Connected: Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Chapter 3

Camille

The vehicle lurched into motion just after the men who’d dropped me into the van had shut the door, and though that gratingly painful sound stopped, I was still paralyzed. One of the men knelt beside me while the other sat on the floor nearby to lean back against the wall. The van smelled so heavily of gasoline and cigarettes that I had to focus to pick out their scents, but it didn’t help, I didn’t know them.

“You sure this is the right one?” asked the man at the door. There was something playful in his voice as the guy kneeling beside me reached for a black box nearby. “You remember what happened with the Adhene?”

“So help me,” the man beside me growled, pulling a syringe out of the box, “if I hear one more word about that goddamn faerie-”

“Hey!” interrupted the driver. “Sedate the wolf before the piercer wears off. And get that connection cloak on her.”

There was a prick in my arm, and the contents of the syringe were so powerful that I was unconscious almost instantly. By the time I woke up again, I wasn’t in the van anymore. It was so much brighter, but it wasn’t sunlight. Cold white lights surrounded me, and over the drowsiness and the glaring of the bulbs, I could barely keep my eyes open. I tried fruitlessly to lift an arm to block it out, but I couldn’t move. At first I thought it was the sedative weighing me down, but my senses were slowly coming back to me, and I realized I was strapped to the cold steel table at my back.

“Name?” asked a gravelly male voice.

“Zade, Camille,” a female answered.

“Age?”

“Nineteen.”

A man in a white lab coat forced one of my eyes open, shining a bright penlight into it. “Werewolf?”

I took a deep breath through my nose, assessing the different smells around me. The air was sterile, laden with little more than various scents of medicines and chemicals. The man was human, I think – his scent was tainted and heavily masked by other smells – but the female wasn’t any supernatural I’d ever smelled before. Her scent was sweet, calming almost, if the situation wasn’t so stressful, and so light that I almost missed it amongst the other smells.

“Yes,” she said.

A hum of acknowledgment and something was shoved into my ear for a few moments before it beeped loudly. “Resting temp, forty degrees,” the man said. I could hear the scribbling of a pen on paper in response. “Class?”

“Pureblood.”

A cold metal rod touched my upper lip, lifting it away so the man could look at my teeth. I still could barely open my eyes, but I managed a weak growl. “Objective?” the man asked, dropping my lip and seeming unconcerned with my lousy attempt at protest.

“Um,” the woman shuffled some papers, “another subject for Serum Twelve in conjunction with the parameters of her…” The woman paused, sounding surprised when she finished, “Blood connection.”

"About time." It was the least bored the man had sounded yet. “Administer a small dose of sedative, take the samples we need, and deliver her to a cell.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few seconds passed before there was another prick in my arm, and then everything went black again. It was no less bright when I woke up, but at least I wasn’t on a hard metal table anymore. My head was set against a soft pillow, my body cushioned by the cot beneath me. I inhaled again, and though there were more scents readily available than before, they were still too faint to give me any real information about where I was. The only thing I could smell distinctly was another werewolf. Male. Bitten. I could see enough of my cell without moving to know we weren’t sharing, but the scent was close enough to be my neighbor.

Other than that, there was no way I could tell where I’d been taken. I’d been knocked out in the van, so I didn’t know how long we’d driven and couldn’t smell or hear anything. We had to be underground, though, because all the light was artificial and the steady stream of air coming from the vent high above me was heavily filtered. There was nothing that would help Kyla find me faster.

I bolted upright, the sudden jolt of terror enough to clear the drowsiness. Kyla. I couldn’t feel her. Not like I usually could. It wasn’t specific or strong or exact. There was no location or emotion, only a constant feeling of wrongness. But when I sat up, that terror caused a spike, and for that brief moment, I felt her. It only lasted a second, because when my panic dropped from its peak, the connection disappeared.

We’d tested this before, with distance.

The farther we got, the less specific we could read each other. It went from feeling joy, stress, fear, pain, to feeling only positive and negative. Beyond that, we felt nothing unless one of us was provoked by an extreme, like that panic I’d just felt. However, the connection only lasted as long as the extreme. I was still scared, but it wasn’t enough.

Though I hadn’t been able to judge Kyla’s exact location, or mine, that burst had given me an idea of distance. It wasn’t like I’d thought. I wasn’t far at all. I couldn’t have been more than thirty miles away. Then why? Why couldn’t I feel her if we were close enough? We’d tested our connection under every circumstance we could think of, including underground. Damn it. Where was I? I couldn’t fake panic like that in order to feel it again, and pain wouldn’t be enough unless it was life-threatening. I growled with a mixture of frustration and confusion and fear, and kicked my legs over the side of my cot.

It had been my intention to pace and hopefully calm myself down, but the sedative hadn’t worn off as much as I thought. The moment I reached my feet, I dropped, collapsing face first to the white tile floor because I didn’t have the strength yet to stand. I pushed myself to my knees, for the first time noticing that my clothes were different. I wasn’t in my jeans, t-shirt, and jacket anymore. I’d been put into a pair of dark blue scrubs, and even though the floor was hard and cold, my feet were bare. I had minor scratches on my arms from the car accident, and though they hadn’t been bandaged, they’d been cleaned.

I stayed on my knees to look around. I was in a corner cell, able to see both directions down a long, white, L-shaped corridor. The cell I was in had only a cot, a sink, and a toilet. Two of my walls were white brick, the other two – the entrance and the wall connecting the cell next to mine – were a thick layer of clear glass.

“They dosed you good,” said my neighbor, rising from his cross-legged position on his cot and striding to the wall separating us. “You’ve been out for hours.”

He was in scrubs exactly like mine, and equally barefoot.  He looked close to my age, maybe a few years older. His eyes were a soft brown, a few shades lighter than the dark brown of his skin, and his black hair was a mess of tight, short curls. He was small, about my height at five feet seven inches, but he was built with lean muscle, and the facial hair on his square jaw had grown to scruff.

I lifted myself to my feet, carefully, in case I wasn’t quite steady yet, and then staggered over to our adjoining wall. “Do you know what day it is?” Maybe if he knew the date, I could calculate how long it’d taken them to get me here.

He simply shook his head, watching me set mine against the clear barrier to battle the wooziness that had taken root in my stomach. “Drink some water.” He nodded toward the sink in my cell. “It helps.” I wobbled over to the sink, using my hand to scoop some water to my lips before making my way back to him. “I’m Palmer.”

“Camille.”

Palmer slipped his fingers through the small ventilation holes in the clear wall between us, leaning forward against it casually. “You know why you’re here?”

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, trying to remember what I’d heard while I was drugged. “Some serum,” I answered, thinking more heavily. “And they said something about my blood connection.”

A pair of guards in black tactical uniforms, holding rifles and with side arms at their belts, had been making their way down the hall, and Palmer waited until after they passed our cells to reply. “What’s a blood connection?” he asked. I explained it to him, and he was so surprised and fascinated that he just stared at me for a few seconds before saying, “That doesn’t sound good.” And to himself, “I wonder what they want with it…” I shrugged. “Did you catch which serum they’ll give you?”

I shook my head. I’d been too heavily drugged and too drowsy to remember what the serum was called.

“They brought a wolf in a few days ago,” Palmer said, pointing to a cell across the hall from us. “Whatever they gave him made him shift, but he was mad, like he had rabies or something. He shredded everything he could get his teeth on, and wouldn’t stop trying to break through the glass to get at anything that moved.”

“Did he survive?” I asked.

Palmer’s shoulders bobbed unsurely. “He snapped out of it after a while. Changed back and seemed normal again. Well, as normal as he did before – the guy had a bloodthirsty look in his eyes before they even gave him the stuff. They moved him though, I haven’t seen him since.”

I glanced across the hall to the cells on the other side. The fit of rage Palmer described was still visible in the room. There was a large chip of ceramic missing from a corner of the sink. The cot was gone, maybe because it had been broken into a million pieces. There were scratches on the walls, and parts of bricks had been clawed away to reveal a gray concrete beneath the white paint. That wolf wasn't the only prisoner, either.

There were other people and creatures in the cells that lined the hall. I couldn’t smell them very well because the air was too filtered, but I could see them. Some looked human, and could’ve been werewolves or vampires or any other supernatural that had a human appearance. Others didn’t look human at all. Some of the cells had different symbols painted above the doors, symbols I would’ve thought were labels about what species they were if it’d been on every cell. But they weren’t, so maybe they were something else. Some kind of magic to keep the prisoners from escaping when simple glass and doors couldn’t.

I looked back at Palmer. “What about you?” 

Palmer took in a deep breath, releasing it through a heavy sigh. It looked like he’d been about to answer, but at the far end of the hall, another pair of guards entered. One of them was holding a clipboard, and when Palmer saw it, his voice gained a sense of urgency. “I think they’re coming for you,” he said. “You see those guns they have?” I nodded. “They’re loaded with darts that have silver in them. Don’t fight when they bring you out or they’ll shoot you with it.” As the guards neared, Palmer began to retreat to his cot. “You get one of those darts and Marion might be able to keep you alive, but you’ll be down for days wishing you were dead.”

I wanted to ask who Marion was, but the men stopped at the door of my cell, and I didn’t want to do anything to provoke being shot with silver.

“Zade,” prompted the guard who was holding the clipboard. “Put both hands on the wall and don’t move a muscle.”

I did as instructed, setting my palms flat against the glass wall. Despite my cooperation, the guard still stopped looking at the clipboard and raised his pistol at me, warning me against trying anything. The second guard unlocked my cell with the card slot on the outside and strode over. I tried not to flinch or show my fear as he grabbed one arm at a time, pulling them behind my back and locking my wrists into a pair of cuffs so heavy that I was sure they were made specially for werewolves. I could feel the silver in them too, meaning even trying to Phase would’ve been pointless.

“You’ll follow me out,” instructed the guard who’d put the cuffs on me. “You’ll stay three paces behind me at all times. You break that distance or try anything aggressive, and you’ll get a nice dose of silver to your bloodstream. Got it?” I nodded. “Let’s go.”

I followed him out at the specified distance, the second guy staying a pace behind me – no doubt with his gun aimed at my back. As we walked down the hall, I stole glances into the containment cells we passed. Not all of them were full, but whatever this place was, they’d picked up a fair share of supernaturals from somewhere.

The guards led me out the doors at the end of the hall and into another sterile, white corridor, at the end of which was a set of double doors. We passed other large entrances on the way, though I couldn’t see into any of the rooms because the windows were small and I couldn’t stop to get a good look. There were more symbols all over place, too. Carved into the stone of the building and floors or painted on doors. All kinds of symbols that I could only imagine did all kinds of different things. Maybe these symbols were part of the reason I couldn’t feel Kyla, some kind of cloaking method like whatever the kidnappers had used in the van. But who would know about our connection in the first place? And who would have the resources and intelligence to develop a blocker for it?

Eventually we reached the doors at the end of the hall, and when the guard opened them, I could see we’d arrived at an infirmary. The only person inside it was an Asian woman, tall despite her flat shoes, and delicate looking even though she was full-figured and thick. Her straight black hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her fair skin looked pale under the white lights and navy scrubs she was wearing. The gloves on her hands were a bit off-putting, seeing as they weren’t latex exam gloves. They were a thin blue cloth to match the scrubs, and snug enough that I’m sure they wouldn’t interfere with her work. I could tell immediately by her scent that it was the same woman who’d been speaking to the man when I arrived.

“Where do you want her?” one of the guards asked.

“There’s fine,” the woman answered, “thank you.”

The guard tossed the clipboard onto a table inside the door, undid the cuffs, and gave my back a shove to push me into the room. Then they let the doors swing closed, leaving me here alone with her. It was a bit surprising that they weren’t concerned. Without the cuffs on, I was free to use my hands or even Change. I could attempt escape, or try to hurt the woman – though I couldn’t see them leaving me in here alone if they were concerned I’d act out. So was someone else watching, was the woman more capable of defending herself than she seemed, or was this just an explicit act of trust that would determine how she’d treat me?

“Please,” the woman said, motioning to the steel table at the center of the room. “Have a seat.”

I couldn’t help it that her politeness and the small smile she gave threw me off. I was here so they could give me some serum against my will, some serum that I had no idea what it would do to me but that I knew wouldn’t be good, and as hard as I tried not to be, I was scared. I was tense as I walked to the table, and kept my eyes on her until I reached it. I turned around, pushing myself back onto the surface to sit at the edge, ready to act if the woman’s manners were all for show.

“I’m Marion.” She held out one of her gloved hands, holding it between us until I’d distrustfully taken it in my own. I studied the infirmary and focused on trying to figure out what was going on instead of introducing myself. “You’re Camille,” she supplied.

I ignored her, steeling my nerves and glancing around to find resources for defense or escape. Everything was carefully locked away in glass cabinets, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the glass of those doors was as durable as the walls of my cell, and there were symbols all over those too. There were some pens on a desk nearby, which I could use as a weapon if I truly got desperate. There was an open shower in one corner, and a sturdy metal door on the back wall with key card access and a sign over it that read ‘Class H Lab.’ There were two small steps at the far left, leading up into a sectioned-off office that overlooked the infirmary.

“Don’t let the guards catch you scouting,” Marion said, distracting me from my examination. “They can get a bit overzealous with their guns.” I finally looked at her, and watched her scribble onto my clipboard while I wondered why she hadn’t just done what she’d brought me here to do. “You’re afraid,” she said. It wasn’t a question, not even a little. She said it like she knew, and when she noticed that I was squinting at her curiously, she offered a comforting smile. “You have every reason to be, I understand.”

“What are you?”

Her smile widened, and she wrote another note on her clipboard. “Any guesses?”

She wanted me to guess? What, was she testing my intelligence? My knowledge about the supernatural? Did I even want to know what the point of all this was? Despite the lingering fear in my gut, Marion hadn’t done anything threatening to me yet, and maybe I could distract her from the purpose of this visit by humoring her. I took a breath through my nose, trying my hardest to decipher her scent. It wasn’t enlightening, so I took in the gloves on her hands. That didn’t help either – I had no idea what she was. I shook my head.

“Give it your best,” she suggested.

“You’re not psychic,” I said. She knew I was afraid, which meant she’d either made an easy guess or she could read me, but, “You’re not human.”

“Not exactly,” she confirmed.

Before she could tell me what she was, a man walked through the main doors and into the lab. At his appearance, Marion straightened, tensing into a visibly less relaxed demeanor. The man strode over to us, and I recognized him from earlier. He was in the same white lab coat, with the same drenched-in-chemicals smell that made his natural scent hard to distinguish. He had pale blue eyes and peppered gray hair. He looked like a completely normal doctor except for the fact that he was kidnapping supernaturals and had a deep scar in his neck. It started at the base of the back of his skull, the thick line extending forward to his collarbone and out of sight beneath his black scrubs. He had to have contact with all kinds of supernaturals, because he carried the hints of multiple scents on him – werewolf, vampire, something I recognized as demon. But those scents didn’t seem to be coming from his clothing. They seemed to be coming from him.

He didn’t look pleased about my studying him either, and his upper lip curled as his eyes darkened with hate. “Status?” he asked Marion, grabbing the clipboard from her to look over my information.

“I was about to get her brain scans,” Marion told him.

He grunted an acknowledgment. “Overall health?” He pointed at my mouth. “Open.” I made sure to give him an incredulous scowl while I stretched my jaws. I didn’t like being looked at like some sort of specimen in a petri dish, but just the idea of those silver darts was enough to keep me compliant. For now.

“There’s an abnormality in her heart,” Marion said. But that was a lie, and she shot me a look over his shoulder that told me not to disagree with her. “Maybe we should delay Serum Twelve.”

Another grunt, though this one contained a depth of mild displeasure. He strode a few steps away to grab a stethoscope, and then stuck the cold end of it down the neck of my shirt. I flinched at the icy feel of the metal, passing him another hard glare. He listened to my heart for a minute before returning the instrument to where he’d got it. He seemed to be only human, but there was something about him and his scent that made me uneasy. Not to mention that he was so comfortable around me, even though I could probably kill him in a heartbeat. It made me wonder how many supernaturals had come through. How many had he done experiments on and made submissive, so that he wasn’t the least bit afraid of ordering me around?

“Fighting condition?” he asked.

Marion’s face fell at the question, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t concern me too. “Cognitive function, and reaction and process speeds are high.”

“Scar tissue?”

“Among the least of any we’ve seen,” she told him. That made me wonder when she’d examined me for scars, but I had been unconscious for a long time, and I didn’t like thinking about what else they could’ve done to me while I was drugged. “But sir,” Marion said, “she’s Pack. Exposure to threats may have been limited.”

The man cast her a disdainful look, as though he’d caught on to the fact that she was trying to help me. For some reason, she didn’t want me to be in perfect health, and she didn’t want me to look like a strong fighter. But I was both of those things, and the man wasn’t fooled.

“Get started,” he commanded, leaving us to shut himself in the office that overlooked the lab.

Marion wheeled over a small cart, picking up a packaged needle and a vial of fluid. It was clear that she was only following orders even if she didn’t want to, but why?

It could be a fatal mistake to try and find an ally in Marion, but my options were so limited, and she’d seemed to do what little she could to prevent whatever was about to happen. “Can he hear us?” I asked her in a whisper.

She broke open an alcohol pad and reached for my arm, wiping it across the bend of my elbow. “Not if we speak quietly enough.”

“Why’d you try to help me?”

She didn’t say anything while she filled the syringe, and then she cast a wary glance toward the office before saying, “I’m a prisoner here, just like you.”

“Are they experimenting on you?” I asked. She shook her head, reaching for my arm so she could inject me with whatever was in that syringe. I yanked my arm away. “Then you’re not just like me. You could refuse.”

“I don’t have that luxury.”

“Why?”

Her eyes darted once more toward the office, and she murmured, “My son. He’s six, and they killed my husband and took me from him. I need to get out of here alive, and that means doing what they tell me to until we find a way out.”

I guess that was as good a reason as any… I sighed, reluctantly extending my arm so she could inject me and do what she was told.

She gave a grateful but apologetic smile. “This is harmless,” she said, expertly finding my vein and pushing the needle in without so much as a prick of pain. “It’ll be absorbed into your body, then in fifteen minutes we’ll be able to see your brain activity with that machine.”

I looked over to where she was pointing and nodded, and she gave me another thankful smile for making this easy on her. “What are you?” I asked again. If she was a friend, I wanted her to know she had one in me too, and knowing what she was capable of would be helpful in planning our escape.

“My kind don’t have a name, and so we have many.” She set the empty syringe back on the cart and pushed it away, folding her arms across her chest when she stood in front of me again. “We’re mostly known as healers.”

“You’re a healer?” I repeated in shock.

“You’ve heard of us?”

Only once. From Abby. She’d gone on a mission for the Council where they had to catch a healer… a healer who was killing people and whose husband was there... The husband was an innocent human man who Abby had killed to defend her team, something she still harbored tremendous guilt over. But she’d said that healers were rare. How was I talking to a healer who’d lost her husband, just like the healer Abby had apprehended, if they were so rare? But the woman Abby had captured was a murderer, and she’d never mentioned that woman having a son. So, was this a coincidence? Or was Marion truly a killer? And did that mean she was lying to me about trying to help me here?

“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.

“What?” Her eyes widened with genuine horror at the mere suggestion. “No. I’m a nurse from Indiana.”

“Just making sure,” I said. She still looked confused and maybe a little skeptical, so I asked, “How does it work? Whatever you can do.”

“We read biology,” she answered. “I can look at any living thing and know how any part of it functions – on a macro or micro scale.”

“That’s how you knew I was afraid?”

She nodded. “Emotions trigger chemicals and hormones. I see them as streams, waves, and bursts of color.” She paused to glance at the clock on the wall above the doors behind her. “Everything else – disease, illness, general health – it’s a combination of sight, colors, and smells.”

“Useful for a nurse,” I said, somewhat sarcastically because all it had done for Marion was get her kidnapped. “Why the brain scan if you can just read me? Or anything else you did to me while I was sedated?”

Marion tossed a look toward the office. “He doesn’t trust me completely.” I could see why. She hadn’t been very subtle about trying to help me. When I asked if she had any other abilities, she looked at the clock again before answering. “We can give or take life with a touch. It comes at a price few of us are willing to pay, but they still make me wear the gloves.” She held up her hands to show me.

“What price is that?”

“It’s unique to each of us,” she said. “For some, it’s the ultimate price. Others value something more than life.”

“What about the wolf in the cell next to mine?” I asked curiously. “Palmer. How long has he been here?”

“Palmer’s been here about six months.”

“For a serum?” I asked, to which she hummed a confirmation. “Marion… what is Serum Twelve?”

The doctor cleared his throat from the entrance of the office. “You’ll find out soon,” he told me, and then narrowed his eyes at Marion. “The scan. Before the tracer wears off.”

Marion didn’t get a chance to say anything else to me the rest of my time in the lab, as the doctor appeared fed up with her being friendly toward me, and stood over her shoulder for the remainder of my stay. They put me in the machine to watch my brain, and pricked at my fingertips to see what it did in the scanner. They’d said they wanted my connection with Kyla, and from what little they said to each other during the tests, it seemed they were looking for physical evidence of it. For the reaction in my brain every time there was a prick of pain. When they were done getting the scan and a couple of blood samples, the doctor called the guards in and gave Marion a syringe.

“Take her back and give her the first dose of Serum Twelve.”

“Sir,” Marion protested, eyebrows furrowed in surprise. “You usually-” He cut her off with a fierce scowl, and she bowed her head in defeat.

The guards led me back to my cell in the same pace and order that they’d taken me to the lab, with Marion following reluctantly behind us. When we got there, they removed the handcuffs, and I hadn’t noticed the camera pointed at mine and Palmer’s cells until now. Somehow, I knew the doctor was watching. I could feel it, and I nearly growled at the thought.

“Camille,” Marion said quietly, prompting for my arm. I gave it to her, wondering if Serum Twelve would be worse than one of those silver darts. She stuck the needle into my flesh, saying rapidly, “I’m sorry. If you can shed your clothes in the next ten seconds, you should.” She pushed the serum into my vein, and no sooner had she removed the needle than the guards shoved me into my cell and slammed the door closed.

I didn’t know why she said I should remove my clothes, or why they’d pushed me in like they were suddenly and finally afraid of me. However, I tried to do as Marion suggested. Already my skin was burning at the point of the injection, but it was spreading like wildfire in my blood. I lifted the shirt over my head and tossed it to the corner of the room, glowering at the guards even though they were watching me with terrified anticipation rather than lewd fascination. The fire consumed me in a matter of seconds, but it went beyond the physical. It was mental and emotional. It was rage. So much rage scorching at the pit of my stomach and boiling into a snarl in my chest. I barely managed to shed my pants before I felt the searing pain that came with a Change.

Only, I hadn’t felt pain like this in my entire life. Normally the Change came and went in a flash, a moment of agony that faded as quickly as it came. This time, that pain lasted, and lasted. It was like my body was fighting it, trying desperately to stop what I had no control over. The Change was slow. A bone in my back snapped out of place at the same time my knees did. It hurt so bad that I cried out, dropping to the ground because I couldn’t stand on distorted legs. Every muscle and bone and tendon was shifting, popping out of its human spot to relocate for my wolf body. Unlike a normal Phase where it happened all at once, I could feel each shift, one by one.

It was excruciating, and the pain only fueled the rage that got so overwhelming I finally screamed, the sound of it wavering halfway through as my throat became completely inhuman. I snarled at the guards watching and sent them backing up into the wall behind them. I bared my human teeth at Marion, and then my wolf teeth at Palmer. The Change was so close to complete. All I wanted was for it to end, but God, the last of it was the worst. The thick fur sprouting from my pores didn’t tickle or itch like it did when I could feel the Change coming. It stung, biting at my flesh with each strand, and it wasn’t like the bones. It wasn’t one at a time, a pop here and then relief while there was another pop somewhere else. It was my entire body all at once, poking through like millions of needles just a millimeter at a time.

Then finally it ended, but I didn’t get a moment to catch my breath. The fury I felt was uncontrollable. I was so angry at anything and everything. All that mattered was getting something in my jaws so I could sink my teeth in. Blood. I was voracious for the taste of blood, because maybe clamping down on something I’d rendered lifeless would ease the rage. I threw myself at the glass front of my cell, snapping and clawing at it to try and break free, because there were three bodies full of blood on the other side. Marion’s head fell, unable to look at me as she retreated down the hall, and this, this bloodthirsty beast from my worst nightmares, this was Serum Twelve.