spot in the center of my back.

  It’s the same as what hit the tree. A clear tube, only empty this time, with a red brush tail, only now I can see the tip and its long, silver, extremely pointy, and looks a lot like a dart for taking large animals down. I’ve seen them on African game reserve documentaries. The needle is thick and huge, so no wonder it felt like something stabbed me with a big pointy object; they literally did… at bullet speed. I let out a groan and try to roll and move, aware that an empty tube suggests the contents are inside of me.

  I attempt to get up, but my limbs give out like useless heavy weights of flesh with no control, and my vision begins to spin. My head turning woozy as everything around me sways crazily, like I just got on the deck of a boat amid a rolling storm.

  I don’t like this, and I can feel the thundering of feet fast approaching me as wolves’ growls turn to human voices. I can make them out ever so slightly, coming at me on the gentle breeze of the rustling trees as silence begins to take over. My hearing and head fading out despite trying to fight it.

  “I hit her… she’s to the left. Split up and spread out in case we need to double dose her.”

  I can’t grasp anything as my hands claw at the dirty muck strewn ground below me, desperate to keep trying to run. As futile as I know it is, something in me is refusing to give up the fight and urging me to get to my feet. Like a tiny warm voice in my mind, softly calling out to me.

  I swear, I hear Sierra drifting my way in the wind as she reminds me of the same thing she has been saying all along, yet it somehow means something else in my drugged stupor.

  “Save us”

  I reach out to it in my oncoming delirium with weak grasping fingers, sure I see her face in the canopy above as my eyesight obscures.

  “I can’t. I’m not strong enough.” It’s a pathetic whisper at no one, as my eyes blur with tears at my own failure, and my heart aches that somehow, I let her down, even if it makes no sense. Maybe it’s the pain of failing myself. Weeks of running, hiding, and I can’t do anything about what I’ve gotten myself into. I was stupid to think I was special.

  I can feel them so close now, and as I try to lift my head and shoulders up from the soggy earth in one last ditch attempt to save myself, my vision blanks our completely and I lose consciousness.

  Where Am I?

  My head aches crazy bad with the weight of that damn bear sitting on my skull, my mouth feels weird and furry like I just ate my own socks, and I blink at the bright white piercing light as I slowly try to open my eyes. Flinching at the assault and screwing my face up in rea
ction. My body is heavy and disconnected as I try to come to and figure out where I am and what happened to me. I feel like I just survived a train wreck, and I’m not entirely sure I’m not dead and in the afterlife waiting room. I’m completely disorientated, everything spinning, and I can barely move my body as though somehow, I’ve lost use of anything but my eyelids. I feel vacuum pressed to the surface I’m lying flat out on and it’s the most surreal sensation to wake up to.

  It takes a minute for my eyes to grow accustomed to the brightness of my surroundings and much like having a torch shone in your face, it’s painful at first until it starts to level out and an actual ceiling comes into focus. Watery eyes blurring to clarity and blinking repetitively to figure out what I am staring at.

  White square tiles, and a center grey wooden fan that’s on slow and hitting me with a gentle breeze. The tiles are large, grubby, and pull my focus enough to let me grasp at the reality of my situation. That I’m inside a building and no longer on the forest floor.

  My gut twists and my insides sink as that filters through. It all comes slowly back, the memory of eating dirt and passing out, and I try to sit hurriedly as panic comes kicking back into play. Straining with all I have in me as mild panic sets in.

  I can’t move, a tightness across my chest, arms, and legs, yanking me down painfully and when I attempt a second time, trying to figure out what’s wrong with my body, I realize it’s not me… I’m restrained. It’s not some weird malfunction of my body after being tranquilized at all.

  I manage to tilt my chin, still woozy but able to drag the exaggerated weight of my skull up enough to look down my body and exhale at the sight I see. Laid out flat on a hospital bed of some sort, dressed in a light medical gown. There are leather straps across me at several points of my torso and legs, keeping me taped down, and both my ankles and wrists are shackled in wide black fabric to the side bars of the bed. The guards are up, holding me in place, and try as I can to wriggle, I can barely move an inch. They’re tight, thick, and impenetrable while I’m in human form.

  I turn my head to the side, dizziness making everything sway, getting a blank white painted brick wall and turn the other way, opening up my view into a small medical room. Brick all around, no windows, and one white door closed shut with nothing but a high square glass panel in the upper half. There are cupboards, trolleys, and worktops in here, with all manners of medical kits and supplies, some posters on the walls that remind me of the doctors surgery in Radstone and an array of panels up near the door that look pretty high tech. The floor is vinyl tiled in a weird blue grey and apart from the information posters on dressing wounds, the predominant color in here is white. It’s stark, stinks of disinfectant, and has the usual low hum of electrical outlets and the whirring fan over my head.

  It’s almost eerily silent and deserted, but I know that’s far from reality. There is nothing overly out of place for a sick room that causes me any extra alarm. I mean, it’s not like I’m waking up mid body slicing in an alien abduction story.

  I feel nauseous, my heart pounding through my ears already, even without the added anxiety of me waking up and finding myself captive in a strange place. I’m obviously inside the building now, somewhere below ground and I have no chance in hell of getting off this bed. My energy levels are low as hell, I can’t get up, probably not even without the straps, while I haven’t come all the way to out of my drugged stupor.

  My first attempt at turning is completely futile, as with sheer will power, I try in the hopes of wiping the residue drug out of my system. It’s like I have zero ability, and even breaking my own promise to myself to never link Colton’s again, I try, desperate for some kind of help right now. Just his reassuring voice, his always knowing what to do, his words to calm me. I get a black wall of non-penetration, meaning something is blocking all of my gifts and abilities and I’m right now, no better off than a mere mortal with no gifts at all.

  I wonder what the hell they’ve done to me to subdue all that is supernatural and I don’t have time to ponder it when a tiny buzzing sound draws my attention up above my head, behind my line of vision. Wriggling around until I can tilt my head far enough back, arching the very slight amount I can, to see a camera repositioning in the top corner over my head and focusing its attention on me. I guess my movements alerted someone to the fact I’m now awake, and I glare at it hatefully, visually doing what my body can’t and rebelling in some small way. I try harder than ever to get movement out of these straps and give up as a wave of fatigue washes over me and leaves me breathless.

  Its futile, I have no strength at all, still groggy enough that my little amount of energy wanes fast and I jump internally when the door across the room beeps loudly, reverberating through my ears and clicks to signal someone coming in.

  “I see you’re awake, dear girl. I’ve been impatiently poised and ready to come introduce myself to such a marvel as yourself.” The heavy accent is foreign, almost like the Queen of England that I’ve heard on television in the orphanage, and I screw my face up at the man who strolls in towards me, smiles weirdly as though eyeing up a special gift someone has left for him by surprise. I’m momentarily taken aback by the almost caricature way he has of talking.

  He’s in his older years with greying fluffy hair, glasses, and a balding head. His midriff is round and portly, which makes his white lab coat look restrictive and emphasizes he’s wider in size than in height. I can tell the second he walks in that he’s not wolf; I mean you would never see a wolf in this bad a physical shape and we definitely do not go bald. Grey over time, but none of that human aging flaws like developing weight or saggy bits. Definitely no losing hair. Wolves stay in their prime until they cash out past the hundred and so years we live for, and this guy looks like he’s maybe hitting human sixty at a push. He has a striped, baby blue shirt on, a peek of green braces, but a dark red polka dot bow tie that just adds to his peculiarness.

  I just stare at him pointedly; eyes steeped in mistrust and give him no response.

  “Quite.” He says absurdly for no obvious reason as his eyes travel up and down me in the most disturbing way. I’m definitely being sized up for some sort of alien autopsy. Either that or he’s lost in his own head and marveling at some wonder that has him smiling like a weirdo.

  “Where am I?” I blurt out boldly, not really caring about polite and friendly given my current predicament, and the fact this asshole has me lassoed to a bed, while Willy Wonka style bobbing nearby. My spine is agony at the point of that damn dart, and it feels like I’m black and blue all over. Only just beginning to feel my fingers and toes and despite starting to regain some alert, I feel like I’m not quite here fully yet, and this still has an aura of dreamlike to it.

  “Oh, of course… silly me. How rude and utterly awful. Let me introduce myself first. I’m Doctor George William Robert Adams, I’m the resident chief scientific officer at this facility, and you my dear are our guest. Sadly, we did have to take some measures for both our safety and yours, given that like my acquaintances, you seem to possess a certain wonderful gift, but it’s a temporary arrangement until we become better acquainted. I hope you won’t hold it against us, that without knowing your character or purpose for trespassing on our doorstep, we acted hastily in a precautionary manner. And your name is?” It’s a whoosh of ridiculously precise, queen’s English in an exaggerated and somewhat foolish sense. I’m at a loss. I didn’t think people actually talked or behaved like this, let alone ones who survived living among the aggressive, low patient, temper driven, wolf kind, like me. He’s a little absurd.

  I blink at him, stupefied at that whole upper crust, marble mouthed, mass of weirdness, that came out of him. He seems like some eccentric Mary Poppins type character, and I’m sure I might still be high from whatever they darted me with. I stare right back at him blankly, dropping my head back on the semi flat pillow underneath it and say not a word.

  “I know, I know…. You must be thinking the absolute worst
after Mr. Deacon took you down with an elephant dart, and they carted you in here and trussed you up like a Sunday roast on an oven sheet. Truly, we don’t mean any harm, we would just like to ascertain who you are, where you came from, and exactly what you were doing snooping around this rather top secret and out of bounds facility. A boring informality before we can be more hospitable. Please don’t hold it against me.” He raises his brow at me, still smiling like a demented person and removes his glasses to clean them on his coat, only breaking eye contact for a moment before returning them to his face and renewing that creep smile. I’m starting to wonder if this one is a sandwich short of a picnic and maybe this is what happens when you live in a box underground and don’t see the sun for prolonged periods.

  “Passing through. I have no idea what this place is and no interest in it.” I point out blankly, not really willing to elaborate, but it only gets a strange hmmm noise in return as he nods at me.

  “I see. Except the little issue with that is, you were very clearly caught on our surveillance, snooping around, and checking Tyron’s truck out, before high tailing it into the forest. Oopsy. I believe you, but they don’t, which is rather disastrous. May I add though… wow, just wow, I’ve never seen, literally ever, in the real flesh and bone myself, an actual pure and full white furred wolf. It truly was a remarkable sight, not to side-track the main point and negate the seriousness of your current position, but I just had to put that out there.” He raises his palms in a quirky little jazz hand movement that perfectly times with the happy wide eyed, lifted brow thing he does. The dude is strange.