Connected: Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Chapter 13

Camille

Some unknown time later, the sedative wore off and my eyes cracked open to familiar white lights overhead. My heart sank, and I lifted my hands to my face as despairing tears blurred my eyes. It was a test. I’d known it was a test all along, but I never expected them to be bold enough to attack the Pack house. I should’ve known better. Now I was back in my corner cell in the lab wearing a brand-new pair of scrubs, my connection with Kyla was as weak as ever, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive whatever Butcher had in store for me next. Even worse, he’d discovered that our connection was enough to override the rabidity the serum induced. What if Kyla was no longer safe?

I lay on the cot in my cell until the drowsiness of the sedative wore off and I managed to blink away the tears. Then I pushed myself up, and even though I could see Palmer out of the corner of my eye and knew he was looking at me, I didn’t meet his gaze as I trudged to the sink. I cupped my hand under the faucet and scooped some water into my mouth, satisfying my thirst before I finally looked at him.

His eyes were full of sorrow and pity and apology, and I didn’t have the heart to talk to him. I was in the process of turning back toward my cot when I glanced past him and felt all the blood in my veins run cold. The glass walls of our cells allowed me to see through his cell into the next one over, where a familiar figure was lying on the cot, still unconscious.

“Luna!” I hollered, lunging forward to slam my fists against the wall separating my cell from Palmer’s. “Luna!” As she began to stir, the ice in my veins melted and boiled, and my shock and fear turned to fury. I whirled around, storming to my cot and grabbing one end, just to fling the entire frame at the door of my cell. “No!” I raged, shouting a barrage of incoherent screams and profanities at the camera overlooking my cell. “Butcher, I’m going to kill you! You touch her and I’ll fucking kill you!” I picked up the cot, slamming it again into the clear door. When that didn’t break through, I kicked at the door with the soles of my bare feet just to release my hatred. “I’m done playing your games! Fuck you! I’ll kill every last one of you!”

I was so outraged that Butcher had also kidnapped Luna that a bone in my knee snapped with the start of Change. I knew I wouldn’t be in control if I Phased, but I didn’t care. I gave myself to it, Changing instantly to avoid the agony of a slow one. My wolf burst out of the new scrubs they’d put me in, and I’d barely been in control before, but now I had none. I hurled myself at the door until I noticed Palmer in his cell, and then I lost myself to snapping and clawing at the glass between us. There wasn’t a fiber in my body that was fighting the rage, and I’d never been so bloodthirsty in my life.

Luna was fully awake, and she staggered to the wall separating her cell from Palmer’s while he backed all the way to it, putting himself as far from me as he could. “Are you Palmer?” Luna asked, and he nodded. “What happened? Did they drug her?”

He shook his head, wincing when I hit the glass so hard it shook. “She saw you and lost it.” He looked back at her. “You her girlfriend?”

“Sister,” she answered. “Luna.” She cupped her hands around her mouth, yelling, “Camille, you need to calm down! I’m fine!” My snarling was the only response.

“She won’t listen,” Palmer said. “The serum does that.”

“I know.”

“Why’d they bring you this time?” Palmer asked.

Luna shrugged, but both of them were distracted when four guards ran through the door at the end of the hall. They sprinted down it toward my cell, and I abandoned Palmer’s wall to snap and snarl at them. One of them fit the barrel of a rifle into one of the holes in the glass, but before he could fire, Butcher’s voice yelled through the walkie-talkie at his shoulder, “Don’t sedate her! I need her conscious!”

The guards groaned, but a second one pulled a familiar small device from his belt. He clicked it on, and the deafening noise that came from it put me on the ground. The glass must have muffled the noise some, because while Palmer only dropped to his knees and covered his ears with his hands, Luna managed to stay on her feet.

“Change back and I’ll turn it off!” the guard shouted over the noise. All I did was keep growling at them.

A third one opened the door of my cell and came in, pulling a baton from his belt. “Change back!” he demanded. When I didn’t, he raised his arm, bringing the baton down hard on my shoulder.

“HEY!” Luna roared. “Do that again, asshole! I’ll remember you when I get out of here!”

Another one outside the cell glared at her and shouted, “Shut up!”

I didn't want to get hit again, and the sound from that device was excruciating. It was difficult to focus through my uncontrollable rage enough to even think I could Change back, but no dose was forcing me to stay in wolf form. With every bit of will I had, I made myself Phase, and the fury faded with the wolf until I lay there, human and panting for air.

The fourth guard threw a fresh pair of scrubs at me while the one with the device turned it off and retreated out of the cell. “Get up and put those on,” he said as they secured my door.

It took a few minutes for me to recover the use of all my muscles, but once I could move again, I stood. I pulled on the scrubs, never taking my fierce glare off the guards. When I was dressed, the one who’d thrown the clothes at me pulled his rifle off his shoulder. “Hands against the wall,” he ordered. “This isn’t a sedative. Move one damn muscle and you’re riding the Silver Express.”

I growled as I turned to put my palms against the glass. They opened my door again and came in while the other guard kept his rifle trained on me. They pulled my arms behind my back and put the silver-contaminated handcuffs on me, and then led me out.

“Where are you taking her!” Luna shouted after us, but they didn’t answer, and she yelled threats at them until we’d left the corridor.

Our route was familiar, and before long I was standing in the infirmary, facing Butcher and Marion.

“Leave the cuffs on her,” Butcher said. The guards left me standing there and retreated to just outside the door.

While Butcher stared me down, I met Marion’s eyes for the first time, only to immediately focus on my feet. I’d never seen such severe disappointment in my life. Such hopelessness. I’d failed at getting any of us out of here, and I wasn’t the only one who would pay the price.

“Your girlfriend helped you cheat through that last test,” Butcher said. “Perhaps you’ve been the wrong subject all along, and I have only one use left for you.” His upper lip curled with disdain as he looked me up and down with a disappointment far more venomous than Marion’s. “Check her,” he told Marion, his voice cold. “Then send for the guards.”

I didn’t dare ask what the one use he had left for me was, and the roiling in my gut told me that I didn’t want to know. Butcher stomped into his office overlooking the lab, and Marion motioned for me to sit on the exam table. I sat on it and glanced at the clock over the door to see how long I’d been unconscious. It was eight in the morning.

Marion went through the unnecessary motion of wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my arm, so silent that I thought she was too discouraged to even try talking to me. But as she pumped up the cuff and pretended to count, she whispered, “You didn’t get it.”

“Get what?” I asked.

She closed her eyes, letting out a sad sigh. “The note Butcher dropped. I slipped it into your pocket while I was patching your wounds, before they released you.” She met my eyes, hers brimming with tears. “I wrote on it that they put a tracker in your arm.”

That stole all the breath from my lungs, and my eyes filled with tears. It was in my arm. God, why hadn’t we checked everywhere? “I’m sorry,” I murmured. She looked away. “Marion, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t say anything while she fit a stethoscope into her ears and listened to my breaking heart. “What’s going to happen to me?”

She glanced at me one more time so I could see the remorse on her face, but she didn’t answer as she strode to the door and said to the guards outside, “She’s ready.”

They came in to get me, and I was too defeated to fight whatever fate I was about to endure. I followed willingly as they led me through the lab and to a room I was all too acquainted with. It was the room they always made me fight in, but I was the only one in it. They shoved me into one of the separated sides and freed my hands, and then closed the door as they exited, leaving me alone. I didn’t know who I was fighting this time, or if I even would be, but I didn’t care. My spirit was broken.

I sat down on the cold tile floor and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them to lay my head down. I sat there in despair, fighting the tears that had filled my eyes because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been so close to freedom. So close to not being forced to Change and fight, but it’d all been a lie. Would Kyla and Abby ever be able to find us? Would Butcher simply kill us before they did?

At least ten minutes passed before the door on the opposite partition of the room opened. If I thought the despair was bad before, it was nothing compared to when the guards led Luna in. So that’s who they wanted me to fight? My own sister? Even worse was that she’d only had two doses of Serum Twelve so far, and I knew she was about to get a third.

“I’m not fighting her,” I said aloud, unmoving from my spot on the floor. I knew it wouldn’t do any good if they injected me with Serum Twelve. I’d fight whether I wanted to or not.

But then Butcher’s voice sounded over the speakers, saying, “Do what you want. Your connection means you’re no longer a viable subject. This isn’t your test.”

My gaze instantly met Luna’s from across the glass separating us, and her hazel eyes were filled with the same panic I suddenly felt. My connection with Kyla meant the results of my control testing weren’t reliable. But Luna… She didn’t want to fight me, or hurt me, and she had no outside influences on her control like I did. Butcher wanted to see if our bond would be enough to affect her under the serum. If it would give her even the slightest ability to resist.

“You have to Change, Camille,” she said as the guards pushed her forward. “Please. I’ll tear you apart if you don’t.”

Maybe she would kill me if I didn’t Phase, but if I did then we’d kill each other. Unless… My heart skipped at the sudden idea I had.

I didn’t know if Luna had the same distant control as I did when the serum forced a Change. Was it because of my faint connection with Kyla that I was able to direct my aggression when I had options? Or would Luna be able to pick a target even if she couldn’t keep herself from attacking? There was only one way to find out.

I nodded to let her know that I’d Change. “Luna, look at me.” Please understand what I’m about to say. “I’ll Phase, okay? But look at me, you can do this.” She looked at me, staring directly into my eyes while I deliberately moved my gaze to the observation window behind her. She followed the look behind her, and then glanced at me again with confusion, thinking about what I meant because she knew I meant something. But it wouldn’t mean anything if she didn’t have that slight control. She wouldn’t know that I wanted us to get our fighting as close to that window as we could. That I wanted us to try breaking through it to the guards and Butcher on the other side, so we could attack them instead. Please, I thought, please understand.

Luna inhaled a curious breath and glanced down in thought as the guards undid her handcuffs, and then it dawned on her. She met my gaze again with recognition, her lips pulling into a half-smile. “I always knew we’d go down with a fight,” she said.

A relieved sigh left my lungs. She knew what I meant. She understood. “Let’s show them what we got?”

“I’ll show you what I got,” she teased. “Marshmallow.”

I pulled off my shirt and then pants, Luna doing the same while the guards on her side stood ready with an injection gun. Once we were both undressed, they stuck the needle into her neck and gave her the third dose of Serum Twelve. Her bones cracked and shifted, and I couldn’t stand watching her go through the slow agony I knew all too well, so I Phased to lose myself in the rage.

The fury consumed every part of me but the part that recognized Luna. The part that remembered what we needed to do to keep from killing each other. Luna completed her Change and met me at the glass, responding to every snarl and snap of mine with one of her own. We raced from end to end, so that we were ready to cross over the very moment the glass partition began to open.

It slid apart just enough for Luna to squeeze through, and we were an instant and rolling tangle of fur and teeth across the white-tiled floor. Luna was an exceptional fighter even without the serum, but with it she was a force to be reckoned with. She was still precise in every dodging step and every slash of her teeth, but she’d gained a careless ferocity that I didn’t know how to counter except with raging desperation. Every time her teeth pierced skin, I snapped in return. Every time her claws tore at me, I snarled and swiped back.

Every drop of blood I drew from her I regretted with all my heart, but I couldn’t stop, and neither could she. Not when she reopened a wound on my leg, or hit my ribs so hard that it knocked the air from my lungs, or sliced open the front of my shoulder. I wasn’t even sure if she remembered what we needed to do, but with every strike I made, I tried my best to move our fray closer to the observation windows. We were getting closer, but both of us were taking too much damage.

By the time we neared the wall under the window, there didn’t seem to be a spot of Luna’s white fur that wasn’t stained red. In the midst of our battle, she closed her jaws around my hind leg, whipping me to the side so that I slid across the floor and slammed into the wall. There wasn’t a wasted moment before I was back on my feet and lunging at her, but she hurled herself forward to meet me in the air. The collision sent us toppling to the floor, but my size was an advantage, and as we crashed down, I managed to get my teeth on the scruff of her neck. I clamped down and threw the entire weight of my body in a circle, tearing her off the ground and heaving her toward the window.

She hit the glass with so much force that she smashed through it, startled shouts sounding from the other side. I followed and leapt into the observation room as Luna regained her feet, and it worked, because she wasn’t at all interested in me anymore. Both of us lunged at the nearest guards, taking them down and ripping into their throats.

As two other guards whirled their rifles around, Butcher’s voice screamed, “I need the white one alive!”

A man in a lab coat pulled the paralyzing sound device from his coat pocket, but I was on him before he could activate it. His hands released the device to close around the wound I’d slashed in his neck, but the serum had taken so much of my control that I opened several more in his chest.

"Shoot them!" Butcher screamed.

His holler attracted Luna's attention, and she turned a raging snarl on him as she crouched for a spring. One of the guards got his rifle up before she could lunge, firing a dart into her flank right as she left the ground. She soared through the air and crashed into Butcher, taking him down, but the moment she widened her jaws, she collapsed on top of him. I roared at the guard that had sedated Luna, so full of fury that I barely registered the silver-feathered dart that struck me in the shoulder. The pain of the silver the dart put in me was nothing compared to my burning anger, and I leapt at the guard who'd shot Luna, sinking my teeth deep into his throat.

"Again!" Butcher yelled.

Another dart hit me in the neck, but the first one was catching up to me, and the second cut through my rage. And then I felt it. The liquid silver filled the veins in my neck, igniting every cell it touched on its way to my heart. It was like a fire started burning me from the inside, searing outward until even my skin felt like it was blistering. Beneath the agony of the heat, every muscle in my body seized, contracting so tight they may as well have been shriveling around my bones, and I dropped. I hit the ground and curled, rolling onto my back, my side, my stomach, and then I reared and hit the ground again on my shoulder. I couldn't control the movements of my body because my body was spasming.

Worse than all of it, worse than the excruciating pain and the fire, was that I could feel the silver in my blood. It was thick, squeezing through my veins to cut a sharp path to my heart, curdling every cell of blood it touched on its way there. My heart was racing, but it felt like it was pumping out gravel that fell into and filled my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn't think over anything that I felt, but I sucked in gulp after gulp of air on instinct, desperate for just one full breath to ease the inferno that had consumed my body.

Then, all at once, it stopped. Everything stopped. The fire and the spasming and the gasping and my heart. I got one long, full moment of peace and relief, and then everything went dark.